It is important to name one’s enemies. Only thus may they be quite completely recognized for what they are, or therefore effectually fought. The reluctance of our chattering classes to name Islam an enemy of the West – as Islam has forthrightly declared herself to be – has forestalled our prosecution of her war against us. If we were able to muster the clarity of thought and vigor of will to name Islam our enemy, our war with her could be soon over (saving lots of Mohammedan lives), and everyone better off.
From my very first encounter with Moldbug’s appropriation of “cathedral” as a way of referring to our homegrown Modernist, Leftist and Materialist enemies of Truth, Virtue and Beauty as manifest in the West, it has irked me. Cathedrals are noble. They may be the very best, most beautiful thing man has ever done. It seems a literal profanation to apply our term for these gorgeous holy temples to one of the most ignoble, evil things man has ever done, a thing indeed demonic in its origins and supervision.
I would like to keep “cathedral” unsullied for good things – like cathedrals.
The term is by now however so widely known and used in our little corner of the web that it is unlikely anything anyone might say will dislodge it. I have for some time nevertheless been casting about for another term as pithy and trenchant, but more apt, that might have a shot.
It would have to be a single word, conveying both the established institutional aspect and control of the commanding cultural heights enjoyed by our demon-haunted adversaries, as well as the devilish nature of their lord. A single word with the many connotations evoked by “Cult of Moloch.” “Cult of Moloch” was the best I had come up with. It’s accurate enough, for that cult involved regular and massive sacrificial immolations of first born children. But while “Cult of Moloch” is more evocative for those in the know than its ordinary equivalent, “culture of death,” both are too long. There is also the problem that most people don’t know Moloch from Adam.
“Leviathan” is good – short, not unfamiliar, catchy, connoting vast size and tremendous inertia – but it, too, usually requires some explanation, and anyway Hobbes has already put it to another, valuable use.
This evening, a fit candidate at last occurred to me: Babel.
Everyone knows the story of Babel. It’s right up there with the Flood. It doesn’t need explanation.
Babel connotes a profane and impudent and mighty *tower,* a huge evil edifice, the central project of the civil authorities, engaging the efforts of the whole people, willy nilly, first enslaving and then confusing them. It connotes the catastrophe of unbridled hubris.
And, of course, the Babylonians too, like the Canaanites, practiced human sacrifice (almost everyone did, back then).
Then there are all those juicy locutions from Scripture: The Whore of Babylon; “Babylon the Mighty has Fallen, has Fallen;” and, best of all, “Mene, mene, tekel upharsin.”
The Persians are indeed at the gates of the City. They are not arrived there because they are particularly evil – they are doing only what is natural for them to do – but because Babylon is particularly weak; and she is weak because she is dissolute, besotted, wicked; is doing what is unnatural for her to do. Babel is a whore, her time for sale to the highest bidder.
Who then are we of the reactionary, traditionalist Right? We are Daniel.
The Babylonians could not read the handwriting on the wall. They were too confused. The discourse of our adversaries is likewise famously incoherent. It is babble. And it is introducing a babble of diverse languages into our cities, as Babel seeks to reconstitute himself in a new body.
That’s what Babel does – has always done.
Babel therefore reminds us also that our true Enemy is ancient, perennial, and of no merely human or recent provenance. “His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate; on Earth is not his equal.” We may beat him back again this time, and decimate him – indeed, I feel fairly sure that we will, yet again – but he will always return, and seek to reconstitute his body, as Sauron the Necromancer did in Mirkwood, where no one was looking. He is the thorn in our side, our perpetual wound. We shall always be at war with him, until the bitter end.
Remembering that it was he who perverted us at Babylon, we should prevent any complacency about the weakness of his human agents.
The Orthosphere 
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Anti-white Supremacist…
AGAINST the white man striving towards objective Supremacy, ie., (P)erfection, either individually or collectively per a POST-Christian/post-liberated mob mentality.
“Babel connotes a profane and impudent and mighty *tower*”
In that light, perhaps “The Cathedral” could be amended to “The Tower” (cf. “the ivory tower”, already extant, and which covers the same terrain as Moldbug’s “cathedral”).
But, Gondor! And Mont Saint Michel, the High Place of our patron!
Seriously: it’s a good suggestion, and I had thought of it. But The Tower is redolent of all towers on all cathedrals and castles, all chapels, churches and temples. In the typological language of Scripture, it refers to the Body of Christ, the Chalice of his Blood: the Grail.
Linda Kimball is a Christian lady who has delved into the details of the spiritual dimension of Babelian end-times deception:
http://patriotsandliberty.com/lindas-latest/2016/2/4/the-dark-god-of-gnostic-progressive-spirituality
The Dark God of Gnostic Progressive Spirituality
“The Tower of Babel was Babylon’s founding edifice and spiritual center, said Brooks Alexander, research director for Spiritual Counterfeits Project. Brooks describes the Tower as an astral temple or gate-way into the dimension of spirits and the Divine Energy. It therefore represented the structure of the evolving universe of energy and matter:
“As the ‘cosmic mountain’ it tied heaven and earth together. It was the all-inclusive image of the totality of the universe.” (The Big Lie, SCP Journal 29:2-29:3, 2005, Tal Brooke, p. 11)
The magical meaning of the Tower is the ancient Egyptian Hermetic principle of the universe or macrocosm’s correlation with the microcosm, “as above, so below” symbolized by the Ouroboros – the serpent-powered cosmic tree of life represented by a snake biting its tail. “Below” corresponds to earth, initiate (aspiring god man), and Tower, and ‘above’ to a number of different astral planes and sub-planes comprising the void— the locale of gods and demons,
“the region inhabited by spirits of the air and other elements, and the various heavens and hells with their angelic and demonic hosts….With the help of ritual procedures, trained persons believe that they can ‘rise on the planes,’ and experience these regions in full awareness.” (Beyond the Body: The Human Double and the Astral Planes, Benjamin Walker, 1974, pp. 117-8)
From the time of Nimrod to our own, the serpent-energized Ouroboros with its astral planes and sub-planes has been well-known around the world in its’ many esoteric (occult secret) traditions.
Brooks adds that in the ritual act of ascending the astral altar,
“…. the priests acted out the stages of god-realization and the inner meaning of mankind’s oneness with the cosmos. The Babylonian monarch was the focus of the occult power channeled through the activities of the priesthood. He was regarded as a divine being, a god-man.” (ibid, The Big Lie, p. 10)
…
While Mystery Religion Babylon is the post-flood root of all mystery religions, in its’ final version, communal and individual possession will become a global phenomenon as untold millions of people ritualistically act out the stages of god-realization and the inner meaning of mankind’s oneness with the cosmos:
“…..I can be saved only by becoming one with the universe. Thereby, too, my deepest ‘pantheist’ aspirations. It was especially the image of God which Teilhard saw in need of urgent redefinition. Modern man has not yet found the God he can adore, A God commensurate to the newly discovered dimensions of the universe.” (Towards a New Mysticism, Teilhard de Chardin and Eastern Religions, Ursula King, p. 172)
“Once again, but this time on a universal scale, humankind is seeking no less than its reunion with the ‘divine,’ it’s transcendence into ever higher forms of life. Hindus call our earth Brahma, or God, for they rightly see no difference between our earth and the divine. This ancient simple truth is slowly dawning again upon humanity. Its full flowering will be the real, great new story of humanity as we are about to enter our cosmic age…” (New Genesis: Shaping a Global Spirituality, Robert Muller, 1923-2010, U.N. Assistant Secretary General known as the philosopher of the U.N. and father of Core Curriculum, 1984, p. 84)”
I find the views of people like Linda Kimball to be rather simplistic and parochial. Granted, there is a whole lot to criticize in the contemporary spirituality culture ( for example, its vapidity and inclination to self-inflation). But on the other hand, there are numerous authentic seekers out there who reject atheo-materialism, scientism, and hedonism and affirm spiritual values. These postmodern “pagans” are far more likely to discover Truth and Tradition than their secular humanist counterparts. I’ll still take a Deepak Chopra to a Daniel Dennett.
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Babel delenda est!
Have you seen this scene from Fritz Lang’s 1927 film “Metropolis”?
“Babel connotes a profane and impudent and mighty *tower,* a huge evil edifice …”
For a little extra cultural punch: Tirith Babel.
Kristor: There have been in the recent past, on offer, some alternatives to Moldbug’s “Cathedral.” You might remember Takuan Seiyo’s multi-part series at The Gates of Vienna called “From Atlantis to Meccania.” That second element, “Meccania,” is nicely coined and richly implicated. Trading two syllables for three, we could just refer to the regime as Kaaba. Given the regime’s fascination with all things muzzly, that would be entirely appropriate.
Lovecraft’s R’lyeh (Cthulhu’s bachelor pad in the depths of the South Pacific) might also serve, especially if in pronouncing it one heavily glottalized the final h. That way it would rhyme with yech, the standard vocalization of disgust.
But, okay – I’ll give you your Babel. I have, however, this complementary proposal: Let the name for any important proponent or administrator or manager or community organizer employed by Babel to increase Babel be, not Nimrod, the Biblical instigator of the eponymous tower, but Dimrod, to indicate with proper scorn the total thoughtlessness of Babelspeak. For example, instead of referring to That Woman as That Woman, we might refer to her as Dimrod, or Ms. Dimrod. Her husband, Mr. That Woman, is equally a Dimrod.
Lodge.
Ilion…
If a belief in “equality before Perfection” makes one a true liberal then where is your animus for the anti-white Supremacist?
The strength of ‘Cathedral’ lies in its sardonic irony, which its more earnest alternatives lack. It gets under the enemy’s skin and thus is more polemically effective against progressives than “Babel” or “Synagogue” — however appropriate those may be in discussions among traditionalists (of whatever stripe).
I can see that. But, I must say, sardonic irony seems more and more to me a bug, rather than a feature. It’s a standard trope of the leftist poseur, who, being too weak to vanquish his adversaries in combat (whether corporeal or verbal), resorts to belittling them.
Call a spade a spade, I say. Babel is just evil. Cathedrals never are. Except the more recently built cathedrals, that were infected in their design by the sardonic irony of moderns.
Babel is evil: tyrannical, stupid, corrupt, mendacious, brutal … one could go on. Call it by an evil name.
To me, the “Cathedral” is just a straightforward indictment of the Roman Catholic Church for the crime of inducing the white race into a dysgenic self-annihilation coined by a highly “intelligent” deracinated atheist. It’s down right egalitarian when you really think about it.
In fairness what passes for irony among many progs is merely a sarcastic irreverence or cynicism. But again, I think it’s a question of context. Moldbug wasn’t preaching to the choir but trying to get the more intelligent ‘open-minded progressives’ to look at progressivism from the outside, to jolt them into the recognition that what they reflexively regard as self-evidently good, true and beautiful is actually an ideology vulnerable to the kind of genealogical criticism they like to wield against their opponents. The point is that for them cathedrals are evil because associated with an oppressive theocratic medieval order. Even if it fails to convert, this polemical jujitsu is at least more likely to rattle and dispirit an enemy who would brush off a biblical signifier for spiritual wickedness as “typical Theothuglican wingnuttery”.
Kristor,
Admittedly I am a wackjob tin foil hat wearing outsider, but this “naming” business seems like yet one more rotten attempt to build a consensus where consensus should have never been sought by participating in the never-ending modern desire to invent new taxonomies for millenia old human actions – all the while telling ourselves we are fighting the Enemy best when we play by the Enemy’s rules. That success is being measured by how closely this made up terminology tracks some heathen’s blasphemous made up terminology is instructive.
But Babel is an *old* name for the phenomenon in question.
What heathen? Moldbug? But “Babel” is not apt because it is like “Cathedral” – for it is not – but because it is apt to the thing it names.
Kristor,
Babel may be an old name for *a* phenomena. But with all due respect you have by no means named that phenomena. My main issue here is all this typical reactionary talk about “the enemy” without clearly defining the goal. Without a defined goal, it is actually impossible to clearly define the enemy. My hunch is that people don’t like where their conclusions lead when defining goals as such. In other words, no Christian worth his salt should be discussing any this-worldly goal apart from the context of our eternal goal. Some Christians wanna fight for white people and some nebulous Western civilization, well, knock yourself out AS LONG AS you show your work how any of that is conducive to the eternal goal of the Beatific Vision. But talk about the eternal goal tends to break up the modern Christian wing of the reactionary side’s Campus Crusade for Christ kumbaya fest, which must be avoided at all costs because Babel.
Essentially, I think Babel is being misappropriated here.
Sorry. Yes, the heathen statement was meant towards Moldbug. Not any way directed towards you or the commenters I’ve read so far.
Interesting. That critique has legs, I think. But I don’t think it quite on target when it comes to orthosphereans. The basic orthospherean approach to politics is that a Christian civilization is more likely to lead more souls to the BV than other sorts of civilizations; and that a Christian civilization that is also aimed at supporting spiritual growth toward saintliness – wherein quotidian mundane life is perfused with sacramental ritual, ergo consecrated, imbued in men’s minds with glowing meaning and signification – will do so even better. But, moreover, there is also this: a consecrated Christian civilization is simply going to work better, in concrete, mundane, economic and political terms, than other sorts of societies, ceteris paribus. Viz., the Gothic cathedrals and the Ars Nova and the Scholastic Synthesis, the Age of Exploration, the Armory at Venice, and the Renaissance.
The political goal of the orthosphere then, in short, is consecrated Christendom. This won’t be quite achieved until the Parousia, of course, but it can certainly be approached more closely than the West has done since 1500. All our talk here of this-worldly politics and culture is environed by the sure knowledge that no mere reform or shift of fashion toward reality and sanity is going to do the job, absent a Great Awakening. Mere reform is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic; a mere shift of fashion is no more than donning formal wear for the final descent to the deep.
No; no pulling a location or changing jobs or wardrobe or friends; only metanoia will do. Hell, it’s a truism of AA. Everyone knows it.
That said, metanoia will involve in its train changes of location, wardrobe, job, friends, the whole shooting match. A change of mind is a change of life. This is why family systems resist healing.
The Enemy I have named Babel is the nexus of men and their institutions that want to destroy or prevent or frustrate or vitiate or sap Christendom. I feel quite sure that the lord of these men and their establishments is no one new; that he and his legions are always, and have always been, prowling about the Earth, seeking the ruin of souls. Babel is one of their favorite and most effective ways of doing it, because it hijacks man’s idealism, his hope and urge toward the Good. And Babel recurs, again and again in history; this is why the story is still so lively and trenchant for us today. The EU is Babel; so is the UN, the New International Order, the Novus Ordo Seclorum, and so forth. Babel is all the Revolutions that have beleaguered men since the Enlightenment; Babel is the Enlightenment.
The temptation to utopianism is perennial. It goes back at least as far as Akhenaten and Mazdak – and to Belshazzar, and aye to Nimrod. Babel is the palmary, the archetypal instance of immanentizing the eschaton.
Alexander the Great transmitted the ancient globalist ideology straight out of old Babel itself into the heart of Western civilization (the Hellenistic culture he started). Citing Plutarch’s panegyric of Alexander:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Fortuna_Alexandri*/1.html
Just look at this symbolism: Alexander died in the heart of Babylon, but the globalist spirit he had unleashed kept marching on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alexander_the_Great
Then there’s Napoleon, Hitler, the Communist International. And, of course, perhaps the ultimate Babelonian project of globalist political utopia: Islam.
I was ironically reminded of these sung lyrics of “British Grenadiers”:
“Some talk of Alexander,
And some of Hercules
Of Hector and Lysander,
And such great names as these.
But of all the world’s great heroes,
There’s none that can compare
With a tow, row, row, row, row, row,
To the British Grenadier.”
That was true in the sense that before the rise of the American Empire, no other entity, not even Alexander the Great, promoted the cause of globalism so powerfully as the British Empire.
Love it.
The melonheads are re-grouping, rebuilding power in their ancient way. It’s good to know it as a pattern: the build, the sin, the fall.
Use of ‘the Cathedral’ should be stopped altogether. Heresy by Moldbug with that curiously recurrent dig at European accomplishments done by that famous group he belongs to.
Is SoS too blatant? That could get people thinking.
The other is, of course, Babylon. There are some advantages. Babylon is well known as Sin City among the Rastafari. And the term has some carry among the youth. That would be a rich inversion. Naming Babylon as such will make the wannabe cool criticals lose cred.
They hate that. More than anything.
Onwards.
JAH bless you.
Kristor,
Thank you for the detailed response. I think I was considering your particular OP through the lens of what I considered to be the Orthosphere as a whole, which was inappropriate. I’ll describe what I mean by that below. Given that, I see how my criticism may have missed the mark. I agree with much of what you wrote. My concerns were about what is meant by Christendom though and what are the means by which we fight for this Christendom. When I hear words like “Orthosphere” I thought that meant, among other things, a group of traditionalist orthodox Christians working toward some common goal. But that implies a common notion of orthodoxy and tradition. I agree that the Enlightenment is a part of Babel. But so is, in my view, the Protestant Reformation. The centuries have lulled Catholics into thinking there is enough common ground with pre-Enlightenment Protestantism to allow us all to fight against the “real” enemy – whether it be the Enlightenment or modernism or what have you. I think that will ultimately be as successful as embracing Kant to defeat Hume. Or thinking we can fight modernism-as-synthesis-of-all-heresies by convincing several individual heresies to team up against it. It’s a program that seems to take a fairly anemic, if not arbitrary, view of things like Christendom, tradition, orthodoxy. I’m working this out in my mind myself. I’m just concerned your stated goals – which I could not agree with more – are not possible given the methods for attaining it the Orthosphere is recommending.
There are two aspects of Babel: there is the building to which Axis Mundi refers, which is Babel proper; and then there is the Confusion of Tongues that ever dogs Babel, and always sooner or later destroys it. It is the overweening hubris of Babel proper which is the insult to the moral order of the cosmos. The Confusion is only a sequela of that hubris.
Babel always intends the eventual integration of all humanity under a single political order. It has, that is to say, not just a spiritual but also a mundane political goal. Indeed, Babel is primarily political, and only secondarily and tactically is it ever infused with a putative divine sanction or mandate. In its determination to implement utopia, it confuses what ought to be rendered to Caesar with what ought to be rendered to God. A movement that lacks a totalistic political goal – that, i.e., lacks any nisus toward mundane empire – is not, I think, properly Babelonian.
So the Church is not Babelonian. Nor then is Christendom, even though in it Christianity informs all politics. The difference is this: Christendom organically arises when men’s minds are conformed toward Christ by a proper and successful evangelical mission, rather than by force of arms. Christendom is a fellowship of men who have been convinced of Christ’s Lordship, and who therefore all try to live according to Christian moral precepts, taking them as normative, and him as their ultimate and superordinate Lord. Christendom puts metanoia first, and lets politics follow in its train; Babel does the opposite.
As Protestantism has played out, it looks to me rather more like an aspect of the Confusion than of Babel proper (indeed, the lesson of the original Babel and Confusion is that the Confusion is a perennial state of affairs, that messes up all human society, construed as companionship – literally, commensality). I don’t mean to suggest that pre-Reformation Catholicism was trying to immanentize the eschaton, so that the Reformation was the natural consequence. Allowing for the empire-builders and megalomaniacs that beset all human institutions of any size (for as I say, our Enemy is always at us, both jointly and severally), that seems an inaccurate notion. Christianity is always evangelical, of course, but it is (almost never) imperial; is, I would say, *essentially* animperial: not of this world. And it seems to me that this is as true of Protestant Christianity as of Catholic or Orthodox.
It’s not that we are allowed to make common cause with other sorts of Christians. It’s that we have little choice. Christendom is Confused, and our commensal fellowship interrupted; but soon, we may hope and must pray, our sad divisions will be healed in and by the light of the Holy Spirit. In the meantime, we are like feuding brothers jointly defending the family manse against an attack of dragons.
The modern does not need Faith in his salvation… He needs Faith in Perfection. He needs Faith in The Perfect Man. He needs Faith in a perfect self. Right now, he desires self-annihilation and the faithlessness that goes with it.
Wood…
The most transgressive departure from Truth is in the denial of The Perfect Man as empirical fact and highest ordering “principle” (read: AFFIRM “universal equality” as highest reality). Understanding this, there is no SCHISM in Christianity. Those anti-Christians intelligent enough to create false schism within Christianity over the matter of salvation or other things are not in fact making their argument for “universal equality” as the highest ordering principle. It’s mere subterfuge. So to the degree you engage in this false schism between Orthodox, Catholic and Protestanism is the degree to which you are immersed in anti-(white) Supremacy. You are nullifying the highest ordering principle of The Perfect Man and setting before the white race an impasse to their collective will to Perfection.
Thordaddy,
I understand little of what you mean or how that was directed towards me. However, Gnostics have always sought after the unholy grail known as the 8th sacrament. For some, the 8th sacrament is ignorance. For some it is faith-aloneness in really old churches. And for some it is apparently ritualized racial supremacy. How horrible it will be, as Babel is finally toppled, when that Day of Reckoning reveals there were only 7 sacraments.
Wood…
Your Catholic claim is the heresy of “by faith alone.” Yet, you’ll readily admit to the truth of modernism. So your Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant “schism” is the confused “work” of Babel itself and does not truly exist..
There is no schism in Christianity.
There is no schism in the claim of empirical Perfection as proof of meta-physical Perfection.
There is no schism in a claim of Absolute Truth.
So you HELP CREATE this false schism, though, you as perpetrator of modernism, still seemingly proceed “by faith alone.”
Wood…
What truth holds for “Christians,” alt-riters and leftists?
Anti-white Supremacy…
Against the white man striving towards objective Supremacy, ie., Perfection. It seems I cannot reiterate this enough even though it is perhaps the most self-evident truth of modernism.
So you think you are JUST a Catholic, yet you renounce “racial supremacy” which is actually your LIBERAL condemnation of “white supremacy.” But in truth, in your renouncement Is a public deconverting from Christianity through the self-evident submission to the Confusion of Babel.
Again…
White Christians JUST ARE white Supremacists and no amount of pejorative appeals to “racial supremacy” shall redeem your denial of such truth. For such pejorative appeal is the very evidence of subservience to Babel and the ongoing zeitgeist.
Thordaddy, your last few comments have been both incomprehensible and monotonous in their recursion – endemic in your comments – to your notion of White Supremacy (that is not to be taken to mean what anyone else in the world means by that term). Stop using shorthand. Write out your thoughts fully, using no idiosyncratic definitions of common terms, so that readers can understand what you say. This is your last warning; any more comments from you on this thread that utilize your private jargon will not make it past moderation.
Kristor…
You are truly incomprehensible. Not in the sense that your words are not understandable, but in the sense that your lack of comprehension is inexplicable.
The zeitgeist is against Christianity AND the “white supremacist.”
Agree or disagree?
And where white Christians are concerned, the above IS ONE IN THE SAME.
Agree or disagree?
Your unwillingness to CONCEIVE of the white Supremacist as a TRUE white Christian AND thus bring cognitive resonance to an ENEMY that is both anti-Christian AND anti-white Supremacy IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE TO ME?
Your unwillingness to CONCEIVE of the white Supremacist in his absolute sense is incomprehensible to me?
And your WILLINGNESS TO ONLY PAY HEED to the “liberal” conception of “white supremacist” as white degenerate is only comprehensible to the effect that it represents the moral inversion that Dr. Charlton so talks about.
White Christian = genuine white Supremacist…
Agree or disagree?
Christianity is belief in the doctrines explicated in the Nicene Creed, and the practical implementation of the moral precepts implicit therein. Nowhere in the Creed are races mentioned.
Kristor,
The Christian Creed is different from the Christian CLAIM. And it is the disparate Faith in the former that has broken the certain Faith in the latter. And yet it has not done this actually. The disparate Christian creeds have only minimized the Faith in the Christian Claim to near nil.
No. It really isn’t. Christians believe what the Creeds proclaim. Period, end of story. Everything else is footnotes.
Disagree with the Creeds, and you are not Christian. Agree with them, and you are.
Thordaddy,
There is no heresy or schism. And everyone should just stop all this heretical, schismatic rejection of Christianity-as-White-Supremacy. Aight.
Schism just is the rupture of ecclesial union. To deny schism is to deny ecclesial Union as such. And schism most typically manifests as rejection of divinely constituted legitimate authority. That we should embrace those Christians who very nearly define themselves by the extent to which they have rejected such divinely constituted authority as equals in order to get along with the really important thing of rebuilding a civilization whose essence just happened to be its submission to the same divinely constituted authority does not seem to be a winning strategy.
The irony is that your rejection of, and the OP’s embracing of for some supposed greater good, heresy and schism is much closer to modern liberal progressive Christianity than the traditional Faith’s the Orthosphere represents.
I utterly reject the imputation that the original post embraced heresy and schism. Where in the post, pray, do you detect any such thing? Are you not perhaps reading that embrace into the post from your own presuppositions about the Orthosphere, its author, etc.?
Wood…
The “rupture in the uniion” revolves around the issue of the “path to salvation.” Yet, there is no “rupture in the union” where the matter of final destination is concerned. But a certainty in your Catholic path to salvation should no more require your faith in thst certainty than a certainty in the final destination that is the end result of that certain path to salvation needs your faith.
Where faith is needed by a mass of white men headed towards damnation is that a certain final destination even exists IN THE FIRST PLACE.
And you as a devout Catholic must take some responsibility in the fact that so many white men no longer have any faith in the final Christian destination let alone the one certain physically spiritual path it takes to get there.
PS “Brothers” can’t be “dragons” when you’ve gutted “brothers” of all racial relationship.
Kristor,
I do not impute heresy and schism to you, as if you were a heretic or schismatic. However I do believe the OP implicitly, and your subsequent comments made explicit a position that, advocated an embracing of heresy and schism as such (since we are feuding brothers fighting the dragons) for prudential considerations of accomplishing some greater good (a Christendom, which I continue to view as anemic or arbitrary). I reject that approach and believe that is a hallmark of modern liberal progressive Chrisitanity. I view you as a brother in the trenches and in no manner imputed ill will to you personally. But – until convinced otherwise – I will intransigently fight against what I see as a failed strategy from intelligent men of good will.
I responded:
Bollocks. I wrote:
It is grotesque to construe me in this as advocating divisions I explicitly characterize as sad, and which I explicitly hope and pray will soon be healed. That feuding brothers must perforce fight together the besieging dragons in order to survive in no way makes their feud a good or tolerable thing. On the contrary, their feud vitiates their war against the dragons.
I hate those sad divisions. Credo in unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam. If I did not, I would have said something like, “We have these dragons to fight, so I guess our intramural feuds are fine, and we shouldn’t worry about them.” I said nothing of the sort.
Heresy and schism must not be embraced. They must be ended.
Kristor,
Then start calling the brothers for the current dragons they really are. My essential critique remains:
There was a time when, even those orthodox Protestants you see alongside yourself, our holy Faith considered such folks dragons. A horrific, as you said, hijacking of man’s idealism – as apt a description of orthodox Protestantism as I have come across. And some resurgence of Islam changes this not a whit. As the Council of Trent stated:
If you view Protestants as simply manpower, then state this. If you wish to commandeer Protestantism to fight against Islam specifically, then state this and leave it at that. But if you wish to join arms with heretics and schismatics – if this is wrong please correct me as this seems to be the implied or explicit program – to ultimately build Christian civilization then you have no historical precedent and no magisterial support. This is a criticism you have yet to address.
Certainly they are, or can be, at least that. Insofar as they are men.
Well, sure. It only makes sense. And against liberalism, too. That said, “commandeer” is inapt; sane Protestants should – and, in my experience, generally do – heed the clarion of their own accord. Dragooning should be superfluous.
That’s a different thing altogether. Christendom must, it seems clear, be founded upon concord in unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam. So, absent that unity, if “joining arms” with heretics and schismatics involves agreeing with their doctrines that err, or agreeing that our doctrinal disagreements don’t signify, then no: I won’t be able to join arms with them. If it doesn’t mean either of those things, then my joining arms with them will amount to no more than a handshake on an arm’s length business transaction. A halfway measure, no more; with the Christendom that resulted a poor crippled thing, compared to what it might have been. But better than a civil war within Christendom, such as was raging in 1571.
But I’m pretty sure that, as a historical matter, it won’t end up mattering.
What I expect is that over the next couple centuries most of the schismatic churches will fall back toward Rome, as the Copts seem now to be doing. [The heretical religions – as, e.g., liberalism, Islam – will not, mostly because I expect they will die.] In part this will be due to pressure from without the Logosphere (my new term for the Church considered as a mystical Body). In part though it will be due also to a higher, purer, and clearer intramural theological discourse – as, e.g., seems to be underway between Rome and the “Monophysites” of the East, and for that matter some salients of the Lutherans and the Orthodox – in which all parties come to understand that they all meant pretty much the same thing all along, except with respect to some tangential disagreements that are not worth schism, as being differences that make no difference (e.g., the filioque, which it seems may some day soon become optional in rites of churches in communion with Rome).
[That was a long sentence. Believe me when I say that it was once far longer. I hope it is nevertheless clear.]
As to historical precedent, there has on the one hand been no time quite like ours, no age that could be characterized as “post-Christian.” On the other, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox (and indeed Jewish) pastors have cooperated for decades in day to day ministry to the lost, the poor, the afflicted, and the miserable. So there is much precedent for cooperation as such, and no precedent for the war against all tradition that now rages throughout the West, in which all the established institutions of society (with the exception of a few outfits in a few churches) have been coopted by modernism or the Social Gospel.
Finally, as to magisterial support for the fundamental brotherhood of Christians:
I take “collaboration among Christians in various areas of service to mankind” to include cooperation in the war against the enemies of the Logos.
Kristor, great answer! No. 818 seems a most reasonable (and Catholic – where Catholic is understood in part as Christian Charity) position to take. I guess that is why it is part of the catechism, no?
I am better informed for having read your post, Sir.
Well, this horse did escape the barn many years ago.
In defense of the term: There is no The Cathedral in Christianity. There are plural cathedrals. Anything called “The Cathedral” is obviously a cult–a gnostic power cult to be exact. It occupies the same legitimizing space as the Catholic Church once did for all of (Western) Europe. But, of course, it is not oriented toward truth, but only its own power. It is centralized, yet strangely byzantine, seemingly random, yet undertakes coordinated actions in a fixed direction over time. No one’s quite in charge, but clearly some are less in charge than others. All other names fail to capture one or another aspect of it. “Babel” is one of the best attempts I’ve seen. Joel Kotkin called it “The New Clerisy”. (“The Synagogue” is popular, but hilariously ill-suited for the task.)
Yeah, I have no real hope that “The Cathedral” will ever be dislodged. But you never know. I likewise publicly disliked “manosphere” a few years ago, on strictly aesthetic grounds, and proposed “androsphere” instead. I expected I would be the only one ever to take up my suggestion. But just the other day, Alpha Game did so. I doubt that Vox encountered “androsphere” because he hangs out here; more likely it was through your own site, where in the same sentence you linked to his interview with the more and more reactionary Roosh and to the Orthosphere post in which I first offered the term.
Our heirs are likely to recognize Babel’s connotations just as readily as we do, whereas they’ll need some explanation of The Cathedral. So Babel may win out over the long run.
I know, right? It’s like a school of fish or a flock of starlings, that can turn on a dime as if it were a single organism – a Leviathan or something, with a group mind. And Babel’s attack on the West is methodical, radical, relentless, and most of all *comprehensive.* As a recent comment by Terry Morris makes clear, not a single institution of Western culture is neglected.
Kristor…
You understand that “Babel’s attack on the West” can only actually mean Babel’s attack on the true white Christians of the West and that the meta-physical “structure” made certain by a faith in the Nicene Creed is the very locus of attack. So where the white Christian of the West impresses this meta-physical “structure” made certain by his faith in the Nicene Creed, one will find a TRUE ATTACK of the West by the forces of Babel. And it is in this particular attack that one will find white Christian after white Christian succumbing to the attack in the only manner necessary. Deny the meta-physical “structure” laid bare by one’s broken faith in the Nicene Creed. And when one catches glimpse of that broken faith, it looks like the submission of Perfection to the “universal equality.” And it should be clear as day now that Babel’s desire for “universal equality” JUST IS anti-objective Supremacy. Anti-Perfection. Anti-Nicene Creed.
But…
You say, “whoa.” The meta-physical “structure” is universally equal. In other words, Perfection as meta-physical reality applies equally across the universe. And so “we” witness the first small, yet, deadly step in subordinating objective Supremacy to “universal equality” manifesting in a grand inversion of realty. “We” witness how a self-identified white Christian is converted into a radical egalitarian, ie., an anti-(white) Supremacist.
Nicene Creed = objective Supremacy = Perfect meta-physical Structure…
Kristor = white father…
Kristor avows to the truth of the Nicene Creed. Kristor attests to the truth of objective Supremacy AS a white father.
Ergo, Kristor is a white Supremacist, ABSOLUTELY.
You cannot escape this my white Christian brother. I’ve already tried for the last five plus years.
Thordaddy, my apologies but you’re venturing off into principles WAY over my head. Can you, please, state this all more in laymens’ terms?
Sincerely, Terry.
Mr. Morris…
The actual objective of Babel is to DECONVERT white Christians and waste no valuable resource on those already on a willing path to damnation.
This is done IN THE WEST through the ideological imposition of anti-white Supremacy.
ALL MEN of “good faith” REJECT “white supremacy.”
This ^^^ is anti-white Supremacy.
No trick here…
Yet…
Your CONCEPTION of “white supremacy” that YOU so “dutifully” reject IS A LIBERATED CONCEPTION, ie., a conception detached from its straightforward and absolute meaning.
A white Supremacist is a white man who believes in and therefore worships objective Supremacy, ie., Perfection…
This absolute conception is indestructible and thus why it is absolute.
And this “Perfection” is otherwise understood as the meta-physical reality of a certain faith in the Nicene Creed.
So when a “white” Christian rejects genuine white Supremacy, he rejects objective Supremacy AS a white man thus DECONVERTING from Western Christianity.
This is Babel’s psyche-war.
The degradation of Christianity in the West is inversely proportional to the rise of anti-white Supremacy. A literal “cause and effect.”
Mr. Morris…
If “we” suppose that the forces of Babel attempt to impose the anti-Nicene Creed on the white Christian then “we” come to realize that in their purported articulation of this anti-Nicene Creed is its inherent disintegration into “nothing.” In other words, one cannot actually articulate an anti-Nicene Creed that does not end up amounting to “nothing.” One CANNOT ARTICULATE “anti-Perfection” and avoid concluding “nothing” as his most “substantive point.” And this is an exact aim of Babel… To make the inherent Perfection of the Nicene Creed come to and from nothing. And this is the manner in which Babel attempts to deconvert those Christians presently faithful to the Nicene Creed… Convince them that the Nicene Creed comes from “nothing” and is not the palpable reality of objective Supremacy, itself, as articulated through the millennia by the father(s), ie., YOUR race.
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Kristor,
I don’t disagree about the brotherhood of Christians. Im just a bit more circumspect about our cooperation in a “how did we get here and how do we get out of here” civilizational crisis kind of way. And it seemed like a spiritual parallel to “no enemies to my Right.” – which I just may be overly sensitive to having relatively recently come to understand better the pervasiveness of liberalism in the political realm. I *suppose* the Catechism’s
collaboration among Christians in various areas of service to mankind
could mean such cooperation. That seems to cast the net wider than what I thought had typically meant as cooperation performing the corporal works of mercy. Anyway, I’ll stop and read more of your stuff here in a spirit of learning. Thank you genuinely for your thoughtful responses.
Wood, you are welcome, and most welcome here at the Orthosphere. I look forward to your future comments.
I would characterize my defense of a Protestant brother under attack from a Muslim – or his of me – as a corporal work of mercy.
The Nicene Creed
Not abstract
Exact
Only to be attacked
By the “inexact”
A “cohesive” Confusion
With no core intact
What “it” lacks
It all it “needs”
To extract
The will of white man
A faith retracts
Detached
One must hatch
A reconception
Of a creed dispatched
Unlatched
From the Perfection
It was meant to match…