The Olympic Games in Paris are teaching us many things.

One thing is clear: that the moral, historical and artistic language and symbolism of Europe’s secular elite are clearly incoherent and bankrupt.

The notorious “drag supper” tableau on the river Seine has been called out by many, including Bishop Robert Barron, as a sleazy mockery of Christian faith and iconography. It was also a moronic and kitsch defamation of the powerful natural symbols of classical paganism.

The compelling pagan respect for the seductive but dangerous natural force of eros personified by the god Dionysus was made vapid in Paris last weekend. In the god’s place was a sneering near-naked, spray-painted male (we guess) resembling a degenerate ‘smurf’ – the Dutch translation of the French ‘Schtroumpf’, a bright blue Belgian cartoon creature – sprawled out on a giant platter of fake flowers.

The athletes, whose noble competition and discipline is supposed to be the whole point of the Games, were diminished during the ceremony into tiny props crammed into boats. Some athletes have since been forced to endure food and protein shortages, cardboard beds and unfair heats against men who simply stake a claim to be women.

One gently expansive eye that would have helped analyse this perplexing dross was that of the brilliant champion of culture and catholic (as well as Catholic) imagination, the English polymath – Stratford Caldecott (1953-2014).

Stratford Caldecott was born into a radical, secular and exiled South African family who came to England in protest to apartheid. The young and frail Stratford had access to excellent literature (his father was a publisher with Penguin) and was especially drawn to the power of narrative and metaphysical questions upon which classic literature is built.

He briefly explored Baha’i and Buddhist faiths before being baptised as a Catholic in 1980. His wife Léonie followed him into the Church two years later.

He wrote of his conversion as being a discovery of grace: "All along, my imagination had been built on a Christian foundation, and I had never noticed it before."

This July marks the 10th anniversary of Stratford’s death from cancer, at the end of a remarkable life of original achievements from which today’s Thomas More Centre continues to take inspiration.

Some of his work, including his last book Not As the World Gives: The Way of Creative Justice (2014), brought him into conversation with the future King Charles. This book is still in need of deeper exploration and application in our bleak economic times.

As well as being a scholar, lecturer, blog-master and author, Stratford and his wife Léonie were geniuses of friendship and founders of a number of significant partnerships and communities. Together they founded the Centre for Religion & Culture in Oxford in 1994, offering courses, tours, events and the journal Second Spring.

In 2002, the Centre merged with the Chesterton Society and took charge of the G.K. Chesterton Library. In 2006, the Caldecotts became more deeply collaborative with American educational projects such as the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire. They also formed a new company with artist David Clayton called ResSource, which aimed to connect education with great artistic endeavour.

In 2010, with encouragement from the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, the Caldecotts became founding editors of Humanum Review and editors for Magnificat. In time he established the Second Spring UK with Léonie and his daughter Tessa (both of whom continue his legacy).

There was almost no cultural, theological or intellectual stone unturned by Stratford. He was learned, original and enthusiastic across so many disciplines: the theology of physics, theological anthropology, poetry, theatrical performance, mythopoesis, Catholic social teaching, pilgrimage and liturgy, art and beauty, integrated economics, education and even an appreciation of the multiverse of Marvel and other comics.

His highly original contributions stood on the shoulders of giants: J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, Christopher Dawson, C.S. Lewis, and Saints Thomas Aquinas, John Paul II, John Henry Newman and Pope Benedict XVI.

Each one of Caldecott’s ten published books are succinct masterworks. Two are keystones for today’s revival of liberal arts education and culture: Beauty for Truth’s Sake: On the Re-Enchantment of Education (Brazos, 2009) and Beauty in the Word: Rethinking the Foundations of Education (Angelico Press, 2012).

‘Strat’, as he was called by his many friends, insisted on the seamless integration between the logic of natural and redeemed semiotics and the symbology of the pagan and Christian cosmos. He was a joyful and humble spokesman for metaphysical and poetic realism – what the Australian poet James McAuley called in his published collection, The Grammar of the Real (1959-1974).

A year before he died, Stratford wrote a short telling essay relevant for today. In the Imaginative Conservative blog (for which he was a contributing editor), Stratford described political correctness as a “syndrome” of attitudes rather than a coherent or meaningful philosophy.

Caldecott suggested that the liberté, égalité and fraternité of the French Revolution were not convincing virtues but slogans torn from a once-organic metaphysical foundation: “In each case the ‘value’ in question is distorted by extraction from traditional philosophical frameworks in which such ideas had been discussed for many centuries—or perhaps more tellingly, from a concern with truth.”

He concluded: “Political correctness is philosophical nonsense. What we need is Justice not just Equality, Moral Responsibility not just Freedom, Intelligence not just Reason, and Charity not just Niceness or Fraternity—even if these don’t sound so good on a banner. We need Caritas in Veritate—love in truth.”

May we at the Thomas More Centre fly that banner regardless!

Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre