Beginning with the Council of Nicaea, the Catholic Church has forbidden usury, in some way or form, for most of its history. (And usury was most often strictly defined as charging any kind of interest on a loan (“making money from money”), and not simply charging excessive interest, as the term is used today.)

For centuries, the money-lender was forbidden a Christian burial. One of the most consequential effects of this was that Europe’s Jews filled this tabooed market niche, resulting in intense resentment on the part many Christians...and unfathomable power for certain Jewish families, Frankfurt’s House of Rothschild being the most (in)famous.

The Church, of course, eventually came to terms with finance in its own way, as evidenced by the Papal Coronation of Leo X—formerly Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici.

Whatever the twists and turns of this history might be, it remains deeply ironic that in 2011, the Vatican has explicitly called for the creation of a massive new usurious bank with “universal jurisdiction.”

In his comments on my discussion of alternate modernities, Paul Gottfried observes that in our present situation there's no educational program, system of alliances, or political and cultural strategy that seems likely to get us out of the hole we're in.

I agree. If we start with what I called the modern "attempt to base social order simply on this-worldly empirical man," we can't get anywhere, because we can't escape the problem of conflicting wills fighting over who gets what. The only way to deal with that problem is by some combination of force and fraud, and any new combination of programs, alliances, and strategies is just going to be one more configuration of force and fraud. Why should our force and fraud work out better than everyone else's? Haven't the possibilities been tried and found wanting?

The problem, it seems, is the basic modern understandings that make our present situation what it is and so condition all the programs, alliances, strategies, and so on that now seem reasonable and practical. Things won't get a whole lot better until those understandings change, and that won't happen because some group of activists and theoreticians puts together a system of understandings that's more to their liking and tries to get them adopted by the dominant forces in society.

In particular, as Paul notes, right-wingers aren't going to create a better world by getting together and aligning themselves with selected religious institutions, "command[ing] the political class and its allies in the media, the entertainment industry, and public education to change their worldview," and educating the masses into an outlook more to their liking. Among other problems, religious institutions themselves are affected by the dominant understandings.

But what then? If we don't like the way things are there must be some response--alcohol, skydiving, suicide, whatever--that makes sense even if political maneuvering is not likely to do much for us.

My proposal was to "go back to first things." What defines the political situation is what seems best and most real to the people involved, and if the situation is impossible those things must change. Current understandings have basic problems that (among other things) lead to a view of man as essentially asocial and eventually mean various forms of tyranny as well as "mindlessness and incompetence on the part of rulers and ruled."

It follows that the dissatisfied need first of all to understand the world better, and in a way that enables them to live in a manner more worthy of human nature. That, of course, is a prepolitical issue. It's worth dealing with in itself, since doing so will help ourselves and our families and friends. It's more than just a personal matter, though, since such initiatives can spread and transform social life. At some point some initiative will--it's happened before and will happen again--so why not ours if it's superior?

The present setup has basic contradictions, and won't last forever any more than other social arrangements have. With that in mind, those with an outlook and way of life that is more true and more worth living by should make their pitch and see what catches on and endures. As I commented, "revolutions begin in thought, and the way of thought that makes people most functional and enables them to deal most intelligently with the world has a good shot at winning eventually."

The proposal sounds impossibly conjectural and long-range, but when there is no obvious quick fix you drop day-to-day events as your reference point and do what you can for what could work in principle. If what's needed is a change in basic understandings then that's what you should pursue. Modernity makes effectiveness the measure of thought, but to deal with the world effectively you have to deal on their own terms with issues that precede effectiveness, like what is real and good.

Such an approach might get results soon: things might be better than they seem, late modernity might be a bubble about to burst, the Church (which like everything else has its own characteristic way of functioning) might be about to revert to type, or something nobody has thought of might happen. Or it might take effect slowly or not at all. The same is true of every approach, though, and the basic point is that this approach--unlike others--could work in concept, and is worth pursuing on its own terms even if it does not.

The big question is what a superior way of thought would be. On that point opinions differ and discussion is necessary. In order to deal with man as he actually is and the problems politics actually present we need an outlook that's adequate to the world as we experience it. It seems clear, to me at any rate, that such an outlook requires an understanding of practical rationality not limited to technology and of knowledge not limited to modern natural science.

Otherwise we cannot, among other things, understand people. To understand and deal with life and human beings as we find them, I suggested that "something like the Christian soul, or at least a human essence that by nature is oriented toward the good" is necessary. Whether I'm right on that is a matter for discussion. Still, each of us in his manner of life displays what he thinks is most real and most worth living by. We're more likely to make progress on basic issues to the extent we articulate and examine such commitments. Our problems today really are that basic, which is the reason there seems to be no exit from them.

The ideology of sexual liberation continues to be the abiding obsession of high-profile opinion shapers in the post-modern Western world. Indeed, in the mindset of today's ruling class, the drive to undermine traditional notions of libidinal restraint trumps all other agendas, including such familiar standards as the avid celebration of "diversity" and the fierce fomentation of white self-hatred. If, as the saying goes, the Puritan's greatest abiding fear was that somebody, somewhere was having a good time, our contemporary societal elite's most visceral apprehension stems from the notion that somebody, somewhere may be learning to be-- horror of horrors--sexually repressed.

Thus, for example, we commonly see this group express furious, feral hatred against the idea of abstinence-only education in schools. Children must learn about condoms and birth control pills, these "experts" who wish to usurp our parental authority sternly inform us; after all, they say, teenagers are going to have sex anyway, so it's best they do it "safely," and avoid getting pregnant or catching a nasty disease. Yet this entire line of pseudo-reasoning is profoundly disengenuous. We certainly never hear it said: "Kids, we think it's best for you not to use racist, sexist, or homophobic language, but if you do choose to talk that way, at least wear protective equipment to prevent injury to yourselves should anyone get offended and try to hurt you... And by the way, though we'd rather you refrain from smoking cigarettes, or bullying your classmates, or polluting the environment, or doing other types of things that we abhor... hey, it's your life; we know you're all strong-willed adolescents, so at least don't be TOTALLY irresponsible when you decide to do these terrible things we know we can't possibly stop you from doing..."

Assuredly, on these and other matters, the contemporary cultural opinion shaper is undaunted by the realization that his efforts to reform young people's behavior won't always succeed, that in fact there will remain many teenagers who continue to use racist, sexist, and homophobic slurs; who go on smoking cigarettes, bullying nerds, polluting Mother Earth, and committing all sorts of other unspeakable atrocities, no matter how often the opinion shaper and his cohorts exhort them to do otherwise. Yet knowing that his impassioned crusades against these behaviors won't be entirely effective doesn't stop the crusader of this stripe from trying to bring about such changes in today's youth; in fact, the unlikelihood of creating a significantly better world fires him with pride at the noble heights of his own ideals. In fact, he luxuriates in his status as an enlightened person, a member of what Thomas Sowell called the "annointed" crowd.

"You might say I'm a dreamer," he may tell you with a smug, wan smile, quoting his favorite song, "but I'm not the only one..."

Yet this same lot of ardent crusaders becomes suddenly and unaccountably pragmatic when it comes to the notion of trying to stop teens from having sex. Abstinence and chastity are dismissed as "unrealistic" concepts; kids are going to do what they want, no matter what anybody tells them, etc. What most of those who raise this objection will not admit is that their seeming pragmatism on this matter is a ruse;  they don't oppose abstinence-only education for reasons of expediency, but on principle. That is to say, they are opposed to chastity and supportive of permissiveness.

They don't want a return to the mores of "the 1950s" or "the Victorian age" (these two distinct time periods have grown to be the main epocal scapegoats flogged by the permissive-ists for some reason, although traditional sexual morality in fact held sway in many other eras of the past as well). They want the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and '70s to rage on, and not be arrested or reversed.

And mostly, they have gotten their way. While the more lurid manifestations of the new permissiveness that cropped up in the early days of the sexual revolution have vanished ("key parties" like the one depcited in Ang Lee's horrifying movie "The Ice Age," group orgies, "swinger" couples, and the like), they have been replaced by less grotesque but far more significant behaviors. Hardly anyone waits until marriage to have sexual intercourse anymore; serial fornication and "hook-ups" are common events among young people, causing little discernable guilt or pangs of conscience; moreover, the practice of cohabitation is barely even looked at askance these days. Yet for all that, and much more, the permissive-ists still seem to live in constant fear of a coming sanctimonious crackdown, ushered in by all those mean and scheming Religious Right-types. And among this feared and hated group, none is more loathed than the Roman Catholic Church, with its celibate all-male priesthood, its inflexible moral laws, and its still-widespread power and relevance in an increasingly secularized West.

Thus, when Pope Benedict recently remarked to a Vatican reporter, in an offhand way, that in certain particularly egregious cases of debauched sexual behavior, use of a condom may make a grievous sin slightly less deplorable, it was bound to be misconstrued. News outlets across the Western world represented Benedict's extreme hypothetical scenario as representing a "stunning reversal" on the Church's teaching on contraceptives.

In fact, as anyone with a brain and powers of discernment can comprehend, it was no such thing: neither a "reversal" of any doctrine, nor particularly "stunning." But one's tendency towards hyperbole shifts into overdrive when one confronts an enemy one doesn't understand, an enemy that one clearly perceives as formidable. And the fact that so many promoters of permissiveness are so anxious to find a chink in the Holy Father's armor ought to give one pause.

Flawed as the contemporary post-Vatican II church may be, its leader still makes our cultural Marxist rulers sweat, quake in their birkenstocks, and foam at the mouth like rabid poodles. That's no mean feat. All of us who wish to prevent the "suicide of the West" should say a prayer, or at least think good thoughts, on behalf of this two thousand year old institution which still holds certain "outmoded" standards unashamedly against a depraved, ruthless Zeitgeist whose corrosive influence threatens us all.

Tradition makes us what we are. The institutions that are dominant today want to make us more manageable as human resources, so they destroy all traditions but those of consumerist careerism. The latter, of course, include pluralism and inclusiveness.

People usually don't like it when things that are close to them are attacked for someone else's benefit. So why doesn't everyone join the traditionalists and overthrow the technocrats?

Paul Gottfried's comments on my post on shrinks and hipsters raise several interesting points: is the social outlook found among the modish half-educated young an organic development or an intentional construction? Can we can do something about it and the broader stream of advanced liberalism of which it is part? And if something can be done, what's the key?

On the first point, there's no doubt a bit of a mixture but organic development seems more basic. Today's education is propagandistic but a system of propaganda can grow up organically. There's nothing radically autonomous about liberal theorists and propagandists. They function as part of a system that's evolved historically.

Paul's books have shown that major political traditions--liberalism, leftism, Christian activism--have all sunk into the same politically-correct mush. I've followed up with a book of my own claiming that the degeneration is a result of current understandings of knowledge and reality. If all that's even partly true, how can our situation at bottom be something that's constructed?

Our civilization rots toward final collapse, and there is scant reason to conserve the ideas and institutions that brought us to this point. Since its inception in the age of Enlightenment and Revolution, the modern West has been on a suicide mission. The current era might very well be its terminal phase as global-scale crises multiply, a factor which only seems to heighten the sense of impending catastrophe. From the grand pyramid schemes wrought by the financial class to far-flung wars for universal democracy, multiculturalism and demographic displacement by masses from alien lands, our power elites are hastening the rush to Judgment Day.

This trajectory to dissolution is driven above all by a profound arrogance. Contemporary society is assured in its faith that humanity can transform the world in service to its desires. This mentality extends as well to “lifestyle choices”, where carnal materialism is propagated as the guide to successful living. Under the ideology of individual liberation, man tears away from the Transcendent and careens through death toward a state much worse than nothingness. Spiritual suicide, whether collective or individual, precedes the physical action.

A recent piece here at Alternative Right advocating suicide as a supposedly “honorable” way out of life casts in stark relief the ultimate choice we must make: shall we serve God, out of love and then duty, or do we rebel? For Truth, beauty and the Good are opposed by the incoherence, absurdity and darkness of rebellion. The oath “non serviam” brings with it a finality and gravity incomprehensible to those still living, a spiritual peril one can dismiss for now- but not forever.

[The eighth in a series on inclusiveness. Read parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX.]

What's it like to live in a modern, diverse, tolerant, vibrant, inclusive, multicultural society? Everyday experience in early twenty-first century America is enough to sketch the situation in bold strokes.

Growing up absurd

Such a society lacks sustaining stories, symbols, and models of a good life, and indeed intentionally eradicates them. Such things are racist, since they reflect the specifics of a particular culture, and sexist and heteronormative, since they express fundamental patterns of human life. They're also theocratic, since they connect the order of human life to a particular understanding of the order of the world.

[The seventh in a series on inclusiveness. Read parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, and IX.]

The Catholic view of the world has lasted a long time and supported many good things, so the Catholic view of antidiscrimination and inclusiveness ought to matter to anyone interested in those topics.

But what is "the Catholic view"? The phrase can refer to anything from the view that best fits the overall Catholic understanding of the world to the average view of all Catholics at a particular time and place. As a day-to-day matter, people mostly take it to be the view expressed by Catholic functionaries. If the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops puts out a statement, that's the Catholic position.

Recent pronouncements

Day-to-day pronouncements by Church officials on discrimination and related issues often seem generally consistent with the advanced liberal view. That view takes the lead, and situations where Catholic doctrines and traditions make deviations necessary are played down. Or so it seems.