Catholic Counter-Revolution and the Counter-Revolutionary Mind

Sacred Heart of the Vendee
Sacred Heart patch of the Vendée Counter-Revolution. The French motto ‘Dieu Le Roi’ means ‘God the King’ or ‘God [and] the King’. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Life, as John Lennon once memorably sang, ‘is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans’.

So it has been with my weblog. Back in February, I announced two things – that my publisher intended to bring out my long-delayed book later this year and that I would be reinvigorating this weblog.

I am glad to say things still appear on course for the first. However, I have stumbled badly with the second.

Because life happened to me, disrupting my plans, in a beautiful, unforgettable way.

An inspiration ran away with me like a wild horse – and the only way to ride that horse was to stop writing for this site and put my responses and correspondence on hold.

But, as a result, I have – in barely over two months – written a second (admittedly short) book!

Personally, it is extraordinary for me. The first book took six years. The second took around ten weeks.

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Gentle Traditionalist

Whilst I cannot express my gratitude to God for this burst of inspiration, I am sorry for misleading readers and delaying responses. To produce this second manuscript, I had to shut everything else I could in my life down –  focussing entirely on the manuscript.

But I now plan – barring life erupting again – to resume work on this website with zeal.

Today, however, I will only say a little of my second manuscript. Unsurprisingly, the manuscript concerns the major themes of this site: Catholic tradition and the threat to that tradition from secularism, the New Age movement, globalisation and more.

It’s a small Catholic Counter-Revolutionary work – with a particular emphasis on Ireland as a microcosm of the changes in the wider world.

Yet, surprisingly – to me at least! – the new book is, in large measure, fiction. (It is surprising because I never imagined myself writing fiction!)

Still, the fiction is really about ideas. Indeed, it is quite simplistic fiction.

I find myself thinking of The Da Vinci Code, which is poor fiction. Subtle as a brick with cardboard characters, The Da Vinci Code simply functions as a device to propagate Dan Brown’s masonic revolutionary ideology.

Readers may think my new manuscript is the same in reverse. Likewise subtle as a brick—but with a Catholic Counter-Revolutionary agenda instead.

(I should add that the book is not a thriller like Brown’s, but a dialogue of ideas framed in a whimsical romance involving Catholic, liberal and New Age characters.)

I will not say much more now – but only offer a very brief fragment.

Here, the liberal protagonist – writing in the first person – encounters a man called GT.

GT has a Counter-Revolutionary mind, not unlike my own. But our liberal protagonist knows nothing of the Counter Revolutionary mind and this small passage unfolds – in simple broad strokes – his growing understanding of GT’s Catholic traditionalist perspective.

It also reveals  – again in broad strokes – much that I will be concerned with as, God willing, I resume work on this website.

Anyway, here it is. A little taste of things to come … (The references to 1789 are, of course, to the French Revolution.)

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All sorts of things started falling into place now [including] a Cambridge lecture I once attended about Max Weber and his book The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. I recalled, too, what GT said earlier about the Enlightenment or ‘Age of Reason’ leading to the French Revolution.

A timeline began taking shape in my mind. [GT’s] version of history at least …

According to [his] version, things started going wrong in 1517 with Luther and the Reformation. Then, Henry VIII took over the English church, forcibly converting people to the new religion. Europe separated into two spheres – a northern Protestant one and a southern Catholic one.

I was beginning to see that, for GT, this fact had led to very crucial distinctions, not just in religion, but every aspect of culture.

Two very different psychologies emerged between nations that remained faithful to the older Catholic tradition and those that didn’t – indeed which actively protested against that tradition. And the new Protestant sphere went on protesting, went on innovating, went on dismantling tradition. This had led to secularism much more rapidly in the northern Protestant world than the Catholic one.

The northern sphere, particularly England, had also pioneered capitalism. That’s what GT meant by capitalist bourgeoisie replacing medieval rulers. And, obviously for him, it was all connected to the secularising revolutions. ‘1789 and all that’. The cultural revolution of ‘1968’ only built on every revolution that preceded it.

Of course, 1789 had happened in Catholic France, not Protestant Europe! That would seem to throw GT’s theories.

But, as we continued talking, I realised that – for GT at any rate – this exception only proved the rule. Violent revolution didn’t tend to happen in Protestant countries, precisely because those countries already underwent the original Protestant revolution – jettisoning tradition. Those countries secularised rapidly, indeed almost effortlessly.

By contrast, secularism didn’t take hold in Catholic countries without revolutionary violence. And France, like other Catholic countries, experienced not only revolution, but also reaction to revolution. In France, Catholics resisted the revolution to protect Christian tradition. They even went to war against the revolution!

Later in our conversation, GT called this resistance ‘Counter-Revolution’.  But Counter-Revolution never really featured in the Protestant countries. Generally speaking, they didn’t suffer revolutions the same way Catholic countries did.

In GT’s view, they all-too-easily accommodated themselves to secularism.

As I say, all this points to where this weblog will be going in the future.

If the idea of Counter-Revolution is new to you, dear Lector, you may wish to read this earlier post: What is a Counter-Revolution? There is also a little blog here about my pilgrimage to the Vendée in France – home of the Counter-Revolution to the French Revolution

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13 responses to “Catholic Counter-Revolution and the Counter-Revolutionary Mind”

  1. Hans Georg Lundahl Avatar
    Hans Georg Lundahl

    I used to write fiction easier a while ago, but I got difficulties (mostly sleep privations, some other things like secuerity harrassment contributed too) last year and haven’t been able to get on.

    Would you like to do speculative fiction, Dan Brown type research in history but a more intelligent theme?

    How about Thorr being father or grandfather of Sts James and John?

    Odin abused his paternal authority in kabbalh to draft his son into fake goodhood for a while in Uppsala, BUT Thorr escapes, if not earlier at least when Odin finally dies, and … well, I am torn between his staying in Sweden and dying making his peace with God OR his returning to Palestine, lake Genesareth, as Zebedee.

    Mark 3:17
    And James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and he named them Boanerges, which is, The sons of thunder:

    And Boanerges does not translate linguistically as “sons” of thunder, so I suppose it is an explanation rather than a translation.

    17καὶ Ἰάκωβον τὸν τοῦ Ζεβεδαίου καὶ Ἰωάννην τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ Ἰακώβου καὶ ἐπέθηκεν αὐτοῖς ὀνόμα [τα] Βοανηργές, ὅ ἐστιν υἱοὶ βροντῆς·

    Perhaps it’s my poor Greek, but the Greek text also looks as if it were sth other than a translation of the word.

  2. Hans Georg Lundahl Avatar
    Hans Georg Lundahl

    (I should add that the book is not a thriller like Brown’s, but a dialogue of ideas framed in a whimsical romance involving Catholic, liberal and New Age characters.)

    Now, THAT sounds like the non-Father-Brown novels by GKC!

    Manalive! anyone?

    1. roger Avatar

      Hans-Georg, my belated, but warm thanks for all your responses. From these and from looking at your blog, you appear erudite about much that I have yet to learn of. I imagine I am quite new to fields you have been stomping through for many years before – indeed there are some I have not even touched – with the result that what you write is – alas! – sometimes cryptic for me.

      I have not even read Chesterton’s fiction, Father Brown or otherwise. I hardly read fiction at all which is why I never thought I’d write it! Anyway, I am intrigued by your suggestion and must check out GKC’s non-mystery fiction at some point.

      My new book is really more ideas than fiction, anyway. The fiction is just a device for a dialogue. I will just add here that I have now heard my publisher does want to publish this so-unexpected second book. Announcing this here for the first time …

      1. HGL Avatar

        Here is a link to Chesterton’s works on the web, much of the fiction (both Father Brown and other) are dialogues:

        Best of luck!

        1. roger Avatar

          HGL – very, very belated thanks (egad – nearly 2 months!) for this link. I have still not managed to read these – being now immersed in writing 3rd book (see my latest blog) – but I am grateful to know of this. So far, I have found Belloc the far more compelling half of the Chesterbelloc – but perhaps these will open my possibly blinkered eyes

          1. Hans Georg Lundahl Avatar

            Belloc is the more thorough historian, but when it comes to writing humourous novels and short stories, Chesterton is better.

  3. Clay Masterson Avatar
    Clay Masterson

    Dear Roger;
    Let me first begin by stating I love my beloved Catholic Church and am equally dismayed at the state of modern society and the rapid decline of the Catholic Church. I truly love the Church and I attend Mass a minimum of 5 times weekly, pray the Rosary daily, and read devotional and other Catholic literature all the time. My love for the Church however does not blind me to its abuses, nor does it allow me to excuse them. Protestantism which led to Secularism did not just spontaenously arise in a vacuum, they arose in direct response to the abject debasement and immorality of the Catholic Church. The blame lies squarely at the feet of the Church and the Church has no one to blame but itself. The Cathlic Church is organized according to the Divine Hierarchy, but unlike the Divine Hierarchy which the Church is supposed to emulate, where the superior is the servant of the inferior, the Church turned this Divine hierarchy into a Satanic Hierarchy and the inferior became the servant of the superior. In the Divine Hierarchy the head is the servant of the entire church, the Bishop the servant of an entire diocesee, and the priest the servant of his congregation, this is how the Church should have functioned, in imitation of the Divine Heirarchy. The Church however began to think of itself as the rulers of the world rather than the servants of the world and fell into abject and total corruption and we are still seeing this attitude in the Catholic Heirarchy where Bishops live in multi-million dollar homes like royal princes while their congregations starve. We see the Priest and Bishops complain about the evils of birth control while millions of children are starving on the streets and forced into child prostitution while Bishops indulge their every sensual desire, driving Mercedes and living like kings. The most recent horrendous example of this is the “Legion of Christ” founder Marcial Marciel who was treated like a prince by the Vatican despite his well know molestation of children simply because he brought money to the Vatican. Marciel was Satan’s very own servant and he was allowed to remain in a position of power and influence despite numerous complaints about his activity and allowed to continue molesting children. Why was he allowed to retire to an a tropical home and not punished directly? Until the Vatican and the Church cleans house and realizes who it serves, secularization and athiesm will continue to spread unchecked. It is not the fault of the secular world that the Catholic Church has behaved in such a disgusting manner, in fact it just gives secularist more and more ammunition to use against my beloved Church.

    Sincerely,
    Clay.

    1. roger Avatar

      Clay, there is much I could say to your anguished words – an anguish which I know has its ultimate source in the heart. However, it is much more than I can easily put in a comments box now.

      I agree with some of what you write – but would prefer the word “fallen” to Satanic. The hierarchy of the Church has been, is and will always be fallen – just like every hierarchy in this world is. Whether religious – Jewish, Islamic etc – or political: British Empire, Roman Empire, American Empire etc.

      The fact that the Catholic hierarchy has been such a vast thing for 2000 years now means that there are many, many instances where that fallenness has been monstrous – though I do not believe that St. John Paul II as the apex of the hierarchy in the time of Marciel knew of the terrible things which you identify.

      Personally, today I am more concerned about the abusive power and evil I see in the largely invisible Secular hierarchy than I am the Catholic hierarchy – which is not to deny that abusive power and evil do not exist in the Catholic hierarchy either.

      Is the Secular hierarchy satanic? Again I prefer the word “fallen” for all these powerful hierarchies, however evil some of their representatives may be …

      Rather than say much more now, I want to point you to my next blog which will be called “The Secular Supposition of Original Innocence”. It says more than I can easily say here to your burning, heartfelt concerns.

      (That blog should appear next week – after an upcoming one from my wife Kim has been published first.)

    2. HGL Avatar

      ” Protestantism which led to Secularism did not just spontaenously arise in a vacuum, they arose in direct response to the abject debasement and immorality of the Catholic Church.”

      False.

      The immorality in the main was on part of populations chosing Protestantism.

      The Mecenate of all German reformers, Ulrich von Hutten, was a syphilitic man.

      All major lands where Reformation was rampant were neglecting alms giving and regulating the freedoms of beggars away.

      France did it once and had the Hundred Years War after that. Then Paris did it and the Religious Wars came. Then Louis XIV did it and the Revolution came.

      England and Sweden were antibegging the century before Reformation.

      1. roger Avatar

        HGL – thank you at long last for contributing these aspects to the above. So many complexities here, which I hardly knew how to say to Clay. I am grateful for your reading and jumping in …

  4. Juan Senko Avatar
    Juan Senko

    Dear Roger,
    It’s good to know you are okay. I’m happy that your book is finally to come out. Isn’t it weird how inspiration from above works? I hope you also find a publisher for your new book.

    Blessings in Christ and Mary

    1. roger Avatar

      Juan, thank you so much! Good to know you are still here … after I let this blog slide for so long.

      As for my book, the same American publisher means to publish it. I hope to be able to give more details about both books soon …

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