Similarly in our times, Western Civilisation faces a crisis of confidence: collapsing demographics, impossible welfare commitments, governments across the globe crippled by unserviceable debt - to name but a few mortal challenges we face.

And just as the Romans were attacked by barbarians, so our way of life is threatened by random acts of terrorism.

The idea that this great civilisation could fall to a force that, at any other time, it could have easily defeated has captivated historians for hundreds of years. For Edward Gibbon and (Nobel Laureate) Theodore Mommsen, Rome's collapse was largely due to moral decadence.

Prof. de Mattei has undoubtedly been provocative with his words, and even unnecessarily hurtful in the way he made his point. But is his basic argument really so different in essence from that given by Cicero? In approximately 50 BC, the Roman senator wrote:

"[T]he first principle of society consists in the marriage tie, the next in children, the next in a family within one roof, where everything is in common. This society gives rise to the city, and is, as it were, the nursery of the commonwealth."

Cicero was later assassinated as an "Enemy of the State". Calling for de Mattei to resign would surely have the same effect: to silence a voice whose message is essential to our survival as a culture and as a civilisation."

Without wishing to enter the debate as to the precise cause of the fall of Rome, the Dignitatis Humanae Institute very strongly believes that our contemporary age, in its strategic undermining of the traditional family, is hollowing out one of the pillars of Western Society. And if this continues, the West will surely go the way of Rome, one and a half thousand years ago.

----Benjamin Harnwell is the Chairman, Institute of Human Dignity