BOOK ALERT: Anthony Esolen – No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men

I am ready to read anything by Anthony Esolen, a writer who is both lyrical and whose head is firmly screwed on in the right direction.   For those of you who are Dante virgins or noobs, his e translation of the Divine Comedy is a good place to start.    His book Nostalgia explains a lot about tradition.  If there is a priest out there who does not yet own a copy of his superb breakdown and reflection on the Prologue of the Gospel in John (the Last Gospel of the TLM)… then… what is the world coming to?

To today’s offering.

Over the years I’ve posted on Esolen’s comments about the war on men and how liturgy has become effete, etc.   How to kill vocations?  Feminize them.  HERE Observations on boys and men and what women cannot give them HERE. Prelates of Sodom HERE. 50 Years of Effete and Infertile Liturgical Culture Is Enough HERE

Now we have.

No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men

US HERE – UK HERE

AMAZON PRIME DAY deals: US HERE

Esolen often grabs you from the first sentence or so. In Nostalgia, for example, he starts with Odysseus. In this new offering he begins with a dialogue from Milton between Adam and the Archangel Raphael.

From the Introduction:

I should not have to write these words. I do so because it is a crime against manhood and the truth that young men should never in their lives hear such a thing. I do not want to encourage pride, the sin. But a just self-esteem is not pride. And it is high time that men be reminded not only that they have powers as men, but also that those powers were given them to be used for the common good—for everyone, men and women and children all.

I suggest a thought reading and then get this book out and around.

Something must be done to reverse the trends in the Church.

I was thinking about this as I saw pictures from inside the hideous Paul VI audience hall where the “Walking Together about Walking Togetherity” is taking place. Some 35 large round tables where everyone can “spit in the bucket”. The slosh is then examined for its merits and the insights are passed along to the other buckets. Anyway, the point is that they are all facing each other. In other meetings, the bishops – it WAS a Synod of BISHOPS and it is no longer – sat side by side.

Men when they talk about important things or just spend time together tend to sit side by side. Women like to face each other. I am mindful that Card. Heenan when he saw the Novus Ordo celebrated versus populum remarked that men would not want to attend it. Of course some man or other will pipe up saying, “Hey! I like facing other men when we talk!” Sure you do pal. This isn’t a hard and fast rule. But I think it stands the test of common experience.

My point is that the very process of the “walking together” has been feminized. And since the whole point of the exercise now underway is the PROCESS… the process IS the content… the content will be effete.