Anti-Culture Antidote

In the recent April 15 issue of “ The Remnant,” there appeared an article “Windy Blather and Lies” by a young man that I don’t think I have ever met, but saying what I have been saying for many years: movies are far and away the most formative influence on young people’s hearts and minds today, and they constitute a tremendous obstacle to the youngsters’ either growing up or acquiring any sense of reality, let alone getting to Heaven.

The author of the article, E.Z., teaches at a Traditional Catholic school for boys which is outstanding in the USA today, yet he says that when the boys come back from a vacation, the one question they are all asking one another is what movies they have seen! I am not surprised, nor do I blame the school. What else does the anti-culture of today’s dissociety have to offer to the youngsters for the feeding of their minds? Worse, what real grip can the Catholic religion have on minds and hearts marinated in such silliness and unreality? As Marcel de Corte puts it, how can someone who has no idea of real being have any real idea of the Supreme Being?

Not that reality will let itself be overwhelmed. Through finance, economics, soon politics and war, it is coming back at a rate of knots. The danger is rather of our children being so progressively caught up in the wilfully immature fantasy that it will be too late for them to re-adjust to reality. “Movies are all they know,” says E.Z., “they aren’t learning anything about life except from movies. How can they reconcile a phony Hollywoodian perception of reality with their Catholic Faith?” No wonder Conciliarism took over from Catholicism!

The whole of E.Z.’s article, especially for adults who may never have thought about the matter, needs to be read and pondered on (four copies available for 4 from Remnant Reprints at PO Box 1117, Forest Lake, MN 55025, USA), because not only was E.Z. himself in his youth, as he tells, totally trapped in movie-mania, but also he found a wholly practical way out – recordings of lectures on the classics, especially Shakespeare, by Dr. David White.

Says E.Z., “You’ll learn more about the world and more about yourself and more about your Catholic Faith by listening to those hundred lectures than in any school anywhere.” Strong words, but they make sense. Dr. White knows both where youngsters (and adults) are at today. and he knows his Faith, so that his tapes can provide an incomparable bridge between the two. Get the article, get the tapes (I get no commission).

Kyrie eleison.