Consolations for Catholics during America’s Impending Decline and Predictable Fall
By Joseph Andrew Settanni
There are means of gaining substantial hope as the illusion of national revival slowly fades from view. This is a discussion of why and how Roman Catholics, as well as other Christians, can still have great reasons to be spiritually hopeful, regardless of the approaching degradation and later destruction of the USA.
Expectations and predictions are so wildly raging toward the upper heights of the political stratosphere; this is surely concerning the now optimistically observed conservative or substantially rightwing takeover of the US House of Representatives, limited “destruction” of the now rubber-stamp Democratic Senate, Republican Party dominance of most state houses and governorships, and, of course, much else in America that appears to expand upon conservative optimism.
An incredible and unstoppable political tsunami or earthquake (called an “avalanche” by George Soros) of a surely titanic magnitude, not seen since at least the election of 1932 had, moreover, both publicly and amazingly occurred, according to the notable pundit and widely-respected elections expert Michael Barone. And yet, more than that, some lucid commentators are now actually thinking there will be something occurring well beyond even that quite fairly fantastic expectation, meaning the projected era of the conservative ascendancy, in American politics, for at least a generation or more.
Realistically speaking, nonetheless, these yet excessive assertions and extravagant opinions are getting further and further beyond belief, as they do, more and more, edge toward the highest limits of what might so speculatively occur. Political enthusiasm, among other matters, normally waxes and wanes depending upon many factors, which can be both directly and indirectly observed; but, political entropy also exists. And, it is known that nations and empires, peoples and cultures, civilizations and societies rise and fall throughout the course of temporal history. A past astute observer of societal realities, Peter Viereck, interestingly, said that the continuing sound of history is the noise of wooden shoes ascending stairs and leather boots descending stairs, which should make optimists pause in their thinking.
Hard Realism versus Bizarre Optimism
There is also, however, as at least some would asseverate, the pendulum view of history. Although the nation had been pulled extremely quite far to the ideological Left by Obama and the Democratic Party-controlled US Congress (the latter in power since January 2007), therefore, the probable movement of the figurative pendulum seems physically poised to head far toward the Right. Or, so it seems.
Perhaps, that attempt will get the political balance back somewhere at or near the basic or essential center, as most realists would generally guess. Usually, one extreme cancels out the other, though a radicalized infrastructure, a further empowered Federal bureaucracy, can be generally left behind to so ensure the continuity of power realities. The New Deal, e. g., permanently gave the nation the Social Security System and, of course, much else as a socialist legacy; the Great Society, in its collectivist turn, permanently created Medicare, Medicaid, and other features of the ever-expanding welfare State.
For each interval in political occurrences, there was some swing back to the Right, though never as great as might have been supposed or, perhaps, had been hoped for in their, the conservative’s, dreams.
This is certainly because that is what history usually accepts, as reasonably predictable, in the clearly known electoral terms of relatively free countries that do not truly wish to provoke violent revolutions or, alternately, counterrevolutions. Based upon many public opinion polls, books, internet websites, and a vast variety of other sources, American society and culture is surely divided, at this time, to a much greater degree than is usually the case; perhaps, not since the early 1860s has there been such a massive division of national opinion concerning the fundamental course of politics in this nation; few people living in this country, e. g., are totally or mostly neutral, actually dispassionate, about Obama, especially now concerning his highly divisive collectivist programs and policies.
And yet, (political) appearances quite often or, perhaps, usually are somewhat deceiving, especially so because too few Americans really wish to unpleasantly see the expanding and insidious Weimarization, meaning seemingly inevitable degradation, of their own country; what is to be well rendered here, in contrast to overweening confidence, are valid considerations for now aiding in the yielding of requisite spiritual consolations for Catholics, or other people logically aligned with Christianity, during America’s impending, looming, decline and then predictable fall.
There are legitimate and substantive means of gaining substantial hope, in matters of the spirit, as the immoderate, mainly overgenerous, illusion of a supposed national revival slowly, over the next few years, steadily and, sometimes, rapidly fades from view. Political entropy is the regular rule, not the real exception. Why may this be appropriately said? Incredibly sustained levels of national vigilance, for the expansion of what used to be called (and praised as) republican virtue, is just beyond the normal human capacity to fundamentally endure in the total absence of an actual (violent) revolution.
Equally, one knows that demographics is destiny; not enough patriots physically exist to do much good; if it were not for illegal aliens, the domestic birth rate in America of the native population, e. g., would be below the absolute minimum replacement level of 2.1%. Patriotism depends upon the existence of actual people, living patriots, millions of whom were not born in this country due to abortion, artificial contraception, sterilization, lives destroyed, e. g., by drugs or pornography, etc. Political hope has been, in fact, literally killed and in a substantially massive way; this is, thus, the absolutely monumental fact that then simply cannot rationally be ignored, though it is, of course, by many optimists and dreamers.
The future belongs to the fertile, not the sterile; the major and unfortunate birth dearth is verifiably real and not, therefore, the supposed figment of someone’s “reactionary” imagination; one can, also, throw into the larger mix the major and continuing de-Christianization of this country, besides the inherently harmful dependency culture of welfare that, as is so well known, increasingly exists as a despondent and degenerate reality, a permanent underclass occupying the country.
A truly living and healthy society, if one assumes it has a true future and is not decadent, ought not to ever have a permanent underclass, which indicates a definite and irrefutable rot, a so wildly festering putrefaction, at the essential core of this highly troubled nation. What are among the pragmatic and empirically observed indications as to the realistic truth, therefore, of what is here confidently said?
The growth of the US Food Stamp Program feeding one seventh of the American population, 41 million and rising fairly soon to 43 million, is but one very tiny indication of why America is so rapidly advancing into a gigantic sociocultural sewer of absolute collectivist dependency, with no end in sight. The gross embrace of the Culture of Death (abortion, infanticide [AKA partial-birth abortion], euthanasia, sodomy/ homosexual liberation, rampant pornography, artificial contraception, sterilization, etc.) by the basic mainstream of American society in general is, thus, becoming rather quite suffocatingly apparent now, meaning by the early 21st century; all this is manifestly part, therefore, of true Weimarization and its obvious and necessary nihilistic consequences, meaning, thus, the aforementioned Culture of Death.
All this is strongly upheld by pandemic support for cultural Marxism: multiculturalism, affirmative action, diversity, etc. Weimarization is, therefore, occurring both rapidly and substantively. The seen welfare-warfare State and its related military imperium cannot, however, be forever sustained; it is known, from past history, that the Republican Party will then find the possible ways and means of salvaging, adapting, reformulating, restructuring as needed, and, thus, making ObamaCare “work” for the American people.
The Beltway Mentality, furthermore, supports the RINO Republicans, the establishmentarians, who will wish to naturally remain with the ruling class who endorse welfarism to mainly further the cause of nihilism in America. Most of the Republican leadership has, furthermore, publicly expressed their great desire to cooperate with and aid Obama; again and again, they have demonstrated their ability to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory, being that they are gutless wonders. A Republican Party-controlled Congress would, thus, not really mean that much for the hopes of dedicated patriots who are expecting a manifestly and undoubtedly conservative ascendancy.
It (ObamaCare) will not, in fact, really be ever totally eliminated because Obama still has veto power for the next two years; the infrastructure is, of course, already solidly in place for now and, more especially, in the future. In ideological context, the full reality of Obama must be understood, as he is, surely, the first postracial, postnational, post-patriotic, post-American, and post-Christian [he has, e. g., deliberately eliminated references, in his speeches, to the Christian God as is found in public documents] president in American history; this fellow genuinely wishes to entirely transform the USA into a social-democratic State with a social-market economy necessarily destructive of free-market economics, while continuing the warfare State’s existence; that bold project, historically speaking, might be delayed, never really fully stopped.
And yet, there is not enough money in the universe to, thus, sustain permanently both an expanding domestic collectivist system and foreign interventionist system dedicated to such clearly simultaneous thrusts of secular-humanist power structures in this highly technocratic age. When “guns and butter” both get pushed as defining parts of the political order, one or both must yield to reality sooner or later, as has been demonstrated, by recorded history, many times. Reality must be faced.
The Republican Party, meaning the rightwing socialists, and the Democratic Party, the leftwing socialists, are all fundamentally establishmentarian-oriented political and ideological forces notably supportive of the main particularities and functionalities of the welfare-warfare State (WWS) and its vast, worldwide military imperium; this is, whether one likes it or not, the core and substantive reality of basic American politics in the early 21st century, regardless of the Tea Party Movement’s massive effort usually to the contrary. Whatever might be done, in consequence, to hopefully reduce the enormous and expanding power of the WWS will, thus, be just too little and too late; and, history marches on to the future.
The directive power of the momentum of American history, with the aid of the Culture of Death and cultural Marxism with PC thinking, sustains the yet main path toward statism, toward tyranny. Political realism demands acceptance of this so realistic point of view that, logically, crushes supinely terrene optimism and silly notions of an assumed and vital revival and resuscitation of patriotism to so valiantly turn back the both heinous and hideous forces of despotism and autocracy in this country.
Compared to America in, say, the 18th century or early 19th century, the current Federal government is clearly tyrannical in nature as it controls peoples’ lives down to very intimate details, much greater than the despotisms of ancient times. Can such a despotic trend be totally reversed in just a few years? The Tea Party Movement’s dreamers are, therefore, just “whistling Dixie in the dark,” as the old expression of historical futility so rightly has it. And yet, a socialist America, though longed for ardently by Obama and his followers, could not last indefinitely; there are limits even to the earthly duration of any tyranny with shorter time periods increasing as to the trend.
With the increasingly spectacular and noted acceleration of history, as now due especially to, e. g., rapidly instantaneous communication, significantly improved transportation, quite hyper-advanced technology, etc., empires have, thus, fallen at faster and faster rates; in the era long before world-class communication, Rome, for instance, had lasted about 1,000 years; the British Empire about 300 years; but, the Soviet Empire somewhat less than 80 years. American exceptionalism is a myth, related to the liberal Whig Theory of history, in that the USA is supposed to be mainly immune from the forces of historical reality or, alternately, crescively political decay of its institutions.
With the ideologically-planned crushing of the last vestiges of this nation’s republican order, the present American imperium has, perhaps, just two to three generations to go, with a classic “generation” being (approximately) twenty years; the culmination of this empire cannot, therefore, be much beyond the year 2070, an absolute maximum of sixty years from now, though it could, of course, still come much sooner, though not later.
In needed instructive contrast to the expected destruction of free, constitutional republican government qua governance, the advocacy of this article will be directed toward not getting too wrapped up in the obnoxious presentism and depressing historicism of contemporary national politics, by lifting one’s eyes above to the New Jerusalem. Hope in the affairs of this world must still end, thus, upon the death of any person who invested even a lifetime, in the manifold and various troubles of this fallen world, inhabited necessarily by fallen men; it is, in that sense, always just a false hope, not a real one.
Reasons Still Existing for Great Spiritual Hope
A discussion will be rendered of why and how Roman Catholics, as well as other Christians, can still have useable and substantial reasons to be spiritually hopeful in a reasonable manner; this is, furthermore, totally regardless of the approaching stages of what can be perceived as the final degradation and later eventual destruction of the USA. From where, however, can sustainable confidence come?
For as St. Augustine so properly reminds all sincere and believing Christians everywhere, Christians are in the world but not of the world. In his time, he consciously wrote The City of God to provide requisite consolation to the often worried believers in Christ during the time of the Fall of Rome; to them and, of course, the pagans surrounding them, it had realistically seemed that the end of Roman dominance was absolutely equivalent, without rational question, to the actual end of the whole world itself, not just the passing of a mere earthly empire; this important consideration needs, therefore, to be historically and otherwise critically kept clearly in mind, as to the related particular nature of the interesting discussion in this present article.
Christians in general and Catholics in particular ought to carefully guard against either acute optimism for the USA’s future or, at the other extreme, excessive pessimism as to what its terrible ending may or will mean for them (and other people). The everlasting hope of the believers in Christ should not be directed toward this passing world filled with sound and fury signifying nothing of absolute and eternal importance. Fear or excessive trepidation can psychologically cripple people and disable them from thinking clearly or acting appropriately as to what can be expected of a fallen humanity, for the peace of the Lord, as Christians ought to know, is not as this corrupted world gives peace.
It, as with America itself, is certainly destined to pass away from existence, sooner or later; those who have faith in God need not fear for their spiritual salvation that can be assisted through prayer and good works, for better manifesting their devotion to Christianity. There is extensive literature in true support of the religious verification and substantiation of the effort to maintain a faith stronger than the absurd fluctuations of many mere political events that usually promise much but never deliver as much as was promised.
Political parties, many times, do tend to disappoint their supporters who expected better than they got. A proper understanding of theology and related theological truth, however, never disappoints those who maintain adamant faith in the metaphysical order of reality (AKA God).
One can profitably read such volumes as Fr. Andrew Apostoli’s Fatima for Today: The Urgent Marian Message of Hope as to the need for hopeful prayer and the making of spiritual reparation for the rising levels of sinfulness in the modern world; it can be found that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother of God, is ever available for acts of intercession, when prayer is offered for such an important resort to spiritual action; David Came’s Pope Benedict’s Divine Mercy Mandate relates how the fine qualities of an extended understanding of the great gift of Divine Mercy, brought to the attention of the faithful by St. Faustina Kowalska, can surely aid people toward the so imperative goal of salvation from this sad world of turmoil and sorrow, of the human condition.
The Perfect Joy of St. Francis by Felix Timmermans can lead its readers to seriously consider how such a person as St. Francis was able to find and project his inner joy upon the outer world. Pope Benedict XVI’s Images of Hope: Reflections on Major Feasts can help to inspire genuine hope, by its consideration of Scripture, history, literature, art, and theology, by aiding in the proper transformation of a human life. Good reading would, also, encompass the book entitled Christ Our Hope: Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Journey to the United States 2008.
Fr. Paul Glynn’s Healing Fire of Christ presents true inspirational events, from the contemporary era, that covers healings, miracles, apparitions, and conversions; Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s Life Is Worth Living is never outdated in the major words of wisdom that are conveyed so freely with optimism and confidence; Josef Pieper’s Hope and History and his On Hope can certainly inspire greater endeavors well connected to the proper living of a Christian life dedicated to its special brand of blessed hope, as with needed faith, hope, and charity, meaning the three theological virtues. There surely are, as might be suspected, implications and ramifications for all righteous believers in Christ; and, history itself can demonstrate the truth of what is said.
As the Church took up the shattered pieces of the fallen Roman Empire, in Western Europe, by gradually and, at times, haphazardly Christianizing the various barbarians, the crude pagans, so, again, it will be the noble civilizational and important religious task of the Church, though so extremely difficult, to re-Christianize a mostly neopaganized population of apostate Christians, besides dealing with numbers of Muslims, etc. But, it can and will be done because enough people do rightly know that Jesus is truly the Christ for all people everywhere and for all time. Christopher Dawson, the great Catholic historian, had known that religion is the true basis of any viable culture and its concomitant civilization.
This will be all certainly possible, for the achievement of a needed moral and spiritual crusade, because, among other reasons, the forces of Hell cannot prevail against the Church; so, it is also the considered case of the political-civilizational decay of the American imperium that it too will not be able to prevent a reassertion of an authority and power required for some sort of social and cultural restoration; those pleasing accomplishments will, of course, be the properly desired and positive side effects of the then appropriate religious renewal, not its supposed or, perhaps, intended utilitarian purpose.
The wanted future, with its hoped-for glorious re-establishment of requisite sociocultural order through ecclesial efforts, belongs naturally with the religious-minded folk, not the abnormal nihilists, corrupted materialists, or sybaritic hedonists of today, meaning the champions of either an earthly modernity or, perhaps, (secular-humanist) postmodernity. The re-Christianization, de-paganization, of the Western world, not just America, will witness positive results.
A new springtime for Evangelization exists for present and future generations of Americans and for all the people in the Western world as well, for it is certain that the Cross of Christ will destroy the sword of Mohammed, a false prophet of a false god; the truth of the latter is seen in such places as Africa where hundreds of thousands of Christians are there routinely massacred, horribly butchered, and viciously enslaved explicitly in the name of Islam. An important question, therefore, must be so asked here to determine the veracity of the cult of Islam, meaning that it is not a valid or true religion.
In what other major religion is it evidently true that as people claim to become more holy and devout, they then turn into fanatical, blood-thirsty, enraged terrorists intent upon insanely murdering as many innocent people as possible [for profound love of Allah]? Of course, historically ignorant people may ask about the Crusades, meaning as if a Christian precedent seriously exists for a supposed holy war.
The Crusades, done for defensive purposes and meaning here only the ones actually sanctioned by the Church, had been initiated, in fact, as a needed response to prior Moslem aggression conducted in the Holy Land and elsewhere; they are not at all (supposedly) comparable to the evils of Islamic jihad or holy war against those they term the hated infidels. In needed reiteration, the West never ever started any religious war to destroy or exterminate Islam, contrary to all the many lies repeatedly told.
Such reputable organizations as, e. g., the Voice of the Martyrs can readily and quantitatively, verifiably and consistently, prove that the tremendously massive killing, torturing, and enslaving that occurs in Africa and elsewhere is real, not a product of fevered imaginations. But, the power of Christianity, contrary to the fanaticism of Islamism, is forever enriched by the blood of its holy martyrs; Islam is cursed by the terrorist blood that is uselessly shed so violently for a false deity, which so many of its disciples vilely assume can only be truly propitiated by the sanguinary holocausts of innocent people.
In America, in all of Europe, in the entire world, Jesus is still proclaimed as ever being the one and only Christ, the Savior, the Redeemer, the Messiah for all times and for all people everywhere. And, that, in the end, is the everlastingly true hope that all Catholics and other Christians can rely upon forever and regardless of the political fluctuations of mere nations or even entire imperiums. Beyond that, the Catholic Faith itself, maintained by the Roman Catholic Church, offers the only authentic means of attaining Christ’s salvation; this is because anyone of any religion gets saved ultimately speaking by the fact of the ecclesial authority granted by the Messiah exclusively, meaning ecclesiam nulla salus est.
Thus, no one is denied salvation by not formally being a member, as against the often and completely false interpretation given by ignorant people; all those who truly do the authentic will of Christ with a heart of love, meaning being free from mortal sin, do then achieve salvation (after physical death) by the power of Jesus who is genuinely the Christ. There are yet more reasons, however, for cheerfulness in that the Latin Mass Community, though still detested and thwarted by most of the hierarchy, is growing in importance and influence.
This is mainly because most members tend to have large families; compared to today’s typical very small family size, the Latin Mass Community has, actually, extremely big families; and, many of their children grow up to be priests and nuns; the latter will, eventually, infiltrate the hierarchy and orient it more and more toward orthodoxy and Church tradition, along with the affirmation and celebration of dogmas and doctrines. Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium, the three pillars of the Faith, are under such improved theological circumstances better upheld for generating improved attitudes favoring the growth of yet more orthodoxy, which defines, in fact, the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite as it is now known.
As these trends hopefully continue, the Novus Ordo (New Mass) will get put into the dustbin of history, which it so richly deserves as soon as possible. All the foregoing are pleasant signs and indications that many good things can be reasonably expected, crescively speaking, in the decades and scores of years to come in America and, in general, the world as well.
Traditionalist, orthodox Roman Catholics can take heart due to such important developments and positive trends, therefore, that are truly supportive of a more solid religious foundation in the many fruitful and fertile years to come; the future, filled with hope, belongs to the sexually fecund, not the nihilistically sterile. Thus, real conditions for a greatly revitalized and substantially revivified society, with a healthy Culture of Life attitude and values, is actually being put into place right now.
Spiritually speaking, moreover, there is little valid room for any legitimate gloom and doom because terrene pessimism, in the larger religious sphere of endeavor, is totally unwarranted, especially when so rightly considering that Christ and His Church will surely conquer in the end; such generous hope may then, logically, overflow into genuine gladness and joy, cheerfulness and elation for all truly believing Catholics and, as can be fairly guessed, other really committed Christians.
In any event, of course, the Lord’s Kingdom, as is so theologically well known, is not of this world. Faith in the political order of any men or even an entire nation is always an ultimately false hope, as with the inevitable passing of the fate of such people or things; but, the Word (the Divine Logos) of God never passes away. Good Christians ought, therefore, to keep their requisite hope and eyes on the prize (AKA salvation), not on the mere meaningless shadows flickering ever on the proverbial walls of Plato’s Cave.
Conclusion
As one might reasonably guess, the overall theme presented immediately above is one of hope, founded generously in the true love of Christ, as opposed to the soul-destroying pessimism expressed for the political order dedicated, as it is, to the worship not of God but of earthly power over and against all men.
It is not so really surprising, therefore, that the glorious Kingdom of Heaven, the Realm of the Lord God Almighty, is to be theologically preferred to the vilely materialistic, hedonistic, and nihilistic City of Man proclaimed through modernity and “sanctified” by (the secularist half/side of) postmodernity as well. Only a fool, therefore, invests inordinate faith in the contemporary political ups and downs of what may or might happen as a result of elections.
The Lord of Hosts is the proper object and appropriate provider of any and all true salvation, at the level of the metaphysical order of reality, not the ever merely transient State—supposedly dedicated to an enhanced human welfare given at the price of slavery and chains, and often at the behest of communist gulags. One can yet then say, in the secularist-humanist face of vile skepticism and atheism: Holy Mary, Mother of God, ora pro nobis. This is explicitly said because no political order, as it can be understood, can validly or really substitute for the metaphysical order defended rightly by all believing Christians and, moreover, articulated much better by traditionalist, orthodox Roman Catholics.
Thus, genuine salvation, the divine prize, cannot be reduced to any intramundane event of either violent or nonviolent ideological revolution; there can be, therefore, no actual New Eden ideologically created by fallen men, for all true glory of everlasting value and pure righteousness is surely God’s alone.
Athanasius contra mundum!
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