Gloom and doom

There is a lot of it about these days. And it isn't completely crazy. As pointed out by Jonah Goldberg and others, there is a neo-fascist spirit abroad in the world and it is conceivable that the day will come again when we see horrors done. It might happen but it probably won't. A more realistic fear is that progressives will bring about a new Victorianism in which we all go to great lengths to protect the tenser sensibilities (often imagined tender sensibilities) of others. And I'm not entirely convinced that would be a horrible thing.

In any case, this is perhaps a good time to remind ourselves of some inspiring words spoken by a sainted man in the first year of my life:

It often happens, as we have learned in the daily exercise of apostolic ministry, that, not without offense to Our ears, the voices of people are brought to Us who, although burning with religious fervour, nevertheless do not think things through with enough discretion. These people see only ruin and calamity in the present conditions of human society. They keep repeating that our times, if compared to past centuries, have been getting worse. And they act as if they have nothing to learn from history, which is the teacher of life, and as if at the time of past Councils everything went favorably and correctly with respect to Christian doctrine, morality, and the Church's proper freedom. We believe We must disagree with these prophets of doom who are always forecasting disaster, as if the end of the world were at hand.

That's from John XXIII's introductory remarks to the Vatican Council. I can't speak to the quality of the translation as I have only enough Latin to understand a few basic prayers I know by heart. It matches what other writers I trust have said. In any case, he's right.

We can also, of course, be too optimistic. Here is some more for your consideration:

But at the present time, the spouse of Christ prefers to use the medicine of mercy rather than the weapons of severity; and she thinks she meets today's needs by explaining the validity of her doctrine more fully rather than condemning. Not that there are no false doctrines, opinions and dangers to avoided and dispersed; but all these things so openly conflict with the right norms of honesty and have borne such lethal fruits that today people by themselves seem to condemn them and in particular forms of life which disregard God and his laws, excessive confidence in technological progress, and in a prosperity consisting only in the comforts of life. More and more they are coming to know that the dignity of the human person and his appropriate perfection are a matter of great importance and most difficult to achieve. What is especially important is that they have finally learned from experience that imposing external force on others, the power of weapons, and political domination are not at all sufficient for a happy solution if the most serious problems which trouble them.

That last sentence, read today, seems ludicrously optimistic. It's a bit jarring to consider that John XXIII was speaking in living memory of WW2. He had seen at first hand the brutal suffering that was imposed on others. He knew that some of the men in the audience listening to him had suffered. ANd yet he, along with many others, saw reason for hope.

Often our fears for the world are really just a projection of our fears for our world onto everything else. The professor of Classics who sees declining enrolment in her field, the union boss who sees the waning influence of the union movement, the taxi driver faced with Uber and the journalist seeing that their industry is rapidly shrinking will all have a tendency to imagine that the whole world is going south and not just their corner of it. They will do this because they will fail to see that there comes a point to get off a sinking ship.

To their numbers we should now add some kinds of conservatism including traditionalist Catholics. Yes, there was much good about the movement. Yes, they were unfairly attacked. Yes, much evil was done in the "spirit of Vatican II". But the traditionalist response to the Novus Ordo was always an over-reaction and the fight to establish socially conservative moral values in law and politics was always doomed to fail. That the walls are now crumbling is a good thing.