In a way that I've not experienced elsewhere, the past seems to live on in the South. I think it probably lives on everywhere, but for some reason there is more willingness to acknowledge it in the south--event the south of today. And so this quotation from Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun:
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
And the truth of this is sometimes conveyed to us through the Church's sense of the communion of the Saints. They are not past, they are present, our helpers today in time of need, our examples, and our guides. The Church understands this, the south understands this, but we can feel it being tugged out of our hands by the pervasive chronochauvism of "progressivism." While we have progressed greatly in some ways, we are encumbered by the shackles of our fallen nature and every step forward in one arena is an invitation to backslide in three others.
the pervasive chronochauvinism of "progressivism."
Excellent and most accurate phrase!