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.’’
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.’’...
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.
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