All has to be done. So you do what you can do—the work that is ready to your hand.

Reform and Renewal Starts with Us

by Anthony Esolen


Let’s get straight to the point. 

• We no longer live in a culturally Christian state. 
• We do not live in a robust pagan state, such as Rome was during the Pax Romana. 
• We live in a sickly sub-pagan state, or metastate, a monstrous thing, all-meddlesome, all-ambitious. 
• The natural virtues are scorned. 
• Temperance is for prigs, prudence for sticks in the mud who worry about people who don’t yet exist. 
• A man who fathers six children upon three women and now wants to turn himself into a “woman” attracted to other women—he is praised for his courage. 
• Justice means that a handful of narrowly educated and egotistical judges get to overturn human culture and biology, at their caprice.

We are not in partibus infidelibus. We are in partibus insanibus.

What shall we do now?  The answer is both daunting and liberating. We do everything.
 

That doesn’t mean that I do everything, or that you do everything. Suppose you find yourself in a bombed out city. There are all kinds of things to do, and all of them have to be done. Some needs are more pressing than others, and some things can be done only after other things are in order. But everywhere you turn, there’s work to do. 

• You have to find clean water. 
• You have to find food. 
• You have to tend to the wounded and bury the dead. 
• You have to erect shelters. 
• You have to see which of the few buildings left standing are actually safe. 
• You have to demolish those that are ruined beyond repair. 
• You have to organize work teams. 
• Someone has to prepare the meals. 
• Someone has to keep the children out of trouble. 

In such a situation, it’s almost absurd to ask whether it’s more important to build a latrine than to gather together some undamaged books. All of it has to be done. So you do what you can do—the work that is ready to your hand.

In no order, then, as I survey the ruins:

- Build new schools, reform old schools, and abandon irreformable ones. ....

- Restore your parish church and bring reverence back to the liturgy. ....

- Acquaint yourself with the proper use of the zipper. ....

- Be social. ....

- Read good books. ....

- Recover the human things. ....

- Pray like the pilgrim you are. ....

Whatever you do, do it as if everything depends on just that.


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