The Broken Cross

<p class=ql-align-justify>What follows is written of set purpose from the viewpoint of a traditional and still practising Catholic. The sentiments expressed figure here in order to emphasise the heresies novelties and profanities that in the name of reformed or 'updated' religion have left the Church in tatters throughout the world. </p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify>There is a feeling abroad that our civilisation is in deadly peril. It is a recent awareness wholly distinct from the old evangelical fears that the world in keeping with some Biblical prophecy is coming to an end; fears that have lost much of their former simplicity and have become more real since the threat of nuclear war. But the end of our civilisation has more sinister implications than has the actual destruction of a planet whether that be brought about by an 'act of God' or by a frenzy of total madness on the part of man. </p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify>For civilisation declines when reason is turned upside down when the mean and the base the ugly and corrupt are made to appear the norms of social and cultural expressions; or to bring it nearer to the terms of our argument when evil under a variety of masks takes the place of good. </p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify>We of this generation according to our age and temperament have become the willing unconscious or resentful victims of such a convulsion. Hence the air of futility that clings about us a feeling that man has lost faith in himself and in existence as a whole. </p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify>It is true of course that every age has suffered the setbacks of war revolution and natural disasters. But never before has man been left without guide or compass without the assurance conveyed by the pressure of a hand in which he trusted. He is in all too many instances a separate being divorced from reality without the consolation of worthwhile art or background of tradition; and most fatal of all as the orthodox would say without religion. </p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Now it used to be an accepted part of the Catholic outlook that the Church created our civilisation with the ethical standards and the great body of revelation on which man's attitude and destiny depend. </p><p></p>