SUNLIT UPLANDS: Orthodox Christianity

From Renew America
By Fred Hutchison

Pope Benedict XVI has identified several causes for the intellectual, moral, cultural, and spiritual decline of the European civilization. I was thrilled to learn about this because I have independently come to some of the same conclusions. Allow me to recapitulate his conclusions as five theses:

1) The West has declined because of the modern separation of faith and truth.

2) The West has declined because of the modern separation of metaphysical truth and practical truth.

3) The West has declined because of the modern separation of freedom and truth.

4) The West has declined because of its postmodern rejection the old rapprochement between Christianity and the classics of ancient Greece and Rome.

5) The attempt to rehabilitate of West by returning to the culture of premodern Catholic Europe would be a mistake. He points to another way forward.

Benedict points to the American Republic

Benedict encourages Europe to learn from the 18th and 19th century Anglo-Saxon world and its balance of freedom, order, truth, and morality in the public and private spheres. The American experiment as described by Alexis de Tocqueville is particularly instructive, according to Benedict! The very German and very Catholic pontiff admires the Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural, moral, conceptual, and historical origins, and early development of the American Republic!

By coming to these conclusions, Benedict has joined a long line of conservative thinkers such as John Locke, Viscount Bolingingbroke, Baron Montesquieu, Sir Edmund Burke, James Madison, Alexis de Tocqueville, Christopher Dawson, Richard Weaver, and Russell Kirk. We are proud to welcome the Bishop of Rome into this pantheon of conservative heroes!

A new kind of civilization

I am curious about whether Benedict XVI has read The American Republic by Orestes Brownson (19th century American Catholic political philosopher). Benedict's writing bears more resemblance to Brownson than it does to de Tocqueville. Like Brownson, Benedict's writing reveals a mind deeply immersed in theology, philosophy, history, and culture.

Brownson wrote that the American Republic embodies a new and better kind of civilization. While no utopia, American was a move away from the tyranny and the remnants of barbarism in Europe. As a champion of civilization and an opponent of tyranny and barbarism, Brownson believed that the American Republic was the providential way forward. Brownson and Benedict are alike in pointing to the early Republic as an exemplar for Europe to follow.

Brownson posited that the constitutional design of James Madison as laid on top of American religious and organic foundations and upon American cultural and political traditions is in harmony with the divine order of things. He derived principles from the Trinity, the Incarnation, and concepts of "catholicism" in contrast to sectarianism.

For example, e pluribus unum, "out of many, one," is a Trinitarian concept, for God is one, but he is also three. We are one nation, a "catholic" concept — not a congery of factions, a "sectarian" concept.

Brownson finds a good organic resemblance between several general principles of the divine order only for the American Republic. His search through history to find another country that measures up was futile. Even parliamentarian England with its admirable balance of freedom and order fell short in several particulars.

Brownson admired the American constitution and wrote: "The American constitution taken as a whole and in all its parts is the least imperfect that has ever existed, and under it individual rights, personal freedom, as well as public authority or society, are better protected than any other...."

The Great Educator

I am a child of the Reformation and regard several of Luther's reforms as indispensable. However, Benedict is a great educator, and I would be a fool not to dine at his table of knowledge. Catholic theologians and philosophers generally have a better intellectual grasp of metaphysics and a more superior knowledge of history and the literary classics than do theologians and philosophers of other Christian traditions — although the gap is rapidly closing in some quarters.

My Catholic readers and some of my more intellectual Evangelical and Protestant readers might be interested in reading 1) European Disunion: Benedict XVI on the Crisis of Faith and Reason, by Samuel Gregg, Touchstone, July/August 2008; 2) Benedict's Regensburg lecture (2006) (available free on the internet); and 3) selected portions of his collection of lectures titled Truth and Tolerance (2004). The five theses of this essay can be traced to these works.

Orthodoxy vs. Orthopraxis

In order to lay the groundwork for my arguments I must explain how Christian orthodoxy differs from orthopraxis, gnosticism, fideism, and romanticism. At some future date, I hope to write an essay in which I delineate the links between Christian doctrinal orthodoxy and conservative political philosophy.

Orthodoxy means correct belief. Orthopraxis means correct practice. Christianity is essentially an orthodox faith, and Islam is essentially an orthoprax religion.

A Muslim following Shariah law has countless rules to obey and procedures to follow. Although their leaders teach them many principles, it is the correctness of their practice that really matters to them. In its extreme forms, Sharia Muslims might care more about the correctness of the format that one uses than what one does. They might be more offended by incorrect forms of ritual prayer at the mosque than if one fails to show up for prayer.

Orthopraxy, legalism, and superstition

Orthopraxy is a legalism of codified rules for outward performance involving precise adherence to ordained procedures and the scrupulous avoidance of superficial peccadilloes. It is a religion for the obsessive-compulsive perfectionist.

Some pagan orthopraxies induce a superstitious horror of the dire consequences of violating a single detail of their code. Some of my readers might remember a ditty of mock horror from childhood's obsessive-compulsive games: "Step on a crack and you break your mother's back." This is a superstitious orthopraxy of a pagan sort involving a scary taboo.

Islam does not invoke this kind of pagan superstition, but it does invoke the fear of hellfire. Step on a crack and you do not break your mother's back — but you might go to hell. Some Muslims fear that a slight infraction of Sharia will send them to hell. Extreme legalism has more in common with paganism than we might have supposed.

There is an old joke that a Frenchman does not care what you say as long as you pronounce it correctly. One might make a similar joke about the Sharia Muslims. They don't care what you think as long as you keep it yourself and perform all your appointed duties with stylistic perfection. This is an exaggeration of course, but sometimes extravagance in satire helps to make the point understood.

Like Islam, Confucianism is an orthopraxy. Its teachers offer carefully delineated models of behavior. A particular model, protocol of courtesy, or code of social correctness is designated for every kind of social situation. A Confucianist walks about with a pocket full of recipes and pulls out a recipe as it is needed for particular social occasions. However, they act out the part with admirable style, grace, and charm. If you violate a Confucian taboo, you do not go to hell, but are dismissed as an uncouth barbarian.

What really matters for the orthodox Christian is faith, truth, conviction, love, and communion with God. It is quite true that the actions of a Christian should be in accord with orthodox beliefs and should not violate the universal moral laws. However, a believer's actions should be an expression of his faith and his zeal for truth and his love for God. This is drastically different from rote actions that follow a recipe.

Christian orthodoxy links faith and truth tightly together. This is the first line of defense against a debilitating legalism and a paralyzing orthopraxy.

A living faith vs. pillar people

The pursuit of perfection by the rote performance of a long list of rules or by following programmed activities, scripted behavior, and scrupulous precision in ritualistic motions is abhorrent to one who has enjoyed orthodox faith. Those who know the sweet freedom, perpetual newness, variety, and vividness of a life of faith regard the automatons of orthopraxy as the living dead.

It is no accident that Christian missionaries have never had much success in the orthoprax worlds of Japan and the Middle East. How can a programmed people understand the vivacious lives of the Christian missionaries? How can Christian missionaries understand what it is like to be a proud Confucian or Sharian automaton?

The Arab world is the graveyard of missionaries — which sometimes involves literal graveyards. Those in bondage often hate those who are free, and the hatred can become violent. Terrorist ideology can tap into this hatred.

I must admit that there is a petrified beauty and enchantment in Sharia Islam and Confucianism. Their orthoprax elegance reminds me of the pillar people carved in the West portal of Chartres Cathedral.

The stylized and aristocratic elegance of the pillar people is enchanting. The systematic arrangement of the figures is a marvel of symmetry. I can stare at them with delight until the tour guide gets impatient. But in the end, the figures are frozen in place and are made out of cold stone. A frozen elegance is no substitute for a living faith.

Orthodoxy: The fountainhead of culture

There are tremendous cultural, social, and individual implications in Christian orthodoxy. Actions flowing out of sincere beliefs, zealously embraced truths, and high ideals can transform a culture. Add to this the love of God, and you have fiery hearts that can change the world.

Christian orthodoxy has unleashed a remarkable creativity in literature, philosophy, the arts, architecture, the sciences, craftsmanship, engineering, and commerce. By 1700 A.D., the West stood on a pinnacle far above all the other civilizations of the earth.

As observed by Benedict, the breakdown of the link between faith and truth (his thesis 1) and the breakdown between truth and freedom (his thesis 3) has robbed the West of its unique fountain of creativity, cultural ferment, and resilience.

The exhaustion of Islam

The cultural high water mark of the golden age of Islam in Baghdad (9th century) and Cordoba (10th century) falls far short of Baroque Europe in 1700. The golden age of Islam is reminiscent of the cultural stage of development that Europe had reached by 1375.

An authentic Renaissance man named Salutati (a disciple of Petrarch) became Chancellor of Florence in 1375, and established a "Republic of Letters" that marked the beginning of the early Italian Renaissance. The Muslim world never had a Salutati or a Luther to lead them onward and upward. They never had a Renaissance or a Reformation comparable to that of Europe.

Orthopraxies burn themselves out. The pursuit of a superficial perfection in scripted actions is exhausting. Therefore, Islamic civilization slumped after its golden age, and with some notable exceptions, has wallowed in mediocrity ever since. The fading monuments of the former glory of Baghdad and Cordoba are still splendid and elegant — like the pillar people of Chartres.

The two-stage collapse of the West into orthopraxy

The West separated metaphysical truth from practical truth (Benedict's thesis 2) partly through the influence of Voltaire and the philosophy of Hume and Kant. Subsequently, men restricted their minds to figuring out how to get practical things done. They no longer extended their powers of reason to profound issues of being, knowing, purpose, meaning, and ultimate origins, causes, and ends. They no longer did great things in pursuit of transcendent ideals. However, the West was still capable of great practical achievements in industry, engineering, and technology.

Unfortunately, original practical thinking cannot be sustained indefinitely when the practical mind is cut off from the metaphysical mind and the spiritual mind. Great original ideas in the practical realm often originate in the metaphysical realm or the spiritual mind. Without nourishment from these higher realms, the practical mind gradually runs dry.

When the intelligentsia of the West suffered intellectual burn-out, they rebelled against reason. This rebellion is better known as postmodernism. When postmodern men were no longer able to guide themselves through life by reason and faith, they groped for stepping stones and hand holds to guide them. Many found such stepping stones in parochial or professional orthopraxies, or in the group-think of liberal ideology.

Many mediocre scientists are guided by the consensus views and the protocols of their field — without being able to coherently and articularly explain why what they teach to their students is true. We find such depressing orthopraxies in every academic department and every profession.

Narrow specialization is the ruling principle of our professions. The withering powers of reason are bundled and tightly focused to an extremely narrow scope. Narrow specialists set the rules of their field that the others follow in lockstep.

Such a civilization as this must burn itself out — unless it be renewed by God's grace and by Benedict's cure.

Orthodoxy vs. gnosticism

Gnostics seek salvation through an esoteric knowledge that is mystically imparted to an initiated elite. Gnosticism originated as a Christian heresy in the late first century. The first epistle of John and the Apostles Creed, which came about fifty years later in the form of a catechism, were intended to combat the heresy of Gnosticism.

Orthodoxy requires adherence to certain great truths, but denies that one can be saved by knowledge. Christians have been publicly confessing belief in great truths enumerated in creeds since the Apostles Creed was written. "I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth...."

It is the confession of faith that counts. Credo, the word from which "creed" is derived means "I believe."

Why is such a confession of faith important? Because only through faith does saving and sanctifying grace come. Why then do we confess belief in orthodox truth? Because the truth statements in the creed tell us who Christ is and what he did to save us. None of the orthodox confessions mentions human works or the esoteric knowledge of the believer. The Catholic insistence upon a combination of faith and works came after the great day of the creeds.

Although the Christian is not saved by knowledge, a tight link between truth and faith must be preserved in order to have an authentic, historically orthodox Christianity. This fact is relevant to Benedict's first thesis: The West declined because of the modern separation of faith and truth.

Saint Anselm's revolution of faith and reason

Saint Anselm (1033–1109) said, "I believe so that I may understand." Faith was the foundation upon which he proposed to build the castles of reason. He started his reasoning process with propositions he embraced by faith. Then, through a chain of deductive reasoning, he worked down from these propositions to logical conclusions.

Anselm's disciples founded the scholastic movement, which was a triumph of logic and metaphysics. Understanding scholasticism is indispensable to correctly understanding the unique rationality of premodern Europe.

It is a remarkable coincidence that Saint Anselm lived at exactly the time when European civilization was born. The years 1050–1100 were approximately when Europe was awakening from her long dark slumber and becoming an authentic civilization. Anselm's life span overlapped these years.

In a variety of ways, Anselm's influence became decisive in the rapidly rising new civilization. It can be argued that the formation of European civilization was more Anselmian than it was Augustinian or Benedictine. However, without Saint Augustine or Saint Benedict, there could have been no St. Anselm.

Anselm, the father of European civilization, decreed that we shall build our culture on faith, metaphysical reason, and practical reason, with all of these tightly tied together. These were distinctive traits of Europe during the centuries of growth and development of European civilization. According to Pope Benedict XVI, the breaking apart of these three things led to the decline of Europe. (Benedict's thesis 1 & 2)

I like to think of Benedict as the second Anselm.

Orthodoxy vs. fideism

If faith is necessary for salvation, is not Christianity fideist instead of orthodox? Fideism is an emphasis on faith to the exclusion of truth. As such, fideism involves a misconception of the nature of orthodox Christianity. Fideism is the separation of faith and truth and is a cause of the decline of Europe according to Benedict's first thesis.

The new spiritual birth involves new things breaking in on one from the outside, as Benedict explains, not things welling up from the heart. According to Luther, faith comes down to one from above. Faith does not originate from feelings welling up from the human heart as the fideists and romantics suppose. One cannot choose his way into faith as some Evangelical Arminians claim — or work his way into faith as some Catholics propose — or feel his way into faith as some pietists and Pentecostals suppose. Faith is a gift from God.

Faith is transcendent and supernatural. It is objective because it is something breaking in from the outside. It is not subjective as something welling up from within. Faith is objective for a second reason. It takes hold of an invisible realty outside of the believer. Because faith is objective, it is in perfect accord with reason and rides above the flux of emotion.

According to Benedict, fideism leads to superstition. The coming of orthodox Christianity to Europe was fatal to pagan superstition because Christianity is reasonable and is not a concoction of feelings and imaginings. As the Christian faith has receded in the modern era, pagan superstition has quickly returned as a subset of the New Age Movement.

The uniqueness of Christianity

Most religions involve some combination of orthopraxis and fideism. Orthodox Christianity avoids both things.

Pagan shamanism incorporates both of them. Myths, precepts, and taboos well up from the heart of the pagan shaman in a purely subjective manner. A similar phenomenon can be observed in romanticism, New Age mysticism, and extreme forms of Pentecostalism.

The members of the pagan tribe avoid the taboos proclaimed by the shaman and his forbears because tribalists are votaries of an orthopraxy. The individual tribesmen accept the gods and the myths proclaimed by the shaman with a vague fideism. When in doubt, chanting and dancing around the campfire to produce ecstasies and hallucinations usually does the trick. It restores the emotionally based belief in the gods and the myths. It is pure fideism. Rational ideas of truth do not enter into the equation.

Practitioners of extreme versions of pietism and Pentecostalism sometimes do the same thing — they try to revive their faith by pumping up their feelings. This is fideism in modern dress.

The separation of truth and freedom

Beginning with Jean Jacques Rousseau, the Romantic movement put forward a new concept of freedom. One becomes free when one's inner feelings and impulses break free from the restraints of reason, order, and the social and moral codes of civilization. Romanticism has been defined many ways, but I shall define its essential nature as the separation of truth and freedom (Benedict's thesis 3).

The intoxication of the soaring flight of the romantic movement was highly stimulating to Western culture for about sixty revolutionary years — 1760–1820. It was like steam suddenly being let out of a kettle.

Without the romantic movement, there would be no classical music (i.e., the delightful new music invented by Gluck, Hayden, and Mozart after 1760, and enthusiastically promoted by Rousseau.) Although I generally oppose romanticism, I love classical music. Pope Benedict is a fine classical musician. This forces me to admit that some of the fruits of romanticism were good.

However, Romanticism must eventually become destructive. Europe was almost destroyed by the social and political earthquakes set off by political romanticism that led to many revolutions and wars.

Classical music was beautiful as long as there was a balance between freedom and form. At inspired moments, sublime harmonies, and melodies of freedom and form seem to have come down from heaven and entered the composer's mind.

Unfortunately, once raw freedom was released from the genie's bottle, the rebellion against restraints must increase more and more until the restraints become intolerable. During the19th century, romantic composers strained more and more against the old musical structures until they shattered prior to World War I, and great classical composition died.

Freedom within boundaries

In contrast to romanticism, orthodox faith engenders freedom, but not a rebellion against restraints. The freedom of the orthodox believer must be an expression of truth and must be contained within moral boundaries. This freedom is not an expression of feelings welling up from within, but is an expression of a spirituality sent down from God. That which wells up from the dark human heart hates restraint. That which comes down from above finds a harmony between freedom and form. Forms must subsist within the boundaries of a higher design.

With the postmodern separation of truth and freedom, many people have come to see freedom of choice as an absolute. For example, the feminists believe that their freedom of choice supersedes the right to life of the babe in her womb.

The separation of freedom from reason always ends with the rejection of morality. By themselves, emotions are evanescent and are a poor platform for morality. A moral man must be rational, because stable moral values require the support of moral reasoning.

The rapprochement of Christianity and the classics

Pope Benedict wrote that without the rapprochement between Christianity and the classics of Greece and Rome, Europe would no longer be Europe (thesis 4). As we shall see, a Christianity devoid of the classics would be something different from the European Christianity of history.

The New Testament was written in Greek by Jewish apostles (except for Luke, who was a Greek physician and was not an apostle). The epistles were mostly addressed to Greeks or Greek churches.

Then came the Greek and Roman fathers of the church. Most of them were classicists!

The classically trained fathers of the church

After the middle of the second century, most of the Greek fathers of the church were classicists to a greater or lesser degree — if certain contemporary scholars are correct. (These Eastern fathers were Irenaus, Clement, Origen, Athanasius, Ambrose, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzus.) Most of the Roman fathers of the church seem to have had a classical education, even if some of them later became ambivalent about classicism. (The Western fathers were Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great.)

Saint Athanasius, a Greek father, was the bulwark of orthodoxy. He defended orthodox doctrine against Arius, the great heretic. The brilliant rhetorical powers that he employed against Arius owed something to his classical education. The orthodox Athanasian Creed was named in honor of Saint Athanasius.

Saint Jerome, a Roman father, is known to this day for his famous and excellent Vulgate translation of the Bible from Greek into Latin. Jerome was the greatest Christian classicist of the fourth century (just as Origen was the greatest Christian classicist of the third century).

However, it was Jerome who cried out the loudest with warnings against the idolatry of classicism and resorted to ascetic extremes to compensate for his own idolatry of the classics. Never has a classical education done the Christian world such great good while causing the possessor of that education such torment.

Perhaps the gnostic heresy of salvation through knowledge was a major temptation during the age of the fathers of the church precisely because the fathers were classicists and proud of their knowledge.

Many saints and martyrs were unlearned men and woman. They were widely venerated, but were rarely sought as teachers unless they founded religious orders. For a thousand years, educated Christians were under the tutelage of the Greek and Roman fathers and imbibed the classics along with Christ.

Europe and the classics

During the European Dark Ages, the missionary monks propagated Christianity among the pagans and copied the classics. Charlemagne (8th century) sponsored a revival in Christianity and a revival in classical education.

During the High Middle Ages, classical scholars, such as John of Salisbury (1120–1180), were sometimes elevated to the throne of a Bishop as a reward for scholarly achievements. John was famous for saying, "We are as dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants." However, the giants he was thinking of were Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Cicero, and Virgil. Chartres Cathedral was the headquarters of a religious order devoted to Plato. Petrarch and Boccaccio (14th century) laid the classical foundations for new schools for the Christian gentlemen. These schools were the fountainhead of the Renaissance. For five centuries, every gentleman — whether Catholic or Protestant — was educated in the classics. Many Christian academies and colleges teach the classics today.

Is Christian faith compatible with the classics?

Do the classics help or hinder the spiritual growth of a Christian? I am not sure. No question has been the subject of continual debate for a longer period of time.

It appears that many fine Christians in history do not seem to have been hurt by classicism. On the other hand, the postmodern banishment of the classics — in the name of multiculturalism — has not helped the spirituality of Western Christianity. During the present darkness, the classics are in eclipse, and a larger percentage of Christians are both intellectually and spiritually shallow than has been the case for centuries.

A classicist tends not to separate metaphysical truth from practical truth (Benedict's thesis 2) or to separate freedom from truth (Benedict's thesis 3). A Christian is less likely to make these two errors if he has studied the classics, or if the classics are influencing the culture he lives in. It is not good for civilization or Christianity to make these errors.

Classicism is good for education and for civilization. The banishment of the classics and the substitution of multiculturalism in the schools is one of the causes of our present educational crisis.

Dawson on the reconciliation of faith and the classics

The twentieth century Catholic historian Christopher Dawson made the following observations in his essay, The Classical Tradition and Christianity:

"The reconciliation between Christianity and the classical tradition in the fourth and fifth centuries, which finds expression in the patristic culture and the new Christian poetry, had a profound influence on the formation of the European mind. The modern is apt to regard the whole rhetorical tradition as a pompous bore. But...it is to the rhetorician and his educational work that we owe the survival of classical literature and the whole tradition of humanism. Without them, European culture would not only have been poorer, it would have been fundamentally different. There would have been no tradition of secular learning, secular literature, save that of the minstrel and saga-writer. The higher culture would be entirely religious, as it tended to be in the oriental world outside China. The survival of the classical and the rhetorical tradition not only made possible the rise of European literatures; they also formed the European habit of mind, and rendered possible that rational and critical attitude to life and nature that is peculiar to Western civilization. The coexistence of these two spiritual and literary traditions — that of the Church and the Bible on the one hand, and that of Hellenism and the classics on the other — has left a profound mark of our culture, and their mutual influence and interpenetration has enriched the Western mind in a way that no single tradition, however great, could have done by itself.

As we read this passage, we hear the echo of Pope Benedict's words, "Without the classics, Europe would not be Europe."

Artificiality

After this glowing encomium about classicism, Dawson had to pause for breath and offer his reservations about the classical tradition. He warns that artificiality is one of the greatest weaknesses of European civilization. One only has to think of Versailles during the reign of Louis XIV to understand what Dawson means by artificiality.

Art historian Kenneth Clark, an admirer of all things Baroque, paused for breath to warn us about the bombastic theatricality of some of the art and architecture of the Baroque era.

Dualism

Dawson also warns about a European tendency towards dualism. What kind of dualism? He doesn't say. Let us consider the question.

During the High Middle Ages, philosophical realism — the belief that universals have an independent existence — was triumphant as a result of the labors of the scholastic philosophers. As Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm noticed, philosophical realism is the point at which the metaphysics of Christianity and the metaphysics of Platonism are in agreement. Precisely because of this critical point of concord, a rapprochement between Christianity and Platonism was possible.

However, once we let Plato get through the door, how do we avoid a disintegration into a gnostic kind of dualism between spirit and body? Saint Anselm, the father of scholasticism, said we do so by emphasizing the incarnation of Christ. St. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest scholastic, said we do so by striking a reasoned balance between Aristotle, Plato, the Bible, the counsels, the creeds, and the fathers of the church. For several centuries, these solutions seemed to work.

In the mid-fourteenth century, things began to unravel with the neoplatonic excesses of some of the Rhineland mystics, the ascetic dualism of the flagellants, and a growing sacred/secular split between sacred and romantic literature.

A cult of neoplatonism was unleashed during the early Renaissance in Florence that led to a monstrous platonic inflation during the High Renaissance in Rome. The bubble burst when the voice of a giant in the North shouted "stop!" That giant was Martin Luther. He said "Here I stand," and Europe was convulsed in psychic earthquakes.

Luther was able to pop the bubble of platonic inflation, but was not able to purge Europe of platonic dualism. This dualism let to Cartesian dualism in the seventeenth century, to Romantic dualism in the eighteenth century, and to a real/ideal and a sacred/secular dualism in the nineteenth century.

Conclusion

It is hard to see how the West can be restored in all five points set down by Pope Benedict without a powerful revival of doctrinally orthodox Christianity — and also without a revival of classicism in the schools. The combination of Christianity and classicism brought Europe out of the Dark Ages in the eleventh century. Perhaps Christianity and the classics can prevent European civilization from falling back into barbarism and having another dark age.

After Western civilization has been saved and restored, we will have the leisure to debate about the inherent problems of classicism. The urgent task that confronts us now is a) the teaching of Christian orthodoxy to lay the groundwork for a spiritual revival, and b) the teaching of the classics to prepare for the restoration of Western culture.

Divine providence has placed a man on the papal throne who understands how European civilization went wrong and understands the way back to a viable civilization. That should convince us that the continued decline of the West is not inevitable. God might be calling the West to a great renewal.

American conservatives who are seeking the restoration of the old Republic and authentic constitutional government should take heart. What we are seeking is what the pope says Europe should be seeking to find their way back to the right road. American conservatives, whether Protestant or Catholic, are in the vanguard of history.

Note to the Reader: Since writing this essay, I discovered that Pope Benedict has identified yet another way that the West has gone wrong. The postmodern West has separated truth from culture. The result is cultural relativism, which is the triple fallacy that: 1) man has no nature, but is a cultural construct, 2) all cultures are equally valid, and 3) "truth" is culturally determined. A separate essay will be needed to deal with the myth of multiculturalism that is based upon this triple fallacy.

RenewAmerica analyst Fred Hutchison also writes a column for RenewAmerica.