I saw somewhere on ‘X’ earlier that Fr. James Martin SJ is unhappy that the final document from the Synod on Synodality in Rome makes no mention of LGBTQ+ Catholics. I too would have liked the Synod to have pushed the envelope a bit more. In different directions, mind. This, for me, is what’s needed -
1 - An injection of Nietzschean vitality into the life of the Church.
2 - A profound re-engagement with Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought - Theurgy in particular.
3 - An acknowledgement of and even reverence for the Old Gods and their likeness to planets revolving around the great central orb that is Christ the Universal King. See C.S. Lewis’s fiction - especially the Narnia books and the Space Trilogy and also his treatise on the Medieval worldview, The Discarded Image.
We need an imaginative and mythopoetic shaking up. We need electricity and fierceness, a live encounter with the Divine, and a mythically-charged core message that speaks to and energises the deepest levels of our being.
That's what The Book of Holy Kings tries to do in its own small-scale way, and this is where I feel our attention increasingly needs to be focused. We’ve got to make things come alive. There has to be a lightning flash - a Heideggeran clearing - a space created for God to act and speak and write His story in the world again.
Then we can fight and win. Otherwise we’ll just sink and drown in the drab sea of secularity. We might even miss the Apocalypse when it swings around and find ourselves trapped in a dismal post-eschatological age of simulacra and meaningless signs. Nietzsche’s ‘Last Man’ on steroids.
The Pope and his men should be fighting like caged beasts - foaming at the mouth and ranting and raving - to make sure this doesn’t happen. Do not go gently into that good night. No, don’t. Rage against the dying of the light for God’s sake, and rise up like the phoenix and shine forth so that all the nine worlds can see in your face and demeanour the light of the living God and the majesty of those angels that sit around His throne and sing continually,
Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra gloria tua, Hosanna in excelsis. Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domin, Hosanna in excelsis.
When I first heard it was called the Synod of Synodality, I thought it was a joke.
I think Catholicism may be the only way out of our current morass, but not the Catholicism of either the liberals or the conservatives. Instead I would advocate for the kind of Catholicism that was still practiced in small Italian villages well into last century; a Catholicism that is in harmony with the seasons and the cosmos; one in which every man and woman experiences theophanies on a recurring basis through nature, and what some might call idol worship, but is really a form of theurgy. The problem with religion today isn't fundamentally a matter of law, philosophy, or theology, but of bloodlessness. Religion needs a transfusion... All religions, but at least Catholicism is on life-support, whereas most religions are six-feet under.