On the Fate of Europe and the Church

If Europe comes to an end, the church must take much responsibility for this:

That Europe is in a real bad way few would dispute. Once the home of Christendom and western civilization, it is now largely a cesspool of secularism, Islamism, hedonism, and narcissism. Decadence, debauchery, materialism and  misotheism seem to reign.

Several questions arise here: How long can Europe last? And to what extent does the European church take responsibility for this sad reversal of fortune? Yes, there has been a long-standing war against faith, going back at least to the French Revolution.

But so much of the damage has been self-inflicted. Far too many churches and Christians in Europe have happily been committing hari kari – ritualistic suicide. The church has become its own worst enemy. Examples of this are legion, with one of the latest and most spectacular examples being the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. As Christian Concern in the UK said about this when it was announced earlier this month:

Bishop of London Sarah Mullally was announced this morning as the Church of England’s (CofE) new Archbishop of Canterbury. She will become the first ever female Archbishop in the CofE, which will itself lead to criticisms from many conservative and traditional Christians in England and around the world. She has called the Holy Spirit ‘she’ and voted in favour of blessings for same-sex relationships, calling it “a moment of hope for the Church”. She has described herself as pro-choice on abortion.

Yep, another own-goal, to use soccer terminology. And then soon after this madness, we had the homosexual dean of the Canterbury Cathedral graffiti the ancient building’s interior with woke and leftist nonsense in support of “marginalized communities” and the like.

Forget all the secular humanists, atheists, anarchists, revolutionaries, and communists – Christians seem intent on rapidly bringing about their own self-immolation. At this rate, there will be little left of the Christian church in Europe in the near future.

Thankfully not everyone is just putting up with this madness. In a new and lengthy piece, Rod Dreher speaks of the “Role of Church Elites in Europe’s Suicide” and how “Christians Cannot Afford to Trust Ecclesial Leaders to Defend the Faith”.

He starts by referring to a speech recently given by Thibault de Montbrial, a top French law professor. Writes Dreher:

He explained that Islamists have managed to infiltrate both public and private institutions all over Europe, and are using it to their advantage. How did all this happen? De Montbrial, a practicing Catholic, said that the core of the problem is cultural — namely, that France (and Europe) has lost all sense of who and what it is. It has forgotten its past, and any sense of connection to it, and has lost its identity. (This is what Renaud Camus calls “The Great Deculturation”). How do you expect young people to resist people (Muslims) who are hostile to Western civilization, and who have a strong culture, if you have produced a generation, or generations, of people who have no culture? He said that in France, Muslim activists are even succeeding in winning over the hearts and minds of no small number of native-born French, by telling them, basically: “Look around you at what a nihilistic, pornified disaster modern Europe has become. Is that really what you want? Convert, join the ummah, and gain a story. Become part of the glorious march through history of the sons and daughters of the Prophet.”

Dreher also looks at the recent suicide attempts conducted by the Anglicans, including the graffiti incident:

The artist commissioned by the gay cathedral dean to do this, Alex Vellis, describes himself as a “they/them queer vegan.” I personally know several rock-solid vicars in the C of E, but it’s hard to see that that ecclesial body has any kind of future with a leadership class that permits and celebrates desecration like this. Who can respect it, if it doesn’t even respect itself?

 

But don’t be quick to assume that something like this could never happen in a Catholic cathedral. Remember that Pope Francis allowed the pagan Pachamama statue to be paraded through St. Peter’s a few years back. And the venerable St. Stephen’s cathedral in Vienna has been the site of similar blasphemies over the past few years.

 

It’s what you get when you have a church leadership that has been formed by feminine attitudes of “compassion” and “welcome,” without being balanced by masculine virtues. To be clear, Christianity needs both the gifts that men and women bring. An overly masculinized church would have its own set of problems. But in the West, church leadership, both Catholic and Protestant, has become badly unbalanced towards the feminine. This, I told Ivan, is why in the US, young men are flocking to the Orthodox church, but also to particular Catholic and Protestant parishes where they feel that they don’t have to be made to be ashamed of being men with natural masculine virtues that need to be suppressed, as opposed to developed and put in service of the holy.

 

The feminization of Western Christianity is leading to its suicide in Europe….

He concludes his piece with these words:

This is where we are in Europe. This Sunday morning, I am thinking about what the speaker Thibault de Montbrial said in his speech: that mass violence is coming, and Europeans had better prepare themselves for it now. Again, de Montbrial is not some fringe wingnut, but a major figure in the French national security establishment.

 

American readers, you will not learn about this stuff from US media, or if you do, it will be only to dismiss it as paranoid far-right propaganda. Trust me, it’s not. Living over here these past four years has taught me how badly informed — and intentionally misinformed, I would venture to say — Americans are about what’s really going on in Europe. Well, guess what: many Europeans feel the same way about their own media, which are determined to control the Narrative by demonizing anyone who objects to it, and often ignoring actual things going on in the real world that contradict what they would prefer to believe.

 

I saw the same thing two decades ago working in American journalism: editors and reporters preferred to stay silent on two particular issues that caught my attention — Islamic radicalization and the role that homosexual networks in the Catholic priesthood played in the abuse scandal — because it was more important to them not to give aid and comfort to what right-wing people believed than it was to report on the world as it actually is, and let people make up their own minds. https://roddreher.substack.com/p/role-of-church-elites-in-europes

To speak of the demise of the church in the West is not of course to say that the church will cease to exist. There will always be a church – a remnant of true believers who do not compromise and who do not go with the worldly flow. Sure, these real deal believers will experience much more opposition and persecution, but all that is the stuff that Jesus forewarned us about.

As he said: “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

And again: “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Matthew 16:18

Or as G. K. Chesterton put it: “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”

And again: “At least five times the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.”

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