I've been struggling lately to defend my beliefs amid our culture shifts. It's not that I think that I'm wrong, but it’s that I'm made to feel like I'm wrong. It's the bitter poison that Modernism tries to feed us. Modernism is a supremacist ideology that seeks to suppress and supplant all other thought systems. When you get down to the meat of Modernism's arguments, it's mostly semantics. New is not always better than old. New is not always destructive. Old is not always wrong. What isn't semantics, however, is logic. The fatal flaw of Modernism is that it cannot withstand even the first buffets of logic.

There’s no way, in any possible world, to deny Natural Law. In the way that gravity cannot be denied, it cannot be logically stated (and defended) that there is no natural order of things. Modernism attempts to shroud itself in the mantle of high intellectualism, but it's a straw man. It makes huge promises, but only delivers disappointment. That's because not only is it untested, it's poorly constructed.

Take, for example, contraceptives. For decades now, we've been told that contraceptives give freedom and liberation to women. Those who oppose it for moral reasons are marginalized professionally. Women of all ages are repeatedly counseled by medical professionals to use them. Natural Family Planning is scoffed at, although decades of medical research prove it to be as effective as contraceptives.

Modernism promised freedom, but delivered disappointment. Women spend the first half of their reproductive lives on contraceptives trying to avoid pregnancy and the second half of their reproductive lives trying to reverse the lasting effects in order to achieve pregnancy. Many suffer debilitating migraines and the heartache of miscarriages because of long term contraceptive use. Rates of single parent homes skyrocketed from 5% in 1960 to nearly 40% in 2006. The importance of that statistic is that single parent homes is the number one indicator of poverty. It's just another broken promise.

We could go through other examples of the banners that Modernism touts, but we’d continue find the same answer. That's because, logically speaking, all of Modernism's premises are built on the same flawed logic.

Traditional thinking is about more than just remaining rooted in proven knowledge; it's about exploration and expansion. Once an idea is proven to be true, it can be incorporated into its thought system.

A good example of this would be the Catholic Church. Time and time again the Church is chastised for being anti-science, too out of touch, and old fashioned. Yet, we forget that we would have lost so much scientific knowledge without the Church. The Church has consistently incorporated the best of a generation's ideas into Her thought system. She has championed universal education and founded the modern healthcare system. To be sure, she rejects that which does not stand up to rigorous intellectual scrutiny, but to say that She is stuck in the Middle Ages because She doesn't conform to your two-decade old idea is asinine.

This is the beauty of tradition and the genius of Catholicism. Trends in thought come and go. Yet, the intelligent are wise enough to pick out the good pieces and integrate them into their own thought system and discard the rest. When you find yourself in doubt about your beliefs, a simple application of logic will help you to find your way.

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