"Western culture is insufficiently healthy to sustain a political solution to abortion"

Dr. Jeff Mirus is yet another Catholic deciding that politics won't persuade the public absent the transformation that Christ brings:

I would suggest that the reality before us in the “Christian” West is far more like the reality of pagan Rome than we have heretofore thought. Christianity has long been in dramatic decline in the West, and a great many moral attitudes we took for granted publicly even fifty or a hundred years ago were no longer even then rooted in any sort of significant Christian belief or commitment. Instead, public and outward cultural morality were largely a shell—often a mere hypocrisy—a vestigial growth left over from a distant Christian past. These outward morals, often enshrined in law, no longer had any significant basis in the spiritual and moral understanding of the people as a whole.

Thus, when divorce, contraception, sterilization, abortion, pornography, homosexual behavior and other evils began to spread so rapidly during the twentieth century, it was not because we were losing by razor-thin margins the ability to restrain the political trickery of a few, but because the shell of propriety had fallen under its own weight, with virtually nothing at all to sustain it from within. Suddenly, almost overnight, we were thrown into thepublic position of our more distant forefathers, a position exactly like the private position which we so often failed to recognize in those days: The position of a relatively insignificant group of deeply committed Christians in the midst of an overwhelmingly pagan culture. And even where statistics suggested we ought to have more influence, this was a culture in which the organs of power, influence and fashion were already controlled almost exclusively by the dominant pagan element.

It is primarily the consequence of a long history of Western secularization that there is still so much Christian talk mixed in with the paganism of our larger culture. After all, for the culture to go so far wrong, a great many Christians over long generations had to give up the substance of their religious commitment while retaining only its deceptive shadow. Christian ideals had to be reinterpreted in a non-spiritual way before they could be abandoned wholesale. But we are now seeing—or at least we ought to be able to see—the tremendous tide of paganism which has risen all around us, the monumental power of it in our political and social and cultural institutions (and often, alas, even in many religious institutions)—a power and control which reduces the possibility of effective political action to something so close to zero as makes no difference at all.

Personally, I do not see this as cause for alarm, just as I do not see it as anything new. I think, rather, that we are just beginning to see our situation as it really is, after a generation and more of intense confusion over the signs of the times. This misreading of the signs has unfortunately caused us to waste enormous amounts of energy fighting not so much for Christ as for political outcomes which cannot be sustained without Christ. This does not mean that we must despair, though we are very likely in for a rough time. Nor does it mean, obviously, that we are absolved from voting morally. But it does mean that we ought to expend our greatest energies elsewhere, in widespread efforts to strengthen the Church, to develop our own Christian subculture complete with vibrant intermediary institutions, to evangelize our neighbors, and to offer practical service to any and all who, increasingly ill-served by a bureaucratic pagan State, may turn to us in their need.

Politics won't bring us the transformative change this country needs. It's becoming clearer and clearer now.

Question is... what are we doing about it?

What are you doing about it?

Comments

[Iris Celeste]

Fasting and praying, doing penance for those souls which are not interested in getting to know God. Going to adoration as often as I can to make retribution for the insults and neglect that Our Lord receives from ungrateful souls. Having Masses said for the intentions of Our Lady, who Our Lord has given the power to crush the head of the serpent, but she needs our prayers (and there is no prayer more powerful than the Holy Mass!) And finally doing everything in my power to release the souls in purgatory so they can join in the prayers of the faithful for the conversion of sinners. I use the prayer given by Jesus to Saint Gertrude the Great, "Eternal Father, I offer you the most precious blood of your son, Jesus, in union with all the Masses throughout the world today, for all the souls in purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the Universal Church, for sinners in my own home and in my family. Amen."

Only God can heal what ails us now. No amount of preaching and attempt at convincing the general public of the error in their ways is going to help. The culture has given itself over to sin. Only God can change hearts now.

Iris Celeste

[Locutisprime]

A sad reality but none the less true. The Catholic churches of the west have known for several generations that their parishioners were not adhering to the teachings of the church, especially as it concerns abortion, birth control and abstinence before wedlock. Just the same as the protestants have taken the wink, wink, nod, nod, approach to the same issues in their congregations. If sex and lust were in fact the original sin? Then we as mankind have been on a greased rail to hell ever since the Garden of Eden. Because short of forced chastity belts and forced castrations for violators, there is no stopping it or keeping it in check IMO.
And sex is the enabling sin for all others IMO. So do the math. Unless you are born a blind and deaf eunuch? There is no way to get around it.