In The Ruins Of The Church

Argues that the postmodern Western church is in ruins and that to be in the church is to embrace a "broken way of life"

In the twenty-five years since Vatican II, the Church has undergone a classic revolution, like those that transform the structures of secular societies. Just as we can speak of a "post-Christian era" in the West, so we have a "post-Catholic era" in the Church. The undermining of the Catholic principle of authority has reduced religion to mere sentiment. The devastating effects of the revolution are evinced in the seminaries, the liturgy, in the bishops' committees, and in the controversies over such issues as celibacy, birth control, and the Church's political shift to the left. The Catholic Church has self-destructed. This book is an eloquent, carefully reasoned reflection on the ruin of the once-universal Church. [Book jacket].

According to the authors, the American church is out of touch with the world views, social situations, and psychological needs of the people it is called to reach. "The church must understand and adapt to our society without Biblical compromise if it is to become relevant, healthy, and Biblically effective".

DIVDIV“A great adventure . . . So outrageous and so real, one is left speechless.” —Chicago Sun Times/divDIV/divDIVIn Walker Percy’s future America, the country is on the brink of disaster. With citizens violently polarized along racial, political, and social lines, and a fifteen-year war still raging abroad, America is crumbling quickly into ruin. The country’s one remaining hope is Dr. Thomas More, whose “lapsometer” is capable of diagnosing the spiritual afflictions—anxiety, depression, alienation—driving everyone’s destructive and disastrous behavior./divDIV /divDIVBut such a potent machine has its pitfalls. As Dr. More soon learns, in the wrong hands, the powerful lapsometer could lead to open warfare, pushing America into anarchy at full-speed./div /div

Repairing the Ruins is a collection of essays about classical education.

At the beginning of the Twenty-second Century, the world has entered a Dark Age. A Lutheran pastor, Jonathan Klug, serves a congregation in Felderheim, a town in central Pennsylvania. While struggling with doubt about himself and his ministry, he receives a call from God to build a new community, Sublacum, near the ruins of a church where certain people have claimed to have seen a pillar of light on Saint John’s night, December 27. Pastor Jonathan finds a document that confirms his call. He comes to acknowledge that God has enlisted him for this mission. Through the crisis, Jonathan’s friend, Anthony Cacciaguida, a priest at Saint Benedict Roman Catholic Church, serves as Jonathan’s advisor. Both men look to the Word of God for their help. As the state and federal governments weaken, Frank Sulla, a successful business man, sees his opportunity to gain power and dominate the region around Felderheim. He too has an advisor and guide, Nikolaos Kakos, who is an emissary of the devil. Sulla has signed his name in blood. The battle lines are formed. Good and evil once again face one another in an epic battle. The conflict will require sacrifice and loss of life. The history of the next few centuries will depend on the outcome.

"In 'The Ruins Lesson,' the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet-critic Susan Stewart explores the West's fascination with ruins in literature, visual art, and architecture, covering a vast chronological and geographical range from the ancient Egyptians to T. S. Eliot. In the multiplication of images of ruins, artists, and writers she surveys, Stewart shows how these thinkers struggled to recover lessons out of the fragility or our cultural remains. She tries to understand the appeal in the West of ruins and ruination, particularly Roman ruins, in the work and thought of Goethe, Piranesi, Blake, and Wordsworth, whom she returns to throughout the book. Her sweeping, deeply felt study encompasses the founding legends of broken covenants and original sin; Christian transformations of the classical past; the myths and rituals of human fertility; images of ruins in Renaissance allegory, eighteenth-century melancholy, and nineteenth-century cataloguing; and new gardens that eventually emerged from ancient sites of disaster"--

This critical review of the Roman Catholic Church since the pivotal changes initiated in the 1960s by Vatican II paints a disturbing picture of decline and corruption. Dr. Paul L. Williams, a self-professed Tridentine or traditionalist Catholic, traces the various factors that have caused the Church to suffer cataclysmic losses in all aspects of its life and worship in recent decades. Williams illustrates the decline with telling statistics showing the stark difference between the robust number of clergy members, parishes, schools, and active church-going Catholics in 1965 versus the comparatively paltry number today. The author is highly critical of Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis for steering the church so far away from its traditional teachings and for a lack of oversight that allowed corruption to fester. Symptomatic of this failure of leadership are the recent pedophilia scandals, the ongoing financial corruption, a gay prostitution ring inside the Vatican, and criminal investigations of connections between the Holy See and organized crime. This unflinching critique from a devoted, lifelong Catholic is a wakeup call to all Catholics to restore their church to its former levels of moral leadership and influence.