Adam and Eve After the Pill by Mary Eberstadt

In a sense, the choice between the two has been perpetual since the Resurrection. He said, “In the present phase of European history the essential issue is no longer between Catholicism, on one side, and Protestantism, on the other, but between Christianity and Chaos.”Ĭhristianity, or Chaos. Waugh summarized that decision in twenty-eight neat words. It appeared in a disarmingly casual account that he gave to a newspaper in 1930, about the reasons for his conversion to the Catholic Church. Bon Appetite! -CarrieĪn insight by novelist extraordinaire Evelyn Waugh illuminates across the passage of nearly a century. We have been given permission to publish a short excerpt from the book to whet your appetite. Mary's book offers keen insights to helping to form our hearts and minds around this goal. Indeed, Your Excellency, this is the heart we must have.

Compare this to the heart of the Lord we see in the Gospels, in his response to the victims of sin and suffering. Secularism is an inferior culture, small of heart, which defines suffering down, so that victims are not acknowledged as victims but as justified collateral damage.

Eberstadt is quite explicit that this truth has gone unsaid for too long.

We also need to remember that Christ was a healer of the blind the disabled, the sick, and the possessed. Among his final words of wisdom, I found this paragraph particularly heartening:Īs both of Eberstadt's Adam and Eve books affirm, secular modernity causes multiple forms of suffering that we can often ameliorate when we understand their true origins. Mary mentioned that Cardinal Pell's foreword is perhaps the last words to be published by the white-martyred prelate. His unexpected death has left his friends and flock reeling, particularly so closely upon the heals of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's death December 31. Mary Eberstadt recently gave me a copy of her Adam and Eve: After the Pill, Revisited, a follow up to her first book on the topic. The foreword was written by Cardinal George Pell, who passed away on January 10.

Adam and Eve After the Pill by Mary Eberstadt