Il cattolicismo è veramente la religion più perfetta, come la filosofia europea moderna è la più perfetta filosofia: sono insieme le più alte creazioni dello spirit ariano.

(Catholicism is truly the most perfect religion, just as modern European philosophy is the most perfect philosophy: together, they are the highest creations of the Aryan spirit.)

~ Giovanni Gentile

In earlier times, Christianity was comprehensible to one, incomprehensible to another; but only our age has succeeded in making it repellent and mortally boring.

~ Vladimir Solovyov

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

~ T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)

It is often stated that the West is Christian, particularly the USA, or at least that it retains its Christian nature. According the Guenon, this is the opposite of the truth:

It is said that the modern West is Christian, but this is a mistake; the modern outlook is anti-Christian because it is essentially anti-religious; and it is anti-religious because, in a still wider sense, it is anti-traditional; it is this that gives it its particular character and causes it to be what it is.

He continues:

Everything of any value still to be found in the modern world came to it from Christianity, or at any rate through Christianity, which brought with it the whole heritage of former traditions and has kept that heritage alive.

This is the important point: whatever is of value in paganism has been incorporated into the Christian religion. The later historical deviation that tried to “purify” Christianity of such elements, only succeeded in ushering in the modern world.

Where, even in Catholicism, are to be found the men who understand the deeper meaning of the doctrine they profess outwardly, and who are not simply content with “believing” in a more or less superficial way, sentimentally rather than through the intelligence, but who really “know” the truth of the religious tradition which they claim for their own? One would indeed welcome some evidence of the existence of at least a few such people, for that would be the greatest and perhaps the only hope of salvation for the West.

Perhaps Guenon did not look East for the answer, or else he looked too far East, so he missed the ideas emanating from Russia. Vladmir Solovyov said the same thing, decades before Guenon: what the believer believes in faith, the metaphysician knows, provided he makes the necessary efforts. Solovyov admits that Christianity offers nothing original in its metaphysics, which is the basis for all primordial traditions whether for pagans, Christians, or the Oriental religions.

As for realistic possibilities, Guenon writes:

It seems quite clear that there is now but one organization in the West that possesses a traditional character and that has preserved a doctrine capable of serving as an appropriate basis for the work in question: that organization is the Catholic Church. It would be enough to restore to the doctrine of the Church, without changing anything of the religious form that it bears outwardly, the deeper meaning really implicit in it, but of which its present representatives seem no longer to be conscious, just as they have ceased to be conscious of its essential unity with other traditional forms.

This would sound incredible both to those who reject Catholicism out of hand, but also to those within the Church who do not see it that way. From a metaphysical point of view, we must be clear about whether we are speaking of the real or the ideal. Clearly, the “real” church, that is, in its actual material manifestation does not demonstrate the ideal characteristics mentioned either by Guenon or Solovyov; in Guenonian language, we would say it exists only virtually.

There is a lively debate going on about whether Catholicism or a reconstituted paganism is the future of the West. Unfortunately, it is usually done on the exoteric level, or solely about exterior forms. This amounts to little more than debates over personal preferences and tribal affiliations. But esoterically, to be Traditional, they must agree in metaphysics. The Hermetic philosophy in the stream from Hermes Trismegistus to Pythagoras to Plato to the Neoplatonists and much more serves as the foundation both for paganism and Catholicism. The full implications of this must be understood first. Then the discussion can turn to which exterior form best preserves the primordial tradition or is better suited to the spiritual temperament of the West.