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Confronting the Crisis that is Modernity. 

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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