Ponder this list of names of the alleged perpetrators of a grooming-and-rape gang in Britain involving a 13 year-old girl. One name is not quite like the others, but I’d imagine he’s a convert, of sorts.

Speaking of which, the reader may be reminded of Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel Camp of the Saints, about a fictional mass immigration of the ‘third world’ into Europe – at least, it was fiction half a century ago – and the chaos and societal breakdown that ensues when, as they say, worlds collide. The novel is unfolding in real time as hundreds arrive on the southern shores of Britain each day.

The central theme, which is developed in a more theological and precise key by Pope John Paul II and others, is that what most defines a nation is its culture, and at the root of culture is how a nation, or more properly the people within that nation, views God and the laws He promulgates. Europe has been Christian from its inception as ‘Europe’, before which it was divided between two paganism, the Germanic barbarians n the north and the Roman ones to the south. Both were eventually converted to Christ and His Church, and Christendom was born, uniting Europe for a millennium. That is, until the Protestant schism which, as Newman saw presciently, has led to the agnosticism, if not outright atheism. So, a new kind of ‘paganism’ now defines most of the continent.

Britain is no longer a Christian nation, even if still dotted with churches and monuments. There are some who still attend religious services, a smaller number who actually believe and live out the Faith. What fills this spiritual void is, like the parable of the swept room, something quite unlike Europe’s Catholic roots, indeed inimical to them, with a culture and creed that knows not Christ.

And as our Saviour taught, if we are not with Him, we are against Him.

Rape gangs may be but the beginning of much more mayhem on what seems a dark horizon.

But Christ, the Sun of Justice, is on His way, with a winnowing fork in His hand. Retribution for the unjust, and redemption for the just, will be swift, and inexorable. Get on His side while ye may. The only place you really want to emigrate to is heaven.

 

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