Posted on 12/20/2012 6:48:09 AM PST by marshmallow
There is only one Thomas More: A man of tender nobility, subtle intellect, and forceful conviction, all rooted in profound fidelity to the larger commonwealth of Christendom outside and above Tudor England.
A day after the 2012 Summer Olympics closed in London, Joseph Pearce wrote that he felt like his “body had been covered in slime. I also felt a great sense of gratitude that I had shaken the smut and dirt from my sandals and had left the sordid culture of which I was once a part.”
Given the grand sweep of British history, those are harsh words from a former Londoner. An English Catholic convert and author, Pearce is now a resident Fellow at Thomas More College in New Hampshire. But he merely said what many people thought: that the Olympic closing ceremony they watched on global television was one long liturgy of overripe vulgarity, a jamboree of cheesy and offensive pop culture. In effect, it showcased a nation grasping to reinvent itself by escaping back to adolescence while ignoring its own real past.
This shouldn’t surprise us. Europe’s work of reinvention, or self-delusion, has been going on for decades, not only in Britain but across the continent. One of the key obstacles to the process is the depth of Europe’s Christian roots. As recent popes and many others have pointed out, there really is no “Europe” without its historic Christian grounding. Anyone wanting a new Britain, or a new Europe, needs to get rid of the old one first. So diminishing Christianity and its influence becomes a priority. And that includes rewriting the narrative on many of Christianity’s achievements and heroes.
By way of evidence: Consider the case of Thomas More, lawyer, humanist, statesman and saint; martyred by England’s King Henry VIII in 1535; canonized in 1935.....
(Excerpt) Read more at thepublicdiscourse.com ...
He was a great man who perished in vain.
Sir Thomas More set high the bar of Christian integrity. Few men today will match his courage when the time comes to choose between Caesar and God.
Perished in vain? Whether you or I hold to the full range of More’s personal beliefs his death was as much a testimony to his convictions about the Rule of Law over the whim of kings.
This whole, brief article is worth the read. Christianity is very much under attack, from Islam, secularists, atheists, and Democratics. The Alinsky protocols on destroying an opponent through marginalization and ridicule have proven too slow in destroying Christianity.
The Democrats/communists of the world must now defund, devalue, and economically gut any and all Christian institutions.
But he failed—England left (thank God) the RCC and he was the “prophet” not without honor save in his own country” as the saying goes—and if he had not been martyred Catholicism may have stayed in England and America today would have started out a maladroit proto basket republic like so many other colonies established by the RCC.
Happily, the faithful remnant are returning to Catholicism.
"Evangelical reformation" is not working out so well for merry England.........
England has abandoned Christianity, period. We're eagerly trying to follow them.
Nevertheless, amongst the faithful remnant, Catholicism is now the largest Christian religion in England as measured by Sunday church attendance. I hear Islam is doing rather well, also.
The RCC just wasn't so great at colonizing.
"Worked"? I assume you're talking economically not spiritually. Spiritually, we're completely adrift on a sea of individualism and subjectivism.
America's economic rise has indeed been spectacular and unless something changes rather quickly, its demise will follow a similar trajectory. Two hundred plus years is a mere blip, in historical terms and no cause for empty boasting. The next chapter in the American story has yet to be written and it won't be pretty.
Any sort of major economic collapse in this country (and we caught a brief glimpse through that window in 2008) could transform urban areas into larger versions of New Orleans, post-Katrina, if and when government checks are no longer in the mail and anarchy becomes widespread.
Under such circumstances, our primitive "Catholic" neighbors at whom we currently scoff, such as Mexico, Honduras or Costa Rica, might suddenly start to appear rather peaceful and attractive.
I have a little bet with myself that these "third world hell holes" (to use Freeper-speak) will actually outlast the "world's only remaining super-power".
Actually, a lot of the blame is on the former colonies emulating the secular French Revolution in the 19th century, just as much of Europe did. They followed along with the socialist and communist mutations in the 20th and 21st centuries.
You might be onto something. The less-developed parts of the world are already suffering, so a worldwide economic crash would not affect them the way it would affect the self-styled "First World."
So you submit that if the French had held fast to Catholicism the socialist evolution of the New World would have been prevented or at least slowed?
Granted, Napoleon had a hold on the European nations with colonies accross the earth,yet did he really promulgate the ideals of the Revolution he pretty much usurped?
He was, like Obama, a tyrant first and an ideologue second.
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