By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
Yea, we wept,
When we remembered Zion.
_____________________
During the Babylon captivity the Psalmist asked, âHow shall we sing the Lordâs song, In a strange land?â How indeed, when the Lordâs song is an anathema to the ruling principalities and powers of Babylon, can a man who believes in the living God still sing the Lordâs song? Possibly he can sing it quietly, under his breath, or maybe he can find a cave or a wooded area where he and a few friends can sing the Lordâs song. But the Lordâs song must be sung or else the memory of the living God will die out.
The modern Europeans are currently suffering through their own Babylonian captivity. But there is a crucial difference between the ancient Jewsâ Babylonian captivity and the Europeansâ Babylonian captivity. The ancient Jews knew they were a captive people while the modern Europeans do not know they are a captive people. The Europeansâ ignorance of their captivity indicates a far greater spiritual decline than that of the ancient Jews. If a man knows he is held captive by an enemy who hates his people and his God he can steel himself, internally, to resist his enemy. But if he doesnât know he is a captive? Then he will be weak inside, he will offer no resistance to an enemy that hates his people and his God.
How can a whole race of people be held captive, estranged from their God and themselves, without even knowing it? It wasnât easy, but the devil knew what he wanted. He wanted the European people, the Christ-bearing people, to see existence through the eyes of a scientist. Where is God in the natural world? Where is the scientific evidence that skin pigmentation is anything but skin pigmentation? Who dares say that white skin connotes a distinct people with spiritual attributes different from people without white skins? Once the Europeansâ God became a propositional God, the European people became a propositional people. Faith in an intellectual concept of God is not the same as a faith in the living God nor is a universal love for humanity the same as a love for oneâs own people, oneâs kith and kin.
How can we hear the word of God and take His word into our hearts if we canât accept His word unless it comes to us as a propositional faith purified by the scientific mind? The Bible, from Genesis through the Book of Revelation, is the story of Godâs relationship with the sons of earth. We are invited into Godâs fairy tale in which our Lord and kinsman, Jesus Christ, defeats the forces of evil and death and brings His people safely home. You canât scientize that fairy tale without losing something essential â your faith in the living God. You can still retain a propositional faith in a mind-forged God whose existence can be proved by reason, but you canât maintain a faith in the living God who can only be known through the human heart. If such talk is sentimental mush, as the intellectual Christians tell us, then we must dismiss St. Paul, who tells us that we need to circumcise our hearts if we want to know Christ. And Christ Himself tells us in the parable of the sower: âBut that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.â Luke 8: 5-18
Christ tells the apostles that the seed of the sower is the word of God. And those âby the way side are they that hear, then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.â Therein lies the tragedy of the European people. Their hearts were the good ground where the word of God was sown, but the devil came, first in the guise of an intellectual Christian, and then later, when the European people had lost their abhorrence of intellectual pride, he came to them in the guise of a well-meaning, secularized, scientized liberal. But throughout the whole long process the devil knew what had to be done â kill the European heart, and faith on earth perishes.
The Babylon captivity of the European people will go on in perpetuity so long as they remain separated from their hearts. The churchmen and the secular liberals are united in their hatred of the good seed, which was planted in the hearts of the good and faithful Europeans. If the antique Europeans were not the good ground, if their hearts were evil and their fruits poisonous, where do we go and to whom do we turn to hear the world of God? To the Thomists? To the Biblical exegetes? There is no sustaining faith in intellectual Christianity. The word of God can only be received by human hearts. Which always brings us back to this modern devil word called âracism.â If white racism is the greatest sin, and white pietas has been labeled racism, then how can the faith flourish and how can the European people ever be released from their Babylonian captivity?
It is only the European hearts which are condemned. The black hearts of the people of color, who are the bad ground, are deified — those hearts are pure and undefiled. But who is defining what is pure and undefiled? It is the devil who informs the minds and guides the rulers and pundits of Liberaldom. Who guided Rousseau and Teilhard de Chardin? And who guides Pope Francis when he attacks the European people? It is always Satan, who seems to be unconquerable. But he only seems to be unconquerable because the European people have allowed Satan to despoil their hearts while they cling to the great lie that goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden: The human intellect does not need the living God. However, our great hearts, the white âracists,â have always seen through that lie:
We employ the term Benevolence to express our outward affections, sympathies, tastes, and feelings, but it is inadequate to express our meaning; it is not the opposite of selfishness, and unselfishness would be too negative for our purpose. Philosophy has been so busy with the worst feature of human nature that it has not even found a name for this, its better feature. We must fall back on Christianity, which embraces manâs whole nature, and though not a code of philosophy, it is something better; for it proposes to lead us through the trials and intricacies of life, not by the mere cool calculations of the head, but by the unerring instincts of a pure and regenerate heart. The problem of the Moral World is too vast and complex for the human mind to comprehend; yet the pure heart will, safely and quietly, feel its way through the mazes that confound the head.
– Cannibals All! Or Slaves without Masters by George Fitzhugh
Fitzhugh got it right. In order to confound the European people, Satan distorted their vision. He got them to look at existence through the mind of the philosophical speculators instead of through the hearts of Europeans of faith. How we see determines our faith. Caiaphas saw and heard Christ, just as the apostles did, but he saw something completely different from the apostles. Many saw Christ raise Lazarus from the dead and âbelieved on Him,â but others, âwent their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.â Pilate looked the living God in the face and asked, âWhat is truth?â All the great Christian dramatists bear witness to the tragedy of spiritual blindness, a blindness that stems from a heart hardened by an intellectual pride that sees only the superficial surface of life while remaining in ignorance of the depths of existence, which can only be known through the human heart. Lear has been with Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia their entire lives, but he doesnât know the depths of Goneril and Reganâs evil or the depths of Cordeliaâs goodness, because he has given first place to his pride of intellect and left no room for a loving heart. It is only when he repents that he learns how to see:
…O, I have taâen
Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just.
We, the European people, have âtaâen too little care ofâ the heart of our civilization. It is not overwhelming numbers that have made the European people unable to resist the Moslem invasion, nor is it the innate beauty of the natural black savage that makes the Europeans worship him, it is the Europeansâ inability to see with their heart that makes them unable to resist the heathen and makes them see beauty in black barbarism.
The Psalmist wept by the rivers of Babylon because he remembered Zion. Why donât the European people weep when they remember Europe? It is because they donât remember Europe. The moral beauty of the antique Europeans is crystal clear to all those who look at them through the heart, but the modern Europeans will not look at them through their hearts. They believe the liberals, who have anathematized the antique Europeans by proclaiming them racist, and they have moved on to what they hope will be a glorious future in the liberalsâ brave new multi-religious, multi-racial world. That world shall never become a reality. We shall see either a colored-heathen world of eternal night or we shall see a resurgent world of the Christ-bearing people, who at the last trump remembered Christian Europe and rose up and cast off the liberals and the colored heathen.
In the 19th century the accumulated wisdom of the scientists made it possible for the pride of science to flourish amongst the European people, but there was still great resistance to the scientizers. I have often made reference to that resistance (see Our Sacred Heritage). There were genuine conservatives in the 19th century, men of heart who opposed the scientizing of God and His people and wanted to preserve the word of God, not as a mere parchment but as a living reality that dwelt in the hearts of the European people. The conservatives of the 20th century were no longer conservatives. They didnât want to preserve the good ground, which was their own people, they only wanted to preserve the outer intellectual husks of a propositional Christianity. Christ wept at the death of Lazarus, and His sacred tears restored Lazarus to life. If we unite our tears with His tears, if we weep for His Europe, we will see a European miracle in the midst of Babylon. +