Scandalized Old Ruins, Girard, and Hope

Walsingham Abbey ruins

Receiving a comment from an old misinterpreter of Girard's mimetic theory -- one of many I have chanced upon with learned backgrounds but idiosyncratic axes to grind -- it reminds me that the deposit of faith, like our human nature itself, is not something to be toyed with or changed at our whims, fancies, or mimetically aroused disordered passions. Please note well: I do not say this from a standpoint of morals, although that is nothing to sniff at; rather I say it from the viewpoint of mimetic theory itself and the sacrificial preparation in which the West finds itself as a culture in decline.

While Girard's theoretical observations and inferences are in desperate need to find a larger audience, sources close to him have assured me that he would be the first to bow to the truth claims of the magisterial claims of the Catholic Church in terms of faith, morals, theology, and, therefore, anthropology.

Those who desire to rearrange, for example, the genders either in terms of marriage and family, on the one hand, or in terms of the priesthood, on the other hand, show a distinct predilection for an alchemical Gnostic coloration and hubris. I.e., "we can do any damned thing we want. Why? Because we can imagine it, that's why! If you stand in our way of making this change, you are an enemy of "social justice" and "God's will" and, thus, you are a certified target for our "righteous" attacks.

Such persons do not, indeed, cannot see that they are themselves part of the resurgence of the primitive Sacred against the Christian faith in general and the Catholic Church in particular. It feels SO righteous, SO certain, that they cannot discern that their championing a victim of their imaginative vertigo is creating a new victim. Namely, they want to sacrifice, in the words of Girard, "the only direction where meaning could still be found" -- the Magisterium.

If anyone wants some guidance from Scripture regarding what Our Lord considered true victims needing our attention and love, I would advise the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats [Mtt 25, 31-46], not the ruse that because the Church teaches that men alone are qualified for the priesthood women whose noses which get out of shape trying to abjure this are true "victims".

Fortunately, or, more accurately, providentially, the Church will not be facing any catastrophic calamity that such persons would, seemingly, like to rain down upon Her. It is passing strange that such seething ressentiment in their hearts (the likes of which Girard describes so well) does not set off some alarm bell of self understanding: "Hmm. Why I am the one in a state of mimetic scandal! Maybe my puny understanding could gain something from the Church's greater epistemological, ontological, and anthropological understanding!"

The Church is experiencing a "new springtime" in a newer, youthful generation; a generation less inclined to pick apart the Catholic Church and more inclined to be grateful for a place of certainty, faith, hope, and charity. And it is high time.