Yup. A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978

Fr. Hans,

Is there a transcript of the address available anywhere?

Thanks,
dean

I know I haven’t been too kind to the protestants, but I do believe in the “radical remnant” of Christians who are going to be saved. And they run the gamut of American Denominational Christianity. If I hear something right on theologically or practically, no matter what denomination, I will applaud, which brings me to my next point. Pastor John Hagee from Cornerstone Bible Church did an absolutely powerful 3-part sermon entitled, “Vote the Bible,” two years ago before the presidential election. I would really like to send this 3-part c.d. series to you, if you could provide me with your business address or other. I think you would appreciate it, and maybe we could discuss it.

Alexis, I agree with you. Unfortunately, when have we in the colonial eparchies ever “voted” on those “elected to office” that is say, our bishops, who should have been catechising us lo these many years?

As soon as the majority of the middle class switches to an entitlement mentality, the country is doomed. We will end up like France, shutting down the country because a sacrifice is need to maintain solvency (if you call raising the retirement age to 62 a sacrifice) while parts of Paris burn at the hands of Muslim radicals, or like England where some courts now function under Sharia Law.

Or maybe we will sentence ourselves to sterility, embracing destructive novelties such as homosexual coupling constituting a marriage, our arrogance blinding us to the most elementary wisdom of the ages.

It starts where you indicated however, a centralizing of assets so that the decisions with the deepest reach into private life can be made by technocrats and others who are convinced they know what is best for you and me, a soft tyranny that ends up in the same place as the brutal regimes that this nation fought against in the last century. Solzhenitsyn warned us in his Harvard Address that the philosophical materialism that ravaged Eastern Europe can also ravage “free” Europe, although the former was imposed by force while the latter is embraced by men without chests seeking their own abolition.

“But Father, aren’t you restricted from speaking about political issues?” Well, no, not really, as long as I conform myself to the spirit of the age.

The men who signed the Manhattan Declaration understand the danger.

Fr. Hans: I wonder whether we are seeing above another aspect of ‘central government expansion’ not just into the moral space you mention but into every available space. You demonstrate above an expansion into the moral space, we see an expansion into the commercial and the financial and the medical spaces, for years we have seen an expansion into the educational space. To include this exploitation of the concept ‘rights’ from a description of what life opportunities must not be encroached into, well, it’s a parody but it starts to feel like the next one will be ‘everyone has a right to free beer’. Soon not even the important rights will be distinguished from the ersatz foolery and I fear the loss of many of them. The echo of that in your case was the professor subordinating general free speech to the dynamics of a particular issue.

The various people active in those spaces have either retreated or been pushed into smaller roles, while this central authority enlarges.

I wonder whether this is what needs must happen when the middle class shrinks in a democratic context.