Christendom as rightly understood was the 1000 year period from the Fall of Rome to the Protestant Reformation where Chritianity built, shaped, sustained, animated, reformed and developed Western Civilization. It was an epoch where Christ the King ruled and reigned, through many godly Christian kings, queens and princes, and the Catholic religion was at the very heart of the culture, from princes to peasants and everywhere in between.  It was a time when the influence of the Church that Christ built was at its peak, where the philosophy of the gospel governed, where its divinely-inspired virtues permeated all laws, institutions, and customs of the people, influencing for the better all relations of an increasingly civil and even virtuous society.

        Within that millennium of an increasingly Christocentric but imperfect era, was the pinnacle of Christendom-the great 13th Century-also known as the “Age of Faith”. It was known by other names as well, even disparagingly dubbed the “Dark Ages” by the secular elites of the 19th Century, who out of all hubris also referred to their own era as “The Enlightenment”, where their anti-God philosophies replaced Christianity as the religion of the ‘enlightened’. It is the same satanic semantic tactic that their secular successors use today calling the murder of babies “choice” and unnatural acts of sodomy “gay”, proving the adage of self-professed devotee of the devil, Saul Alinsky that he who controls the language controls the masses. Fortunately most serious historians have come to reject the “Dark Ages” narrative and have come to present it as the glorious period that it was. But regardless of what the enlightenment thinkers and recent historians have to say about the Age of Faith, the only opinion that truly matters is what does God think? Would God have approved of a time when He was at the center of the culture, even the entire civilization, where people practiced and lived out their faith, where millions of souls focused on Him were saved-or does He favor a period like ours where He has been kicked out of the public square, pushed to the remote, private, fringes of society, irrelevant to most who are enslaved in sin and completely distracted by the material world, where millions upon millions of souls are led astray? This is exactly why we have to transform the culture-why together we have to reclaim and rebuild our once-Christian civilization-for the salvation of souls and the greater glory of God.

      So what did a Christian Culture look like? According to Pope Leo XII, “the Religion instituted by Jesus Christ, solidly established in the degree of dignity due to it, flourished everywhere, thanks to the favor of Princes and the legitimate protection of the Magistrates. Then the Priesthood and the Empire were united by a happy concord and by the friendly interchange of good offices. So organized, civil society gave fruits superior to all expectations, whose memory subsists and will subsist, registered as it is in innumerable documents that no artifice of the adversaries can destroy or obscure." It was a time that, except for a small number of Jews, everyone in Europe was Catholic, from king down to serf, touching everyone’s life to a very significant degree. There were no nations, no states, only the Church to serve as the unifying and organizing body across the continent. From birth to death, the Church was prominent, from baptism, to teaching them prayers, songs, Bible stories, and lives of the saints, to going to Mass every week, to celebrating feasts, festivals, and liturgical seasons, to receiving the sacraments, to requiring them to live by the gospel and teachings of the Church.

      

   

 

What was christendom, and why do we need it today?

       What many of the enlightened elites have tried to hide from us, is that the Catholic Church created the great Western Civilization we were fortunate and blessed enough to be born into, though in my view we would have been more fortunate had we been born into it several centuries earlier. But God knows far better than I, and put us on earth with our unique gifts, talents, and potentials, at this critical moment for a reason, so that we could not build up, but rebuild the Kingdom of God for the salvation of souls and glory of God. As seemingly interesting and advanced modern life is, in a materialistic sense, we were not created for the purpose of having a nice house, the latest gadgets, expensive clothes, wasting time with television, video games, the computer-we were equipped and created for such more more-a limitless potential to accomplish great things if we only subject and unite our will to God’s will.

 

       

easier sale for an entire village to contribute its time, talent and treasure toward building not only a beautiful, fitting place of worship, but a banquet hall, a community center, and a place where people regularly gathered, and where all of life’s milestones were celebrated. Try building a magnificent basilica today having to convince Creasters to spend half of their life and half of their income to complete it. Our parishes have to become the countercultural villages and religious outposts where Christians freely gather to escape the godless, immoral society that surrounds us. If we see how not only the parish, but Christian life flourished during the peak of Christendom, where families celebrated life together, worked together, worshipped together, and actually knew each of their fellow men, we see a blueprint for the renewal of the Church. Together we must strive to transform our unwelcoming, sterile, underutilized places of worship, into these vibrant Christian communities, where the Eucharistic Christ remains at the heart of all we do, and why we do, and are, and hope to become.

       But beyond this seemingly simple, mundane, often difficult way of life, the religion of Christ converted the violent barbarians and other tribal peoples who inhabited Europe, transforming these backwater, warring clans and societies to heights which could only be attributable to the blessings and providence of God. For unlike Islam, Christianity transforms every society it touches for the better, in every aspect of its culture, and by every meaningful measure, the lives of its people flourish. Slavery, violence, bloodshed, ignorance, superstition, and other acts of degradation, immorality, and sin, were reduced or all-but eliminated because of the religion of Christ. Solely because of the tremendous influence of the Catholic Church, and the infusion and immersion of the culture with the teaching of Christ and His Church, the, uncivilized, barbaric, pagan amalgam of warring peoples were converted and united under the banner of Christendom, elevating the entire culture, and together built the single greatest Christian civilization, blessed as never before or since in both the spiritual and material realms. Make no mistake, this was by no means a utopian heaven on earth, as this will not be possible until Christ’s return, but it was a far more perfect union than even the United States of America at its founding and infancy, and far more perfect than it has devolved into this day.

      But the fact remains, if there was no Catholic Church, there would be no Western Civilization. If there was no Catholic Church, all of the wonderful things our civilization established and enjoys, such as art, architecture, charity, medicine, philosophy, universities, reason, and science would not exist as it does today. The Catholic Church and her work to establish the primacy of God in the lives of men led to this unparalleled human flourishing and grandiose accomplishments, and our collective rejection of both caused its decay, decline, and the myriad of evils that presently befall our once-Christian culture. If there was no Catholic Church, Europe would be an Islamic state, as it was the Catholic Church and the Church alone that rallied the good Christian soldier in every European territory and tongue, to defend Christendom from Muslim invasions on at least 5 separate occasions.

      Sometimes we have to look back in order to move forward. If the world is to be converted, Christendom must be restored. The time has come to reclaim for ourselves, our descendants, the many great saints, and our ancestors, but mostly for Christ the King the lands He won, preserved, and defended for more than 1500 years, having purchased them with His own blood.  For there have always been problems and crises in the Church and the culture, and this is merely the latest iteration of a perpetual battle.  Yes, there are new weapons, new tactics, new clashes, and newly replenshed armies, but the same war. Why do you think the Church on earth is called the Church Militant, for she is always threatened, always under attack, both from without and often within, always reforming,  always vigilant and ever-militant. Restoring Christendom does not mean we all live, talk and dress like they do in some creepy Renaissance Faire. It is not about recreating some sycophantic copy of a bygone era, but a creative adaptation of a more God-centered time, when the culture was fully immersed in a Christian spirit, but adapted to the times within which we live.  And though the evil one was a prolific early adapter of the internet, using it as a means to destroy marriages and steal innocence of children,  there is no greater grass roots weapon in this battle which we can wield, as a bottom-up means to connect, unite, teach, encourage, mobilize and transform the culture for good. Restoring Christendom means people, families, and churches shaping the social, moral, political order, the very essence and ethos of a society, a culture, a nation. It involves infusing our temporal life with the eternal, and reuniting our religion with our daily life, which was severed by the heresy that our faith is a personal, private matter, capable of being compartmentalized.  It is the changing of hearts and minds, institutions and activities by our joyful witness and the bold, immutable guidance of the Church.  It simply means re-converting the world back to Christianity, fulfilling our baptismal mission, and the final words of our Savior:

"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,  teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age."                                                       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                -Matthew 28:19,20

     

      Lives were shorter and harder than today, but the Church did its part to show them the way to eternal life and perpetual happiness for those who did as she taught. The parish church was the heart of every town, which was there to mark every milestone of life, birth, entry into adulthood, marriage and death, and was the most beautiful, soaring, uplifting building around, built by the hands, hearts and contributions of the townspeople. Many people also made religious pilgrimages across hundreds or thousands of miles on foot to visit holy sites far from home. Monasteries and Nunneries also dotted the landscape, from where villages and towns would spring up, surrounding these spiritual, agricultural and educational centers, with an extremely high percentage of young men and women giving their lives to God and becoming monks and nuns.

      What is perhaps most striking for us in examining life in medieval Christendom, other than people walking around in suits of armor, of course, was that the Church, convent or monastery was not only the center, but the very heart of every village and town. Towns burst into existence only because of these sacred sites, and the parish church was not just a place of worship, it actually was the community – where people and families gathered becoming a community built on Christ. Sadly today our parishes have become mere places we visit for one hour a week, and for most Catholics, one or two hours per year.  It’s a lot