Reconsideration. Father Jape has responded to David Koyzis one more time in a piece entitled ‘Hunkering Down,’ and it appears to me right and good to see if I can provoke a response from him. If not a liberal order, Koyzis asks, then what? I agree with Father Jape on quite a number of points; and in particular, his critique of principled pluralism I have no difficulty. The mutual exclusivity of religious claims, Christ’s claim that he came to bring a sword, these things confirm in my mind that the very idea a space where people of different faiths can come together and talk their differences out is in the long run doomed to failure.

The conclusion Jape draws from this that Christians should, ‘Hunker down and wait for the big crash…’ The picture he draws called to mind an especially moving scene at the conclusion of Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz which had a monk slapping the soles of his sandals together, beating the dust from them, which recalled Christ’s instruction to his disciples to shake the dust from their feet when a town would not listen to their message (Mark 6:11). They did this before departing a dying earth. Humankind thought once more they could build utopia on a faith in human reason, but Reason, like Molech before it, had swallowed its own children. I have great sympathy for this perspective. I am sometimes left to think that there should be more of this going on.

Where I depart with Father Jape is over principled pluralism should be rejected on principle. Admitting its faults, its inability to do what it sets out to do, I would still consider a potential, indeed even faithful, Christian response for it is built on a hope that one day all men will be reconciled. However shaky its epistemological foundations might be, there is something worthy to be found.

The use of the quotations by MacIntyre and Eliot will occupy the rest of my comments here. Calling attention to the character of the early medieval monastic community At the outset of the MacIntyre quotation there is a helpfully injunction to the effect that ‘[i]t is always dangerous to draw precise parallels between one historical period and another.’ Reading on we hear MacIntyre say, ‘A crucial turning point in that early history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium.’ A good example of what MacIntyre is referring to here is the development of female monastic communities which had over time the effect of undermining the Roman ideal of the paterfaminalis, in which the husband had the power of life and death over the members of his household, including his wife. With the option of becoming a ‘bride of Christ,’ another possibility opened up to them.

Possibly the best example of this turning away can be illustrated in the example of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. Ambrose was a defender of the Eusebian concord between church and state. Eusebius, we remember here, was Constantine’s adoring biographer. Augustine, who was mentored by Ambrose while he stayed in Milan ended up walking a very different road. His philosophy effectively detached the Church from the Roman imperium and any imperium that should follow it.

Monastic communities, the best example of the Church ‘hunkering down,’ can hardly be said to have withdrawn from the world. While the Rome in the West fell apart, missionaries went out and brought a wholly new form of civilization, a unique blend of Roman civilization and Christianity, to the pagan tribes of Europe. The Western Roman Empire collapsed under its own weight, and the Germanic tribesmen had little by the way of civilization. What follows is a dark age—dark at least for the lack of writings and historical records; dark for its lack of social and cultural sophistication when compared to its Roman predecessor—that lasts nearly a century and a half, during which the Latin Church carefully groomed the Western Europe for another attempt at building a civilization. So the Church hunkered down. What else could it do?

I wonder whether Japes expects, maybe even hopes for, another dark age like this? I have no doubt, if the world were weighed on scales the Lord held, the modern world would be found wanting, deserving even of destruction. Africa, China, and South America could be the new Germanic peoples.

I confess to having difficulty embracing Japes’ vision. The sick cow of Modern Civilization can still walk and I would have difficultly pulling the trigger—or even making a symbolic gesture to that effect. Heeding MacIntype's injunction against reading precise historical parallels is in order. That said, civilization do rise and fall; that much is certain. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes says there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven. Where Japes and I part ways, I believe, concerns what time it is. Though I admit, he may be right. rich