Just as the year 2001 has come to an end, so also this twelve-part series on the Egalitarian Revolution is completed with this installment. Let us end this series with the more hopeful theme with which we started.
If we look to the family for the long-term solution of the crisis that afflicts society, we need to look long and hard to the patriarchal Catholic fam-ily. Society should be at the same time hierarchical and fundamentally Catholic. What sound families like this engender is an organic society that brings about its own form of government, at times original and new.
Someone can make the objection: the Catholic patriarchal family cannot take root in the world in which we live. This is not true. The world of ideas, of the perennial, of truth exists. The solution has already begun. The family may be in a fragile state, but there are growing numbers of Catholic families with couples committed to the marriage vow and willing to have the children that God will give them. The growing number of women who are staying home as full time mothers and wives obedient to their husbands ex-ist. The men willing to accept the responsibility for providing for a family and to assume their natural place in the home and in society exist.
God can draw a good for the future even from the instability and chaos we now are facing. I can give a historical example. In a certain way, the Catholic Kingdom of France rose as a result of a tragedy. The Germanic tribes invaded Europe and destroyed the Old Roman Gaul. In the chaos that followed, the traditional political institutions disappeared. Even the Church was seriously weakened.
But Catholic families fled to mountains and outreaches. Small organic and hierarchical social units formed, which included troops of soldier, led by a family patriarch. From this came small fiefdoms, then baronies, and finally the kingdom of France.
It was these clusters of noble families faithful to the Church and the ideals of the Catholic social order that gave rise to the system of feudalism and the whole order of Christendom.
We don't know how the future will be. An organic organization grows from the bottom up and is not planned by theoreticians or writers. We know that even in today's cultural crisis, there is a remnant who, while small in number, are committed to a Catholic social order and the restoration of all things in Christ. This is already proof of a seed that, with the help of Our Lady, can give a great fruit.
We are not dreamers nostalgic of the past. Already we are collaborators who influence the present and prepare a grand future. Skeptics can smile. But the smile of skeptics never managed to stop the victorious march of those who have Faith.
Next Week: A series on the Crusades