Warren on Ferguson

Columnist David Warren, a recent convert to Catholicism, has taken note of Bob Ferguson's recent CBC commentary:

But that post-modern mind is itself anti-Christian, to say nothing of anti-Catholic. It believes what it believes (nothing, consistently) in defiance of Christian, and all other religious traditions.

Is it a danger to the faithful? You bet. And not only because it offers anodynes, to lure them away from their intellectual, moral, and spiritual commitments.

I felt this danger, last week, in a radio commentary the CBC commissioned from a retired engineering professor -- a certain Bob Ferguson -- who said that the Canadian government should "overcome the inertia" of the Catholic Church by imposing such things as "gay marriage" and "woman's ordination" upon it by law. His reasoning was tortuous, and he displayed no knowledge whatever of church history, but I'm sure his "modest proposal" would be embraced by all aboard that Gananoque showboat.

The glibness with which the totalitarian solution is proposed marks it as post-modern. The result would be two "Catholic churches", as there now are in Communist China. One, faithful to Our Lord, and flourishing underground despite police raids and murderous persecution. The other, an "official" church for show, emptying of membership but obedient to the State's every whim.

St. Anthony of Egypt, the founder of Christian monasticism: "A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, 'You are mad, you are not like us'."