Aug23 Written by:MarginPressAdmin
8/23/2008 10:35 AM
Brian Moore (I have an uncle of the same name but this isn’t about him) wrote a novel called Catholics in 1972.
Moore wrote lots of novels but this one in particular is very special. Thirty-six years ago, a mere two years after the Latin Mass was supposed to be assigned to the dustbin and while the disastrous cultural revolution that was going to protestantise Catholicism raged with congregants scarcely noticing as just about everything around them was subtly re-framed and their salvation imperilled, Moore recognised where things were headed and told our futures in a slim book that has the habit of being placed in the theology sections of book stores rather than being lumped with the fiction.In the work a young ‘priest’ (he works for Rome but whether his grandparents would recognise him as a Catholic cleric is unlikely) visits a remote Irish monastery that has PO’d the Vatican by sticking to the old rites. This won’t do and young Kinsella is sent to correct things. That the monastery has become something of an international attraction with Catholics travelling there at great expense after being drawn to what they know their faith to be grounded on, makes the situation untenable. The Irish monks must be stopped or a series of ecumenical happenings (such as Buddhism and what passes as Catholicism being merged) might be endangered. Kinsella encounters the abbot who appears to be attached to the rites for no real reason than they are familiar. Kinsella eventually wins him over and convinces him that things must change. The rest of the monks don’t quite agree and the story ends with everyone involved praying for guidance. If you’re a traditional Catholic, Kinsella can’t get his way. If you’re not, Moore’s ending no doubt leaves you excited by the prospect of more pantheist rubbish and neo-paganism to incite literal spitting on the relics of the martyrs.Thirty-six years later and we’re still stuck with this attraction to ecumenical dialogue that doesn’t seem to go anywhere or do anything except lend legitimacy to groups whose existence is built on error or heresy. We’ve had a pope kiss a Koran, the same pope tentatively acknowledge the authority of the ‘archbishop’ of Canterbury, all sorts of indicators that Jews don’t need Christ to be saved, Limbo itself cast into Limbo and so on… Any why not, we seem to all worship the same god (or gods) in our own way anyway and isn’t it more important that we just all get along? Sacraments, salvation, whatever. Who cares that modern ‘cathedrals’ look like something to have escaped a Scientologist’s nightmare? As long as we all live the now.Where does it end? I’m pretty certain that the authors of our fate have no idea and would be surprised to learn just how much their efforts are undermining everything they once stood for and entrenching secularism. If only Moore had written a follow-up so that those slow to see what the changes they’re hawking are doing could benefit from his foresight.
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