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The Great Heresies

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Belloc has an amazing ability to discern general principles from a complex set of facts. He puts it to good use in analyzing the five major heresies that have thwarted the Catholic Church-all of which are socially, politically, and theologically complicated matters spanning centuries.

Conciseness is another of his writing attributes. In a scant 160 pages, Belloc manages to fully probe Arianism, Islam, Albigensianism, the Reformation, and what he calls the "modern" heresy, which at that time had no name but contains elements of what today we might call scientific determinism, humanism, secular humanism, skepticism, or moral relativism.

I found the discussion of Islam particularly valuable. Prior to reading this, I had no idea how Islam spread so quickly, why so enduringly, and how it differed theologically from Christianity. I was struck by how similar the phenomenon of Islam was to the Reformation: both movements liberated converts from oppressive taxation and other financial obligations; both involved a simplification of doctrine that appealed to the masses; both were a reaction against clericalism. Obviously, the movements differed in that Islam attacked Catholicism from the outside, while the Reformation struck from the inside. In Belloc's view, this existence on the fringe of Western culture explains why Islam has endured culturally and spiritually. Ominously, Belloc closes this chapter by asking whether Islam will rise up once more to challenge the West. Prophetically, he answers, "yes". Islam, he maintains, has the virtue of spiritual solidarity, whereas in the West, religion, the very glue of civilization, is dissolving, leaving us irresolute, aimless and vulnerable. A strong political leader in the Islamic world could harness the strength of this spiritually united people and overwhelm us. Pretty relevant ideas, even though written in the 1930's.

No less impressive is Belloc's overview of the Reformation from before Luther to his present day. He traces the movement as seen through the eyes of those who lived through it-an illuminating technique of which Belloc is a master. He makes any number of important points, but the most crucial, in his view, is this: that the Reformation, by splitting Christendom, diminished the importance of religion to all men. If one religion is as good as another, if no single value system guides the behavior of men, then men will be driven by other things-acquisition of wealth, pleasure, power, what have you. This splitting of Christendom thus paves the way for a new attack-what he calls the Modern Attack-that is wholly anti-religious and seeks nothing less than the utter destruction of faith. We are in the midst of this attack now, and Belloc helps us understand how we got here. Sobering reading indeed

Here the great Catholic historian Hilaire Belloc analyzes 5 of the greatest heresies of all time: Arianism, Mohammedanism (Islam), Albigensianism, Protestantism, and "the Modern Attack," showing that the world would be vastly different today if Arianism or Albigensianism had survived--and how it is different because Protestantism survived. He predicts the re-emergence of Islam; explains how the Modern Attack is the worst threat to the Catholic Church ever. Gives a keen understanding of the direction of history--as we are living it today!

That line, from page 4, is embedded into my brain, because it is so darn true!

This book is not a theological refutation of heresy, but an historical and sociological account of the effect that heresies have on civilization, even long after they have been abandonned.

"Heresies survive by the truths they contain"??? Can there be any truth in heresy? "What, can the devil speak true?" (That's for you fans of Shakespeare's "Macbeth").

Yes, there is truth in heresy. But the truth is oversimplified, exaggerated, and mixed with falsehoods. That is what makes the heresy dangerous - heresies appeal to those who want a simpler truth (even if the truth is not so simple), and heresies hide their lies behind those truths.

This sets the tone for the whole book, and it also serves to make the heresies and their appeal much easier to understand.

After discussing heresy in general, the author goes on to describe five of the great ones (Arianism, Mohammedanism, The Albigensians, Protestantism, and The Modern Attack). He discusses how they came to be, how they affected the contemporary world, how they still affect us today, and what the world would have been like if the heresy had prevailed. And, his section on the Modern Attack is nothing less than prophetic, when you realize that the deteriorations he discusses, deteriorations we face in society today, he wrote about back in 1938 - a time when protestantism was just beginning to embrace artificial contraception.

Well, Hilaire Belloc is now my favorite author. Read this book, and he will become one of your favorites too!

Belloc is in fine form as he details both the cultural implications of, and the Catholic Church's response to, five of the major challenges to orthodox Christianity. Includes chapters on Arianism, Islam, and Protestantism. A good starting point when studying the development of Christian doctrine.

_The Great Heresies_ by the notable Catholic historian Hillaire Belloc is an outstanding introduction on what constitutes a "heresy" and the threats they have posed to the unity of Christendom. Belloc introduces his subject by defining what a heresy is. A heresy is a worldview that affirms certain aspects of Catholicism (and "Catholicism" can be understood as "traditional Christianity" in its Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox forms) but denies certain absolutely crucial doctrines of the Catholic Christian faith. The cover features a portrait of John Calvin, one of Christendom's chief heresiarchs in a characteristically Mephistophelian light. Belloc examines five of the largest, broadest and most influential heresies that have confronted the Church: Arianism, Mohammedanism (Islam), Albigensianism, Protestantism and what Belloc terms the "Modern Attack" which may in fact be, or is the precursor to, the Spirit of Antichrist. Arianism arose during the power politics of the Roman Empire and was generally supported by the upper-class elements in the Roman Army and the Imperial governing bureaucracy. It was easier more appealing on a philosophic level because the preacher Arius exalted Jesus as the greatest creature of God yet denied the actual Divinity of Christ. Belloc speculates that varying strains of Arianism provided a catalyst for the Nestorian and Monophysite schisms in the Church during the 5th century in the context of anti-Imperial political causes among the Christians of the East. The Arian heresy eventually died out at the same time Islam threatened both Eastern and Western boundaries of Christian Europe. Islam began, according to Belloc, as a heretical doctrine preached to its originally pagan Arab audience rather than as a new religion in itself. Mohammed affirmed the Catholic attributes of a creator God, the Virgin Birth, the prophetic legacy of Jesus and the Last Judgement where Jesus would return to judge good and evil. However, Mohammed totally disavowed the Incarnation of Christ, the tradition of the Apostles and the Church's sacraments that Christ instituted. Islam found a ready audience in the Middle East disenchanted with Byzantine rule and nearly gobbled up both Western and Eastern Christendom by sheer fanaticism and military prowess had it not been for the Spanish re-conquest and the Crusades. Belloc notes the many strengths of Islamic society and (writing in 1938) predicts a resurgence of radical Islam again assaulting the West. Albigensianism was a movement popular in southern France among nobles who were disenchanted with the structure of the Catholic Church. The "Albigensies" were named after a region in France, and the heresy consisted of a radical anti-institutional attitude toward the Church. Basing their philosophy on ancient cosmologies imported from the East, these heretics abandoned marriage, the Church's sacraments and believed in the equality authority of women and men officially preaching the Gospel message. They were eventually destroyed in a French-Papal crusade that assured the development of a united Catholic France. The Protestant attack's most perilous fruits were the denial of a united, authoritative Church, the doctrine of predestination and the denial of free will and of course the idea that material wealth was a sign of God's blessing. Belloc calls Calvin's theology that of a "Moloch God" who predestines souls to heaven and hell indefinitely before linear time began. However, Calvin's tremendous historical influence has been shown by the uplifting of the traditional Catholic ban on usury and an increasing control of individual life and property by both private (capitalist) and government (socialist/communist) interests. Catholic and Protestant Europe came to blows against each during the 17th century and neither side gained ascendancy. Catholic Europe gradually fell behind Protestant Europe in the eighteenth century except for Napoleon's brief conquests after 1800. Protestant Europe, especially Britain and Prussia, greatly expanded their power in the 19th century but by the early 20th century both the Catholic and Protestant regions of Europe had completely exhausted themselves. Since Protestantism has collapsed in much the way Catholicism is now struggling to survive, Belloc's "Modern Attack" has come to the fore. Belloc devotes only a handful of pages to the Modern Attack and does not go into very many details about what and whom it constitutes. Modernism in its broadest definition encompasses a plethora of different political movements, philosophies, ideologies, superstitions and pseudo-religions, but is basically the denial of God's existence as a transcendent Being independent of humanity and the material world. According to Modernism, man created God in order to deal with complex problems of life that had no material ("scientific" or "rational") solution at primitive stages in human evolution and therefore what God actually exists is merely a quaint figment of our imaginations. Belloc notes that there can be no peace or tolerance between the Catholic position and that of the Modern Attack. Either the Church will be swallowed up until something as small as "the Pope and the twelve apostles" (better put if Belloc simply said "the twelve apostles") remain or the Church reemerges triumphant as it had in the past. Belloc concludes his survey in an optimistic rather than pessimistic light. Even if the Church shrinks to an obscure sect invisible, ignored and frequently ridiculed in the neo-pagan society arising, it can never be destroyed and it will always remain a witness to the Truth until Christ returns.

Hilaire Belloc begins his book by justifying its existence. Modern education and thought largely ignore religion, particularly the parts that unfolded in what we label "The Middle Ages". But Belloc has some inconvenient facts for us. The history of civilization is the history of religion. A society rises or falls by the strength of its individuals; those individuals rise and fall by the strength of their religion. To understand the past, grasp the present, and know the future, we must know religion. The one religion that has stood at the center of human history is the Catholic Church. And to take the measure of that religion, we must look at the challenges it has faced and overcome.

Belloc's spare, straightforward prose takes us through a whirlwind tour of five heresies that the Church defeated. The Arian Heresy denied the full divinity of Jesus. It was rejected by Church leaders, but survived in the Roman Army for much longer. The Albigsenean attack came later, during the High Middle Ages. It was an attack not just on theology but on the fundamental nature of reality. The end product of denying reality was an obsession with intense experience, such as bizarre rituals involving fire-worship. Fortunately for us, both of these notions passed into the dustbin of history.

The chapter on Islam is the longest and the most illuminating. Belloc begins it by unerlining the fact that Islam was a heresy. It was not a brand new religion, but a corruption and oversimplification of the Christian doctrine that the Prophet Mohammed learned in Syria. But more importantly, Belloc focuses on the social environment where Islam first rose. A massive underclass in the decaying Persian and Byzantine Empires toiled under the restrictions of the upper class. Among these oppressed, the nascent Islamic movement found willing support for its doctrine of total equality and total submission to God.

We all view Islam as decaying, stagnant, and backwards-looking. We rarely remember that until about three centuries ago, Islam dominated the world with the most advanced technology, thought, and political systems. Belloc does. He enjoins us to remember that almost into the 18th century, the Muslim hordes were knocking on the doors of Central Europe, and that Vienna was only saved by a last-minute intervention by the Poles. (It happened, in a delightful historical twist, on September 11.) In 1938 Belloc saw an Islam that was down but not out; he predicted that it would soon be knocking impolitely on Europe's door again. A far-fetched prediction at the time, this has now come true, and Belloc knows why. Islam thrives on social injustice; when westerners decided to prop up oil-wealthy shieks throughout the Arab world, they created the exact conditions in which the Muslim message can rally the masses.

Thr fourth and probably least popular chapter is "What was the Reformation?" Belloc acknowledgeed that by the 16th century, the Catholic Church was badly in need of a correction. Yet the cure, as so often happens, may be worse than the disease. He emphasized that Martin Luther aimed to fix the Church from within. It was only John Calvin who insisted on breaking away and forming a new church with a radically different theological basis. Belloc predicted that the Protestant world would lose its vitality and join the secular world. Again, time has proved him right; Protestantism remains strong in the USA but throughout northern Europe the churches are disintegrating.

And that leads us to the final chapter, "The Modern Attack". Secularism is the first heresy to try overthrowing all the building blocks of Christianity. In denies not only the supremacy of God but also the need for justice, equality, joy, and love. It replaces morality with self-interest, education with job-training, freedom with tyranny. And yet, awesome as this final attack may have seemed, Belloc saw the seeds of the Church's victory already sprouting. Time has proved him right yet again. Pope Jonh Paul II stood up to lead the defense against communism. Now Christianity regains it strength in the former Soviet block and also throughout the third world, and there are tantalizing signs that Western Europe will soon be Christian again. And so Belloc finishes the book with tempered optimism. Christianity will survive; we have Jesus's word on that. How it will look in the future remains to be seen. But in any case this book gives a spirited look at parts of world history which our schools now ignore totally, and for that alone it's more than worth reading.

Some have considered Mr. Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) to be one of the most famous and influential Catholic historians of the past two centuries. In 1938, he wrote what many maintain was his greatest book, The Great Heresies. In that work, he reminded us all of the need to remember our history, and reminded us of why September 11th, 2001, took place on September 11th:



"Today we are accustomed to think of the Mohammedan world as something backward and stagnant, in all material affairs at least. We cannot imagine a great Mohammedan fleet made up of modern ironclads and submarines, or a great modern Mohammedan army fully equipped with modern artillery, flying power and the rest. But not so very long ago, less than a hundred years before the Declaration of Independence, the Mohammedan Government centred at Constantinople had better artillery and better army equipment of every kind than had we Christians in the West. The last effort they made to destroy Christendom was contemporary with the end of the reign of Charles II in England and of his brother James and of the usurper William III. It failed during the last years of the seventeenth century, only just over two hundred years ago. Vienna, as we saw, was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that ought to be among the most famous in history--September 11, 1683." The Great Heresies, Hilaire Belloc, Tan Books and Publishers, Inc. (first published 1938, reprint 1991) , pp. 70-71.


During the course of The Great Heresies, Mr. Belloc discusses what he believed to be the final heresy that the Catholic Church will confront, the "Modern Attack." While reading it, I was shocked and somewhat frightened by Mr. Belloc's description of the Church's final enemy. What he referred to back in 1938 as the time of the "Anti-Christ" was strikingly similar to our present day. I only wished that he was still alive and would be interviewed on EWTN so that more people would hear what he had to say.

This got me thinking and the end result is this faux interview. I did not interview Mr. Belloc. He has been dead for more than 50 years. Instead, I took chapter 7 of his book, The Great Heresies, and converted it to his responses to my questions. The answers are almost entirely taken word-for-word from Mr. Belloc's book. While I have done my best to ensure everything has been typed word-for-word, any errors are with me and not Mr. Belloc or the text.

It is my hope that this interview will get you to read the entire work and purchase a copy or two for your friends and family.


* * * * * *


Niko: These days it seems socially acceptable if not "politically correct" to attack Catholicism and the Church, be it in the press, movies or just daily conversation. Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code" or movies such as "The Matrix" have revived the old Gnostic heresy. Is this just my imagination or is something going on?

HB: Well, the Catholic Faith is now in the presence not of a particular heresy as in the past--the Arian, the Manichean, the Albigensian, the Mohammedan--nor is it in the presence of a sort of generalized heresy as it was when it had to meet the Protestant revolution from three to four hundred years ago. The enemy which the Faith now has to meet, and which may be called "The Modern Attack," is a wholesale assault upon the fundamentals of the Faith--upon the very existence of the Faith.

Niko: Are you saying that war has been declared on the Catholic Church?

HB: The forces now opposed to the Faith design to destroy. The battle is henceforward engaged upon a definite line of cleavage, involving the survival or destruction of the Catholic Church. And all--not a portion--of its philosophy.

Niko: But I thought the Catholic Church was to be eternal?

HB: We know, of course, that the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed. But what we do not know is the extent of the area over which it will survive; its power of revival or the power of the enemy to push it further and further back on to its last defences until it may seem as though anti-Christ had come and the final issue was about to be decided. Of such moment is the struggle immediately before the world.

Niko: So it's not just my imagination, then, something is going on....

HB: The truth is becoming every day so much more obvious that within a few years it will be universally admitted. I do not entitle the modern attack "anti-Christ"--though in my heart I believe that to be the true term for it: No, I do not give it that name because it would seem for the moment exaggerated. But the name doesn't matter. Whether we call it "The Modern Attack" or "anti-Christ" it is all one; there is a clear issue now joined between the retention of Catholic morals, tradition, and authority on the one side, and the active effort to destroy them on the other. The modern attack will not tolerate us. It will attempt to destroy us. Nor can we tolerate it. We must attempt to destroy it as being the fully equipped and ardent enemy of the Truth by which men live. The duel is to the death.

Niko: What can you tell us about this new or, as you put it, modern attack?

HB: Well, we find, to begin with, that it is at once materialist and superstitious. There is here a contradiction in reason, but the modern phase, the anti-Christian advance, has abandoned reason. It is concerned with the destruction of the Catholic Church and the civilization preceding therefrom. It is not troubled by apparent contradictions within its own body so long as the general alliance is one for the ending of all that by which we have hitherto lived. The modern attack is materialistic because in its philosophy it considers only material causes. It is superstitious only as a by-product of this state of mind. It nourishes on its surface the silly vagaries of spiritualism, the vulgar nonsense of "Christian Science," and heaven knows how many other fantasies. But these follies are bred, not from a hunger for religion, but from the same root as that which has made the world materialist--from an inability to understand the prime truth that faith is at the root of knowledge; from thinking that no truth is appreciable save through direct experience.

Niko: As opposed to scripture, which would be divine revelation...

HB: It has been well remarked that nothing is more striking than the way in which all the modern quasi-religious practices are agreed upon this--that Revelation is to be denied.

Niko: Can you give us an example of how this modern attack is taking place?

HB: First, we are witnessing a revival of slavery, the necessary result of denying free will when that denial goes one step beyond Calvin and denies responsibility to God as well as lack of power in man--

Niko: Sorry to interrupt, but you said a revival of slavery?

HB: Yes. The two forms of slavery which are gradually appearing and will as time goes on be more and more matured under the effect of the modern attack upon the Faith, are slavery to the State and slavery to private corporations and individuals.

Niko: Give us an example of what you mean by slavery to the State. I mean, after all, slavery was abolished by the XIII Amendment to the US Constitution.

HB: When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated. And if it be continued for, say, three generations, it will become so thoroughly established as a social habit and frame of mind that there may be no escape from it in the countries where State Socialism of this kind has been forged and riveted on the body politic. In Europe, England in particular--but many other countries in a lesser degree--has bound itself to this system.

Niko: So you are refering to "the dole" or welfare, as we call it here in the US?

HB: Below a certain level of income a man is guaranteed a bare subsistence should he be out of employment. It is doled out to him by public officials at the expense of losing human dignity. Every circumstance of his family is examined; he is even more in the hands of these officials when out of employment than in the hands of his employer when employed.

Niko: What about slavery to corporations?

HB: Of modern "wage-slavery" one can only talk by metaphor; the man working at a wage is not fully free as is the man possessed of property; he must do as his master tells him, and when his condition is that not of a minority nor even of a limited majority, but of virtually the whole population except a comparatively small capitalist class, the proportion of real freedom in his life dwindles indeed--yet legally it is there. The employee has not yet fallen to the status of the slave even in the most highly industrialized communities. His legal status is still that of a citizen. In theory he is still a free man who has contracted with another man to do a certain amount of work for a certain amount of pay. The man who contracts to pay may or may not be making a profit out of it; the man who contracts to work may or may not receive in wages more than the value of what he produces. But both are technically free.

Niko: Technically free, perhaps, but still chained to their jobs due to the need for health insurance and the need to repay their thousands of dollars in credit card debt. Interesting. Is this economic based slavery the only sign?

HB: These are the first fruits of the Modern Attack on the social side, the first fruits appearing in the region of the social structure.

Niko: It's almost like things were reverting back to as it was before Catholicism was on the scene.

HB: Well, we came, before the Church was founded, out of a pagan social system in which slavery was everywhere, in which the whole structure of society reposed upon the institution of slavery. With the loss of the Faith were turn to that institution again.

Niko: You've told us about the changes in the social system. What else?

HB: Next to the social fruit of the Modern Attack on the Catholic Church is the moral fruit; which extends of course over the whole moral nature of man. And throughout this field its business so far has been to undermine every form of restraint imposed by human experience acting through tradition.

Niko: You're talking, of course, about sex.

HB: Those who would point to the modern break-down of sexual morals as the chief effect of the Modern Attack on the Catholic Church are probably in error; for it will not have the most permanent results. Some code, some set of morals, must, in the nature of things, arise; even if the old code is on this point destroyed. But there are other evil effects, which may prove more permanent. Now to find out what these effects may be, we have a guide. We can consider how men of our blood carried on before the Church created Christendom.

Niko: So in looking at the past you can get a glimpse of what the future may bring. What do you see?

HB: What we chiefly discover is this: That in the realm of morals one thing stands out, the unquestioned prevalence of cruelty in the unbaptized world. Cruelty will be the chief fruit in the moral field of the Modern Attack, just as the revival of slavery will be the chief fruit in the social field.

Niko: Given the history of humanity, with over two thousand years of armed conflict, massacre, judicial tortures, horrible executions, the sack of towns and all the rest, I would think that cruelty existed more in the past than today.

HB: There is a capital distinction between cruelty exceptional, and cruelty the rule. When men apply cruel punishments, depend on physical power to obtain effects, let loose violence in the passions of war, if all this is done in violation of their own accepted morals, it is one thing; if it is done as part of a whole mental attitude taken for granted, it is another. Therein lies the radical distinction between this new, modern, cruelty and the sporadic cruelty of earlier Christian times.

Niko: It's just business as usual--

HB: The proof lies in this: that men are not shocked at cruelty but indifferent to it. The abominations of the revolution in Russia, extended to those in Spain, are an example in point. Not only did people on the spot receive the horror with indifference, but distant observers do so.There is no universal cry of indignation, there is no sufficient protest, because there is no longer in force the conception that man as man is something sacred. That same force which ignores human dignity also ignores human suffering.

Niko: And how we ignore the millions starving in Africa. As if we could care less....

HB: I say again, the Modern Attack on the Faith will have in the moral field a thousand evil fruits, and of these many are apparent today, but the characteristic one, the one presumably the most permanent, is the institution everywhere of cruelty accompanied by a contempt for justice.

Niko: Any other signs of this modern attack on Catholicism other than economic slavery and the indifference to cruelty?

HB: The last category of fruits by which we may judge the character ofthe Modern Attack consists in the fruit it bears in the field of the intelligence--what it does to human reason.

Niko: Of all ages, ours is certainly one of technology. I would think its foundation would be human reason.

HB: When the Modern Attack was gathering, a couple of lifetimes ago, while it was still confined to a small number of academic men, the first assault upon reason began. It seemed to make but little progress outside a restricted circle. The plain man and his common-sense--which are the strongholds of reason--were not affected. Today they are. Reason today is everywhere decried.

Niko: In what way?

HB: The ancient process of conviction by argument and proof is replaced by reiterated affirmation; and almost all the terms which were the glory of reason carry with them now an atmosphere of contempt. See what has happened for instance to the word "logic," to the word "controversy"; note such popular phrases as "No one yet was ever convinced by argument," or again, "Anything may be proved," or "That maybe all right in logic, but in practice it is very different." The speech of men is becoming saturated with expressions which everywhere connote contempt for the use of the intelligence.

Niko: But how does this effect our Faith?

HB: Faith and the use of the intelligence are inextricably bound up. The use of reason is a main part--or rather the foundation--of all inquiry into the highest things. It was precisely because reason was given this divine authority that the Church proclaimed mystery--that is, admitted reason to have its limits. It had to be so, lest the absolute powers ascribed to reason should lead to the exclusion of truths which the reason might accept but could not demonstrate. Reason was limited by mystery only more to enhance the sovereignty of reason in its own sphere.

Niko: So you are saying without reason there is no Faith?

HB: When reason is dethroned, not only is Faith dethroned--the two subversions go together--but every moral and legitimate activity of the human soul is dethroned at the same time. There is no God. So the words "God is Truth" which the mind of Christian Europe used as a postulate in all it did, cease to have meaning. None can analyse the rightful authority of government nor set bounds to it. In the absence of reason, political authority reposing on mere force is boundless. And reason is thus made a victim because Humanity itself is what the Modern Attack is destroying in its false religion of humanity. Reason being the crown of man and at the same time his distinguishing mark, reason is their principle enemy.

Niko: What do you think will be the end result of this attack? Will it succeed?

HB: The modern attack on the Faith has advanced so far that we can already affirm one all-important point quite clearly: of two things one must happen, one of two results must become definite throughout the modern world. Either the Catholic Church--now rapidly becoming the only place wherein the traditions of civilization are understood and defended--will be reduced by her modern enemies to political impotence, to numerical insignificance, and, so far as public appreciation goes, to silence; or the Catholic Church will, in this case as throughout the past, react more strongly against her enemies than her enemies have been able to react against her; she will recover and extend her authority, and will rise once more to the leadership of civilization which she made, and thus recover and restore the world.

Niko: So the Church will either become a useless and ignored entity or will bring salvation to humanity. Talk about an either/or situation. Is there anything we can do other than "have faith"?

HB: That mood of faith has been largely ruined, ruined certainly for the greater part of men, all will admit. So true is this that already a majority--and I should affirm it to be a very large majority--do not know what the word faith means. For most men who hear it, in connection with religion, it signifies either blind acceptance of irrational statements and of legends which common experience condemns, or a mere inherited habit of mental pictures which have never been tested and which at the first touch of reality dissolve like the dreams they are. The whole vast body of apologetics, the whole science of theology (the Queen exalted above every other science) have for the mass of modern men ceased to be. If you but mention their titles you give an effect of unreality and insignificance.

Niko: Although we are seeing a rise in people such as Scott Hahn and Jeff Cavins, so perhaps apologetics and theology are not yet dead. Do you think the Church as we know it will survive?
HB: The Catholic observer would deny the possibility of the Church's complete extinction. But he must also follow historical parallels; he also must accept the general laws governing the growth and decay of organisms, and he must tend, in view of all the change that has passed in the mind of man, to draw the tragic conclusion that our civilization, which has already largely ceased to be Christian, will lose its general Christian tone altogether. The future to envisage is a pagan future, and a future pagan with a new and repulsive form of paganism, but none the less powerful and omnipresent for all its repulsiveness.

Niko: Okay, enough of the doom and gloom. What's Catholicism have in its favor?

HB: Well, on the other side there are considerations less obvious, but appealing strongly to the thoughtful and learned in things past and in experience of human nature. First of all, there is the fact that all through the centuries the Church has reacted strongly towards her own resurrection in moments of deepest peril.

Niko: Such as?

HB: The Mohammedan struggle, for example, was a very close thing; it nearly swamped us; only the armed reaction in Spain, followed by the Crusades, prevented the full triumph of Islam. Or consider the onslaught of the barbarian, of the northern pirates, of the Mongol hordes, which brought Christendom to within an ace of destruction. Yet the northern pirates were tamed, defeated and baptized by force. The barbarism of the eastern nomads was eventually defeated; admittedly very tardily, but not too late to save what could be saved. The movement called the Counter-Reformation met the hitherto triumphant advance of the sixteenth-century heretics and even the Rationalism of the eighteenth century was, in its own place and time, checked and repelled. It is true that it bred something worse than itself; something from which we now suffer, but there was reaction against it; and that reaction was sufficient to keep the Church alive and even to recover for it elements of power which had been thought lost for ever.

Niko: So historically, the Church has been able to defeat her foes. What else?

HB: Next, let this very interesting point be noted: the more powerful, the more acute, and the more sensitive minds of our time are clearly inclining toward the Catholic side. They are of course of their nature a small minority, but they are a minority of a sort very powerful in human affairs.

Niko: And you believe this minority can make a difference?

HB: The future is not decided for men by public vote; it is decided by the growth of ideas. When the few men who can think best and feel most strongly and who have mastery of expression begin to show a novel tendency towards this or that, then this or that bids fair to dominate the future.

Niko: For example, Mel Gibson and his movie....

HB: The conversions which strike the public eye are continually the conversions of men who lead in thought; and note that for one who openly admits conversion there are ten at least who turn their faces toward the Catholic way, who prefer the Catholic philosophy and its fruit to any others, but who shrink from accepting the heavy sacrifices involved in a public avowal.

Niko: Is this unique to Catholicism or Christianity in general?

HB: There is no such thing as a religion called "Christianity"--and there never has been such a religion. There is and always has been the Church, and various heresies proceeding from a rejection of some of the Church's doctrines by men who still desire to retain the rest of her teaching and morals. But there never has been and never can be or will be a general Christian religion professed by men who all accept some central important doctrines, while agreeing to differ about others.

Niko: Thanks for taking time to talk with us. I understand that our readers can either pick up a copy of your book, The Great Heresies, at Amazon.com. Is there anything else you'd like to add, some words of wisdom to end on?

HB: We are now in the presence of the most momentous question that has yet been presented to the mind of man. Thus are we placed at a dividing of the ways, upon which the whole future of our race will turn.

Niko: Thank you, and God bless.

I have read several books by Hilaire Belloc and have found him
to be one of the most thoughtful authors of the 20th century. His opinions are refreshing. His historical accounts differ from
the accounts presented almost anywhere in the media today. Some of his books ("Economics for Helen" and "Survivals and New Arrivals") are a little difficult because of their depth but are still very good for all to read.
If I may plug some other authors, I highly recommend William
Cobbett and G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton is a very difficult read but very much worth taking the time to decipher. All 3 are Brits who grew up in an Anglican environment and conerted to
Catholocism....
Thank you for the chance to rave, 5723jack.

Published in 1938, this book has great merit and deserves five stars, but has its shortcomings. This edition is a re-typeset version of the original and is littered with anoying errors which snuck threw the spellchecker softwear. But the merits outweigh the demerits, and return us to great truths by way of the great heresies.

CONTENTS
1. Heresy (to oversimplify any existing system, eg scientific, nationalist, theological heresy)
2. Scheme of the book
3. The Arian Heresy (AD300: denied the Incarnation, was supported by the Roman army - good psychological analysis of the Roman Empire and military)
4. The Great and Enduring Heresy of Mohammed (AD630: Islam as over-simple theology. Predicts Islam Resurgam.)
5. The Albigensian Attack (1163: matter and the body is evil: the Manichean-Dualist-Jansenist-Calvinist-Puritan response to the problem of evil. Caused upsurge in devil worship, magic, destruction of marriage, vegetarianism, teetotalism)
6. What was the Reformation? (1517: a protest and attempt to reform RC worldliness, allied with secular powers to divest church of its land and political power)
7. The Modern Phase (now called `postmodernism', itself a dying term, not surprisingly. The secular inadvertent attack on Reason itself and deliberate attack on the Church universal, disregard of fatal intellectual mistake of self-contradiction; relativism and subjectivism, AntiChrist)

STYLE
Hilarie Belloc is closely linked with G.K. Chesterton, and his name with that of C. S. Lewis. There is merit in this linkage as Belloc and Chesterton were friends and both Catholic. But where Chesterton has subtlety and humour, smooth style and flow, Belloc has a two fists of iron style and pounds his opponents. He is normally fair, according to Queensbury rules. He is irritating to a Protestant, but (so I say) worth every effort required to adapt to as he has his compensations. He says what most are now too scared to say in the twenty-first century, for political correctness is but a hypocrite and coward mood and will pass in time.

WEAKNESSES
Belloc was as staunch a Roman Catholic as is possible to be, and every chapter of this book shouts this fact, over and above the argument and analysis he presents from the viewpoint of what C.S. Lewis called `Mere Christianity'. The irony here is that he pointedly denies that there is such a thing as a doctrinal `Mere Christianity' to be detected in all the branches of Christendom's historic churches. But he effectively contradicts himself in fact by repeatedly commenting on Greek Orthodoxy; pointedly ignores the early church; ignores the Anglican communion; and plainly allows that Protestant societies had superior `vitality' to the old RC societies but are (in 1938) dying out because they are generically `auto-toxic'. But then by this mere analogy, all societies are `auto-toxic' in this sense: he notes that the RC communion of 1500 with its bought bishops and indulgences needed radical reform but resisted it; and Islam split Shia-Sunni very early on, etc. Belloc covers a vast acreage of history but does it with seven-league boots, missing out swathes of connecting facts and ideas hasteing to a conclusion. It seems to me that he is aware of the mind of the reader, but not the person. He appeals to the male way of thinking, not the female. He too often gives generalizations unsupported by even one example. His theoretical Trinitarianism lacks consideration of the Holy Spirit.

He is very cold-blooded. Glib recitals of European civil wars, Islamic invasions, the Reconquista, the Crusades, the Inquisition, and other deadly episodes unnerve me. He skates over some critical events such as the victory of Charles Martel against Islam at the battle of Tours-Poitiers AD732. In such a short book this is probably inevitable, and he is a take-no-prisoners, no regrets type such as is not seen today. He is a dinosaur of the Rex genus and I am glad we on the same side but not side-by-side.

His knowledge of practical live Islam is weak. He notes the pure doctrines, but lacks the feel of its chimeric nature and inability to see the world as anything other than Umma-Kuffaar. The mindset of instinctive systemic counter-verisimilitude towards the jahiliya he knows not. He does not do much with his accurate perception of its inherent societal inefficiency and the consequent constant need to co-opt and tax, as opposed to create and generate. The Janissaries and Mamelukes elude him. Dhimmitude he seems not to know of, nor of the honour-shame nature of the culture, constantly operating at the level of conformity as opposed to internalization (or holiness as our jargon has it - revivals are holiness movements). This is probably due to the RC weakness towards this tendency itself.

His notion of all charging of interest as `usury' is woefully naïve economics. Interest is the cost of a loan, a charge on use of money which could be put to alternate uses, and the insurance cost of bearing the risk of loan default. But then even Aquinas did not understand this, and Belloc just failed to get up to date.

STRENGTHS
He summarises well, and says what badly needs saying in our day, without jargon-munching touchy-feely death-by-qualification. It is quite possible to get a working idea of any of the heresies he tackles, purely by reading that chapter alone. It is excellent for beginners in this respect. The sheer speed of progress over the facts and the ideas is very exhilarating.

The sign of a powerful intellect, he draws accurate connections between apparently entirely different things. Eg, the indissoluble `Trinity' of Plato and Aristotle (Truth, Beauty, and Goodness) and its complete consonance with Theism, revealing why atheist Communism has contempt for both these abstract things and the physical dignity of the person (ch.7). Also, the whole chapter on Albigensianism and its forms. In life Mr. Belloc must have been as formidable a foe as a friend, I will read more of him.

Mr. Belloc never leaves one doubting his opinion. His direct and authoritative style might anger those who disagree or thrill the faithful. Either way you will be led through the reasoning Mr. Belloc took to draw his conclusions which will drive you to think the same matters through to your own. In this work, Mr. Belloc does not provide an in-depth theological background on the heresies cited but instead gives a rough sketch of each and categorizes each as a type. Then, using this typology approach he carries each to their logical conclusions to convey their affect on the societies they infected. Mr. Belloc provides the superstructure for understanding other heresies by giving us the essential root of Arianism, Islam, Albigensianism, Protestantism, and Modernism. Through each description he also draws some interesting parallels to the various heresies. Of course, as a Roman Catholic, Mr. Belloc will step on some Protestant toes in particular since they will be the most likely to read his book outside other Catholics.

Mr. Belloc's approach is opinionated and he writes as an expert without always providing the evidence for his opinions. At the same time, there is enough evidence in the form of his logical approach to give one the opportunity to explore his opinions more themselves. Mr. Belloc was one of the great philosopher-historians of the early 20th century and his thoughts will always be valuable to the seeker or any one wishing to improve their critical thinking skills through practice. In this key work, he reminds us how ideas, and particularly, theology has consequences to society. It is not a topic to ignore or think only the realm of the theological hair-splitters. Our culture today has the marks of the theology that created it and upholds it. Mr. Belloc helps us focus on those aftershocks in theology that have shaped our culture.