I have already introduced a couple of posts with the title of an encyclical that Pius XI had written in German in 1937, a translation of the title being “It is with deep anxiety and growing surprise…” in reaction to the growing evil in Germany and the coming war that was only two to three years away for most of Europe. Today, we are worried about the increasing bureaucratic overreach of the European Union and the World Economic Forum. They increasingly represent a kind of abstract intellectualism that cares nothing for real human needs in persons and local communities.

I am habitually silent about politics because I am as much a victim of propaganda and lies as anyone else. It is by this means that the Archons control us and cancel out any resistance. Their intention is the same as any dictatorship like that of Hitler, Stalin, Mao,  Mussolini and many others. Human persons and imagination must be obliterated in the interest of the collective, whether it be a nation or something like what the EU is becoming. A few years ago, I opposed the British government’s decision to separate from the EU in the name of many ideals we cherish in our Islands, but time has proven that the increasing socialist collectivism walks in lockstep with Brussels, even before the election of Starmer. I approach this issue, not from the point of view of someone’s angry ideology and emotional protest, but from the origins of European idealism in the advent of the Romantic movement in the 1790’s. We all know what happened in France in those years – an earlier form of the murderous ideology that keeps rearing its hideous head.

Only today, I found a Substack article by the American farmer and philosopher Dr Michael Martin, Christendom or Europe ? This is the title of the fragment written in 1799 by Novalis. Both he and I have a particular affection for  Georg Philipp Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg (1772 – 1801) who adopted that pen name. I already wrote an article about my interview with Dr Martin on YouTube My Interview with Dr Michael Martin. Personally, I write as one who is totally European and tends to support some form of cosmopolitanism over nationalism and “right-wing” ideology. However, what passes for globalism with its shrill propaganda and manipulation makes me utterly sick. I am outside the modern conflict, like one who is Unbound. I make no claim to be Prometheus ! I do however have a sceptical and critical attitude to authority, and this instinct in me arose when I was twelve years of age. It was at that precise age when I went to Wennington School in Yorkshire. Its founder was Kennenth C. Barnes who wrote an admirable book Energy Unbound, clearly inspired by the wild mind of Percy Byshh Shelley and the Greek epic of Prometheus. Those ancient legends are symbolic of aspects of human nature that remain with us to this day. Unfortunately, the school was already in a decadent stage of its history in 1971, and my father had to work out another plan for my education.

Kenneth Barnes had a very original philosophy of education for 1940 when he founded the school in war-torn England. He was aware of the power of the state and the corporations uniting themselves with political power. The schools were becoming an instrument of consumerism. A new method of education would consist of grouping children around adults who are not teachers but creators who draw children into the enjoyment of their work. It involves a relationship of trust and altruism, seeking to draw out the best of human nature. Barnes recognised that the term deschooling would lead to polarised attitudes and emotionally-based opinions. One bitter parable of children left to their own devices is William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a favourite work for study in English literature. The real issue is freedom as opposed to collectivist manipulation.

The notion of freedom takes a lot of thought and the right kind of personalities to guide by example and not by repression. Acting freely comes from within oneself and not from an external force or authority. Human nature has to recognised to be different from inanimate objects or animals. It is in our nature to be enchanted by nature and the world outside ourselves. There is then the notion of freedom of perfection shared between the German Idealists Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel and St Thomas Aquinas. My own moral theology professor at Fribourg, Fr Servais Pinckaers OP, studied Thomas Aquinas’s use of the terms libero, libertas, and liberum arbitrium in the Summa Theologiae, giving us a wealth of information about free will and freedom.

We human beings have free will and are masters of ourselves through free will. Free will can be impeded by obstacles or ignorance but naturally moves toward God. Our freedom can be that of indifference (the morality of obligation) or that of excellence (the morality of happiness). The freedom of indifference is our choice between good and evil. The freedom for excellence is the power to be the best human being we can be. Rules and discipline are the grounding for freedom. One who observes these rules has the freedom to become excellent. One can only become a virtuoso pianist, to have the freedom to play Liszt and Chopin, by years of gruelling hard work and practice. Freedom has its  price. Illusions of freedom will only enslave us. One of the most positive things for humanity is not so much love but friendship (amicitia). St Aelred of Rievaulx chose the word carefully, not only from the Stoic Cicero, but also from his experience as the head of his monastic community. It is in this friendship (as opposed to marriage with a person of the opposite sex) that we discover our true nature through the truth and reality of the other person in the friendship. We have to distinguish discipline and self-discipline from the fear of the cat ‘o nine tails administered by the ship’s bosun ! Education comes from friendship and community.

The notion of morality and values is a double-edged sword. Read this cutting quote from Barnes :

A morality that depends on the the idea of obedience to moral law offers no more freedom than that of a stone, it is sub-human, a mechanical morality. An organic morality may seem more attractive ; it focuses on service and duty so that the group will survive as do animal species.

Like in Roman Stoicism, Barnes evokes the example of Nazism and Fascism. The Catholic Church adopted this notion of organic morality. Unfortunately, the coin flipped over to the other extreme of utter indifference, but globalist politics and corporations are imposing a new version of organic morality, not even using the name of Christianity. This is the dark side to what was once a noble ideal of the European Union. We need laws, without which we would never have freedom, but the laws of the state are not moral laws but an expression of practical necessity.

Another important point is to be rid of dualism. We cannot escape the polarity of being mind and matter, body and spirit. What is dualist is trying to separate the poles and give them an independent and opposing existence. Can we not recognise the clash of the opposite in cultural Marxism and critical theory ? This way of thinking leads to the equally toxic materialism of totalitarian Communism and religious fanaticism as in Fundamentalist Christianity or certain forms of Islam. Very often, the snake eats its own tail or disappears up its own arsehole ! One of the greatest of non-dualists was Meister Eckhardt.

The ideal I am presenting is ignored by politicians and those chasing after our freedom and money. It shapes my understanding of the current political situation which frightens many witless faced with the spectre of the nuclear war that would end it all. I fear that the EU, as for the governments in the UK, France and Germany, needs to be reformed or suffer a complete system reboot. The mainstream institutional churches are not better, and need to understand some fundamental principles on pain of suffering a new Reformation under Jihadist puritans who would trash churches and kill a lot of people.

We need freedom built on noble principles and friendship. Above all, we need common sense, not the intellectual masturbation that has destroyed our schools and universities ! Dr Martin’s

as a kind of libertarian communitarian with distributist sympathies, it seems like nothing but common sense.

is spot-on.

In the essay, Novalis extols an idea of Europe as a land united by faith (and clearly the Catholicism of the Middle Ages). As can be expected of Novalis, his Christian vision is characterized by sophianic luminosity:

“They preached solely love for the holy and wondrously beautiful Lady of Christendom, who, endowed with divine powers, was prepared to rescue any believer from the most dread perils. They told of celestial persons long since dead who, by virtue of adherence and loyalty to that Blessed Mother and to her divine and benevolent Child, withstood the temptation of the earthly world and achieved honors and had now become protective and beneficent powers to their living brethren, willing helpers in tribulation, intercessors for human infirmities, and efficacious friends of mankind before the heavenly throne.”

Especially, Novalis aimed at the “sterility and totalizing claims of the Enlightenment“. In the 1790’s, they had Robespierre and the guillotine, today we have the present caricatures of politics and the curtailing of freedom of speech. They all “made imagination and emotion heretical, as well as morality and the love of art, the future and the past”.

The realist Novalis was not a childish idealist unable to recognise that there were problems in the medieval Church :

The old Papacy lies in its grave and Rome for the second time has become a ruin. Shall Protestantism not cease at last and make way for a new, enduring Church? The other continents await Europe’s reconciliation and resurrection in order to join with it and become fellow-citizens of the heavenly kingdom.

We are left with the feeling of wondering what that all means. I think we will find the answer within ourselves. Michael Martin does not mince his words about the EU being a demonic parody of Christendom. It can never be good and should be defeated. Perhaps our friend in Russia might do the honours as long as he keeps his finger away from the red button ! He has written about Novalis’ Die Christenheit oder Europa including the introduction reproduced in the Substack article.

Perhaps a new Romantic movement might fish out some scraps from the mouldy remains of the EU and complicit national political institutions. The regeneration of Christendom is an act of magical idealism, not a diabolical attempt to manipulate God, but of finding re-enchantment.

Finally, I have the impression of reading Kennenth Barnes as he sheltered children from the horrors of the blitz :

We must seek to become magicians in order to be able to be truly moral. The more moral, the more harmonious with God—the more divine—the more bound to God. Only through the moral sense does God become perceptible to us. —The moral sense is the sense for existence, without external stimulation—the sense for covenant—the sense for freely chosen, yet found, and thus common life—and being—the sense for thing-in-itself—the true sense for divining.

I shall end this reflection with a beautiful text from the Book of Job on that Queen of Virtues – Wisdom :

Where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?

Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.

The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me.

It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.

It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.

The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold.

No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.

The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold.

Whence then cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding?

Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air.

Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.

God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof.

For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven;

To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure.

When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder:

Then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out.

And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.