Conrad Black: A Christian uprising is here to save the West

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Eventually, France will have to devise some combination of raising the retirement age, seeking more assimilable immigration, reducing taxes, shrinking government, and doing the necessary to generate economic growth. The fact that the left-wing coalition, France Unbowed (France Insoumise), is stirring the pot and encouraging the disorder will ensure an unusually confrontational election next year with the Ralliement National, led by three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. It has worked hard to house-train itself since its origins as an antisemitic, xenophobic and somewhat Petainist movement founded by Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom she eventually expelled from the party.

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This is only politics, though the economic crisis is real. A surge in religiosity, especially among such a cynical nationality as the French, indicates the practical bankruptcy of the secularist enemies of spiritual values and beliefs and of the advocates of leftist flimflam about the perfectibility of man. Religious vacuums are usually ultimately filled by destructive nihilism, charlatans, and pagans, including terrestrial pretenders to deification such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

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In France and the U.S. and in some other countries, this intimation of revival is coming mainly from young people. It is not so much a matter of religious practice as respect for the limitations of sensible human ambitions; the incurable shortcomings of the human personality and the moral value of conscientiousness. The Catholic tradition in France, identified with such gigantic historical personalities as King St. Louis IX and St. Joan of Arc, has never vanished. France has been one of the greatest national influences in the world throughout the history of the nation-state and French opinion, particularly the youth, feel that the secularists and the prophets of anti-spiritual materialism have failed, that there is more to civilization than a higher minimum wage and better daycare facilities.

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The intellectual correlation of forces seems to be shifting toward acceptance that some spiritual forces exist and that there is some supernatural intelligence which sometimes intervenes in terrestrial affairs and may possibly be propitiated.

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There is also the Muslim challenge. Now that the Roman Catholic Church has atoned for its shameful laxity in matters of sexual abuse, it is equipped with its central organization and more than one billion adherents, to lead the growing determination of the West to avoid being overrun by Islam. The Prophet came 600 years after Christ, and not wishing to be a martyr, he was a warrior. The Archangel Gabriel announced them both. Increasingly, atheism is seen as soulless decadence, inadequate and intolerant in its conceptions, and in its secular performance, and finally, thoroughly incapable of repelling the onslaught of militant Islam. We are not returning to crusades, inquisitions, or ecclesiastical fervour, but we are discarding militant atheism’s hostility to any notion of religion, and its failure to produce an intellectually and practically respectable substitute. Our Judeo-Christian values are important and will be defended.

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National Post

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Note: last week I incorrectly wrote that Camille Laurin had been arrested for shoplifting in Montréal. It was in fact his colleague Claude Charron. I relied on my memory which is usually trustworthy and apologize to readers for my error.

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