The essence of the problem is that the entire "mens" (mind, worldview, mental outlook) of Western culture has, to put it in terms that Americans may understand, blown two tires on the passenger side of the car, so that the vehicle of our collective mind is now resting motionless, tilted down to the right, in the highway breakdown lane, on the rims of two popped and collapsed tires, rims which will simply shred through the rubber if we try to keep driving before we put on two fully blown up spares and get the vehicle righted again, balanced again.
This means we cannot move this vehicle -- this cultural world, this "woke post-Christian West" — without replacing the two blown tires completely -- without changing half of our "mens," half of our entire worldview, half of our entire mental structure.
In other words, we have a trip-stopping problem, a problem which is a virus of the mind, a problem of how we see the world which has seeped into the mind of almost every single one of us, and is making it impossible for us to see things in the simple light of reason and common sense.
Past centuries did not have to speculate on whether Jesus and Lazarus may have had a homosexual relationship, but for an ordinary, studious Italian Franciscan friar of today, there is almost no way to avoid speculating about the matter as part a spiritual reflection.
We are now in the late twilight of Christendom.
Night has been descending for two-plus centuries, since the "Endarkenment" of the French philosophes and the French Revolution which grew out of their thought.
The shadows have been lengthening since Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris became the Revolution’s "Temple of Reason" in 1793, 231 years ago. The following is a historian's summary reconstruction of what happened:
It was the 10th of November 1793 when an attractive young opera singer was carried on a palanquin to the doors of the Notre Dame Cathedral. The singer – scantily clad and bearing the pike of Jupiter – was to play the part of Liberty in one of the strangest performances the 600-year-old Catholic Cathedral would ever witness. Entering through the central doors, she walked down the long aisle of the great Cathedral to her stage – a paper-mache “mountain” which had been erected in the Cathedral’s nave. Around the mountain stood a troupe of ballet dancers, all bearing torches in her honor. On the top of the mountain sat a small Greek temple with the words “To Philosophy” inscribed on it. The singer seated herself below the temple as the gathered crowd sang hymns in her honor – “Thou, Saint Liberty, inhabit this temple, Be of our nation the Goddess,” they cried. When the songs concluded, the singer climbed to the Greek temple, turned to the crowd, and smiled. Uproarious cheers erupted, thus completing the transformation of France’s leading Cathedral into the Revolution’s Temple of Reason. (link)
This was a false Reason.
The true Reason, the Logos, incarnate in Christ, the Word of God, the Reason of God, the Meaning of God, the ordered sanity of the personal mind, has been eclipsed by veils and shadows and idle speculations.
We must return to the holy Logos, source of all being and all reason, and allow our own minds to be renewed into His.
This somehow should be the burden of the daily and hourly preaching at the summit of the Church in Rome, which is supposed to be the summit of Christ's Church.
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