Humpty Dumpties of the West

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,” is the beginning of the famous nursery rhyme, “Humpty Dumpty.” While its origins are unclear, and its original meaning uncertain, today in this article, we can use it to help us accurately symbolize some of the assembled and squatting ideologies found loitering and harassing the Church. Not that this should be a surprise, but there is and always has been erroneous philosophies that want to tread on the wall of the “Holy City…on the highest point of the temple.” These trespassing follies are the “ideological eggs” that we are going to discuss here. What I am going to call the Humpty Dumpties of modern times whose "unwillingness to attribute the right of ruling to God” are the errors that have declared themselves the truth and ultimately the true salvation as they comfortably place themselves high on the walls for the world to see. Luckily, these movements have not gone unnoticed, and I like to begin by discussing some of the history of the Church fighting these modern errors. 

Starting in Mirari Vos, Pope Gregory XVI in 1832 as the Shepherd of the Church, points out in his Encyclical two of these squatting eggs: Liberalism and Indifferentism. These two along with others “which are neither few nor slight” are named by Pius IX in his 1864 Encyclical, Syllabus of Errors which are: Pantheism, Naturalism, Absolute Rationalism, Moderate Rationalism, False Tolerance, Socialism, Communism, Secret Societies, Biblical Societies, and Clerico-Liberal Societies. His predecessor, Pope Pius X, in 1907 continued to confront the threats of these bad eggs which attacked Church Dogma with his Encyclical, Syllabus Condemning the Errors of the Modernists which included a very important statement to man’s reason, and its ability to show no “restraint in its search for the ultimate causes of things.” To show that he was serious on this point, he did not hold back and addressed his message to all Catholic writers and the clergy themselves who sought the “progress of dogmas” which in reality were only further “corruption of dogmas.” To continue the momentum and his teaching, Pius X later in 1910 went on and published, The Oath Against Modernism for the whole world, and the Church. The beginning of the 20th century heard the Pope’s call for conviction, and steadfast pursuit for truth by not only with human reason but with the grace of God, and this call carried itself all the way to Saint Pope John Paul II at the end of the 20th century with JPII saying that “faith and reason are like two wings of the human spirit by which it sours to the truth.” 

I like to just pause here for a moment and reflect on the fact that the Shepherds of the Church since the beginning, have always cared for their flock with “words of faith and with…doctrine.” With faith and reason, the Popes have guarded the truth from errors throughout history, and returning now and continuing with these modern philosophies, and their errors which have climbed to the summit for all of us to see. We have been watching these humpty dumpties arrogantly pacing back and forth for centuries, and we can clearly see the faces of men that are painted on these eggs. These are men who have denied God’s grace, and with their own reason have objected, tested, and accepted to climb only to be tempted to jump from the heights of the temple that Christ rejected, telling Satan: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”   

“Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;” unlike perched birds whose strong wings help them balance themselves during strong winds. A fall for any one of these ideologies will not be saved by the power of flight. Eggs do not fly. That is why they are in need of God who will “cover you with his feathers, and under his wings” they “will find refuge.” All are in need of God’s Divine Grace that has been deposited into the Church to care for us so that we can mature and grow our wings of faith and reason to fly, but the “figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort” are these eggs who want nothing to do with God’s grace nor seek His refuge. They do not care to have the wings of faith and reason because they come to the wall to be tempted and fall; they are as Pius IX stated in his Encyclical, Quanta Cura (1864) “hasting to fall.” They have to fall for they are in essence humanity’s fallen nature that gravitates to an earthly kingdom that “aims at dominion, which holds nations in enslavement, but is itself dominated by that very lust of domination.” With their thin and shaky legs that hold the weight of this lust as well as erroneous teachings, violence, and corruption that rottens within, these ideological eggs “refuse to obey the divine and eternal law,” and fall. Their top heaviness, namely, their ego, is what contributes to their true downfall, but they earnestly believe that what they are doing is truly great for all mankind. Their philosophies overlooking humanity from the wall believe that “the Divine is built on the ruins of self-debasement,” and desire an anthropology over theology. So they jump, allowing their anthropotheism to drive deeply into the earth. The only problem is that the earth no longer yields to us “...its strength…” 

These ideologies either purposely refuse to see or are truly ignorant to the fact that their dive will not provide enough force to shake the very foundation of the Church to cause its walls to fall. The Church’s foundation “is much too firm to be overturned by the effort of men” because it is not made by men. The “chief cornerstone” is divine, and an extension of the City of God-“a kingdom that shall never be destroyed.” This however, is not their only strategy of theirs and them falling to be shattered does not mean that they are broken. For the remainder of this article I like to reflect on the strategies of these broken humpty dumpties on the ground.  

“All the king’s horses” are a symbol of strength, endurance, speed and power. While these ideological eggs lay fractured, sending the horses is to deliver the might and loyalty of a king. The question is which kingdoms will arrive? Will it be the kingdoms that “trust in…horses” or those that “trust in the name of the Lord our God?” These eggs do not care which one arrives. If it is Rome or Communist China, it makes little difference. It is in the gathering, that is to say, it is the crowd around the fractured eggs that matters most for them. The appearance of the horses is a dismounting of resources, but in a deeper sense, it is the stage of their battleground where they wage their true war against the soul. The marching of horses towards these eggs is their way to mass “the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies” gathered to not only deceive, but “to make war against him who was sitting on the horse,” who is Christ. These ideologies understand that they need feet and hooves on the ground. Even if they themselves lay shattered, they know that by calling upon those who will have their allegiance, they will gallop forth to piece them back.

“And all the king’s men” is humanity’s confirmation that there are in fact ideological eggs present on the ground. This approach by men to either aid in unifying these eggs once again or to keep them fractured is one of many strategies that causes a “plurality of positions” which “has yielded to an undifferentiated pluralism, based upon the assumption that all positions are equally valid, which is one of today's most widespread symptoms of the lack of confidence in truth.” The chaos of these eggs on the ground results in disorder, unrest, which ultimately leads to injustices, slavery, and hatred. If the foundations of the wall cannot be shaken, its undoing must then be done from within which is the true strategy of these ideological eggs. That is why St. Pius X in his Encyclical: On Modernism, teaches that these ideologies do not “lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the Faith and its deepest fibers…they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole…so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt…which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls…relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy.” As their rottenness begins to poison the foundation, it is able to enter and begin to poison the soul. Their “truth” as planned, becomes nothing more than fractured and scattered propaganda that desires nothing more than to spread lies while everyone is standing around trying to figure out how to piece the truth together. Souls become more and more unrested, and suffering to know what is true and what is not begins to look impossible to know and fix. 

“Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”  This battlefield, the reader and the whole world needs to understand is a spiritual one. It is a war against good and evil, and although it may seem that these eggs have lost due to their fall. That is what the Devil would want us to believe. While God is the I am, the Devil is the I am not. Being broken and weak is deceptive because it is “not” unified and strong. The true reason to be broken when you are an egg is because “life cannot assert itself until the shell has been broken,” but when these ideological eggs are broken we find that they do not have a “source of life within,” and therefore they “must seek it either in what is higher or lower” than themselves. They cannot put themselves back together so they seek what is lower, which is the horses and men, but these same horses and men cannot put them back together because when one studies their philosophies they are filled with contradictions and errors. This however, is what the Devil wants. He wants this chaos and confusion on the ground because it seeks something higher. He wants this pluralism spoken by Saint John Paul II to aid in what is one of the devil’s main strategies which is us forgetting that we have a soul. This is an important battle for the devil to win because “when man forgets he has a soul he also forgets that there is a competition for it between the forces of good and evil.” This is a principle strategy of these ideologies which is based on the error of materialism. When everyone is focusing on putting together the material, we forget that this is about the spiritual, however; there is One who never forgets. 

The very same wall that stands strong and true in front of the battlefield continues to remind us who is “the way and the truth and the life.” Christ is the way because his fall was to raise us up to him. He is the truth because he rejected the Devil at the temple, teaching us that God alone is the truth, and He is the life because of his fracturing and brokenness, his blood saves us from the death of sin. For my readers today and to the world. I leave you with this reflection and suggest reading for yourselves the encyclicals of the Popes on modern errors. As well, never forget to pray and to receive the sacrament of confession and the Holy Eucharist as often as one can.

I hope that this article has helped and for more insight and my thoughts, please give a follow on my Instagram Account:

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Resources:

Matthew 4:5

Pope Leo XIII, Diuturnum Illud, Encyclical Letter, June 29th, 1881, § 23

Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, Encyclical Letter, June 20th, 1888, § 32

Pope St. Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, Decree, July 3rd, 1907, § 1

Pope St. Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, § 1

Pope Saint John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, Encyclical Letter, September 14th, 1998, § 1

Pope Pius IX, Quanta Cura, Encyclical Letter, December 8th, 1864, § 1

Matthew 4:7

Psalm 91:4

Pope St. Pius X, The Oath Against Modernism, Oath, September 1st, 1910, § 1

Saint Augustine, City of God, (Penguin Books: 2003), p. 5

Pope Leo XIII, Humamum Genus, Encyclical Letter, April 20th, 18884, § 1

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, (Tan Books: 2022), p. 60

Genesis 4:12

Pope Leo XIII, Humamum Genus, § 7

Psalm 118:22

Daniel 2:44

Psalm 20:7

Revelation 19:19

Pope Saint John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, § 5

Pope Saint Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Encyclical Letter, September 8th, 1907, § 3

Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, 45

Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, 14

Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, 13

John 14:6