A prophet for our times …

… How a 20th century theologian became a quiet prophet for our distracted age | America Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Concurrent with [the] loss of what Guardini calls “natural religious experience” has been a move toward mass conformity—what we might call the “hive mind.” “Mass man has no desire for independence or originality in either the management or the conduct of his life,” Guardini writes in The End of the Modern World. “Nor does he seek to create an environment belonging only to himself, reflecting only his self. The gadgets and technics forced upon him by the patterns of machine production and of abstract planning mass man accepts quite simply; they are the forms of life itself.”

Guardini is a great writer and thinker. I have been re-reading The End of the Modern World. It could been written yesterday. I notice this piece has the usual boilerplate reference to the "conformist" 1950s. Check out the books and plays that were written then, sir.