The Demise of Protestant Fundamentalism

The growing push among the intelligentsia to reject the exercise of religious influence in the public square (which is problematic on many levels) will prove highly detrimental to Catholics in the long run. But from a Catholic standpoint, this current push towards secularism has one silver lining: the death blow to the relevance of Protestant fundamentalism.
For the worldview of Protestant fundamentalists is completely dependent upon the primacy of Scripture. Protestant fundamentalists hold that the Bible is the sole source of revelation about God. Whenever science apparently conflicts with the Bible, Protestant fundamentalism chooses the Bible (or, more accurately, a literal interpretation of the Bible) over scientific evidence.
A fundamentalist belief system can flourish where Judeo-Christian norms are predominant. But the world has cast off Judeo-Christian norms, and the current intellectual climate rejects Scripture as an archaic book of fables. A belief system solely dependent on the Bible cannot flourish in a culture where the very concept of scriptural authority is considered balderdash.
While Catholics do rely on the Bible as a source of revelation, the Bible is not the sole source of revelation for Catholics. We also assert that Sacred Tradition is a source of divine revelation. Tradition allows us to understand how our Fathers in faith, guided by the Holy Spirit, used their reason to come to a greater understanding of thorny theological questions. The existence of Tradition necessitates reason in coming to understand God's revelation. Indeed, we Catholics believe that the moral teachings posited in the Bible are supported by reason; that God's existence is knowable and provable through reason as well as through revelation, and that the Church's doctrines do not conflict with science in any way.
In a culture which sets up reason as its highest principle (even as it rejects its use in practice), it is impossible to appeal to the authority of a centuries-old book, no matter how ancient or beautifully written, as an unimpeachable authority on faith, morals, and matters of science. The use of reason must be deployed to combat secularism in an age where reason reigns, to explain why the truths of the Bible are reasonable. This is why in a formerly Protestant country, resistance to the swelling tide of secularism increasingly takes on a Catholic character. It is also for this reason that Protestant fundamentalism is becoming increasingly irrelevant, since Protestant fundamentalism can only flourish in an already Christian culture.

The New Persecution

Last year, I wrote that a persecution is coming for American Catholics. Others wiser than I have made similar predictions. But the coming American persecution will not take the form of persecutions in previous eras and far-off lands. As a society, America has moved beyond wholesale execution (well, at least wholesale execution of the born). There will not be heaps of corpses left in the streets or arenas full of lions waiting to devour Christians. American Christians will not face wholesale red martyrdom.
White martyrdom is the future of the faithful American Christian. The new persecution will consist of relentless character assassination directed against those Christians who dare to uphold the teachings of the Faith, especially those teachings that conflict with the new morality of modernity (where reproductive freedom trumps all other rights).
This persecution will be severe enough to ruin reputations and careers. The continued media obsession with Catholic clerical sex abuse scandals that happened in the last century (and their utter unwillingness to discuss the epidemic of sex abuse of minors in America) is but a foretaste of the onslaught that will be leveled against faithful Catholics. The Church will be perpetually accused of aiding and abetting crime, scandal, and division. Christian morality will be attacked and blamed for every evil of modernity by a hostile press, no matter how fanciful or contrived the evidence. Christians will be forced to acquiesce in behavior they consider to be immoral (this is already occurring on a small scale), or face crippling fines or government sanction. Christian owners and administrators of charities and businesses will be shut down for failing to comply with the new morality.
Those who fight against the new morality will not face death; they will be branded as bigots and troglodytes and treated with utter contempt and hostility by the elites. Christians will serve as the scapegoats of the state, perpetually defeated but always treated as dangerous threats to the forces of progress. Like Snowball in Animal Farm or Goldstein in 1984, Christians will serve as omnipresent bogeymen, politically and culturally impotent yet somehow responsible for every societal ill afflicting America. Only at the end of this persecution (and most likely not even then), when the failure of the new morality is clearly evident, will government turn its sword against Christians.
But this will not happen for at least a generation, and it will be brief when it occurs. For as they did during all other persecutions, the forces of darkness will overreach, until they collapse under the weight of their own sin. Modern America will eventually follow the lead of other nations and blithely commit demographic suicide. Any society which embraces a culture of death is in the long run unsustainable.
The response of Christians to persecution must be the same as their predecessors' answer: unwavering fidelity to the truths of the Faith, trust in Christ's promise that His Church will not fail, and burning charity to friend and foe alike. Unwavering emphasis on the truth is the only real antidote to lies, constancy the eternal answer to despair, and charity the effective response to hatred.

A Post-Same Sex Marriage Future (The Addendum)

In my previous post, I argued that the proponents of same-sex marriage will collapse under the demographic pressure of their redefinition of marriage to de-emphasize children. I must make two rather frightening caveats to this assessment.

The first caveat is that the culture advocates of the new conception of marriage have created and will continue to forge will be alluring; the glitz and the gaudiness of the dying society (and the soft persecution that accompanies it) will draw in some of the children of faithful Catholics, causing them to embrace the culture of death. This, in and of itself, will not be sufficient to overturn the demographic tide (after all, individuals disgusted with the emptiness of the modern culture will likely swim the Tiber), but it will slow it slightly.

The second caveat involves the widespread adoption of artificial reproductive technologies. Already, technologies exist which shortcut the natural processes of childbirth, such as in vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers. (These processes create rather shocking moral questions.) The potential creation of artificial wombs is a very real possibility. Human reproduction may not need human participation soon

What I fear, quite literally, is a “Brave New World,” in which children are manufactured in laboratories and the human element is completely removed from the reproductive process. This would allow a society to replenish its numbers and dive ever deeper into the depths of hedonism. I fear that this future will take place because others openly call for it, even now.

This future would be the death of the family, if adopted. Children could be raised in government institutions, trained in government schools, and never have anyone to rear them other than the government. It would increase the role and the power of the government over humanity to absurd and dangerous levels.  

I do not think that such an institution would survive today, of course – the outcry, even in our troubled society, would as yet be too great. But a decadent society desperate to protect its vices and yet replenish its numbers might well be driven to adopt this nightmarish strategy, embracing servitude to a reproductive totalitarianism to maintain their pleasures.

A Post-Same Sex Marriage Future

There are many who claim that the demise of traditional marriage is inevitable, and that those who seek an “expanded” definition of marriage will eventually and irrevocably triumph, since the “tide of history” is on their side. Some of this is of course wishful thinking, but in the short term, the adoption of same-sex marriage is likely to become a reality in the foreseeable future.

Let’s assume that the adoption of same-sex marriage in America is inevitable, and the definition of marriage in America will be altered to include same-sex couples in around 5 years or so. What happens next?

In the short term, very little. The world accepts same-sex marriage, and… nothing will happen immediately. People will keep living their lives, as people usually do after changes come, as though nothing ever happened. Lightning bolts will not descend out of the sky to destroy America.

And it is also likely that a consensus will begin to form around same-sex marriage. It is difficult to say exactly what percentage of the American population will embrace same-sex marriage, but it seems probable to say that 75 to 90 percent of the American population will eventually accept the redefinition. Protestant fundamentalists will most likely adhere to the Biblical prohibition against homosexuality, while faithful Catholics, Orthodox (Christians and Jews), and a few contrarian natural law proponents will continue to oppose homosexual marriage on natural law grounds. Everyone else who has not already done so will accept the status quo.

For the fight for same-sex marriage is part of a much larger attempt to change the purpose of marriage to legitimize any consensual sexual relationship and to de-emphasize the role of the family in society. It is a retreat from the Christian view of marriage in favor of a new view of marriage as societal recognition of any consensual behavior.

So the adoption of same-sex marriage is less about “civil rights” and more a symptom of society’s larger embrace of a post-Christian vision of marriage, where the place of the family and of children is rendered secondary (or irrelevant) to the pleasure of multiple consenting individuals. Other “restrictions” to marriage will fall in turn; the next barrier to fall will most likely be that of only two partners in marriages. “Open marriages” will be the next frontier (no one will call it polygamy, which carries with it a stigma).

But the change in the definition of marriage will have far-reaching consequences on society. The fertility rate will continue to plummet, as children become increasingly viewed as strains on an overburdened and overpopulated society and hindrances to the pleasure of consenting partners. As the years take their course, government institutions designed to assist the old and the disabled will be strained to the point of collapse, as the taxpayer base grows smaller and the pool of retirees grows larger and larger.

Meanwhile, a soft persecution of Christians will take place, in which Christians adhering to traditional marriage will be restricted from holding political offices and government positions for their views on marriage. No, they will not be expressly prevented from office; but they will be constantly demonized for holding "intolerant" views of marriage by the media, to the point where election will be impossible. Opposition to same-sex marriage will be viewed as a civil rights violation, and treated accordingly.

It will take two or three generations for this state of affairs to fully play itself out. (For a sign of what is to come, look to Europe, which is farther down this road than America and graying rapidly.)

This state of affairs will continue until society comes to a crucial crossroads. The leaders in charge of society will grow older, and will have few children to replace them. Faithful Christians, meanwhile, will grow in numbers. Childless individuals will be repressing the very people keeping the systems they depend on barely functional. Childless individuals, as they age, will become increasingly dependent on government social systems to keep them alive, yet the systems they depend on will become dependent upon those who have held to the traditional view of marriage.

The eventual result will be the restoration of traditional marriage, as the proponents of the new view of marriage commit demographic suicide. The proponents of the shift in marriage may triumph for a day, but will destroy their cause by destroying their descendants.

There is now an addendum to this article.