The Ecstatic Visions of St. Catherine of Siena

When we contemplate, we set aside a place, either externally in the physical world or interiorly within our minds and hearts, or both, to ponder, observe, and meditate. After Catherine donned the habit of the Mantellate she spent three years in seclusion, except when she went to church for confession and Mass, in the small room of her family’s house that she converted into a templum of continual prayer, fasting, silence, self-mortification, and study. Catherine had been inspired since childhood by the prayerful ancient Desert Fathers. Per Blessed Raymond, she “established a desert within the walls of her own home, and solitude in the midst of people.”

It is fascinating to consider that it was not until these years of contemplation that this great Doctor of the Church even learned to read and write! During a prayer one morning, Catherine asked Christ to teach her so that she could say the Psalms and sing His prayers, since she was not smart enough to master it on her own, adding that she would remain ignorant and meditate on Him in other ways if this was not His will. When she arose, she found she could read fluently. She read so fast that she was not able to read out separate syllables and could hardly spell the words, which he took as a sign of a miracle. 

Catherine read Latin but could not speak it. She would not write her first letter until 1377 at around the age of thirty. Her ability to write came as a gift in a vision of Christ, who was accompanied by His beloved disciple Saint John and the Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Her letters and Dialogue were written in Italian and in such beautiful language that they have been compared to the works of Dante.

Mystical Ecstasies

During these years of secluded contemplation and through the remainder of her life as well, Saint Catherine experienced many mystical ecstasies with visions of Christ and of the saints. Raymond relates an early vision of Christ in which the most profound of theological proofs are stated simply and sublimely in just a handful of words.

In one of Saint Catherine’s first visions, Christ asked of her, “Do you know, daughter, who you are, and who I am? If you know these two things, you will be blessed. You are she who is not; whereas I am He who is.” These simple words were as a Summa enriching Catherine’s growth in wisdom and understanding. As Blessed Raymond explains, “All creatures are engulfed in nothingness — made from nothingness, tending toward nothingness.” Sin is a nothingness, a lack of a goodness that should be present, so that when we sin, we move back toward nothingness. This is why Christ said, “[A]part from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). We must embrace humility in the recognition of our potential nothingness and the fervent love of charity for the One who gives us life and sustains us.

Among the most profound of Catherine’s ecstatic visions was the “mystical marriage” in which she was espoused to Christ, the wedding party including the Virgin Mother, Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Paul, Saint Dominic, and King David, who played his harp. Christ presented her a ring that was invisible to others, but which she could see for the rest of her life. 

In another powerful vision revealed to her confessor, she asked Christ to take her own heart and will from her, and Christ came to her and removed her heart. Some days later, he appeared to her again and placed his own heart within her breast. Saint Thomas said that understanding is an excellence of knowledge that penetrates into the heart of things. Christ Himself said that the pure of heart shall see God. Through the Holy Spirit’s gift of understanding, Catherine was given visions of Christ, and in a mystical sense, His very own Sacred Heart.

The fruits of Catherine’s gifts of understanding blossomed most completely in her dictated work called The Dialogue or The Dialogue of Divine Providence, in which Catherine makes four requests to God the Father for herself, for the Church, for the world, and for assurance of His divine providence to provide for all things. The responses come from God in four treatises of over two hundred pages on divine providence, discretion, prayer, and obedience. The Dialogue treats of a great many basic, essential, creedal, catechetical issues of faith and morals in the most moving, intimate, and creative ways. They drip with moving and memorable metaphors containing great mystical truths. 

A Treatise on Divine Providence

Catherine speaks of “the virtue of desire,” of the soul’s “fire of holy desire” that makes us contrite of heart for our sins and desirous of the limitless loving mercy of God, made possible for us through Christ’s Crucifixion. Our holy desire brings remission of sins, and here our holy hound of the Lord speaks of the “hound of conscience” as well: 

“I wake up in them the hound of conscience, and make them smell the odor of virtue, and take delight in the conversation of My servants.”

She provides insights as well on the nature of virtues and of suffering and injuries, noting the virtues are demonstrated and fortified by their contraries. Patience, for example, is proven and fortified when one is injured by his neighbor. It is through such injuries that patience is given the opportunity to manifest itself and grow. We build justice within our souls when we are treated unjustly. The virtue of humility conquers the vice of pride, because a proud person can do no harm to the humble, who are not concerned about their worldly reputation. God, in his providence, has so arranged the world that from vices in some spring virtues in others; from contrition for sin springs limitless mercy; from worldly suffering springs heavenly joy.

A Treatise of Discretion

Here Saint Catherine reveals the Dominican thirst to bring souls to Christ. God tells her our works are holy and sweet to Him when they are infused “with hunger and desire for My honor and the salvation of souls.” Here, too, she explicates on the instrument through which God provided the mechanism for our salvation in her most famous metaphorical elaboration of Christ as the Bridge by which man can pass from earth into heaven. 

This Bridge has three “steps” that signify the three states of the soul through which we ascend to heaven from earth:

The first step signifies “the feet of the soul,” representing our affections, because as the feet carry the body, so do our desires and affections carry our soul. The pierced feet of Christ the Bridge are the means by which we reach the second step, at His side, which reveals to us the secret of His heart. When the soul desires to taste the love of Christ’s heart and gazes into his heart with the eye of the intellect, it finds His heart “consumed with ineffable love.” Having tasted of this love, the soul reaches the third step, of Christ’s mouth, and finally attains peace from the terrible war that it has waged against sin. In the first step, then, the soul steps away from earthly affections and is stripped of vice. In the second step, the soul fills itself with love and virtue. In the third step, the soul “tastes peace.” 

So then this Bridge to heaven was lifted on high for us when the Father’s Son was lifted up on the wood of the holy Cross, “the Divine nature remaining joined to the lowliness of the earth of your humanity.”

A Treatise of Prayer

Saint Thomas Aquinas had written that prayer is a most reasonable thing to do. Citing the ancient Roman theologian Cassiodorus, Thomas had agreed that “prayer is spoken reason” and that speech is a function of the intellect, a power that no other creature on earth has been given by God. Prayer, for Thomas, was “the raising of one’s mind to God,” and the “parts” of prayer include supplications (humble requests) for particular blessings from God and thanksgiving for blessings He has already provided.

Saint Catherine provides most penetrating insights on the relationship between the intellect, the Scriptures, and the life of prayer. “The intellect was, before the Scriptures were formed, wherefore, from the intellect came science, because in seeing they discerned.” God illuminated the intellects of the ancient prophets and apostles before all the Scriptures had been written down. Likewise, after we had received the Holy Scriptures, God gave light to the eyes of the intellect of holy, prayerful men, such as Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, and Jerome, so that even the light that comes from Holy Scriptures comes through the supernatural light of illumination. 

God warns us, then, that we would be better off seeking spiritual counsel from a holy person of upright conscience than from a proud, learned person who lacks God’s supernatural light. Those without God’s light are mired in the darkness of self-love, which is “a tree on which nothing grows but fruits of death, putrid flowers, stained leaves, branches bowed down, and struck by various winds.” 

Indeed, the seven deadly sins are this tree’s seven drooping branches. They droop to the earth because only earthly things can feed them, and they are never satisfied. Man has been placed not below but above all other creatures, though, and he cannot be satisfied except when he rests with the eternal God.

A Treatise of Obedience

Here Saint Catherine sails into the theological waters of obedience to God’s will, for all of us in general and in particular for those of religious orders who have taken vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty. She compares the religious orders to great ships that sail toward the port of salvation. These ships are so rich that the religious need not worry about their temporal or their spiritual needs, for those who are obedient will receive all they need through the Holy Spirit who guides them.

“Now look at the ship of your Father Dominic,” God tells her. That ship was ordered perfectly, since Saint Dominic wished only that his sons would endeavor to bring honor to God and seek the salvation of souls, “with the light of science,” which is the order’s principal foundation. It cherishes poverty too, not as an end in itself, but so that the preachers need not be distracted by temporal things as they fight error and spread God’s truths. The three riggings of obedience, chastity, and poverty make his a royal ship and make it broad, joyous, and fragrant. 

Glorious sons of the order Saints Thomas and Peter Martyr are praised for the illumination that arose from their obedience, and Dominic’s friend in Christ is praised for his order too: “Of a truth Dominic and Francis were two columns of the holy Church. Francis with the poverty which was especially his own, as has been said, and Dominic with his learning.”

https://catholicexchange.com/the-ecstatic-visions-of-st-catherine-of-siena

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This article is an excerpt of Dr. Vost’s Hounds of the Lord: Great Dominican Saints Every Catholic Should Know. It is available as an ebook or paperback from Sophia Institute Press.

By Dr. Kevin Vost

Dr. Kevin Vost, Psy D. is the author of Memorize the Faith, The Seven Deadly Sins, The One Minute Aquinas, as well as numerous other books and articles. He has taught psychology at the University of Illinois at Springfield, Lincoln Land Community College, and MacMurray College. He is a Research Review Committee Member for American Mensa, which promotes the scientific study of human intelligence. You can find him at drvost.com.

How We Redefine the Good to Justify Our Sins

I remember a political debate where participants were asked, “Who is your favorite philosopher?”

Mostly their answers were ones you’d expect — Aristotle, Plato and so on. But one piously said that his favorite philosopher was Jesus. Another replied with even greater rectitude that Jesus was not a philosopher: Jesus is not a lover of wisdom, but Wisdom itself. He is the Truth that has ordered the universe. Philosophy is a natural activity of the mind — the discerning of the basic hierarchy of principles by which we deduce what truth is. Theology, however, moves beyond philosophy by considering the source of truth itself.

When Our Lord was twelve years old, the rabbis in the temple marveled at His wisdom. I am sure that Our Lady and St. Joseph had a very good little domestic school going in Nazareth, but His wisdom did not come from them. In His human nature, He did have to learn natural things; for instance, He had to be taught the grammar of the Scriptures that He had given the world. But this magnificent paradox does not contradict His divine nature, which is not merely intelligent, but is the source of all intelligence.

What We Choose

The human being has a free will to choose good or evil. But after having plotted evil, when a person begins to commit the act itself, it begins to contradict the human dignity and the conscience in a more poignant way. This is why the most evil people in the world have had to redefine evil, pretending that it was good. Or, when that hasn’t worked, they have had to drug themselves, either with intoxicating language — slurs and euphemisms and so on — or with chemical drugs.

If we cooperate with evil, if we plot to do evil, and then if we commit ourselves to evil, the human spirit has to deny that what it is doing is evil. Evil always calls itself good; every vice parades itself as a form of liberation.

Fr. Theobald and Our Culture

In the nineteenth century there was a remarkable character named Fr. Theobald Mathew, an Irish Capuchin who dedicated his life to the temperance movement. There are those today who speak patronizingly of such work, but he was not a puritanical teetotaler, and drunkenness truly was a social crisis at that time. He had a higher vision, a vision of the human soul as a reflection of the glory of God. And it was so wonderful to him that he wanted people to understand that they were losing sight of something far more splendid than what alcohol or drugs could give.

This article is from a chapter in Grace and Truth.

He was a virtual miracle worker, giving the temperance pledge to hundreds of thousands of Irish and, on one occasion, to a multitude of a hundred thousand Scotsmen. He came to the United States and visited at the White House, where he presented his work to the admiration of President Zachary Taylor. The vice president at the time, who later became President Millard Fillmore, received him at City Hall in New York, and it is said that he even took the pledge.

What Fr. Mathew faced in his day was no different from the drug culture we face today. Any sociologist can come up with an explanation for why alcohol was such a problem in the nineteenth century: The breakdown of social institutions, economic oppression, the suppression of religion, political tyranny, or any number of other things drove people to seek some kind of escape. But this good priest told the people that God gives us not an escape but an “inscape” — a vision of the good that challenges every attempt to contradict that good by doing evil.

Our Lord gives us His Body and His Blood in the Holy Eucharist. When the world denies the majestic reality of the Holy Eucharist, it will always try to drink itself into oblivion or drug itself out of reality. Any attempt to redefine the Blessed Sacrament as something less than the sacrifice of Christ for the forgiveness of sins and the presentation on the altar of His True Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity is an embarkation upon a kind of semi-life.

Allegories

Why do people even consider doing evil? Well, it’s in the blood — not the Blood of Christ, but human nature. It’s Original Sin. When we appropriate that Original Sin in the form of explicit acts against the good, that’s what we call a sin.

Our Lord told a parable about the owner of a vineyard who left tenants in charge of the land. The proprietor sent one man to visit the vineyard and collect the rents, and that man was beaten. Another went to the vineyard, and he was gravely wounded. And then finally he said, “Surely, they will not touch my son.” He sent his son in, and they killed him.

Our Lord is giving us an allegory for sin. The beating of the first servant is venial sin, a lighter kind of offense against the good that can easily be remedied through an Act of Contrition. It does not even require a sacramental Confession, though it is recommended. But a venial sin is not to be dismissed lightly, because it lays the groundwork for the more direct affront against God represented by the wounding of the other servant, which represents habitual sin. The ache in the soul that takes away our desire for the good forms a habit of behavior. These habits lead to the gravest offense of all: killing of the Son Himself. This is mortal sin, and every mortal sin is an act of violence against the Lord of Life. St. John Vianney said that when we confess our sins, we take the nails out of Jesus.

Charles Darwin, in his expedition to the Galapagos Islands, noted with great insight how the wildlife seemed unperturbed by the arrival of his ship or the men on it. The reason was clear: They had never seen humans before, and thus had no reason to feel threatened by them. They were not potential hunters or collectors, but just like the birds in the air and the beasts of the field. But, he observed, the seals jumped off the rocks and swam away at the ship’s approach, for the seals alone of all the species on that island had a long experience of being hunted by humans.

The sons of Adam were like those seals. We have had a long experience — that is, all of human history — to observe and to learn the various ways in which people have offended God by offending against men and women, and this has created a deep wound in the human heart. If we are not careful, it can rust into cynicism, which denies the possibility of holiness and eternal joy. Cynicism cooperates with evil.

Jonathan Swift & Righteous Indignation

One of the most admirable writers in the English language was Jonathan Swift. He lived something of a misplaced life as a non-Celt living in Ireland and the dean of the Protestant cathedral of a Catholic country. But he was a man of deep natural virtue. He saw injustice all around him, and he marshaled his literary talent to do what he could to publicize these accounts. To do this, he unleashed his acidic tongue in the form of biting satire.

A lot of people continue to think that Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is a children’s book. It is anything but! A child can enjoy it, of course, but it was written for the minds and hearts of the most sophisticated people of his day. He aimed his satirical barbs at the government officials and the representatives of the ancient institutions of his culture who had fallen into the dismal self-parody of worshipping themselves and their class instead of worshipping the God Who gave them life and power and prosperity.

He reserved particular scorn for the intellectuals who used their intelligence for no useful purpose at all. In the book, they live on a flying island, which they can never quite get to settle down on solid ground. He satirizes the politicians as jumping through hoops or over strings just to get a particular kind of colored ribbon. Swift laid before the reader how easy it is for us, deprived of the vision of God, to lapse into a kind of innocent rejection of our own dignity. Once we have done that, we become easy prey for the liar. The prince of lies knows that once we have lost the vision of higher things, we can be persuaded to participate in the lower things.

Jonathan Swift, as I said, was a man of natural virtue, to a remarkable degree. What he did lack were the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love to a degree that could overcome bitterness and cynicism. He practically dissolved in his frustration and indignation at the injustices of his day. On his tomb in the cathedral in Dublin is this epitaph: “Where savage indignation no longer tears his heart apart.”

Our Lord doesn’t want us to deny that kind of bittersweet indignation, but He also doesn’t want our hearts to be torn apart by cynicism. The goodness of the human soul can discern good from evil, but it will be eternally frustrated if it doesn’t have access to the grace and truth of Christ, which can release the good and conquer the evil.

Light in Darkness

It is highly significant that Our Lord reveals Himself as an eternal light shining in the darkness. Our Lord, when He wanted us to see His divine mercy, showed it in a private revelation to St. Faustina with lights coming out of Him. The Light that made the world can cancel out the propensity to evil that is in every human heart.

Instead of surrendering to indignation and dying with a sense of futility, it is far better to follow the example of the saints. In particular, we could take as our model that saint whose very name means “fire”: Ignatius Loyola. He prayed in his Spiritual Exercises, and the Church has taken up his prayer ever since,

Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my will. All that I am and have You have given to me. And I give all back to You to be disposed of according to Your good pleasure. Give me only the comfort of Your presence and the joy of Your love, and with these, I shall be more than rich and shall desire nothing more.

https://catholicexchange.com/how-we-redefine-the-good-to-justify-our-sins

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This article is adapted from a chapter in Fr. Rutler’s latest book, Grace and Truth: Twenty Steps to Embracing Virtue and Saving Civilization. It is available from Sophia Institute Press.

Notre Dame: A Fiery Sign?

BY WILLIAM KILPATRICK | APR 21, 2019

Was the near destruction of Notre Dame Cathedral simply the result of an accidental fire? Or was it also a prophetic sign?

In the Bible, the destruction of a city or a temple is often linked to immorality or unbelief. The fire and brimstone that was rained down on Sodom was punishment for the sins of its people. Likewise, Jesus warned the people of Capernaum and other cities that their fate could be worse than Sodom’s because they did not repent despite the “mighty works” he had performed in their midst (Matt. 11:20-24). When Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem, he prophesied that its enemies “will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:41-44).

The “sign” of Notre Dame ablaze comes on top of other disturbing signs. Since the beginning of the year, dozens of churches in France have been vandalized, desecrated, and torched. In 2018, 1,063 attacks on Christian churches or symbols were registered in France—a 17 percent increase over 2017 when “only” 878 attacks were registered. Other signs that the times are out of joint are not hard to find.  Among the more horrific were the massacre at the office of the Charlie Hebdo publishers, the Bataclan Theatre attack, the truck jihad in Nice, and the Christmas Market massacre in Strasbourg.

Church desecrations and terror attacks are not confined to France, but since France is one of the most aggressively secular states in Europe, it may be more in need of signs than most.  And it may require more spectacular signs to call France—once considered the “eldest daughter of the Church”—back to the faith.

When asked why her stories were full of grotesque characters and shocking violence, Flannery O’Connor replied: “When you write for the blind, you have to write in big letters.” Those who live in overly-secularized societies, such as France, often become blinded to what is truly important in life, and may, therefore, require fiery signs to wake them up to reality.

The truth is that unbelief in France is probably as great as, if not greater than, in the biblical cities and towns cited in Christ’s warning to the unrepentant. Only 4 percent of French Catholics attend Sunday Mass on a regular basis, and in the larger cathedrals the number of tourists far exceeds the number of worshippers.

After visiting several churches in France, including Notre Dame, Mark Steyn was struck by their emptiness: “One gets the sense that a living, breathing faith is just becoming, actually, a museum, an art gallery, a storage facility.” The cathedrals of Europe are truly magnificent and awe-inspiring, but the awe is for achievements that we no longer seem capable of because we lack the requisite faith.

The damage to Notre Dame is a wake-up call not only for Christians who have let their faith lapse, but also for dyed-in-the-wool secularists. Though run by the Church, Notre Dame, like other historic churches in France, is owned by the French state. Notre Dame is important to France not only because of its history, art, and architecture, but also because it is one of the main reasons that people visit France. Notre Dame draws more visitors than the Eiffel Tower. Many who visit the Cathedral come not just as tourists, but also as pilgrims. For them, “Our Lady’s” Cathedral means far more than one more historic site to check off the list. Ironically, secular France’s greatest attraction is a spiritual treasure.

French President Emmanuel Macron promises to raise enough funds to rebuild Notre Dame within five years. But to what purpose? For the greater glory of God? To worship and praise him? Not quite. The damage to Notre Dame could be a fatal blow to France’s tourist economy which is already reeling from rising crime rates and the constant threat of terrorism brought on by mass Muslim migration. Macron’s haste to rebuild suggests that the state is far more dependent on the Christian faith than it had thought.

Many moderns assume that the secular can get along fine without the sacred. But much of the glory and greatness of France—and of Europe as a whole—is bound up inextricably with its Christian faith. Take that away and much of the glory and greatness would disappear with it. There would be no parliamentary democracies to boast of, little sense of the dignity of man or of his inalienable rights, and, quite possibly, no planes, trains, or automobiles.

But Europe’s leaders seem disinclined to admit any of this. In a fine essay on the subject, historian Paul Kengor writes: “The burning cathedral, and the state’s inability to stop the blaze, seemed a harsh symbol of France’s failure to protect its religious heritage.”

Or even to acknowledge it.

Kengor reminds us: “In the early 2000s, a battle raged within the European Union over whether to include a reference to God in the EU constitution.” In the end, the European Union decided to keep God and Christianity out of its constitution. Having rejected the cornerstone, the builders are now discovering that the whole edifice of secular Europe is crumbling.

Why does the secular need the sacred? The answer is that the sacred realm makes sense out of life—a service the state cannot perform for itself. If there is no fixed transcendent order, everything becomes relative. Without reference to a higher authority, laws are perceived as arbitrary impositions of the state. One follows them simply to avoid the state’s penal institutions. As Dostoevsky put it, “If there is no God everything is permissible.” Likewise, if there is no God, there is no ultimate standard by which the state itself can be judged. Hence, the state becomes the ultimate arbiter of what rights you can and cannot have.

Pope St. John Paul II was the most prominent proponent of keeping God in the European constitution.  According to Kengor:

He made arguments akin to those made by the American Founding Fathers: It is crucial for citizens living under a constitution to understand the ultimate source from which their rights derive: their rights come not from government but God.

The hollow shell of Notre Dame should be a reminder to France that the secular state is itself a hollow shell when it fails to acknowledge the Creator who endows us with inalienable rights. The state has no lasting vision to offer. And its guarantee of liberty, equality, fraternity, and the rights of man are backed by absolutely nothing.

Thus the damage to Notre Dame is not necessarily a tragedy if it serves to remind people of the source and center of their lives. Hopefully, it will provide a much-needed spark of recognition. President Macron and other secularists are now acutely aware that France’s tourist economy depends much more on God than they had realized. Perhaps that is a step in the direction of realizing that France depends on God for everything.

There is, of course, one other consideration. France is allowing itself to be taken over by an alien religion—a religion that has been at war with Christendom for over 1,400 years. Whether or not the French leadership takes the fire at Notre Dame as a sign from heaven, Muslims almost certainly will. They will see it as a sign from Allah—a sign that Islam is destined to triumph over France and all of Europe. Some Muslims will, no doubt, feel that they have a duty to hasten the process along. As a result, we can expect the attacks on Christian churches to continue and even to escalate.

Most French citizens, one assumes, would prefer not to live under sharia law. But that is the direction in which France is headed, and secularized France doesn’t seem to know how to prevent it from happening. In previous centuries, the people who built the great cathedrals were able to turn back massive Islamic invasions. Apparently, the faith that enabled them to build the cathedrals also gave them the strength to resist.

Providentially, enough of Notre Dame has survived intact to make a full restoration possible. And quite possibly there remains enough residue of Christianity in France to provide a foundation for the restoration of the Faith. In that case, it seems quite likely that Our Lord and Our Lady will give the people of France the strength to resist the advance of Islam, and perhaps even to convert their Muslim neighbors in the process. 

AND WE PRAY!

https://turningpointproject.com/notre-dame-a-fiery-sign/

This article originally appeared in the April 18, 2019 edition of Crisis.

Notre Dame -- God Takes Back What Is His

Notre Dame en Feu: God Takes Back What Is His

During my senior year of college, I took a class on the French Revolution — my first real academic exposure to that seminal period since a brief survey in high school. Going into the class, I was confident in my understanding of the Revolution, a narrative more or less predicated on the traditional historiography: the French Revolution was a struggle against an oppressive monarchy in defense of the same basic principles as our own revolution in the United States, though perhaps with a bit more bloodshed. Guillotines or not, how could one take umbrage at such lofty ideals as liberty, equality, and fraternity?

Such was the extent of my understanding of the Revolution at the time I began the college class, a misguided view (as I would learn) that my Catholic high school education criminally failed to correct.

In what turned out to be the biggest seismic shock of my academic career, my professor quickly disabused me of my preconceived notions and tipped over the first domino that would soon cause the total reorientation of the foundations of my political and philosophical worldview. The class showed me, for the first time, the ugly and unvarnished truth of modern France’s founding myth: the guillotine, yes, but also the Vendée. The mass shootings and drownings of nuns and priests. The desecration of the churches — Notre Dame itself was converted to a hideous “Temple of Reason” under the careful eye of Robespierre and his republican thugs. The virtual abolition of the Catholic Church in France and the forced conversion of priests into mere civil servants. The expulsion or arrest of those priests and bishops who would not conform — then, as in the England of St. John Fisher, a depressing minority. The senseless savagery, the unbridled, visceral rage — is this what modern Europe proudly holds up as the fruit of Enlightenment?

For the first time in my life, I began to doubt the received wisdom that, whatever its faults, the French Revolution ultimately liberated the French people and was a bold step forward in the quest for La Raison. This first domino toppled my views on the (previously not to be challenged!) Euro-American dogma that democracy is the highest, indeed only form of government, and later on the very legitimacy of republican forms of government themselves.

The tragic fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris brought me back to that lecture hall of my college class. I can only say what so many others are saying: is there no more fitting metaphor for the absolute state of the Church in France — indeed, in Western Europe — today? What distinguishes today’s Frenchman from his forefather of 1789? The French Revolution was not an event; it was a regime, and one that still reigns in the secular Wahhabism that is the French policy of laïcité.

Watching such a great treasure of the Catholic patrimony go up in flames brought me grief, yes, but it also awakened in me a sense of righteous anger born of God’s infinite justice: as the Apostle reminds us, God will not be mocked. In a nation where Mass attendance has fallen to single digits, is it any wonder that God has taken back what is His? In a city where the average church hosts more iPad-clutching, shorts-clad tourists in a single day than the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass attracts in months, did we honestly expect anything different from what transpired Monday? In this part of the European continent, where one can sooner find a rainbow banner than an altar rail in the sanctuary, did we really think God would be mocked indefinitely?

Regicide has become deicide. Where once men beheaded their earthly kings, they still strive to decapitate their heavenly King. The Temple of Reason has once more become the funeral pyre of the Faith.

Much has been made of Islam’s alleged threat to “Christian Europe.” If the people of France have taught us anything, and if the events of this week are any proof of divine justice, then it is clear that the people of France and indeed of Western Europe need no help from the Muslims in destroying their culture, their heritage, their faith.

Louis XVI, king of France, martyr of France, pray for us. Holy martyrs of the Vendée, pray for us. O Lord, Who promised to destroy the temple made by human hands and in three days raise it up once more, have mercy on us.

https://onepeterfive.com/notre-dame-feu-god-takes/

Editor’s note: This essay was submitted to 1P5 by an anonymous Catholic.