"The falling of Christendom into Paganism must necessarily produce results shocking to our inherited culture...I cannot but wish---somewhat temerariously--that the new Paganism may develop a little too rapidly, shock a little too violently the dormant conscience of Europe and thereby prepare the counter-attack against it."
Hillaire Belloc, Survivals and New Arrivals.
According to a recent Harris opinion poll only one in three people in England say they are "a believer". In Italy less than two-thirds are believers, and in France it's less than one in three.
A recent ICM poll found that an overwhelming majority of Britons believe that religion does more harm than good. Neither of the above polls account for the percentage of "believers" that are Muslim in Britain and France.
Everywhere we hear the mantra that religion has caused nothing but hatred, violence and bloodshed throughout history. The secularists assert that they can do a better job at keeping peace, justice and order in society than Christianity did.
So how do secularists propose to achieve a better society? What is christianity replaced with?
Christianity is replaced with no less than a man-made, man-centered religion that demands a human rather than a divine faith. This faith has been in the making for centuries. We are now at its culmination. Some may refer to it as the spirit of the anti-christ. After all it is indeed against Christ.
The secularists are not theists since their belief system does not include a diety per se. Although they abhor the notion of dogma they nevertheless rigidly espouse the strict adherence to the fundamentals of their faith.
One of the essential dogmas of secularism is relativism. Relativism tells us that truth is subjective and everyone's truth is different. What may be wrong for you could be right for me and vice versa. Relativism holds that no one religion has a monopoly on the truth. It tells us that there is no such thing as objective truth. It makes the practice of orthodox Christianity impossible. Since Jesus Christ revealed Himself to be the living Truth then the rejection of objective truth is necessarily the rejection of Christ and Christianity.
A second dogma of secular fundamentalism is multicultural tolerance. Converts to this system of belief are convinced of the peace and harmony that can be achieved when one strips himself of any and all preferences for one's own culture. An untempered openness to everything, except of course christianity, is part of the fundamental dogma. A contempt for all things Western and most especially Western history frees one to conclude that Islam is the religion of peace and christianity is the religion of crusaders and the inquisition.
Toleration is to secularists what love is to christians. Truth and toleration do not go hand in hand for the secularists. If someone is engaged in something that might cause harm tolerance requires a "live and let live" approach. After all "I cannot impose my morality on someone else". We must tolerate all things liberal and licentious.
Secularists condone everything that christianity condemned as an abomination. The doers of the abominable have been declared secular saints and martyrs. The stripping of the mind, heart and soul of so called rigid belief systems is supposed to bring about peace, justice and order.
Will our society flourish now that it has rid itself of christian influences? Are we finally on the threshold of utopia?
Would anyone in their right mind answer these questions in the affirmative? Most elements of our society are in a steep and speedy decline.
Our entertainment elevates vice to the status of virtue while mocking marriage, motherhood, fatherhood, parenthood, innocence and glorifying all things sexual. Our educational system is a dismally dumbed downed government program that creates an anti-socialized, cookie-cutter, apathetic citizenry.
Families have been destroyed so quickly and efficiently it is no less than diabolically orchestrated. Materialism beckons and fathers become slaves to the tremendous "needs" our society impose on us. Motherhood is lost to the lie that the drudgery of work is more fulfilling than truly impacting the future by rearing one's children. We have defrauded generations of our children by sheer neglect. We have stolen children's innocence and have force fed them lies about what will make them happy. Then our secular society has the gaul to act surprised when school shootings occur and the number one cause of teenage deaths is suicide. Everywhere is the toleration of what is wrong as right--and the intoleration of all that is right as wrong. Despite both parents pursuit of the American dream, we cannot "afford" more children so we make the mortal blunder of contracepting away our future. Meanwhile the West is oblivious to the looming demographic crisis that its love of contraception has created.
Islam does not share the West's love affair with contraception. It is now at the West's doorstep with a punishing zeal and it will not tolerate, nor peaceably coexist, with the West's secular dogma and perversion of right and wrong. The West's very existence is threatened by its own suicidal extinction. A society that makes the family its enemy will make an enemy of its future.
Essentially secularism is a religion that compels no specified behaviors and asks for nothing of its adherents. Even a secular fundamentalist would not suffer, let alone die, for the cause of secularism. After all, the dogma of relativism tells them that their beliefs are no better than anyone else's. Yet marching now into Europe is a religion that believes itself to be superior and its adherents will die for their faith. Herein lies the crux of the matter--without conviction and willingness to fight or die for something, a quiet death will come upon the West. It will tolerate even its own demise.
How can a civilization continue when it fails to see the benefit of reproduction of the human race and attempts to thwart it at every turn? How can a civilization continue when we have all become mini-gods, each with his own divine plan for right living? How can a civilization that accepts everything condemn anything? An ordered peaceful and just society based on secularism is doomed to fail. All around us is destruction. But in this vast destruction lies a tremendous gap or void that offers hope. Hilaire Belloc, prophetically saw this in Survivals and New Arrivals.
"Meanwhile there is a gap: and that gap is our opportunity. ... [It is Catholicism's] "...unique power to answer the great questions, it has always seemed to me the most powerful instrument possessed by the Faith in the spiritual crisis now so close upon us. You cannot perhaps convert despair when despair has been erected into a system, ... but you can check it in its beginnings, when it is no more than the loss of something which the despairing man knows he has enjoyed, and cannot but wish he might recover.
"To the Great Questions which man must ask himself and which so insistently demand an answer (What is man? Whence comes he? Has the universe a purpose? What part does man play in that purpose? What final destinies may be his?) the Catholic Church gives not only a reply... but a fully consistent solution: a sound complete system of philosophy. Moreover Her answer is not only consistent; it is triumphant. She knows fully Her own validity; She can point in actual practice to the effect of happiness produced in society by her philosophy.
"Those great questions will be asked again and again. We are not hearing the last of them; we are at the beginnnings of their second postulation, at the beginnings of a new interest in them.
"The falling of Christendom into Paganism must necessarily produce results shocking to our inherited culture...I cannot but wish---somewhat temerariously--that the new Paganism may develop a little too rapidly, shock a little too violently the dormant conscience of Europe and thereby prepare the counter-attack against it." Hilaire Belloc, Survivals and New Arrivals.
