The Catholic View of History

The denial of truth, reason, goodness, beauty, and God is not and never was a product of the Communist Revolution or any conspiracy connected with it; rather the Communist Revolution was a product of their denial...

Until [the twentieth] century, men lived close enough to reality and had a strong enough awareness of God's presence, supported by age-old religious traditions passed down through intact, close-knit families and thereby shaping the thought of almost every child, to reject the worst of these perversions. But in this twentieth century after Christ, insulated from the harsher rigors of life by the advance of science and technology, made arrogant by the vast increase in human knowledge and power over matter, given opportunity to shape millions of young minds by mass media of communication and the universal public school system, intellectuals have sought with chilling success to create a world apart from God in which all values are plastic, molded by them. The majority of them have been satisfied to work at this only by propaganda and indoctrination and cultural influence. The minority who wanted to do it by force were the makers of the Communist Revolution.

Thus spake Warren Carrol, Catholic historian.

Somewhat recently, I commented that Amynda from Pandagon, former blogger for the Edwards campaign until she "resigned" days into her brand new job, sees everything though her fog-filled feminist glasses. And so she does. One could argue similarly that Carroll and myself see everything through Catholic glasses--fill in your own alliterative adjectives. I do not deny this. Catholicism is more than simply a religion, it is a philosophy. And a philosophy forms one's whole world-view.

This is not to say that I don't ever disagree with a fellow Catholic for the simple reason that even among orthodox Catholics there is often diversity of opinion concerning a number of topics. Certain items can no longer be debated since the Church has declared doctrine on certain matters. For instance, Catholics cannot squabble over the nature of Christ, defined, so long ago, as being fully human and yet fully divine. But there are all kinds of other topics which Catholics are free to--and often do--squabble over.

My points are two. First, barring insanity or total skepticism, it is utterly impossible to avoid viewing the world through certain glasses, which is only to say a certain way. If I say rape is morally acceptable one day and reprehensible the next, I am probably insane; in any event, my opinion, being wholly arbitrary, is wholly irrelevant. If I say that I don't know whether rape is acceptable--I would have to add that I do not know whether rape, or even the participants therein, exist at all--I am playing the skeptic. Consistent, it nonetheless provides no place for judgment because it never makes one.

Alternatively, one may use one's philosophy, implicitly perhaps, to determine the moral value of rape. This philosophy will also form one's opinion concerning a smörgåsbord of other, far more divisive, topics. But as soon as one takes a stand, one risks the possibility of being wrong. It follows, then, that the best philosophy is the one which most closely adheres to truth in all situations; the adherent thereto will find his conscience perfectly formed, and, acting thereon will be the most noble and just of all men. And no, I didn't steal any of these ideas from The Symposium; Plato stole them from me, the anachronistic bastard.

I cannot quite prove that Catholicism provides the best philosophy which man has to offer, though I certainly believe this to be the case. However, when one looks at the world which man tried to create on the ruins of Christendom, it cannot be argued that the moderns have stumbled on an improvement.

The solution to the dilemma does not lie in the not-so-distant-future. If the people of this century are to escape the fate of the last, we must turn to things forgotten. We must turn to the past.