Trans as "a liberating, cool, edgy thing"

 File photo from PxHere

A mother of a teenager who is eager to take on a male identity speaks from experience of the pressure young people succumb to because of the cultural influence of promoters of  gender ideology, namely the Western education systems, social networks and news media. This from a site that has earned its credentials as being trustworthy:

In today’s culture, being “trans” is considered by many a very liberating, cool, edgy thing. We know people are (I hate these terms, but they are becoming part of the lexicon) “love-bombed” when they come out as “trans,” and are seen as brave, strong individuals. Further, many young girls fear what being a woman means ‒ how they may be sexualized, how they won’t be successful if they aren’t gorgeous, etc., and some boys fear what expressing their natural sexual desires will turn them into (monsters is what they may think, thanks to an overly enthusiastic “me too” movement that went way beyond exposing corrupt, vial practices of men like Harvey Weinstein, making many young men feel embarrassed simply for feeling strong attractions for women). Many effeminate gay males and butch lesbians still don’t feel very accepted in society. By instead being “trans,” they resolve their gender non-conformity by claiming to be the opposite sex, and have the bonus of getting oppression points (very useful for upper-middle class white kids!).

They are fed the notions that the medical changes associated with transition are safe, relatively painless, and necessary in order to prevent them from committing suicide and, as noted above, for them to be their “true selves.” They are told they will be truly happy only once they medically transition.

To question these notions is to be a bigot, so everyone who does bring up questions about the medical treatments is sloughed off as a transphobic moron, assuming they are allowed to speak at all. Parents like me are considered bigots (my daughter has used this word), transphobic (she has also used this word), and just plain ignorant. (My daughter has used much worse terms, but why get ugly?)

With all these messages about being “trans,” and so many more that I’m not mentioning, it is no wonder so many young people are flocking to it. And are these young people ‒ many of whom are on the autism spectrum, have suffered abuse, are overly sensitive, are gay/lesbian or very gender non-conforming, have anxiety and depression or other mental illnesses, or are just plain vulnerable ‒ really able to consent to these medical treatments when they are fed so much mis-information, and when they are not mature enough to understand the real, permanent consequences of these treatments?

Frankly, I see the medical transition of teens and vulnerable young adults as not only analogous to foot-binding and genital mutilation, but actually worse in many ways. At least the foot-bound and/or genitally mutilated girls did not have to pretend to be something they are not. Further, foot-binding and genital mutilation do not cause sterility, and only cause lack of function in the specific area in question (the feet or the genitals, respectively), rather than total dysfunction of the genitals combined with a host of other medical issues, on top of the mental gymnastics of pretending to be the opposite sex and putting energy toward “passing” as such.

True informed consent can only be given by a mature, mentally stable person who is provided with accurate information about the procedures to be done. This includes the medical necessity of the procedures, the potential side effects, and alternative, less invasive treatments (or non-treatments as the case may be) that may adequately alleviate their perceived suffering.

I don’t think any young person today can possibly consent to the medical treatments associated with transition because, even if they were mature enough to understand all the ramifications of transition ‒ which they are not  ‒ they are being fed so much misinformation, by their schools and universities, by the Government, by large corporations, by the medical community and therapists, by both social media and mainstream media, and by their friends and neighbors, such that they cannot possibly have the information necessary to give truly informed consent. Therefore, we as a society should be ashamed for pushing these medical treatments on to young people. 

US: A mother, teacher describes her child being indoctrinated, encouraged to transition in high school. https://t.co/eEIKRDNzNO

— Genspect (@genspect) December 29, 2022

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The twin dimensions of Christmas

Photo at PxHere

To understand the Christmas story, we need to grasp two dimensions that are apparently contradictory but which, on closer scrutiny, are both showing us the same thing. The first is what we could call the wide-angle version; the second, the close-up picture. 

Let’s start with the wide angle, says the Rev Dr Samuel Wells, in a Christmas sermon. He is the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London.

The universe is impossibly large to imagine, stretching to trillions of stars; and who knows if there are plenty other universes beyond this one. But that which lasts forever, which we know as “God”, seems to have a particular interest in this tiny planet in this obscure galaxy. It seems useless to speculate why this planet, in this galaxy, in this universe; the point is, that which lasts forever seems to have so ordered things as to be in relationship with one part of creation — in short, us.

The whole epic magnitude of existence has come about in order for God to be among us as one of us and to be our companion and dwell with us. That’s the wide-angle version of Christmas. It answers the perennial question, “What’s the meaning of life?” The answer is, the meaning of life is for God to be in relationship with us and for us to reflect the joy and glory of that relationship by relating to one another and the wider creation in the same way. That’s the meaning of Christmas — the wide-angle version.

And so to the close-up picture. The three accounts of the coming of Christ, in Matthew, Luke, and John’s Gospels, are significantly different from one another. But they all agree on one thing. Matthew talks about a man called Joseph who discovers his fiancée is expecting a baby and is told by an angel that the Holy Spirit has brought this about. Luke sees it from Mary’s point of view, and locates the conversation in Nazareth. Luke adds the story about the census, and there being no room at the inn, and tells us about the shepherds and angels. John misses out the personal detail and describes how the animating force in the universe became a human being, but, interestingly, he adds this sentence, which we seldom talk about at Christmas but seems to me very significant: “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.”

What these three contrasting accounts have in common is that the entry of the creator of all things into the human drama didn’t happen in the way we might expect. It happened in an obscure backwater of the Roman Empire. It the happened to an ordinary woman and a bewildered man with no social prominence. It happened in a shed. It was witnessed by lowly herdsmen.

I discovered what God was up to some while ago when I got to know a woman and a man who told me they wanted to get married. It was a difficult situation. The man had been married before, and for a long time had been partly estranged from his wife. The woman was much younger than the man, and from the very start of their relationship felt she had to tiptoe around her family, because it was clear they didn’t approve.

To be fair, she’d spent her whole life tiptoeing, because her family had been a scene of constant wrangling and great pain almost since she’d been born, and she couldn’t see why her finally finding happiness was taken so badly by a group of people, many of whom it seemed had never found the way to any happiness of their own. But then she became pregnant, and those who disapproved, or took offence, or just couldn’t bear the idea of someone in the family being happy, all decided this was the moment to say the whole thing was terrible, and everyone should be ashamed, and ask what did they think they were doing? But they all turned up to the wedding, and when the bride walked down the aisle, her elegant simplicity, her utterly unpretentious grace, took the wind out of the whole congregation, and all misgivings were set aside for the day.

Two months later, she gave birth. And she wrote to me and said, “You’ll never guess what’s happened. My family has been visiting and have been very kind to everyone including my husband. It’s as if this tiny child heals something inside them when they are with him, and their troubles vastly reduce or disappear around him. It made me think of the wonder of God. This little baby has achieved what my husband and I tried to achieve and couldn't over many years. And so effortlessly!” Those were her exact words.

It was one of the most moving messages I’ve ever received. And not just because this new child had changed the whole dynamic of two troubled families. But because in seventy words, this new mother had shown me what God is doing in coming among us as a baby. God is doing just what this baby was doing: something no argument, no loud voice, no lit-up sky, no heavenly vision could achieve. It’s called a dismantling of the heart. A disarming of resistance.

God comes to us at Christmas — not to blast us into submission, not to make us guilty for what we’ve got wrong, not to stir us to take up cudgels in the latest battle. God comes to us under the radar. God surprises us by appearing as a tiny baby. It’s a high-risk strategy. It’s such a vulnerable way to come among us. But it shows us unmistakeably, irrevocably, eternally, who God is and what kind of relationship God wants to have with us.

God doesn’t want us to worry about the wide-angle story our imaginations can’t encompass anyway. God says, “Receive me as you receive this tiny child. Allow me to dismantle centuries of enmity, heal decades of hurt, transform depths of antagonism. Be mesmerised by me the way you’re captivated by a tiny baby. Let me melt your heart."

❒ Rev. Dr Samuel Wells  

❒ Sermon source here 

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The logic of God gleams at Christmas

Photo by PxHere

Matthew's gospel says the birth of  Jesus isn’t just one of myriad consequences of the original Big Bang. On the contrary, the conception and birth of this particular baby is the single event around which every other event in the universe clusters. That's the theme the Rev Dr Samuel Wells* explores in a sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, just before Christmas this year.

In delving into Matthew 1:18-25 (see in full below), Wells relates an experience of 30 years before:

Just as I was beginning studying for a PhD, I sat next to a very fervent Christian at a wedding reception. ... [M]y neighbour asked me, besides being a priest, what I was involved in. I said, ‘I’m doing a PhD in theology.’ ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘I don’t bother with theology. The Bible’s always been enough for me.’

There’s few things more deflating than to run into a self-assured lack of curiosity, mixed with an air of superiority and condescension, all dressed up in the language of being a simple creature, free from the self-imposed complexities that beleaguer others. I can’t deny I wondered for a moment if doing a PhD in theology was a waste of time. But 30 years later, I realise the response I might have done well to give to that affectedly humble smugness dressed up as piety. I should have talked to him about today’s gospel reading from the back end of Matthew chapter 1. 

Why? Because what I want to show this morning is how this passage opens up pretty much every door in the conventional theological textbook. It’s a whole manual of doctrine on its own. Let’s walk through these few verses and see the entire theological panorama come to life.

Straightaway we have a fascinating word. Birth isn’t a notable word in English, until you realise the Greek word it’s translating is genesis. This is a huge theological claim. Matthew’s saying the conception and birth of Jesus are a more significant moment than the creation described in the book of Genesis. He’s saying, this is the real beginning, for which the creation of the universe was just preparation. We’re used to thinking of the Big Bang and the cosmology that outlines the first few seconds at the start of the universe. And probably most of us have wondered at what feels like the miracle of conception and the growth of a baby in its mother’s womb and the agonising yet fabulous process of being born. Matthew’s saying the birth of this particular baby isn’t just one of myriad consequences of the original Big Bang. On the contrary, the conception and birth of this particular baby is the single event around which every other event in the universe clusters. That’s mind-blowing; and yet we’re only five words into this passage.

After starting with creation, the second big theological theme we move to is Israel. We’re quickly in the company of two Jews, Mary and Joseph, seeking to live faithful lives according to the covenant God made with Moses. The significance of Israel in theology is that almost from the very beginning our understanding of God is one of the essence of eternity being eager to be involved in the ordinariness of human affairs – in this case, the traditions of betrothal and marriage. Interestingly the Old Testament also begins with creation and Israel, the call of Abraham to be the father of God’s people coming only a few chapters after the two portrayals of the creation of all things. Matthew’s emphasising that you can’t talk about God without talking about God’s chosen people, the children of Abraham, and without talking about very earthy and ordinary human relationships in which the life of God is embedded.

Only when we’ve located ourselves in such a way do we get the first reference to God. We’re still in the same opening verse, and we’ve covered a lot of territory: now we stumble upon the Holy Spirit. This tells us two things at the same time. First, there’s something beyond our experience and beyond our existence that’s above, beyond, outside or within that existence. I call it essence – that which lasts forever, in contrast to existence, which lasts a limited time. How that essence relates to existence in general terms is a mystery, although we assume essence was responsible for creation.

But this is the point – the Bible isn’t much interested in God in general terms. The Bible’s interested in God in relational terms – a God who’s invested in Abraham, Moses, David and Elijah; in Sarah, Deborah, Ruth and Esther. And the discovery that’s veiled in the Old Testament, yet clear in the New, is that essence is relational within itself – it’s inherently made up of communicative encounter between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Any relation we have to God is a joining in the relation already taking place within God. God is relationship. The Holy Spirit is the name for the way God extends relationship to us, by making Christ present to us, and how God turns that relationship into abundant life, here and everywhere.

But let’s not get carried away with God. This is a very human story. We trust the Bible to tell us about God because it’s so acute at telling us about humanity. Joseph’s plunged into a moral, social and relational crisis. Mary’s pregnant and he’s not the father. His duties as a faithful Jew mean he should publicly humiliate her. His dignity as a child of God mean he has no desire to do so. Here we land in our fourth aspect of theology, after creation, Israel, and God. That aspect is ethics. Ethics is about how we live in the light of God’s grace. Joseph’s depicted as a man torn between justice and mercy. That’s territory in which ethics often dwells. It turns out the one to blame is the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit’s merciful action blows apart our notion of justice. As so often.

Then we get the appearance of an angel – which is how this passage portrays the irruption of God’s essence into our existence. It sets up the experience of a dream as a liminal space between God’s reality and ours. And the two significant aspects of theology that arise here are providence and vocation. Providence is a theological theme many people struggle with. It’s about how God’s purpose is being worked out as year succeeds to year. People struggle with it because it’s hard to see how God’s purpose can possibly be worked out through holocaust or tsunami. 

People also feel nauseated when an individual or nation arrogantly assumes the mantle of the bearer of God’s destiny. But the Bible’s full of moments like this when God’s purpose is visible despite adverse circumstances. Likewise vocation. Vocation is our discovery of the unique part we are called to play in God’s story. Joseph literally overnight goes from a bewildered critic or silent victim of God’s mysterious ways to a crucial agent in advancing God’s story. We do the same. ‘Do not be afraid,’ says the angel. ‘Do not be afraid,’ says the Holy Spirit to us today, when we’re called to take up our part in that story.

We’ve seen six great theological themes at work; but we’re only half-way there. The child’s name is Jesus. This introduces two more dimensions of theology. One is the notion of the kingdom, or realm, of God. Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua, and Joshua was the one who took possession of the Promised Land. As we transition from Judaism to Christianity, we change from an understanding of blessing based on the land to a notion of grace based on the coming-alive of all those in exile – those oppressed in body, mind or spirit, those suppressed by foreign invader or sinister prejudice or unrestrained cruelty.

These are ways we perceive God’s future now and live today the life God prepares for us to share forever. In the naming of Jesus we also discover the reality of sin. Sin is everything that prevents us fully being with God, ourselves, one another and the creation. Jesus is the full and utter relationship of God that overcomes all these obstacles, whether made by ourselves or others, arising from painful memory or wilful disregard. Hence here we have an insight into the theme of salvation.

The way the angel persuades Joseph in his dream is to quote a line from Isaiah. Here we find the notion of revelation. Many theological textbooks begin with the doctrine of revelation, because they find it impossible to explain issues like authority, narrative and divinity without some idea that particular discoveries and experiences are blessed and honoured by a community. But Matthew has no abstract idea of revelation. He just plunges straight in with it, portraying Jesus within the context of what God has long prepared and always done. 

Within the notion of revelation is the doctrine of scripture, and we can see at work here Mathew’s confidence that, even with only the Old Testament to play with, the ways of God have already been disclosed such that identifying the unique and overwhelming significance of Jesus is not difficult.

Then to the greatest theological theme of all, that of incarnation. The angel announces Emmanuel, and quickly explains that means ‘God with us.’ These three words sum up everything theology has to tell us, and invite us into all the mysteries that theology has in store for us. It’s Matthew’s gospel in three words. It describes the wonder of Jesus – fully human, fully God – the call for our response, to be fully with God, ourselves, one another and the creation, and the embracing inclusivity of the us God chooses to be with. It also gives us eschatology, the promise of how things will be beyond now and into forever: that too is summed up in those three words, God with us. That’s all we need to know about revelation and all we need to anticipate about heaven.

But there’s two final verses, and one last doctrine to articulate. Joseph goes ahead and he and Mary live according to God’s call, making room for Jesus and responding to the implications of Jesus for their lives. That’s what we call church. Maybe church didn’t begin at Pentecost; maybe it began here, when the difference Christ makes began to be felt, understood, and responded to.

So here’s pretty much the whole of theology in eight verses: creation, Israel, Trinity, Holy Spirit, ethics, providence, vocation, God’s realm, sin, salvation, revelation, incarnation, the last things, and church. Theology is simply attending to the work of the Holy Spirit in scripture and elsewhere and discerning what that means for who God is and how we should be. 

I wish my conversation partner at that wedding 30 years ago had realised that the Bible is not like a packed lunch or first aid kit tucked away to get you through all eventualities, but an invitation to explore every aspect of what it means for God to be with us. And I hope he experienced the wonder of making that exploration together, with others committed to find, listen to and share that truth and put that truth to work. That’s the gift of what we’re doing right now: that’s the wonder of church.

* Rev. Dr Samuel Wells is the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, and Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at King’s College London. 

❑ Sermon source here

Matthew's Gospel 1:18-25

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about : His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:

23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

(NIV: Source)

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Evil resides in the heart of every person

 “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970. He was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 and returned to Russia in 1994.

UPDATE:

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, commencement speech delivered 8 June, 1978 at Harvard University. 

Solzhenitsyn told the graduates of his profound sadness at what he had observed in his four years in the United States. The West as a whole was guilty of the abuse of freedom. Some excerpts:

The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It's time, in the West ‒ It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counterbalanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.

Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually, but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature [my emphasis - BS]. The world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems, which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society.

... [T]he fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their offensive; you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?

I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.

The turn introduced by the Renaissance evidently was inevitable historically. The Middle Ages had come to a natural end by exhaustion, becoming an intolerable despotic repression of man's physical nature in favor of the spiritual one. Then, however, we turned our backs upon the Spirit and embraced all that is material with excessive and unwarranted zeal. This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. 

Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones. 

However, in early democracies, as in the American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God's creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic.

The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man's sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the 20th century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the 19th Century.

As humanism in its development became more and more materialistic, it made itself increasingly accessible to speculation and manipulation by socialism and then by communism. So that Karl Marx was able to say that "communism is naturalized humanism."

This statement turned out not to be entirely senseless. One does see the same stones in the foundations of a despiritualized humanism and of any type of socialism: endless materialism; freedom from religion and religious responsibility, which under communist regimes reach the stage of anti-religious dictatorships; concentration on social structures with a seemingly scientific approach. This is typical of the Enlightenment in the 18th Century and of Marxism. Not by coincidence all of communism's meaningless pledges and oaths are about Man, with a capital M, and his earthly happiness. At first glance it seems an ugly parallel: common traits in the thinking and way of life of today's West and today's East? But such is the logic of materialistic development.

The interrelationship is such, too, that the current of materialism which is most to the left always ends up by being stronger, more attractive, and victorious, because it is more consistent. Humanism without its Christian heritage cannot resist such competition. We watch this process in the past centuries and especially in the past decades, on a world scale as the situation becomes increasingly dramatic.

I am not examining here the case of a world war disaster and the changes which it would produce in society. As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.

To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging everything on earth ‒ imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible  ‒ The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.

If humanism were right in declaring that man is born only to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot be unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most of them. It has to be the fulfilment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.

It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times. Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge: We shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but ‒ upward.

Some months after this address Solzhenitsyn reflected on the response to his speech:

Western society in principle is based on a legal level that is far lower than the true moral yardstick, and besides, this legal way of thinking has a tendency to ossify. In principle, moral imperatives are not adhered to in politics, and often not in public life either. The notion of freedom has been diverted to unbridled passion, in other words, in the direction of the forces of evil (so that nobody’s “freedom” would be limited!). A sense of responsibility before God and society has fallen away. “Human rights” have been so exalted that the rights of society are being oppressed and destroyed.

And above all, the press, not elected by anyone, acts high-handedly and has amassed more power than the legislative, executive, or judicial power. And in this free press itself, it is not true freedom of opinion that dominates, but the dictates of the political fashion of the moment, which lead to a surprising uniformity of opinion. (It was on this point that I had irritated them most.) The whole social system does not contribute to advancing outstanding individuals to the highest echelons.

The reigning ideology, that prosperity and the accumulation of material riches are to be valued above all else, is leading to a weakening of character in the West, and also to a massive decline in courage and the will to defend itself, as was clearly seen in the Vietnam War, not to mention a perplexity in the face of terror. But the roots of this social condition spring from the Enlightenment, from rationalist humanism, from the notion that man is the center of all that exists, and that there is no Higher Power above him. And these roots of irreligious humanism are common to the current Western world and to Communism, and that is what has led the Western intelligentsia to such strong and dogged sympathy for Communism.

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Where to go for the soul to appreciate its worth

A child has been born to us

O Holy Night has some striking words, good reason – along with its winning melody – for its popularity each Christmas. Central to its theme is the role of Christ in enabling us to recognize who we are in our fallen state: "Til He appears, and the soul felt its worth." Though we live in a humble state of war within ourselves and without, God was willing to become human, with the one person, Jesus, having two natures, which is the mystery of the incarnation.

One commentator offered this reflection about God's guidance on our soul's worth:

We can't know our true worth by ourselves. It took God to write the ultimate headline —written in the Word made flesh, expressed from all eternity, now born in time, and dwelling among us.

God became a baby! What a challenge to the arrogance of this age, in which fame, wealth and power are the idols heralded by a blind culture, where the goal is no longer "to enjoy the examined life founded on reason". Only with our eyes on the divine finger at work in our own life can we discern our own value, and that of each fellow human, as being reckoned fit for a relationship with God.

The carol, of French poetic origins, is traditionally translated this way:

O Holy night! The stars are brightly shining

It is the night of our dear Savior's birth

Long lay the world in sin and error pining

'Til He appears and the soul felt its worth

A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices

For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn

Fall on your knees; O hear the Angel voices!

O night divine, O night when Christ was born

O night, O Holy night, O night divine!

Led by the light of Faith serenely beaming

With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand

So led by light of a star sweetly gleaming

Here come the Wise Men from Orient land

The King of kings lay thus in lowly manger

In all our trials born to be our friend

He knows our need, to our weakness is no stranger

Behold your King; before Him lowly bend

Behold your King; before Him lowly bend

Truly He taught us to love one another;

His law is love and His Gospel is Peace

Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother

And in His name, all oppression shall cease

Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we

Let all within us praise His Holy name

Christ is the Lord; O praise His name forever!

His power and glory evermore proclaim

His power and glory evermore proclaim 

The Adoration of the Magi is a tapestry depicting the story of the Three Kings who were guided to the birthplace of Jesus by the star of Bethlehem. It is sometimes called The Star of Bethlehem or simply The Adoration. Ten tapestries of the same type were completed by the British company, Morris & Co., including one in 1894 for the Corporation of Manchester.

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Christmas: History gains its true perspective

The genius that leaves the modern in the shade. Photo by Denis Zagorodniuc

Some wise words, beginning with "History often needs shock treatment to get it back into the correct rhythm."

The writer points out that Marxism, both the "historical determinism" of yore, as well as its version flaunted by promoters of the Woke today, "promises a solution to historical woes: Cancel the past and replace it with a glorious future according to the dictates of powerful elites. [...] The proposal is utopian and ends in tyranny. So we must look elsewhere for a solution that protects human dignity."

Our observer of the world's ways continues:

Christianity offers us a view of history to evaluate all historical developments. The evangelists and early Christians were humble and honest historians. They fearlessly reported the genealogy of Jesus, which included saints and sinners, and accurately depicted his messengers—the Apostles—including their sins. The humility of the early Christians enhances the reliability of biblical history, and the Cross is hardly the stuff of huckster advertising.

Further, the Resurrection fulfils all of scripture. In the gospels, we hear a litany-like repetition of the phrase, “So that Scriptures may be fulfilled.” Portions of Mary’s Magnificat prayer of joy are rooted in Old Testament prayers. Jesus prays the psalms on the Cross. The references reinforce the unity of the Old Testament with the New Testament and restore the integrity of salvation history from start to finish.

The early Christians didn’t cancel history but evaluated the past by the Word. “So Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus, said: ‘Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.’” (Acts 17:22-23) 
Ancient civilizations challenge modern arrogance. History teaches: Been there, done that.

Among the discolored ruins in Athens ravaged by time, the custodians provide a bright white recently-hewn block of marble. The unweathered stone provokes the imagination and allows us to visualize the glorious remnants as brightly elegant, unique structures that rival the splendor of modern skyscrapers. The ancients were hardly our inferiors in construction management. Confidence in ancient history helps us dismiss the false promises of Marxism that place faith in relentless human progress. 

However, that bright white piece of marble also suggests that [...] gospel historians were not, by default, inferior to modern progressives. The truth of honest testimony is immutable. “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16)

Truth in its absolute form, as derived from historical information, has been the focus of much of the theological argument in the Church over the centuries. Therefore, we can say this: "The Church safeguards the integrity of salvation history." Our writer states:

The deposit of faith of the Church—rooted in Scripture and Sacred Tradition—guarantees the unity of all of history and carefully guards the eternal truths of the Gospel. The Apostles’ Creed summarizes history from start to finish. The “one, holy, Catholic Church” delivers the Word until the end of time. Jesus is the Lord of history. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last. (cf. Rev. 22:13)

The saving history of Jesus critiques all of history—individual and collective. Confident in the Word, we encounter Him throughout history in the Sacraments and realize our worth in His eyes. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

The writer of this piece is Fr. Jerry Pokorsky, a priest of the U.S. Diocese of Arlington. Trained in business and accounting, he also holds a Master of Divinity and a Master’s in moral theology. Read his full article here.  

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Gratitude uplifts as it reflects our reality

A quality of soul that must be cultivated... Photo: Source

During my more-than-a-month-long break away from the keyboard involving travel in the United States, I noted the generosity of many individual Americans and, conversely, their attention to saying thank you, even for any minor thing done by way of displaying the good manners that oils daily interaction.

However, in many ways, the spirit of the worldwide culture is one of narcissism and entitlement, so that gratitude has fallen from favour within the mentality of large swathes of society, especially among the young, who have been taught to believe they have a right to a life without difficulty. 

I want to tap into words of wisdom on why gratitude should be cultivated in our life:

Gratitude, of course, has many counterfeits, but the genuine article is worlds apart from either social ‘smoothery’ or self-interested charm. Genuine gratitude is, as it were, written into our DNA, into the ‘depth-grammar’ of our nature. It is almost a self-evident good, needing no support from argument, a quality of soul, a virtue, in the classical sense of a disposition that inclines us to act for the good naturally, with ease and even with pleasure. 

Gratitude and its opposite crucially define our character and decisively determine our outlook on everything, especially ourselves and our lives, marking a far more deeply definitive difference than any other distinction. Total, ingrained ingratitude is more a pathological condition than a moral failing. 

But gratitude is much more than an individual attribute: like courtesy and kindness, and generosity and compassion, gratitude is an indispensable condition of civilised existence. A world without gratitude would be a terrifying, brutish, dangerous place. A world where ingratitude was valued over gratitude would be the nearest thing to a definition of Hell. 

No wonder that ingratitude cuts more deeply and more painfully and is more shocking than almost anything else: hence Lear’s lament: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is, to have a thankless child.” The whole of King Lear could be read as a meditation on the catastrophic social and political impact of ingratitude and how only gratitude counters the negative and ultimately destructive effects of resentment, the most destructive and demoralising of all human emotions, and regret, the most negative. 

But gratitude figures in our lives so deeply because in every particular expression of gratitude, we give implicit expression to our sense of the given-ness of existence itself, no less real for being so difficult to articulate. And that gratitude for the given-ness of everything which lurks in the metaphysical undergrowth of every particular ‘thank-you’, concerns – to steal a line from Wittgenstein – not how things are but that they are. And, by extension, not how we are, but that we are.   

To see life as a gift, something that need not have been, is to see it, implicitly, as purposefully brought into and sustained in existence – created, in other words - as opposed to being the result of a random concatenation of meaningless events. A world whose existence is not an a priori necessity is a world for which, despite its shadow-side, it is impossible not to give thanks. 

And if to feel, almost as a default setting, an overwhelming sense of gratitude, is to affirm implicitly the gift of existence itself, it also implies the existence of a Giver. The Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), catches the same intimation when he says of someone in a similar position to the grateful leper [one of a total of 10 lepers healed by Jesus] that “He felt gratitude: so, he couldn’t not believe in God.”

That’s why gratitude is so closely allied to reverence and respect, wonder and awe. It is a prime candidate for what an American sociologist of religion in the 1970s, called “a signal of transcendence”, an aspect of ordinary life which, even if we find it near impossible to say how or why, constitutes a source of meaning and value, written into and read off from our everyday experience of the world, but pointing beyond: an inkling of something more.

All of this is present in this particular gospel where, as always, everything is more than it seems; and this is why Jesus gives such extraordinary weight to the grateful response of the Samaritan leper. His gratitude is an expression of faith, even if unacknowledged, the more remarkable, because the detested Samaritan would have been, from a Jewish point of view, the least likely person to exemplify faith. But, Jesus says, it is precisely his faith that has healed him. 

Faith and gratitude, then, if not exactly interchangeable, are certainly correlative, in that both see and savour the miracle and mystery of being, finding it impossible either to take it for granted or to be anything less than awed. Faith, in its essence, sees through ‘giftedness’ to a Giver. 

To conclude, there are two other elements of our modern view of gratitude discussed by the esteemed writer of the words I quote that deserve noting. First:

Until Christianity, gratitude wasn’t prized in anything like the same way. Aristotle, for instance, thought it was demeaning, that it rendered us inferior. Cicero thought the purpose of gratitude, as well as the exchanging gifts, served only the purpose of furthering one’s career. And, with his sense of Stoical self-sufficiency to the fore, Seneca felt that, since you must never be in anybody’s debt, you should equal, if not exceed, the gift given by a greater gift in return. 

Seneca's lack of a sense of generosity is, perhaps, evident again in Western culture. But the second point worth noting is this:

The source and object of all gratitude, whether acknowledged or not, is God, the ultimate cause and goal of existence and the ultimate source and goal of love, however and whenever we genuinely experience it. God is Love Itself, Goodness Itself, and Being Itself; and [to paraphrase Acts 17:28], “it is because we are loved that we exist”.

Gratitude is a quality of the soul, and it is a measure of our understanding of reality in all its dimensions.

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This is a huge deal. Sex changes for children - the Biden-approved policy - is unraveling before our eyes. https://t.co/WHrWliu2oi

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) July 28, 2022

The clinic was the only NHS one in the whole country. Other centres will now host such clinics. But the key point of the Cass review that gave rise to this closure was that Tavistock was too free with its hormone suppression therapy, putting at risk the future of young people like Kiera Bell, who took the centre to court for not challenging her feeling that she should become a boy. 

Homosexuals share a cruel nightmare

Joseph Sciambra ... renounced homosexual activity out of disgust with what goes on Source

They did disgusting things to each other, because, as gay journalist Randy Shilts said, “there was nobody to say no.” (And the Band Played On pub.1987)

Another man who admits that as a wild young homosexual (born 1969) he did disgusting things is Joseph Sciambra. He is the mover and shaker behind an organisation that aims to rescue those 'who are still trapped within the homosexual lifestyle and within the false “gay” orientation'.

The practice of chastity and the exercise of courage is the challenge he offers. He knows that the men who accept the challenge must fight a spiritual battle to 'overcome all same-sex attractions and any persistent attachments to the homosexual or the “gay” orientation'. Sciambra is not asking others to do anything that he is not doing himself with regards living out a more human lifestyle.

Two principles by which his group operates are:

We acknowledge that homosexual acts are not part of God’s plan for nature, humanity, or ourselves.

We acknowledge that the homosexual inclination is a part of our wounded false-self that can be healed.

Sciambra presents strong arguments on why his group accepts that the homosexual inclination is sign of a wounded person, and of the need for counselling and support on the way toward healing. Here is one presentation of his arguments where he poses the question: Do I have to become straight?

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder. The American Psychological Association Council of Representatives followed in 1975. Thereafter other major mental health organizations followed, including the World Health Organization in 1990. Yet, before and since, evidence continues to determine that homosexuality is indeed a mental illness.

The way in which most contemporary researches get around this fact is by blaming the high rates of psychiatric morbidity in homosexuals to social and cultural homophobia, internalized homophobia, and overall that homosexuality and mental illnesses are unrelated with the unusual rates of serious psychological conditions seen in homosexuals as “possibly linked with discrimination.” Only, this supposition is categorically false, for in the Netherlands, the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, in particular, gay men continue to exhibit a plethora of various mental disorders.*

* “Despite the Netherlands’ reputation as a world leader with respect to gay rights, homosexual Dutch men have much higher rates of mood disorders, anxiety disorders and suicide attempts than heterosexual Dutch men. Epidemiologists report similar disparities elsewhere in Western Europe and North America.”

“Exploring a Dutch paradox: an ethnographic investigation of gay men’s mental health.” Aggarwal S & Gerrets R. Culture, Health & Sexuality 16:105-119, 2014. 

Part and parcel along with any authentic program of healing from same-sex attraction, there must be at least a cursory examination of any childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse that was experienced by the person now dealing with same-sex attraction. Because some have survived particularly intense or violent abuse as children, professional therapy is highly advised; others, with a different story, perhaps therapy is not as necessary.

Here, it is not that mental illness causes homosexuality, but that the oftentimes extreme difficulties which some men experienced as children, who later become same-sex attracted, will eventually exhibit various mental illnesses because homosexuality never fully resolves the unattended wounds; [the controversial] Dr. Joseph Nicolosi put it this way: homosexuality is a “symptomatic failure to integrate self-identity. Symptoms will always emerge to indicate its incompatibility with a man’s true nature.” Ultimately, the decision to seek therapy is up to the individual; although it is possible, outside of a clinical environment, to naturally experience a diminishing of same-sex desires, and, henceforth, to witness an increase in attraction towards the opposite sex. Reparative therapy, while extremely beneficial to many, is not for everyone.

Sciambra offers a range of studies into the reality of homosexual inclination:

⊝ “Of the 1285 gay, lesbian and bisexual respondents who took part, 556 (43%) had mental disorder as defined by the revised Clinical Interview Schedule (CIS-R). Out of the whole sample, 361 (31%) had attempted suicide…Gay, lesbian and bisexual men and women have high levels of mental disorder…”

“Rates and predictors of mental illness in gay men, lesbians and bisexual men and women. Results from a survey based in England and Wales”. James Warner, et al. British Journal of Psychiatry 185, 479-485, 2004.

⊝ “LGB people are at higher risk of mental disorder, suicidal ideation, substance misuse, and deliberate self-harm than heterosexual people.”

“A systematic review of mental disorder, suicide, and deliberate self-harm in lesbian, gay and bisexual people.” Michael King, et al. BMC Psychiatry 8:70, 2008.

⊝ “Self-reported identification as non-heterosexual (determined by both orientation and sexual partnership, separately) was associated with unhappiness, neurotic disorders overall, depressive episodes, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobic disorder, probable psychosis, suicidal thoughts and acts, self-harm and alcohol and drug dependence.”

“Mental health of the non-heterosexual population of England.” Chakraborty A, et al. British Journal of Psychiatry 2011, Feb; 198(2):143-8. 

⊝ “Gay/lesbian and bisexual respondents had higher levels of psychopathology than heterosexuals across all outcomes. Gay/lesbian respondents had higher odds of exposure to child abuse and housing adversity, and bisexual respondents had higher odds of exposure to child abuse, housing adversity, and intimate partner violence, than heterosexuals. Greater exposure to these adversities explained between 10 and 20% of the relative excess of suicidality, depression, tobacco use, and symptoms of alcohol and drug abuse among LGB youths compared to heterosexuals. Exposure to victimization and adversity experiences in childhood and adolescence significantly mediated the association of both gay/lesbian and bisexual orientation with suicidality, depressive symptoms, tobacco use, and alcohol abuse.”

“Disproportionate exposure to early-life adversity and sexual orientation disparities in psychiatric morbidity.” McLaughlin KA, et al. Child Abuse and Neglect. 2012 Sep; 36(9):645-55.

⊝ “Compared with heterosexual respondents, gay/lesbian and bisexual individuals experienced increased odds of six of eight and seven of eight adverse childhood experiences, respectively. Sexual minority persons had higher rates of adverse childhood experiences compared to their heterosexual peers.”

“Disparities in adverse childhood experiences among sexual minority and heterosexual adults: results from a multi-state probability-based sample.” Andersen JP, Blosnich J. PLoS One. 2013; 8(1):e54691.

⊝ “The studies reported childhood sexual abuse (CSA), childhood physical abuse (CPA), childhood emotional abuse (CEA), childhood physical neglect, and childhood emotional neglect. Items of household dysfunction were substance abuse of caregiver, parental separation, family history of mental illness, incarceration of caregiver, and witnessing violence. Prevalence of CSA showed a median of 33.5 % for studies using non-probability sampling and 20.7 % for those with probability sampling, the rates for CPA were 23.5 % (non-probability sampling) and 28.7 % (probability sampling). For CEA, the rates were 48.5 %, non-probability sampling, and 47.5 %, probability sampling. Outcomes related to SCE in LGBT populations included psychiatric symptoms, substance abuse, revictimization, dysfunctional behavioral adjustments, and others.”

“Stressful childhood experiences and health outcomes in sexual minority populations: a systematic review.” Schneeberger AR, et al. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. 2014 Sep; 49(9):1427-45.

⊝ “Among 287 participants, 211 (73.5%) reported experiencing [child physical abuse] CPA before the age of 17…”

“Association between Childhood Physical Abuse, Unprotected Receptive Anal Intercourse and HIV Infection among Young Men Who Have Sex with Men in Vancouver, Canada”. Arn J. Schilder, et al. PLoS One. 2014; 9(6): e100501.

⊝ “The research results indicate that, as compared with the group of heterosexual individuals, in the group of homosexuals there occurs a worsening in psychological functioning, which may be also manifested by an increased indirect self-destructiveness index. The increased intensity of indirect self-destructiveness in homosexual individuals may be considered a manifestation of worsened psychological functioning.”

“Indirect self-destructiveness in homosexual individuals.” Tsirigotis K, et al. Psychiatria polska. 2015 May-Jun; 49 (3): 543-57.

Read this essay by Sciambra about the "cruel" consequences of male homosexual activity. For instance:

I am constantly reminded of the excesses of my past. The bathroom has become a torture chamber. Basic biological functions are excruciating and painful [...] anal fissures, prolapses, and huge distended hemorrhoids.  

The tendency towards acts of self-harm by those with a homosexual inclination—see the studies above—is borne out with in the case of  Sebastian Köhn who describes his nightmare of suffering endured since picking up monkeypox during encounters with several men during New York City's Pride "festivities" in late June. It says a lot about the mentality of those caught up in the male homosexual lifestyle that though Köhn had worked in sexual health for a long time, he embarked on his wild weekend even though he knew monkeypox was spreading and the implications for homosexual men. 

Köhn relates that having picked up monkeypox the outcome was this:

My [initial] anorectal lesions, which were already very painful, turned into open wounds. It felt like I had three fissures right next to each other, and it was absolutely excruciating. I would literally scream out loud when I went to the bathroom. Even keeping the area clean, like washing myself, was extremely painful. It was a two hour process each time.

One wishes Köhn a full recovery.  However, given the latest wave of "fashionable" homosexuality in Western societies, and the propaganda machines behind that wave—Köhn works for George Soros' globally influential Open Society Foundations—many are the young people heading for significant degrees of harm along this route of deceit and irresponsibility, when all they are hoping for is entry into the broad society that will provide them with a sense of belonging and a balanced way of life. Each of us faces the challenge of accepting our personal responsibility in creating a society that protects our young people.

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Woke ideology poisons Western life

Wokeism's fabricated world of unreality. Photo by Kristina  Nor 

The belief that each person has the wherewithal to be autonomous—as opposed to being limited in intellectual capacity and moral insight—has blighted the West's ability to make progress in justice and peace. 

That belief has given rise over the past few centuries to a certain ideology that is now bearing the fruit of fractured societies and individual misery, even as it pushes itself deeper into the governing institutions and completes its capture of the social elite of academia, large parts of the political system and government, the mainstream media, and such leading sectors as education, and the corporate world. This ideology, based on Marxist concepts of a solely material world and dictatorship by an elite, is what we have come to refer to as wokeism—or wokeness, if you prefer. (See definitions at the end.)

An awareness of the character of this "ideology" that governs the West, and which is being promoted by Western evangelists around the world, is critical if societies are to regain the equilibrium that the West's Christian heritage had offered until the Reformation's doctrine of sola scriptura fomented the view that every Jack or Jill is as capable of interpreting God's word as any spiritual authority that the Church as a whole represented, creating a "subjective and individualistic" view of life.

All this is brought into focus by a well-reasoned essay titled "Ideology has poisoned the West" published in a refreshing source of countercultural thought, the online magazine Unherd.

In this essay, author and academic at the budding University of Austin (Texas), Jacob Howland, writes that "ideology" has earned itself a connotation of something distasteful within the political arena. He presents this contrast:

In the ancient republics of Greece and Rome, primary models for English republicanism and the American Founders, politics was understood to be the collective determination of matters of common concern through public debate. As Aristotle taught, politics consists in the citizenly exercise of logos, the uniquely human power of intelligent speech. 

[...] speech reveals what is good and bad, just and unjust, binding us together in the imperfect apprehension of realities greater than our individual selves.

But ideology is incapable of treating human beings as participants in a shared life, much less as individuals made in the image of God. Like the party hack whose spectacles struck Orwell as “blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them”, it sees them [humans] only as groups to be acted upon.   

The origin of the term under scrutiny is revealing:

The term idéologie was coined during the French Revolution by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, an anti-clerical materialist philosopher who believed that reason offered a way of uncovering general laws of social relations. Tracy conceived of idéologie as a social science of “ideas” that would inform the construction of a rational progressive society governed by an enlightened elite, whose technical expertise would justify their claim to rule. 

The illiberalism of this progressive-technocratic ideal became fully apparent in the West only with the onset of Covid. It is now widely understood that the subordination of public life to ostensibly scientific guidance and the effective transfer of sovereignty from the body of citizens to an unelected overclass are fundamentally inconsistent with liberty and individual dignity.

To Western victims of this spiritual virus, we can add countries elsewhere under dictatorships of a similarly materialistic and technocratic nature, such as China and Vietnam.

What is crucial at this period of post-history history is that Western populations—and those in rapidly adopting a Western style of economic and social development—realise that the political atmosphere is not unencumbered. This means, what societies are encountering is part of the intellectual and spiritual and political debt or liability of the recent past.    

The picture Howland presents of the state of affairs abroad in society is stunningly accurate:

The political philosopher Raymond Aron defined ideology quite precisely as “the synthesis of an interpretation of history and of a programme of action toward a future predicted or hoped for”. In this synthesis, a theory about the historical origins of real or alleged social ills is pressed into the service of an imagined future in which those ills will be cured. The theory is not to be judged solely, or even primarily, by its adequacy in describing the historical record as it presents itself to an informed and inquiring mind. Rather, it is to be judged by the promised consequences of the programme of action it underwrites. Of course, ideological prophecy, appearing in times of organic or manufactured crisis when everything assumes an air of urgency, must be taken on faith.  

The roots of the intellectual and political regime societies are increasingly suffering under tells us a lot about the nature of the course being pursued by elites in Western societies:

Although ideological regimes were not unheard of in antiquity, ideology’s focus on efficacy rather than truth, its assumption that history is a problem awaiting a rational solution, and its elevation of the possibilities of a deliberately constructed future over the present constraints of the actual world, are characteristically modern. Its closest analogue is the phenomenon of technology, the harnessing of significant social resources to achieve mastery over nature through mathematical and experimental science. Formulated by the early modern philosophers Francis Bacon and René Descartes, the programme of technology rejected inherited intellectual foundations, including the guidance of God or nature.

Descartes, a professed believer whose pencil-thin moustache gave him an unmistakable air of duplicity, reduced the natural or created world to the mathematical abstraction of spatial extension, which is perfectly accessible to algebraic geometry but bears no trace of implicit order or divine goodness. And he divided his profoundly skeptical Meditations and Discourse on Method into six parts, in rivalrous imitation, scholars tell us, of the first six days of God’s creation. Liberated by technology from dependence on God and history, man and world could be fashioned in the image of human desires.

From the beginning, we observe how "an ill-formed utopian vision licenses fundamental social transformation":

The implementation of an ideological programme is an experiment testing the hypothesis that a radiant future can be achieved if only political, social, and economic relations are radically restructured, a process that always involves the preliminary destruction of existing realities. That future, like Descartes’s infinity of satisfactions, is never concretely described and never actually arrives. 

In the United States, we are currently engaged in many such experiments simultaneously, all undertaken in the name of social justice. [...] But ideology is always and everywhere opposed to the moderate middle ground, not only of politics, but of the general opinion and sentiment that goes by the name of common sense.

Howland draws several conclusions:

Ideology’s most horrific social experiments illustrate several points that apply also to the “Totalitarianism Lite” of contemporary American life. First, while human beings naturally form social groups for common purposes, ideology assumes that organic associations cannot support a good society, which must be engineered from the top down. This assumption, which no ideological experimentation has ever sustained, makes up in arrogance what it lacks in humility.

Second, ideology abjures persuasion, preferring what Hannah Arendt called “mute coercion”. We see this today in the insistence that certain widely-shared opinions that were uncontroversial only a few years ago are so morally illegitimate that they do not deserve a hearing. We see it in the fact that those who publicly voice such opinions are commonly smeared, hounded, denied financial services, investigated, and fired, even by institutions that are publicly committed to diversity of opinion and freedom of speech.

Third, ideology always involves the scapegoating and purging of opponents. Today these primitive religious rituals, enacted within the framework of a secularised and apocalyptic Christianity, include the sanctification of “victims” and the (for now metaphorical) public crucifixion of “oppressors”. Those who are targeted by, or resist, the ideological programme — denounced variously as kulaks, capitalist roadsters, vermin, or white supremacists — must, with the exception of a few penitents who are mercifully spared, be decisively defeated in battle with the forces of good. For only then will the earthy salvation of a just and harmonious society be achievable.

Western societies are on the road to greater misery, Howland predicts, because the intellectual and spiritual regime that has gained sway lacks "an ongoing attentiveness to reality that is inconsistent with wilfulness and fantasy". 

The takeaway is that the fantasy world of wokeism must be opposed and rejected at every opportunity. The common good relies on individuals and groups who are willing to display conviction and courage in the face of the distorted values and manipulated standards of virtue promulgated by those seeking meaning and purpose in the power-hungry realm of the woke. 

💢 Read the full essay here 

💢 Read also:

                      Woke censorship in publishing, here, and here.

                      Success in battle against woke lawyers. See here.

💢 Definitions of "wokeness" from UrbanDictionary.com

[] The ability of someone to become outraged at imagined enemies and create ways to be the victim, even though you're insanely privileged.

[] If anyone disagrees or is not extreme enough, then they deserve to be cancelled. Wokeness or wokeism is a cult based on neo-Marxism and post-modernism.

[] Performative wokeness: People who more concerned with self-promotion, social media "likes", or selling books & lectures than they are about actual deliverables.

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Fathers are key: Two women testify

Fathers are important for the psychological and emotional balance of children. Their absence in many families is the part of the dis-ease that so many young people experience. Two instances where fathers have died, leaving a "lingering emptiness", bring out clearly just how essential their role is in shaping their children's life.

 In the weeks after her father's death Megan Blandford felt the need to "reflect and regather". She writes:

In the winter my dad died from cancer, focusing on work became incredibly difficult.

I took a few weeks to slow down, think, and follow a craving to get back to basics. I spring cleaned my house, went for long bushwalks, caught up on my own health checks, and took over the dinner table with a thousand-piece puzzle. After school hours, I read stories with my kids — huddling together and immersing ourselves in fantasy worlds filled with magic and problems that can be solved — and took them out for chai lattés. (Kids these days.)

That time made me reflect a lot on my purpose, and how to spend the next chunk of my time on earth. 

Megan Blandford, pictured with her father, is finding it hard to recover from her loss.

Blandford, an Australian, was proud of her work as a freelance writer: 

Yet, suddenly, I just couldn't bring myself to write one more word about things that don't mean anything.

I lost my purpose, and asked myself a number of questions about it.

What could I do that would give me back that sense of achievement? How could I put more good out into the world? And why did none of it seem to mean a thing?

Time has passed, providing salve to the feeling of being without purpose in life, but the experience of such a deep loss has been revealing:

I'd seen this impact on some friends who had lost a parent. They'd go a bit off the rails, questioning everything and feeling — very outwardly — like they'd somehow lost themselves. It seemed like more than grief, as though they were adrift and needed to search for a new anchor.

As a writer, Blandford is able to find the words to explain what is going on in her life but she is surprised that even three years later she remains unsettled:

I underestimated that I would have sought Dad's advice on this career questioning that I was suddenly experiencing. I would never have followed his advice (I was never any good at doing as I was told), but I would have asked for his thoughts.

I underestimated the little things that would hit me with such a force of grief. The memory of the last time I had Christmas with my dad, when we'd ended up arguing; we were meant to have happier Christmases together after that. That the first time I'd walk into my parents' house without hearing Dad's voice call out, "Hi, Poppet!" would take my breath away.

I certainly didn't expect that, a couple of winters later, I would still be floating and searching for a new anchor.

Ruth Niemiec, who years later stood at her father's grave and said, 'I miss you'

For Ruth Niemiec, her father's life was taken in a road accident when she was nine years old. Writing as as an adult in Australia she notes how his death has had a profound effect on her:

My father's life was cut short, and it was unexpected, I didn't have time to say goodbye. It made the mourning prolonged and difficult.

For a few years, I remembered the sound of his laughter, his voice, how tall he was and his mannerisms. Twenty-four years on, I remember only his eyes and they are fading from my memory too. Dad wore his keys clipped onto a belt loop, left side. He wore brown leather shoes and was fond of light-yellow polo shirts. I know that from photographs. 

Joan Didion wrote in her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, that she thought her husband would come back after he had died. At nine years old, I felt my father would come back too.

I distinctly remember sitting in the passenger seat beside my mother just a few weeks after his passing, convinced that he would come and see us soon.

The impact of the loss of any parent when the child is young can be far-reaching, and this was certainly the case for Niemiec: 

Losing a parent is never easy. It changes you completely, no matter what age you are when it happens. So many unanswered questions, so many "I love you's" whispered to the memory of their face. A lingering emptiness.

What made my confusing childhood grief deeper and more mystifying was that before he died, I hadn't seen him for a year. Mum and Dad were separated, and he had remarried.

When I was eight he took me to Gumbaya Park [Melbourne], and we spent the whole day together. It was the last time I saw him in person and the last time I was in a vehicle with him travelling down the freeway.  

In order to feel in a space where she could get on with her life Niemiec had to travel to Poland:

Dad was buried in Poland. That was his wish. His ashes were placed beside his father's at the cemetery in the village he grew up in.

It took over 15 years for me to be done with school and university and save enough money to afford a ticket to Poland. It took that long to get a chance to stand at my father's grave and say "I miss you". 

I wanted Dad to know I was there. And that I knew the beauty of the fog in the valley in Tuchów, with the first morning light beaming through it. I walked the worn streets he, too, had walked before leaving for Australia. I spoke the language he spoke to people he had known.

Being in Poland made me feel close to him and I left feeling an enormous sense of closure.

Those two personal accounts of the role fathers can play in the emotional life of children, both when young or as an adult, illustrate how important it is for society to be proactive in protecting the family as a unit of mother and father.

Therefore, it's worth repeating a snippet of the research findings about the importance of fathers. The following information is from the Child and Family Research Partnership at the University of Texas:

Children who grow up with involved fathers are: 39% more likely to earn mostly A’s in school, 45% less likely to repeat a grade, 60% less likely to be suspended or expelled from school, twice as likely to go to college and find stable employment after high school, 75% less likely to have a teen birth, and 80% less likely to spend time in jail.

💢 See the info poster here. 

💢 From a pediatricians' viewpoint, go here.

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