The collapse of western civilization is going to be very inconvenient

I just finished reading this really great article written by Fr. Richard Simon (aka, RKIA) about the demise of western civilization. He starts out like this: "I had the privilege of teaching dead languages to comatose seminarians for many years at the seminary of Bathsheba Bible College. There I had the even greater privilege of working with Fr. Stanley, a renowned old professor. Once at lunch in the faculty dining room he sighed and said, “The collapse of western civilization is going to be very inconvenient.”

Then he goes on to give the reader a lesson in 20th century history beginning with the great wars, one and two, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the cold war, and how all this chaos and poverty created a longing for material possessions in our culture and the longing became a goal that had to be fulfilled - suddenly, this desire replaced all other desires in our minds even to the point of forgetting our purpose on this earth we greedily reached into pandora's box and pulled out and consumed everything that would make our world better, brighter, happier, and more fulfilling. Out of this box came "the pill" that brought in the reign of sexual fulfillment. Sex without consequences. Sex for its own sake. Reach into the box again and pull out the idea of abortion and how "right" it felt to rid oneself of any impediment to the joy and gratification of consuming things - food, products, time to spend on oneself without constraint or impediment, and on and on. Reach into the box again and pull out sexual perversion in all its many forms - find justification for that in one's own mind and feel fulfilled. Only it really doesn't work that way, does it. The more we imbibe with unbridled restraint, the more we feel empty, lost, without purpose.

I think the 15th c. artist, Hieronymus Bosch, must have been a prophet for our times. We need to take heed, we need to take seriously the warning that God isn't interested in having us muck around in the mud devising every possible pleasure to enjoy. He wants us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next. And, yes, it is that simple.

Reverend Know-it-all: RKIA on materialsim and the decline in religious observance