Briefly Reviewed: July-August 2026

Failing Foundations: The Pillars of the West Are Nearing Collapse

By Sarah Cain

Publisher: Independently published

Pages: 150

Price: $14.95

Review Author: Robert McTeigue, S.J.

In the Broadway musical 1776 (and in its later film adaptation), John Adams cries out poignantly, “Is anybody there? Does anybody care? Does anybody see what I see?”

I was in high school when I first saw the film, and I immediately identified with the frustration and disappointment Adams expresses. Even back then I could see that something was terribly amiss with our culture and that normalcy bias held sway over those who seemed to be sleepwalking through life. Decades later, though I have happily met likeminded and rare battle companions along the way — all of us trying to articulate the dangers we are in and what we can do to put out the fires — I struggle with the disappointment of being shouted down, dismissed, or, worse, ignored. I find myself wondering who will take up the cause, sound the alarm, and insist that Christendom is still worth fighting for.

Enter Sarah Cain. Her first book, Failing Foundations: The Pillars of the West Are Nearing Collapse, offers a sober yet stirring analysis of our present peril, focusing on what she calls “the pillars of the West,” namely, God, reason, human dignity, and family. This book isn’t just a collection of “black pills.” It is easy to lament; it is harder to give an accurate diagnosis. And it is harder still to move from a clear-eyed diagnosis to a hopeful prescription, which is what Cain does in her final chapter, “A Tomorrow Worth Saving.”

Cain (aptly known online as “The Crusader Gal”) insists that man is inevitably religious — there will be deities, cultus, taboos, commandments, symbols, and blasphemy laws. “It would be inaccurate to say that we are becoming a less religious society; rather, we should say that we are becoming a dechristianized society,” she writes. “After all, while the 10 commandments are now banned from public school classrooms, the trans and gay flags are welcomed and hung proudly. They are defended with vigor and religious zeal.” Terrible consequences follow from rejecting the living God and replacing Him with idols. The scriptural illustrations are too numerous to list.

The consequences of manmade idols are disastrous: the collapse of morality, the apotheosis of the state, the reduction of man to his basest instincts yet armed with terrible mechanical ingenuity. In the United States, recent Supreme Court decisions, the proclivity toward violence as a form of political expression, cancel culture, and gruesome enthusiasm for in vitro fertilization come readily to mind. The ripple effects of idolatry are far reaching. “A brokenness of the scale that we are seeing is not without its cause,” Cain observes, “and until we acknowledge the genesis, we cannot move toward a remedy. Either man has a unique value, tied to who he is in relation to the Transcendent, or he is a mere instrument for the benefit of others who use his output and can morally discard him when he loses his usefulness.” Fallen man is so often a poor steward of his dignity, a dignity rooted in his being made in the image and likeness of his divine Creator, yet this dignity continues to assert itself and calls us to live harmoniously with our divine origin and divine vocation. Absent that firm foundation and transcendent horizon, human activity can only be a race to the bottom.

Having clearly identified our hazards and their origins, Cain pivots, offering alternatives that are at once principled and practical. Not surprisingly, she advocates conversion to Christ, but not as a mere strategy. “Don’t misunderstand. The Faith is not merely pragmatic,” she writes. “I don’t advocate re-establishing a Christian undergird to contemporary society because that society needs it in order to survive. It does, but that’s not the point. That’s an inversion of order. Christianity has the ability to build a thriving civilization because its claims are true.”

We seem prone these days to eschewing or surrendering our metaphysical obligations (especially discerning what is true or false) and instead rushing to expedient considerations of pleasure and pain. That can only end badly, as Cain illustrates throughout this book. Truth, like Goodness and Beauty, makes moral claims on us. If we conform to Truth as individuals and communities, we then make ourselves available to Goodness and Beauty. We need only look around to see what happens when we choose not to conform ourselves to Truth, and we know as Christians that Christ Himself is Truth.

Cain does not end her book with a merely pious fervorino. She is a young but seasoned cultural warrior. I think she would agree with J.R.R. Tolkien’s account of history as a long defeat. “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic,” he said, “so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.” I take this to mean that the human condition cannot be “fixed” by human effort alone. Our call is to live and fight with hope — with hope understood here as the choice to show up — and make ourselves available to the divine intervention that could be ours. I think Cain would add that part of what inspired her to write this current volume is the reluctance of many — including all too many Christians — to show up. Complacency, like dithering, is a form of despair.

Cain concludes with a call to arms: “The renewal of Christendom was achieved by the toil and suffering of peoples who understood that the fight for the good is an intergenerational battle that spans time and ends in eternity. For now, it’s our turn.” Failing Foundations will reward careful and repeated reading. It’s an inspirational intelligence briefing from the frontlines of our cultural conflict. I hope many will read it and then gladly go forward in the manner of Wordsworth’s happy warrior:

And, while the mortal mist
is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of
Heaven’s applause:
This is the happy Warrior;
this is he
Whom every Man in arms
should wish to be.

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