Why this back to the future, pre-Enlightenment, virtuous, Christian approach? Are we just a bunch of nostalgic, myopic, medievalists? Well kind of, but for good reason. Sometimes you have to look back in order to move forward. We just see the need for our Christian families to hearken back to a simpler time, far from the meaningless distractions of technology, fame, narcissism, hedonism, and lonely disconnectedness that has led our society astray, and with it the souls of far too many of our brothers and sisters. We long to restore a truly Christian culture, centered on Christ, like the one that flourished in 13th Century Europe, except with cars, televisions, cell phones, computers, and the microwave. We desire nothing more than to reclaim for Christ the formerly Christian lands He purchased with His blood, which have now rejected and abandoned Him, and driven Him out, due to the actions of militant secularists and other useful idiots doing the will of the evil one. We yearn for a culture saturated and immersed in the true faith, where Christainity is the default setting, where people find fellowship, fulfillment, support, and courage to enable them to live virtuous, holy, Christian lives, and where their children remain pure, innocent, and chaste. We thirst for a time when we as an entire civilization become the best we can be, a civilization which does not degrade and demean our humanity and our chances for divinity, where we are not forced to constantly swim againt the tide for the salvation of our souls and those of our families. We desire to restore the concept of Christendom for God’s sake as well as our own.  We're not trying to turn back the clock of history ; rather the restoration we seek is a restoration yes, but more so a re-creation and re-imagining of what a truly Christian culture can be in the world today.  We’re not a bunch of Catholic Christian Flag waivers. In fact, we don’t want to waive any flag, we just want to reclaim the battle standard that proudly flew over the greatest civilization on earth, advance it, and plant it in what has become territory increasingly hostile to our Faith. 

     

     

     

       For although we have accumulated more “stuff”, more virtual “friends”, more instant gratification, more entertainment, more comfort, and more pleasure, we are more disconnected from our neighbor, less happy and less fulfilled than the generations that came before us. We have made incredible material progress, but have neglected the soul, and thus have as a culture suffered a precipitous spiritual and moral decline. How else can one explain not only the sin, hate, and immorality without, but the epidemic of depression, mental and emotional illness, and suicides within? In restoring all things in Christ, we need to reclaim that sense of detachment from the things of the world, as did our Savior, who willingly relinquished power, pleasure, wealth and honor, embracing instead the painful, humiliation of the cross, so that His followers would strive to do likewise.

      There’s a reason modern man ignores, denies, or denigrates our Christian civilization, her miraculous, religious founding, flourishing, and longevity. It’s based upon their view of history as a progression – man evolves as does his culture into a perfected creature and society, far superior whatever went before him in every way. That’s why modern man prefers the new, unproven theories, fads, having little use for tradition, for the accumulated wisdom, accepted morality, and especially the religion undergirding both. In fact many have argued that jettisoning these traditions are a necessity to achieving the utopian society, remade in their own prideful, immoral image, which they see as within their collective reach. Christians, on the other hand, know that such a progressive, linear view of history is pure folly, instead accepting as true the adage that he who is ignorant of history, is doomed to repeat it. We prefer the accumulated wisdom, morality, philosophy, art, architecture, literature, science, from scholars, philosophers, theologians, artists, and scientists far superior to most of the recent immoral lot, untethered to both history and morality. We view history as more cyclical than linear, as the lessons from Israel in the Old Testament clearly demonstrate, as the nature of man, and his many shortcomings are on full display in every generation. That’s why knowing our history and more, learning from it, so that we do not repeat our most grave errors, is crucial for the Christian, but meaningless for the modern. That’s also why we hearken back with a great degree of admiration and fondness to a more God-centered time, at the pinnacle of Christendom, when the members of this most-Christian culture lived, loved, fought, created, served, worshipped, celebrated, and yes, sinned, with great gusto, zeal, and joy, an era of unparalleled flourishing of the family, the Church, and the culture, that secular modern man could never hope to accomplish. "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10)

      Progressives, tend to view history as man evolving and progressing toward perfection, who view traditional morality, established religion, and the accumulated wisdom of the ages as either irrelevant, superstition, unenlightened, or an obstacle to this coming utopia, remade in the image of man. For most of human history, man used to treasure the knowledge of the past, and viewed himself as an inheritor, steward, and ultimately disseminator of the old knowledge, realizing its timeless value in obviating the need to rediscover the truth in every generation. Now with the rise of technological progress, modern man views technology as the ends rather than a means to pursue knowledge thereby rejecting all that came before him, denigrating, disparaging and deconstructing the great works and great minds of old. Under this post-modern view, man seeks to “create” new knowledge, pridefully believing that we know more than every generation before us, we have nothing to learn from them, and the new always surpasses than the old. We create not only our own new knowledge, but our new morality, new values, and a new religion: progressivism.

      As Christians we take a longer view of history, viewing the essence of history as Salvation History, acknowledging the Divine Providence in our lives, shaping the course of human history, our redemption, our answer to this call to return to Him who created us. With this God's-eye view of history, we see that for the world to be converted, Christendom must be restored.  Restoration of Christendom necessarily entails a restoration of Christian principles which have been jettisoned by our secular society in the name of some warped sense of enlightened, material dystopian progress. What are some of the principles that need to be restored in order to restore Christendom?

Restoration Of Christian Principles

A Restoration of the Sacred - drawing a bold line of demarcation between the sacred and profane, restoring that which is holy, consecrated, and set apart for God

A Restoration of Christian Unity - the Christian unity that was severed 500 years ago must be restored as we join forces with our separated brethren to defeat our common cultural enemies who have been waging war against us

A Restoration of Virtues – not the counterfeit modern “virtues” which are really vices in disguise, but authentic Christian virtues which are uncommon, attractive and magnetic

A Restoration of the Sense of Sin and Shame – in a culture which calls good evil and evil good, due to the snares of moral relativism, political correctness, uber-tolerance, and the self-esteem movement, we need a return to teaching right from wrong, the objective Truth with clarity and in charity

A Restoration of Simplicity – a call to live humble, holy, simple lives of prayer, work, family, and community, rather than pleasure, comfort, technology, and isolation-living authentic, honest lives where we interact face to face with all those God puts in our path.

A Restoration of Christ as King – He who was driven from the public square to the fringes of the culture, must be returned to rule and reign as our Eucharistic King from the golden throne of every Tabernacle as the center and heart of our faith, our families and our culture

III Restoration Of Christendom

"Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?"

-Canticles 6:10

       What does our culture value, meaning what are we, as a post-modern, post-Christian society concerned and consumed with, who or what are our modern idols? Too often it’s the most recent celebrity whatever, the newest electronic gadget, the latest fashion fad, or the constant, insatiable, narcissistic need for digital affirmation and approval. But this is not what we were created for, this is not the normal state of human existence, and thus cannot provide us with a meaningful existence and true inner joy. For in the thousands of years before, and even today across the majority of the globe, people are focused on and concerned with far weightier things, like feeding themselves and their families, staying warm in the winter, finding fresh water to drink, staying free from deadly disease, teaching their children to read, about right from wrong, about God and eternal life. We have become so distracted, so blinded by the shiny objects dangled before our eyes, all the noise and static which drown out the soft still voice of God, and take our focus away from the simple things in life that really matter. So either we are the greatest, most-enlightened, most virtuous generation because we discovered that these inane accessories are in fact the key to human existence, happiness, and fulfillment, and the other thousands of years of human existence were pitiable dupes, or our generation is the one to be pitied, while the rest of humanity knew what was truly important. Should we put it to a vote?

"Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us make out that his own modification of the original plan is the plan itself. "                                                                                       -C.S. Lewis