THE CRISIS of CIVILIZATION

THE CRISIS of CIVILIZATION

Ever since the disaster of the Protestant Reformation our civilization has been falling into ever deepening crisis, the solution to which Hilarie Belloc says. “Does not permit of indefinite delay.

Catholicism built the Western World from Roman times through the dark ages to the high middle ages but the false social philosophy of the Protestant Reformation, based on Calvinism, has been causing an ever deepening breakdown of our Catholic built Western World.

Belloc shows Reformation’s evil results in the economic sphere through the dissolving of Catholic restraints on usury and unbridled competition.

He claims that “Calvin opened the door to the domination of the mind by money” 

Thus the Protestant Reformation has led to our present disastrous economic situation, where there are on the one hand, a few wealthy men and on the other a multitude of ‘wage slaves’ who have neither a secure ‘status’ nor a place in society, nor any property, except for their labour, upon which to rely on for their daily bread.

Furthermore he shows how this situation contrasts sharply with that of the middle ages, where security of status, with a sufficiency of material goods, was the rule, which thus supported the catholic goal of frugal comfort and family security in this life and salvation in the next, as opposed to the Calvinist ideal of acquiring material wealth, even at the expense of the welfare of one’s neighbor.

He concludes by stating that only a return to Catholicism will remedy the crisis of our crumbling world.

He sees a threefold remedy of reform.

1. The better distribution of property
2. . The public control of monopolies
3. The reestablishment of those principles and that organization which underlay the conception of the guild.

But institutions do not arise of themselves nor are they preserved by mere verbal regulations. They comes says Belloc, from the spirit of which they are the product, namely in this case Catholicism.

A return to the faith, therefore on the part of both individuals and society is the only answer to our present crisis.

He goes on to say “We must begin by aiming at the conversion of Society failing which no scheme of stable economic freedom will stand. We came remember out of Slavery, our society (The old Roman World) was once wholly based on slavery and to slavery it is returning.

As a defense against such a decline, there is none but the counter-action of Catholicism