Essays in Idleness

Like many aging gentlefolk, home-schooling themselves through the Batflu summer, I have spent an inordinate amount of time “researching” whimsical topics on the Internet. For instance, I am now largely caught up on abbeys and cathedrals, throughout Europe. I was an architecture nut before I became an Anglican, then a Roman; and therefore obsessed with temples of all kinds; yet without any calling to faith. That came later.

I was not obsessed with the religion of the churches, but with their art. The European mediaeval (and earlier) heritage in art is not the equal of the world’s other cultural traditions, whether civil or religious. It is their decided superior. This is what called me back to the West, when I was travelling. We have not equalled Sung Dynasty pots, or a thousand other specific accomplishments, but I’m referring to a matchless whole. What we export today (via our Western conception of free trade) is, in the main, worthless. What we once exported — this cultural tradition — is now deprecated, when it is not suppressed.

My catch-up is a depressing activity. I have only been trying to learn what has happened to the physical structures; what nasty tampering has been done, to make them more “market-friendly.” Chartres, Reims, Beauvais, were already built. Notre Dame must be restored, again, after the recent fire. That psychopath of vanity, Emmanuel Macron, wants to turn it into a “starchitecture” showpiece. Our critics now confuse our wealth with our garbage.

But in the condition of splendid greatness these monuments were secondary from the start. They were expressions of faith, and means of communication, at the highest level, among the men who made them. Now they are dead museums, quite literally. In France, for instance, the greatest cathedrals were long ago appropriated by the state, and converted into tourist attractions. Christians are still allowed to pray in them, for the time being, subject to the state’s rules and regulations. As we’ve seen through the Batflu, the “right to worship” can be casually withdrawn.

Even the satanic creatures of the French Revolution could not bring themselves to level Notre Dame, although their mobs desecrated it, until they converted it into a “Temple of Reason,” under police protection. Today, only Islamists would torch it again; or perhaps Antifa, which serves the same master. Or it will burn as an accident during more riots.

What we cannot foresee, for now, is the re-animation of souls. The Spirit is still there, but ignored. To the modern mind, even at its least destructive, it is a cost-benefit analysis. What advertising will draw people to see this potentially lucrative property, and how to extract the most cash from them? What tee-shirts can we sell them? There are moments when I think, bomb it and have done; there will be better to see in Heaven.

Christ is not mocked, although the great majority of tourists do not understand that they are doing this, when they visit His Church as if it were Disneyland.

There is no such thing as “white supremacy,” except among a handful of pathetic goons, but here I am recalling French supremacy, along with Italian, Spanish, &c. What they had in common was Christian faith, operating through artists. It raised them miraculously above their normal stations. It may come again: in Africa, or China.

It cannot come to Europe unless something other than cathedrals are restored. Probably, we have to hit bottom first, but hitting bottom is not how to rise.