We Are Pagans And What To Do About It

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – We all know what the complaint is.  We live in a pagan nation, septic tank, sewer of a culture, if it can even be called a culture.  “Reform and Renewal Starts with Us,” Anthony Esolen, Crisis Magazine.  I’ll post this in today’s Pile of Prep.  Listen to his statement here, which closely parallels mine or mine parallels his.  I don’t care who gets the credit, let’s just make sure that we agree.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  We all know what the complaint is.  We live in a pagan nation, septic tank, sewer of a culture, if it can even be called a culture.  “Reform and Renewal Starts with Us,” Anthony Esolen, Crisis Magazine.  I’ll post this in today’s Pile of Prep.  Listen to his statement here, which closely parallels mine or mine parallels his.  I don’t care who gets the credit, let’s just make sure that we agree.

[reading]

We no longer live in a culturally Christian state.  We do not live in a robust pagan state, such as Rome was during the Pax Romana. We live in a sickly sub-pagan state, or metastate, a monstrous thing, all-meddlesome, all-ambitious. The natural virtues are scorned. Temperance is for prigs, prudence for sticks in the mud who worry about people who don’t yet exist. A man who fathers six children upon three women and now wants to turn himself into a “woman” attracted to other women—he is praised for his courage. Justice means that a handful of narrowly educated and egotistical judges get to overturn human culture and biology, at their caprice.

We are not in partibus infidelibus. We are in partibus insanibus.

What shall we do now? [Mike: That’s why I’m reading this to you. This is the operative question.] The answer is both daunting and liberating. We do everything.
That doesn’t mean that I do everything, or that you do everything. Suppose you find yourself in a bombed out city. There are all kinds of things to do, and all of them have to be done. Some needs are more pressing than

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others, and some things can be done only after other things are in order. But everywhere you turn, there’s work to do. You have to find clean water. You have to find food. You have to tend to the wounded and bury the dead. [Mike: He goes through some more of this. Let’s get to the point.]

In no order, then, as I survey the ruins: [Mike: Here are his suggestions.]

Build new schools, reform old schools, and abandon irreformable ones.

Are your children attending the sub-pagan schools? Get them the hell out of there. What are you waiting for? It’s not as if the sub-pagan schools actually teach children English grammar and give them facility with numbers and make them familiar with the lands and rivers and seas of our world, let alone introduce them to the great works of western civilization. If your children are in the sub-pagan schools, it will require almost a miracle of God to keep them from becoming sub-pagan themselves. They too will learn to worship the three-poisoned god of our times, self, sex, State. Take for granted that everything in their classes will be sexuality and politics; even in science classes. Shakespeare? Sexuality and politics and nothing else. Get them out. Begin, if necessary, with one room and one teacher and ten children. Begin.

Restore your parish church and bring reverence back to the liturgy.

Was your church denuded during the Decade that Taste Forgot? Bring art back in. Is there an ugly sculpture of Jesus the Helicopter, or a pseudo-primitive stained glass window of the Baptist dropping a rock on Jesus’ head? Replace them . . . It’s never been easier to do that. Become more familiar with O Salutaris Hostia than with Table of Plenty . . . Learn Gregorian chant.

[end reading]

Mike:  By the bye, I don’t talk about this because no one ever asks me, but I’m learning Gregorian chant and actually can do some of it.  It’s quite beautiful.  Once you start learning it, it’s like anything else.  You get the fever and the zeal for it.  The Gregorians were brilliant.  We have music notation today – I know that Catholic monks and what have you are supposed to be anti-scientific, miserable people meandering about European countryside preying on anyone trying to have any fun or bring any beauty into life.  I know the urban legend.  You know that musical notation comes from Gregorian musical notation.  Classical musical notation is antedated by what’s called neumes.  The Gregorians, to do the chant, would compose it, would write it down on a four-line staff.  They used things called neumes instead of notes. [/private]

[reading]

Acquaint yourself with the proper use of the zipper.

No pretending here. We’ve all been scorched by the sexual revolution. The ancient Christians knew they were living among hedonists, but plenty of the pagans, especially those who lived outside of the cities (Latin paganus = hayseed), were old-fashioned in their mores. The Christians could say that they honored the virtue of chastity, which the pagans recognized but often violated. We cannot say that now. [Mike: The pagans weren’t all bad, by the way. Aristotle was a pagan.] We have to tell ourselves and our children the truth. There is no way to make it sound nice. “We are Christians, they are not. How God judges them is not ours to know. Our first task is to follow God’s law ourselves, before we can witness to them. [Mike: This is where it gets dicey. This is where we lose people.] We do not fornicate. We do not divorce. We do not engage in sodomy. We do not use porn. We do not flood women’s bodies with synthetic and carcinogenic hormones. We do not care for obscenities in film. We do believe in marriage according to the evident design of God, imprinted upon our bodies male and female. We encourage boys to be boys and girls to be girls.” And then—where are the chaperoned dances? Where are the concerts? Where are the matchmakers? Where are the healthy customs whereby the older generation made sure that the younger generation would, ahem, get on with the great and innocent business of new life? Establish them. Begin.

Be social. . . .

Read good books. . . .

[end reading]

Mike:  We have great books to read.  As a matter of fact, folks, I’m going to release this later today.  Father Michael, who is the curator of sorts for the Archdiocese of New York, is a listener of this program.  I probably just outed him now.  Anyway, I was looking for a book because I’m republishing this book called Humility of Heart, which was written in the 18th century by an Italian priest who adopted the name of the town that he gave his life and dedicated his life to serve, Bergamo, Italy.  He was born Cajetan but he died Father Bergamo.  Bergamo wrote this magnificent book called Humility of Heart.  Cardinal Vaughan, before he died in 1905, made it his life’s work, the last 15 years of his life, to translate the Italian into English.  There are many translations of this book.  There are none that are updated and checked on all the footnotes, and there are 60-some errors.  We’ve corrected all this and added stuff to it as well.

I was never able to find a digital edition of the original 1906 book.  There are dozens upon dozens of the 1940s edition but none of the 1906.  Father Michael found it for me in a library that he had access to and sent me the book.  We scanned it here, all the pages, and will now preserve it digitally, since Google didn’t do it, for all of you so you can begin – it’s a great book to read.  You want to talk about an experience, that’s an experience.  When he mentions great books, I think Bergamo’s Humility of Heart is one of the greatest ones.  If you start reading this book, you won’t be able to put it down.  You’ll look forward to reading it every day.  You will realize just how full of pride we all are.  Notice I said we.  I’m not accusing you; we, me.

End Mike Church Show Transcript