So What Went Wrong?

 

beautiful

Have you been to a modern church or "worship space", and have you found it at best anodyne, two dimensional and somehow cheap, like a small but Ikea clean shopping mall? Perhaps you have, even worse, have you been to a modern church and found it offensively, actively ugly?

Sure you have, we all have, though I tend to avoid those places like the plague, which is hard in this part of the world. By way of aside, if you live in N Central Texas, everything's pretty much new, and that includes churches, which are built new style, and new style's not attractive, at best it's an ersatz simulacrum of the higher aesthetic of yesteryear. 

oops

"So what went wrong," I exclaim in disgusted wonder at varnished blonde pine, faux stained glass, shiny faked up wood plastic floors, water feature font and all the rest, "Two thousand years of Christian art and architecture reduced to this." At that point, I usually walk out of the grossly ugly HVAC temple and enjoy a cigarette, only to return again in repentant humility.

Please don't laugh, it's true, I do. Still, what went wrong, and it's a serious question, because something did go wrong, got broken, and within living memory for the most part. Why, dear friends, did this happen? Big question, with more than a few answers, but let's try and narrow it down.

fraud

Why? Because society went godless, rejecting in its promethean pride the classical forms of beauty, truth and goodness, such utter  bourgeois oppression, and the Church, in a fit of apostasy, followed suit. Then, after the initial revolt, ugly became the new normal and there you have it. 

To put it another way, Satan hates beauty which elevates the soul to God and salvation, and encouraged trite at best, bestial at worst ugliness in our architectural norms, which the Church embraced, being foolishly married to the disbelieving spirit of the age.

how very beautiful, you satanists

Net result? Ugly churches which no one wants to go to. And guess what, they aren't, attendance's in free fall. The same rule, not that we believe in "rule" here at the Compound, applies to liturgy, the public work of the worship of God. 

Make that as banal, polyester and ugly as the building you're attempting to worship in and wonder, aghast, at your lack of converts to a Faith you don't believe in anyway. I say again, what went wrong? Apostasy on a grand scale.

This is discouraging to faithful Christians and others, no one wants to live in an ugly world, life's too short for such a thing. But perhaps people are starting to wake up, to reclaim their heritage and their faith, the Faith on which the West is founded. Stats, notoriously deceptive but there nonetheless, suggest younger people are doing just that. 

beautiful

And well done them, they're perhaps beginning to see through the miasma of the last fifty years or more. Part of this realization will involve a thoroughgoing rejection of atheistical Socliaism, to say nothing of the Liberal project of, ahem, radical personal autonomy, and an embrace of the Faith, without which Europe and by extension us, are nothing.

That's my call and I'm sticking to it, my monkey's in the ring. Do feel free to pit your ape against mine. Guinea take it, what?

Your Best Pal,

LSP

Vespers Said

 

Vespers is over and Mexican music fills the air as Eduardo, a good man, tends to several breeds of chickens, roosters and exotic ducks. Jesús, a house down from Eduardo, is running a welding rig and you can see its star bright light from the back deck of the Compound. 

He's working on some kind of metal frame which is already a story high, and who knows what this will become. A garage, a small shop, a fortified strong point? Regardless, I'm all in favor, we build, they destroy. That in mind, must get off the hind... and learn Spanish.

Then the phone rang and a young soldier excitedly announced that he'd bought not one, not two, but three uniforms by way of being prepared for deployment. He'd also purchased a large KA-BAR which fast release clips onto his plate rig.

Such martial ebullience was, I learned, part owing to a promotion; he's acting NCO in charge of battalion maintenance prior to a board next month. To that end, he's drawn up a training program involving weekly runs with his team in full gear, plates, helmets and all. Get fit to fight is his message.

Impressed by this I offered a congratulatory well done, and a promise to defray uniform expense. I did not share the story of a Para RSM, veteran of Arnhem and beyond who told this story, "When we were in Malaya we lost more men through self-inflicted knife wounds than anything else."

He was a model of his type and an inspiration to this day. I remember him taking his 1911 pistol out of an armoury safe and showing it to me, he loved that pistol, a keen marksman even retirement. 

Then UKGOV made it illegal for law-abiding citizens to own pistols and stole his 1911. What utter, tyrannical, lying, thieving Illuminati shill scoundrels. You see, free men can defend themselves, slaves can't.

we build, they destroy

That aside, well done boy on the military upvote and plans for combat readiness, let's hope the last part isn't needed and I mean that seriously.

Your Old Pal,

LSP