NUNTIATORIA

Holy Name of Mary (Sept 12)

by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. In January we celebrated the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus following the celebration of his Nativity in December. Now we have celebrated in the past week the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and today we celebrate the Holy Name of Mary. This feast was extended to the universal calendar of the Western Church by Pope Innocent XI in 1683 to mark the defeat of the Ottoman Turks at Vienna.

In those days, despite the schisms and divisions of the Reformation era, Europe was still Christendom and it had the strength to withstand the threat posed by the expansion of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. Today, the situation is very different. The West is no longer Christendom, though militant Islam is still with us. How did this situation come about?

When addressing this question it is important to avoid falling into the error of seeing nothing of any value in non-Christian religions. The true light that lighteth every man has not left himself without witness, and there is no need to deny that non-Christian religions contain some elements of truth. Other religions contain seeds of the Word, imperfect elements of truth.

However, today the tendency is to fall into the opposite error, that of syncretism, and to play down the differences between Christianity and non-Christian religions. The truth of the matter is that, while it contains much that is of value, Islam is a very different religion from Christianity, and modern Christians who play down the fundamental differences are deceiving themselves. Other religions may be able to give good advice in some respects, but it is only Christianity that brings good news, the good news of salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But why has the West so changed that it is no longer Christendom, and why do modern Western governments now repudiate the faith that created our civilisation? What has happened? The change has come about as a result of a long and complex process, but the most important symbol of this change is the outlook of the so called Enlightenment. Whereas previous ages had faith in God, the maker of all things and judge of all men, and saw humanity as created in the image of God but fallen and sinful, who could only achieve salvation by divine grace given through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Enlightenment repudiated this. The world was now viewed as a closed continuum of cause and effect. Human beings were no longer seen as fallen and sinful, but rather as people who had now risen from an earlier pre-scientific age to a new age of Enlightenment. History did not come to a climax in first century Palestine, but rather in eighteenth century Europe and America. This was now seen as the dawn of a new age of freedom, equality and brotherhood (symbolised by the change in the calendar in early days of the French Revolution).

The apostles of the new post Enlightenment age claimed to follow reason, and to be free from any transcendent authority. The world could now be explained in terms of evolutionary (Darwin), sociological (Durkheim), economic (Marx) and psychological (Freud) forces, so there was no longer any need for any “exclusive” religion such as Christianity. The irony of the situation was that, though post-Enlightenment Western man repudiated the exclusive claims of Christianity for consigning the rest of the world to heathen darkness, the Enlightenment made a similarly exclusive claim for itself, namely that they alone were men of enlightenment and that other peoples had died in the dark. The other irony of the situation was that the apologists for the Enlightenment who claimed to have emancipated themselves from any form of transcendent authority in fact themselves created determinist philosophies that reduced reality to evolutionary, sociological, economic and psychological forces. Post-Enlightenment Western man, with his insistence on the eternal truths of reason and freedom from any traditional authority, was actually using the pretext of giving an “objective” scientific view of the world as a device for controlling it. It has produced a society that is strong in terms of technological progress, but weak in terms of spiritual resources.

As the limitations of the Enlightenment have come to be recognised, a new philosophy has emerged, popularly known as post- modernism. Whereas modernism (the philosophy of the Enlightenment) repudiated God and enthroned instead reason and science, post-modernism has now repudiated reason and science in favour of the view that there is no truth and meaning other than what we create for ourselves. Reality is something that we create, not something to which we respond. The truth (though in fact post modernism does not believe in truth) is no longer seen to lie in scientific, as opposed to religious knowledge, but rather in what anyone feels at any given time. Texts no longer have meanings that can be discovered. All claims to truth are just power games, and there is no need to look for any correspondence with any “external” reality. People are encourage to cultivate “self worth” and “self esteem” at every available opportunity, and anything that questions anyone’s “self worth” and “self esteem” must be cancelled and shut down. Rational debate is impossible, for there is no truth to debate. 

So we find ourselves in a very strange situation. Our society originally repudiated Christianity in favour of a post-Enlightenment faith in reason and science. Now this has itself given way to a post modern age that repudiates not only Christianity, but reason and science as well. For there is now no truth other than the one we create for ourselves on the basis of how we “feel,” and woe betide anyone who dares to question my “right” to my own “truth”.

Into this situation militant Islam has entered. It has now succeeded in penetrating into the heart of the West (whereas earlier ages of faith had successfully withstood it). Devout Muslims are right to look aghast at the decadence of modern Western societies. They are now dominated, neither by Christianity, nor even by faith in reason and science, but instead by the debased “popular” culture of the entertainment industry, and the managerial culture of political correctness (which is in fact the ruthless application of the contemporary post modern philosophy). Post- modern Western society is now collapsing under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It is a house built upon sand.

This is now an age of post- truth and “after virtue” (as one philosopher has put it). The philosophy of the Enlightenment was deeply flawed, but at least it was intellectually mature, and governments to some extent adhered to the ideal of a civilised but non-religious society. Now, even that has gone, and modern Western governments are dominated by people who are quite literally charlatans who believe neither in Christianity nor in reason but only in themselves. Perhaps it is fitting that this post-modern age should elect politicians who do not believe in truth but only in themselves. We cannot let go of the Christian faith and assume that society will remain the same. It will not, and it has not.

In 1948 T. S. Eliot wrote these words “An individual European may not even believe that the Christian faith is true, but what he says and makes and does will all spring out of the history of this European culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning. Only a Christian culture could have produced a Nietzsche or a Voltaire. I do not believe that the culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian faith. And I am convinced of that not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole of our culture goes. Then you must start painfully again, and you cannot put on a new culture ready made. You must wait for the grass to grow to feed the sheep out of which your new coat will be made. You must pass through many centuries of barbarism. We should not live to see the new culture, nor would our great-great- great grandchildren, and if we did, none of us would be happy in it.” 🔝