Back to the Caves (and ruins), by Anthony Esolen

Attendance at Mass has plummeted since that New Springtime for the Church, heralded by the Second Vatican Council. There has been no springtime. Indeed, in no area of human culture has there been any such—not in the fine arts, film, literature, education, social institutions, civic life, folkways; not in the ordinary interchanges of human beings outside of their homes; not even in life within the home.

People have not turned from the Church to the mosque, or to the Order of Raccoons, or to some weekly meeting of armchair philosophers. They have turned to nothing at all; or to worse than nothing, the antisocial life of social media, where all is rancor, pride, and spite, and no one need look anyone in the eye and say, “I think you’re wrong,” and begin a fruitful or at least a human discussion. The glory of God is man fully alive; the boast of Satan is to reduce man to less than man, to deaden him within, to get him to prance with pride while he becomes pettier, more predictable; to replace him with automatism, as if he were aspiring with all his tiny heart to become a machine. ….