The Death of the Churches

An Anglican priest commented to me yesterday that the Anglican Church in Canada, on present trends, will disappear in fifteen years, by 2040. There are only grey heads in the pews now, and they are dying off.

My friend Xerxes, who is United Church, estimates 2035-2040 for their extinction date.

These are the two largest Protestant denominations in Canada.

The decline has been going on since about 1960; but apparently there was a big drop with COVID. Sources also blame the residential schools scandal, or, as I would call it, the residential schools hoax.

The Catholic Church is not doing that much better. Extinction not in sight, but affiliation and attendance is definitely declining, mostly in Quebec. I cannot find figures for Canada outside Quebec, but for the country as a whole, in ten years from 2011 to 2021, the Catholic population declined from 12.7 million (38.7% of the population) to 10.8 million (29.9%).

One should, perhaps, not worry. “Let go and let God”; He will manage affairs. On the other hand, one thinks of Sodom and Gomorrah. We cannot assume He loves Canada unconditionally. It does not help that we have embraced child sacrifice and various sexual perversions, the stated reasons that he obliterated Canaan and the cities of the plain.

It is true that more evangelical denominations, collectively, have shown “stability or slight growth.” But this does not make up for the mainstream decline.

On the brighter side, these figures may be unnecessarily alarmist. They seem to be based on census figures, so that the last year for which figures are available is 2021-- the height of the Covid pandemic. If Covid was responsible for a large drop in numbers, as is said, and certainly put people out of the habit of going to church, it seems possible there has been some recovery since, or will be over time, which will not show up in these figures until 2031.

The culture may also have been turning since 2021. It has politically, after all, with the resurrection of MAGA and the striking failure since of wokery in advertising, in the media, and in Hollywood.

There are signs of revival since 2021, if largely anecdotal, among Catholics and evangelicals.  Record numbers of adult baptisms, celebrities publicly converting, reports of miracles, and of descents of the spirit at mass prayer meetings.

When I turn my head at my local Catholic church, most of the heads are not grey. There are many children, young families. 

It is also perhaps natural that mainstream Protestantism is dying. It is perhaps not so much that the people have left the churches; it is more that the churches have left the church and abandoned the people. I went to grad school with Protestant ministers; the faculty was almost entirely Protestant ministers. They tended to scorn traditional belief; it was uncool among them to profess faith in anything. The people on the pew were ignorant peons, clinging to their superstitions. Anglicanism and the United Church preach no consistent doctrine, seeking only to reflect back to the congregation whatever they think they want to hear. Religion bores them, or frightens them; they have pretty much shifted their interests to politics and vaguely “doing good” for the poor or otherwise supposedly disadvantaged. 

This makes them redundant: why belong to the United Church instead of the local NDP constituency organization, or the local Red Cross or soup kitchen? Indeed, aren’t you just wasting time and effort by comparison?

The remaining reason to join a church, surely, is to hang out with people you know and like; as a social club. This gives little reason for anyone new to join the organization, or this organization instead of another; when the present cadre dies off, that will be the end of it. 

And as a social group, a weekly Sunday meeting, these churches face new competition for everyone’s free time and interest: endless streaming and reading on the internet, social media, video games, online conferencing, AI companions. All voluntary organizations, from the Masons to the St. Andrews Society to the bowling league, are bleeding members. There is too much else to do.

The mainstream Protestants, I think, aew doomed. Yet there is a path for Catholicism, and a crying need, if Pope Leo and the hierarchy have the wisdom, let alone the piety, to seize the times. They need to emphasize what makes going to mass most different from an ordinary day, a Catholic life most different from just living your life. That is, they need to give a solid reason to spend your time in Church instead of somewhere else. The very opposite of the direction things have been going since Vatican II. 

Catholicism has a secret weapon here: the eucharist. It requires your physical presence. It cannot be replaced by anything online. It significance and its infinite value should be emphasized by surrounding it with as much distinctive ritual as possible: more bells and smells, more organ music and choir, more reverence in its handling, and yes, a return of the option of a Latin mass. 

I am encouraged to see that my local cathedral, last Sunday, started reserving the front row of pews and kneelers for those wishing to receive communion on the tongue. This is, in effect, a return to the communion rail. I asked after the mass where this innovation came from. The celebrant said it was from the bishop; he did not know if it came from higher up.

Perhaps the Holy Spirit.

At the same time, the evangelical groups also demand physical presence for their celebrations, with the electric presence of the Spirit and laying on of hands. Catholicism shares this in the charismatic movement, and this too should be leaned into.

All this is desperately needed, by the many souls abandoned by their own churches, and to restore Canada to God’s grace.

Lolita and the Hellfire Club

I have long suspected that Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, was blowing the whistle on some kind of Hellfire Club going on among the prominent and wealthy.

Revelations since about Jeffrey Epstein and P Diddy and Hillary Clinton’s Russia hoax seem to confirm this. There really has been some sort of immoral cabal at the top running much of the society. And this explains many things, like large corporations seeming to act against their own self-interest, politicians going against the popular will and fearing free speech, and, not least, Trump Derangement Syndrome.

But for how long has this been going on? Is it new, or are we only hearing about it now?

 Kubrick’s far earlier film, Lolita, 1962, might also have been a blow on the whistle. It deals with ephebophilia, which seems the dominant obsession of the Epstein cult. That is, having sex with young, but post-pubescent, women. An obvious attraction for the rich and powerful: all societies and cultures see youth and innocence as highly desirable in women. So it is reasonable to foresee this as an ideal commodity for a corrupt blackmail cult.

Kubrick filmed Lolita as his first independent production, after breaking a multi-film contract with Kirk Douglas. The two had a bitter falling out.

In the opening scene of Lolita, James Mason asks Peter Sellers, “Are you Quilty?” And Sellers responds, “I am Spartacus. Why, have you come to free the slaves, or something?”

The film is relatively sympathetic towards Mason as Humbert for his obsession with underage Lolita. It is a natural enough desire. But Quilty is the real villain. As the movie’s plot unfolds, he kidnaps the underage Lolita and takes her to a “dude ranch” full of his “weird friends.”

It sounds so much like the Epstein arrangement.

Spartacus, in Kubrick’s previous film, was played by Kirk Douglas. By saying “I am Spartacus,” Quilty/Sellers is identifying himself with Douglas. And implying Douglas in some sense kept slaves, as Quilty does. Perhaps young female slaves, as Quilty does.

In 2021, soon following his death, Douglas was accused by the family of Natalie Wood of having brutally raped her when she was a child star of sixteen. She and her family had kept silence all these years due to fear of his power and influence.

There are suspicions around another starlet, Jean Spangler. Not underage; but she disappeared. Her purse was found, with signs of a struggle, containing an unfinished note that read “Kirk: Can’t wait any longer, Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away,” She was three months pregnant. Like the pianist in Eyes Wide Shut, there has been no sign of her since.

Whatever his experiences with Douglas, as soon as he was able to get out of that contract, Kubrick decamped to England for the rest of his life, a very strange move in terms of career. Although Lolita was set in the US, Kubrick awkwardly filmed it in England, using what American or Canadian actors resident in the UK to get the accents right. As he did for all the rest of his films. Surely a striking eccentricity. As if there was something in Hollywood he feared or needed to escape.

Kubrick’s wife has said he had wanted to make Eyes Wide Shut for years, but felt he was not ready to yet. Not ready? What held him up? It was not an expensive story to film in terms of special effects, like some of the other films he made before it. It did not require great historical research, like some of the other films he made before it. And as soon as he did make it, he suddenly died. A heart attack in his sleep, age 70, six days after the film’s final cut.

Did they get to him?

Did he let go and die knowing he had finally said what needed to be said?

Did he die of the stress of possible reactions from powerful quarters?

I hope one day we know.

Jesus Was No Socialist

Why are haunted houses never small or modest?

First Reading: Ecclesiastes 1: 2; 2: 21-23

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities!  All things are vanity!Here is one who has labored with wisdom and knowledge and skill, and yet to another who has not labored over it, he must leave property. This also is vanity and a great evil.

For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun?

All his days sorrow and grief are his occupation; even at night his mind is not at rest.

This also is vanity.

Second Reading: Colossians 3: 1-5, 9-11

1 Therefore, if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above; where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God:

2 Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth.

3 For you are dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God.

4 When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with him in glory.

5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is the service of idols.

9 Lie not one to another: stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds,

10 And putting on the new, him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that created him.

11 Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all, and in all.

Gospel: Luke 12: 13-21

13 And one of the multitude said to him: Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me.

14 But he said to him: Man, who hath appointed me judge, or divider, over you?

15 And he said to them: Take heed and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life doth not consist in the abundance of things which he possesseth.

16 And he spoke a similitude to them, saying: The land of a certain rich man brought forth plenty of fruits.

17 And he thought within himself, saying: What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?

18 And he said: This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and will build greater; and into them will I gather all things that are grown to me, and my goods.

19 And I will say to my soul: Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years take thy rest; eat, drink, make good cheer.

20 But God said to him: Thou fool, this night do they require thy soul of thee: and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?

21 So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God.

These mass readings for this Sunday amount to a clear rejection of the left-wing idea of “equity.” Justice, Ecclesiastes asserts, requires that a man keep what he has earned from his labour. Not just his physical labour, but also what he has earned from his wisdom, and knowledge, and care. No doubt it is legitimate for government to take some in return for services rendered. No doubt it makes sense to provide a “social safety net” as group insurance. But for a government to get into the business of wealth redistribution is, in the words of Ecclesiastes, “a great evil.” That should settle the matter.

If not, the Gospel conveys the same message. Someone comes to Jesus demanding that his brother divide their inheritance equally. And Jesus refuses.  So much for Marxist equity.

Jesus says “who hath appointed me judge over you?” This is odd, and commands our attention, because Jesus is the rightful judge of the deeds of all. No one has to appoint him. How is it he has no authority in this case?

Because there is no moral issue involved. In an inheritance, neither party has earned the money. Neither has a moral right to it. So it is an administrative issue, a matter for king or Caesar: what does the law say? 

Jesus then goes on to address the moral issue: demanding equity is the sin of covetousness. 

This is not to let the rich off the hook. This is not to praise the rich. As the second, epistolatory reading tells us, their pursuit of riches is idolatry.

I worked for some years in Toronto with and among the “mentally ill.” Some of the names of these street people might surprise you. You might recognize some of the family names. A striking proportion of the severely mentally ill come from prominent families. Few seem to emerge from wealthy families with psyches fully healthy and intact. Most large old houses are haunted, and have closets full of skeletons. We know this, as a folk truth.

Thoe who are rich are likely to be covetous; for those who are covetous are likely to grow rich. This is obvious on the simple and self-evident principle that when we try to get something, we are more likely to get it. The same will be true for those who strive for social prominence. They are almost inevitably idolators.

Mental illness is spiritual illness. Mental illness naturally comes of growing up in a family with values askew. And the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons, unto the third and fourth generation.

The rich are not to be praised or admired; at the same time, it is folly to envy the rich. 

Are the Times Still A'Changin'?

 

I recently inadvertently uncovered the essential difference between right wing and left wing perceptions. 

In a poetry group, I was given Dylan’s “The Times, They Are A’Changin’” as a prompt.

My immediate thought was that, if that song is still relevant today, times have been a-changin’ since at least 1964. Over sixty years. And yet, all the things we wanted changed then seem still to be with us, or back with us, or many claim are still with us—notably those on the left, so I thought this point was uncontroversial. We have endless foreign wars; we have rogue government; we have continuing racism and discrimination. 

The only difference, I thought, is that we now lack the same enthusiasm for change that we had back in the Sixties. Nobody is singing any longer. Which stands to reason, after sixty years barking up the same tree. We are exhausted; we need transcendence.

I wrote a prose poem to this effect. I read it to another poetry group to which I belong. I thought my sense would be universally shared, among those who knew the original song. 

I was wrong. Most folks who style themselves poets these days are leftists, and from them I got, unexpectedly, immediate pushback.

First, according to the left, the arts today, including most specifically popular music, are just as vital and vibrant and popular today as they have ever been. The quality of art is a constant, regardless of time and place.

So there was nothing special going on in Greenwich Village in the early Sixties, nor in Haight-Ashbury in the later Sixties, nor in Paris in the 1920s, nor in English poetry during the Romantic era, or Italian painting and sculpture during the Renaissance, or English drama during the Elizabethan era. The perception that it is so is all just prejudice.

I id not expect this; I would have thought the assertion mad. It is as if there is no such thing as quality in art, no standards. 

Yet this actually makes sense from a left-wing perspective. It is consistent and in fact seems to follow necessarily from their contention that all cultures are equal. Moreover, that all women are equally beautiful. 

It then seems necessarily so that eras in a culture must also be equal. Indeed, one could extend this: the works of all artists are equal, so that one chooses for a gallery or a publication only for proper ethnic representation. Which is pretty much how it works these days. I would see a decline in quality as a result; to the left, apparently, this is not possible. 

But that was not the strongest objection. The leftists in the group also objected to the assertion that we are facing all the same problems, in essence, that we did in 1964. 

They must believe this, I suppose--despite also insisting often that nothing has really improved in non-white lives since the days of slavery, indeed since the days when European empires controlled the world. Despite the contradiction, the inexorability of social progress is after all the core of their belief system as “progressives.” The left-wing agenda is to them after all, as an article of faith, the “right side of history.” Even if that left-wing agenda once included such failed ideas as prohibition, eugenics, pacifism in the face of Nazism, or segregation. Progress has to be a given.

“At least,” one fellow insisted, “You have to agree that society has become more tolerant.”

This floored me. Growing intolerance is my strongest impression. Back in 1964 there was no political correctness, no deplatforming, no cancel culture, no shouting down the other side. The Fifties saw blacklisting under McCarthyism. The Sixties had thrown off that yoke. Now we have it worse than in the Fifties. 

You might cite sexual freedom. After all, nowadays men can walk around wearing women’s clothes. But this is not the whole story. Things were freer for heterosexuals then. The Sixties have been called “The Golden Age of Porn.” Now that is largely shut down by fears of disease, “me too” and the like. And the growing legal requirement to pretend that men are women is, for 99% of the population, a decrease, not an increase, in freedom and tolerance.

You might point to the civil rights movement. But that was a fight for the 1950s. It was already capstoned by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the year the song came out. I recall Martin Luther King adjusting his program accordingly, to focus on poverty instead of race; that war was won. Since then, the movement seems to have been in the opposite direction: towards greater segregation, now often by black demand; in most recent years, greater hostility among the races; and even a higher poverty rate among black families. If whites are more tolerant of BIPOCS, BIPOCS are less tolerant of whites. There seems an even greater and more clearly binary us-them divide than ever.

And antisemitism is now at a level I would not have imagined possible after WWII.

It feels absurd even citing these matters—they seem obvious. 

Yet apparently they are invisible to the left.

To my mind, the left is trapped back in 1964, and cannot get out.

To be fair, when I held firm to my opinion, even without getting into detail or citing evidence, the leftists in the group seemed to back down.

They had to, I suppose. All opinions, after all, are equal. [sic]

The Evils of Urban Planning

 

Here in Saint John, back in the Sixties, they tore up Main Street, full of old shop fronts and city life, the traditional immigrant neighbourhood, to widen it to six lanes.

After all back in the early Sixties, one did not want ghettos. Ghettos were segregation. One did not want slums. So one wanted to knock them down to improve the city. Urban renewal was the thing. 

Moreover, in the Sixties, planners assumed rapid growth; the hugely expanded road capacity would surely be needed. Saint John would one day soon have a population over a million, and everyone would have a car. Overpopulation was the future. One needed to plan for the future. 

Saint John has not grown since the 1960s. Main Street is a dead zone—a stretch you drive through to get from here to there. There is no street life. There are no shops, and no residences. Just drive-ins and large institutional buildings. Historic buildings are gone. Many lament the loss of their old home, their old neighbourhood. The area is referred to locally as “The Lost City.”

Seeing the excess capacity and wasted space, town planners are now cutting Main Street back to four lanes, and putting in two dedicated bicycle lanes.

My cyclist friends say they will never use these new lanes. They cross on-ramps from the highway below. Cars cannot see a bicycle zip by until it is too late. The bicycle lanes are too dangerous.

Why does urban planning always cause more problems than it solves? 

I feel urban planning has been a blight on my life; on the lives of all of us. Consider the old towns and cities of Europe and Asia, which grew organically through a million individual decisions. Each has a distinct character; each block and corner has a sense of place. Compare the numbered grids of so many North American towns and cities. One place is just like another. The individual seems as insignificant as an ant, and daily life feels meaningless. There is no reason to be any one place rather than another. This was urban planning. 

Worse are the postwar suburbs, with their spaghetti streets and zoning prohibiting any storefronts or workplaces or diversity. They are designed to force everyone to own a car and burn fuel to do anything, to prevent you from knowing your neighbours or developing a community. It all seems deeply sinister. Among other ill effects, I think these suburban deserts prompted much of feminism: housewives felt trapped and isolated in their homes.

It is consistent: allow urban planning, and everything gets uglier. In Bulgaria, they refer to such Stalinist architecture as “roughneck baroque.” In the UAE, it is breathtaking to drive from freewheeling Dubai across the border into urban-planned Sharjah. It is as if a light suddenly goes out. 

Urban planning is always central planning. It is some expert or experts controlling the lives of other people. Since people are not objects, this cannot work. 

Worse, anyone who seeks to do this cannot have good motives. No one wants to be controlled; everyone wants to make their own choices. And so such planners are always breaking the golden rule, of “do unto others.” They are looking down on others as their inferiors. It tends to follow that they are acting with malice. It is not just that they will not foresee their subjects’ wants and needs. To show their superiority and confirm their control. They will tend to deliberately make the lives of those they control worse.

And make us pay for the privilege.

If we want to fix the current housing shortage, the quickest and most effective thing we could do is ban municipal zoning.

The Canadian Cyclist Genocide

 

Here’s how out of hand Canada has become: the Ontario government’s plan to remove bicycle lanes in Toronto has been declared unconstitutional by a court of appeal on the grounds that it violates “the constitutional protection of life, liberty and security.”

Presumably because, if cyclists insist on still using those roads, it is more dangerous for them.

Yet abortion, assisted suicide, child genital surgery—all quite okay. In fact, constitutionally demanded.

Canada is now run by unelected judges simply imposing their will.

Because they have an exclusive right to interpret the constitution, it is hard to see how this problem can be fixed without a new constitution. And the amendment formula for Canada’s constitution is impossibly difficult.

Perhaps leaving only two options: either provinces separate, or the US takes over.

Sydney Sweeney Conquers All

 Sydney Sweeney now dominates the culture. 

Ben Shapiro says that, aside from prompting outrage on the left, boosting her career into the stratosphere, and selling a lot of jeans, she is also splitting the MAGA base. Blonde power!

There are, Shapiro says, two kinds of Trump supporters: the conservatives, and the anti-woke. The anti-woke love the Sweeney American Eagle ads, because they are a poke at the woke. The conservatives, like him, will dislike them, because they are immoral, using sex to sell a product.

I agree with him on the first part of this. Joe Rogan, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., are not conservatives. Trump himself is not a conservative. But by becoming a mad cult, the woke left united everyone else in opposition.

And his analysis works in my case. I am not a conservative, never was, but I support MAGA from a distance. I can respect the conservative position, but I have always been a liberal, in the proper sense of that term. And I rejoice in the Sydney Sweeney ads, because they are anti-woke.

But I disagree with Shapiro that they promote sexual immorality, or that they are using sex to sell a product—which would be, in effect, prostitution.

Sex itself is not a bad thing. Sex is a very good thing, so long as it is directed, as is proper, to male-female companionship and the procreation of children.

And I see the Sweeney ads as promoting exactly this. Not casual sex, but companionship and procreation. The tag line, “Sydney Sweeney has great genes” makes this about as direct as it could be: you are attracted to Sweeney because, having good genes, she would make good children. 

People also comment on her “girl next door” vibe. This speaks of companionship as opposed to callous lust. Aside from cleavage, Sweeney is really not showing much skin. She is quite modestly clad in most of the commercials, by current standards. Arms covered, legs covered down to the floor. Loose jeans not showing the shape of her legs. Shoulders covered. Midriff covered. Usually just head and hands visible. "profile and hands, please." That's all you get. 

If she nevertheless provokes lust in you, I’d say that’s on you. Surely we can appreciate feminine beauty without immediately thinking about jumping into bed.

I’d say she comes across instead as the kind of level-headed, just-folks woman most men would want to show a ring to, and settle down with, if they could.

I think Shapiro has slipped into puritanism. But maybe that’s why I’m not a conservative.