Some afterthoughts, now that much of the dust has settled . . .



Spoiler alert: some details about Avengers: Endgame are discussed.

According to a few online tests, I’m a melancholic, for whatever that’s worth. Sometimes it seems as if a few Catholics I know risk using the Four Temperaments as a kind of zodiac-typing, but I rarely see the Temperaments consulted like newspaper horoscopes or astrological birthcharts. Anyways – I’m prone to episodes of pessimism, and from what I’ve gathered, this is something common among most melancholics.

My life in God’s sheepfold forced an obsession with geopolitics and the news-cycle to buy a one-way ticket into the past. It was a healthy parting. We only grow as the Father wills if our roots embrace the eternal; a foundation on the ephemeral leads only to death. Nonetheless, in the journey towards holiness, it’s easy to forget that the world spins as it always has, even if one is disillusioned with the kingdoms of the world. Like many Catholics, I received a sobering reminder, a punch to the gut, on April 15th – the day Notre Dame caught fire.

The initial reports didn’t give much pause. By the time the news sped across the Atlantic, I was in the middle of my workday. I took a few moments to watch live footage of the inferno, and while a certain sadness was felt, I continued with my day. I didn’t understand the weight of Notre Dame; I’ve never been to Europe (except for a brief stay in Iceland) and I had been Catholic less than a year. It wasn’t until later that I felt the ripples across the Catholic community when friends of mine were deeply moved by the tragedy.

Shortly thereafter, the whispers began. Sure, the official explanation of a worksite accident in the attic could be valid, but many were, and are, skeptical. Given the French government’s – or any government’s – vested interest in maintaining peace and order, allegations, or even educated conclusions, of arson are relegated to the realm of conspiracy theory. Fox News anchors Shep Smith and Neil Cavuto were quick to give guests the crazy-treatment when such concerns were voiced, and many Twitter accounts were suspended indefinitely for supporting such theories.

Accusations of Islamophobia are the lowest hanging fruit that give one only indigestion, delirium, or both. The pages of history – and no, I don’t only mean the last hundred years or so – are inked with a wisdom few wish to consult: that cultures, and indeed civilizations, far more often clash than coexist. The tension that multiculturalism invokes is felt by intellectuals and workmen alike, and the paradigm shift we’re currently weathering like sailors beleaguered on rough seas is the undercurrent driving the suspicions of arson. For those in Western Europe who lack the sociopolitical vocabulary to describe the transformation of their countries and cultures, the hypothetical arson of Notre Dame is a symbol for their fear and anxiety; for those who are engaged in the ever-sounding arena of the “culture-war”, Notre Dame is but one of 875 churches that’ve been vandalized in 2018. (Undoubtedly more than 875 as of 6/26/2019.)

It’d be foolish and irresponsible to pin every instance of church vandalism on the Islamic population. Who, though, is to blame? And who is willing to shut their eyes to the recent arrival of an anti-Christian population in massive numbers, an arrival that succinctly coincides with the rise of church vandalism?

About a day after the incident, I spoke with my brother Paul, a private military contractor who spent more than a year working in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Our conversation fell along familiar lines: the inherent dangers of an unvetted population, dangers founded in their religious and cultural beliefs, the demographic changes in Europe, and the “coming-out” of many people who are no longer afraid to proclaim that maybe, just maybe, Western Civilization is, once again, under attack, a sentiment that propels various European populist movements across the continent. The success of Nationalist factions in the most recent EU elections are but one instance of the political phenomenon.

In the drama following the fire, I once more found Pessimism, an old friend who, if we aren’t careful, sits at our dinner tables, drinks our coffee, and lives rent-free in the bedrooms of our minds. I’m too untraveled to remember a London of yesteryear when acid attacks weren’t commonplace, when Christian street preachers wouldn’t be arrested for “Islamophobia”, and when London, a gun-free city, didn’t experience a higher murder rate than New York City, but the almost ubiquitous statistics illustrating a Western European population crash, the reign of atheism, the wanton disregard for healthy morality, and uncontrolled mass migration from Islamic countries point to a disfigurement of the Western Identity.

Identity – what is the West without the people, our forefathers, who made it what she is?

A more important question: Who would those people have been without the faith that made them who they were? Without Christ, they were pagans awaiting conquest as they drifted in the sea of eternal recurrence, the water-beast Ouroboros delivering death by sword, strife, famine, natural disaster, or anything else that may befall a peoplehood, a nation, a civilization.

They would’ve been who we’ve become – just another child-sacrificing, self-worshipping people kept on a tight chain-leash by their own idols of violence, materialism, and sensual pleasure.

What should a man do? What could a man do, a man who sees much but is capable of little?

There’s only one path: pray and endure.

And, of course, try to enjoy oneself every once in a while.

I was never one for superhero films. The narrative arcs become repetitive and the emotional responses to the world-ending conflicts at hand always seem to fall flat. Before Avengers: Endgame, the last one I’d seen was Ironman 2. I have to say, though, that the marketing for Endgame was wildly successful; even I, grouchy ol’ me, found some interest in the film. Before long, I was dragged to the theater and there I was, sitting in front of the big screen, watching the grand finale of the Marvel cinematic universe thus far.

I hadn’t watched the preceding films, but the plot was easy enough to piece together: Thanos, using the Infinity Stones, erased half of all life in the universe to ease the pain wrought on those living in lands with dwindling resources. Endgame continues with the Avengers’ goal of retrieving the Infinity Stones by traveling through the past to find them before Thanos does. It’s not a plot without holes, but it nonetheless delivers a satisfying experience.

Thanos, quite predictably, discovers the Avengers’ time-travel scheme, but in a time before he’s discovered all five Infinity Stones. This discovery makes Thanos only more determined than before, considering the Avengers’ efforts inadvertently inform him that, eventually, he’ll find the Infinity Stones and use them as he pleases.

“I am inevitable.” Thanos utters this at the final battle, as, once again, he clutches the Infinity Stones in his grasp. Around him, scattered across the scorched battlefield, the heroes are broken and bloody. Again, hope seems lost, but Thanos won’t make the same mistake twice: the second time around, he desires to destroy the universe and rebuild it new in his image.

I am inevitable. One may close their eyes and see this written across the trails stomped out across Rome’s Empire by her legions, each letter of the message a vanquished tribe, an executed general, a family sold into slavery. Each syllable is a life taken by Attila, a mile of land taken by Hannibal, or a townhouse pillaged by his Iberian horsemen, long famous before and after Carthaginian rule. It is a promise shouted by an Aztec Jaguar Knight, a Mongolian general sowing terror in the East, and the Bolsheviks who, promising international bloody revolution, came not terribly long after them, if one can see the brevity hiding within seven-hundred years.

I am inevitable. It must’ve been thought by that depraved, deviant Arabian warlord, that Muhammad, marching across the sands with blades gleaming in the rapacious desert sun, as he imposed the ideology of submission, of Islam, across the land. Warred against its incursion into the West for centuries, we did, until one day, we didn’t.

Yet, somehow, the surge of Islamification – particularly, the support for Sharia Law – across Western Europe is still a mystery for tens of millions.

We’re told it is progress by a tainted media, by partisans with hearts defiled, by our own countrymen who both overtly and covertly want to see the destruction of Western, Christian values and the monumental nations they formed. Progress – a word inextricably tied with modernity, it’s since replaced the egoic “I” as it’s viral companion, ideology, implants itself to the consciousness of men and women and twists them into ideologues, shapes defying any previous notion of human metaphysical geometry. I am inevitable becomes Progress is inevitable during the long march of the 20th Century as Marxism and Nazism both promise to be the harbingers of humanity’s social evolution with disastrous consequences. The latter has persisted and thrives quite well. Marxism necessitates the destruction of all hierarchy, and in its cultural manifestation, of social hierarchy. The assault on marriage and the family has been quite successful; now, the individual itself must be shattered, lest he remind others of the divinity we all point to, or worse, act as a seed that escaped with a gust of wind and will set down healthy roots elsewhere. In all of this, the flourishing of Islam is both a tool and a symptom of the sickness.

I am inevitable. How many in our own Church don the wilting laurel wreath of worldly progress instead of a divinely sanctioned alternative? How many in the pews, the sacristies, and behind the ambos speak of the preciousness of life while supporting initiatives that fund abortion, and, in turn, decimate our own population? How many bishops and priests, now, are implicated in various corruption scandals but, in public, busy themselves propelling homosexuality and transgenderism into mass public acceptance? (You’re tolerant, aren’t you, comrade? Surely you aren’t a bigot . . .) Once again, the Rubicon has been crossed. Rome Eternal, again, finds herself in great peril as an enemy, ideological and ruthless, begins a violent campaign of destroying her institutions, her families, and her morality only to recreate them in its own image – just as it always promised to among whispered gatherings before the 20th Century and proudly from its pulpits during and afterwards.

The structures of sin – a thousand-headed hydra looming over our universities, town halls, department stores, media, and yes, our Church – are too great to count, much like the forces of Thanos in that final scene. But even Endgame has predictability coded into its writing, for all glory, all righteous victory points to our Father, even in fiction. Just as Thanos snaps his fingers a second time to destroy the universe as it’s known and – surprise – recreate it in his own image, a subtle nod to our own struggle, Tony Stark (Ironman, if you’ve never seen a Marvel film), through sleight of hand in the midst of combat, snatched the Infinity Stones from Thanos’ gauntlet and inserted them into his own. Moments after, Thanos utters that terrible phrase – “I am inevitable.” – and, in powerful response, Stark proclaims: “And I . . . am Ironman.” Snapping his fingers, Thanos and his forces disappear with the wind, and the stones themselves are destroyed.

And, for once, the hero dies at the end. Wielding the Infinity Stones proved too much for Tony Stark’s body of flesh and bone, and he succumbs to what looks like severe burns to the right side of his body.

The Romans, with all their might and glory, eternally sleep in the ruins of their civilization. Once upon a time, those sons of Mars raised rough by the Wolf-Mother tried to erase us Christians. We found martyrdom and oppression, but we survived. They didn’t. Where is the great Hunnic Empire? In the dirt Eastern Christendom built itself upon. Who of the Great Khan’s former lands still praise his name in great number? To most, he is forgotten, but the name of Christ which brings faith, fear, or disgust isn’t. Where is the USSR, the empire that so labored to destroy the Church from both without and within? Gone, with bankruptcy and incompetence its only legacy. Where is Napoleon, he who boasted about destroying the Church before losing everything in the Battle of Waterloo?

Only now can I ponder Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias . . .



I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

. . . and realize that the traveler is Christ Himself, delivering a message not of despair for our labors, but of hope, of certainty.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. They who do not cling onto Christ with all their strength molder away in the graveyards of defeat. That is inevitable.

We stand toe-to-toe with Islam’s incursion into the West, finally successful after centuries of attempts. (May I point to the success of political Islam in Belgium, the host-organism of the European Union?) The goals of Islam’s adherents are quite public. The political Left, while permitting the cherry-bomb blossom of Islam in the name of a suicidal Multiculturalism finally realized, does everything in its power to accelerate the destruction of everything reflecting Christian, and indeed Catholic, values – including the values themselves, and those who hold them. Today, it’s censorship on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It’s people losing their livelihoods for not towing the line. It’s children being kicked out of classrooms for refusing to submit to the state by denying reality. I can only guess what tomorrow will bring if more of us do not stand up and fight, and fight, we must. Fight, we will, lest we see ourselves subject to the whims of madmen who’ve become grotesque in their mass-denial of Christ and His rightful place in our societies. And while the struggles are bound to escalate as we find ourselves evermore bruised, always, always remember: Only Christ is inevitable. Only the Way, the Truth, and the Life shall remain standing once the Evil One, a grifter pretending to run the show, is defeated in the end, and we are able to rest in God’s dominion for all of eternity.