Hilaire Belloc of Fordham University

Hilaire Belloc of Fordham University has produced a new treatise on the rise and fall of Catholicism within the world order. Belloc, a noted Christian author wrote this book in the 1930s as an examination and prediction of Catholicism. Belloc condemns collectivism and proposes an ideal society that we should model our current world under. He specifically upholds as an ideal, the mediaeval guild system that was produced by Catholicism. Unlike modern scholars who all seem to laud the Reformation and Martin Luther for moving forward contemporary Christian society, Belloc takes the opposite view. He argues that the Reformation movement destroyed the guild system and therefore released the forces that have created uniformity within the masses. Rather than focusing on a status-based system our world is now contractual, generated by capitalism and an economic understanding of Darwinism and Marxism. The fundamental premise and thesis of his work is that Christian society is faced with a dire threat of death, and that unless dramatic steps are taken to remedy this disorder, Christianity will fade into destruction.

Belloc argues within this book that there is only one solution for the current evils of capitalism and communism within our world. This is a restoration of our world towards a greater unity through Catholicism and the guild system of the mediaeval era. His book is divided into five sections which covers a different phase of Christianity. Belloc covers the history of Christianity, first from its inception during the Greco-Roman Empire where it blossomed into an underground religion. Then in the Middle Ages it became the predominant religion of the era. Belloc's specific focus however is on the "Protestant revolt" most specifically, this movement that sprung up from Germany would eventually wreck havoc within Christian societies causing a so called "disintegration." Belloc's ultimate conclusion is that there must be a decision between civilization or crisis, a choice of Catholicism or Communism. His most important chapter is entitled Restoration. He suggests it he sets forth some suggested remedies to the acknowledged evils which have dragged what was once civilization into a state of chaos. They are based on the culture of Christendom and common sense, with temperance as opposed to the extremes of our society monopoly, concentration of wealth and property, usury and competition. Only by the curbing of these, along with the reestablishment of the guild principle and all that it entails, in brief, a Catholic atmosphere, does he see the salvation of the modern world.