Belloc actually handles that thesis quite handily in his book http://books.google.com/books?id=5ryGAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA21&lpg=PA21&dq=belloc+on+the+roman+church&source=bl&ots=rCbzs8Z0_v&sig=8np-hr2MoW49X_gX5lyyCxcQgWU&hl=en&ei=rUCiTcivE-H30gGJo6ifDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false
The thesis that spiritual and moral generation or exhaustion is what spells the end of civilizations isn’t a new one. It’s very persuasive, and you can see that more than a few influential people believed in it with regard to the Roman State.
What I’m suggesting is that the calamities which followed on the heels of the extreme moral exhaustion of the Roman Empire, which wasn’t entirely Christian at the time you speak, maybe about half, came as a result of the moral decay which negatively effected the fertility of the women and the desire to form families. You can see from contemporaries in the quotes that Sheen is making that the family is under attack and the generality of the population is mercilessly immoral.
I’m actually surprised to see this much resistance to the idea here of all places. After all, this IS a socially conservative site. We do believe, like Richard Nixon, that the State will suffer correspondingly if the people are not moral, and all around us we see these influences destroying the coherence of American Society, not only on an intellectual plane, without which there can be no right actions, but in every aspect of society from folk culture down to the elites themselves who regard those of us who hail morality with contempt, even if they agree with us publicly.
I think these people are naive. Ultimately, a civilization's continued existence depends on its martial virtue (in the sense of potency). Plenty of very pious Christians have been erased from this world, including many in what is now Turkey, most of the Middle East and North Africa. In reality, religious faith is no substitute for military preparedness. What is surprising is that Christendom has survived two rounds of intra-religious genocidal-scale wars - WWI and WWII - without being threatened by Islam. It's symptomatic of just how relatively weak Islam is, from a military standpoint.
Don’t be surprised. We are not drones like those on the Left. We on the Conservative side, like you and I, think for ourselves. We do not need to follow the party line. This site would be pretty boring if we all agreed with each other, and just posted ditto. Been many a time I posted, someone disagreed, and I saw the error in my argument and changed my opinion. Its a great site for Conservative of all stripes to hash out their arguments.
I don’t think the resistance is to the subject, per se...it’s resistance to the 6 tracking sites and 37 cookies dumped onto our machines by your blog.
Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have go run my spyware/malware programs after checking it out.