Having spent way more time than I could really afford on this series–but carried on by an odd compulsion to get it off my chest (it has been on my mind for months)–what was my imaginary interview meant to accomplish?
It is not an actual prediction of the future. I do not expect some of the things I wrote about to ever actually happen. That Western intellectuals would throw themselves into mathematics for solace is more a projection of my own personality than a realistic scenario. Most of all, I don’t believe any pope would ever do something so stupid as to explicitly abolish holy orders. It would be like Pope Francis announcing that the sedevacantists are right. Even if Francis were a communist and an atheist to boot, that would just be shooting himself in the foot and putting himself and his supporters out of work. Heresy and abuse or invalidation of the sacraments are real dangers, but nobody would be that obvious about it.
For a long time, I’ve been fighting a terrible sense of hopelessness, a sense that the Left has basically won the field everywhere and can now do as they please. In Catholic circles, there is a lot of anxiety over doctrine, a sense of being held hostage by an unsympathetic hierarchy. “If they did X, it would all be over. But Jesus would never allow that to happen. Right? Right?” Among the Alternative Right, one often hears things to the effect that if Europe flips to majority African/Arab, it’s all over. Our rulers are in a position to make it be all over–whatever that means–in our lifetimes.
So I imagined to myself, suppose the Left is able to get its way on all fronts. Can I imagine life going on? A few commenters noticed that my scenarios are actually hopeful. Yes, the Left could do everything we’re afraid they’ll do and even some other awful stuff on top of it, and it wouldn’t be the end. Christianity (even of a recognizably Catholic sort) and Western civilization could continue in small pockets. Given the large numbers involved, the logic of natural selection, and the inherent inefficiencies of irresponsible rule, our numbers would very likely bottom out above zero.
For me, the most important part was part 3. Considering the West as a people, it’s very hard not to be discouraged. Even if a remnant survives, the prospect of just surviving among a hostile majority is not a pleasant to imagine. How sad these people would be when they compare their wretchedness to their past glory. But if the West really is an unfinished project, then our real days of glory may be ahead of us rather than behind us, even if our numbers are small and we have no countries of our own. It’s something that people like me can try to contribute to already, both at the Orthosphere and my day job. Some Jews have said that anti-semitism is driven by envy, and in my case this is certainly true. I love the idea of my people being able to sway the majority culture by our sheer brilliance. I can imagine a scenario where Christians become the Jews of the future, but only if we first suffer something like the catastrophes the Jews overcame in the past.
I do hope to stir up conversations by these posts. By making fiction rather than prediction, I have deliberately avoided committing myself. Commenters who say that such and such I wrote was impossibly bad, or overly optimistic, or even just unnecessarily offensive all make good points.
Everybody’s different, but I’ve drawn considerable solace from imagining these awful scenarios. They make everything seem a little less fragile.
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