Dark Day In Post-Christian Britain
And: The Secret Migration Plot; Carlos Martins Latest; Sea Monkey Wedding
Good morning, all. It’s a Saturday, and normally I wouldn’t post, but there’s so much to talk about today. Besides, I have decided that at year’s end, I am going to do something I have not done in the four years I’ve been writing this Substack: take a short vacation. I have a friend coming over from the US right after Christmas, and I want to be fully present, not distracted by online stuff. And then I’m going to Mount Athos for four days. So, I will not be posting for about ten days in all. As you know, I write a lot of weekend posts, so I have more than fulfilled the 20-per-month contractual obligation to y’all (though it doesn’t at all feel like an obligation). This post is just one more.
Like many of you, no doubt, I am grieved by what happened yesterday in Great Britain: Parliament legalized assisted suicide. It put restrictions on the practice, but if things continue in the UK as they have in other countries that have taken this diabolical step, they won’t stop there. As others have observed, in societies that, as this century progresses, face the inevitability, given fertility decline, to take even more from the smaller population of young and productive and give to the larger population of old and dependent, there will be resulting pressures on the old to kill themselves, to reduce the collective burden. Can you imagine now that the old have to fear their own children and grandchildren? And that the children and grandchildren, even if they hate euthanasia, will face the hideous task of convincing their aging and sick parents not to kill themselves, that no, Mum, we want you around, we will care for you?
I have long pointed out that the legitimation of same-sex marriage and transgenderism are fundamental markers of a post-Christian society. So is euthanasia. These practices are utterly antithetical to the cosmic order established in the Bible. In his new book, We Who Wrestle With God, Jordan Peterson notes the significance of the Biblical stories in revealing to us the fundamental order of reality. Quotes:
The stake in the ground around which everything else must rotate is established upon humanity’s divine reflection, and it is to be held as immoveable, sacrosanct, inviolable: sacred. This is nothing less than the description of the moral order implicit in the cosmos itself, reflective of the nature of God, man and woman, and the foundation on which the idea of intrinsic rights and sovereign responsibility is based.
Do we believe this story? Do we believe what it states and implies?
No, we plainly don’t, not anymore. We have replaced God with the divinized Self, and its sovereign choices. Ideas have consequences. We are living through them now, collectively. More JBP:
When the wrong principle is established as supreme — when a false king is set upon the throne or an impious ethos prevails — the people quickly find themselves deprived of the very water of life. more deeply, however, a kingdom oriented around the wrong pole — that worships the wrong gods, so to speak — suffers psychologically or spiritually.
This is us. This is the post-Christian West. We are dying spiritually, and will die socially, culturally, and at last, as the euthanasia phenomenon reveals, in our bodies, by the exercise of choice, when we conclude as the Nazis did, that there is a such thing as “life unworthy of life.” It is barely less evil when a people reaches such a conclusion through liberal democratic means as when they do so via the imposition of a totalitarian regime. Indeed it might be worse: no dictator forced the British, the Belgians, the Dutch, the Swiss, the Canadians, and others, to make this wicked, fateful choice.
One more JBP:
We posit a good — at least a good that is better than our point of departure. This is an act of faith as well as sacrifice: faith, because the good could be elsewhere, and sacrifice, because in the pursuit of that good we determine not to pursue all others.
In the Christian past — indeed, until just yesterday in the United Kingdom — we chose to sacrifice to live by the fundamental principle that Life Is Sacred, that there are no lives not worth living. As painful as an individual life may be, because of sickness, we had concluded that the sacrifice society must make to provide for the suffering is worth it. We had also concluded that solitary souls must, to the best of their ability, bear their suffering with courage, because our lives are not our own.
Now Britain, like many other post-Christian nations, and perhaps even our own America in the years to come, has decided that the greatest goods are Individual Choice and Avoiding Suffering. We therefore sacrifice the principle that Life Is Sacred; we are determined not to pursue that unfashionable truth.
Note well that the socialist MP Jeremy Corbyn voted against euthanasia, while the MP Rishi Sunak, until recently the leader of the Conservative Party, voted for it. This means something.
God said to His people:
“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live…” (Deuteronomy 30:19)
These words have not been revoked, and never will. The British people, through their elected representatives, have, in their hubris, chosen death. And so, they and their seed will die. God is not mocked. Nemesis will follow. It always does. We will sooner or late face the euthanasia question in the United States. Prepare.
Do you see now why I wrote The Benedict Option? I am grateful that a UK edition has just been launched; God knows the Christian remnant in that land needs it. We all do. Many, many Christians are unwilling to accept the dark reality of the present moment. God has not abandoned us, and never will — but we live in societies and cultures that have abandoned Him. It is hard to see God’s presence in a culture that denies Him. We cannot keep living as we have been. Despite what you will have heard from people who don’t understand the book, and who probably haven’t read it, this is not about heading for the hills. As I write in the introduction, there is no escape. We have to endure this trial, with fidelity, courage, and steadfastness. We cannot do that as long as we think everything is going to be fine, if we just sit quite still and wait.
The Secret Plot, According To Starmer
True, but also false: in the speech, Starmer blames it on Brexit. Nonsense. The truth is that the Tory government’s betrayal of Brexit and what it said about the kind of country Britons wanted to live in, is the chief cause.
We all must know that this is not a left-wing versus right-wing thing, mass migration. Established parties of both political traditions are to blame. I’m telling you, if you want to understand what has happened and why it has happened, read this English-language collection of the political essays of Renaud Camus. If, however, you are not ready for the Camus book, then at least read Nathan Pinkoski’s summary of Camus’s thought. Camus has been anathemized in France and beyond, and smeared as a racist and anti-Semite. It’s a damnable lie. Once you read him, it is clear why they do this to him. Camus refuses to live by their lies. Nor should we.
Latest On Father Carlos Martins
It has been going very bad for the exorcist Father Carlos Martins, whose innocent but imprudent gesture of touching a child’s hair in the middle of a crowded church has made him an object of international speculation and obloquy, one that now threatens to destroy his ministry. This is evil, straight up.
From journalist and Martin defender’s Bree Dail’s recent thread:
Pope Francis is a protector of abusers, and shame on him for it. But a priest touching the head of a child, especially in public, is not abuse! What the hell is wrong with a church and a culture that says it is?
There is all kinds of stuff going on, things I don’t want to comment on, because I am in no position to get to the bottom of them, that are intended to discredit Father Carlos’s credentials as an exorcist. Attacks from within the Church. You think you’ve seen it all, and now something like this. There is going around a statement from a superior in Father Carlos’s religious order, saying that he is not an exorcist. What that religious superior probably — I’m only speculating here — does not understand is that there are two kinds of exorcists: 1) the “stable” exorcist — in-house and operating on the staff and within the diocese — and 2) the “ad actum” exorcist, who takes on a particular case when it presents itself. Father Carlos is the latter. He still has to get permission of the local bishop before engaging in a formal exorcism, of course.
Here’s what you can do to help, besides pray: buy Father Carlos Martins’s new book, The Exorcist Files. This stupid and wicked controversy could spike the book; please don’t let it happen. It’s a very good book.
I also suggest listening to Father’s podcast The Exorcist Files, which, like his book, is full of useful counsel for how to avoid entanglements with these things, and how to deal with them if they enter into your life. I’ve linked to its website, but you can get it wherever podcasts are available.
If you haven’t already, you might also want to read my new book Living In Wonder, which in part gives context for why this kind of warfare is happening, and will intensify. What is happening to Father Martins is not a one-off. You need to know this, and prepare yourself. This is not a joke, or a game.
A Sea Monkey Marriage
I can’t leave you today with something that heavy. Look at this:
Here is Colin Wright’s earlier link to the actual peer-reviewed academic paper. And somehow, there are plenty of smart people who think academia is being unfairly criticized by MAGA. But friends, nothing can prepare you for the pure hathos surge of watching these woke dingbats marry brine shrimp. Pop open a cold one and enjoy!
Here’s a taste, from a screengrab:
Peer-reviewed, brethren and sistren. I wish we would re-open the asylums, or at least simply rebrand certain universities.
And we all thought “hydrosexuality” meant nookie in a hot tub! I reckon not.
“Once you enter the euthanasia highway, there are no brakes.” Can’t remember who said it.
Canada is the great case study. They initially framed a very narrow law, I believe it was 2016, but immediately “patient rights groups” attacked the limitations as “discriminatory”, and one limitation after another fell. In swift order.
As for the Brine-Shrimp Wedding, the phrase “peer-reviewed” makes me think of David Brooks yesterday excoriating those who dare question our institutions.
“Your institutions are staffed by people who marry shrimp, David.”
From Romans 1...
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.