Chaos and Responsibility

Continuing on from the questions in the last post, the answers follow the questions. I start with the last first.

But, what if someone is not facing his suffering? What if one is in denial of chaos in the soul? Can an entire culture, an entire society be blinded to suffering and disorder?

Many, if not most, people in Western societies may be described as T. S. Eliot did in The Wasteland.

Unreal City,                                                            60
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying "Stetson!
"You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!                            70
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
"Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
"Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

The curse of modern society has been the acceptance of the dulling of the pain of sin. Living death is a result of mortal sin, of sin which denies natural law and the consequences. One of the points of Fr. Ripperger's book is that mental illness can be a result of mortal sin. Why? Because sin denies the end to which all humans were made. We deny our own happiness in eternal life with God when we sin. Therefore, when we choose deliberately to go against why we were created and who we are, that is creatures of a Loving God, a sort of spiritual division occurs in our souls, minds, bodies. Such denial causes chaos in the soul, which is ignored by so many psychologists.

Eliot's cry that death had undone so many is the cry of the modern prophet, who see the sadness, the false happiness, "each man fixed his eyes before his feet", an image of modern isolation.

Mylae was the decisive battle of the Romans over the Carthaginian fleet. Carthage was a horrible society of human sacrifice and war, a society even the Romans hated for its barbarity and violence.  Stetson, the name of the famous cowboy hat, means more than a hat, the "Boss of the Plains". This name is supposed to remind us of false utopias, like those expected in the Gold Rush or through Manifest Destiny.

The buried corpse is the dead soul. Will it bloom in the new year, or will the frost of modern sins keep it dead and buried? No resurrection here.

Yes, an entire society can have false ideals, consumerism, materialism, greed, hatred for the poor, hatred for the rich, and so on. Acceptance of all types of sexual sins is now part of our culture in the West, except for those in the remnant, who still cling to natural law philosophy, Revelation, and the Good New of the Bible.

A person or a people can drug themselves with entertainment, things, sex and so on to curb the niggling doubt that something is not right. And, if the wills are bent towards evil from a lack of religious belief and practice, yes, an entire society can be bent. This is what we are now seeing, not only in America and Europe, but in other countries which have departed, even for centuries, from the only spirituality which can help man become and stay human-Catholicism.

Such were the Five Cities. Can an entire culture, an entire society be blinded to suffering and disorder?

Genesis 19 Douay-Rheims

19 And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of the city. And seeing them, he rose up and went to meet them: and worshipped prostrate to the ground,

² And said: I beseech you, my lords, turn in to the house of your servant, and lodge there: wash your feet, and in the morning you shall go on your way. And they said: No, but we will abide in the street.

³ He pressed them very much to turn in unto him: and when they were come into his house, he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread and they ate:

⁴ But before they went to bed, the men of the city beset the house both young and old, all the people together.

⁵ And they called Lot, and said to him: Where are the men that came in to thee at night? bring them out hither that we may know them:

⁶ Lot went out to them, and shut the door after him, and said:

⁷ Do not so, I beseech you, my brethren, do not commit this evil.

⁸ I have two daughters who as yet have not known man: I will bring them out to you, and abuse you them as it shall please you, so that you do no evil to these men, because they are come in under the shadow of my roof.

⁹ But they said: Get thee back thither. And again: Thou camest in, said they, as a, stranger, was it to be a judge? therefore we will afflict thee more than them. And they pressed very violently upon Lot: and they were even at the point of breaking open the doors.

¹⁰ And behold the men put out their hand, and drew in Lot unto them, and shut the door:

¹¹ And them that were without, they struck with blindness from the least to the greatest, so that they could not find the door.

¹² And they said to Lot: Hast thou here any of thine? son in law, or sons, or daughters, all that are thine bring them out of this city:

¹³ For we will destroy this place, because their cry is grown loud before the Lord, who hath sent us to destroy them.

¹⁴ So Lot went out, and spoke to his sons in law that were to have his daughters, and said: Arise: get you out of this place, because the Lord will destroy this city. And he seemed to them to speak as it were in jest.

¹⁵ And when it was morning, the angels pressed him, saying: Arise, take thy wife, and the two daughters which thou hast: lest thou also perish in the wickedness of the city.

¹⁶ And as he lingered, they took his hand, and the hand of his wife, and of his two daughters, because the Lord spared him.

¹⁷ And they brought him forth, and set him without the city: and there they spoke to him, saying: Save thy life: look not back, neither stay thou in all the country about: but save thyself in the mountain, lest thou be also consumed.

¹⁸ And Lot said to them: I beseech thee my Lord,

¹⁹ Because thy servant hath found grace before thee, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewn to me, in saving my life, and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil seize me, and I die:

²⁰ There is this city here at hand, to which I may flee, it is a little one, and I shall be saved in it: is it not a little one, and my soul shall live?

²¹ And he said to him: Behold also in this, I have heard thy prayers, not to destroy the city for which thou hast spoken.

²² Make haste and be saved there, because I cannot do any thing till thou go in thither. Therefore the name of that city was called Segor.

²³ The sun was risen upon the earth, and Lot entered into Segor.

²⁴ And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.

²⁵ And he destroyed these cities, and all the country about, all the inhabitants of the cities, and all things that spring from the earth.

²⁶ And his wife looking behind her, was turned into a statue of salt.

²⁷ And Abraham got up early in the morning and in the place where he had stood before with the Lord,

²⁸ He looked towards Sodom and Gomorrha, and the whole land of that country: and he saw the ashes rise up from the earth as the smoke of a furnace.

²⁹ Now when God destroyed the cities of that country, remembering Abraham, he delivered Lot out of the destruction of the cities wherein he had dwelt.

to be continued...