May 2, 2019
MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey
Latest ABBEVILLE Essay Published – Aaron D. Wolf, RIP – Champion of
Tradition and of the Southland
Friends,
Back on April 29, I offered a tribute “in memoriam” for
Aaron D. Wolf who suffered a massive heart attack and passed away on Sunday,
April 21. Aaron, as some of you know, was not only the Executive Editor of Chronicles Magazine—the finest traditionalist
print journal in the United States—but also a brilliant defender of Southern
heritage and history. In 2018 he spoke memorably at The Abbeville Institute
conference, the “summer school university” series. (Links to the video and
print version of that presentation are included in my column.)
That essay has now been slightly revised and picked up and
published in full by Abbeville, and I pass it along to you today (below).
In my revised column I included a GoFundMe link: Aaron
left behind a wife, Lorrie, and six children, one of whom is in college. And
without him they will be incredibly stressed in coming days. As you read (or
re-read) this essay, I ask you to consider assisting Aaron’s wonderful family
as they go through incredibly difficult times.
Aaron Wolf was an exemplary orthodox Christian. Please pray
for him and for his family…and for the continuation of his critical work. \
ABBEVILLE INSTITUTE
The Death
of a Christian “Knight Without Fear”–RIP Aaron Wolf
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-death-of-a-christian-knight-without-fear-rip-aaron-wolf/
Boyd Cathey on May 1, 2019
A week ago Sunday—Easter Sunday, April
21—Aaron D. Wolf, Executive Editor of ChroniclesMagazine, passed
away. After what had been for him, his wife Lorrie, and his family one of the
best weeks of his life, he was struck down on the Day of Resurrection by a
sudden and massive heart attack: Our Lord had called Aaron unto Him.
I got to know Aaron over the past couple
of years because I had submitted several articles to him that were then
published in Chronicles. We became friends. I knew of his fine
writing which appeared in every issue of the magazine, always adding thoughtful
insight to each topic he examined.
I also knew of his love for and defense
of the heritage and history of the South. In 2018 he had accepted an invitation
to speak at The Abbeville Institute, where he offered a superb presentation.
Abbeville has published the text of the presentation on the institute’s Web site.
And there is also a You
Tube video of
Aaron’s splendid remarks. I urge you to watch the video and read the
transcription.
Aaron demonstrated both a profound
understanding of Southern history and a deep appreciation of the legacy left to
us by our ancestors. Like another fallen “Chevalier sans Peur,” the
late Mel Bradford, he knew that the key to our future, to our survival as a
people, was “remembering who we are,” continually delving into that
wellspring—that rich heritage stretching back millennia—that for centuries has
defined us and given us our character. In that sense, remembering who we are is
the ultimate act of piety, of pietas, and a recognition that we
are part of that history and culture that comes to us from our forefathers. If
we turn our backs on it, if we deny our history, we are thrust out into the
darkness of barbarism and despair, and end up by denying our own essential
personhood.
Aaron understood that, and he took that
appreciation not only to his stellar work at Chronicles, which,
along with its editor Chilton Williamson Jr., helped make it the premiere
magazine defending and advancing the principles and reality of our Western
Christian civilization, but to his everyday pursuits, his role as a devoted
family man, and his belief in God.
And now Our Lord has called Aaron to
Himself, and on Easter, the Day of Resurrection.
My prayers are for him, and for his wife
Lorrie and family, and for the work of the enterprise, Chronicles magazine,
for which he so tirelessly labored and through which he helped define the
response that every devout Christian must make to the cunning temptations and
snares of the modern and soulless world in which we live: “Non possumus!”
“We cannot—we will not succumb to your tawdry enticements!”
Rather, we—our small remnant—sing the
hymn of ultimate victory and praise, chanted at the coronation of the Holy
Roman Emperor Charlemagne in 800 A.D., the Laudes Regiae:
“Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!” – Christ conquers! Christ
reigns! Christ commands!
In many ways, they were Aaron’s watch
words.
There is a GoFundMe page for Aaron’s wife and children, if
you would like to assist them in this time of need.
The last issue of Chronicles fully
edited by Aaron was the May 2019 number, and I am honored that it featured a
major review by Professor Donald Livingston of my book, The Land We
Love: The South and Its Heritage (Scuppernong Press, 2018; hardback).
Dr. Livingston is a professor emeritus of philosophy at Emory University and
internationally known author, as well as co-founder of The Abbeville Institute.
His review is found at pages 17-18 of the print version of the May issue, and
is also available online for subscribers.
I offer the review here, but I also
entreat you to subscribe to the print magazine which, as I say, is the major
print publication in today’s dark world defending the two millennia of our
culture and civilization against the barbarians.
Faithful Son
By Donald Livingston
Boyd Cathey is an 11th
generation Carolina Tar Heel who was mentored by and worked with Russell
Kirk. The Land We Love: The South and Its Heritage is
written reverentially, just as one might reflect on the memory of one’s
mother. For the South is not just any region of the United States, like
the Midwest, the Southwest, or even New England. From 1776 to 1860 the
South was at the core of American identity. In the first 72 years under
the Constitution, only five presidents were elected from the North. None
served two terms; whereas five Southern presidents served two terms. All
the territory beyond the original 13 states was acquired by Southern
presidents.
As of 1860, the South was America:
Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, the Louisiana
Purchase, the Alamo. But this Jeffersonian America was challenged with
the formation of the Republican Party in 1854. It was a revolutionary
party and a sectional party. Its goal was to consolidate the states into
a centralized regime of crony capitalism ruled by the emerging New York-Chicago
industrial axis. This aim stood in stark contrast to the America that
Southerners did so much to create and sustain. So, they seceded and took
the Founders’ constitution with them, word for word, except for a few reforms
to prevent crony capitalism and to strengthen state sovereignty.
Unlike other regions, the South was once
an independent country. It suffered defeat in one of the bloodiest wars
of the 19th century and endured the humiliation of military occupation and
plunder. Out of this Golgotha came a tragic view of human life and human
nature that immunized the best of the Southern people against the ideological
enthusiasms of the age.
In time North and South would be
reunited, and the War would be seen as a battle over a contested American identity
that existed among the Founders themselves. This gave the Confederacy an
honorable heritage. Southern heroes such as Lee became models for
emulation by all Americans. President Eisenhower kept a portrait of Lee
in the Oval Office throughout his two terms.
But that America is as gone with the
wind as the Old South itself.
Written from the aforementioned
perspective, this book is a collection of short essays that appeared in various
journals from the 1980’s into 2018, the period in which the Cultural Marxist
understanding of America came into its own. The chapters cover a great
variety of topics: Southern Founders; the attack on Confederate monuments;
Southern writers, religion, and character; secession movements; the South in
film; the Southern Poverty Law Center; the South and Christian civilization;
race relations; and the baneful character of ideology. The essays are
short, eloquently written, and—since they range over a variety of characters,
events, and topics—continually stimulating.
Readers of this book will come away with
an understanding of Southern virtues, but they will also wonder whether the
tradition that produced those virtues still exists. Have most Southerners
been transformed into a nomadic, Sunbelted mass of deracinated Americans wearing
Ray-Bans? It might seem so. In recent years, those leading attacks
on Southern monuments have been Southern mayors, city councils, governors, and
prominent leaders of Southern churches and denominations.
Today, two years after the tragic events
of Charlottesville, one is hard-pressed to find a state or federal political
leader willing to defend the Lee monument there, though it still stands by
court order. A South whose leadership cannot (or will not) say a good
word about Lee is in serious decline, if not already dead. Have
Southerners lost their immunity to ideology? Have they internalized the
Cultural Marxist mantra that America is structurally white supremacist, sexist,
and homophobic to the point that they are morally disarmed by the dreaded
charge of racism? The question applies not only to leaders but to
rank-and-file Southerners as well, who failed to assemble en masse to
protest the desecration and tearing down of their monuments.
Traditions do die, and usually with a
whimper. Boyd Cathey is aware of this, and running throughout this book
are reflections on the Christian virtue of hope as well as two essays that
encourage recovery: “The Vigil of the Nativity: Reflections on the Hope that
Came to Us Two Millennia Ago,” and a substantial final meditation, “Reflections
on the Future.”
[The Land We Love: The South and Its
Heritage,
by Boyd Cathey (Wake Forest, NC: Scuppernong Press) 308 pp., $28.00]
This
review appears in the May 2019 print issue, pages 17-18.
About Boyd Cathey
Boyd D. Cathey holds a doctorate in
European history from the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain,
where he was a Richard Weaver Fellow, and an MA in intellectual history from
the University of Virginia (as a Jefferson Fellow). He was assistant to
conservative author and philosopher the late Russell Kirk. In more recent years
he served as State Registrar of the North Carolina Division of Archives and
History. He has published in French, Spanish, and English, on historical
subjects as well as classical music and opera. He is active in the Sons of
Confederate Veterans and various historical, archival, and genealogical
organizations.
No comments:
Post a Comment