Without Vision, the People Perish

Father Aidan Nichols is right. Europe and the West need a revitalized imaginative vision. The sole vision that is strong and vital is the transcendent vision of the Church. It is the present secular void into which western demographics and nihilism are falling. "Without vision the people perish" (Prov 29,18).

Islam, ironically, is a culture in doubling rivalry from its inception with the faith and ethos of Judaism, embodied in the state of Israel, and Christianity, embodied in the "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church." Both of the latter are emphatically still being rejected by secularist westerners.

Yet the Scimitar, being a post-Incarnational expression of what Girard calls the Sacred, anthropologically speaking, incessantly feeds on its rivalry with the Judeo-Christian, meager though Islam is theologically, intellectually, and psychologically.

If Christendom had its vision, there would be no contest with the Scimitar. But this is not the case. Many voices speak for renewal of vision. Father Aidan Nichols in his guide book, Christendom Awake!, apostolates within the Church, the Holy Father, of course, in his wooings of a shepherd to lost sheep, even J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings all implore this regaining of the Church's transcendent vision of Christian culture.

I repeat: there would be no contest between Christendom and the Scimitar if Christendom regained its vision of being a continuance of biblical salvation history; a furtherance of the in-breaking Kingdom of God empowered in the Incarnation, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of the Word made flesh (Jn 1,14), Jesus Christ. Islam could never overmaster with its thin religion and ethos.

I do not propose an attempt at nostalgic return to a romanticized past. Rather, I propose a rejection and ejection of all the enervating, hypocritical elements of western society that rob men and women, youth, and children of their - our - awareness of our God-given dignity, honor and birthrights.

Rejection? Ejection? Where? Who? In your life. In my life. Take personal responsibility. Make the sacrifices, expected and unexpected. BE an expression of the in-breaking Kingdom of God at your age, at your station in life.

It starts with you. It starts with me. Our honor in Marian chivalry comes with every single decision we make, every time we love and forgive, in every virtuous act of faith, hope, and charity.

Christendom must be acted into being, one fiefdom, one knight, at a time.

God bless and support us in this noble Quest to restore the vision of the Holy Spirit's grand experiment, the Church, in the hearts and lives of the West.