Fr. Z's Blog

At Crisis there is an interesting suggestion today that applies not just to the secular order but… you read it and tell me what you think… perhaps also to the ecclesial order.

The Meaning of Viktor Orbán by Declan Leary (associate editor of The American Conservative).

Leary opens with a thumbnail pairing account of the unsuccessful attempts by Bl. Karl of Austria to reclaim his throne of Hungary.

He goes on to describe the cultural and political scene in these USA, which is increasingly dominated by the Left, as it is in the Church. Any resistance to their socialism is met with hysteria, accusations of “racism” and “fascism”. In the Church, they throw a spittle-fleck nutty and accusations of “schism”.

Have a look at this:

Though our situation is perhaps a little less black-and-white, and there is disagreement on exactly when we turned our backs on the Christian social order that built the West (put me down for 1688!), it is hard to deny in 2021 that such a break occurred. We, too, find ourselves subject to a tyrannical ordering of the market that destroys the bonds of place. We, too, find ourselves subject to a domineering social philosophy that finds no room for the family in the future. We, too, face a gnostic fanaticism that hates history and truth as much as it hates us.

We should not overburden the comparison. Politics are particularistic. Our problems are not identical to Hungary’s; nor will our solutions be. Our revolution has been slower, more prolonged, and less dramatic than theirs; so, too, will our recovery be. But the general principle applies: the response to the destruction of the West is not to sit back and “let the market figure it out,” nor to reconcile ourselves to the pressures of secular, technological, and liberal modernity. What post-Christian societies need is a deliberate effort to restore social order, to reassert the prerogatives of Church and family in the face of hostile forces.

The writer goes on to make an interesting proposal, and this is what you might offer your thoughts about.

On the one hand, we can let it run its course. We can pay the price in deaths of despair, family destruction, deracination from place, the death of tradition, and a million other untold miseries. On the other, we can do something. We can do something. … You can fight fire with fire, or you can fight fire with water, but you cannot fight fire with sitting still and saying, “Well, now, I really think if you stopped to consider it, you’d realize that your unrelenting attempts to turn me to ash and smoke violate the implicit principles of the Declaration in these important ways…”

American conservatives have spent a century standing athwart history yelling Stop, and we’ve wound up with nothing but bootprints on our faces. It might be time to stand up, dust ourselves off, and finally realize that Blessed Charles had the right idea in marching to Budapest.

A “march to Budapest”.

BTW… Bl. Karl died young in 1922. He caught a cold, which developed into pneumonia. Let us pray to Bl. Karl for the miraculous healing of Card. Burke. He God hear his intercessory prayers and give Card. Burk a sudden, complete and lasting healing.