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Very interesting blognote, but one comment; Hilaire Belloc was not a Catholic convert. His father was a French Catholic artist; his mother from a famous Unitarian English family (I believe she was a grandaughter of Joseph Priestley, the dicoverer of oxygen). She coverted to her husband's faith and young Hilary (he adopted the French spelling in adulthood) was raised a Catholic from infancy. At University he was politically radical in the Red Republican tradition of 1870, but in spite of some youthful doubts, never left the Church or ceased religious observances. He wrote in public at Oxford with a rosary dangling from his pocket and a large statue of the Blessed Virgin on his desk.
Indeed one of the interesting contrasts of Belloc with his friend Chesterton as well as later gifted literary champions of Catholicism such as Waugh, Knox and Lunn, is that he defended the Church from the stanpoint of one nourished in her traditions from birth, and not as a convert.
Outstanding post, thank you. The quote at the end nails the truth of our current American decline. I had hoped, after 9/11, that Christians in this country were really going to take more seriously the Words of Jesus, as well as the prophecies that are being fulfilled before our eyes.
I am bookmarking your site for frequent visits.
P.S. My husband used to work with a land surveyor, in Arizona, who shares your name. Any relation?
It would seem that Benedict XVI shares many of these same views given his emphasis on the global south. As did JP II who made more visits to Latin and South America than the US, IIRC.
But, at the same time, I would not write off the US just yet (Europe, maybe). It seems we are still suffering from the cultural hangover of the 60's and 70's, but the boomers are reaching retirement and will soon go out into the long night. Those that follow have more who are traditional in mindset. We may yet recover.
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