My wife, two small children and I will be heading back to Europe in a couple of weeks after a richly enjoyable and informative six-month stay in the States. It has been a blessing, in so many ways, to spend time here, learning, I hope, more than a little from the professionalism, commitment and enthusiasm of our American colleagues. We have formed friendships here which I hope will be permanent.
 
Nevertheless, in some ways our experience here has deepened our commitment to Europe. We have noticed how there is still a hunger – at least in educated American Catholic and conservative circles – for news of Europe and analysis of European culture past and present, both of which require living contact to be meaningful. More importantly, we have become aware of the insecurity of American culture. In the imagery of The Lord of the Rings, America is no Minas Tirith: but even if it were, in the darkest days of Sauron’s expanding dominions, the Fellowship did not seek salvation within the Citadel (though it sought and found a measure of precarious safety there for a time): Frodo and Sam like thieves in the night, Aragorn and his armies brazenly with trumpet and banner, took the fight right into the heart of Mordor.
 
In one of the reader responses to this website, a correspondent asserted that the torch had passed from Europe to the United States. No. In electing Barack Hussein Obama with full knowledge of his infanticide agenda – an election which could not have occurred without the widespread support or apathy of practising Christians – America has dropped the ball, though I believe she still has it close to her feet. But in any case, there is good news – for you Yanks (or Rebs) as for us denizens of “The Old World”. For, just as for the servant of darkness “Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place, for where we are is hell, and where hell is there must we ever be” (Marlowe), so “We do not enter paradise either tomorrow or in ten years’ time. We enter today if we are poor and crucified” (Bloy). If German culture could survive the Nazis – and it did -; if Russian culture could survive the Bolsheviks – and it has -; if the whole of Europe could survive the fall of Rome and the Dark Ages – then our cultures can yet survive the Secularist State.  The torch will blaze wherever it is lit; and though God grant it may be passed from one nation to another, it must first be passed from heart to heart. And the torch still blazes in innumerable hearts.