St. Boniface (feast day 6/5) was an 8th century English monk who left his homeland to evangelize the region we now call Germany. There, he reformed the weak, ignorant, and immoral clergy who were notoriously disobedient to Church authority. His efforts led to the spread of Christianity before his martyrdom in 755 A.D. He is most famous, however, for chopping down an oak tree considered sacred by the Germanic pagan tribes. When Boniface shattered the tree without consequence, the hold of paganism on the people’s hearts was broken. But there are some who see evidence that it is reappearing.
In an article titled “We are Re-Paganizing,” the author Louise Perry argues that many of the cultural developments we are seeing now have their roots in a pagan world view. A self-described agnostic, Perry nonetheless recognizes the revolutionary impact Christianity has had on the development of civilization. She explains that “most [pagan] cultures… glorify warriors and kings, not those at the bottom of the heap.” In those cultures, the poor and weak are not to be pitied. Indeed, “the smallness and feebleness of women and children is a sign that they must be commanded by men. The suffering of slaves is not an argument against slavery, but an argument against allowing oneself to be enslaved.” Then, Christianity came along and turned everything on its head, exalting a crucified Lord, who made Himself weak, the slave of all. “Christianity takes a perverse attitude toward status and puts that perversity at the heart of the theology.” According to Perry, God’s self-identification with the weak to shame the strong (1 Cor 1:27) “is a baffling and alarming claim to anyone from a society untouched by the strangeness of the Jesus movement.” Shattering the logic of the pagan worldview, Christianity gave status to the weak, extolled the virtue of chastity for men and women, and upheld the inherent dignity of those whom the powerful had unabashedly exploited in every conceivable way – particularly the poor, the disabled, slaves, women, and children. This is the Christian revolution that, Perry argues, is being undermined in the contemporary culture war. Laws sanctioning abortion, physician assisted suicide, and euthanasia create classes of people whose lives are unprotected by law, rendering the weak once again vulnerable to the power of the strong. Our holy father the pope often decries a global economy that seems to turn a blind eye to human trafficking, forced labor, and prostitution, practices by which the strong exploit the weak for personal gain.
In an ominous conclusion, reminiscent of St. Boniface’s dramatic act, Perry writes: “what if we understand the Christian era as a clearing in a forest? The forest is paganism: dark, wild, vigorous, and menacing, but also magical in its way. For two thousand years, Christians pushed the forest back, with burning and hacking, but also with pruning and cultivating, creating a garden in the clearing with a view upward to heaven…. With no one left to tend the garden, the forest is reclaiming its ground.”
posted 6/1/24
The Parish of St. Cecilia-St. Gabriel 