From O’Brien’s perspective, Christian civilization and the Church are failing in critical ways, inducing a sense of collective kenosis, and the temptation to social despair. The raw pain of collective suffering puts supernatural hope to the test.

To label one’s opponents as ‘antidemocratic’ may make rhetorical sense, but if the values held as sacred have no foundation besides being considered so by the majority, they will inevitably fail when significant minorities beg to differ. 

Any discussion of Christianity as part of a conservative resistance to revolutionary changes needs to make a sober assessment of the religious situation in Europe—without wincing at uncomfortable truths.

In radically diverse societies lacking a clear religious and cultural majority, it becomes obvious that worldviews sometimes harbour radically different ideas of what it means to be human.