This is a quite hostile article, mentioning Philip Pullman as follows: "It is not just the infantile obsession of Philip Pullman with poisoning the minds of children against Catholicism, in a very Anglo-Saxon, Popish Plot kind of way."
Easter has been infused with more of a religious atmosphere than has been usual in recent years, due to the interest generated by Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. The screening of the Gibson film in Britain has now enabled people to make an artistic judgment. It seems that the one adverse criticism even the film’s keenest admirers would concede is its understated depiction of the Resurrection. One can sympathise with Gibson’s need to avoid the kind of Spielbergian special effects that might have trespassed into the realm of science fiction, but the very graphic portrayal of Our Lord’s humiliation required him, in counterpoint, to highlight the glory of the Resurrection.
That small cavil apart, Gibson is to be thanked for giving the world so eloquent a testimonial to the cosmic drama around which the Christian faith revolves. It is much needed: never, since the early days of persecution, has Christianity been more beleaguered. A glimpse of our city centres during the past two nights would convey how the greatest festival in our religious heritage was celebrated by the younger generation and what hope that affords for the future.
Never has there been so much expression of anti-religious opinion in the media, nor so venomous an aggression against every vestigial remnant of the Judaeo-Christian ethic. It is not just the infantile obsession of Philip Pullman with poisoning the minds of children against Catholicism, in a very Anglo-Saxon, Popish Plot kind of way. It is more the active hostility of such bodies as the European Union - willing to proclaim the pagan heritage of classical Greece in its proposed constitution, but adamant in its refusal to acknowledge the Christian faith that has moulded its culture during two millennia.
Around the developed world, it is clear that aggressive secularist lobbies are now assailing Christianity. By the imposition of so-called anti-hate laws and enforcement of ethical aberrations abhorrent to Christians, believers are to be presented with the stark alternatives of coming to a self-serving accommodation with the forces of evil, or incurring legal and social penalties amounting to persecution. How many will stand up to be counted? Religion has been so diluted that it would be unsurprising if the reaction of many young people today to the drama of Calvary was indignation at the ecological irresponsibility of destroying three trees.
The world of paganism, just as it was before the original triumph of Christianity, is bleak. For all its token deference to the interests of the weak, it is a devil-take-the-hindmost, bread-and-circuses society in which the unborn are torn from the womb and, increasingly, the elderly infirm are to be killed off for the convenience of the young and active. Even some people of no religious affiliation are becoming alarmed at the violence and disorder of a society lacking any moral compass.
Spearheaded by the media, all decency and reticence are being trampled down. Among the young, in particular, where parents (if they have any) have abdicated their responsibility, ‘peer pressure’ exerts a gravitational pull downward to the lowest common denominator. It is evasive and trite to claim that we have been here before: we have not. There have been periods of decadence in human history; but they did not result in the dissolution of the basic unit of civilisation - the family - as is the case today. Ours is an unexampled decadence.
By what right does the developed world claim the moral high ground over poorer, but religiously devout, societies? Because the economies of the west are currently the dynamic motor of material expansion, we are exporting our way of life across the globe. That is what many other cultures resent; and you do not have to be a leftie Guardian reader to understand why.
How could one persuade a moderate Muslim, from Iraq or anywhere else, who has a deep-seated religious faith, prays at set hours of the day, enjoys a secure family life and lives in a community where these conditions are universal, of the benefits of embracing the western lifestyle? What does he see on offer? Does he want his family broken up by materialism and easy divorce? Does he want to see the mosque deserted, in favour of ‘shooting galleries’, ‘raves’ and discos? Does he want his sons turned into junkies? Or his daughters transformed into drunken ladettes, vomiting on street corners, lost to any prospect of marriage and available to every predatory male?
It is an historical fact that the sexual mores of ‘liberated’ western women that are promoted in teenage magazines were, in every previously recorded human society, peculiar to prostitutes. Muslims are keenly aware of that. When we go to war, we tell the rest of the world we are fighting to export our ‘values’. That is exactly what they are afraid of.
The critical question at Easter is: how is the pagan West to be Christianised again and who will be the agents of conversion? Not the mincing, fissiparous Church of England, is the evident answer. Rome, since the Second Vatican Catastrophe, has been in free-fall. Now that the word ‘renewal’ has finally been displaced by ‘crisis’ in headlines in the Catholic press, a comical attempt at reform is being essayed. The New Mass is to undergo a few cosmetic changes: the 1960s Marxist-collectivist "We believe", at the beginning of the Creed, is to be replaced by the correct translation: "I believe".
That only took 40 years to achieve. At this rate, the liturgical witchdoctors may arrive at a vaguely orthodox version of the Mass sometime around 2150. They are putting a Band-aid on a body that has been run over by an articulated lorry. Their irrelevant tinkerings will not stem the haemhorrage of indifferent Catholics out of the Church, nor prevent the increasing return to tradition and the Tridentine Mass of the surviving serious faithful. Therein lies the hope of a restored Rome.
Hope is the birthright of all Christians at Easter, no matter how bleak the landscape. On the historic Good Friday, "there was darkness over the whole earth until the ninth hour"; but that black pall was soon to be eclipsed by the brilliance and glory of the Resurrection.
[© Scotland on Sunday, 11/4/04]
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