Whither the TRUE “City of God”?

If you are the sort to enjoy eavesdropping on a couple of continental blowhards twirling their non-existent mustaches and pondering, “Whither Catholicism?” knock yerself out.

The only reason this gasbaggery is of any public interest is one of the voices belongs to Michel Houllebecq, France's reigning “literary bad boy.”

The other belongs to Geoffroy Lejeune (left) whom I hereby accuse of Lejeunosity.

It's curious how “literary bad boys” frequently seem to harbour a nostalgia for the days when the Mother Church of Rome was the acknowledged common organizing principle.* We have no shortage of “literary it girls” (sic) writing novels and the like, but I've yet to encounter any who express wistfulness for pre-Vatican II Rome. I'm sure they have their reasons.

Maybe it's a Parisian thing. Morley Callaghan noted, with some pique, how the literary bad boys of his day developed a sudden fondness for things Catholic while enjoying their chosen exile in Paris. Cradle Catholics like Callaghan and James Joyce watched with bemusement as Hemingway and Fitzgerald and a wide array of also-rans converted and became loud (usually temporary) advocates of the blessed HRCC. Again, this wasn't a passion that seemed to inflame any of the women in their orbit — cause for pious vexation, I expect, if not marriage annulment.

Anyway, I don't think much of this sort of nostalgia (can you tell?). Besides, people who are truly in the know about these matters are in agreement that there was no finer City of God than the Molochna Colony, under the aegis of Catherine The Great.

*It's also curious how these two in particular can't seem to muster up much curiosity for the Russian Orthodox Church, Dostoevsky's religion from cradle to grave, which remains a powerful organizing principle in that country to this day.