We've had an interesting thread on the possible "end of the Catholic church," but I've read some interesting articles lately that all seem to dovetail with the idea that institutions, as such, formal and informal, are crumbling in Western Civilization if not the whole world. People usually seem to point to Brexit as the kickoff and the evisceration of the GOP by Trump followed by his stunning victory in the general election. A lot of stuff about the NATO and the UN can be linked to that, but what I think is interesting is how the thesis links such disparate things at the Catholic church and the NFL, the Oscars and law schools, denominational Christianity and the news media, and a whole bunch of other seemingly unrelated, formerly iconic but rapidly declining things. Silicon Valley seems to be possibly be still ascending, but even the major tech firms are showing signs they might soon crumble under their own monopolistic weight.
When a tree falls you can usually point to some cause, usually a wind storm. But really in a lot cases it was a tree about to fall and just needing a run of the mill wind storm, nothing it hadn't withstood dozens of times before, to make it happen. Trees don't live forever. The ostensible reason a tree falls- the 60 mph gust- isn't necessarily the real reason, just the thing that happened to coincide with the of the tree's lifespan.
Right now it seems like all the trees of our culture are falling at once, but there is no particular windstorm to point to as the cause, just separate things that seem to be happening to each tree individually but concurrently. It is as though the forest just got old, and whether it is bugs, disease, vines, or wind, all the tree are dying.
If this admittedly debatable thesis is true, the question is what will replace the forest? Will a new spate of sapling institutions rise from the undergrowth as part of the natural cycles of the forest of Western Civilization, or is the forest itself dying? Certainly the Church will endure to the end, but what the form of it and more importantly the context of it look like apart from Western Civilization is tough to say.
Nice post, Peter. I especially like the using the idea of the forest — there have been huge changes in recent years concerning thinking about the role of fires in forests —
this article serves as an example of this change. Fires, it seems, often turn out to be — while destructive — useful and helpful to the local flora and fauna. I'd suggest that the West has not had a good burnout since WWII — whether it was war, massive economic and population upheaval due to technological change, disease (the black death, for instance, played its tune multiple times in European history, with significant shifts following because of population changes/losses). We have had an unnatural build-up of institutions, most of which (unlike the Church) are not rooted in such a way as to know where they are going once their founding generation no longer has a hand on the tiller.
These institutions have come to be seen as natural, even necessary and essential, and this is why there has been so much blather about Brexit, Trump, and the like — those who thought they had control of the institutions tied up discovered, much to their chagrin, that they didn't. Now they kick and whine and moan like toddlers about the world changing, both because they didn't get what they thought was rightfully theirs, and because the institutions they thought were so solid have proven to be built on sand and are not anchored into the bedrock. It drives them bonkers, and they are at a loss — thus the calls for free speech to be diminished, the search for enemies of the State (
someone is clearly to blame), and for doubling down on their old, now clearly outmoded ideas and ways of doing things, as the problem could
not have been the ideas or institutions, but their implementation (this helps explain the strange draw toward communism and socialism that can be found amongst the younger set, as they have no memory of just why those things are and were bad).
The hollowness of the other institutions you mention is explained in the very same way (always helpful): they have kept on going for the sake of either their own survival or for the sake of profit, without the motivating,
human factors and ties that were so often behind their founding, development, and growth. There has not been a reason for the injection of people who are tied to the institution because they have a movement to get behind, but because that institution looks like a decent employer to hitch one's wagon or career to. When it comes to the articles I've seen about the current crisis in the RCC, I keep hearing about bishops and "careers" in the Church — the first time that was ever uttered out loud should have sparked a thorough housecleaning, as that is
a clear signal that the rot has set in.
Yes, there will be new institutions, and they will do just fine (though those wading through the rubble in the interim won't have a good go of it). The Church will also stand, as you say and we know is promised, but bodies that are tied to their form will probably have the worst go of it. I'd even go so far as to say that loosely-governed from the outside, local-minded churches bound by a common confession are in the best spot in any coming crumble — they have something that is solid and yet not tied to a place or time (the Scriptures, the Confessions) along with the agility allowed by a loose confederation and the freedom to act as is and when appropriate in a particular time and place. A distributed Church will be interesting to watch and/or be a part of (depending on when/if/how things shift)l, and will be vital in the cultural game of whack-a-mole that is likely to be a part of a new cultural realignment.
