A number of short excerpts from Belloc's "Seven Great Heresies" are given in an Amazon review. The reviewer is antagonistic to the Catholic Church, but the excerpts expose the general flaws in the modern West (the book was written in 1938.) It is not surprising that Hoffer agrees with Belloc (see below post on Hoffer); what is surprising is that Belloc's clear vision and concerns about 'modernity' have only recently become a serious national issue by, of all things, the rise of Trumpian Populism.
[In the following, Belloc's words are italicized and in color; the reviewer's are not.]
“Human
society cannot carry on without some creed, because a code and a
character are the product of a creed. In point of fact though
individuals, especially those who have led sheltered lives, can often
carry on with a minimum of certitude or habit upon transcendental
things, an organic human mass cannot so carry on.’’...
... “Unfortunately,
in the modern world the habit of such a definition has been lost; the
word “heresy” having come to connote something odd and old-fashioned, is
no longer applied to cases which are clearly cases of heresy and ought
to be treated as such.’’
This
religio/theological foundation is foreign, even unrecognizable to the
modern ear. However, modernity has belief, opinion, passions, that are
just as controlling as the old religious ones. That enables Belloc’s
insights to resonate.
...“For
instance, there is abroad today a denial of what theologians call
“dominion”—that is the right to own property. It is widely affirmed that
laws permitting the private ownership of land and capital are immoral;
that the soil of all goods which are productive should be communal and
that any system leaving their control to individuals or families is
wrong and therefore to be attacked and destroyed. That doctrine, already
very strong among us and increasing in strength and the number of its
adherents, we do not call a heresy. We think of it only as a political
or economic system, and when we speak of Communism our vocabulary does
not suggest anything theological. But this is only because we have
forgotten what the word theological means. Communism is as much a heresy
as Manichaeism.’’...
“It
is the taking away from the moral scheme by which we have lived of a
particular part, the denial of that part and the attempt to replace it
by an innovation. The Communist retains much of the Christian
scheme—human equality, the right to live, and so forth—he denies a part
of it only.’’
As to the first assertion, 'without a creed,' see also Elon Musk w/Tucker. Same assertion.
Belloc also had an acute perception about the Church's problems, although for some reason he did not mention Pp. St Pius X's term "Modernism."
“Equally,
is it a heresy, a “change by exception,” to affirm that nothing can be
known upon divine things, that all is mere opinion and that therefore
things made certain by the evidence of the senses and by experiment
should be our only guides in arranging human affairs. Those who think
thus may and commonly do retain much of Christian morals, but because
they deny certitude from Authority, which doctrine is a part of
Christian epistemology, they are heretical. It is not heresy to say that
reality can be reached by experiment, by sensual perception and by
deduction. It is heresy to say that reality can be attained from no
other source.’’
This loss of authority has thrown modernity into the stormy sea of uncertainty. There is no ‘rock’ to stand on.
“We
are living today under a regime of heresy with only this to distinguish
it from the older periods of heresy, that the heretical spirit has
become generalized and appears in various forms. It will be seen that I
have, in the following pages, talked of “the modern attack” because some
name must be given to a thing before one can discuss it at all, but the
tide which threatens to overwhelm us is so diffuse that each must give
it his own name; it has no common name as yet. Perhaps that will come,
but not until the conflict between that modern anti-Christian spirit and
the permanent tradition of the Faith becomes acute through persecution
and the triumph or defeat thereof. It will then perhaps be called
anti-Christ.’’
Moving on.....
...“I
say again, the Modern Attack on the Faith will have in the moral field a
thousand evil fruits, and of these many are apparent today, but the
characteristic one, the one presumably the most permanent, is the
institution everywhere of cruelty accompanied by a contempt for
justice.’’...
Remember what Hoffer said in the (linked only) interview? (Begin at 3:20 or so.) "The institution of cruelty .........a contempt for justice." What Hoffer says is congruent with Belloc's claim.
“The
last category of fruits by which we may judge the character of the
Modern Attack consists in the fruit it bears in the field of the
intelligence—what it does to human reason. When the Modern Attack was
gathering, a couple of lifetimes ago, while it was still confined to a
small number of academic men, the first assault upon reason began.’’
“Today
reason is everywhere decried. The ancient process of conviction by
argument and proof is replaced by reiterated affirmation; and almost all
the terms which were the glory of reason carry with them now an
atmosphere of contempt. See what has happened for instance to the word
“logic,” to the word “controversy”; note such popular phrases as “No one
yet was ever convinced by argument,” or again, “Anything may be
proved,” or “That may be all right in logic, but in practice it is very
different.” The speech of men is becoming saturated with expressions
which everywhere connote contempt for the use of the intelligence.’’...
The Obama-Biden-Harris campaigns are THE exemplars of 'contempt for the use of' logic, reason, and intelligence.
There's a reason for the rhetoric of those campaigns, which happens to coincide with the Communist heresy--the Totalitarian praxis:
“There
is no God. So the words “God is Truth” which the mind of Christian
Europe used as a postulate in all it did, cease to have meaning. None
can analyze the rightful authority of government nor set bounds to it.
In the absence of reason, political authority reposing on mere force is
boundless. And reason is thus made a victim because Humanity itself is
what the Modern Attack is destroying in its false religion of humanity.
Reason being the crown of man and at the same time his distinguishing
mark, the Anarchs march against reason as their principle enemy.’’...
See also a critique of the Frankfort School:
... the Frankfurt School believed that as
long as an individual had the belief – or even the hope of belief – that
his divine gift of reason could solve the problems facing society, then
that society would never reach the state of hopelessness and alienation
that they considered necessary to provoke socialist revolution. Their
task, therefore, was as swiftly as possible to undermine the
Judaeo-Christian legacy....
For the last 20-30 years, there have been signs of another "Great Revival" in this country. The policies and rhetoric of Trump are contributing to the rise of that revival--and as Belloc intimates, that "revival-populism" scares the bejabbers out of The Blob/Deep State.
Democrats attack "Christian nationalism" (whatever that is), but it's the "Christian" part they most fear and must eradicate; to them, it's the silver crucifix, as it is to the Mammon-ites in the (R) party and the power-mad intellectuals of the Deep State. Think otherwise? Then why the (D) attack on free speech?
Trump is just in the way.
