Essays in Idleness

My Chief Hoosier Correspondent (not to be confused with the Vice-Potus) advises me to advise gentle reader of another living sage. All of his recommendations are good; some, like this, remind me that I have done a wretched job of “sharing” the wealth of which I know. For the strange thing is, that God has not abandoned us. (I’m often at a loss to understand why not.) Knock and it shall be answered, according to Our Lord. Look, and you will find. I have found this to be so, with shocking regularity. But one must knock, one must look. No one answers when you don’t knock; not even God. Although, He may be sneaking up behind you.

There are actually people like Gabriele Kuby, alive and at large — even in Germany. They write books, such as hers — on, The Global Sexual Revolution: The Destruction of Freedom in the Name of Freedom; on, Christian Principles of Political Struggle; on, The Nationalization of Education; on, Self-Knowledge: The Way to the Heart of Jesus — which are not only on the right topics, but handled with extraordinary poise. What has impressed me, at every literary encounter with this lady, is her refusal to be destructive. Even while condemning the worst excesses of our post-modern Culture of Death, there is sweet breath in her. She gathers our attention then lifts it from the mire; in a way that is neither naïve, nor clever.

We claim to want a better world; to be struggling for “change” in one direction or another; to be oppressed by tyrants of the Left or Right; to be small and powerless and helpless. If only we were in a position to do something! If only we had the ability to advance, then we could make a difference. Everything would be better then.

But: Quia parvus error in principio magnus est in fine, as St Thomas saith. (“For a small error at the beginning is a great error at the end.”) We go wrong, from the start, in failing to grasp that “change” requires repentance. The essential problem is in each of us, and not in any social abstraction. Without that purposeful act of reconciliation with the Author of all Grace, we cannot rise. And yet we can, rise, from the moment that we discard the burden of sin we have been stupidly carrying.

This is not impossible. The confessionals are open.

The problem begins with me. This is the profound Christian insight that can change everything in the world around us. Of a sudden we are not slaves any more. We can begin to see and to embrace truths from which we had spent all our days hiding.

Gabriele Kuby (website, here) is a credentialled master of certain grim social sciences. She is from a distinguished family of German writers and thinkers, who went her own way into Catholicism. She has been reviled for her stalwart orthodoxy by many “progressives” in Europe, to a degree that suggests how well she understands them.

In a time when “gendered” madness is afoot, she has patiently expounded the nature of the sexes at the root of civilized life. She has a further understanding of what is called Love, that does not interact with our current, degraded conceptions. Instead, it is a cure.