German Catholic priest, philosopher and theologian Romano Guardini (1885-1968, born in Verona, Italy) wrote the following in the 1950s after the 20th Century’s dual cataclysms of world wars. It appears in his prescient 1955 short work called, The End of the Modern World (translator unknown):
Monstrosities of such conscious design do not emerge from the calculations of a few degenerate men or of small groups of men; they come from processes of agitation and poisoning which had been long at work. What we call moral standards – responsibility, honor, sensitivity of conscience – do not vanish from humanity at large if men have not already been long debilitated. These degradations could never have happened if its culture had been as supreme as the modern world thought.
Thus Guardini realized circa seventy years ago what he felt we all should realize: that the modern world is coming to an end.
He further believed that the non-God believer will cease to reap benefit from values and forces developed by the very Revelation he denies and that Loneliness in faith will be terrible. Love will disappear from the face of the public world, but the more precious will be that love which flows from one lonely person to another…
But, one what you might call ‘the bright side,’he believed the world to come will be filled with animosity and danger, but it will be a world open and clean.
I’m thinking Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen may have put it well when they put it another way — and put it to song:
Where is that worn out wish
That I threw aside
After it brought my love so near
Funny how love becomes
A cold rainy day
Funny
That rainy day is here
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