Western Culture is Christian Culture

Is the Pope Catholic? One has to wonder with statements like this:

Recently, while apologizing to "indigenous peoples" and denouncing Christians — without the all-important historical context — Pope Francis declared, "Never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others[.]"

This — claiming all cultures are equal — is a dangerous position, not least as it leads to relativism and the abnegation of Truth.

Thus Raymond Ibrahim began is article at the American Thinker today entitled Is Any One Culture Superior To Others? My personal opinion, and that of Ibrahim, is that the traditional Western Culture is indeed superior to all the others. I am not ashamed to say it. And yes, the West has done many terrible things, some of them in the name of Christ; men are fallen creatures after all. But Christ is the only Truth.

An atheist once said to me "Are you condemning me to Hell? Others say I am going to Hell." My reply was that whether or not he would be saved was way above my pay grade. Only Jesus can answer that question, but Jesus said "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." Either you believe Him or you don't.

Indeed, for some thinkers, such as essayist T.S. Elliot, "culture and religion" are inextricably linked and "different aspects of the same thing."

Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living. ... [N]o culture can appear or develop except in relation to a religion. ... We can see a religion as the whole way of life of a people, from birth to the grave, from morning to night and even in sleep, and that way of life is also its culture. [From Elliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, 1943, p.100-101, emphasis in original.]

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The fact is, all values traditionally prized by the modern West — religious freedom, tolerance, humanism, monogamy — did not develop in a vacuum, but rather are inextricably rooted to Christian principles that, over the course of some two thousand years, have had a profound influence on Western epistemology, society and of course culture.

While they are now taken for granted and seen as "universal," there's a reason why these values were born and nourished in Christian — not Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or Confucian — nations. Even if one were to accept the widely entrenched narrative that the "Enlightenment" is what led to Western progress, it is alone telling that this enlightenment developed in Christian — as opposed to any of the many non-Christian — nations.

All this is missed by those ignorant of the spiritual and intellectual roots of Western civilization — including, apparently, Pope Francis.

I was talking to a fellow, a nice enough man, at church one day, when he made the claim that all religions basically teach the same thing and the same set of morals. Hmmmm. That assertion seems pretty easy to falsify. Buddists belief that man is reincarnated a number of times until his soul reaches "enlightenment' at which time he becomes god. Christianity, building on Jews roots, teachs that there is an infinite gulf between man and God. We are born in sin, and are only saved by grace through belief in Jesus Christ. Indeed Jesus sacrifice on the cross harkens back to the Jewish custom of atonement by sacrificing a lamb.

What, then, of "multiculturalism" — this word that the West is supposed to celebrate and embrace wholeheartedly? Behind it is the idea that all cultures are equal, and none — certainly not Christian or Western culture — "is superior to others," to quote Francis. In reality, multiculturalism is another euphemistic way of undermining and replacing the truths of a religion and its culture with relativism.

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One anecdote well captures this "clash of cultures." After the British colonial powers banned sati — the Hindu practice of burning a widow alive on her husband's funeral pyre — Hindu priests complained to British governor Charles James Napier that sati was their custom and therefore their right. Napier replied:

Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.

Incidentally, being opposed to "multiculturalism" — that is to say, relativism — is in no way the same thing as being opposed to other races or ethnicities, but rather being opposed to disunity and chaos.

So, Western culture, indeed Western civilation, is Christian culture. Despite current infiltrators in our Church body seeking to destroy it, Christ's words are eternal, his Church is eternal, and I stand with Him. When evil communists shout that "Western Civilation must go" what they really mean is that Christianity must go. These people are on the wrong side. Pray for them.