All This Evil - What's Going On? (pt. 3 From October 5th)
Two weeks ago in my column, I started giving some insights into what’s happened in our society that would bring some people to condone murder “as long as its done for the right cause”. Or, worse yet, to not only approve of a political assassination, but in the case of Charlie Kirk, to joyously celebrate his death.
I gave a bit of history of phenomena that probably laid the foundation for our current state of affairs. These were social trends in the last century that first replaced God with “mankind” or “society”—and then, more recently, replaced God with “the individual”, so that all truth, all reality, becomes entirely subjective. Traditional morality as well as any beliefs that implied a supernatural basis were discarded in favor of the new “enlightened” and “progressive” thinking.
But there is an even deeper phenomenon that provided the soil in which these trends could take root and grow. Namely, that the basic assumptions which underpinned western civilization have changed. Let me explain.
The worldview that dominated in the Roman Empire, a pagan, indulgent worldview, was radically changed within three centuries by the preaching and witness of a handful of Apostles and the willing martyrdom of the saints.
For many centuries afterwards, the unchallenged prevailing societal vision in the Western world had become “Christianity”. That is not to say that all people throughout these centuries were good, practicing Christians. “Culturally Christian” might have been a better descriptor. For most people, however, the basic tenets of Christianity not only explained our place within the cosmos but also defined moral living. These seemed so obvious to people by then that they were unquestioned and gave society its sense of meaning and direction.
The last several centuries, however, have experienced an increasingly hostile atmosphere towards Christianity as a competing vision began to take hold, a humanistic and materialistic one. This competing cultural vision was brewing under the surface, and seemingly all at once, in the space of one generation it surfaced, and some countries that
Today I encounter many Catholic parents and grandparents who are confused why their children, raised Catholic, “suddenly” no longer go to Church or don’t have their children baptized. It’s because, perhaps without even realizing it, they’ve bought into a new underlying cultural worldview, one that has abandoned its Christian roots and has sprouted off into different directions.
Take courage though, this is exactly when real Christianity has shown itself to be, again and again, capable of resurgence. Just as in ancient Rome, the Church will respond by becoming Apostolic once more. Neo-paganism, after all, doesn’t have real depth. Self-indulgence can only go so far, and people have an innate yearning for meaning and purpose in their lives. Trying to satisfy that purpose by political power or monetary gain is a temporary delusion, and eventually all such delusions are shattered by the reality of death. In recent centuries and in our own era there have emerged pseudo-religious belief systems based on profoundly misguided assumptions that often demand fanatic but unthinking adherence. These will eventually self-implode when the promised utopia fails utterly, as has always happened.
The only lasting truth, which has stood the test of time, is Jesus Christ. He was a real person—that’s an historically indisputable fact. Also indisputable is that he was executed by a hostile Roman government. But an unexpected thing happened: many people soon after, in stunned disbelief, encountered him again in a risen, glorified body. —And so have countless individuals afterwards throughout history. We discovered that He is our God who created us and who came to rescue us from our own folly, and from sin and death. He challenged death itself and overcame it, and now offers us the gift of unending love and eternal life in heaven, our ultimate destiny and purpose.
Some of the new “progressive religions”, albeit atheistic ones, would have us believe that we can create our own heaven right here on earth, if we can only get the formula right….
Rome will fall again.
In Jesus,
Fr. Michael
P.S. I still want to share more insights about what I termed “progressive religions” so that we can understand why people are seduced by them, how they influence society today (often with bizarre ideas), and so that we can be vigilant to avoid their influence ourselves while taking appropriate steps to counter them.