The
Decline of the West through Abortion and Birth Control —
and the Exploding Muslim Population
“The
Days Have Come Down in the West”
Part II
At the Gates
It
is, I think, difficult to take issue with Mr. Muggeridge’s
assessment.
Let us look briefly at the army at our gates. You will remember
that in Tolkien’s,
“The
Return of the King”
, it is not at all monolithic, apart from purpose: it is composed
not simply of immediately recognizable evil in the demonic forms
of Orcs, Uruk Hai and the like, but also of
“men”
and Haradrim, indistinguishable from the citizens of Minas Tirith
nevertheless, all have been summoned by Sauron, the Dark Lord, to
bring the world under the dominion of darkness.
It strikes us as odd that men should war against men to bring about
that state in which the the leader of the Orc legions declares that
“The
age of men has ended. The time of the Orcs has come.”
But let us remember that the Orcs were not always Orcs, but Elves,
who through the Dark Force were
“brought
to a horrible and mutilated form of life". In other words, seized
by evil they were deprived of good and not just subsequently, but
consequently, became evil. It turns out that even the clearly discernible
enemy was once among us, was counted among us. We are in a better
position, through Tolkien's metaphor, to understand Mr. Muggerridge
the more clearly – and through Mr. Muggeridge to see the presecience
of Mr. Tolkien:
|
“It
is, indeed, among Christians themselves that the final
decisive assault on Christianity has been mounted; led
by the Protestant churches, but with Roman Catholics
eagerly, if belatedly, joining in the fray. All they
had to show was that when Jesus said that His kingdom
was not of this world, He meant that it was. Then, moving
on from there, to stand the other basic Christian propositions
similarly on their heads. ... A whole series of new
interpretative 'translations' of the Bible have appeared
supporting the new view ... I see the great liberal
death wish driving through the years ahead in triple
harness with the gospel of progress and the pursuit
of happiness. These are our three Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
Progress, Happiness, Death. Under their auspices, the
quest for total affluence leads to total deprivation;
for total peace, to total war; for total education,
to total illiteracy; for total sex, to total sterility;
for total freedom, to total servitude.”
(from The Great Liberal Death Wish)
|
We are bent upon our own destruction through a dissolution of the
very means by which the destruction itself had become possible.
Through a freedom become license, we have legislated our own end.
In the end we find that absolute freedom is not only absolute tyranny,
but the dissolution of freedom itself as it collapses under the
weight of insupportable license.
We wish to be free of all things ... all encumbrances ... all mores
and constraints ... from reason itself – all things, except sin.
And the wages of sin — we have on unimpeachable authority (God Himself)
— is death.
Is this not what we find at the gates? And do we not know their
faces, even those contorted in hatred, and cloven of foot?
Are not those who throw up ladders against the towering walls of
the Church, who would pull down her parapets, those whom she had
nurtured? Having fled the gates of the City whose laws they found
ultimately intolerable, they have returned as though to claim a
patrimony they had spurned, but no longer as her children but as
“a
horrible and mutilated form of life" bent upon matricide, upon ravaging
the womb that bore them, that the breath of the dragon who transformed
them may cauterize it and make it barren of children,
and a desert of death.
Osgiliath stands on the brink of the River, it's soldiers are menaced
and few and even now the smoke rises from her turrets, but Minas
Tirith yet stands ... and awaits the Return of the King — and her
derelict stewards, even of their own evil purpose, cannot prevent
the Return of the King. For He is yet among us. And by His word
the gates of the great city will prevail against the hell let loose
upon her.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
for the Boston Catholic Journal
