Sackcloth and Ashes

A Call to Holiness

I went to seminary last week.

Well, a former seminary.

I travelled the halls where thousands of young religious prayed and studied for forty years. Built during the great Catholic cultural ascendance shortly after World War II, the Church was an ascendant force primed to dominate the nation. Now the seminary is a four-star hotel and resort. Where seminarians once sat for lectures with priests and monks, wealthy guests from all over the world frequent for conferences. Where the clerics once congregated for basic meals is now a luxury restaurant for the country’s elite.

When you walk into the large steel and glass doors in the entrance, right ahead is the chapel, with seats on both sides as the aisle converges to the great altar. Many weddings are now held in a space that once was the exclusive domain of celibate males. Walking to the main display room of the conference I attended, I walked past a courtyard with magnificent statues of saints studying you as you pass by. The great halls once used for theological lectures are used for bustling wares for business, the one I attended swarming with new electronic gadgets for automotive manufacturers, representatives from dozens of companies showing their expertise while multi-million dollar business deals are done in executive board rooms.

It’s tragic, but the result was better than the alternative. It was through the heroic efforts of local Catholic businessmen that the space was resuscitated, and without their help it might have been sold by the financially strapped diocese for far worse purposes, if not outright destroyed. The seminarians simply weren’t there anymore, and the diocese has suffered a shortage of priests for decades. The new springtime that every Catholic was told was just in the horizon never came, and now the diocese is involved with painful consolidations that will end in many parish closures as the flock they were responsible for dispersed to the secular mainstream.

A lot of traditional Catholics will point to Vatican II as the culprit, and not without good reason. But the truth is more nuanced. During the era of triumphalism in the mid 1940-1950’s, when a bishop preaching for thirty minutes was one of the most popular T.V. shows on the era, serious cracks were already showing. Priestly formation was getting lax, and while the seminaries exploded with potential priests, their quality dropped. As the convents were bustling with nuns, they also swarmed with angry young women caught between their religious parents and the secular world they wanted to experience.

A classic example was Cardinal Cushing, who famously did not understand any Latin, unable to even recite it correctly. He presided over John F. Kennedy’s funeral, which, unfortunately for him, was recorded and made him a legend in all the wrong ways. For those with no experience in Latin, this is not a good example!

It seems strange that when the Catholic faith seemed to be ascending and eclipsing even the traditional protestant religions of the era, a seminary just built forty years ago would be closed and repurposed. It must have seemed stretching the most pessimistic fortunetelling that there would be a mass exodus of priests and nuns from their vocation, many more becoming essentially secularists wearing a cleric’s collar. Churches would be literally wrecked, the beautiful frescos replaced with a bland white while the statues were destroyed to keep up with the “spirit” of the new council. Loyal parishioners could only look at each other in confusion.

If the earlier era was a time of triumphalist, arrogant confidence, the 1960’s and 1970’s began an era of limp-wristed submission to the secular age. Where once the faithful proudly stood above mass culture, judging it based on their religious convictions, they found themselves on the other side, forced to justify their attitudes and actions based on the morality of mass propaganda. They found their charity being judged not by their priest, but their secular neighbor, and always found wanting.

It was thirty years of dealing with this.

Their priests suddenly took the side of the atheists, wagging their fingers at the congregation about how the unbelievers won’t embrace the faith because the faithful refused to live the way the ungodly find moral. Instead of the firm conviction of a cradle Catholic whose entire upbringing made one breathe the Mass, the Catholic schools took an ecumenical approach to the extent that students couldn’t see any difference between the religions. They reached the logical conclusion that if their religious instructors didn’t think Catholicism was unique, why should they?

Today, the older generations are still in control of the powerful posts in Church hierarchy, and the more new evangelical tilt the Church embraced in the 1960’s has faltered, the more they embrace what the religiously active younger generation see as clear failures. While it’s easy to blame the boomer and silent generation for refusing to see the decline, they grew up with incredible institutional trust in traditional hierarchies, both in the Church and in secular government. It was assumed the clerics both had their interests in mind and a good vision of the future. They are unable to see that these high-trust institutions no longer exist.

Oof.

These older priests of today were formed in those tumultuous times of the mid-century and listened intently as the new evangelization was proclaimed. Out was talk of repentance, and out the idea of exclusivity in the Catholic faith. Tough talk in the old mass of being surrounded by enemies in a fallen world was replaced with talks of openness and seeing the goodness in everyone.

This framework turned into passive conflict avoidance, and jackals took advantage of the opportunity. Some of the strangest experiences I had was going to Catholic forums, and being bombarded with homosexuals, atheists, and subversives, getting regularly punished for giving blunt answers to arguments given in bad faith. The infiltrators, however, were able to make passive-aggressive swipes with impunity.

You saw this as internet Apologetics became mainstream with the idea that discourse could solve the seeming unbridgeable gap between the modern world and the Church. Good faith was assumed, even when their opponent continuously punched below the belt. Like the conservatives of the last generation, they internalized that defeat against a bad actor is okay, as long as acted like the bigger man. It was rationalized defeat all the way down.

The Ascendent Generation

The rising young generation never experienced the confident, stable, and outspoken hierarchy of earlier times. Talk of the old mass and tight-knit communities is relegated to some aging grandparents who witnessed them in their youth. They have no experience with initial excitement of a new springtime that promised transformation and renewal of their parishes. There’s no mental block of sunk costs their elders have to cope with, nor nostalgia for kitschy music or felt banners. To the young, what was supposed to cater to Modern Man comes from a foreign and strange era.

With their fresh eyes without the blinders of age, they see the disaster that modernity has brought on the faith. They understand the stratagems of evangelization were simply a controlled retreat. They see clearly the contradiction in diocese after diocese talking about imminent renewal as more parishes closed. The positivity of the institutions remained while the world burned around them, like they still lived in the ascending 1950’s. Most of all, white Catholics saw utter betrayal as Church leaders focus their efforts on the mass of Hispanics entering the country while ignoring the mass of whites with whom they failed to catechize in their youth. The move to include women, paradoxically, led to a revolution where all the women left and men now make the majority of young religious.

It’s no wonder a large contingent who saw most of their colleagues apostatize said enough, and demanded a return to the older, sterner, more muscular Christianity that was dismissed by their forefathers. Many came from devout families who hosted priests to celebrate the Tridentine Mass in secret to avoid the wrath of the local bishop. Others came through intellectual means, while many came after finding the religion of their suburban parish weak and ineffectual. They want the pomp, the glorious architecture, the vocation of being on a mission from God against the forces of the Devil. Evil lurks in every corner, and the new vanguard wants to call it out. The openness to the secular world the Church once encouraged has only been manipulated to hollow out the Church, making it smaller and ineffectual.

Since secular culture did not respond to the Church’s openness in good faith, the new generation doesn’t see the point of ecumenical conversation anymore, only war. Mass culture is not something to be conversed with, but crushed and transformed. The old liberal pieties of freedom of religion and to live one’s own life has been supplanted with an open call for society to live according to the old idea of freedom espoused by the Church, the freedom to act in accordance to God’s will.

While the upper echelons of the hierarchy still stubbornly cling to the new order taught in their twenties, the new faithful are more fanatical and less willing to make compromises. After decades of near apostate progressives disobeying their superiors and not receiving any punishment, it’s the younger traditionalists who find ways to sidestep the hierarchy. In a turn of fate, the progressives of the earlier age now wag their fingers at the up-and-comers for refusing to follow the dictates of their bishops. The bishops could once count on conservative Catholics to follow their edicts, but now have to deal with organizations that try their hardest to avoid their gaze. The complication ensues, as the traditionalists are becoming the only contingent of Gen Z who actually become priests, and are primed to inherit power in Church politics.

The future is now old man.

The Church and the Nation

One would need to be daft to fail to see the parallels in Church politics to the current situation. Both the Church and the Nation had a short era of seeming invincibility after the war. Both are now ruled by sclerotic has-beens who either refuse to see the disaster of the last fifty years or cynically embrace it. The national discourse has been permanently polluted with an entrenched media pundit class no one believes while the Vatican press corps is a running joke in the Francis papacy. Both are inundated with needless bureaucracy that makes decision-making impossible, the Vatican with the ill-founded Synodality (which they fail to even define) and the U.S. Government with the Deep State. The separation between the institutions and the people they serve has never been more stark.

One major difference is the ability to stop going to Church while it is far harder to leave the state. Paradoxically, it’s the most religious, the most abused, that tends to cling to the faith that demeans them. The progressives that religious leaders hoped to court never showed up, and the children of lukewarm parents who went to church stopped going. Dissidents see that Nation as a unique entity for a unique people, and progressives see it as an economic zone. Traditionalists want to maintain a Church that believes fully in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, while many prelates see the Church’s future as a glorified NGO.

Also, both Francis’ edicts against ancestral teachings and Washington D.C. abuse of power have created a situation where the very rules and traditions that grant both legitimacy are being swept away, and with it their rhetorical power over the masses.

One of the pope’s biggest fears regarding allowing the old Tridentine Mass was that there would be parallel churches. The truth is, that’s already been the case for decades as Catholic parishes have been bifurcated into “liberal” and “conservative” churches for some time. This might sound strange for such organizations to be forming in what’s supposed to be the unified bloc of the Catholic Church, but it’s happening. I’ve personally met a monk who was ordained pretty much as secret as possible to avoid attention to their monastery who follows the old-rite of the Mass. There are “brothers” who room in apartments without any ordination, but simply living the life of a celibate monk without the binding vows. Religious schools are popping up outside the jurisdiction of the Diocese, and religious publications thrive with no input from the hierarchy.

In the same vein, the North Carolina hurricane relief efforts brought into focus the hopelessly bureaucratic and naive worldview of our government. In addition, the vicious glee the new generation of teachers have in indoctrinating conservative parent’s children showed that the unspoken contract of openness between parents and teachers that allowed public education to work has been broken. The implanting of millions of illegals into small towns points to institutions who believe they exist for their own sake and not to support the needs of a people. As political differences become more pronounced, the country itself is splitting into different ideological zones. The political and spiritual realm has been crushed by the same forces of modernity.

Spiritual Malaise

It’s an exciting time in our sphere. I sincerely believe even if Trump ultimately loses, events unfolding have an energy of their own as high agency elites and ascending young dissidents are continuously defecting to alternatives to the status quo. We’re witnessing a renaissance in our culture, where ideas once relegated to a niche part of the internet are being blasted by mainstream political leaders. The ascending anti-liberal powers can’t be stopped, and it’s just a matter of how much damage is done before the old order crumbles to dust.

Many people in our sphere are pushing Christian Nationalism, a government based on traditional Christian principles as opposed to the enlightenment ideals of liberalism. Stephen Wolfe and Andrew Torba have written extensively on this subject and I personally have no qualms with the ideas brought forth, but I keep thinking back to that seminary turned into a resort. How such an institution can come into being when the soil that could, maintain such a system is so degraded and poisoned? If such institutions came about, would we have the strong roots necessary to maintain it?

I always wondered what would have happened if, when that seminary closed, instead of trying to put a positive spin on the future, Church leadership demanded mortification in reparation for the lack of vocations. What if the congregation witnessed the bishop’s face sunken from hunger, walking with a limp from kneeling for hours on the stone floor? How would have things been different if they made the rallying cry to be the holiest generation ever to walk the earth, demanding radical deprivations to oneself in the cause of holiness instead of accepting gradual decline and misplaced hope?

In earlier days of the Church, there were extensive disciplines designed to force deprivation to maintain a healthy spiritual balance in the population. Most of it revolved around diet, with the most strict measures in the 46 days of Lent disallowing eggs, dairy, and meats. Less than a century ago, it was required to fast 8 hours before receiving communion. This wasn’t the only discipline though, as the Church also forbade sex during Lent, like a medieval version of No-Nut November. Now a weak fasting protocol is only twice a year, with no meat on Fridays during lent and an hour(!) of fasting before communion being the extent of modern Church discipline.

In World War II, there was enough discipline to maintain Victory Gardens, accept strict rationing, and maintain social balance while our soldiers died on the other side of the world. While there are plenty of reservations one can have about the war, the fact remains a people were willing to suffer deprivations for what they saw as the common good, and one can’t help but wonder if such a war happened again whether our current citizens would accept similar restrictions.

There’s confident bluster in the air, but do we have enough to maintain the momentum? Are we going to have our shot and waste it by being a people unworthy of taking power? When push comes to shove, are we going to show the same decrepit weakness our enemies showed? Are we going to destroy all the goodwill and opportunity gained by lacking the discipline for a real movement? Like the 1950’s, are we going to see our triumph turn into disaster within a decade?

Nothing is more detrimental to a young boy’s faith than seeing a fat, lethargic priest with no backbone, and this was the norm of priests for at least two generations. The older, tougher priests retired out, and their replacements were found wanting in the battle against modernity, with the good ones often browbeaten into getting with the times. Laxity in discipline killed the momentum.

In the same way, there is nothing more detrimental to our current restoration than being inundated with gooners, porn-stars, and other degenerates. It shows a total lack of cohesion and seriousness in our ranks. For those people who whine about purity spiraling, there’s nothing wrong with expecting leaders have a modicum of self control and not embarrassing everyone. Also, there’s a difference between a spicy Twitter post from a few years ago and a long history of immoral and disruptive behavior, yet the former causes more controversy.

Earlier generations understood you could not trust a former prostitute in authority. You could forgive their transgressions, but they would always be far away from publicity and decision making, because otherwise bad things would happen. Even if

Christopher Rufo

and the CATO Institute don’t understand this, any sensible leader needs to. Antifa can get away with being drug-addled maniacs because they are ultimately shock troops of destruction. Our people are supposed to be guardians of order, and our leadership should be models of that.

Just like the triumphant heyday of the 1950’s, fresh from winning a war led to the social fabric being torn apart only a decade later, the time when things seem most hopeful, when your side seems undefeatable, is the time you’re most susceptible a great fall, and most blind to the rot within.

When a cultural shift seems within reach and you regain ground. this is the worst time to take your foot off the pedal. It’s when you witness a great spiritual movement unleashed that you fast longer, pray harder, and prove yourself worthy of what’s coming. In this era of great spiritual and political awakening, forget the triumphant bloviating online, the mocking of our enemies, and smug self-satisfaction. Forget scrolling Twitter like a dopamine addict, the bluster of your discord spaces, and saucy anime girls. Now is the time to hit the gym, lose that 30 pounds, to regain focus and attention. It’s time to pray all the more fervently, and to wear a hairshirt under your business suit.

The world is still materialistic and crass, our culture is still rotten, and the great religions are pale shadows of their former glory. Our generation will never see the full glory of this great reawakening occurring, but we can ensure our children do. If you want to continue to win and maintain what we’ve gained for future generations, now is the time for sackcloth and ashes.

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