Tuesday 18 October 2022

Everything is theological

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'Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in moulding life than nationalism or a common language.' Hilaire Belloc.
Many people nowadays not only don't understand why religion is fundamental but don't think nations are either. Not all these people, by any means, are left-wing. 'Why can't we all just get along?', they ask. 

In fact they do believe in a religion, a secular religion of human rights, welfare, fairness and non-discrimination. 

Nations don't fit into this religion snugly unless they become immigrant societies. 

Canada, 'the first post-national nation' (Justin Trudeau's phrase) which welcomes disabled and able bodied immigrants alike, is the advance guard.

Cardinal Manning told the young Belloc that all political questions are essentially theological questions and we all see this nowadays more than ever.

'Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth..'

People have speculated that Tennyson was talking about the Church of England when he wrote this. I think he just had in mind a kraken, but the description might fit the Church of England before St John Henry Newman and the Oxford movement shook things up. It fits much better the Romanian Orthodox Church. 

Having a national religion untouched by enlightenment values helps make Romania a very congenial country, deeply old-fashioned, where people think like human beings (a phrase a British-Ukrainian friend used about Ukraine). 

But Orthodoxy will not save Romania from the many negative aspects of modernity. Romania is doomed.




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