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Friday, November 27, 2015

Zombieland: Convert or Die!

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Many social commentators have noticed the rise and staying power of zombie lore in our current storytelling. Zombies became all the rage, pardon the pun, many years ago and their popularity shows no sign of waning. We may be getting sick of superheroes, but zombies are ever fresh.

Those social commentators suspect that there is something about zombie lore that speaks to us in the modern era, that somehow amidst our comfort and prosperity, we have never been more fragile. They posit that somehow our golden lives, compared to every generation that came before, are more fragile, that something isn’t right and we know it. That the life we lead, like the zombies, gives the appearance of life, but is truly dead.

I think there might be something to this analysis (although not in the way they likely mean it.) Of all the zombie storytelling that has occurred these past decades, there is one zombie movie that stands out in my mind as social commentary, directly tapping into the vein. That one story that stands out above all the others, which should almost go without saying, is the slacker cinema classic “Shaun of the Dead.”

 


There is a scene in the movie that occurs after the zombie outbreak has ravaged England, but our slacker heroes were too drunk to have noticed. Simon Pegg wakes up the next day, hungover, and decides to go to the nearby convenience store to get something to eat. As he ventures outside on his short walk, there is evidence all around that the world has fundamentally changed, but things are still similar enough to how they were before for him to not notice.

Consumed with self, our hungover hero stumbles through his shopping trip oblivious to the death, blood, and undead that surround him. The world has fundamentally changed, but he is very slow to notice it.

This is the scene that immediately came to mind as I gathered for dinner, the week before last, with a large group of colleagues in Germany. After several beers, the conversation of my international group turned to the current “refugee crisis” that has been such a hot topic in Europe lately.

Several people at the dinner table gave voice to their concerns that the new Muslim immigrants, like the Turks before them, have no real interest in becoming German and of integrating themselves into the German culture.

Others, myself included, noted ISIS’ boast that they were secreting terrorists among the refugees. I said to the German sitting next to me, “Islam is fundamentally different and these people have no interest in becoming German and many of them fundamentally despise your culture. These people will be the death of you.”

He responded by assuring me that if Europeans were just nice to them, they would like us and become like us and everything will be fine. Besides, he said, we need them to pay taxes. Of course, in the most predictable attack ever, just days later, Muslim terrorists, including some of the very same refugees, murdered over six score people in Paris.

And it occurred to me, my colleague, and so many like him in Europe (and America), are oblivious to the fact that everything has changed. They are like Simon Pegg in “Shaun of the Dead” wandering through life thinking everything is the same when everything’s different. They are oblivious to the threats around them and where this is all heading.

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It should come as no surprise that they cannot perceive the death around them, since this is not a new phenomenon.

Europe has for the last century, and maybe since 1789, been living in a zombie culture. Since Europe’s Catholic soul perished at its own hand, its culture has been slowly rotting. Yes, it still walks and talks and, seen from a distance, gives all the appearance of life, but on closer examination, it is a rotting corpse that knows only death.

I shake my head whenever I hear a western leader make his or her way to a microphone to say that the latest terror attack will not change our values; we will welcome our destroyers with open arms, because that is what our values dictate. Never was a truer statement made by those unconscious of the truth of it.

Of course, this folly is not limited to secular leaders. We hear the same drivel from our Church leaders. And again, this is just the latest in a continuing pattern. For the last 50 years, we have abandoned our actual values for the false values of tolerance and acceptance, thinking that if we are just nicer to people, they will become more like us, even as we become less like us day by day. Europe and the Church face an inevitable future and a certain fate in the face of Muslim immigration and aggression. They have but one choice, even if they don’t yet acknowledge it: They must convert or die!

Europe is currently powerless to resist the Muslim threat precisely because it has no faith. Western liberalism, the zombie corpse of western Catholicism, is powerless against Islam. This has been proven time and again and Muslim leaders fully understand this weakness.

So too is Neo-Catholicism incapable of resisting Islam for the very same reason. They don’t actually believe in anything.

They don’t believe Islam to be a satanic and evil lie, because they no longer believe in actual truth. In their offerings of tolerance and false mercy, they seek only an incremental Dhimmitude with a relentless enemy that will not be satisfied with it.

So what is the answer? Europe and the Church must face the only real choice they have left. Convert or die!

Either convert to genuine traditional Catholicism, a Catholicism that actually believes in the Truth, and that which will fearlessly preach the Truth and will seek to convert the Muslims to that Truth. If they will not, Europe will die. Then Europeans will have to choose again.

Either convert to Islam or die.

Either way, the choice is the same.

Convert or die. Either way, western liberalism, properly called zombie Catholicism is dead. ■ 


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Last modified on Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Patrick Archbold

Patrick Archbold is co-founder of Creative Minority Report and a Catholic writer on the intersection of religion, culture, and politics. When not writing, Patrick is director of information technology at a large international logistics company. Patrick, his wife Terri, and their five children reside in Long Island, N.Y.

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