Confronting the Crisis that is Modernity.
Modernity – one big “head trip”.
In 1848, the French sociologist and liberal Catholic, Alexis De Tocqueville, said that “We are sleeping on a volcano… a wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.” The irony is that today the volcano has long since exploded, the storm continues to rage and yet people are still sleeping in a lethargy of unreality.
At the heart of the crisis of modernity is the denial of reality. Financial markets are held together by usurious financial products that only exist in the mind of brokers. Language is being distorted and definitions forcibly expanded to include things that have no basis in reality e.g. same sex marriage.
Ever since the fourteenth century when William of Ockham denied the common natures of things (e.g. human nature) he set in motion modern philosophy, Protestantism, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution by turning the mind in on itself and away from external reality. This is the denial of the mind’s adequation with reality. For these people reality becomes what their mind makes it to be not what reality says to their mind about what it is. Consequently, if reality is what your mind makes it to be then you must impose it on the world, see it take shape, determine, and control it. Effectively thinking and rationality becomes one big “head trip” and absolute freedom to determine the “head trip” becomes everything, hence the bloodbaths of 1789, 1848 and future events which De Tocqueville foresees.
Today’s corruption in thinking and today’s bloodbaths manifest themselves in disguised, seemingly neutral but violent ways. Abortion is dressed up as the unreality of bodily autonomy, mass immigration is pushed as humanitarian and economic benevolence,
euthanasia as mercy and the denial of pre-existing social and cultural norms, like the family, as progress.
The volcano has blown yet people still sleep and as the lava flows around and over them, they are oblivious because they are lost to the unreality and distorted ideas created and formed in the minds of revolutionaries.
Over the last number of years Catholics have been presented with various “options” to deal with the ferocity of modernity - the Benedict option, the Jeremiah option and even a “Brendan Option!” To be honest none of them are fit for purpose as none of these saints confronted anything as malign as modernity. Although St. Benedict had to contend with barbarians - the tattooed uncivilised types wielding axes - at least he could tell who the bad guys were, he wasn’t dealing with ideologies pretending to be neutral like gender theory. No, modernity is a different animal altogether and Ireland is at the vanguard of promoting it as recent referenda results clearly show. This is ironic considering that from this island missionaries went forth and in a very small way were harbingers for benedictine monasteries across Europe which in turn led to the reign of Charlemagne and the eventual unification faith and reason in the thirteenth century with St Thomas Aquinas’ writings. What this island once helped to build, in a minuscule way, with western civilisation it now leads to destroy.
Modernity is created to destroy society, the village, the Family, and the Catholic Church because they are custodians of reality. Modernity only accepts Individualism and liberalism. Both are destructive and both are demonic.
Modernity – crushing its head.
But what can be done to turn the tide if anything? Indeed, many of the best Catholic philosophers and theologians today do not hold out any hope. For them we have gone passed the point of no return because Catholicism is being eviscerated from within and without, it no longer has the social presence to attract new converts.
However, even they would admit that there is a reality that is best situated to confront modernity because it is the greatest of all realities and it represents an event that occurred in the fullness of time and when history reached a climax of reality. This is a reality that destroyed both sin and death. If modernity is based on what is most unreal than what is needed to vanquish it, or at least confront it, is to avail of what is most real – The Traditional Latin Mass. The Traditional Latin Mass is Jesus Christ, it is the greatest act of love. Before it there is nothing you can say or do except remain silent and give thanks. Not only is it most real in providing a superabundance of grace, which heals, perfects, and elevates the reality of nature, but it also passes on something pre-existing like a gift given to us from previous generations of Catholics. Love, silence and attempting to receiving something pre-existing from previous generations is abhorrent to modernity.
Of course, at Calvary the superabundance of gifts that pours forth does so through the conduit that is Our Lady suffering while offering up her son to God and acting as co-redeemer. There she is given to her children as Mother as she gives birth to them in agony. She is the nemesis of modernity, and She will crush its head. St Louis Marie de Monfort in his great work said:
“The children of Belial, the salves of Satan, the friends of the world – for they are all one and the same – have always persecuted and will persecute more than ever in the future those who belong to the Blessed Virgin, just as Cain of old persecuted his brother Abel, and Esau his brother Jacob. These are the types of the wicked and the just. But the humble Mary will always triumph over Satan, the proud one, and so great will be her victory that she will crush his head, the very seat of pride…... Satan will lie in wait for her heel, that is, for her humble servants and her poor children whom she will rouse to fight against him.”
What is most needed in an age of unreality is to withdraw, every now and again, for a short time and be reminded of the reality of the Traditional Latin Mass and the co-redeeming work of Our Lady. This is what is happening in Galway City of February 10th with a conference on Our Lady, The Liturgy, the Family, and the crisis of Modernity. For more details see www.roundtower.org/conference-24
Re- emerging afterwards to confront modernity’s insidious ideologies is the objective. That may take many forms or shapes - small surprise attacks, a skirmish here or there, or full-scale spiritual battles, but confrontation there must be otherwise modernity will have
succeeded, with its pretend neutral ideologies, to render Catholics inactive once again before the exploding volcano. Again, confrontation there must be for as Otto Von Habsburg, the eldest son of Blessed Karl, the last Austrian Emperor, once said “When you die and stand before Christ, at your personal judgement, He will not ask you how successful you were in life but on which side you fought on and how hard did you fight?”
Article by - The Round Tower Association - https://roundtower.org/about
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