Placing Blame Where It Belongs

The downward spiral of society in Western Europe and North America that began in the sixteenth century with the Protestant revolt, accelerated in the eighteenth when liberal rule began to replace Christian government and then gathered still more speed during the two following centuries, now appears to have stopped. Instead we seem to have gone into free-fall.

Consider that only a few years ago it was still possible to object to the practice of homosexuality, if no longer on religious grounds, then because the activity was not normal, and not normal because it is not natural. Admittedly, making this case could be difficult inasmuch as the practice of chemical and mechanical contraception, which also is not natural, had long since become nearly universal, including among Catholic married couples. In any event, today it is any objection to homosexual activity that is not normal. In most nations of ex-Christendom it is recognized as a basis for marriage. In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump made a point of reaching out to the so-called LGBT community and was cheered for it. (Mind you, this was the convention of America’s “conservative” political party.) Is the power of the “community” responsible for such fast and profound change? Nonsense.

Are the feminists to blame for the displacement of the father as natural head of the family and the consequent break-down of that institution?

Are multiculturalists to blame because we now have living among us jihadists who have already perpetrated massacres in Paris, Brussels, San Bernardino, Orlando and Nice, and doubtless will commit similar or worse atrocities in future?

Are atheists and other non-believers responsible for the U.S. not being a Christian nation even though 70 percent of the population still claim they are Christians of some kind?

These groups, the organized homosexualists, feminists, multiculturalists, non-believers and others, all of them minorities, have done no more than seek equality for their constituencies; and equality, together with liberty conceived as the freedom to do whatever is humanly possible, including evil, is one of the twin pillars on which American-style liberal democracy rests. It is a “right”.

With whom did the minority groups seek equality? Answer: With a majority that was still by-and-large living according to standards set in Western society’s Christian past and whose politics, the means by which the life of society is regulated, reflected it by operating to uphold and safeguard the standards.

How did the minority groups finally achieve success, which is to say, why are we now in free-fall? Answer: The majority stopped thinking and living like Christians even if they claimed that’s what they were. They let it happen. Worse, succumbing to their fallen nature, they abandoned the old standards and themselves embraced the twin pillars of liberty and equality. Thus did Original Sin become triumphant by being spread politically throughout society. It was the fulfillment of the ancient dream of Adam and Eve to become “as gods” deciding for themselves what is good and evil, as if the One True God does not exist.

If some are appalled by the situation and fear what may yet occur now that we’re in free-fall, they are mistaken when they think the needed remedy will be provided in November when they elect a new president. They are still thinking and acting, on the one hand, as if they were “gods,” and, on the other, still not acknowledging the real reason for the situation: that the peoples of the West aren’t as Christian as they used to be, or not Christian at all. They are become, most of them, so liberal that liberals have taken to calling themselves “progressives” in order to stay distinct.

The notion of free-fall may be wrong. It suggests a bottom. Is a condition of permanent moral anarchy possible? Are there signs that the answer to the last question is no? It’s something I want to explore at the upcoming SBC conference. All I’ll say for now is that the first step toward correction must be an understanding that error has no rights.