Wherever an Altar is Found...

“Wherever an altar is found, there one finds civilisation.”

Joseph de Maistre, Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, Second Dialogue (1821)

Maistre's infamous quotation echoes through most reactionary Catholic spheres like the voice of God through the clouds. Countless philosophers have recognised the importance of Christian worship, and even those who believed that the downfall of Christianity was necessary or inevitable, such as Nietzsche, expressed concern about the downfall of religion in the West. In declaring that Gott ist tot, Western philosophy came to the realisation that so too was the most powerful expression of will that had driven European civilisation for centuries. It was manifestly obvious that the abandonment of the altar would remove that Divine Spark, which, whether you believed in all orthodox Christian doctrines or not, an appreciation of which drove individuals and communities onto great feats of labour, intellectual development, and greatness. 

Kant's solution was to find an alternative way to justify Christian ethics. Modern deontologists indeed now like to pin the root of morality in a plurality of various abstractions: justice, freedom, duty et cetera, concepts known as much to God as to Man. The rational root of order seemed acceptable, but only until other rationalists, such as Bentham and the utilitarians, began to posit that reason could just as easily be used to defend hedonism. Benthamite utilitarianism involves the throwing out of all methods of ethics besides universal happiness, a problematic term in itself. Nietzsche on the other hand tried to carry forward some of the atheistic principles of philosophers such as Schopenhauer, exhorting his readers to not merely overcome their instincts, but their very humanity. This too is problematic - it would be dangerous to claim that mankind has the ability to play God himself, as has been the warning of the Church for centuries, and indeed, to overcome oneself and become the Superman that Nietzsche envisaged, will either lead to delusions of false grandeur, or as in Nietzsche's own tragic but telling case, complete and utter insanity. There is therefore no perfect solution to the problem of moral order outside of the Church, and so we must turn back to Maistre's little gobbet.

Most ultraconservatives accept that for them, politics is like religion: it is a matter of dogmatics, not a matter of opinion or speculation. Ultimately, history has proven that dogmatics make for far more acceptable and stable grounds for the furtherance of societal order and progress. A degree of freedom, or as the Church has often called it, economy, may be permitted within the grounds of a dogmatic legal code, but total freedom can only lead to destabilisation, as we are seeing in contemporary Europe and North America. As Europeans turned away from the altar, they lost that which bound them together. If you ask a priest of any major liturgical Church why sacraments such as Mass, Confession, Unction et cetera are so important, he will probably say, amongst other things, that "it brings us [the faithful] together, sharing the one thing that we all have in common." When a Catholic goes to receive communion in the Holy Eucharist, he believes that he is receiving the precious body and blood of Jesus Christ. That is a monumental feat of belief, and the Church ensures that all who believe are properly treated, and receive the proper sacraments. It is the sacraments of the Church which, through this binding instrument of superhuman faith in itself, link each member of the faithful to the next. The philosophers described above were trying to rationalise a mystery. The morality of Christianity may indeed be rational when reflected upon, but its universality depends on the mystery of our human need for God, which we see most perfectly when kneeling at the altar. Walk away from the altar as these philosophers did, and the binding is loosed; no wonder then that moral relativism has become so popular in our time - what is left to hold us together in brotherly embrace?

If one looks at many of the Protestant Churches of the contemporary West, we can see that they have abandoned the altar in its truest form. The Anglican Church, for instance, has always tried to please both the Catholic and mainstream Protestant ('High' and 'Low' Church) factions within its midst. Nowhere within an Anglican Eucharist is a metaphysical transformation stated to be taking place, and upon receiving communion, the congregant is greeted with the ambiguous phrase "May the body and blood of Christ bless you, always." Anglicans also practice open communion - one need not even technically be a Christian to receive the sacraments, or at least, no one will ask, and no one will know. Such lapse respect for the mysteries of God has led to the state that Anglicanism is in now, with relatively few congregants, of whom most are Christians for Sunday morning only, and a primate who believes in "a radical new inclusion" following the Church of England Synod's rejection of the definition of marriage.

When we speak of mysteries, we speak of the unrevealed knowledge which only God can reveal to Man, and which Man as-yet has not been able to understand. God has graced us with enough knowledge to offer Him rightful and pleasing worship, offerings in the form of light (such as from candles) and the communion bread and wine placed upon the altar. It is not the place of the Church to pat the heads of sinners and the faithless who feel as though they are not 'included' and welcome them as though their behaviour is openly encouraged - such a path has led the Christian Churches of the world to all kinds of iniquity (a mystery itself, cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:7), and now, this liberal theology is beginning to work its way into the Catholic Church; Vatican II made this very clear when it concluded:

“[Muslims] adore the one God, living and subsisting in himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to humans. They take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even God's inscrutable decrees.” (Source)

In reality, of course, Muslims do no such thing. For one thing, there is very little if any concept in Islam of God embodying the concept of love, forgiveness is by no means a given, and the Muslim deity certainly does not withhold his judgement upon the unfaithful in order to give them time to repent. Free will is by no means a gift from God according to Islam, and whilst the power of God is very real in both Christianity and Islam, Muslim scholars have tended to fall down in favour of eliminating enquiry into the nature of the Divine, unlike Christianity, which has a rich history of natural theology and apologetics. We do not worship the same God, and yet liberal theologians would have us think so, in order to help bring about this strange, homogenous world where everyone worships a bit of everything in some sort of spoilt broth of multicultural spirituality. Ah yes, and there is one other thing - Islam utilises no altars, no liturgy. Its only binding power comes from the potential wrath of the divinity. 

In short, Catholics cannot afford to lose the altar, by which we also mean the liturgical sacraments which make our faith so special, and set it apart from other religious faiths, even other forms of Christianity. By nature of the fact that we guard the altar against the profane and the lies of those who would harm its sanctity, we also guard our civilisation. The altar binds individual brothers into a community, and it is within these firm communities, united by faith and participation in the rites instituted of the Divine, that civilisation can thrive. The problems of modernity seem to arise ultimately from a lack of binding spirit. My neighbour shares nothing with me - he: atheist, those around him: a mix of all things, Christian, Muslim, and what have you.

So for now, there is no central will, no Divine Spark which all in society may share in any longer in our multicultural, secular world. Thus, there is no civilisation there anymore. 

An altar, why, there civilisation—is!