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Robert Hugh Benson’s Lord of the World (1907; republished by St. Augustine’s Press, 2011)

Image credit: Goodreads.com

Title this casual review: Brave New World Revisited Yet Again, or, How Could a Century-Old Novel Have Become a Frightening Prophecy of Life in the United States in 2023?

Several Catholic sources mentioned Benson’s novel as timely for contemporary life.  After reading it, one can concur.

Granted, some elements of this science fiction novel written 116 years ago miss the mark regarding technological advances that humanity would experience well beyond 1998 (the last future-identified year in the novel itself).  However, other elements hit the target directly, including the following.

In his preface to the novel, Ralph McInerny concludes that “Three-quarters of a century before John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae, Robert Hugh Benson imagined a Culture of Death” (vii).  C. John McCloskey III identifies the most frightening example of the death-loving culture in his introduction to the novel when he states that “The Culture of Death is omnipresent in the novel, particularly the universal availability of euthanasia.  Chillingly in an early scene, the ‘ministers of Euthanasia’ descend upon the survivors of a ‘Volor’ crash in order to finish them off” (xvii; volor is a type of airplane).

The following are quotable quotes which students of literature will find worthy to study to determine how what was written in 1907 applies to life today (British spellings retained):

On the feebleness and decay of Protestant Christianity and the remnant of faithful (orthodox) Catholic Christianity:

“I think, that, humanly speaking, Catholicism will decrease rapidly now.  It is perfectly true that Protestantism is dead.  Men do recognize at last that a supernatural Religion involves an absolute authority, and that Private Judgment in matters of faith is nothing else than the beginning of disintegration.  And it is also true that since the Catholic Church is the only institution that even claims supernatural authority, with all its merciless logic, she has again the allegiance of practically all Christians who have any supernatural belief left” (8).

On Islam’s attacks on the West:

“the patient East proposed at last to proselytise by the modern equivalents of fire and sword those who had laid aside for the most part all religious beliefs except that in Humanity” (17).

On the barbarity of mobs, such as those of young people who think they are fighting “for Palestine” when they are promoting genocide of Jews:

“And then the rest of the world—the madness that had seized upon the nations; the amazing stories that had poured in that day of the men in Paris, who, raving like Bacchantes, had stripped themselves naked in the Place de Concorde, and stabbed themselves to the heart, crying out to thunders of applause that life was too enthralling to be endured; of the woman who sang himself mad last night in Spain, and fell laughing and foaming in the concert hall at Seville; of the crucifixion of the Catholics that morning in the Pyrenees, and the apostasy of three bishops in Germany….  And this…and this…and a thousand more horrors were permitted, and God made no sign and spoke no word….” (120).

On Antifa domestic terrorists and Hamas terrorists destroying Western civilization:

“but this was a cheap price to pay for the final and complete extermination of the Catholic past” (179).

On the current state of the world, described for the “new pope” in the novel:

“Christianity had smouldered away from Europe like a sunset on darkening peaks; Eternal Rome was a heap of ruins; in East and West alike a man had been set upon the throne of God, had been acclaimed as divine.  The world had leaped forward; social science was supreme; men had learned consistency; they had learned, too, the social lessons of Christianity apart from a Divine Teacher, or, rather, they said, in spite of Him” (194).

Since Amazon collaborates with cancel culture and woke zealots and bans conservative and pro-life books, buy this book directly from the publisher: https://www.staugustine.net/9781587314711/lord-of-the-world/.

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Thanksgiving to God Day 2023

Happy Thanksgiving to God Day 2023…

…despite the best efforts of pro-abortion zealots, Antifa domestic terrorists, Hamas terrorists, and the abortion business Planned Parenthood (virtually the same things, right?), we pro-life civil rights activists give thanks every day to God for the essential gift of life.

THAT’S something that a pro-abortion puppet like the criminal Joe Biden can NEVER say.

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Tracking the extremist Ohio abortion ballot initiative

Civil rights/pro-life activists:

You can follow the progress on defeating the extremist abortion proposal to Ohio’s constitution here:

https://www.ohiolife.org/ballotinitiative

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Translation: abortion clinics are in it for the money.

Well, well…what have we here?  Evidence that pro-life pregnancy support clinics help women more than abortion clinics, which, like Planned Parenthood, promote abortion because of the $$$ they make off women.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pregnancy-centers-offer-better-service-than-abortion-facilities-a-new-study-shows/

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Video of activity of an unborn person

These are the unborn people—human beings like you and me—whom the violently pro-abortion Joe Biden, the Satanic Temple, and the Democratic Party/DNC (forgive me for being redundant) want to kill.

Thank God there’s a pro-life movement to counter this violation of human rights!

Always remember: abortion harms women, kills unborn babies, and alienates fathers.

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An American nightmare ended

The death of a nation’s nightmare

is cause enough to celebrate,

especially if it wasted

forty-nine years of the culture.

Irrational Roe is damned by Dobbs.

Let every prolifer rejoice!

The refused and voiceless unborn child

is vibrant with his or her voice.

And we in this prolife nation

are binding the demons of choice

and voting red in elation.

6 July 2022

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A warning bell about Catholic academics

Dr. Stephen Sammut isn’t writing an essay as much as he is furiously ringing a warning bell about Catholic academics.  The embedded links citing those “Catholic scholars” who urged people to reject pro-life candidate Donald Trump and then pro-life President Donald Trump shocked me.

Such great names!  “Scholars” trying to confuse Catholics into…what?…either staying away from voting or, worse, voting for anti-life Joe Biden, who claims to be Catholic on social justice issues but is just an ordinary abortion zealot?  It’s bad enough that most people despise academics for their race-baiting leftist ideologies (critical race theory) or for their just plain ignorant ideas (white privilege).  That Catholic institutions, apparently, lack the courage to fight—and fight hard—for our Catholic values is discouraging.

Worst of all, when we, sinners though we are, want to support our Catholic institutions and learn that those institutions are no better than any secular community college, college, or university, then to whom can we donate our pro-life money?  If there is no Catholic college or university worthy enough to receive our pro-life dollars, then, absent having the power of a college president or the power of being on a college’s board of directors, there is only one course of action faithful Catholics can take to rectify the problem: we just won’t donate to them.

Let me say that louder, in the way that our young people would on social media:

We.  Just.  Won’t.  Donate.  To.  Them.

Maybe that is the only language that will work to encourage Catholic institutions to stand up in the fight against leftist secular attacks on human life and on our Faith: money.

I have this idea of choking off money from Catholic institutions which lack courage to defend life and morals because I was about to donate again to what many call one of the few genuine and orthodox Catholic institutions to praise it for its good work.  Now, I’m not so certain, and there will be no electronic donation coming out of my checking account to that institution.  Right-to-life groups will get it instead.

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Welcome!

Welcome to the website of Dr. Jeff Koloze (PhD, English, Kent State University), which will maintain archived material and current research on the issues of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia in literature.