infinity

Perhaps it's an effect of recent reading, but last night I had a dream which used to often come to me when I was a teenager. I haven't dreamed it in years since then.

In my dream, I'm trying to place the infinitely big next to the infinitely small. Usually this proves impossible to visualize and I wake up suddenly with a feeling of dread. My waking is like a thunderclap: I remember one time when it seemed like something had burst into my room with a loud shout. It was as if I'd been thrown out of the dream for daring to approach something too holy to gaze upon.

In last night's dream, however, I wasn't trying to put the infinitely small next to the infinitely large. Rather, I imagined it within the large, so that no matter how far I "zoomed" in or out, the smaller was always embraced by the large.

Just as there is no center on a line that extends to infinity, so there is no central, privileged or default "zoom level."

But you could also say that every point on the line is a center, and every "zoom level" is privileged.

On the intellectual life

Things I wish I'd been told when I was young:

In the first free years after early studies, when the ground of our intelligence has been newly turned-up, and the seed sown, what splendid tillage could be undertaken! That is the time that will never come again, the time that we shall have to live on by and by. What it is, we shall be; for we can hardly put down new roots. The future is always the heir of the past; the penalty for neglecting, at the right time, to prepare it, is to live on the surface of things. Let each one think of that, while thinking may be of some avail.

How many young people, with the pretension to become workers, miserably waste their days, their strength, the vigor of their intelligence, their ideal! Either they do not work -- there is time enough! -- or they work badly, capriciously, without knowing what they are nor where they want to go nor how to get there. Lectures, reading, choice of companions, the proper proportion of work and rest, of solitude and activity, of general culture and specialization, the spirit of study, the art of picking out and utilizing data gained, some provisional output which will give an idea of what the future work is to be, the virtues to be acquired and developed -- nothing of all that is thought out and no satisfactory fulfillment will follow.

What a difference, supposing equal resources, between the man who understands and looks ahead, and the man who proceeds at haphazard! "Genius is long patience," but it must be organized and intelligent patience. One does not need extraordinary gifts to carry some work through; average superiority suffices; the rest depends on energy and wise application of energy. It is as with a conscientious workman, careful and steady at his task: he gets somewhere, while an inventive genius is often merely an embittered failure.

-- A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods

Of course, I did hear this kind of advice when I was young, but I did not listen. Nor would I have known how to apply it, since I was too anxious to leap ahead to conclusions of my own, and too unwilling to accept an elder's guidance on what things I should work on, even if only provisionally. Thus I became an intellectual vagabond, and now I fear it's too late to become anything else...

On moral responsibility

Today I came across a reference to Harry Frankfurt's paper on what he called the Principle of Alternative Possibilities.

It raises some rather serious doubts about the idea that a person is only morally responsible for what he does if he could have done otherwise. That moral responsibility implies freedom. Or to put it in the way I often have, that no one should be blamed for doing something he was coerced to do.

I'm still reading the paper and probably haven't yet grasped the full point of his argument. But it's already occasioned a few thoughts:

- Even when I am being coerced, I still have the freedom to refuse. I can still be a martyr, and say with Gandhi that they can have my broken body but never my obedience. Usually it's my cowardice or my pragmatism that leads me to give in to the coercion. That, or a judgment that it isn't worth fighting over: in the grand scheme of things there are more important things to do. But surely I am responsible for my cowardice, my pragmatism, and my sense of the relative value of things?

- In my post about Oscar Wilde and the tragic sense of life, I remarked on the way we seem inexorably driven to our fates. "...it’s as if we were actors in a story written by someone else, and we had no choice except to play the part as it was written for us. We’re character studies in a Greek tragedy, brought inexorably to the final, sobering scenes by the quirks and flaws in our own nature. Even our best qualities seem to have worked to our undoing." And yet, don't we still believe, down deep, that none of this excuses us, that we are still responsible for being who we are?

- Frankfurt's paper was published in 1969, years before I studied philosophy as an undergraduate and long before I began my sojourn through libertarianism. This is the first I've heard of it, yet it is considered to be a seminal paper and one that has convinced many philosophers and libertarians that the Principle of Alternative Possibilities is false. This just goes to show that I am not familiar with the relevant literature, and therefore cannot claim to be an expert in these matters.

See this article for a discussion of the philosophical context of Frankfurt's paper.

Addendum: now that I've read the paper and the discussion of its context on the plato.stanford.edu site, I can say that it's mostly irrelevant to my own position --  which is better described by what, in another article,  the SEP calls an agent-causal theory.    I don't know if I would agree with everything any of the philosophers cited in that section have said about such theories, but I'm glad to add them to my already-overflowing reading list.

I should also add that I did miss Frankfurt's point at first. He is arguing in favor of the theory that free will is compatible with determinism. He is indeed rejecting the principle that moral responsibility implies the ability to do otherwise, but in doing so, he wants to suggest that the concept of moral responsibility has been incorrectly analyzed. The first SEP article linked above explores some of the ways others have followed up on that suggestion. I can't say I find any of their ideas appealing.

The modern project in a nutshell

As long as I'm quoting Rabbi Heschel, I should share my favorite of his sayings:

After having eaten the forbidden fruit, the Lord sent forth man from Paradise, to till the ground from which he was taken. But man, who is more subtle than any other creature that God has made, what did he do? He undertook to build a Paradise by his own might, and he is driving God from his Paradise.

Setting aside the somewhat awkward phrasing, isn't this the perfect summation of the chutzpah involved in the whole modern project?

"Oh yeah? Well, I'll show you!"

The Timeless Moment at Sinai

It turns out that the passage I was looking for is by Rabbi Heschel and in fact it is in the same essay from which I quoted a few days ago.

The decisive event in the spiritual history of our people was the act that occurred at Sinai. It had a twofold significance. One in opening up a new relationship of God to man, in engaging Him intimately to the people of Israel; and second in Israel's accepting that relationship, that engagement to God. It was an event in which both God and Israel were partners. God gave His word to the people, and the people gave its word of honor to God.

That word of honor was not given by one generation alone. All generations of Israel were present at Sinai. It was an event that happened at a particular time and also one that happened for all time. "Nor is it with you only that I make this sworn covenant, but with him who is not here with us this day as well as with him who stands here with us this day before the Lord our God." (Deuteronomy 29:13-14).

It was an act of transcending the present, history in reverse: thinking of the future in the present tense

-- Abraham Joshua Heschel, "The Moment at Sinai" (italics in the original, bold emphasis added)

Can it be said that all events involving God have this timeless quality, of occurring both at this particular time and yet also for all time?

Isn't that why and how the sacrament of marriage creates an unbreakable, lifelong bond, because it also "thinks the future in the present tense"?

When we first hold our newborn child, aren't we at one with every father who has ever experienced that bond of love, along with all those who ever will, each of us participating in the eternal idea of fatherhood?

God is eternal: how could anything involving Him not have this timeless quality?

Over at the orthosphere blog, there's been some discussion of the traditional doctrines of continuous or perpetual Creation.   It's because Creation is timeless that we can experience it in every waking moment, if only we take care to look.

CorkyAgain

When I was a boy, my father nicknamed me "Corky" and most of my extended family and friends called me that.

When I became a teenager, I decided the name was childish and let it be known that henceforward I was to be called by my given name.

So from then on I was known as "Charlie."

(Never "Chuck."  That was the name of that obnoxious kid from down the street.  "Charlie," on the other hand, was a name I shared with a grandfather and a great-grandfather.)

But after my divorce, I saw the need to review my life and to re-affirm some of the things I had been missing over the years.

Thus, Corky, again.

I also found some self-deprecating humor in using it as a screen name while commenting on other people's blogs.  I imagine readers coming across one of those comments and saying to themselves, "Oh no, not him again!"

The spirit of romanticism

A splendid description of one of the formative strands of liberal thought:

The romantic outlook condemns success as such as both vulgar and immoral; for it is built, as often as not, on a betrayal of one's ideals, on a contemptible arrangement with the enemy. A correspondingly high value is placed upon defiance for its own sake, idealism, sincerity, purity of motive, resistance in the face of all odds, noble failure, which are contrasted with realism, worldly wisdom, calculation, and their rewards—popularity, success, power, happiness, peace bought at morally too high a price. This is the doctrine of heroism and martyrdom, as against that of harmony and wisdom. It is inspiring, audacious, splendid, and sinister too.

-- Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity

h/t Michael Gilleland

Of course, the Romantic view sets up a false dichotomy. It is true that worldliness of the sort described is something to be opposed, but the heroic individualism of the Romantics is not the only alternative. There is also the idea of fealty to proper authority, of loyalty to kith and kin, of humility rather than self-assertion.

Kristor and Joseph at Arimathea have provided a perfect example of what I mean by language I can read and mostly understand, but am unable to speak except for a few awkward, halting sentences.

I intend no disrespect when I say this. I understand enough of what they're saying to know that it isn't just obfuscated gibberish and that something important is being discussed. I'm simply not competent to judge whether what it is being said is correct, or to articulate a meaningful, worthwhile response.

Nevertheless I find it pleasant reading.

Why I'm not voting for Ron Paul

Reposting a comment I made on Mark Shea's blog:

I think there’s a lot to like in Ron Paul’s non-interventionism, anti-federalism and defense of civil liberties.

But what ultimately puts me off the bus is the naive faith that he and his Mises Institute buddies have in the so-called free market. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is more than a little merit in the charge that libertarianism is apologetics for big corporations.

Also, while they’re strong in opposing the central bank, they don’t seem to be as strong as the distributists and social credit theorists when it comes to the issues of debt and the creation of money through fractional reserve banking.

Their preferred remedy for the financial crisis, allowing the debtors to default and the creditors to take their losses, would only result in most of the real assets falling into the hands of those with money to spend (because they have the power to create it out of thin air.)

They like to pose as benefactors of the community, like the Bailey Building and Loan Association, but I think that their policies are actually more akin to those of old man Potter.

So while I can’t vote for the warmonger Santorum, I can’t bring myself to support Ron Paul either. I’m probably going to have to sit this one out.

More on nominalism and modernism

Writing about the philosophical foundations of modernism, Anthony Carroll refers to Pius X's 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis:

...the paradox of this Encyclical, and indeed of the modernism conflict in general, is that whilst a variety of thinkers clearly shared some of the ideas condemned, it was really only through this Encyclical that ‘modernism’ as a coherent and unified body of thought can be said to have existed.

Pascendi in many ways constructs modernism as a straw man in order to defend a certain style of philosophy and theology that had been designated as official for the Catholic Church by Pope Leo XIII in his 1879 Encyclical Aeterni Patris: that of Saint Thomas Aquinas. The dominance of this style had been reinforced by a resurgence of interest in Aquinas in the nineteenth century from the movement that became known as Neo-Thomism. Important centres for the propagation of Thomistic ideas developed in Europe and their influence was felt on the various letters and decrees issued by the Church against modernist trends in philosophy and theology at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.

However, the roots of what is termed ‘philosophical modernism’ lie well before the modernist crisis of the twentieth century. In fact, one has to trace them back to the break-up of the medieval synthesis in theology and philosophy that was ushered in by Nominalism in the eleventh century. Nominalism was a philosophical movement that held that it was not possible to know universals or general realities, but that all one could safely come to know and to talk sensibly about were particulars. The tendency towards this thought led to a disbelief in a realist approach to the world and so too the view that one could come to know God in and through sensible reality. This breakdown of the medieval synthesis of thought was further intensified by scientific advances which gradually discredited the Aristotelian conception of the universe.

Re the modern idea that one can come to know God in and through sensible reality, cf. Prof. Harrison's discussion of scientia/science. It's difficult for us, from our 21st Century perspective, to remember that the original modernists saw themselves as religious reformers, and not as opponents of the Faith.

The idolatry of the will

Joseph at Arimathea has provided us with this précis of the origins of modernism (h/t Kristor via Proph):

The end of the Middle Ages saw the rise of nominalism—a philosophical doctrine that denies that essences exist in the world. The Franciscans who created this theory did so from a certain kind of piety, thinking that formal ontological realities limited the power of God. They thus conceived God as an omnipotent and unrestricted will, disconnected from and superior to anything known and, therefore, to knowing. This fundamental change in thinking about God revolutionized everything else, including the West’s understanding of nature and of mankind. Will has become the most important reality. Indeed, it is the only reality in quite a few philosophical currents. Having discarded the divine will, atheists keep only the human will, or perhaps will as such, and the will remains the touchstone for all other considerations. This change is the origin of all modern philosophical movements, almost all of which deify the will and discard any restraint upon the will. As with the original nominalists’ theology, the elevation of will corresponds to a diminution of truth. For truth is a restriction upon will, and the glorification of will necessarily accompanies a demotion of the intellect. For if we admit that there is reality apart from will, then the will’s freedom and scope become limited as there would be truths independent of the will. In summary, modernity is fundamentally an idolatry of the will.

I do not know if we should blame this aberration on the medieval nominalists or on Augustine who ensnared the West with the will’s tangle, but I do think that the reduction of reality to the will underlies all modern madness from the Cartesian mastery of nature to liberalism to utilitarianism to nihilism to Marxism to fascism to feminism to postmodernism to all the insane -isms that afflict men’s minds. Contemporary political thinking remains a prisoner in these fetters.

(Italics in the original.)

A similar analysis can be found in Richard M. Weaver's 1948 book Ideas Have Consequences, which at one time was de rigueur in conservative circles.

It might be an interesting study in the history of ideas to try to find out who it was that first traced modernism back to nominalism.

The sons of Thrasymachus

Bonald has called our attention to an article about some gay students at Yale who protested a lecture by Anthony Esolen, a professor who has spoken out against gay marriage.

The details of the protest are uninteresting: it was the usual in-your-face transgressiveness and refusal to give opponents a fair hearing.

It's that refusal that is interesting.

One of the commenters on Bonald's post takes the position that

“Good and evil” and “absolute truth” are child’s fictions. I only believe in good (stuff I like) and bad (stuff I don’t like). All that matters is that one possesses enough force to make what one believes is good prevail. Everything else is window dressing and obfuscation.

To which someone else replied that this position is self-refuting.

I don't think that reply is as effective as it might seem at first glance.

Here is my comment on that thread:

Perhaps we misunderstand the “sons of Thrasymachus” when we take them to be making a truth-claim when they say there is no truth?

Perhaps it is merely an assertion of their own will? Not an argument, but an argument-ending, table-banging snarl?

“All that matters is that one possesses enough force to make what one believes is good prevail.” Someone who says things like that should not be mistaken for one who could be persuaded by arguments.

The situation is the remarkably similar in the case of the students protesting at Prof. Esolen’s lecture. They’ve hardened their hearts and plugged up their ears. They’re not open to persuasion. Argument is only interesting to them when it serves as a rationalization of what they have already willed to do.

The "sons of Thrasymachus" view argument as a contest of strength, like those medieval trials by combat I've mentioned before. The only point of the contest is to determine a winner -- which simply means the one who kills or beats his opponent into submission. Winners get their way, losers don't.

What's missing are the ideas that "I might be wrong" and "By reasoning and reflecting on this together, perhaps we can come closer to the truth."

Dialectic, as opposed to mere contest, presupposes that there is a truth to be found. The "sons of Thrasymachus" reject that presupposition and therefore it is inappropriate and usually futile to engage them in dialogue.

history

I came across the following paragraph while tracking down the source of my earlier reference to the timeless moment below Mt. Sinai:

It is indeed, one of the peculiar features of human existence that the past does not altogether vanish, that some events of hoary antiquity may hold us in their spell to this very day. Events which are dead, things which are gone, can be neither sensed nor told. Of course, not all events of the past survive or are worthy of survival. Much of the past must be discarded. An act to which God is not a partner is like "chaff before the wind." To the ears of history there is no perfect past. History may be described as an attempt to overcome the dividing line between past and present, as an attempt to see the past in the present tense.

-- Abraham Joshua Heschel, "The Moment at Sinai", emphasis in the original

But no, this isn't the source I was looking for. I'm still searching.

German (or should I say Deutsch?)

My ancestors were Germans, from the little village of Kaldenkirchen, on the German side of the border opposite the Dutch city of Venlo. They came to America in the late 1600's to join Wm. Penn's Quaker/Mennonite colony in Pennsylvania.

As I've mentioned before, I was raised as a Lutheran (Missouri Synod). My father's mother was a Swede, and it was probably at her insistence that my father was raised in that typically Swedish faith. But I don't really know when it was that the family stopped being Quakers. It might have been when great-great-great-grandfather moved from Pennsylvania to upstate New York, in what seems to have been a falling-out with his parents.

Anyway, my immediate family lived in western Illinois, in what are known as the Quad Cities. It was, and perhaps still is, an area populated mostly by the descendants of Belgian, Dutch and German immigrants. So it wasn't surprising, I suppose, that the hymnals we used in church gave the verses in both English and German.

Hey, we were Lutherans. "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" and all that.

While the congregation was singing in English, I was reading the German, noticing how it was similar to, yet different from the English. I was enchanted by the feel of it, and passed the time during many dull sermons by studying all the other pages in that hymnal. By the time I got to high school and took my first class in the language, I was already familiar with much of its grammar and vocabulary, but also with the peculiarly German way of saying things.

Its charms still never fail to delight me, although I've forgotten most of what I once knew, because I've had so little occasion to use it. I can read it, most of the time, and I can almost follow what they're saying on the tagesschau broadcasts I receive over the Internet. But I can't speak it, except for a few hesitant and elementary phrases.

I sometimes catch myself thinking in what can only be described as nonsensical German, using German-like rhythms, intonation and phonemes, but with nouns and verbs that are probably meaningless.

It's a metaphor, perhaps, for our knowledge of so many other things.  In some areas, we're fluent.  In others, we can just barely pick out the phonemic and syntactic structure. Maybe we can produce something that sounds like it ought to make sense, but doesn't.  We have trouble keeping up with the conversation; it always seems as if they're talking too fast.  With still others, like me with Japanese, we can recognize the sound of it but we can't pick out any of its structure.

Even on the mountaintop the sky is far above us

Seh ich die Werke der Meister an,
So seh ich das, was sie getan;
Betracht ich meine Siebensachen,
Seh ich, was ich hätt' sollen machen.


When I look at the works of the masters,
I see what they have done;
When I consider my own trifles,
I see what I ought to have done.

-- Goethe

Yes, even Goethe.

Religion is more than ethics

Bill Vallicella makes a similar point about good works and religion:

The sense of the gap between 'is' and 'ought' is undoubtedly part of the religious impulse, but there is more to it than this. It must be accompanied by the sense that the gaping chasm between the miserable wretches we are and what we know we ought to be cannot be bridged by human effort, whether individual or collective, but requires help from beyond the human-all-too-human. Otherwise, the religious sensibility would collapse into the ethical sensibility. There is more to religion than ethics. The irreligious can be aware of the discrepancy between what we are and what we should be. The religious are convinced of the need for moral improvement together with a realization of their impotence in bringing it about by their own efforts.

(emphasis added)

I agree that religion > ethics, for the reasons stated. But I also think there's more to the religious impulse than the awareness of the gap between what we are and what we ought to be, and of our inability to bridge that gap without divine assistance.

The search for meaning, for example, seems to be another thing altogether. So does the sense of awe when confronted with the sheer fact of Being.

On Self-Importance

A few days ago, over at Bonald's blog, I commented that

Many of the evildoers on the Left like to imagine themselves being as important a figure as a Ringwraith or a Mouth of Sauron.

But the truth is, most of them are merely a scoffing Ted Sandyman or a sneering Bill Ferny.

Beyond acknowledging my appallingly poor prose (shouldn't that have been "scoffing Ted Sandymans or sneering Bill Fernies" in order to agree with the plural "most of them"?), I want to point out that many of us on our side have a similar problem with self-importance.

Few of us want to think of ourselves as mere footsoldiers. We all want to be the mighty captains or generals, responsible for grand strategy and entire theaters of operations.

We say we believe in hierarchy, but we have trouble accepting that among its implications is that we ourselves might not get to be the kings or queens or the knights in shining armor.

Our part in the great drama might not be any more than doing a kindness to some stranger, so that he feels less alone and abandoned in a cruel world.

(Once, when I was in dark mood following my divorce, I was startled out of my funk when the woman in the next apartment began to sing a cheerful tune in a clear, beautiful voice. She saved me just then, without ever knowing it.)

All too often we imagine ourselves doing great deeds, and neglect to do the small things on which Providence depends.

"Spiritual but not religious"

Yesterday I mentioned my Lutheran upbringing and in particular, its characteristic doctrine regarding good works. In a comment that same day, I also said that I am not a Roman Catholic.

Nevertheless, I must say that I found the argument in this video to be quite compelling:



I'm still inclined to agree with Luther that our good works will always prove inadequate, but I also think he went too far in his attacks on the ecclesiastical institutions and other outward manifestations of the Church.

Religion, like Tradition, isn't something to be cherished simply because it is old or because it's the way we've always done it. Rather, it's because it can be a vehicle for conveying Truth -- both as doctrine (Prof. Harrison's "religion") and as practice ("religio").

I also cannot overlook the resonances between what I said yesterday about marriages ruled by love and what Fr. Barron says about the Church as family.

On Marriage

Yesterday Proph posted an entry on his blog, about the increasingly frequent use of the word 'partner' to describe any and every kind of couple.

As usual, my comment spun off in a different direction and took the opportunity to rehearse some of my favorite themes:

"Partner" suggests contract, which in turn suggests that the partnership may justifiably be dissolved when one of the parties violates the terms of that contract. Thus, "partner" suggests divorce.

It also suggests that the relationship is not one of being united as one flesh by God, but instead one between two distinct individuals constantly measuring and critiquing each other to see if they're holding up their ends of the deal. I like to describe this as a relationship ruled by justice rather than love, because love forgives and forgets, but justice puts every transgression on the scales.

When we take our spouses in holy matrimony, we are saying that henceforward we shall treat them as if they were blood relatives -- indeed, when God blesses our union, they in fact become the blood relatives who are *nearest* to us. We might still quarrel, or disapprove of their behavior, but we can no more dissolve our relationship on that account than we can our relationship with our children or our siblings, who also often disappoint or annoy us.

That final paragraph expands on a remark I've made here, agreeing with Charles Williams that divorce is a metaphysical error rather than a moral one. Although we might be separated, estranged, or even disowned -- and even though the reasons for this might be completely acceptable -- the ontological bond between us can never be broken.

For me, this is a matter of personal experience. We married thirty-four years ago, in church, and as I have said, I experienced it as a timeless moment. Seventeen years later we had a civil divorce, and although we have now been separated for as many years as we were together, not a day has gone by that I haven't thought of her and felt that enduring bond.

In the paragraph about relationships ruled by justice rather than love, there is an echo of my Lutheran upbringing. It is a characteristic doctrine of Lutheranism that good works alone can never save us, that we are all such sinners that we can never measure up when we are placed in the scales of justice. Only one perfect man has ever lived, and He died on Calvary. So when a marriage is ruled by justice, divorce seems almost inevitable.

In another of my impertinent comments on someone else's blog, I've said that none of us deserve love. We should always be surprised and humbly grateful when we receive it nevertheless.

As Christians, we are the brides of Christ, and it is to our great relief and joy that He views the relationship as one ruled by love and not by justice.

The beginnings of the Revolution

Browsing through Revolution and Counter-Revolution, I found this synopsis of the beginnings of the Revolution:

In the fourteenth century, a transformation of mentality began to take place in
Christian Europe; in the course of the fifteenth century, it became ever more apparent.
The thirst for earthly pleasures became a burning desire. Diversions became more and
more frequent and sumptuous, increasingly engrossing men. In dress, manners, language,
literature, and art, the growing yearning for a life filled with delights of fancy and the
senses produced progressive manifestations of sensuality and softness. Little by little, the
seriousness and austerity of former times lost their value. The whole trend was toward
gaiety, affability, and festiveness. Hearts began to shy away from the love of sacrifice,
from true devotion to the Cross, and from the aspiration to sanctity and eternal life.
Chivalry, formerly one of the highest expressions of Christian austerity, became amorous
and sentimental. The literature of love invaded all countries. Excesses of luxury and the
consequent eagerness for gain spread throughout all social classes.

Penetrating intellectual circles, this moral climate produced clear manifestations
of pride, such as a taste for ostentatious and vain disputes, for inconsistent tricks of
argument, and for fatuous exhibitions of learning. It praised old philosophical tendencies
over which Scholasticism had triumphed. As the former zeal for the integrity of the Faith
waned, these tendencies reappeared in new guises. The absolutism of legists, who
adorned themselves with a conceited knowledge of Roman law, was favorably received
by ambitious princes. And, all the while, in great and small alike, there was a fading of
the will of yore to keep the royal power within its proper bounds as in the days of Saint
Louis of France and Saint Ferdinand of Castile.

...

This new state of soul contained a powerful although more or less
unacknowledged desire for an order of things fundamentally different from that which
had reached its heights in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

An exaggerated and often delirious admiration for antiquity served as a means for
the expression of this desire. In order to avoid direct confrontations with the old medieval
tradition, humanism and the Renaissance frequently sought to relegate the Church, the
supernatural, and the moral values of religion to a secondary plane. At the same time, the
human type inspired by the pagan moralists was introduced by these movements as an
ideal in Europe. This human type and the culture and civilization consistent with it were
truly the precursors of the greedy, sensual, secularist, and pragmatic man of our days and
of the materialistic culture and civilization into which we are sinking deeper and deeper.
Efforts to effect a Christian Renaissance did not manage to crush in the germinal stage
the factors that led to the gradual triumph of neopaganism.

In some parts of Europe, this neopaganism developed without leading to formal
apostasy. It found significant resistance. Even when it became established within souls, it
did not dare ask them - at least in the beginning - to formally break with the Faith.

However, in other countries, it openly attacked the Church. Pride and sensuality,
whose satisfaction is the pleasure of pagan life, gave rise to Protestantism.

Pride begot the spirit of doubt, free examination, and naturalistic interpretation of
Scripture. It produced insurrection against ecclesiastical authority, expressed in all sects
by the denial of the monarchical character of the Universal Church, that is to say, by a
revolt against the Papacy. Some of the more radical sects also denied what could be
called the higher aristocracy of the Church, namely, the bishops, her princes. Others even
denied the hierarchical character of the priesthood itself by reducing it to a mere
delegation of the people, lauded as the only true holder of priestly power.

On the moral plane, the triumph of sensuality in Protestantism was affirmed by
the suppression of ecclesiastical celibacy and by the introduction of divorce.

and this clear statement of what I have called the timeless orientation of conservatism:

The traditionalist spirit of the Counter-Revolution has nothing in common with a
false and narrow traditionalism, which conserves certain rites, styles, or customs merely
out of love for old forms and without any appreciation for the doctrine that gave rise to
them. This would be archaeologism, not a sound and living traditionalism.

The Silence of the Counter-Revolutionaries

Here's an encouraging quotation I found on a Catholic forum:

The actual counter-revolutionary is not as rare as one might think at first. He has a clear vision of things, a fundamental love for coherence, and a strong soul. For this reason he has a lucid notion of the disorders of the contemporary world and of the catastrophes looming on the horizon. But his very lucidity makes him perceive the full extent of the isolation in which he so frequently finds himself in a chaos that to him appears to have no solution. Thus, many times, the counter-revolutionary keeps a disheartened silence – a sad condition: “Vae Soli” (“Woe to him that is alone”), the Scriptures say.

A counter-revolutionary action must seek, above all, to detect such persons, acquaint them with each other, and lead them to support each other in the public profession of their convictions.

-- Plinio Correa de Oliveira, Revolution and Counter-Revolution

I've downloaded the PDF, but haven't yet read it. So I don't know if I would endorse everything it contains.

But this quotation definitely rings true.