MikeLigalig.com

by Brother André Marie 



For years, physicists have been on an Arthurian quest for what they call the “grand unified theory.” Far be it from me to bore readers with an explanation of this theory that they can find elsewhere, but the gist of it is an attempt at quantifying the three fundamental interactions of physics — strong, electromagnetic, and weak — with a single principle when they operate at some very high energy. Add to this blend the force of gravity, and the attempted explanation is called a “theory of everything.”



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Religion — In this area, there is a special application of the theory, for religious matters are not a human domain, but a divine one. There are many religious “traditions” that are false, so we need to go by the one tradition handed over (tradere, whence comes “tradition”) by God himself to man, and then passed down (again, tradere) through successive generations. The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is the repository of that sacred deposit, which encompasses the written tradition of Scripture and the oral tradition also taught by Jesus to the Apostles, and by them, to successive generations. It is a tradition she alone, as God’s chosen and infallible teacher, has the authority to guard, keep, and proclaim. It is also a tradition necessary for salvation.

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So, in the matter of religion, “Tradition is good for you.” Even the local traditions which safeguard the Catholic identity of a nation or region are beneficial; for example, the Lithuanian matrimonial customs involving the newlyweds reverencing a Crucifix and pledging to carry the cross of their marriage together. To slight or diminish these little hedges that safeguard our Catholicity, and to replace them with novelty will ultimately have a corrosive effect. Eventually, as the saying goes, “nothing is sacred.”

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In this nation’s foundation, we have remnants of the Christian social order given us by English Common Law, which itself is a product, be it noted, of Catholic social thought. Mind you, those traditions, even in the early foundation of the nation, were admixed with Lockean and Masonic principles born of the Enlightenment, but they were not completely eradicated, nor was the light of the natural law extinguished altogether. Great American political thinkers sought to preserve them. Indeed, any American “conservatism” worthy of the name is  founded precisely on this principle.

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Health and Diet — You don’t read this column to get advice on health, I know. Yet, let me point out that the novelties of processed food, the bogus “food pyramid,” sodas and soft drinks with this strange thing we call high-fructose corn syrup, industrialized farming, McDonalds, chemical additives, GMO’s and other such modern culinary evils have contributed to our obesity as a society, as well as to our moral and intellectual torpor. Besides, all this has destroyed the traditional lifestyle of small farmers, who have been savaged by mercenary capitalists whose bottom line is more important than whether the fodder you imbibe is food or not. This would also introduce the subject of pharmaceuticals versus natural health curatives. Without getting into details, let me speak from my limited experience as a caretaker for two very old men — and myself — which shows that traditional medicine can work wonders where pharmaceuticals fail. I watched our 92-year-old chaplain virtually come back to life with a better diet, a few enzymes, and probiotics. The brothers have a regular supplier of herbal cold and flu remedies that work, and this same wonderful lady makes an ointment out of plants in her backyard that cures skin afflictions and eye infections very quickly. I know; I’ve used it with great success. She’s even sold it to nurses who use it on the sly because none of their drugs can do what it does.

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One last note on this subject: GMO’s are apparently being used to force birth control on unsuspecting consumers in the poorer (mostly Catholic) nations. The kindly philanthropist, Bill Gates, is said to be behind this effort to turn corn into a prophylactic.

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The unnatural, immoral practices of divorce and remarriage, homosexuality, pornography, and other such ills have riven families and impaired people’s mental, physical, and moral health. Even before AIDS was a reality, homosexuals were subject to terrible diseases resulting from their disgusting practices. Why should this fact be hidden or dimmed down? And in consuming birth control drugs and utilizing devices for that purpose, some women put chemicals and contraptions in their bodies they wouldn’t want cast into a swamp lest it pollute the environment and endanger an innocent bullfrog. Yet, in their mania to divorce sex from procreation, they are willing to pollute their own environments, spiritually as well as physically. From the beginning, it was not so.

Traditionally, humans produced offspring. But ours is a demographically dying culture precisely for the reason listed above. Sex is “recreation, not procreation.” Economists are even declaring plainly that Europe (whose birth rate is lower than ours) will have great difficulty recovering from its economic woes due to its demographic atrophy.

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Labor — Mothers should be in the home and fathers should be able to provide for their families on a single income. Traditionally, they could. Now, it is all but impossible. This has a long history. When the industrial revolution took men out of traditional crafts, sending them to work for long hours in mines, factories, and the like, men became viewed as means of production for salable goods, while big banking looked at such goods as means of making money. The human being ended up at the bottom of the economic totem pole, whereas Christian societies traditionally saw him at the top. Raw, unbridled capitalism denied the humanity of the worker, the quality of the product, and the necessity of a man to provide a living wage for his family. (The evil of Communism also betrayed the worker, turning him into a cog in the statist machine, but mercenary capitalism did something nearly the same. Blind “market forces” are not the way to run an economy and treat people’s lives. Remember, economics, too, is part of the discipline of ethics.) Later, the industrial revolution also invented “agribusiness” and destroyed the family farm, thus producing the terrible, cheaply mass-produced food mentioned above; the loss of one of the stablest elements of society, the farmer; and a flight into the cities, where people whose forebears were robust outdoor laborers have become flabby salesman of cheap cellphones made by factory slaves in communist China.

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Are not some of the positions you’ve taken “liberal”? No. While we find ourselves in agreement with many modern liberals on such subjects as real food versus industrialized food, just wages for workers, and the evils of mercenary capitalism, our objections and assertions are based upon tradition, not novelty. As such, they are inherently “conservative,” for they conserve something good from the past. That this question can be asked by a reasonable reader is further proof that the labels “conservative” and “liberal” have been all but drained of any proper meaning.

Do you reject all development and progress? No. We’re Catholic, not Amish. As I wrote above, even the Church’s traditional liturgy undergoes “organic development.” This truth is a fact of history and is accepted by all traditionalists. But when organic development gives way to radical replacement, things are amiss. While the application of this principle to every facet of life I’ve touched upon might be tricky, still the principle holds true. Prudent uses of new technologies can be beneficial (such as the laptop I’m presently using). But the intellectual error of neglecting ends (purpose) and attending exclusively to means (methods, technologies) must be strictly resisted. So, too, must greed, which leads to so many of the destructive novelties I’ve highlighted above, from birth-control, to unjust wages, to political chicanery, to cheap unhealthy food, to the destruction of Catholic morals.

There it is, my “grand unified theory.” It will do nothing to advance the cause of quantum physics, but I hope it helps you to live well, and to pass on a salutary love of tradition to your loved ones.


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