Tracey Rowland, one of the Augustinian Thomists, who is no fan of Whig Thomists, the ones who like the United States and argue for Roman Catholicism’s compatibility with it, wonders what’s going on in Belgium, the Roman Catholic country that just passed a child euthanasia bill:
I first visited Belgium in 2004 to attend a theology conference in Leuven. The conference Mass was the most bizarre liturgical experience of my life. It did not take place in any of the many churches in Leuven but in the conference room itself. Part of the ritual took the form of watching a video of the September 11 attack on the twin towers while listening to mood music. One of the participants from Holland was dressed in a folk costume and looked like a member of the band The Village People. There was also a Nigerian priest who was treated like an idiot because he expressed respect for Cardinal Arinze. I took some flak for being critical of the culture of modernity and one polite person apologized to me by saying, “you see, around here people think of you as an ally of Joseph Ratzinger”!
My overall impression was that Leuven was like a town that had been hit by a neutron bomb—the kind of bomb that kills people but leaves buildings intact. All the Gothic buildings remained—the outward symbols of a once vibrant Catholic culture were still on view as tourist attractions—but the people who worked within the buildings seemed not to be the original inhabitants, but another people who had moved in after some terrible cataclysm and were ill at ease with what had gone before. Our Lady, the Seat of Wisdom, and Patroness of Leuven, appeared marginalized.
A few years later I attended another theology conference, this time in Krakow. A Belgian professor delivered the keynote address in the hall of the Polish Academy of the Arts and Sciences. He veered off topic and gave a rousing oration in favor of the projects of the culture of death (eugenics, euthanasia, a tax on babies etc). He even argued that anyone who opposed contraception should be convicted of a criminal offense. Not all the conference participants were supporters of Humanae Vitae, but they were completely shocked that such an anti-life and totalitarian speech could be given in the hall of the Polish Academy just a couple of hours drive from Auschwitz. What stunned the participants was the closeness of the ideology of the speaker to that of the Nazi ideologues whose specters (metaphorically speaking) still haunt the streets of Krakow. A quick Google search revealed that the illustrious academic had been Jesuit educated in Antwerp and was a product of the University of Leuven. A more recent Google search revealed that last year he ended his life by being given a lethal injection in the presence of his children. He at least had the virtue of practicing what he preached, but I wondered how someone who was Jesuit educated in the 1930s could end up in such a spiritual state. In an interview given not long before his death he said that religion is nonsense, a childish explanation for things that science has yet to fathom. At some moment in his life he had bought the Feuerbachian critique.
Audacious, indeed.
Old Life 
Has anything good other than beer and waffles ever come out of Belgium?
Whenever you hear of some really twisted child porn ring or other incidence of extreme weirdness or depravity in Europe it seems like it’s out of Belgium.
Roman Catholic country, indeed…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Belgium
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When you top France on the depravity meter you know you’ve really achieved something…
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Somehow, the U.S. is to blame.
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Erik Charter
Posted February 21, 2014 at 4:30 pm | Permalink
When you top France on the depravity meter you know you’ve really achieved something…
Heh heh. ^5
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We Calvinists have far more in common with Tracey Rowland and her colleagues in the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family than we will even find with Liberal Protestants (or Belgium Catholics).
I had Tracey as a speaker at a Religion in the Public Square Colloquium I ran several years ago under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria.
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I dig it, yo.
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No disagreement here.
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we are often co-belligerent on social issues with groups that we don’t agree with in faith.
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David, we all do what we gotta do. As much as I may agree with Rowland on matters like marriage or sex, I’d sure like to know what her alternative (or her radical orthodoxy friends) to liberal society. They point out its weaknesses so much but don’t offer another route — unless, of course, they mean Christendom. As a Protestant, I’m uncomfortable with that.
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Erik: Has anything good other than beer and waffles ever come out of Belgium?
BL: Chocolate.
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kent
Posted February 22, 2014 at 8:12 am | Permalink
we are often co-belligerent on social issues with groups that we don’t agree with in faith.
“Co-belligerent.” Apt and masterful, Mr. K.
And as far as “faith” goes–There is One God, not many, or none; providential [here and now, not on a billion-year vacation], a natural law under which man and his children are happiest; and he loves u, even Darryl. Mebbe even me.
And He is not a wimp. What a soggy universe that would be.
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The Belgic Confession?!!??
You guys are killing me.
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D.G.,
DeBres was from the Southern Netherlands (“Netherlands” = All Good).
“Belgium” didn’t exist until 1830.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Netherlands
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Then there’s the Belgian Congo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Congo
“Congolese children and wives whose fathers/husbands failed to meet rubber-collection quotas often had their hands cut off.”
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Why do they call it the Belgic Confession? Think about it.
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Belgium was pretty plucky during WWI. I think they should get some credit there. Plus Hercule Poirot was Belgian, and how else would we get to see Colin Farrell karate chop a dwarf without In Bruges?
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missionaries who spent time in Africa used to tell me the rule of thumb on colonialism was:
England didn’t kill many and didn’t build much
Germany killed several and built a lot
France and Belgium killed by the millions and built nothing.
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Tom, co-belligerent was a term I picked up from Francis Scheaffer, something not forgotten 30 years later.
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D.G. – Why do they call it the Belgic Confession? Think about it.
Erik – Dutch humility?
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Erik – “…Has anything good other than beer and waffles ever come out of Belgium?…”
Me – Yes, 1) actor Bruno Cremer (particularly well known for his portrayal of French police superintendent Maigret in filmography) and 2) cyclist Eddy Merckx (who, unlike his infamous American counterpart of faux Tour-de-France championships, Lance Armstrong, pedaled his way to numerous victories in multiple European cycling races, including the several wins in the “Tour”)
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kent
Posted February 24, 2014 at 10:32 am | Permalink
Tom, co-belligerent was a term I picked up from Francis Scheaffer, something not forgotten 30 years later.
Heh. Schaeffer was thisclose to getting it right. He liked Machen but unfortunately didn’t get Aquinas.
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Tom – Schaeffer was thisclose to getting it right. He liked Machen but unfortunately didn’t get Aquinas.
Erik – Actually, as the first seminary graduate to be ordained in the newly-formed Bible Presbyterian Church he might not have been that crazy about Machen. They had just split off from the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
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