When Austria was defeated by Prussia in a war in 1866 and political power and cultural dominance within greater Germany shifted from Vienna to Berlin, the people of Vienna tried to mask their true feeling of loss by acting gaily, but gaiety, like laughter that lasts more than four or five seconds, soon becomes forced. To keep up the appearance of theirs, the Viennese resorted to behavior that became more and more extreme the longer they persisted in it. “Gay Vienna” was a sham. Decadence became the true state of the Viennese. Their decline was reflected in art and thought. In music, of which Vienna had been the world capital, they went from Mozart to Johann Straus to Arnold Schoenberg. In thought, they wound up, for instance, with Sigmund Freud, whose invention, psychology, pretended to measure movements of the spirit “scientifically”.
While that was going on in Vienna, exactly the same thing was happening in Paris. France was defeated by Prussia in a war in 1871. The defeat culminated thirty years later in la belle epoque, the Parisian equivalent of “Gay Vienna”. In painting, of which Paris had been the world capital, it was entirely fitting that the first exhibition of Impressionist pictures took place in a photographer’s studio. Impressionism then devolved to Pablo Picasso and abstraction.
Berlin had its own decadence, usually associated with the Weimar years following the Second Reich’s defeat in World War I but truly epitomized by the Nazis. Picasso was banned in their Third Reich, but during the Occupation of Paris in World War II Wehrmacht officers would sneak off to his atelier to look at his abstractions secretly. How pathetic!
Of course Prussia, which became the mightiest nation in Europe by defeating Austria and France, no longer exists, not even as a state of the Federal Republic of Germany. The parts of it that didn’t disappear into other states are now Polish.
What have these ruminations to do with anything of interest to an American? Isn’t it obvious?
When I was a boy, we used to hear it said in school in the 1940s and 50s — no, bragged — that America had never lost a war. (I speak of public school; I don’t know what went on in Catholic parochial ones.) Perhaps our teachers harped on this so we kids would feel reassured as we ducked under our desks during atomic-bomb drills.
Atomic-bomb drills? The “Uncle” Joe Stalin, the valiant ally we had heard about while World War II was still fought, had become the nation’s archenemy, so determined to spread “godless” Communism around the world that he might one day nuke us (and never mind that we never heard about God either, at least not in the classroom).
In any case, the trope of invincible America would end with Vietnam. Except it didn’t, not for most. Like the Viennese and Parisians before them, these Americans couldn’t face defeat. They wouldn’t believe the U.S. could be beat by a bunch of “slopes” who lacked freedom, democracy, and our technical capacity to drop bombs on them endlessly. So five years after Saigon became Ho Chi Minh City Ronald Reagan became President by assuring everybody, in effect, that Jimmy Carter was wrong to speak of national “malaise” (Carter’s word). America was still “a shining city on the hill.” The Emperor was still fully clothed.
Well, Reagan did have his hugely-celebrated military triumph over the miniscule island-nation of Grenada, but that was followed (under George W. Bush and Barack Obama) by Afghanistan and Iraq. However, just to prove those weren’t defeats we have 10,000 troops stationed in the former even after last year’s “withdrawal” and are currently bombing the latter (as well as Syria) and seem on the verge, at this writing, of equipping Ukraine with heavy weapons in order to show Stalin’s current incarnation Vladimir Putin that he’d better not mess with a government installed in power by a revolution we encouraged and helped finance.
As with Vienna and Paris, U.S. defeat has been reflected in art and culture. In painting we got the abstraction of Willem de Kooning and “pop” of Andy Warhol. In literature we went from reading Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy to not reading, period. Instead, we spend our time “tweeting,” a word that doesn’t even belong in the mouth of an adult. In music, the vast majority of Americans listen to sounds that are not musical at all. They would affront a barbarian of old.
A barbarian of old?
Long before the Viennese and Parisians of the nineteenth century there were the Romans. They, too, became decadent as barbarians from the north encroached on their Empire. Only, those barbarians actually admired the people whose rule they were supplanting. More, they aspired to be like them, or like them as they once were, so that when they finally took over they left intact institutions like the Roman Senate and Roman law and, most importantly, the Church of Rome. They invigorated all of them with new blood, becoming thereby more Roman in many respects than the Romans had been in their decadence. Eventually, when the ancient Empire was revived as the Holy Roman one, it was Charlemagne, King of the Franks, who became Emperor.
Tell me, what do today’s barbarians promise except further destruction? That is, destruction further to what has already been laid waste.
Seeing that there wasn’t all that much left for them to destroy in the first place — not that much of the Christendom that began with Charlemagne and whose last vestiges pretty much disappeared amid the moral as well as physical rubble of World War II — what will civilize our barbarians?
Brother Andre Marie, prior of Saint Benedict Center and editor of this website, proposes that the requisite civilizing mission can be begun, or should begin, with a Montfortian consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary. I don’t want to lay too much on his shoulders, which can only be seen as terribly frail in view of the immensity of the task, but isn’t that the point? The weight of the task — making America Christian enough that so would be the United States thereof — couldn’t possibly rest on any man’s shoulders or the shoulders of many, but must be assigned to Mary or, more exactly, through her to her Son. Being God Incarnate, He can do anything.
My faith tells me Brother is on to something, but the key — this has to be italicized — is consecration. Since he is the one who already leads a visibly consecrated life, it is best left to him to explain what such would entail for us layfolk, or explain more than he has, but in a couple of weeks I’d like to talk a little in this space about having faith. I’ll do it in the context of the second anniversary of the election of Pope Francis.
P.S. I have reread the last words of my commentary. I don’t take them back because, after all, God can do anything. In fact, as the Holy Ghost he can even inspire enough men, or the right men, to live and act in ways that over the course of time will result in the advent of a Second Christendom. This is what we should pray for and that the men will include ourselves. It will not do to pray: “Mother of God, Our Spiritual Mother, petition your Divine Son to relieve us of the responsibility of being the men He as Lord has the legitimate right to expect His servants to be. Ask Him to do for us everything necessary for His lordship over the world as well as in Heaven to be recognized by the world.” All prayer is answered and such a prayer as that will be answered by: 1) the life of society continuing to spiral downward; and 2) making it more difficult for us to get to Purgatory, not to speak of Heaven.
To read more about the Consecration to Mary read these articles:
Act of Perfect Consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary
Picasso Image found Wikicommons, author: Vallera Gabriel
