Frank,
This is a good question. The ancient definition was of a creature who had life in two worlds: his body was rooted in the earth and his soul swept out across the horizons to a world beyond. His name was man. Aristotelian man and Platonic man. The two were integrated in the Incarnation. Doubting Thomas and St. John were both satisfied when the Word was made flesh. This unity has been lost and perhaps recoverable as you say.
More thoughtful men than myself -- Joseph Cambell, Aldous Huxley, Mircea Iliade and many, many others -- seem to think the Christian revelation is now inadequate and another path through the enuui and hate of modern life must be found. If there own efforts are any evidence of the difficulty in men revealing God,the task would seem rather hopeless -- Although consistent with their beginning principle that men create gods and not God creating men.
My own thoughts on the matter were vividly displayed recently when a dear mentor and friend of mine (and myself) visited Chartre Cathedral. The labryinth on the floor was being occupied not by pilgrims immitating life's pilgrimage through earth to heaven, but by a coven of witches dressed in red receiving power from the summer solstice and engaging in group hugs in what in a happier age was a symbol of the Holy City. I think these new adventures will become more prevalent and more sadistic before Christians can regroup and return to the God of their Fathers. Joeseph Cambell for instance was born and raised a Catholic and what he found in other religions he was unable to see or love in his own. But this is mere opinion, men are not given the power to know the future and we can all thank God for that.

Also, modern economies of scale are also larger than those of the past, so it's expected that larger societal units would now exist and require a greater degree of management than in the past, though of course that loss of roots and trusting of strangers is partly what's made modern societies so dangerous.

Reply to Robert @ #3: Surely it's possible for that same "Old Paganism" to arise again as well. It's arguable that ties to the old have been lost, but to say the characteristics you cite praise of are impossible to recreate is bold and in need of explanation.

You cannot live a day, nay, hardly an hour, in our culture without encountering someone who assaults these basics from some idealogical viewpoint. This has been a most valuable article.

If we carefully consider the human soul in its nature, we see two different regions in it: the one belongs to the sensible order, the other to the supersensible or intellectual order. The sensible part of the soul is that which is common to men and animals; it includes the external senses and the internal senses which comprise the imagination, the sensible memory, and the sensitive appetites, whence spring the various passions or emotions which we call sensible love and hatred, desire and aversion, sensible joy and sadness, hope and despair, audacity, fear and anger. All this sensitive life exists in the animal, whether its passions are mild like those of the dove or lamb, or whether they are strong like those of the wolf or ox. Above this sensitive part common to men and animals, our nature likewise possesses an intellectual part which is common to men and angels, although it is far more vigorous and beautiful in the angel. By this intellectual part our soul towers above the body, and this is why we say the soul is spiritual. True intelligence which alone deserves the name of "intellect unqualified", is a faculty which, if it not be hindered as a result of insubordination on the part of the lesser faculties, its appointed handmaids, will fly straight to the mark. It does not think. It sees. The catalyzing of this power to see, which everyone bears within himself, whether he be aware of it or not, is the aim of spiritual life in every man.
Marco Pallis, Private correspondence

G One way of understanding our natural necessities is to view them as clauses in the Natural Law, which is far from being a set of abstractions deduced by right reason in an exercise of rationality. Natural Law is a law of nature, the law of our moral, social, and political nature. Most of its provisions can be learned by a long-term process of observation and induction. Men marry, beget children, and assume responsibility for wife (or wives) and children. This is close enough to being universal to give us indication of the law. On the other hand, we can also discover some parts of the Law by observing what happens when it is breached: Murderers are routinely killed, either by a government or by the victim's relatives or friends; thieves lose their property; adulterers are beaten or killed, etc. While the Natural Law is not perfectly observed by men, one might make a rough statistical approximation. It is the norm on which most cultures and nearly all higher civilizations converge.