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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   29634 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 13, 2023

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I think tales of it's death have been greatly exaggerated and even if it is dead, I'd place the date far later. It was still very much alive at the outset of the First World War, whether it died there is a matter of debate.

As Chesterton says, Christianity has died at least five times and rose again stronger from the tomb. It's almost as if there's a theme somewhere in the Gospels...

As Chesterton says, Christianity has died at least five times and rose again stronger from the tomb. It's almost as if there's a theme somewhere in the Gospels...

You probably mean Hillaire Belloc, writer even more prolific than Chesterton and one half of "Chesterbelloc" inseparable duo.

In The Great Heresies he boasts how the Church survived attacks of Arianism, Islam, Cathars, Reformation and modern unbelief and ends in rather optimistic tone.

Of this new tendency to sympathize with Catholicism--and in the case of strong characters to take the risk, to accept the Faith, and proclaim themselves the defenders of it--there can be no doubt. Even in England, where the traditional feeling against Catholicism is so universal and so strong, and where the whole life of the nation is bound up with hostility to the Faith, the conversions which strike the public eye are continually the conversions of men who lead in thought; and note that for one who openly admits conversion there are ten at least who turn their faces toward the Catholic way, who prefer the Catholic philosophy and its fruit to any others, but who shrink from accepting the heavy sacrifices involved in a public avowal.

...

Even the most misguided or the most ignorant of men, talking vaguely of "Churches," are now using a language that rings hollow. The last generation could talk, in Protestant countries at least, of "the Churches." The present generation cannot. There are not many churches; there is one, it is the Catholic Church on the one side and its mortal enemy on the other. The lists are set.

Thus are we now in the presence of the most momentous question that has yet been presented to the mind of man. Thus are we placed at a dividing of the ways, upon which the whole future of our race will turn.

The book was written in 1938 and, sadly for Catholic Church, Belloc's optimism turned out to be badly misplaced.

Catholic church rejected everything that would make it Catholic in Bellloc's eyes and is not looking very well.

Protestant churches are still there, and the churches that are thriving and growing are churches that would drive Belloc into rage and total despair, if he saw them.

As great sage said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

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