The Abyss

ONE millennium ago, Christendom was rife with speculation that the Parousia was finally at hand, and with it the end of history. Today, with the year 2000 less than nine years away, Christendom has been replaced by that much more vague abstraction known as “the West,” and public speculation regarding the events and conditions accompanying the Second Millennium is limited to such matters as the probable status of women at the dawn of the third one, how large the world population is likely to be, and how small the trade deficit. Nevertheless, at private levels of society, there is subversive talk. A Catholic priest of my acquaintance confided to me at supper two weeks ago that the idea that the Second Coming may indeed be imminent had occurred to him. Likewise, David Walsh, who teaches political thought at Catholic University of America, writes: “Now the sense of living in a transitional phase has become pervasive . . . Modernity has been overcome . . . All that has been present from the inception of modernity has now been unfolded.”

After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom, by David Walsh (HarperCollins, 296 pp., $29.95)

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

ONE millennium ago, Christendom was rife with speculation that the Parousia was finally at hand, and with it the end of history. Today, with the year 2000 less than nine years away, Christendom has been replaced by that much more vague abstraction known as “the West,” and public speculation regarding the events and conditions accompanying the Second Millennium is limited to such matters as the probable status of women at the dawn of the third one, how large the world population is likely to be, and how small the trade deficit. Nevertheless, at private levels of society, there is subversive talk. A Catholic priest of my acquaintance confided to me at supper two weeks ago that the idea that the Second Coming may indeed be imminent had occurred to him. Likewise, David Walsh, who teaches political thought at Catholic University of America, writes: “Now the sense of living in a transitional phase has become pervasive . . . Modernity has been overcome . . . All that has been present from the inception of modernity has now been unfolded.”

After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom, by David Walsh (HarperCollins, 296 pp., $29.95)