The Gentle Traditionalist Returns

Book excerpt: Three years ago, the Gentle Traditionalist introduced the skeptical, secular Geoffrey to the Catholic Mystery. Now a convert, Geoffrey struggles to see with his reason what his wife Anna intuits to her horror: the steady possession of a once-Christian West by the twin forces of Secular Materialism and Secular Spiritualism—the New Secular Religion and New Age Religion. In Ireland, land of saints and scholars, the transformation is rapid and devastating: over 1,500 years of faith evaporating in just 50 years. Meanwhile, Anna’s cousin Brigid, who grew up Catholic, is now entangled with Gareth LightShadow, a slick salesman of post-Christian enlightenment—and a smooth operator with the ladies. The situation is desperate. Enter Gilbert Tracey (the Gentle Traditionalist), who deftly exposes the contradictions, confusions, and lies within LightShadow’s shallow creed “Spiritual But Not Religious,” which brackets out sin and the Cross. The result is often heartlessness, including toward the unborn child—a key theme of this very pro-life book. All of which GT demonstrates to Geoffrey with unexpected aid from the Chesterbelloc and the mysterious Emperor of Christendom! In the process, we are taken behind the scenes to the little-known but deeply influential promoters of (in GT’s words) “Eastern Occultism Without Christ.” We are left with no doubts: something profoundly disturbing, an epochal shift, is under way, driven by giant political and economic interests. It is time to wake up, time to see clearly, time to act.