Christendom Lost and Found: Meditations for a Post Post-Christian Era

by Robert McTeigue .S.J.

Overview

The book you are holding is a kind of a war journal, written between 2020 and 2021 during "the COVID Interruption" and the violent outbursts in cities across America. Witnessing cultural collapse in every direction, philosopher Father Robert McTeigue, S.J., offers meditations on what it will take to build Christ-centered cultures in our time—what must be retrieved and what must be renewed. 

Since the French Revolution in 1789, the West, formerly called "Christendom", has chosen life without Christ. And ever since then, the West has produced much bad art and even more dead bodies—precisely because of this rejection. Father McTeigue, host of the Catholic Current and author of Real Philosophy for Real People, invites us to explore new paths back to Christ. With thoughtfulness and grace, we can build, not a reconstruction of some mythical "Good Old Days", but rather a new Christendom that does justice both to what our ancestors entrusted to us and to what our posterity deserves from us.

Inspired by Saint Augustine's The City of God, Christendom Lost and Found is an on-the-scene account of a cleric and scholar facing the accelerating convulsions of the West and of the Church, offering us insights, corrective guidance, and reasons for hope. Anyone who knows he has a debt to pay to the Christian past and the Christian future will benefit from this book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642292565
Publisher:	Ignatius Press
Publication date:	10/24/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	152
File size:	182 KB

About the Author

Father Robert McTeigue, S.J., has lectured and taught worldwide on philosophy and theology. A member of the National Ethics Committee of the Catholic Medical Association, he is host of the radio show The Catholic Current on the Station of the Cross Network, as well as the author of the best-selling book Real Philosophy for Real People.

Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J., is a member of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus. He has lectured worldwide on philosophy and theology. A member of the National Ethics Committee of the Catholic Medical Association, he is host and producer of the radio show The Catholic Current on the Station of the Cross.

Table of Contents

Foreword Joseph Pearce ix

Preface xiii

Meditations

I A Lament for Christendom? 1

II Methods, Monarchs, and Morals 2

III Two Pointed Questions 3

IV In Our Place and Time 4

V Preparing for Christ's Arrival and Return 6

VI Christmas Day, 2019 9

VII The Decisive Event 11

VIII It's Only a Matter of Time 12

IX Who Can Rob Christ? 15

X Retrieve, Rediscover, Restore, or Reclaim? 16

XI Narratives, Propositions, and an Urgent Request 17

XII Time, Boredom, Procrastination, and Other Luxuries 23

XIII Manners, Worship, and Justice 26

XIV Controversies, Optimism, and Pessimism 29

XV Crisis-Chastisement or Illumination? 30

XVI Sorrows Old and New, Near and Far 32

XVII Friends and Dilemmas True and False 34

XVIII Finding Hope between Presumption and Despair 36

XIX Gratitude, Memory, Hope, Purpose 39

XX J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Prophet Isaiah 40

XXI An Exciting Time to Be a Believer? 45

XXII The Future Is Handmade? 48

XXIII Where Do Necessities and Luxuries Come From? 50

XXIV The Roots and Fruits of Civility 51

XXV The Works of Homes, Churches, and Schools 51

XXVI Who Will Lead? Who Will Follow? 52

XXVII What Was Noah Thinking? 53

XXVIII The Past, Present, and Future of Hope 54

XXIX "I'm Dead-Now What? (Christendom Edition)" 60

XXX A Jesuit's First Look at the Benedict Option 63

XXXI "Flee. Be Silent. Pray Always." Why? How? 69

XXXII The Beginning of the End? Or the End of the Beginning? 75

XXXIII Merely Human? 76

XXXIV Caesar, Court Jesters, and the Churchians 79

XXXV "You Can't Turn Back the Clock" 85

XXXVI Moving from "Christendom Lost" to "Christendom Found" 88

XXXVII Reconnections 91

XXXVIII Giving Our Past to Our Future 93

XXXIX The First Principle and Foundation 94

XL The Dangerous Liaisons of Church and State 101

XLI Great Ideas and Big Plans 105

XLII Four Strategies 109

XLIII Eight Principles 116

XLIV The Hardest Question of All 118

Acknowledgments 123

Editorial Reviews

"Father McTeigue aims to persuade us charmingly and succeeds in doing so. He uses reason to exorcise the forked tongue of deceit, banishing the sophistry of the serpent with the wisdom of the saint. What's more, he does so delightfully and with a great sense of humor. Seldom has a book by a philosopher been so enjoyable to read."
— Joseph Pearce, Author, Faith of Our Fathers and The Quest for Shakespeare

"Father McTeigue shows the qualities that make him an outstanding radio host: an ability to explore difficult subjects in a simple, engaging style. His meditations on 'the trauma and farce of the twenty-first century' and 'a fatally compromised Christendom' are very serious business, but his conversational style makes the book an enjoyable experience."
— Philip Lawler, Editor, Diogenes Unveiled: A Paul Mankowski, S.J., Collection

"In these deeply personal and precisely expressed meditations, Father McTeigue leads us along a pilgrimage of hope. Without Christ, man attains little of lasting worth—no Bach, no Dante, no Michelangelo. But Christ calls, and McTeigue repeats the call, begging us to consider how much we have lost, to recover what we have squandered or forgotten, and to be on the way once again—to Calvary, and the risen Christ."
— Anthony Esolen, Professor of Humanities, Magdalen College; Author, Sex and the Unreal City 

"Wise, erudite, personal, and penetrating meditations—written during the waking nightmare of 2020 and 2021—on what we must erect in place of the lie, and how to do it. If teaching is, as his mentor often said, 'the sound of an honest man thinking out loud', then listen to this most honest thinker share his heartbreak, his wise counsels of resistance and restoration, and his hope for a new 'wiser and holier' Christendom after this Gethsemane."
— Dr. Thaddeus Kozinski, Author, Modernity as Apocalypse: Sacred Nihilism and the Counterfeits of Logos

"Father McTeigue describes and analyses the pathologies of modernity from which, to his alarm, the Catholic Church is far from immune. The decrease in civility, the willful throwing over of academic standards, the indifference to beauty in favor of comfort, speed, and sensation, and the tyranny of the present moment are the reasons for his profound discomfort. He does not despair, however. Where there is evil, there is the possibility of the good."
— Theodore Dalrymple, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute; Author, Our Culture, What's Left of It

From the Publisher