I started this thread some time ago, put it aside, and then oddly a few weeks later, heard a Parish Priest make the observation during a homily.
Synchronicity at work?
I've since linked the theme in to another post, which then ends up being published, as it were, prior to what should have been the original entry, that entry being here:
So we return to finish our original thoughts.
St. Augustine of Hippo, in The City of God, describes the fact and the era of the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Rome, it is often noted, wasn't built in a day, and it didn't collapse in one either. People living through the horrible experience knew things weren't going well, but they wouldn't have necessarily thought that "well, it's 450 and Rome is over". They wouldn't have thought that in 500, or 600 for that matter.
And they might not have really noticed that a lot of old things were passing away. Christianity was only in its third century when Augustine was born in 354 and still twenty years away from Rome's disastrous 450 when he died in 430. All sorts of heresies and competing religions flourished in the era. Indeed, the Council of Nicea had occurred as recently as the summer of 325 and the birth of Mohammed was only a little over a century away at the time of his death. Looking outward, it would have been hard for Christians of the era to appreciate that many of the early heresies were about to pass away along with the European pagan religions and Christianity explode as the religion of Europe, North African and the Middle East.
Clearing out the thick weeds of the Roman era turned out to be necessary first.
Human beings, having fairly short lifespans, tend to see all developments in terms of their lifespans. In True Grit the protagonist Maddy Ross states, "a quarter-century is a long time", but in real terms, except for our own selves, it isn't. Things that occurred only a century ago, and I used only advisedly, didn't really happen all that long ago in terms of eras and changes, although here too we are fooled by the fact that the last century has been one of amazing technological development, which is not the human norm, with this being particularly true of the middle of the 20th Century.
I note this as the entire Western World is in turmoil right now, seemingly without any existential or metaphysical center, which explains a lot of what we're enduring in the world. How did we get here?
There's a good argument that it's due to the end of the Reformation, or rather, it's collapse.
St. Augustine lived at the beginning of Rome's death throes. That same era was the birth of the Catholic world, and I say that advisedly. Some would say the Christian world, but they'd be wrong in the way they mean it. Christianity, all of it, was Catholicism. It would be right up until the Reformation. Even the Great Schism, which was a schism, really only had its final act in 1453, quite close to Luther's famous apocryphal nailing on the Cathedral door in 1517.
The English-speaking world is a product of the Reformation, and while it now seemingly regrets it, the English-speaking world was the major, influencer of the world's history and cultures. By extension, therefore, the Reformation influenced the entire globe.
That's not praise for the Reformation. Indeed, I'd have preferred it never have had happened. That's just a fact.
The Christian Era is usually calculated to have commenced at the time of the Crucifixion of Christ, which occurred sometime in the 30s, but it might be more instructive for our purposes to look at the 200s or the 300s, but a person could go earlier. The very first council, a general gathering of Bishops of the Church, occurred in about the year 50, and is reflected in the Book of Acts. It dealt with some issues that had come up in the very early Church, but for our purposes one of the things worth noting is that it was a Council of Bishops, which means that there were Bishops. This shouldn't be a surprise, but due to the way the Reformation attacked the history of the Church, it might be to some. Peter, the first Pope (that title of course wouldn't have been in use) was there.
The Council of Jerusalem is not regarded as an ecumenical council, as Church historians would note. The first one of those was the aforementioned Council of Nicea, which occurred in 325. Some Protestants would date the founding of the Catholic Church to that date completely erroneously, a Reformation era lie, as it's been one that has been particularly attacked by Reformation Protestants at some point. The reasons are fairly obvious, really. The Council gathered to address heresy, put it down, and it did. It's noteworthy as a Council for the additional reason that it was the first to occur during the reign of a Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, who stayed out of it, as is often not appreciated either.
Indeed, going forward, that reflected much of the history of the Church. If we date the Christian era from, let's say, 100 and go forward to 1517, generally the Church was independent of the state and defined the metaphysical.
This is significant in that it was universally agreed that there was a metaphysical, or an existential, that was outside human beings, greater than it, independent of it, and which humans had to conform themselves to. In other words, it was accepted that reality defined humans, and not the other way around.
Luther didn't mean to attack that core principle, but his actions set a revolution against it in motion. Luther didn't even really mean to separate from the Church at first, but rather to criticize what he saw as abuses. Things took off, however, mostly as German princes saw this as an opportunity to say that they could define certain things locally, rather than the Church. After a time, Luther, who didn't find German bishops following him, claimed in essence that the clergy could independently interpret all matters theological, although he himself only attacked a limited number of principals.
Luther was a cleric, of course, and he didn't really start off to, and in fact did not, establish a Church that departed from the Catholic Church in all things. Indeed, Lutheran services today strongly resemble Catholic ones. But following "reformers" did. The logic was fairly inescapable. If Martin Luther, who wasn't a bishop, could tell the bishops what doctrine ought to be, anybody could, or at least any Christian could. More radical species of revolution, therefore, followed Luther.
In the English speaking world, the Reformation got started with King Henry VIII's desire to secure an annulment, not a divorce, from his wife. When the Church found the marriage to be valid, he declared that it was he, not the Church, who was the supreme religious figure in England. That was really a different position than Luther had taken, but Henry opened the door to challenging the Church, which would play out in a particularly odd form in England as various regimes teetered between radical Protestantism and Quasi Catholicism, before settling in on an uneasy truce between the two in the form of the Church of England in England. In Scotland, which England had heavy influence over, Presbyterianism set in as a form of more radical Protestantism. In the form of the United Kingdom, coming officially into existence in 1707, the Crown would spread both faiths around the globe, with the unwilling Irish taking Catholicism with them. In Europe south of the Rhine, of course, Catholicism remained, so French and Spanish colonialism took Catholicism with them as well.
English-speaking colonists were often religious dissenters early on, holding to the more radical form so Protestantism, while later English colonists tended to bring in the "established" church. In neither instance, however, was it ever the case that there was a rejection of Christianity. The Enlgisih had, through their leaders, rejected Rome, but they hadn't rejected all variants of the faith. Be that as it may, the concept of rejection based on independent belief was firmly established, first in 1517, and then in 1534. The door was open.
When the United States came into being, it did so as a Protestant country. Canada as well, in spite of a large, but marginalized Catholic population, and so too Australia and New Zealand. Indeed, anywhere the English went, and they went everywhere, Protestantism went with them.
This is so much the case that American Christians tend to think that Catholics are simply a minority all over the globe and that "Christians", which is how many define themselves, represent the Christian Faith.
Far from it.
Conservatively, 50.1% of the Christian population of the globe is Catholic. Another 11.9% of Christians are Orthodox. Given this, over 60% of Christians are Apostolic Christians who, while not united, generally recognize each other's Holy Orders as valid, and who moreover share the overwhelming majority of their tenants of their Faiths. I've seen estimates, however, that place 80% of all practicing Christians as Catholics. Indeed, while Protestant missionaries frequently work to convert Catholics in poor countries, calling into question really their status as real missionaries, the Catholic Church has large numbers of underground Christian members in its ranks all over the globe, and local Protestant conversions in some areas are in reality probably often conversions of convenience and not really all that deep in any form.
Protestants are estimated by Pew at 36.7% of the Earth's Christians, if the Pew figures are otherwise correct.
Maybe that's right, but as noted I've seen other figures that skew the Catholic figure upwards significantly, and the Protestant figure downward.
In the U.S., however, 48.9% of the population is Protestant and 23% are Catholic. That makes Catholics a large minority, but a minority. Orthodox are an even tinier minority at .4% of the population. It's most strongly represented, not surprisingly, in Alaska. It has been growing, however, due to what we're noting in this threat. As the Protestant faiths collapse in on themselves, some abandoning them go into Orthodoxy.
Indeed, one entire congregation in Gillette did just that.
Luther's biggest accomplishment, one that is acknowledged and celebrated today in some European countries that underwent the Reformation, was to bring about the modern world of individualism. Reformation Day, for example, is a public holiday in five German states and even Lego put out a Lego variant of Martin Luther in 2017 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. What's really being celebrated isn't so much his theology, but the concept of radical individuality.
That same individuality, however, has led to the collapse of Protestantism, or at least a massive contraction from what it once was. This is constantly in the news, but rarely understood. In the English-speaking world the urban British began to lose their attachment to the Church of England long ago, which after all had a strong connection with the English establishment, not the English underclass, something that was really the opposite of the oppressed Catholic Church. Put another way, Henry VIII did not destroy the monasteries to benefit the poor, and they didn't.
Elsewhere, British imported Protestantism was strong, with this particularly being the case in North America, with this most particularly the case with the United States which had large numbers of adherents to Protestant faiths that the British Crown had oppressed. But by the turn of the 19th/20th Century, things were very slowly changing. The collapse of the Progressive movement, which was strongly tied to Protestantism, accelerated it as more radical reformers on the hard left pitched for social change. This trend was strongly in place by the 1930s.
It took the post-war economic boom to really set it in, however, even thought that, like so many other things, was not apparent at the time. Following World War Two, in fact, main line Protestant churches grew, as newly monied middle class Americans went into them. The last gasp of Catholics converting to main line Protestant churches as they'd economically arrived occurred, something that came to an end with John F. Kennedy arrived. By that time, however, the Baby Boom children were coming into their own.
Raised in a Protestant culture but coming into massive societal wealth, much of the Boomer ethos amounted to nothing other than being allowed to do what they wanted to without hindrance. The table was already set for that by the increased wealth of the post-war era and the arrival of the Playboy era starting in 1953. They took it and ran with it, rejecting anything that got in the way with license. Protestant churches, which already had the concept of being democratic, responded by getting on board in many instances. "Liberal" theology spring up and took root in some, followed by the widespread turning of a blind eye to many other things.
For example, as late as the 1930s the Anglican Communion rejected divorce to the same extent that the Catholic Church does. As the Sexual Revolution came in, it started to turn a blind eye to this, and now it'd be extraordinarily difficult to find any Protestant Church that cares anything about divorce, something clearly prohibited by the New Testament, at all, save for some very conservative Protestant denominations or semi denominations.
This, in fact, provides a good example. Christ prohibited divorce. St. Paul condemned not only sex outside of marriage, but listed specific sex acts and behaviors. The Anglican Communion now has bishops who engage in the very activities that St. Paul condemned.
It can't really be justified, but it's occurred as these institutions are, at the end of the day, democratic. Religion is not. And those sitting in the pews, in their heart of hearts, know the difference. The leaders, like leaders of democratic institutions, attempt to do the obvious, which is to modify doctrine to satisfy the cravings of the electorate.
Because religion is existential by its nature, it's not working.
This has seen the massive drop-off of membership in some Protestant denominations. I'ts also seen ruptures in others, as "conservative", by which is really meant those adherent to basic tenants of the Christian faith, split off. At the same time it's seen the growth of "non-denominational" churches, some of which chose not to challenge the behavior of the congregants and focus instead, broadly, on the theme that everyone is going to Heaven, something that the New Testament doesn't support at all.
Naturally, as part of all of that, people have been just dropping out, with WASPs dropping out most of all. The white upper middle class, which reflects more than anything else the spirit of the 60s and the Boomers, would rather sit comfortably behind imaginary gated walls and not be bothered with having to have restrictions of any kind. Not all of them, of course, but enough to have impacted and still be impacting the culture.
It shouldn't be imagined that Catholics have been immune from this, in European cultures. The spirit of the age took hold to a very large extent, but not the same universal degree, in the 1970s, impacted it as well, with the stage being set, in the U.S. in the Kennedy election of 1960. Kennedy's election heralded the end of open public prejudice, for a time, against the Catholic Church in the U.S. and Kennedy's Catholic on Sunday declaration essentially muted differences in the Faith from Protestant faiths, which were and are very real, to private ones, rather than the open and obvious public ones they had been. The spirit of the age that took hold in the late 1960s led to blisteringly poor catechesis in the 70s, and a generation, or more, of Catholics that didn't understand that there really were massive differences between Apostolic Christianity and Protestantism. The term "Cafeteria Catholic" came in, in no small part as younger Catholics weren't told they weren't in a cafeteria. Catholics were almost informed that major tenants of the faith, including the need for Confession, and the prohibition against marrying outside the Faith, were merely options in the 70s and 80s. Clawing the way back from that has been difficult and massive damage has been done. Moreover, as Western Catholicism suffers from the same Baby Boomer control that so many other things do, the process of recovery has been slow as those who came up during that age have yet to yield control.
At any rate, this is where the spirit of our age comes from. It turns out that given time, and money, people's thoughts don't go to higher things, but only to themselves. Even people immediately around them can be a bother. Ultimately the generation that had calimed to be for "Love" turns out to be for self love in every way describable, including to its own destruction.
Of course, as noted, people know that something is wrong and that's creating massive social disruption. The problem ultimately comes to be that reconstruction is very difficult. People lead down the road so far, that then realize they're being led to where they don't want to go, will often just sit down and demand that the new world be built right there. I.e., divorce was okay. . . but we'll stop here. Or, homosexual marriage was okay, and we'll stop there. The problem is that you really can't stop anywhere you want, as it suffers from the same intellectual deficit that going further on the road that you are on, if it's a false road, does.
Hence, as noted, the inaccurate contemplation of Susan Stubson in the NYT that we wrote about the other day. Not realizing it, her departure from Apostolic Christianity didn't go deeper, as she believes it did, but took her on the path to where she is right now, and where's she's now uncomfortable. Some roads get rocky.
At the end of the day, however, what this really is, is the collapse of the Reformation. It's in its final stages. Having attacked the existential nature of the Church in favor of clerical liberty, and then that in the name of individual theological liberty, it ultimately has to be for radical individual liberty. But, as we don't actually exists as planetary mammals of our own description with our own universe, to which the laws of the existential must bend, that can't work.
And it isn't.
Collapses are horrific messes.
At the time that Augustine wrote City of God, the collapse of the Roman world wasn't close to being worked out. The long slow developments that gave rise to the Great Schism still hasn't been worked out, and it started prior to the Reformation. The Reformation was a revolution, and looking back from a distant future, it will have been seen to only now being playing itself out.
Revolutions cause causalities. There have been many, and there will be many more to come. The entire Western World was impacted, to some degree, by the Reformation, some of it more than others. Its collapse is being particularly felt in the English-speaking world, and interestingly also in the Lutheran world. This will get worse before it gets better, but as the Reformation turned out to be anti-natural in the end, or took that turn at some point, it will get better as a new Counter Reformation correct the errors now being inflicted upon us. That too is already starting.
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