The Last Wave By

“Give me my robes. I am wild in my beholding.” – Shakespeare’s Pericles

The comic sage O. Henry once made the following observation in his novel Cabbages and Kings:

There is a quaint old theory that man may have two souls – a peripheral one which serves ordinarily, and a central one which is stirred only at certain times, but then with activity and vigour. While under the domination of the former a man will shave, vote, pay taxes, give money to his family, buy subscription books and comport himself on the average plan. But let the central soul suddenly become dominant, and he may, in the twinkling of an eye, turn upon the partner of his joys with furious execration; he may change his politics while you could snap your fingers; he may deal out deadly insult to his dearest friend; he may get him, instanter, to a monastery or a dance hall; he may elope, or hang himself – or he may write a song or poem, or kiss his wife unasked, or give his funds to the search of a microbe. Then the peripheral soul will return; and we have our safe, sane citizen again.

It is the task of the devil to make man disbelieve in his central soul and believe only in things peripheral and inconsequential. ‘I see nothing at all, yet all that is I see.’ The devil labored long and hard to convince the European that the peripheral, material world was all there was. He has succeeded. The modern world is the world as Satan always dreamed it would be. And the modern European sees no difference between Liberaldom and Christian Europe because the modern European does not believe in the central things of the soul. When you point out acts of heroic chivalry and Christian charity from the European past, the modern European will simply re-label those acts of heroism and charity as acts of cowardice and self-interest. Whatever is noble in the past, whatever points to the spiritual realm, is re-labeled to fit in with a modern materialist view of reality. The modern science called psychology, for instance, is nothing more than an attempt to refashion things of the spirit into a materialist garment. Reality is made to fit the liberal’s abstractions. In his fantasy world man is a glorified ape, so the world must be structured to accommodate glorified apes. If anyone suggests the world should be anything other than a world fit for glorified apes, the rulers of Liberaldom will silence that person by whatever means necessary.

I’ve never cared for the science fiction genre because I don’t find the future very interesting. It is the past, where the heroes of Europe dwell that is fascinating. We are currently living through a real life version of a sci-fi horror film. The antique European living in Liberaldom is living in a world more remote and antithetical to everything he holds sacred than any alien world ever created by a writer of science fiction.

Picture a planet where black barbarians are worshipped as gods, babies are tortured and murdered at the behest of hermaphrodite creatures, and religious leaders preach a doctrine of mandatory hatred of the white race. Ming the Merciless once landed on the planet and left because it was too merciless for his liking. Of course we’re talking about Liberaldom, and the story is not very funny because we live in Liberaldom.

All writers of futuristic literature, with the possible exception of George Orwell, predicted that the totalitarian regimes of the future would be right-wing totalitarian regimes. Where are those regimes? All we see around us are left-wing dystopias, all centered on one basic premise: the black race is a sanctified race, and the white race is a demon race. And there can be no place for the white in the new utopian state because the premise upon which Liberaldom was built was the premise that everything from the European past is evil. Europeans who repudiate their past can avoid extermination for a small space of time, but in the end they will face the death they sought to avoid by sacrificing other whites (it is always other whites) to the seven-headed hydra of Liberaldom.

A superficial comparison of Liberaldom and Christendom reveals men and women in a daily struggle for existence dealing with the peripheral material aspects of life. But if we look deeper we see a great difference between Liberaldom and Christendom. In Liberaldom there is no awareness of the central soul. In fact the liberal denies its existence. All of life consists of “on we work without the light,” going toward a kingdom of endless carnal pleasure. The European of the good old stock believed something different from the modern liberal. He believed in “on we worked and waited for the light.” The man with a central soul knows that the minutiae of life must be attended to, but he does not forget that life, real life, consists of the white moments of grace. Those moments are part of our soul, a thing eternal, and they go with us into eternity when we stand before God.

A life without white moments is not a life; it is death in life. Every day I see young white people, who should, if they were still linked to their European heritage, make me think of pastoral comedies such as As You Like It and marriage feasts from Much Ado About Nothing. But I don’t see the animation of the European in their eyes; they do not make me think of pastoral comedies and marriage feasts. Instead I think of Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls. The white man tells his children there is no central soul, and then bids them look to the black race for the ultimate meaning of life. What meaning is there in blackness? Look behind the mask of blackness, and we see a death’s head. The unbought grace of life has been squandered by the white men in a futile attempt to replace love for God, for kith, for kin, with love of the generic black man. But a generic love is an airy nothing.

The eternal battle against principalities and powers does not cease because white people no longer believe they have souls. The battle continues on a different front. When whites believed in Him, they fought against the devil and his minions. Now that Europeans have forsaken their God and the passionate love of their kith and kin that stems from the love of God, they have been herded into concentration camps throughout the world. Satan and the liberals regard such white people as prisoners of war, but the sheep-like Europeans believe they are living life to the fullest; they are happy if they are allowed to live life by proxy through the great black gods of the natural world. At times the white people in the prison camps – and some of the camps are quite plush – get a vague sense of something missing in their lives. But they fill the void with drugs, sex, and an increased involvement in the black-worshipping, Christian churches without Jesus Christ. Young and old, particularly the young, are told that paradise, the future world of pleasure without pain, can only be obtained by worshipping and serving the black gods of Liberaldom. I saw that a young Irishman, just 22 years of age, won the U. S. Open Golf Tournament. The press lauded him for his “growth.” And what was his growth? He went to Haiti and spent time with the sacred black people of Haiti. The pathetic, indoctrinated caricature of a European came back chastened and ashamed, vowing to be a better man and not so insular and white. Does anyone care to point out that the Haitians would not need the continued support of the white Europeans if they had not massacred the French Europeans who once ruled their country with a charity that the Haitians could not understand and took for weakness? No, I don’t suppose anyone did point that out. It’s not intrinsically wrong for a white man to make a goodwill trip to an African country. But it is wrong to appease the rulers of Liberaldom by worshipping at the shrine of their black gods to the detriment of the oppressed and disenfranchised white people all over the world, particularly in nations such as Rhodesia and South Africa. Let white sports heroes visit the surviving family members of murdered whites in Africa, the United States, and Europe if they want to do genuine charitable outreach. Charity is hard, not easy, and it begins with a man’s own kith and kin.

The institutionalized hatred for the white man has bred a kind of hybrid Christianity among the halfway-house Christians who want to retain some vague connection to Christianity but do not want to challenge the new Christ-less Christian theology of liberalism. The halfway-house Christians stay “Christian” by abandoning traditional European-based Christianity and fusing their Christianity with Judaism and Negro worship, a kind of Christian-Jewish-pagan mix. It’s not the religion of Jesus Christ, the religion of our European ancestors; it is an anti-European faith which is more acceptable to the rulers of Liberaldom.

I once, while attending what we shall laughingly call an institution of “higher” learning, attended a lecture on the subject of the European’s loss of a sense of the sacred. The lecturer’s analysis seemed to be accurate. He placed the blame on rationalism and science. But he followed up his analysis with a plea of impotence: “We are all Hegelian rationalists now,” he intoned; “What can we do about it? There is no going back. We can’t pretend to believe that [meaning Christianity] which we, as rational men, cannot believe.”

Of course the assumption behind the lecturer’s plea of impotence was that scientific, rational thought is the highest summit of thought. The lecturer and his rational, scientific colleagues were drawing conclusions about existence without having plunged to the heart of existence. They had left out the poetic of life. What philosophy and theology cannot fathom, poetry can. Christ, the King of Poets, speaks only to those who have reached the poetic depths; He speaks to men of blood, not to men of intellect. The European fairy tale has not been refuted by the rational and the scientific “thinkers”; it has been left for dead by those who thought the abstractions they created from their pygmy brains, that missed man’s central soul, were accurate representations of reality.

The age of chivalry is only dead in the peripheral, statistical world of the rationalist bureaucrats, who worship in the fusionist churches of modernity. In our old European home, chivalry still lives. And those who live by the chivalric code, the code of the European, are not daunted by numbers, by principalities, or by powers. “He that endures to the end shall be saved.” +

Through the Blood

“God of our fathers, be the God
Of their succeeding race.”

I see nothing intrinsically wrong in helping earthquake victims, but I do see something terribly wrong in the people who are involved in the Haitian relief effort. Who do liberals and blacks routinely blame for all the ills of the world? White people, of course. And to whom do blacks and liberals appeal for aid? Let’s take a page from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life script and imagine a world without white people. Would such a world be a happy paradise of blended brown people? Well, you wouldn’t have to worry about earthquake relief efforts any more, because there would be no concept of charitable outreach in the blended brown world. The idea of relieving someone else’s misery would be as inconceivable as self-propelled flight. Everyman’s hand would be against every other man, as in the New Orleans’ Superdome after Hurricane Katrina.

True charity, the charity that never faileth because it comes from the living God, has virtually disappeared from the face of the earth. The post-Christian European still engages in feel-good charity, the charity that stems from human pride, while the people of color continue to regard charity as an entitlement to be had on demand.

The Europeans do not stand out from the rest of mankind because they built better roads and bridges or made more money than the rest of the world. They stood apart because they were the first people, as a people, to believe that God had a human heart. What an earth shattering concept! The knight errant and the true God are one. Christ is more chivalrous than we are, more courteous, more compassionate, and more powerful, but still He is like unto us. He suffers with humanity and for humanity. But He stands above us, because He is nobler than we are, not because He is crueler. And it is not His power to which we bend our knee, but to His goodness.

Nothing good will come of the Haitian relief effort, because it is not based on Christian charity. The liberals have shown by their support of white genocide in South Africa and Europe and by their support of legalized abortions that they have not charity. They are “helping” the Haitians because the worship of blacks is all they have left. They pride themselves on their faith in, and their love of, the natural black savage. Some Catholic nuns (I’m sure other churches will follow suit) have already brought a number of Haitian orphans to the United States. This is not Christian charity, it is liberal demonism. When Europe was Christian, works of charity consisted of first subduing and then converting the savage. It was not considered charitable, in the days of the Christian European, to allow colored vipers into European nations. We have no reason to believe that the current breed of Haitians is any less bloodthirsty and satanic than were their ancestors, who massacred all the whites in Haiti. If Europeans are not willing to first conquer the barbarians of color, they should stay away from relief efforts that will not aid the colored barbarians and will do great harm to the whites.

At the heart of the liberals’ worship of the dark races is a rejection of the human personality. When the European took Christ into his heart and his hearth, he became more fully human than the non-European peoples. Pride of race became pietas. The European, because of his union with Christ, loved his kith and kin with a far greater intensity than the savage races who did not regard each and every individual soul as a personality of “eternal moment.” Ties of family and blood were doubly important to the European, because it was through those human ties of blood that Christ entered the world.

It is significant that the word ‘diversity’ has become a God-word to the liberals. The concept is diametrically opposed to Christianity. The ultimate horror for someone who has divine intuitions of the distinctness of the human personality is the notion that an individual human being can be ‘diversified,’ that his personality can be scattered into individual atoms. Why are we more horrified at the idea of being blown to bits or decapitated at our death than we are at the idea of a death with our body left intact? Because Christians have absorbed into their blood the belief that the human body contains a personality, we recoil in horror from the image of a ‘diversified,’ mutilated body. Montrose demonstrated his faith in the saving power of Christ and his contempt for his executioners, who sought to inflict the ultimate punishment on his soul by diversifying his body parts, when he declared:

There is a chamber far away
Where sleep the good and brave,
But a better place ye have named for me
Than by my fathers’ grave.
For truth and right, ‘gainst treason’s might,
This hand hath always striven,
And ye raise it up for a witness still
In the eye of earth and heaven.
Then nail my head on yonder tower—
Give every town a limb—
And God who made shall gather them:
I go from you to Him!

We love as individual personalities, and our love is directed towards other individual personalities. You can’t love with the type of love that Christ enjoins us to have for our fellow men if you only love an idea of diversity. This is so evident if we look at the liberals’ worship of the Obama. Is there anything in Obama’s personality that, if he were white, would spark one single infinitesimal impulse of love from a white liberal? No, there is not. He is worshipped because he is black. The liberals have evolved beyond the love of individual human beings, they now only worship ideas. And Obama is the embodiment of the black idea.

The liberals insist that ties of family and blood must be broken in order for mankind to evolve to a higher plane of existence. But is the new, diverse plane of existence a higher plane? Why is it that anywhere the idea that ‘every man is our kith and kin’ flourishes, as in the egalitarian United States and the former Soviet Union, there are abortuaries and Gulags? Perhaps it is because saving grace comes to us through our ties to kith and kin and not via the medium of generic, diverse humanity.

The liberals who deny the divine authorship of the Bible often cite it nevertheless when it suits their purpose. The Good Samaritan parable, for instance, is often cited as an excuse for race-mixing and Negro worship. But the Good Samaritan does not give his daughter away to the stranger, nor does he take him to his house; he takes him to an inn. And are we to presume, based on his actions toward the stranger, that the Good Samaritan goes home and sends his children to daycare (“I can’t stand the little beasts”) and then runs around the neighborhood trying to force other Samaritans to cohabit with wayside strangers? I doubt it, because a man in touch with the living God is the most clannish and most charitable person on the face of the earth -- clannish because he knows he is linked to his God through the ties of blood and kin, and charitable because his God is the true God from whom true charity flows. The oft-noted, even by Northerners, Southern hospitality before the Civil War was a result of the Southern people’s clannishness and their Christianity. Concern for the unfortunate ‘other’ and the stranger is only present in a people who are intimately connected at the family hearth with the Son of God. They have imbibed the Pauline maxim that ‘charity never faileth’ with their mother’s milk. Or to use Thomas Nelson Page’s phrase, their Christianity is ‘bred in the bone.’

Nothing of lasting benefit in this world or the next comes from ‘relief efforts’ that turn men and nations away from the bred in the bone Christianity of the European. Such relief movements will fail, neo-paganism will fail, democratic egalitarianism will fail; only His provincial people who believe in the charity preached by St. Paul will not fail. +

The Young Drummer Returns

Many years ago a village stood in the hollow which is now filled up by the mere. But the inhabitants were a wicked race... they scorned to bend the knee, save in mockery, to the White Christ who had died to save their souls. – “Bomere Pool” from English Folk and Fairy Tales

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Interviewer: There is a moment in C. S. Lewis’s novel The Silver Chair in which the two children begin to doubt the existence of Narnia. Puddleglum, however, pulls them through:

“One word, Ma’am,” he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pail. "One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world.

If two modern children were to ask you if Christian Europe ever existed, what would you tell them?

Young Drummer: I would tell them a story – actually, I would tell them many stories – of a time when the European’s heart was a flame and he blended his blood and soul with Jesus Christ. I would not read to the children from a philosophical treatise; if I did that, I would be placing them in the hands of the Gnostics, because nothing delights the Gnostic more than to turn everything into philosophical speculation.

Many white moments from the European story-telling tradition – those moments of white heat which enable us to recognize our Lord in the faces of His creatures – parallel incidents from the Gospel. What could be more natural since Western Culture was formed by Christianity?

One of my favorite Gospel stories is the account of the redemption of the good thief. What a moment! “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.” And the good thief didn’t win his salvation on the cheap, simply catching our Lord in one of those weak, sentimental moments that the Gnostics deplore. No, there had to have been something monumental going on in Dismas’s soul that enabled him to see that Christ was something more than mere man. Dismas had pity for Jesus the man, suffering on the cross unjustly, and he had faith in Jesus the Lord: “Remember me when you shall come into your kingdom.”

It is usually pity, compassion, or love for an individual human being that awakens the soul of a sinner and inspires him to heroic efforts and to a heroic faith in Him, who enjoined us to have pity, compassion, and love for our fellow human beings. The modern liberal, the Gnostic, by attempting to bypass humanity, never really knows the God who saved and pardoned Dismas. We are saved because our humanity reaches out to respond to Christ’s humanity. That human embrace allows us to touch the divine; without it, there can be no redemption.

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Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities finds redemption for a sinful wasted life by voluntarily taking the place of another man destined for the guillotine. On the way to the guillotine Carton also comforts a young woman, destined, like Carton, for Madame Guillotine.

"Do you think:" the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: "that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?"

"It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there."

"You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come?"

"Yes."

She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him--is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."

The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.

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Rake Windermere, in the poem of the same name, like Sidney Carton, also “steps out,” and finds redemption:

'RAKE' WINDERMERE

Disgrace he’d brought on an ancient name
A smirch on an honoured crest
He’d blotted the page of glorious fame
That his family once possessed
Eton he’d left beneath a cloud
And left in the greatest haste
He’d proceeded whilst there in revels loud
Life’s choicest hours to waste.

Sent down from Oxford next was he
The result of orgies wild
He’d filled the cup of vice with glee
And a noble stock defiled
A nickname he’d earned by his acts of shame
‘Mong comrades of many a bout
From the broken shell of his own true name
“Rake” Windermere stepped out.

As a fitting end to a family scene,
He had quitted the family home
With a tearless eye and a smile serene
He had started the world to roam
Still lower he’d sunk than ever before
And never a vice he’d shun
Till even his roystering friends of yore
Forsook him one by one.

He’d drifted at length with a tourist band
To the land of the war-like Moor
And there on the dreary desert sand
Had disaster attacked the tour
Approached by a tribe of bandit brand
The party had turned and fled
But first a shot, fired by some foolish hand
Had pierced a Moorish head.

Besieged for a week on a mound of stone
And with water getting low
The bandit chief appeared alone and said
“Thou art free to go.
If thou deliverest first up to me
Of thy number any one
So that True Believer’s blood may be
Avenged ere tomorrow’s sun.”

Each looked at each as he rode away
Grim silence reigned supreme
The sun went down, and the Moon held sway
Flooding all with silver stream
Then a muffled form crept down the mound
With a wistful glance about
Then with head erect, but without a sound
“Rake” Windermere stepped out.
by Leonard Pounds and Herbert Townsend

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We must return to Charles Dickens for an incredible moment of redemption for two sinners. Pip’s “great expectations” have raised his material prospects in life but degraded his soul. He is deteriorating inwardly from overweening pride even as he learns more and more of the outward habits of a gentleman. It is only when he realizes that his great expectations come from the blood and sweat of Magwitch, an “exiled for life” convict, that he begins to understand that true gentlemanliness comes from within and works its way outward, not vice versa.

Magwitch, another sinner like the good thief, finds redemption through his love for Pip. And Pip finds redemption by overcoming his initial revulsion for Magwitch by pledging that:

‘I will never stir from your side,’ said I, ‘when I am suffered to be near you. Please God, I will be as true to you as you have been to me!’

And both sinners are permanently bound to each other in Christ when Pip commends the dying Magwitch’s soul to God:

Mindful, then, of what we had read together, I thought of the two men who went up into the Temple to pray, and I knew there were no better words that I could say beside his bed, than ‘O Lord, be merciful to him a sinner!’

Such white moments come only from a storytelling heritage steeped in the Gospel of Christ.

St. Paul tells us that the last enemy to be defeated is death. Even in Christian circles these days there is grave doubt that the “fell sergeant” will truly be defeated. But in the storytelling tradition of the West, a belief is firmly ingrained that at the last trump, in the twinkling of an eye, we shall be delivered from the clutches of death. The great fairy tales speak to this hope.

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Two excellent fairy stories that end with glorious white moments of deliverance are The March of the Wooden Soldiers with Laurel and Hardy, and the 1954 “children’s” opera-musical of the Grimm’s fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel.

In The March of the Wooden Soldiers (a movie that defies classification, being part opera, part musical, part epic, and all fairy tale), the bogeymen, lead by the wicked Barnaby, are invading Toyland. The situation seems hopeless, but two inept toy makers, Laurel and Hardy, suddenly remember that because of their ineptness, 100 six-foot-tall toy soldiers are on hand. They quickly wind the soldiers up, and in a magnificent ending, the wooden soldiers drive the bogeymen into the sea.

Is this a prefiguration of the final fight between good and evil and Christ’s destruction of that last enemy called death? Yes! I also think it is entirely in keeping with divine metaphysics that two bumbling, but pure of heart, toy makers are used by God to combat evil. “What your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light.”

In the 1954 production of Hansel and Gretel (adapted for the screen by Padraic Colum and composed by Engelbert Humperdinck) the father, who has been searching through the woods for his lost children, sums up the miracle of Hansel and Gretel’s triumph over the witch in his song:

And so you see that Heaven will bend
And to evil make an end
And when hope is nearly gone
God’s relief to us is surely won.

And when hope is nearly gone
God’s relief by us is won.

There is a spiritual virility represented by the words of Hansel and Gretel’s father that we have lost. And we won’t regain it by listening to the siren song of the Gnostics.

“Heaven will bend.” Everything is contained in that line. A belief that heaven will bend connotes a childlike faith in our blessed Lord. When we face our final hour we need to believe, like Hansel and Gretel’s father, that our Holy Savior will bend and make an end to that last great enemy.

Since I am a mortal man who fears death, and since I don’t possess any secret documents containing inside information about the afterlife, it is indeed a comfort to know that we need not know of hidden things on secret scrolls, we need only a childlike faith in Christ. Jesus, at the hour of my death and that of my loved ones, please bend.

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Another theme that we see represented in the storytelling tradition of the West has its origins in the ‘Lord of the Sabbath’ incident in the Gospels. In it, the Pharisees rebuke Christ for disobeying the law and healing on the Sabbath.

And certain of the Pharisees said unto them, Why do ye that which is not lawful to do on the sabbath days?

And Jesus answering them said, Have ye not read so much as this, what David did, when himself was a hungered, and they which were with him;

How he went into the house of God, and did take and eat the shewbread, and gave also to them that were with him; which it is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone?

And he said unto then, That the Son of Man is Lord also of the sabbath.

(6 Luke: 2-5)

The Pharisees, like all formalists, were unimpressed.

There is an exquisite balance in all of Christ’s actions. He follows most of the older Jewish laws, even assuring his followers that He comes not to destroy the law but to fulfill it. But the laws are made for man, by God, out of love. They are His laws; He can abrogate or bend any one of them. In point of fact, when He does abrogate or bend a law, it is always out of charity. And it is our Lord Himself who tells us that charity is the essence of all true laws.

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I have quoted from the story The King of the Golden River before and will continue to do so because it speaks so directly against the Gnostics, the Feeneyites, and all those who would deny that Christ is Lord even of the sabbath day.

The two cruel brothers in the story follow all of the rules; they even possess the holy water necessary to obtain the riches from the Golden River. And yet, they are turned to stone! On this earth the cruel brothers who follow the formula while violating the laws of charity usually win. But in the European fairy tales that prefigure the Kingdom of Heaven, they lose.

The King of the Golden River speaks in the language of the Gospels and St. Paul when he says, “...the water which has been refused to the cry of the weary and dying, is unholy, though it has been blessed by every saint in heaven; and the water which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy, though it had been defiled with corpses.”

God bless Gluck, the third “dumb” brother. May we all be filled with such holy dumbness.

And Gluck went out and dwelt in the valley, and the poor were never driven from his door; so that his barns became full of corn, and his house of treasure. And, for him, the river had, according to the dwarf’s promise, become a River of Gold.

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In the 1954 movie Brigadoon, we also see the theme of God making a rule for the good of His people, and then bending that rule for the benefit of an individual, or (in this case) for two individual human beings.

The beautiful Scottish village of Brigadoon and its inhabitants have been preserved from corruption because of a special prayer request: Their village and its inhabitants come to life only one day in each century, thereby avoiding the special corruptions of any one century.

But what if a poor weary traveler from the 20th century happens upon the village during the one day it appears in the 20th century? And what if he falls in love with a Scottish lass from the village of Brigadoon and she with him?

Well, we know what a Gnostic would do. He would sneer at and condemn the very notion that romantic love can be a source of divine grace. But Christ, who blessed the married couple at Cana, does not disdain legitimate romantic love. When heaven bends at the foot bridge of Brigadoon, it is a glorious white moment.

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Scenes of genuine forgiveness always remind us of our Lord’s divine mercy and His very human compassion, thus striking a blow against the entire Gnostic tradition and the modern hate-filled destroyers of white Christian Europe. Where will mercy be found now that Christian Europe is gone? Only in the European mists.

Genuine forgiveness doesn’t mean liberal forgiveness: “I forgive you for murdering Charlie, whom I didn’t really care for anyway because he was overweight and politically incorrect.” Genuine European, Christian forgiveness consists of Cordelia’s forgiveness of her father, King Lear.

Cordelia: O, look upon me, sir,
And hold your hands in benediction o'er me.
No, sir, you must not kneel.

Lear: Pray, do not mock me.
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;
And, to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you, and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is; and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments; nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me;
For (as I am a man) I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.

Cordelia: And so I am! I am!

Lear: Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray weep not.
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong.
You have some cause, they have not.

Cordelia: No cause, no cause.

And genuine forgiveness is also shown by Prospero in The Tempest. He renounces magic and pardons the deceiver – and prays to the God of mercy, who has taught us to render the deeds of mercy.

Now my charms are all overthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own,
Which is most faint. Now 'tis true
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so, that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

_________________

Shortly after the reconciliation scene between Prince Hal and his father Henry IV, there is another reconciliation scene between Prince Hal (now Henry V) and the Lord Chief Justice, which highlights the difference between the pagan and the Christian. The one knows noting of mercy and the other has it in his blood.

Having rebuked Prince Hal quite justly when he was a young, riotous youth, the Chief Justice now has reason to fear the new king’s wrath. But a Christian king, which Prince Hal is determined to be, knows the difference between the English and the Turkish courts. He knows he must not only forgive the Lord Chief Justice’s rebukes of his own youthful miscreant person, he must also commend his actions as befitting the Chief Justice of a Christian king:

KING. No?
How might a prince of my great hopes forget
So great indignities you laid upon me?
What, rate, rebuke, and roughly send to prison,
Th' immediate heir of England! Was this easy?
May this be wash'd in Lethe and forgotten?

CHIEF JUSTICE. I then did use the person of your father;
The image of his power lay then in me;
And in th' administration of his law,
Whiles I was busy for the commonwealth,
Your Highness pleased to forget my place,
The majesty and power of law and justice,
The image of the King whom I presented,
And struck me in my very seat of judgment;
Whereon, as an offender to your father,
I gave bold way to my authority
And did commit you. If the deed were ill,
Be you contented, wearing now the garland,
To have a son set your decrees at nought,
To pluck down justice from your awful bench,
To trip the course of law, and blunt the sword
That guards the peace and safety of your person;
Nay, more, to spurn at your most royal image,
And mock your workings in a second body.
Question your royal thoughts, make the case yours;
Be now the father, and propose a son;
Hear your own dignity so much profan'd,
See your most dreadful laws so loosely slighted,
Behold yourself so by a son disdain'd;
And then imagine me taking your part
And, in your power, soft silencing your son.
After this cold considerance, sentence me;
And, as you are a king, speak in your state
What I have done that misbecame my place,
My person, or my liege's sovereignty.

KING. You are right, Justice, and you weigh this well;
...
And I will stoop and humble my intents
To your well-practis'd wise directions.

A king that can “stoop and humble” his intents to wise direction follows the way of the cross. He is Christlike in that he willingly chooses to hide the outward shows of majesty so that the inner majesty, the real majesty of kingship, will show itself the more brightly.

_________________

Let me also point out to the children another white moment from the Chronicles of Narnia in the seventh book, The Last Battle. (Incidentally, it is in the realm of so-called children’s literature that the best writing in the 20th century has been done. When we try to write like adults, we write like rationalists, without hope or joy.)

The Narnian white moment occurs when Peter, Lucy, Edmund, and the whole Narnian cast are getting ready to embark on the ‘real’ journey. (Lewis has the metaphysical virility to hope for the giddiest of happy endings; it is more and more difficult to maintain such a hope, in the face of Gnostic modernity, but the men of the Christian West used to have it.)

“No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?”

Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them.

“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for every: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

_________________

Are white moments from the Western tradition merely false shadows? Or are they prefigurations of the Kingdom of Heaven? Dear children, I believe they are not false shadows; they emanate from the depths of human hearts connected to His Heart.

They must be real. It is the Gnostic’s promise of salvation through the intellectual knowledge of God’s divinity alone, divorced from His humanity, that is an illusion.

That, or something like it, is what I would say to modern children who have never known Christian Europe.

Interviewer: Would it do any good? Aren’t the stories from Christian Europe as alien to modern children as hieroglyphics are to the non-Egyptian?

Young Drummer: Quite probably. But that’s the only approach I know. And maybe my approach will be just foolish enough to work.

Interviewer: “What your wisdoms could not discover, these shallow fools have brought to light?”

Young Drummer: Precisely, it takes a wise man to play the fool. The European people, the Christ-bearing Europeans, were foolish, from a worldly perspective, to carry the Christ child on their shoulders, but if those modern European children could just see a glimmer of what their ancestors saw, they would be on their way to the castle of the King of Fairyland, the Knight Errant of Heaven, who, in direct contrast to Midas, turns every heart He touches into a burning flame of charity. Those foolish Europeans who saw beauty on a cross were wiser than the geniuses of Liberaldom who have no honor, no faith, and no vision. We will not perish so long as their vision of His Europe remains our vision. +

The Fiery Furnace

It is requir’d
You do awake your faith. Then all stand still;

The very best way to discern whether one belongs in a particular Christian organization is to determine whether the organization’s image of Christ is compatible with your own. “What think ye of Christ?” is indeed the question of these wars. When the dialectal approach to religion rules as it currently does in the organized churches, it becomes very hard not to choose the lesser of two evils because two false evil images of Christ are the only images presented. I found that I was not in sympathy with the liberal Catholics or with the traditionalist Catholics. The liberals claim Christ is like Mr. Softie (of ice cream fame), and the traditionalists claim he is like Mr. Murdstone of David Copperfield. But is He with either of these groups?

The liberals would have Him be soft on sexual license, soft on non-believers, and soft on them. But they do make one exception: when people do not accept their vision of a ‘Mr. Softie’ Christ, the liberals demand that ‘Mr. Softie’ hurl the non-believers into outer darkness.

The problem with the ‘Mr. Softie’ Christ is that He ends up not being strong enough to raise Himself or His followers from the dead. He becomes a kind of Great Gatsby: the nicest man in the world, but a hopeless, powerless figure. This type of Christ suits the liberals’ purposes until they are faced with a situation, such as their own death, or the desired condemnation of a conservative creed, at which time they are left out in the cold by their image of Christ.

What the liberals fail to see is that there are occasions when Christ must be tough in order to protect the soft. Those who are soft in their faith must be protected from aggressive Jews, Muslims, neo-pagans, secularists, etc. Hence the ecumenism of a John Paul II-type is a base betrayal of the flock. The physically soft, such as babies in the womb, must also be protected. To fail to be tough in order to protect their softness would run counter to the true image of Christ. He would be tough in their defense. But the liberal Christian will not accept toughness (except when dealing with those with conservative creeds) from their ‘Mr. Softie’ Christ.

The traditionalists commit a grave error on the other side of the spectrum. Their God is certainly tough. He doesn’t take any stuff and nonsense from anyone. And they, in imitation of their God, are tough guys too. They are not ‘nice guys’ – in fact their lack of ‘niceness’ is their badge of honor. But just as niceness without doctrinal firmness makes the liberal Christ a ‘softie’, so does firmness without charity make the traditionalist Christ an anti-Christ, because what the traditionalists fail to comprehend is that Christ was tough for a soft reason.

The liberals are partly right: Christ is merciful, He is forgiving. He did come to save and not to condemn. And yes, the traditionalist is right about Christ’s toughness: He did come to define, condemn, and judge. The traditionalist doesn’t err because he claims those tough attributes belong to Christ, he errs when he designates the softer qualities as liberal and therefore not part of Christianity.

Is it so difficult to comprehend that the Man-God is tough and strong because he is meek and mild? Yes, it is too difficult, I have noticed, so long as one clings to the dialectic: If A=B, and B=C, then C=A. To the dialectician, bent over his computer, toughness and softness do not compute. Either God is tough with all the attributes of toughness, or He is soft with all the attributes of softness.

But in real life, as distinct from the dialectic, it is quite easy to comprehend a tough God who is soft. We can comprehend such a God by examining our own striving for the heroic ideal. Melville, in his magnificent novel, Pierre, has his hero, who is about to be married, exert himself in various manly exercises, imagining as he does so, that he might be called upon in the future to protect his meek and mild bride-to-be.

Once more, the sweet unconditional thought of Lucy slid wholly into his soul, dislodging thence all such phantom occupants. Once more he rode, he walked, he swam, he vaulted; and with new zest threw himself into the glowing practice of all those manly exercises, he so dearly loved. It almost seemed in him, that ere promising forever to protect, as well as eternally to love, his Lucy, he must first completely invigorate and embrawn himself into the possession of such a noble muscular manliness, that he might champion Lucy against the whole physical world.

One can see that Pierre is trying to become tough for gentle reasons.

Chesterton tells us in one of his works that on his wedding day he went out and purchased a revolver. What an excellent instinct! Like Pierre, Chesterton had the desire to be tough in order to protect softness.

What the liberal Catholic and the traditionalist both try to do is banish all decent Christian feelings from our hearts and souls so that they may plant their new religions in our minds. The liberal Catholic tries to convince us that our nobler instincts to fight for and protect the soft are base, un-ecumenical, and pagan, while the traditionalist tries to tell us that all those Pickwickian instincts of love and charity have nothing to do with Christianity. We must work, we are told, to squash such instincts and cultivate the toughness of a ‘tough guy’ God. (Although I must note that the traditionalists, like the liberals, permit one exemption from their creed. The traditionalists prefer a tough God until they need mercy and forgiveness, and then, they too want ‘Mr. Softie’.)

Now the devil would like us to choose between traditionalist (always distinct from traditional) and liberal Christianity because both versions of Christianity present a distorted view of Christ that serves the devil’s purposes. He preys on spiritually sick individuals who have no blood faith and hence no touchstone of reality. He is like an evil conman hanging around the lonely hearts' clubs hoping to bilk lonely women out of their savings. And it is quite lonely without a church, without community. But if one’s church and community is without Christ, won’t our loneliness in such a church and such a community be all the more acute?

Loneliness is now the permanent condition of an incarnational Christian in the modern world. There is no remedy for it. But the Christian’s loneliness can be lessened if he stays connected to the traditional, nonsectarian faith of the European people. The reason the traditionalist and liberal churches cannot support a Christian is because they have abandoned tradition. The traditionalists think tradition consists of Church documents and the works of older theologians. And they cite those documents and those theologians against the liberals’ new documents and new theologians. But tradition means so much more than one theologian’s ideas or one set of documents. Tradition is the faith of a people in its entirety.

The people’s art, their loves, their social structures all express how they feel about God. If a modern Christian finds the older European tradition to be in line with his faith, he should cling to that tradition and reject the Christ-less faith of liberal Christianity and modern traditionalist Christianity. He will still feel lonely, but he will no longer feel God-forsaken. And in traditional European Christianity, there is no Mr. Softie or Mr. Tough Guy. There is only Jesus, true God and true man. His power and his mercy are indivisible and infinite.

I think that the distorted portraits of Christ painted by the modern liberals and the modern traditionalists are the end result of a change in the soul of the European. The focus in a healthy, functioning, Christian soul is on the God-Man, but in a sick, unhealthy soul the focus is on oneself, particularly on those aspects of one’s life that shows one to be of the elect. The modern Christian is constantly checking the list to make sure he is fit, tanned, and chosen, because a man who has been dialectically severed from the inner life of God has only outward signs to convince him that he lives in the light. The only difference between the various denominations is with what they choose to verify their elect status.

Thus liberal Catholics are very concerned with having correct opinions on the subject of Negroes and women’s rights, but they are very little concerned with adultery and abortion. The conservative Catholics are very concerned about obedience to the Pope, but they are not in the last concerned about the rights of Christ the King or the defense of kith and kin. And the traditionalists are very concerned about the rite of the Mass, but they are not in the least concerned about their inhumane, Christ-insulting creed. It is the feeling of election which has become paramount, and not a respect and love for the living God.

But if modern Christians would look to the older European culture, they would find a remedy for their sick souls. In the traditions of maidenly virtue and hierarchically structured institutions, the liberals would find an answer to their problems of gender and race. In the chivalric traditions of Europe, the conservatives would see how one can be martial yet gentle. And in the daily lives of the European folk, the traditionalists would find a burning light of charity to ward off the dark Nestorian night.

The European people, in structuring a society around the idea of the God-Man, put their faith to the test in the furnace of reality. When their faith came out unscathed, it gave us a touchstone of reality that we avoid at our peril.

True Europeans are in line with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego:

Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning furnace, and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ye servants of the most high God come forth, and come hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, came forth of the midst of the fire.

What is the unique feature in that account? Is it the fact that the three men were willing to face fire for their God? No, that is a rare thing but not unique. The heathen have courageous men among their ranks who will face fire for their gods. The unique feature in the account is, of course, that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not burn. Their faith withstood the test of fire. This so impressed Nebuchadnezzar (apparently he was more easily impressed than modern churchmen) that he proclaimed:

Therefore I make a decree. That every people, nation, and language, which speak anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill: because there is no other god that can deliver after this sort.

Well said, Mr. Nebuchadnezzar. He has punctuated a point that is overlooked by modern Christians: One’s faith must be based on reality. Feel-good slogans geared to convince us of our elect status won’t cut it. Nebuchadnezzar used to run around with banners about the sun god’s warmth and beneficence, but after witnessing Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s astonishing survival, he became a raging, un-ecumenical convert to the true faith.

Existence is a fiery furnace. We can put our faith to the test during our lives here on earth, like our European forefathers, or we can ‘Skip to the Lou’ and hide from reality with feel-good slogans. But at the hour of our deaths we will still have to face the fire we avoided our entire lives. King Lear, after living a life based on the wisdom of Hallmark greeting cards, had to face the fire:

You do me wrong to take me out o’ the grave—Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound, Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.

Above the Sceptred Sway

Lord have mercy upon us.
Christ have mercy upon us.
Lord have mercy upon us.

Introduction
I’m more familiar with the Roman Catholic tradition than I am with the Protestant or Orthodox traditions, so I chose a Roman Catholic priest for the following interview. But I don’t think the other Christian churches are devoid of their own Father Trendies. What I see in all the Christian churches is a battle between polytheistic atheists and halfway house Christians. The halfway house Christians don’t like all the radical conclusions the Father Trendy types draw from the premises of halfway house Christianity, but once you go halfway down a slippery slope it is only a matter of time before you go all the way down. The antique European stays away from the slopes altogether.

This interview is a composite of actual opinions and statements of liberals that I’ve known and had inflicted on me over the years. Only the names have been changed, etc.

Father Trendy is 63 years old. He was ordained a priest in 1973. Five of his most famous books are: 1) Vatican II: The Hope, the Promise, and the Call (1980), 2) I Jogged with God (1983), 3) Beyond Christianity: A Syncretistic Look at Buddhism and Christianity (1990), 4) Sodomy and the Catholic Tradition (2001), and 5) The Emerging Black Church (2007)
__________________________________________________

Interviewer: In a recent article for Radical Catholic magazine, you stated that a spirit of conservatism was sweeping the Church. I do not see that spirit. Would you explain what you mean by ‘a spirit of conservatism’?

Fr. Trendy: Pope Benedict still speaks in the language of what I call patriarchal Christianity. He still uses anarchic terms like ‘God the Father’ and ‘Christ the Lord’. Those are tribal terms, not universal terms for modern man.

Int: I don’t quite understand your meaning.

FT: The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, but also the New, is a reflection of a particular time period and a particular people’s – a tribal, nomadic people – concept of god. It is not a magic book that is relevant, without modification, to modern man.

Int: So you reject the notion that the Bible is divinely inspired?

FT: I reject the traditional notion of divinely inspired scripture. I do not reject the notion that a life force inspires works of creative literature.

Int: And that is how you view the Bible, as a work of creative literature?

FT: Yes.

Int: If you reject the authority of the Bible, what is your touchstone of reality? Is it the Pope?

FT: No, of course not. Benedict is the head of an organization called the Roman Catholic Church, but he is not the head of the evolving church of the holy spirit.

Int: Who is the head of that church?

FT: There is no head of that church. We are all evolving to our own omega points. No bogeyman authority figure from the Dark Ages can guide an evolving human being. Pope John Paul II was beginning, at the time of his death, to understand that concept. The present Pope doesn’t seem to grasp it.

Int: I must say that I don’t grasp it either. The faith you describe sounds less substantial than Casper the Friendly Ghost.

FT: I’m afraid you just don’t understand things of the spirit.

Int: Well, we’ll let that alone for the present. Let me ask another question. Don’t you ever get tired of trying to keep up with the latest trends in liturgy, theology, and sexual practices?

FT: It is difficult, but if one is to stay in touch with humanity, one must stay in touch with the times.

Int: I don’t agree. There can be no humanity if there are no concrete men of flesh, blood, and spirit. The integral, true man does not drink from the well of modernity. He takes his life-sustaining drink from a well that is not subject to the ever-changing water of the ever-changing times.

FT: All things change. That is the law of life.

Int: I would call it a law of death. And didn’t Christ conquer death?

FT: Evolve, evolve, evolve – that is our sublime mission.

Int: I refuse to evolve.

FT: Then you are doomed to extinction.

Int: If nature is supreme, as you seem to imply, then yes, I am doomed to extinction. But you are also doomed, aren’t you? If Christ be not risen... You know the implication, don’t you?

FT: No man will become extinct who is part of nature. He doesn’t die, he simply returns to his source.

Int: Not to his Maker?

FT: No, that is a primitive, out-dated concept.

Int: What is the significance of Jesus Christ to the Catholic Church?

FT: He was our founder. He taught us how to evolve.

Int: But you have evolved beyond Him now?

FT: You put it rather crudely, but yes, we have evolved beyond Christ. We still respect him for having shown us the way. But these concepts are probably new to you and therefore hard to grasp.

Int: No, they are not new. I’ve been through the university system. But while at the university, I also came across the European poets. And in their works, I saw the reflection of a face. Do you have any idea whose face I saw?

FT: You saw the face of a tribal god of one particular group of people who occupied a geographical region called Europe.

Int: No, I saw the face of the one true God. And having seen that face in European culture, I looked for confirmation of the truth I had seen. I went to a priest who was teaching at the university, and I asked him how I could verify the vision. The priest said something very interesting. He did not drag out the party line and tell me to read the Baltimore Catechism and the latest papal encyclical. He told me to read the Gospels. It was good advice, because the Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of the European people are one and the same. I don’t think it is possible to evolve beyond that vision. That vision is reality.

FT: I would say that it is one man’s fantasy.

Int: It is not just my vision.

FT: All right, I’ll grant you that. It is a fantasy of a whole group of people who used to occupy the continent of Europe. They were a distinctly insular and cruel people.

Int: I know your views on the Europeans. But before we discuss your book, The Emerging Black Church, let me go back to a book you wrote in 2001 called Sodomy and the Catholic Tradition.

FT: All right.

Int: You stated in the book that sodomy could be very beneficial for one’s soul under the right circumstances. Could you elaborate on that statement?

FT: I would be happy to. Sodomy is an expression of love. Love is from the divine essence. Love between consenting adults is always life-enhancing and, therefore, holy.

Int: That’s a rather disgusting syllogism. Do you really believe it?

FT: Of course I do. It is the essence of the true Christianity.

Int: Sodomy?

FT: No, love.

Int: Then any physical act between two consenting adults is a life-enhancing, loving act, and therefore the act is Christian?

FT: Yes.

Int: Suppose a man decides he loves his neighbor’s wife. And suppose that love is reciprocated. If they act on their mutual attraction, is that interaction life-enhancing and therefore Christian?

FT: Yes.

Int: But what if the woman’s husband does not think his neighbor and wife have participated in a life-enhancing act? Suppose he thinks his neighbor is a scoundrel and his wife is a slut?

FT: The husband would be wrong. He would be looking at the whole thing from the antiquated prism of conventional non-evolutionary Christian morality. If he had a properly evolving Christian perspective, he would understand that the truly loving relationship does not entail the stifling of another’s life-enhancing acts.

Int: But isn’t the husband suffering when his neighbor sleeps with his wife? Can something be life-enhancing if it destroys the life of another human being?

FT: The husband only suffers when he sees life through a false prism.

Int: So it’s his own fault if he suffers, because he doesn’t see the world properly?

FT: I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but, yes, that is essentially correct.

Int: How about rape, then? If a man rapes a woman, is that a life-enhancing act and therefore a Christian act?

FT: Most definitely not.

Int: But it is life-enhancing, is it not? Let’s suppose the man loves the woman he raped.

FT: No, the act cannot be life-enhancing because the man did not get the woman’s consent.

Int: But in the case of the adulterous couple, they did not get the husband’s consent.

FT: That’s different; the husband was not looking at life through the proper window.

Int: Well, couldn’t we say that about the hypothetical rape victim, she was just not looking at life through the proper window?

FT: No, we couldn’t; you’re making a mockery of my words. I don’t believe you really want to have a serious discussion.

Int: Is it possible to have a serious discussion with a man who could write this passage. I quote from a book you wrote called Language and the Objective Correlative: “There is no real connection between the words we use and objective reality, because there is no such thing as objective reality. All reality is relative. The spiritual principle of life is that the spirit is a relative concept. Words as they have been traditionally used are jailers, used to keep us prisoners in charnel houses of objectivity.” End quote.

FT: I stand by those words. But I don’t think that passage is relevant to the issue of sodomy, which is what you said you wanted to discuss.

Int: I wouldn’t think you would see the relevance of the passage. But it is relevant to everything we have been discussing. If we cannot know anything but our own ever-evolving minds, then we become shadows that simply pass over the earth like an evening mist. We are without a god, without an identity, and without human fellowship. But as a consolation, we can be sodomites and adulterers because in the land of pure, evolving mind, there is no such thing as sin.

FT: You have twisted everything I’ve said. The evolving minds that you deprecate have given us mercy. For the first time in the history of mankind, man, at least the evolving man, knows what it feels like to be free of guilt and free of a vengeful god that sees evil in every life-enhancing act.

Inter: You have no right to use the term ‘mercy’. Mercy is only given to those who believe in the Christian God. What we always come up against is the essential question: Is Christ the Son of God? If He is, then far from being a vengeful, cruel, antiquated faith, orthodox Christianity is man’s only hope to actually know what it is like to be loved by a merciful God. In your scheme of things, there can be no mercy because there is no God to extend mercy. But you do keep the concept of sin.

FT: That I categorically deny.

Int: Yes, you do. The sinners are the recalcitrant Christians, like the husband of the unfaithful wife, who still hold on to a belief in God, sin, and redemption.

FT: You’re not going to try to justify the story of Adam and Eve and original sin?

Int: I don’t have to justify it; the reality of life confirms it. Melville once remarked that modern man, in rejecting original sin, was rejecting the one tenet of Christianity that was most obviously true.

FT: Don’t quote a white European to me.

Int: The white Europeans whom you deplore showed us the face of Jesus Christ. And that face is a merciful face. To whom can we turn for mercy if not to Christ? And to what people can we look, if not to the white Europeans, to see the mercy of God embodied in a culture? The barbarians have no mercy and the post-Christian rationalists like you have eliminated the divine source of mercy.

FT: I must stop you there. The white Europeans have defiled the earth. Our only hope is to embrace the black race and...

Int: I’ve read your book, you needn’t go any further. But I wonder if you have ever looked at the Gospels with an open heart, or looked at the Western cultural heritage from any vantage point other than a hate-filled, Olympian vantage point. There is a remarkable synergy between the Gospels and the European poets who were inspired by His presence in their civilization. You claim that you and like-minded, evolving men invented mercy. The European tradition gives the lie to that blasphemous claim.

FT: Again, I must protest.

Int: No, you’ve had your say, in countless lectures which I’ve had to sit through.

FT: You’ve never attended one of my classes.

Int: Yes, I have, for you and your ilk are legion. You exist in every university throughout the Western world and you haunt the airwaves and print mediums of the world. So just this once, you’re going to be lectured to.

In the deceptively simple parable of the prodigal son, we have all the elements of Christian drama. The drama of the Greeks was the drama of fate. Oedipus’s triumph consisted of the way he played the cruel hand which fate dealt him. In Christian drama, the triumph and tragedy consist not in the drama of fate, but in the drama of free will. There are no Grecian goddesses of the fates spinning our destinies; our wills are free, and we can send ourselves to perdition or be astounded into heaven. Such is the substance of Christian drama.

The prodigal son has lived all his life in his father’s house but has never really known his father. If he had, he would never have left him. It is only when he is completely outside of his father’s house that the prodigal son appreciates what he had but never knew. The prodigal’s plight illustrates a point Chesterton made in his book, The Everlasting Man: “Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it.”

So, the prodigal son returns. His father is not content to simply wait for his son to get to the house. When he sees him, “yet a great way off,” the father runs to his son and showers him with kisses. The father is like our Lord, who is just waiting for us to make the slightest move in His direction, and He will pursue us as an ardent lover pursues his beloved. One can hear the father using the words Francis Thompson ascribes to Christ:

"All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"

The prodigal son returns to his father’s house with the love that “casteth out fear,” and on bended knee with true contrition says, “I have sinned against heaven and before thee, I am not worthy to be called thy son.” The father, much to the chagrin of animal rights' advocates, kills the fatted calf.

Our joy in the return of the prodigal son is mitigated by our sadness at the spiritual state of his brother. On merely face value, the brother seems in good shape. He, unlike his prodigal brother, has stayed in his father’s house. He has not “devoured his substance with harlots,” and he has kept the commandments. Yet his soul is a knot of vipers. He is angry with his father for celebrating his brother’s return. His anger reveals that he does not love God or his neighbor. If he loved God, represented by the father, he would not think to have been separated from the father was a great joy for his brother ; and if he had loved his neighbor, represented by his brother, he would rejoice that his brother was once more united with the father. I would not venture to say that the prodigal’s brother is damned, but I do think we are meant to see that the brother’s soul is in dire straits.

The prodigal’s brother has been practicing only the externals of the Faith. There is nothing in his heart. It is a great error to sneer at any mention of the heart, as many traditionalist groups do, and falsely label the heart as an invention of the liberals. The liberals have hardened their hearts to Christ more thoroughly than any of the formalist religious sects that the liberals are so fond of caricaturing. But it is clear from the parable of the prodigal son and so many of Christ’s other parables, that the heart, the interior soul, is central to a man’s faith. If a man’s heart is right, the externals will generally be there too. But all of the externals can be in place, and a man’s heart can still be a knot of vipers. A house, no matter how beautiful its outside walls, is an empty shell without a hearth fire.

Let us proceed from the prodigal son to that heroic knight of charity: Mr. Samuel Pickwick, Esquire, the founder and President of the Pickwick Club. Mr. Pickwick, as we know, wandered throughout England accompanied by his trusty manservant, Sam Weller, and by his fellow Pickwickians, trying to extend the reign of charity throughout England. Mr. Pickwick’s greatest adversary is Mr. Jingle. Jingle wanders throughout England cheating widows and fleecing the poor. Mr. Pickwick repeatedly tries to bring Mr. Jingle to justice and is repeatedly thwarted in his attempts. Toward the end of the book, Mr. Pickwick, who has been unjustly cast into prison by the law firm of Dodson and Fogg, meets Mr. Jingle; Jingle is a fellow prisoner. Mr. Pickwick has quite rightly sought to bring Jingle to justice, but when Pickwick perceives that Jingle has had more justice than even Jingle deserves, he forgives Jingle and saves him from starvation. Their meeting is worth witnessing:

‘Come here, sir,’ said Mr Pickwick, trying to look stern, with four large tears running down his waistcoat. ‘Take that, sir.’

Take what? In the ordinary acceptation of such language, it should have been a blow. As the world runs, it ought to have been a sound, hearty cuff; for Mr Pickwick had been duped, deceived, and wronged by the destitute outcast who was now wholly in his power. Must we tell the truth? It was something from Mr Pickwick’s waistcoat-pocket, which clinked as it was given into Job’s hand, and the giving of which, somehow or other imparted a sparkle to the eye, and a swelling to the heart, of our excellent old friend, as he hurried away.

-- from Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens

Mr. Pickwick, upon his own release from prison, facilitates Jingle’s release, and procures a job for Jingle. Those of us who know Mr. Pickwick are not surprised, but it is an act of mercy that only a man of Pickwick’s nobility would have performed. Just as Quixote rides on that lonely road in Spain, so does Mr. Pickwick ride the lonely roads of England; however, the roads are not as lonely because of Mr. Pickwick.

From England and Mr. Pickwick, we go to France and Jean Valjean. You know the story: Valjean serves nineteen years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. When he gets out, he is an embittered, vengeful man. He stays the night at the home of a saintly cleric (there were a few back then) named Bishop Bienvenu. After dinner, he steals the bishop’s silver plate and flees the house. A couple of gendarmes bring the captured Jean Valjean back to the bishop’s house in the morning. The bishop, instead of renouncing Jean as a thief, asks him why he forgot to take the silver candlesticks, since he, the bishop, had given him both the plate and the candlesticks the night before. The gendarmes leave, and the bishop speaks to Jean Valjean:

“Forget not, never forget that you have promisted me to use this silver to become an honest man.”

Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of this promise, stood confounded. The bishop had laid much stress upon those words as he uttered them. He continued, solemnly:

“Jean Valjean, my brother; you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of
perdition, and I give it to God.”

-- from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

The bishop is a truly remarkable man. But Jean Valjean proves to be an equally remarkable man. He responds to the mercy shown to him, by becoming, during the next forty years of his life, a dispenser of mercy. The transformation that takes place in Jean Valjean’s soul illustrates a profound truth of the Christian Faith. In theory, it should be enough for all of us that our Lord, in the ultimate act of mercy, gave up his person to suffering and death to atone for our sins. But if one of the heirs of the apostles does not, at some time, show us mercy, we will never believe in the author of mercy. “See how they love one another,” used to be said about the early Christians. It will always be a sign of a sect when the opposite is said, “See how they hate one another.”

In the encounter between Bishop Bienvenu and Jean Valjean, the grace of God is triumphant because there is a willing dispenser of mercy and a repentant sinner. In the parable of the unmerciful servant (Matthew 18: 21-35), the grace of God is not triumphant because the servant who receives mercy -- “And the Lord of that servant being moved with pity, let him go and forgave him the debt” -- is not truly repentant. He thinks his master is a fool for forgiving him his debt. How do we know this? Because the servant goes out and demands a pitiful sum, in comparison to what he owed his master, from his fellow servant.

And his fellow servant, falling down, besought him, saying: Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
And he would not: but went and cast him into prison, till he paid the debt.
Now his fellow servants seeing what was done, were very much grieved, and they came and told their lord all that was done.

The unmerciful servant has nothing in his heart. He knows only the externals of the Faith. He knows how to go on bended knee to his lord to ask for a favor, but he has no idea of the meaning of a bended knee. As a result:

Then the lord called him; and said to him: Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all the debt, because thou besoughtest me:
Shouldst not thou then have had compassion also on thy fellow servant, even as I had compassion on thee?
And his lord being angry, delivered him to the torturers until he paid all the debt.
So also shall my heavenly Father do to you, if you forgive not every one his brother from your hearts.

There is a danger, in secular times like our own when the idea of God’s judgment is laughable to most people, of over-emphasizing God’s wrathful nature in order to compensate for the rampant secularism. One can see this overcompensating tendency in many of the traditionalist sects around today. Mere reaction, however, is never the answer to rampant secularism. The answer is always integral Christianity. The greatest act of mercy, especially in times of persecution, that our pastors can perform is to preach the pure and unmitigated Gospel of Christ. This point is illustrated for us in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s magnificent novel, Quo Vadis.

The setting of the novel is Nero’s Rome. Late in the book we witness the Christians, who have been herded together by Roman soldiers, about to face death in the arena. A precursor of the Jansenists, a priest named Crispus, speaks to the Christians.

“Bewail your sins for the hour has come. Behold, the Lord has sent down flames to destroy Babylon, the city of crime and shame. The hour of judgment has struck; the hour of wrath and disaster is here. The Lord promised to come, and He will soon be here. He will not come as a meek Lamb Who offered His blood for our sins, but He will come as a Judge Who in justice will hurl sinners and unbelievers into the pit. Woe to the world! Woe to sinners! There will be no mercy for them. I see You, Lord Christ! Stars are falling upon the earth, the sun is darkened, the earth opens its gaping maw, the dead rise from the graves but You are triumphant amid sounds of trumpet and legions of angels, amidst thunder and lightning. I see You, O lord, O Christ!”

Understandably, Crispus’s words do not comfort the Christians. The ungodliness of the godly Crispus leads the Christians to despair. But suddenly the voice of Peter is heard.

At that moment a calm and reassuring voice was heard. “Peace be with you!”

It was the voice of Peter the Apostle who had entered the cave a moment earlier. At the sound of his voice terror dissipated as if by a miracle. People rose from the crowd. Those who were near the Apostle fell on their knees before him as if seeking protection. He stretched out his hands over them and cried, “Why are you troubled? Who can say when the final hour will strike. The Lord punished Babylon with fire but His mercy will be on those whom baptism has purified and you, whose sins are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, will die with His name on your lips and peace in your hearts. Peace be with you!”

After the merciless words of Crispus, the words of Peter feel like a balm on all present. Not the fear of God but the love of God was more important to them now. These people loved Christ about Whom they had learned from the Apostle’s narratives. Not a merciless judge but a mild and patient Lamb was their God. A God Whose mercy surpasses all understanding, surpasses all wickedness that man can perpetuate. This was great comfort to them all. A great solace and thankfulness filled their hearts.

In the exchange between Crispus and St. Peter, we can see vividly illustrated the difference between heresy and Christianity. The Christian preaches mercy to the repentant sinner, but the heretic preaches wrath and judgment for all but himself.

Closely allied to the Jansenist mentality which preaches hell with such joy, is the Feeneyite mentality. God’s grace must work through the channels they demand or else He is no God. Christ’s promise to the thief on the cross, “This day thou shalt be with me in paradise,” stuffs the lie down the Feeneyites’ throats. Christ cuts through all the red tape and takes the good thief to heaven with him. This does not negate the sacramental system, nor does it mean we should all plan on a deathbed conversion; it simply means that the ways of God are not the ways of man, and that one cannot put “love in a golden bowl.”

If one looked only at the externals of the good thief’s life, one certainly would never have known him. But Christ did know him. He knew of the titanic struggle that took place in the thief’s heart. He knew of the subterranean current of grace that was hidden from the rest of mankind. The current was so strong that our Lord decided that the good thief belonged in heaven. Who are we, and who are the Feeneyites, that presume to judge our Lord? “This day thou shalt be with me in paradise.”

I have refrained from using any images of mercy from the works of Shakespeare because that task would demand a separate book. But I would be remiss if I didn’t quote Portia’s immortal speech from the Merchant of Venice. She confronts the unrepentant Shylock with these words:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

What Portia so eloquently explains, my poor, soul-dead Father Trendy, is that we see God most clearly when we practice the virtues that His only begotten Son taught us to practice. Tom Brown might have become a Viking-type pagan, or worse, a post-Christian rationalist, if he had not extended mercy and protection to a poor fatherless boy who was placed in the same dormitory with him. When Arthur’s mother expresses her thanks to Tom, he understands the link between God, mercy, and the civilization of the white man, which you, Father Trendy, and your ilk have done so much to destroy.

Arthur’s mother got up and walked with him to the door, and there gave him her hand again, and again his eyes met that deep, loving look, which was like a spell upon him. Her voice trembled slightly as she said, “Good night – You are one who knows what our Father has promised to the friend of the widow and the fatherless. May He deal with you as you have dealt with me and mine!”

-- from Tom Brown’s Schooldays

I read that work once a year with my children, so I always know that passage is coming, yet still I can’t hold back the tears.

And that, Father Trendy, to paraphrase Linus, is what Christianity and Western culture are all about.

FT: I’m not impressed by reactionary drivel... You struck me!

Int: There is no such thing as striking another person. You are trying to place me in a “charnel house of objectivity.”

FT: It hurt!

Int: It was life enhancing for me; maybe you are not looking at life through the proper prism.

FT: I think I’ll need dental work!

Int: Then, I guess the interview is over.