Very good summation, Hilary. I appreciate how your own story fits. I'm 10 years older than you, raised Catholic with strong memories of the Latin Mass, and saw the changes happening in the Church, but thought they were good, on the whole. I imbibed the self-actualization thing as a teenager and didn't find anything to counter it in post Vat II. Long story short, after +30 years as an Evangelical Protestant (but with retaining a love for art and music), I have been 16 years Orthodox. The church in the photos from the St Gregory web site is my parish. More fresco work has been done and we're close (within a couple of years or so) to being finished.
I wonder if you know the work of Paul Kingsnorth, who describes an interesting journey into Orthodoxy. At his Substack, he wrote a long series of posts on The Machine to get a grip on his own thoughts about how we got to Modernia on not only a Theological/Social road, but also factoring in the history of the West. He revised his posts into a book coming out in September. I think your thoughts and his dovetail very well. He writes The Abbey of Misrule.
Thank you for this survey history of “modern” thought and yes, there is power and strategy a foot. It is the program of the Masons and the George Soros’ clique (the One World Government types) which perhaps includes our former Bishop of Rome. Note that the Vatican recently ran a two page spread on Teilhard de chardins; trying to rehabilitate him. https://ewtn.co.uk/article-teilhard-de-chardins-ideas-find-resonance-inside-the-vatican-70-years-after-his-death/ Yes, we are down the rabbit hole when we abandoned an Aristotelian-Thomist objective reality. Even though the Vatican documents on the priesthood strongly promote St. Thomas Aquinas, few seminaries, as I recall from my experience in the 1980’s, still teach him. Instead young men are subjected to a name left off this above list of men who effected a turn to the subject, viz. Fr. Karl Rahner S.J. who helped write 14 of the 16 documents of Vatican II as a periti or specialist theologian who provided the draft documents as the council progressed.
Powerful. I remember a class argument in Episcopal seminary in Ethics. The class discussion was espousing Utilitarianism and I told them they were all nuts. They counted “who was I?” to think there was any one box everyone fit into. I shouted “There is a box for everyone…it’s the Bible.” I was Catholic two years later.
Fantastic summation of the long, cultural, theological, academic and psychological progression toward "Modernia". As humans, we are always in search of that "next best thing", but without God, ethics and a respect for the past, we all too quickly throw out the baby with the bath water and "progress" ends up the new false god. By ignoring the past (or censoring the truth, in many cases), we have walked down a path that has had a snowball effect into ends justifying the means for an empty slogan of "the greater good." A familiar, dystopian path with disturbing results- history speaks it quite clearly to those paying attention.
What interests me about many of the thinkers you mentioned, especially Foucault, is how their philosophies always seemed to justify their perverted (sexually or otherwise) lives. One wonders which was prior: their philosophies, or their embracement of evil habits. I strongly suspect the latter flowed into the former.
The way postmodernism follows modernism, as a supposed "corrective," almost calls to mind the prophet Daniel's dreams. As pagan empire succeeds pagan empire, so too do these godless philosophies. Christ, the cornerstone, will grind of all these systems to dust — even if it's difficult to see how. Keep your spirits up.
Very depressing, but vital to be reminded of how the situation we are in developed. I find it revealing that the artist you feature here could not even find words to attach a name to. It is all emptiness and horror.
Thank you for this. Very on point. Bentham and J.S. Mill have ‘won’ over Thomas Carlyle … at least in lands served by the English language. Utilitarianism ‘pays the bills’ while it destroys the goodness handed over to it.
Salvation will come from unexpected places.
I remember car rides as a kid to Port Hardy, where my father worked as an engineer at the copper/molybdenum mine.
The open skies of Saskatchewan, and Australia, are inimical to the gloom of deep forests and esp the narrow valleys of B.Columbia.
Thank you. I wondered what you make of Peter Brooke who sees Gleizes and Severini as a way back from Cubism to Classicism. His website seems to be down but his books are here:
Very good summation, Hilary. I appreciate how your own story fits. I'm 10 years older than you, raised Catholic with strong memories of the Latin Mass, and saw the changes happening in the Church, but thought they were good, on the whole. I imbibed the self-actualization thing as a teenager and didn't find anything to counter it in post Vat II. Long story short, after +30 years as an Evangelical Protestant (but with retaining a love for art and music), I have been 16 years Orthodox. The church in the photos from the St Gregory web site is my parish. More fresco work has been done and we're close (within a couple of years or so) to being finished.
I wonder if you know the work of Paul Kingsnorth, who describes an interesting journey into Orthodoxy. At his Substack, he wrote a long series of posts on The Machine to get a grip on his own thoughts about how we got to Modernia on not only a Theological/Social road, but also factoring in the history of the West. He revised his posts into a book coming out in September. I think your thoughts and his dovetail very well. He writes The Abbey of Misrule.
Dana Ames
California
Thank you for this survey history of “modern” thought and yes, there is power and strategy a foot. It is the program of the Masons and the George Soros’ clique (the One World Government types) which perhaps includes our former Bishop of Rome. Note that the Vatican recently ran a two page spread on Teilhard de chardins; trying to rehabilitate him. https://ewtn.co.uk/article-teilhard-de-chardins-ideas-find-resonance-inside-the-vatican-70-years-after-his-death/ Yes, we are down the rabbit hole when we abandoned an Aristotelian-Thomist objective reality. Even though the Vatican documents on the priesthood strongly promote St. Thomas Aquinas, few seminaries, as I recall from my experience in the 1980’s, still teach him. Instead young men are subjected to a name left off this above list of men who effected a turn to the subject, viz. Fr. Karl Rahner S.J. who helped write 14 of the 16 documents of Vatican II as a periti or specialist theologian who provided the draft documents as the council progressed.
Powerful. I remember a class argument in Episcopal seminary in Ethics. The class discussion was espousing Utilitarianism and I told them they were all nuts. They counted “who was I?” to think there was any one box everyone fit into. I shouted “There is a box for everyone…it’s the Bible.” I was Catholic two years later.
Fantastic summation of the long, cultural, theological, academic and psychological progression toward "Modernia". As humans, we are always in search of that "next best thing", but without God, ethics and a respect for the past, we all too quickly throw out the baby with the bath water and "progress" ends up the new false god. By ignoring the past (or censoring the truth, in many cases), we have walked down a path that has had a snowball effect into ends justifying the means for an empty slogan of "the greater good." A familiar, dystopian path with disturbing results- history speaks it quite clearly to those paying attention.
Thank you for this interesting post.
What interests me about many of the thinkers you mentioned, especially Foucault, is how their philosophies always seemed to justify their perverted (sexually or otherwise) lives. One wonders which was prior: their philosophies, or their embracement of evil habits. I strongly suspect the latter flowed into the former.
The way postmodernism follows modernism, as a supposed "corrective," almost calls to mind the prophet Daniel's dreams. As pagan empire succeeds pagan empire, so too do these godless philosophies. Christ, the cornerstone, will grind of all these systems to dust — even if it's difficult to see how. Keep your spirits up.
Very depressing, but vital to be reminded of how the situation we are in developed. I find it revealing that the artist you feature here could not even find words to attach a name to. It is all emptiness and horror.
May I ask why Beksiński's works have been chosen to the article..
The writer's explanation is under the first image.
Indeed, thank you.. reading around midnight is no longer good for me..
The writer’s explanation is under the first image.
Thank you for this. Very on point. Bentham and J.S. Mill have ‘won’ over Thomas Carlyle … at least in lands served by the English language. Utilitarianism ‘pays the bills’ while it destroys the goodness handed over to it.
Salvation will come from unexpected places.
I remember car rides as a kid to Port Hardy, where my father worked as an engineer at the copper/molybdenum mine.
The open skies of Saskatchewan, and Australia, are inimical to the gloom of deep forests and esp the narrow valleys of B.Columbia.
Thank you. I wondered what you make of Peter Brooke who sees Gleizes and Severini as a way back from Cubism to Classicism. His website seems to be down but his books are here:
https://francisboutle.co.uk/products/from-cubism-to-classicism/
https://francisboutle.co.uk/products/art-and-religion/
https://francisboutle.co.uk/products/the-aesthetics-of-beuron/
I don't think Classicism is the answer we need. But I've never heard of these books or their authors.