by Brian Douglass

Created on: August 19, 2008

Fr. Nichols makes the case that it is Catholicism that made England and it is only Catholicism (withing which he seems to include Anglo-Catholicism or what is left of it) that can save it today. Thus, the subtitle's use of the word unpopular.

It is about England and thus some points (like the monarchy) don't speak much for the situation in America (sadly, enough), however, many do. For example, he points out that declines in Church attendance are not from "principled opposition to the norms of Church doctrine and discipline through this may play a subsidiary part. Instead, it lies in an apathetic attitude towards the entire realm of religion, that cosmic framework within which the lives of great majority of this country's inhabitants were once lived" (p 17).

How does he say this conversion should be brought about?

* a revival of doctrine in catechetics and preaching
* a re-enchanting of the liturgy, so that by language, gesture, image, music, it brings before us the transcendent beauty of the Kingdom of God
* a recovery of Metaphysics
* renewing of Christian political thought...showing how to combine order and spontaneity in a spacious civil life lived under God
* the revivification of the family through a reuniting wherever possible of home and work, domestic life and economic production
* the resacralizing of art and architecture
* a great emphasis on monasticism (including de-secularizing religious orders)
* a new and more powerful rhetoric in defense of the unborn, the crucified innocents in our midst
* recovering a Catholic reading of the Bible

(p 31-32)

Fr. Nichols of course covers the great English Anglo-Catholic and Catholic minds: Chesterton, Belloc, TS Eliot, Sayers, and of course JRR Tolkien (much in connection with re-enchantment of liturgy).

One quote I liked in particular came from Christopher Dawson:

"It would be a strange fatality if the great revolution by which Western man has subdued nature to his purposes should end in the loss of his own spiritual freedom, but this might well happen if an increasing technical control of the State over the life and thought of its members should coincide with a qualitative decline in the standards of our culture" (p 109).

The book is quite good and is highly recommended. It will provide useful reading for anyone who wants to understand the way out of the mess in which we live. While it addresses England specifically, there is much to be learned that can be applied to the US or other Western Nations as well.

THE REALM:An Unfashionable Essay on the Conversion of England
Aidan Nichols O.P.
(Family Publications, 2008, 160pp, soft cover, 8.95)

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