KATHY G. writes:
I received an e-reader as a gift and was downloading The Liturgical Year by Dom Guéranger and these words, written by Gary Potter, from the introduction of the Loreto Publication’s version reveal a keen understanding of history and the splitting of the spiritual from the material in the minds of men:
There is a dimension of the work that can surprise the American reader. Political is the only fit word for that dimension. This is to speak of politics, not in terms of parties or elections, but simply as the means whereby the life of a society is regulated or governed. Dom Guéranger believed the means should be Christian because he believed society itself should be. We Americans may believe our society is fundamentally Christian, or used to be, but every schoolboy knows we have never had Christian government. That would be exclusionarу.
As a consequence, we [contend] that the real target of modern revolutionaries, whether in France in 1789 or Russia in 1917, has been the Christian Faith – that they have overthrown governments in order to get at it. Dom Guéranger knew this view was wrong, that it was backwards. He saw what had really happened: that the revolutionaries began their march to power in the 18th century by first undermining religious belief, including belief in the very existence of God and, above all, His Incarnation, in order to dethrone Christ as King of Society. The Christian political order, not the Christian religion, was their real target. They were determined to replace Christ with themselves. Instead of Christian government, there would be government according to their lights.
To put this another way: If God could be shown as not to exist – and this was the work of the Encyclopedists and philosophes of the 18th century- He could hardly be seen, let alone recognized, as the Head of society.
So far have the revolutionaries succeeded that virtually everywhere today in the formerly Christian West, the generality of men, including ones who still call themselves Christian, believe God rules over nothing but Heaven. They prove it whenever they say, as they do incessantly, that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. Apparently it does not occur to them that if Christ does not rule this world, He simply is not God.
Read faithfully, The Liturgical Year can at least serve as an aid to the salvation of individuals. If everything the volumes have to say is taken truly to heart, the work can also be a guide to the restoration of Christendom whenever God decides the time for that is arrived.”
