Modern Foundation Myths and the Destruction of Church and Civilization

Presented by the Roman Forum in Gardone, Italy in July of 2019, these talks critique some base assumptions of modernity and address the truth that the Catholic Faith alone can create a lasting and just civilization.

1. The Nineteenth Century Catholic Revival and the Modern Blindfold

Dr. John Rao discusses the idea that modernity can seriously be critiqued in and of itself as opposed to being chastised merely for failure to live up to its supposedly obvious truths was contested by the great revival of the Roman Catholic Church after the French Revolution in the nineteenth century. Dr. Rao discusses this substantive critique, demonstrating how an apologetic rooted in a deepened understanding of the Incarnation and the Mystical Body of Christ underlies the conviction that the Catholic Faith alone can create a lasting, true, good, beautiful, and just civilization.

2. The Foundation of No Foundation: A Reflection on the Tendency of Modernity Toward Absolutization of Change; of Building a House on Sand
by Dr. Clemens Cavallin

Of all the foundation myths of late modernity, that which rejects the need for foundations all together is perhaps the most formidable opponent of traditional Christianity. The earlier attempts of high modernity to shift the burden of an absolute, necessary foundation of truth and social life from God to humanity, at least when failing highlighted the impossibility of making the contingent necessary, and the relative absolute. Like the Tower of Babylon, the grander the ambitions, the more spectacular the downfall.

In the following reflections, I will argue that ironically the late modern rejection of absolute foundations is founded on, or more properly bound to, a spiritual denial of divine fatherhood. The motivational force of the modernist abjuration of patriarchy is the pursuit of self-realization without firm moral boundaries, which its advocates consider mere human constructions that can and should change with the expansion of freedom.

3. Providence and the Image of God
by Dr. Thomas Pink

It has been suggested that secular liberalism is a secularised form of religion, that posits its own form of God as a kind of invisible hand that providentially guarantees good outcomes, a guarantee for which liberalism has no naturalistic or ‘secular’ explanation. But this is to confuse religion with an unwarranted optimism that ‘it will be all right on the night’. Religion worth the name requires both an object of worship and a conception of humans as worshippers. Looking at Bernard Mandeville I show that secular liberal appeals to ‘an invisible hand’ have long involved the effective abandonment of both of these - the object of worship and the idea of a worshipper. This is especially because secular liberalism lacks a theory of humans as bearing the image of God, and so of humans as plausible worshippers. But a theory of humans as bearing the image of God is also lacking in notionally ‘conservative’ modern Catholic thought, as the case of Alasdair MacIntyre shows.

4. Mutable Myths: Reimaginations of Britishness in Victorian England
by Rev. John Hunwicke

Much of the apologetic of modernity is based upon liberal ideas first developed in Britain. Fr. Hunwicke discusses the mythical character of this apologetic and its some of its rather dubious historical associations and claims for moral respectability.

5. Mill on Liberty: Why the Liberal Defense Against Tyranny has Failed
by Dr. Joseph Shaw

John Stuart Mill argued that people should be able to do and say whatever does not harm others, because only then will we be able to test our opinions in a competitive market-place of ideas. This rules out commitments by individuals and societies to particular values and projects and so makes impossible the development of the high cultures such as those Mill professes to admire. This talk sets out this problem and traces the evolution of the liberalism of individual liberty to the liberalism of 'safe spaces'.

6. Duo Sunt: The Constitution of Christendom, the Social Kingship of Christ and the Enslaving Revolution against Both.
by James Bogle, Esq.

Christendom is based upon a union of the efforts of Church and State, both of which, traditionally, have been international in character. Any effort to destroy Church or State influence in their proper sphere has been disastrous both to civilization in general and human liberty in particular.

7. The Instrumentum Laboris for the Amazonia Synod
by Professor Roberto de Mattei

This critique of the working document of the Amazonia Synod demonstrates its radical, heretical, and revolutionary character, and indicates that the forces in favor of it are working in a coordinated fashion for the destruction of the true character of the Roman Catholic Church.

8. The Vain Agreement; Social Contract Theory and the Future of Modern Politics
by Rev. Dr. Richard Munkelt

Social Contract theory has proved an essential role in the creation of modernity on the political level, and yet its natural historical truth is as fraudulent as its theological and philosophical errors are manifest. It cannot build a proper society and the future depends upon an escape from its vanities.

9. Dispelling the Neo-Darwinian Mythos: Matter, Form and Mind
by Christopher Ferrara, J.D.

How discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics undermine the materialist, Neo-Darwinian creation myth.

10. The Myth of Liberalism as Ultimate, Irrefutable, and Unquestionable
by James Kalb, Esq.

A discussion of Western liberal society, how we got there, what its flaws are, why nothing else seems possible, and what we can nonetheless do about it. The talk attempts to bring basic issues that seem very abstract down to earth.


11. Demythologizing from Descartes to de Chardin---‘I just Kant’: Re-creating Scripture and Tradition in our Image
by Jonathan Arrington

One of the main pillars of modernity has been the attempt to recreate reality on the basis of individual subjectivism, whether intellectual or sentimental in character. This has led to the construction of mythological depictions of Scripture and Church Tradition, alongside mythological depictions of the creation and nature of political society. The falsity of these perversions of Scripture and Tradition are addressed in this talk.

12. Trent, Chant, and Palestrina: Myth, Fact, and Wishful Thinking in the Revival of Church Music, 1848-1970”
by David Hughes

The post French Revolutionary world saw a revival of traditional Church Music. David Hughes discusses what this revival really entailed and how it has often been misconstrued by friend and foe alike.

13. The Myth of Socialism and its Foundation in the History of Thought From Antiquity to Modern Times—Based on Igor Shafarevich’s ‘The Socialist Phenomenon
by Dr. Thomas Stark

Socialist visions of creation of a New Man and a New Society are a major part of the modern mythology. Dr. Stark demonstrates how the socialist myth has ancient historical roots, and also how much of its current apologetic is based upon a “primitivism” that also plays a major role in the appeal to the Amazon as a model for the Church and society as a whole.