We like Prof Riley’s idea of a King’s Week to atone somewhat for the regicidal, revolutionary violence that has made its home in the West:
. . . The implied and frequently explicit claim of MLK celebrations is that the only social regime that could be opposed to the multiculturalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-traditionalist value system of the MLK cult is racist, fascist, and evil. This is false. The social order preceding the age of revolutions in the West was known in French as the Ancien Régime. It was founded on traditional authority, centered ultimately on God, and then here on earth on the political sovereign, the King, and the body of law that descended from God and relied on the King for its implementation and protection. It was overthrown by a variety of revolutions—English, French, American—and evolved into further elaborations through the years, including the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s.
January marks the striking of the two most significant and earliest blows against that Old Order by the revolutionaries. We might do well to mark those days to remind ourselves what was lost and what tragedies have befallen us because of these outrages. These holidays would be opportunities to celebrate traditional order and authority but still more they would be days of mourning, not only for the nations most directly affected, but for all in the Western world who understand the fundamental values that have been stripped away from us and not yet effectively replaced.
On Jan. 30, 1649, the English monarch Charles I was beheaded by English revolutionaries and sent to the incorruptible throne he was certain awaited him in heaven. The brutality of Cromwell and his regime followed. On Jan. 21, 1793, the French revolutionaries performed the same monstrous act against their King Louis XVI, and later in the same year, to their Queen Marie Antoinette. The descent into the demonic savagery of the Committee of Public Safety’s reign of terror would begin before the year expired.
In these two abominable moments, the murderous designs of the revolutions now dominating American, British, and French societies were realized, and the already established trajectory of the assault on authority was given still greater velocity. This was the consequence of the foolish utopianism of those who, in the words of the Comte de Ségur, “without regret for the past, without misgiving for the future… trod gaily on a carpet of flowers that hid the abyss beneath [them].”
Celebrating Kings Week (I suggest the last week in the month) would not require that one literally be a monarchist. It would simply be a collective opportunity to recall the extreme dangers and violence of revolution, and to recognize the splendors and majesty of the Western tradition even prior to the emergence of the political institutions that most contemporary Westerners, in their ahistorical ignorance of the vast expanse of their own civilization, mistakenly believe to be the only ones possible.
On the campus where I teach, this year’s MLK Week events have been, apparently unironically, given the title “Lessons in Resistance.” Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows that adherence to the radical principles articulated under its aegis hasn’t the slightest thing to do with resistance to anything except the traditional American political principles that the Civil Rights Movement assaulted and that nearly the entirety of American elite culture now opposes. It’s a rather long way from courageous “resistance” to standing on the side of those who dominate the entirety of American culture and society. The real resistance in our times is in recognizing what a tremendous loss this revolution that is now orthodoxy produced, and to acknowledge the beauty of what it trampled underfoot.
--https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/mlk-and-a-modest-proposal-for-real-resistance/
But it is far more important to understand why this revolutionary madness has descended on the West, and remains rooted there (for a modern ensample of this madness in Texas, from one who wishes to remain nameless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMLwlvL4Nu0). As we have said before, it must be traced back to the West’s first overthrow of legitimate Christian authority, when the Roman bishop (the Pope) rose up against the Orthodox Church (Europe’s first Church, the Church of the Holy Apostles), proclaimed himself the vicar of Christ, and made himself a divine figure, a man-god. From this point, the decay of the West sets in. And it is such a terrible fall that St Justin Popovich of Serbia (+1979) links the lineage of Antichrist with her cataclysmic falling away, that lineage being from Judas to Arius to the Pope to the Antichrist. Everything from the Roman Catholic Pope (the Infallible Man) onwards - Luther and the Protestant Reformation, the secular Enlightenment, the singularity and transhumanism - all of these are about mankind deifying himself, are an attempt to realize the promise of Satan that ‘ye shall be as gods’ apart from the Holy Trinity.
But God is merciful and will allow the West to repent and return to her original Church home if she will only bend her stiff neck in humility. In this respect, St Macarius the Roman is an important figure for her. Living in Rome during the time of the upheavals surrounding the Protestant Reformation, he longed to know where the Truth lay, and the Merciful Lord led him into the Orthodox Church:
Saint Macarius the Roman was born at the end of the fifteenth century into a wealthy family of Rome. His parents raised him in piety and gave him an excellent education. He might have expected a successful career in public service, but he did not desire honors or earthly glory. Instead, he focused on how to save his soul.
He lived in an age when the Christian West was shaken by the Protestant Reformation. While others around him were pursuing luxury and lascivious pleasures, he studied the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers. Saint Macarius was grieved to see so many darkened by sin and worldly vanity, and was disturbed by the rebellions and conflicts within the Western Church. With tears, he asked God to show him the path of salvation, and his prayer did not go unanswered. He came to realize that he would find the safe harbor of salvation in the Orthodox Church.
Saint Macarius left Rome secretly, and set out for Russia without money, and wearing an old garment. After many sufferings on his journey, he arrived in Novgorod, where he rejoiced to see so many churches and monasteries. One of these monasteries had been founded three centuries before by his fellow countryman, Saint Anthony the Roman (August 3).
Saint Macarius came to the banks of the River Svir, where Saint Alexander of Svir (April 17 and August 30) had founded the monastery of the Holy Trinity. Saint Alexander received Macarius into the Orthodox Church and tonsured him as a monk. Macarius, however longed for the solitary life. He moved to an island on the River Lezna, forty-five miles from Novgorod, where he engaged in ascetical struggles and unceasing prayer.
. . .
--https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2021/01/19/100233-venerable-macarius-the-roman-of-novgorod
May the South and the rest of the Western European peoples find their way home, through the prayers of St Macarius.
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
No comments:
Post a Comment