Faithful Catholics are a New Counter Culture Offering a Way Forward to the West

By Deacon Keith Fournier
12/13/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

My return to the Catholic Church as a young man was propelled by my search for truth

It is time to build a "new society within the shell of the old with the philosophy of the new, which is not a new philosophy but a very old philosophy, a philosophy so old that it looks new." (Peter Maurin)

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CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - My return to the Catholic Church as a young man was propelled by my search for truth. It was also fueled by a desire to build a counter culture which embraced values different than the inhuman materialism, nihilism, lack of solidarity, violence and idolatry I saw all around me. I was a teenage hippie - I admit it.

However, I began to see that the alternative offered by that movement was illusory. I came to believe that it would replace the social order it decried with something worse. I also came to see that the problems I rejected in the society and culture around me were also within me. I embraced the Christian claim that I needed a Savior and found Him in His fullness in the Church which He founded.

I bring this up to make a point. I was not launched out of the womb a "conservative". That is one of the reasons I have never liked the label applied to my politics or theology. If anything, I saw myself as a radical in the truest meaning of the term, one trying to get back to the root.

The root I discovered led me to what early Christian writers called the Second Tree, the One planted on Calvary's Hill where the New Man, Jesus Christ, stretched out His arms to embrace the world in redemptive love and begin a New Creation. On that Cross, the Living Word, through whom the Universe was created, re-created it anew.

Theodore the Studite, an eighth century Abbot, once wrote: "How precious the gift of the cross, how splendid to contemplate! In the cross there is no mingling of good and evil, as in the tree of paradise: it is wholly beautiful to behold and good to taste. The fruit of this tree is not death but life, not darkness but light. This tree does not cast us out of paradise, but opens the way for our return."

"This was the tree on which Christ, like a King on a chariot, destroyed the devil, the Lord of death, and freed the human race from his tyranny. This was the tree upon which the Lord, like a brave warrior wounded in hands, feet and side, healed the wounds of sin that the evil serpent had inflicted on our nature."

"A tree once caused our death but now a tree brings life. Once deceived by a tree, we have now repelled the cunning serpent by a tree. What an astonishing transformation! That death should become life, that decay should become immortality- that shame should become glory!"

A fourth century Deacon named Ephrem proclaimed: "He who was also the carpenters glorious son set up his cross above deaths' all consuming jaws, and led the human race into the dwelling place of life. Since a tree had brought about the downfall of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of life."

"Bitter was the branch that had once been grafted upon that ancient tree, but sweet the young shoot that has now been grafted in, the shoot in which we are meant to recognize the Lord whom no creature can resist. We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death, like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living.

"We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead. Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our Lord the great and all embracing sacrifice of our love and our lives"

As a young man I rejected secularist, atheistic humanism - not humanism itself. I came to see that the true humanism is Christianity. That conviction led me back to the mother church of the entire Christian movement, the Catholic Church, because she is rooted in the theological anthropology and world view of the early fathers of the Church.

The existential questions I asked as a young man such as "Who Am I" and "Who are we", are still asked by men and women who hunger for more. They led me to the at the Cr�che, the Cross, the empty Tomb and the Catholic Church. As the Fathers of the last Council of the Church reminded us "The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light."

It is time to acknowledge that the collapse of Western civilization will not be remedied by political movements alone. They are inadequate for the task. Crippled by the culture of death and indoctrinated by what Pope Benedict XVI called a "Dictatorship of Relativism", the West has been seduced by the siren song of evil.

What we need is a Christian revolution and, to shake things up even further, I quote from Peter Maurin's insightful book of prose entitled Easy Essays. I do so NOT because I agree with the left wing politics which ...

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1 - 7 of 7 Comments

Jim Englert
3 months ago
I stumbled upon this piece, and initially found myself drawn to the view you seemed to be building. But then. . . your notion of 'countering' seems so small. Abortion? I concur, of course, in your response to this horrific and tragic evil. Homosexuality? How easy to make 'them' the problem. So few, so other. But what most troubled me is what is absent. Nothing on the intense militarization of American life. Nothing on our having rendered unto Caesar the right, because the wherewithal, to determine whether human history continues or ends. And once you have rendered that, really on what basis do you reasonable withhold anything? Have we become so numbed to having made that concession that we can speak of 'countering' without even acknowledging it? Largely for this reason, I've come to find the expression, 'culture of death,' inadequate -- indeed, misleading. In fact, we tend to be a culture that fear, and so denies, death. We are foursquare a culture of life, of living to the fullest. But the Gospel does not call us simply to a culture of life. It calls us to a culture of life, death, and resurrection. The real problem is that we have such a 'culture of killing.' We have made soldiers into heroes. I don't villify them. If need be, accept the role of 'professional killers' as necessary to maintain the tranquility of social order. But don't glorify them, as is done virtually across the political spectrum in post 9/11 America. If you truly choose to 'counter,' raise that red-white-and-blue flag, and feel the response. I concur totally in positing the need for Catholic countering. It's just that you aren't it, haven't really even begun to stumble upon it. And that's ok. I certainly haven't. But I know that. The problem is that you think you're the real thing, and, in so thinking, trivialize the meaning -- and the cost -- of affirming authentic Catholic culture. Go back to Miss Day and Peter Mauirn. But this time, try to enter their horizon, rather than squeezing them into your own.
vance
5 months ago
The Catholic Church was always a counter to anti-Christianity. Sadly, I have watched the Culture of Death grow its roots in the ranks of the church. I call it Liberalism. Anyone who has watched EWTN's Sister Angelica had heard her mentioning the scourge of Liberalism among the Bishops and priests. We have these individuals to thank as accomplices to the moral melt down of our nation and the loss of a great many who have fallen away from the faith. What is saving the church are the Pillars of Faith who hold onto the Traditions and Values that come from the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Saints. They are the glue that is holding everything together. They are there in spite of the priests and Bishops, not because of them.
Robert
5 months ago
The time to be heard is now. I humbly suggest scheduling a meeting with your pastor and or deacons. One meeting will not change a parish. 50 meetings(brought by 50 different people) can change a parish. One parish cannot change a diocese. 25 parishes can change a diocese. One diocese cannot change a nation. 75 diocese can change a nation.

It must start with us. It must start with you and with me.

Spread the word and spread it with Love. Spread the word with the message of making our Church better. Pope Benedict is calling us to be warrior for Christ.
Tom McGuire
5 months ago
The new culture will not be Western; the new culture must be based on a dialogue with Catholics and people of other churches and other religions from around the world. The Catholic Church is a world Church and must reflect that reality. What if all people faithful to a given religion or faith were to find a project that all could agree on and worked together to accomplish a goal? That might be a more effective way than to insist the Catholic way is the way for all. Such insistence is perceived as arrogance on the part of those who do not agree with the Catholic way. A return to the humility of Christ, to proclaim salvation in stories, to live as the Gospel values will appeal to people who then will be more willing to cooperate in building new culture or as the Pope's have called it a "civilization of love".
cj
5 months ago
this is pretty much right on brother. Well written and thanks for sharing.
mike robertson
5 months ago
Part of our battle against a culture so hostile to the Church is to point out members of the Church who enable the hostility. Catholic democrats voted for a candidate who continues his immoral, unprovoked and unjust war against the Church. Our crime is obeying Our Lord. The Catholic democrats' candidate threatens closure of our institutions and prison because, like Martin Luther King Jr, we are placing more importance on God's laws than on the immoral law of a man. This should not surprise us because the Catholic democrats' candidate refused to thank God on Thanksgiving Day. Does such a person thinks he is to be thanked more than God? The Catholic democrats' candidate has low regard for innocent human life made in God's image. He believes it should be legal to kill girls and boys who survive the attempt to kill them outside of their mom's womb even after they survive the attempt to kill them in the womb. Yes, a political solution is not the ultimate solution. It is part of the solution. Christians need to bring our light to the world's darkness in all spheres of life, including politics. We do not wait until all hearts are changed before we make just laws. Did we wait until no one supported Jim Crow before we changed the unjust laws? The problem is when you have members of the Church fighting for the side which is so hostile to the Church. We need to bring light to too many in the Church who have apparently not seen the light.
jh
5 months ago
All clearly written, Deacon, and inspiring. Living the Christian faith is always a challenge because there is nothing more worthwhile. God loves us, Our Lord Jesus Christ died for us. It takes great humility to surrender to these captivating truths. And how we must pray for this virtue!

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