We live in a world gone mad. This madness was foreseen a century ago by the Irish poet William Yeats in The Second Coming: “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”. We need to understand what happened.
In Paradise Cancelled, Anthony Schratz does precisely that by first analyzing the intellectual and spiritual foundations of the Christian worldview and those of the postmodernist worldview (which he calls “Expressive Individualism”), and then explaining why it is impossible for those two worldviews to coexist peacefully.
The Christian worldview described by Schratz is in all respects consistent with the Magisterium. It proclaims that the universe was created by a transcendent Being infinitely good and powerful, a God who is also a Trinity of persons rooted in a communion of love from which issued the universe and man. It also proclaims that God created man in His image and likeness, calling him to heavenly bliss with Him after a virtuous life on earth.
Man has a material and mortal body, which makes him a part of nature like other animals. But, unlike the latter, he has been created “in the image of God”, which means that he is endowed with an intellect enabling him to grasp universals and immaterial realities, and a free will that allows him to choose freely between good and evil, i.e., to obey or disobey his Creator.
Having chosen to disobey the Creator, Adam and Eve brought sin into the world. This is what is called Original Sin. The Christian worldview is incomprehensible without this doctrine of Original Sin. Although we still have remarkable faculties, we are inclined to use them for evil. Deep down, we know there is something wrong with us. We are born without divine life in the soul because the human life we inherited from our first parents is “disconnected” from God. The result, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously put it, is that “the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, but right through every human heart”.
Since man is unable to remedy this evil with infinite consequences, only a divine intervention could reconcile him with his Creator. Thus, God promised a Savior who would restore him to his original friendship. God appropriated a people who, strengthened by the Law and prophets, were to prepare mankind to receive that Savior. After revealing Himself to men through the prophets, God revealed Himself to them by taking on their human nature, which gave rise to a new Covenant between God and man. This Covenant is represented by the Church, which continues the work of redemption by proclaiming that only Christ can lead us to eternal happiness.
All this implies that the Church has a very specific understanding of human nature. It teaches that our primary end is the imitation of and incorporation into Jesus Christ, that is, human virtue and divine holiness. Christ in effect redefined the meaning of life by showing that it is ordained not to wealth or pleasure but rather to self-giving and sacrifice. Because the human heart cannot be easily reconciled to such teaching, the Church is often misunderstood, feared or persecuted.
The Church teaches that the natural law (or moral law) is inscribed on the heart of man. It tells us what we must do and avoid to achieve our end, which is holiness. The natural law can be compared to a user manual, that is, the set of instructions and information a human being must have to live according to his nature. A thing is not good or bad because of what the natural law says about it. It only tells us what is right and wrong in the light of the great givens of human life. It is constitutive of our nature and accords with our end. Therefore, natural law is absolute, objective, and universal. It does not depend on our feelings or intentions.
In short, the Christian worldview is an anthropology centered on Christ. Anthropology asks: what is the meaning of life? The answer is not an idea, but a person—Jesus Christ! God made flesh!
The competing worldview is what Schratz refers to as “Expressive Individualism”, otherwise known as “wokeism”, critical theory or, more generally, postmodernism. It asserts that the universe is governed by man, not God. Its motto is that of Protagoras, for whom man is the measure of all things. It contradicts that of Plato, for whom God is the measure of all things; hence the impossibility for the two worldviews to coexist peacefully.
The distinguishing feature of this competing worldview is its emphasis on personal autonomy.
More specifically, it does not admit of any higher authority, religious or otherwise, to whom we are accountable. It denies the existence of any sacred order or, indeed, of any permanent truth. We are therefore required to choose our own values and lifestyles. Human nature is not a given we inherit, but a kind of modeling compound–a sophisticated kind of Play-Doh—that each one can manipulate as he pleases.
The most complete expression of personal autonomy is the LGBTQ+ ideology that belies the biological foundations of the male-female couple and the family. It aims to replace them with a purely subjective conception of sexuality and gender designed to abolish the traditional family.
The most eloquent expression of this gnostic-like sense of personal autonomy was perhaps expressed in the 1992 U.S. Supreme Court Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, which defined this autonomy as follows: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”. In short, there is no transcendent meaning to life.
One of the great merits of Cancelled Paradise is the clarity with which it shows the inner contradictions of Expressive Individualism. It highlights the intolerance of those who hold that worldview towards those who do not. Like all past ideologues, whether Marxist, Fascist or Maoist, they consider all their opponents as pathologically irrational, homophobic, transphobic, sexist or racist. All these so-called “deplorables” ought not to be tolerated because they threaten the advent of the secular paradise that self-appointed enlightened Expressive Individualists (also known as progressive liberals) seek to establish. And if these deplorables ever invoke their right to free speech, they are told that there is no such thing as a right to “hate speech” and that to oppose Expressive Individualism is to engage in hate speech.
Another important merit of Paradise Cancelled is that it addresses directly what Christians should do in the present predicament. It asserts that there is no political solution to our existential crisis and that the solution is essentially spiritual. That is what Jacques Maritain wrote in Integral Humanism, when he called for a “New Christendom”, one to be founded on “a new style of sanctity, which one can characterize above all as the sanctity and sanctification of secular life”. That is what the Second Vatican Council reminded us of when it proclaimed that all Catholics—lay people as well as clerics—are called to be saints in the middle of the world. That is what Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI asked for when they proposed a new evangelization. And that is the answer to Yeats’s claim in The Second Coming that the Christian era is terminated.
In short, the Christian worldview can defeat its secularist counterpart only if you and I become saints. In today’s parlance, that means becoming “weird”, as one well-known public figure recently found out. That happens to be also how Christians living in the Roman Empire were viewed. They were witnesses to Christ in a pagan world that in many ways resembled our own.
Paradise Cancelled: Unveiling the False Promises of a Secularist Utopia
by Anthony Schratz,
True Freedom Press, 2024
Paperback, 151 pages
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An excellent summary of the Christian “worldview.” Might we say, then, that the difference between the Christian vision and postmodernism is succinctly the difference between Plato and Play-Doh?
But, not quite…
PLATO is credited with discovering the immateriality of God, but then by not suspecting the possibility of the Incarnation, he still missed the nature of ultimate and human reality–by only a hair, it is said. In his “True Religion,” Augustine says that all that was needed to convert the Platonists was the modification of a few words and formulae (remark in Charles Norris Cochrane, “Christianity and Classical Culture,” Oxford, 1940/1974).
ST. JOHN PAUL II notes, with Augustine, that Plato must have known of the Exodus text (“I am who I am”, Ex. 3:14), but then explains further:
“The comparison of biblical ‘knowledge’ with Platonic eros reveals the divergence of these two concepts. The Platonic concept is based on nostalgia for transcendent Beauty and on escape from matter; the biblical concept, on the contrary, is geared to concrete reality, and the dualism of spirit and matter is alien to it as also the specific hostility to matter (‘And God saw that it was good’: Gen 1:10,12,18,21,25),” (“The Theology of the Body,” General Audience of March 26, 1980).
POSTMODERNISM is a deeply ingrained materialism and, yet, as “expressive individualism” is also a Manichaean “hostility to matter”–as in mothers destroying their own unborn children, and with the state subsidizing even this part of the “health care” industry.
“Postmodernism asserts that… man is the measure of all things”
Precisely the error of Vatican II.
Consider Guadiem et Spes paragraph 2:
“the Council focuses its attention on the world of men, the whole human family along with the sum of those realities in the midst of which it lives; that world which is the theater of man’s history, and the heir of his energies, his tragedies, and his triumphs;”
Councils are Always Called to Solve a problem.
Catholicism was a problem for Freemasonry.
The Council simply Cancel-Cultured it?
Yea, verily, “Guadiem et Spes” [Gaudium et Spes, GS], paragraph 2 is so short that even the casual reader might notice the rest. Moreover, and confusing to the glazed-over reader, the Document of Vatican II, especially GS, sometimes do feature intrusive points which are then offset elsewhere by other counterpoints…
Like this: n. 39: “Earthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ’s kingdom. Nevertheless, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the kingdom of God” (n. 39).
Or: “The Christian who neglects his temporal duties neglects his duties toward his neighbor and even God, and jeopardizes his eternal salvation” (n. 43).
Or, “While helping the world and receiving many benefits from it, the Church has a single intention: that God’s kingdom may come, and that the salvation of the whole human race may come to pass” (n. 45).
Or, n. 76: “The role and competence of the Church being what it is, she must in no way be confused with the political community, nor bound to any political systems. For she is at once a sign and a safeguard of the transcendence of the human person” (n. 76).
HOWEVER, Mr Cracked Nut, we surely agree that Gaudium et Spes is not without its exploitable ambiguities. Those still intent on selectively misrepresenting the whole of Vatican II flag the following:
[Surely channeling Teilhard de Chardin] “Thus the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more dynamic, evolutionary one” (GS, n. 5).
And, the optimism of the early 1960s: “The Church further recognizes that worthy elements are found in today’s social movements, especially an evolution [say what!] toward unity [!], a process of wholesome socialization [?] and of association in civic and economic realms” (n. 42).
(“Socialization” is a distinct Latin concept introduced by Pope John XXIII in his 1961 Mater et Magister, but conflated by functionally illiterate ideologues with “socialism.” Socialization—having to do with the “common good”—is clarified in GS, n. 63 and 74.)
A council text intent on cancel-culturing the seat of dogma WOULD include “intrusive points”. The council was called to solve the problem of Catholicism for and by freemasonry.
Thanks for the Teilhard reference.
Hat tip to William Briggs for a reference to the Book “Theistic Evolution” by Wolfgang Smith (RIP, MIT Maths prof, devout Catholic) who disemboweled the many and manifest heresies of Teilhard which have apparently infected the limited intelligence of the present pontiff.
No, a genuine holy man or woman does not come across to the secular world as weird. The sanctimonious come across as weird. But the genuinely holy are very attractive. The problem is that there are so few who are genuinely holy; sanctimony is much easier.
According to Merriam-Webster, the root meaning to the word sanctimonious is in exemplifying holiness. Apparently it is Shakespeare who initiated the way to use the word corruptively; and frankly I am not surprised to find this out about him, as the works ascribed to him reek of that parlay and are not mere fuddley-duddley stuff.
I suspect many of the saints would have seemed “weird” to their contemporaries, particularly hermits. I don’t believe anyone would have looked at Simeon Stylites and said “What a refreshingly normal man.”
Absolutely, msc. There have been saints who did some very weird things. St. Benedict Labre, St. Joseph of Cupertino, St. Rose of Lima (my patron saint),St. Christina the Astonishing, St. Francis of Assisi, etc., etc.
Maritain’s “A new style of sanctity, which one can characterize above all as the sanctity and sanctification of secular life” is inherently oxymoronic, sanctity and secular, similar to clean coal, foolish wisdom. We’re currently befuddling ourselves with a new paradigm, the Synod on Synodality, two words providing absolutely no insight or meaning of the other.
What John Paul and Benedict had in mind on new evangelization was less moronic, simply meant to bring Christ to a secular society. Although the authors cited in this essay have it right when they speak of sanctification. Even weirdness, a term, or like term similarly used by Larry Chapp when speaking of the anomaly of being a Christian in an atheist secular world. Perhaps the oxymoron foolish wisdom fits. For the ordained, the layman being Christ in the world, whether he by necessity employs himself in the world’s operations is being a Christian not a secular. He’s different indeed.
The very willingness to endure what others revolt or fight about, the love of others for sake of the act of charity itself rather than recompense, return does appear strange and fruitless. Although it’s the stark simplicity of the act that changes hearts.
“What John Paul and Benedict had in mind on new evangelization was less moronic, simply meant to bring Christ to a secular society.”
Well, yes, but Guissani’s Communion and Liberation, for example, is a path of sanctifying engagement very much within the so-called secular world. The mentioned John Paul II and Benedict were among the supporters. https://www.clonline.org/en/cl/the-popes-and-cl
And, then, there’s the wisdom of Jean-Pierre de Caussade who reassures us that each day is a kind of sacrament (“The Sacrament of the Present Moment”). Spiritualization of the seemingly ordinary, as in the sacrament of marriage, is the vocation of most of us in the universal call to holiness.
But, with Fr. Morello, this does not mean that Holy Orders can be diluted or deluded into a mongrelized version of what a synod of bishops is supposed to be. One can only guess what the synodal study group #9 will come up with by June 2025, just in time for the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea: “Theological criteria and synodal methodologies for shared discernment of controversial doctrinal [!], pastoral [!], and ethical [!] issues.”
Needless to say, I appreciate your views. I suppose there are methodologies, conceptual approaches that have value rather than my simplistic response. De Caussade, Giussani certainly can add. Then few parishioners have that range of reading.
What I’ve taught for years from the pulpit focuses on the personal charisma, often unique to each person that they express in social interaction, finding ways to inculcate and convey Christ. It all begins and ends with deepening our relationship with Christ.
Is “secular priest” oxymoronic?
No. The familiar term refers to priests who are not monastic or in religious orders. Synonymous with diocesan.
Off topic, but will add how about a review of Jordan Peterson’s new book. Saw part of his interview on EWTN, fascinating but not sure if is worth the time to read and study.