Marco Tosatti is back from a brief vacation, and shares his thoughts on Robert Hugh Benson's classic novel of dystopia and a Catholic apocalypse…
Benson's 'Lord of the World' was prophetic
But he did not foresee that his hypothesis would be here and now -
and worse than he thought for the Church
Translated from
August 9, 2017
Dear
stilumcuriali [followers of his blog], I spent a few days of rest away from computers and in the company of a book I had not read before and which certainly many of you are familiar with – Robert High Benson's
Lord of the World, a work which some say served as a model of George Orwell's
1984. If you have not read it yet, take my advice and read it. It was written in 1907 and is a dystopic novel, meaning it describes an imaginary society that is the opposite of utopia, and therefore, ugly.
Benson had been an Anglican priest, son of the Anglican Archbishop of Westminster no less, but converted to Catholicism in 1903 at age 32 and was ordained a Catholic priest the following year. The novel was published in 1907.
[Like his two brothers, the Cambridge-educated Benson was a prolific writer of fiction but his output also included historical works, apologetics and devotional writings.]
Since he died in 1914, just seven years after the novel that would 'immortalize' him, he did not live to see the horrors of the new century - the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, communism, Nazism, and eventually the subtle dictatorship of the politically correct which silently took its place alongside the earlier abominations.
But his novel already prophesied much of it, including euthanasia, though he lived at the apogee of Victorian England and wrote at a time when positivism, science and technological progress (which he deftly employs in his book in both its positive and negative aspects, including destructive aerial warfare) seemed to guarantee for mankind – also thanks to the loss of ground by 'superstitions' (read 'religion') – a radiant future that would finally be free of secular classes. Elements which render his acute prophetic vision even more interesting.
Reading it, for what it says about the persecution of the Church, and remaining faithful to what the Church has taught and transmitted, a statement by the late Cardinal George of Chicago came to my mind:
"I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history."
[The quotation had been cited widely since around 2010 without proper attribution, until finally, in a column he wrote before he died in 2015 after a long bout with cancer, the cardinal himself set the record straight:
I was trying to express in overly dramatic fashion what the complete secularization of our society could bring. I was responding to a question and I never wrote down what I said, but the words were captured on somebody’s smart phone and have now gone viral on Wikipedia and elsewhere in the electronic communications world.
I am correctly quoted as saying that I expected to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. What is omitted from the reports is a final phrase I added about the bishop who follows a possibly martyred bishop: 'His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.'
What I said is not 'prophetic' but a way to force people to think outside of the usual categories that limit and sometimes poison both private and public discourse."
[Ironically, the cardinal – who was perhaps the most Ratzingerian of all contemporary US bishops – could not have imagined that his actual successor would be the arch-Bergoglian Blasé Cupich who would never go to prison under this or any other dispensation for defending the received and transmitted Catholic faith!]
Neither George nor Benson – both persons of the most solid faith – had imagined the possibility of apostasy for convenience or fear, but never that of 'internal apostasy' nor the cleverness of the Catholic ministers who affirm such apostasy – though they can't change anything in the deposit of faith and all they do is sow confusion. [But because the internal apostates are who they are – from the summit of the Church down – this confusion is leading many souls astray!]
Most especially, they did not imagine that instead of frontally and openly fighting the Spirit of the World, the 'Church' in our day would willingly subordinate itself to it. Who needs martyrdom when one can have the applause and praises of the world?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/08/2017 23:37]