AW Pugin produced a manifesto "Contrasts" he compared his modern and industrial age with that of the "age of faith" and found the former decidedly lacking.
This morning one of my parishioners said he didn't believe in "human rights", I think it was a bit of a throw away remark but I am beginning to wonder whether a culture that promotes our "rights" make us selfish, the "age of faith", which is really feudalism, placed everyone under an obligation and imposed duties on them, to serve and to ensure harmony within society.
With the elderly being left in their own filth or to go hungry, with a winter of strikes looming, with economic meltdown we are facing, it seems the strong and the wealthy can indeed exercise their rights whilst the weak are trampled upon.
I am not sure it was ever true, but Pugin's vision was one where man was conscious of his intimate connection with the sacred. At its heart was man as as worshipping God or as we might say today "as a liturgical person". For him that was a radical alternative to his society. It was also a Christian alternative to the visions of Bentham or Marx and Engels or any of the other constructors of new worlds of the 19th century. It raised man up from meanness conveying an idea of "Glory" rather mere utilitarianism - see the last of these illustrations, "The Public Conduit" both serve the same purpose of conveying water to the thirsty but the East Cheap Conduit is a celebration of so much more than merely making water available.
A friend hates the Fr Z catch phrase, "save the liturgy, save the world" but actually the liturgy, learning to acknowledge God and our obligation to him, is salvific, it places us in context, it changes the whole balance of society, it makes us human.