Archbishop
Fulton J. Sheen wrote in 1977, “We do know that at the end of time,
when
the great conflict between the forces of good and evil takes place,
Satan
will appear without the Cross, as the Great Philanthropist and Social
Reformer
to become the final temptation of mankind.”[12]
An English Catholic apologist of the last century, Ronald Knox,
likewise
said, “It seems probable enough that the Armageddon of the future lies
between Catholicism and some form of humanitarianism – I mean the
attempt
(in some form) to produce a perfect humanity through the external
pressure
of breeding, education, and legal coercion.”[13]Catholic
and Protestant writers of apocalyptic fiction, from the
dispensationalist
Protestant Left Behind series[14]
to the Catholic authors of Lord of the World[15]
and Father Elijah,[16]
have painted the Final Enemy as a man of the Left.
It may be that this
is, indeed,
the hour before the triumph of “progressive” religious and
political globalists.Current
American foreign policy has ranged most of the rest of the world
against
us; weapons of mass destruction and terrorist networks spread;
Communist-ruled
China is friendly with Russia now, and threatens to recover Taiwan by
any
means necessary; Russia retains a huge nuclear arsenal, and is led by a
former KGB colonel;[17]
imperialism, terror, and sex abuse with a religious cloak are
discrediting
traditional monotheist religions; capitalist economies worldwide are
built
on an unsustainable combination of public and private debt, imbalanced
trade, concentration of wealth and power in few hands, and a race for
the
bottom in labor costs (a trend that may wipe out the middle classes
that
have been the bulwark of social stability in the industrialized
nations).If
this house of cards tumbles – or is pushed – then the globalist
progressives will have their chance at creating a New World Order.
An
Apocalyptic Threat From the Right, As Well?
As bad as this
appears, we
may face an even sterner challenge, one that will be the worse for
being
unexpected by most: a global theocratic reaction that follows the New
World
Order.Such a reaction could culminate
in the appearance of a seemingly orthodox Christian wonder-worker, a
leader
who finally puts himself forward through the Church as the Anointed
One,
demanding worship as God (2 Thess.
2:4).This
theocracy would establish a regime of legalism and “righteous”
vengeance,
responding to leftist antinomianism by fanatically enforcing its own
laws,
and by scapegoatingany
individuals
or groups who might be plausibly blamed for installing or cooperating
with
the prior leftist, heretical “New World Order” regime.The
new purge would begin where the Nazis left off.
A present-day Catholic
mystic,
who calls himself “Miguel de Portugal,” sets forth this scenario in
detail:
a global war, followed by the creation of a “progressive” New World
Order
and an anti-Christian New Religion – and then, the rapid collapse of
this
system due to Divine intervention.He
expects that immediately thereafter, there will be a time of massive
conversions
to the Christian faith – but the re-emergentChurch
would be swiftly captured by movements that pervert the Church into a
totalitarian
theocracy.In the name of enforcing
religious orthodoxy, there would be a New Inquisition – and at the end,
there would be a religious deceiver, a False Christ, who would ensnare
most of the world.Soon after this,
Jesus will return in power and glory to rescue his people from this
final
tyranny.[18]
The prophecies of
“Miguel
de Portugal” do not have ecclesiastical approval, and it remains to be
seen whether future events will validate all his expectations.Many
who may read his web site could be put off by his style, if not by his
content.
Nevertheless, “Miguel”
has
given me – and perhaps, many others – an essential warning:as
bad as a victory of leftist globalism
would
be, it would not necessarily be the end of our trials.History
could well continue, with a global reaction toward a “Christianized”
form
of Fascism following the brief triumph of the leftist variant of the
New
World Order.
The Anglican writer C.
S.
Lewis describes what such a “religious” regime would be like: “The
loftier
the pretensions of the power, the more meddlesome, inhuman, and
oppressive
it will be.Theocracy is the worst
of all possible governments.All political
power is at best a necessary evil; but it is least evil when its
sanctions
are most modest and commonplace, when it claims no more than to be
useful
or convenient and sets itself strictly limited objectives.”[19]
He added, “The higher the pretensions of our rulers are, the more
meddlesome
and impertinent their rule is likely to be and the more the thing in
whose
name they rule will be defiled.”[20]
By exercising tyranny in the name of Christianity, a future rightist
regime
would perform an ultimate defilement.In
an essay that was a sequel to the Screwtape
Letters, Lewis’ infernal contact at the “Tempters’ TrainingCollege”
exulted in the demonic potential of religion gone bad: “All said and
done,
my friends, it will be an ill day for us if what most humans mean by
‘religion’
ever vanishes from the Earth.It can
still send us the truly delicious sins.The
fine flower of unholiness can grow
only
in the close neighborhood of the Holy.Nowhere
do we tempt so successfully as at the steps of the altar.”[21]
In 1940, Lewis warned
against
“pseudo-theology” of the extreme Left and Right: “Fascism and
Communism,
like all other evils, are potent because of the good they contain or
imitate.Diabolussimius
Dei.And of course, their occasion
is the failure of those who left humanity starved of that particular
good.…One
of the things we must guard against is the penetration of both into
Christianity.…Mark
my words: you will frequently see both a Leftist and a Rightist
pseudo-theology
developing – the abomination will stand where it ought not.”
Tolkien,
a Roman Catholic, likewise offered a glimpse of what the Deceiver’s
religious
dictatorship might be like.He pondered
what might have occurred in the world of The Lord of the Rings
if
the good wizard Gandalf had accepted the temptation of using the evil
One
Ring, the talisman of power, to overthrow the Dark Lord Sauron.In
a letter written to a reader in September 1963, Tolkien
said, “Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron.He
would have remained ‘righteous,’ but self-righteous.…Thus
while Sauron multiplied … evil, he
left
‘good’ clearly distinguishable from it.Gandalf
would have made good detestable and seem evil.”If
a future regime makes “good detestable and seem evil,” then the only
help
for humanity would be the Return of Christ.
A present-day
Evangelical
Protestant expert on religious cultism, Brooks Alexander, also warns:
“The
mystery of iniquity evades any simplistic attempt to identify evil with
chaos and disruption, or with vice and immorality.”The
Final Deceiver will arrive on his own White Horse, a counterfeit of
righteousness
and justice.
The Russian Orthodox
priest
Alexander Men, assassinated in 1990 for his faith, warned, “When
religion
becomes an instrument in the hands of those in power, when its
adherents
use force, then faith loses its true nature and becomes the servant of
political passions and the ‘interests’ of a particular social group.In
many ways our present spiritual crisis bears traces of that
counterfeit,
that metamorphosis of religion, when religion is darkened by fanaticism
and violence and becomes merged with interests of the state.”An
Italian Catholic commentator on the Apocalypse restates the peril of
politicized
religion: “The recognition of the spiritual authority of the Church by
the world in exchange for secular power has always been a subtle
temptation
and a form of blackmail.(Be very
careful when political authorities begin to praise Christianity and
speak
well of it.)”
What is the value of
this
warning?It alerts those who value
Christian faith and human liberty that grave threats may come at us
from
multiple, unexpected directions – simultaneously or sequentially.In
his novel That Hideous Strength, C. S. Lewis describes – from
the
point of view of the head of the secret police in the N. I. C. E., a
Satanic
group that attempts the takeover of England – how the Final Threat
could
transcend our usual political categories: “Isn’t it absolutely
essential
to keep a fierce Left and a fierce Right, both on their toes and each
terrified
of the other?That’s how we get things
done.Any opposition to the N. I.
C. E. is represented as a Left racket in the Right papers, and a Right
racket in the Left papers.If it’s
properly done, you get each side outbidding the other in support of us
– to refute the enemy slanders.Of
course we’re non-political.The
real power always is.”
Therefore, our
spiritual
early warning systems should scan the entire horizon, not just the Left.We
should not repeat the mistake that the French High Command made before
World War II, when they expected the next attack from Germany
to come as a frontal assault.In response,
they built, and trusted, the “impregnable” Maginot
Line – and were overwhelmed when Germany
outflanked their defenses in 1940.
The
Two-Fold Threat: Lessons From History
It would be easily
understandable
that readers scoff at the notion that we face a two-fold, potentially
apocalyptic
threat to our faith and our freedom, from the extreme Right and the
extreme
Left alike.Below, I offer reasons
(derived from theology, social theory, history, and human psychology)
to
take seriously the warning against an unexpected right-wing globalist
aftermath of left-wing, URI/Gorbachev-style globalism.
Consider the lessons
of human
history – especially the experience of the 1914-1989 period.Fascism,
it seems, has an enduring mass appeal.In Germany,
the social-democratic revolution of 1918 faced an immediate, violent
reaction
from defenders of the old regime, including the rise of “Free Corps”
militias
in 1919 and a military coup attempt in 1920; the Nazi Party arose
amidst
this chaos. Throughout Europe, people
reacted
similarly, as a response to the threat of domestic Communism and
subversion
from Russia.The
far Left evoked the authoritarian, Fascist Right.Additionally,
as the Nazis seized power, in 1933, “Hitler knew that masses of
Socialist
and Communist workers were deserting their parties in droves, many of
them
coming over to him easily and early.”Neo-Nazism
in Germany
is strongest in the former German Democratic Republic, the Soviet
satellite
state of 1945-1989.
In the aftermath of a
future
global leftist regime, those outraged by the horrors of the time may do
as their European counterparts did between the World Wars, and turn
toward
an updated, religious form of Fascism.Recruits
to the far right of the future may include many who helped to establish
and manage the leftist “New World Order”; repentant and disillusioned
leftists
may become inveterate, illiberal, and fanatical anti-leftists in
revulsion
against their own earlier deeds.(This
has happened before in the history of the Left; it can easily happen
again.)It’s
also true that persecution creates and ennobles martyrs; disreputable
forces
can align themselves with the persecuted, and cover themselves with
borrowed
glory after the end of the persecution.Exactly
this occurred with the French Communists during and after World War II;
it could happen again with cultic religious movements during and after
a future leftist regime.
Another factor will be
at
work: a leftist New World Order will be, in practical terms, atheistic.Any
spirituality that it fosters will be emotionally shallow and
unsatisfying,
akin to the spiritist pabulum now
offered
by Robert Muller, Neale Donald Walsch,
and Barbara Marx Hubbard.
When the leftist
regime collapses
– whether by Divine or human action – people will seek a more
“profound”
spirituality.That will be the cue
for those who plan a false restoration of tradition to offer their
gilded
wares to a disoriented, shell-shocked world.It
is likely that multitudes will take the bait.The
precedent for this is – again – the 1914-1989 period.Communism
was established and maintained in Russia
and China
only by dint of civil war and repeated, massive purges; its atheism did
not captivate the masses, or fully compensate them for their material
sacrifices.By
contrast, German Nazism took power without civil war.Hitler
and the Nazis quickly won the adulation of the majority of the German
people,
and the Nazis remained popular within Germany
until it was clear that Germany
was losing the war.The
cult of blood and race, and a false restoration of volkisch
tradition, was a part of the glue that held the Third Reich together
until
it was destroyed by the Allies.George
Orwell wrote in 1937, “Fascism has been able to play upon every
instinct
that revolts against hedonism and a cheap conception of ‘progress.’It
has been able to pose as the upholder of the European tradition, and to
appeal to Christian belief, to patriotism, and to the military virtues.”
A new, global
religious Fascism
could do something like this, or worse.The
historian John Lukacs said, “Compared
to
the untruth of Stalin’s Communism, Hitler’s National Socialism may have
been a half truth; but, as St. Thomas
said, a half truth may be more evil than a lie.…A
half truth is not equivalent to 50 percent of the truth.It
means, instead, a 100 percent truth compounded with, and subordinated
to,
a 100 percent untruth, the result being an especially dangerous
corruption
of truth.”The
same comparison could apply to the left-wing and right-wing variants of
a future New World Order.
The
Two-Fold Threat: Warnings From Scripture and Patristic Tradition
Consider the warnings
that
Christ issued against the Final Deceiver and his religious precursors.In
the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Beware of false prophets, who
come
to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” (Matt.
7:15)Jesus
prophesied against the religious authorities who persecuted him for
healing
a man on the Sabbath (Jn. 5:15-16):
“But I know that you have not the love of God within you. I have come
in
my Father’s name, and you do not receive me; if another comes in his
own
name, him you will receive.” (Jn.5:42-43).In
his apocalyptic discourse, given a few days before his Passion, Christ
warned: “Take heed that no one leads you astray. For many will come in
my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.”
(Mt.
24:4-5).He continued: “And if those
days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved; but for the
sake of the elect those days will be shortened. Then if any one says to
you, ‘Lo, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For
false Christs and false prophets will
arise
and show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible,
even
the elect. Lo, I have told you beforehand. So, if they say to you, ‘Lo,
he is in the wilderness,’ do not go out; if they say, ‘Lo, he is in the
inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the
east
and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of
man.”
(Mt. 24:22-27).St.
Paul likewise shows that Satan can act through
seduction
and false light: “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.So
it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants
of righteousness.” (2 Cor. 11:14-15)
Taking these Biblical
admonitions
together, the nature of the Final Enemy becomes clearer.He
will proclaim himself as the Christ, will build an “ecclesial movement”
among the religious authorities and rank-and-file Christians, and will
rally many to his side with his false miracles, signs and wonders that
counterfeit Christ’s own actions.The
Usurper will tempt even “the elect” – those who are (or consider
themselves
to be) orthodox and obedient Christians.Such
will be the allure of the “Ape of Christ” that unless the time of trial
were shortened by God, everyone would fall.This,
then, will be a peril that could ensnare anyone – including
traditionalists
and conservatives.Contrast this with
the New Age “Christs” such as Share
International’s
“Maitreya,”
or with the secular utopias offered by Gorbachev and Maurice Strong, or
with the silly syncretism of the United Religions Initiative and other
interfaith movements.Many leftists,
liberals, and New Age devotees love this stuff – but traditionalists of
all kinds are instinctively disgusted.If
the Last Trial is to test the faith of everybody, there will be
a trap that could lure the Right as well as the Left.In
the time of the leftist New World Order, the Left will be tempted by
seeing
the realization of its own rebellious desires; in the succeeding time
of
the Deceiver, the orthodox and the rightists will be tempted via their
own orthodoxy, religiosity, and instincts of obedience.
The tradition of the
Church
carries forward Christ’s warning that mankind’s final challenge may
come
at the hand of an imposter who acts in the name of Christ, and then
falsely
claims to be Him.The Didache,
a summary of Church teaching from the end of the first century, warns
of
the final liar: “For in the last days the false prophets and the
corrupters
shall be multiplied, and the sheep shall be turned into wolves, and
love
shall change to hate.For as lawlessness increaseth
they shall hate one another and persecute and betray, and then shall
appear
the deceiver of the world as a Son of God.”
In his scholarly
history
of the Christian traditions pertaining to Antichrist, Bernard McGinn
says, “Antichrist as the false messiah, the ‘pseudo-Christ,’ is first
and
foremost the great deceiver, the arch-hypocrite.”St. Hippolytus
of Rome wrote in the
early
part of the third century that “The Savior was manifested as a lamb, so
he [Antichrist] too, in like manner, will appear as a lamb, though
within
he is a wolf.”McGinn
comments, “The history of the Antichrist legend reveals, above all, how
Christians have viewed the perversion of true religion, the masquerades
that can be used to hide evil intent under the guise of religious
probity.…
Augustine of Hippo, preaching on the First Epistle of John, identified
Antichrist with heretics and schismatics
who departed from the true church, but he went on to speak also of
Antichrists
who remain within – those who confess Christ with their mouths but deny
him by their deeds.”McGinn
concludes, “the dominant view of ultimate evil has not been one of
cruel
tyranny so much as one of deception, the masquerading of the lie that
perverts
the good that saves.”
Christian Scripture
and Tradition
together alert us to the ultimate peril: a foe who is the seductive Ape
of Christ, and who will build his own religious and political kingdom
on
Earth.As
the Russian Orthodox theologian Vladimir Solovyov
warned in 1900, “the closing scene in the tragedy of history will not
be
a mere infidelity to or a denial of Christianity, nor simply the
triumph
of materialism or anything similar to it, but that it will be a
religious
imposture.The
name of Christ will be arrogated by forces in humanity that in their
practice
and in their very essence are alien, even inimical, to Christ and his
Spirit.”
A
False Hope: the “Great King” of the West and a Future “Holy Pope”
There are traditions
within
the Catholic Church that may predispose some people to heed the
Deceiver.Chief
among these beliefs is the notion that a global upsurge of evil and a
Divine
chastisement will be followed by a time of peace and universal
conversion
to the Catholic Church.In this era,
there would arise a Great King to restore order and justice worldwide;
he would work in tandem with a Holy Pope, who will purify the Church
and
restore the ancient disciplines.In
the words of one adherent of this theory: “The Great King to-be [sic]
and
the Holy Pontiff will reveal themselves to the world and fight
Communism,
thus prefiguring Henoch and Elias.Stones
will fall from heaven; earthquakes and tidal waves will wreak havoc
throughout
the world; famines and epidemics will be widespread.Thus
will come the end of the first stage, or ‘the Good Friday of
Christendom.’The
resurrection will be spectacular; the Great King will be the Emperor of
Western Europe, and anointed by the Holy Pontiff.Many
Jews and all non-Catholic Christians will turn to the True Faith.The
Mohammedans will embrace Christianity, as also the Chinese.In
short, virtually the whole world will be Catholic.This
universal preaching of the Gospel, in turn, will constitute the first
sign
of the second stage [leading to the rise of Antichrist and the end of
the
age].”
The tradition of the
Great
King and the Holy Pope is based on apocalyptic speculation by saints
and
by anonymous writers,
from the fourth century onward.It
first emerged from the Tiburtine
Sibyl,
a work that may date back to 380-400 AD.However,
expectations for a future Great Monarch and a Holy Pope are not defined
in Scripture, or in any dogmatic Conciliar
decrees, or in any other official teaching of the Catholic Church.Rather,
these hopes derive from private revelation – and Catholics are free to
accept, or to reject, such visions and locutions according to the
dictates
of their own conscience and reason.(Of
course, Catholics are called upon to reject private revelations that
are
contrary to Scripture or to the traditional teaching of the Catholic
Church.)
Those who await the
Great
Monarch and a Holy Pope may be ready to fall into the trap of
the
Deceiver, in a traumatized reaction against the preceding horrors of
the
left-wing globalist regime.Catholic
writer Paul Thigpen warns, “Looking for the Great Monarch, then, who
does
not appear in Scripture, might lead to overlooking the Antichrist, who
does.It might even lead – a more
disturbing thought – to mistaking the Antichrist for the Great Monarch.After
all, lesser antichrists of the past such as Hitler and Stalin have
seduced
followers with visions of grand and glorious earthly kingdoms.Surely
the Antichrist of the last days will do the same.”
The
French metaphysician René Guénon
said likewise in 1945: “One can already see sketched out, in various
productions
of indubitably ‘counter-initiatic’ origin
or
inspiration, the idea of an organization that would be like the
counterpart,
but by the same token also the counterfeit, of a traditional conceptionsuch
as that of the ‘Holy Roman Empire,’ and some such organization must
become
the expression of the ‘counter-tradition’ in the social order; and for
similar reasons the Antichrist must appear like something that could be
called, using the language of the Hindu tradition, an inverted Chakravarti.The
reign of the ‘counter-tradition’ is in fact precisely what is known as
the ‘reign of Antichrist.’”(For Guénon,
spiritual growth within orthodox, traditional religions is a way to
authentic
“initiation,” communion with God; those who are involved in
“counter-initiation”
are – knowingly or not – attaining communion with spiritual forces
opposed
to God.)
The
desire for a “Great King” aligned with a “Holy Pope” to establish
justice
is understandable in these lawless times, when bureaucrats, venal
time-servers,
mountebanks, and charlatans dominate politics and churches.However,
this is a yearning that will only find satisfaction when Christ returns.No
one other than Him is fit to fill the roles that visionaries assign to
idealized future Kings and Pontiffs.
Religious
Sectarianism: Laying the Foundation for the Final Deception
Additionally,
sectarian religious movements
that seek political power are arising within and outside the churches.These
movements may lay the groundwork for the “spiritual” reactionary regime
that could follow the left-wing globalists.
In
making the following criticism of right-wing sectarianism, I do not
mean
to disparage the sincerity or good will of these movements’ present-day
followers.Many members of these
movements are – as one defender recently told me – people who are
“trying
to be good Catholics in these difficult times.”Like Lot,
they are “greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the wicked” (2
Peter
2:7).Therefore, if they see a life
raft that promises to carry them unscathed through the present
ecclesiastical
and social chaos, they climb on board.Criticism
of these movements from the Left only makes this life raft look more
appealing
to beleaguered conservatives and traditionalists.Nevertheless,
it would be spiritual malpractice for me to keep silent about the
dangers
that may come from this quarter, perils that few on the Right now
perceive.
Five
points, therefore:
·Sincerity
and good will are positive attributes for souls, but I am not acting as
a confessor for individuals.I
am dealing with social movements, and the good or evil that may arise
from
these movements.There is abundant
evidence in history that sincere zealots with praiseworthy intentions
can
do great harm – regardless of whether the fanatics are secular or
religious,
leftist or rightist.
·Bankers
and art collectors know that the most dangerous counterfeits are those
that seem real at first glance.The
same is true for spiritual counterfeits. The
more convincingly a cultic spiritual movement can present itself as a
model
of probity and orthodoxy, the more dangerous it is.
·Many
of these movements’ allies and adherents see what they want to see in
the
movements, and will never learn of or foster the full agenda of the
organization.In
this respect, they are like ordinary American Freemasons: sociable
Protestant
men who attend Lodge parties, do some old-fashioned rituals, and
network
for business – and who never discover, let alone approve of, the
Theosophical
and esoteric form of Masonry espoused by Foster Bailey, Manly Hall,
and MemphisRite
Masonry.
·The
movements that I am criticizing appear to be trying to use money,
political
power, and spiritual manipulation to re-mold their followers, and to
re-make
the world.People of good will may
enter the rank and file of these sectarian organizations, but if
they
are fully re-formed in the movement’s image – or if they rise
within
the movement, approaching its “inner ring”
– how long will their sincerity and good will last?In Tolkien’sLord
of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf warned the hobbit Frodo about the
awful transformation that will befall any person who seeks to use the
Ring
of Power, even for good purposes: “Yes, sooner or later – later, if he
is strong or well-meaning to begin with, but neither strength nor good
purpose will last – sooner or later the dark power will devour him.”
·The
groups that I name below appear to be preparing for a “utopia of the
Right.”However,
they are not necessarily the ones who will build the final regime of
the
“counter-tradition.”That dubious
honor may fall to one of the present-day movements, or a
coalition
of these groups, or some yet-to-be established group that takes
authoritarian
pseudo-orthodoxy to its last extreme.
Outside
the Catholic Church, rightist movements that explicitly seek to reunite
Church and State include the followers of the Rev. Sun Myung
Moon
and the Christian Reconstructionists
(whose ideal is a theocracy based on Old Testament Law).
Within
the Catholic Church, these sectarian tendencies are exemplified now by
Opus Dei, the Legionaries of Christ, the Neo-Catechumenal
Way, and
similar
“new ecclesial movements.”A
scholarly observer of new religious movements says, “Each, from its own
point of view, is promoting true spirituality, religious orthodoxy, and
conservative morality.”
The
new ecclesial movements are growing, and exist worldwide.The
Legionaries of Christ have “500 priests, another 2,500 seminarians,
1,000
consecrated lay persons, and 30,000 active members in twenty nations.”As
of 2001, Opus Dei had “82,443 laity and 1,763 priests” as members;
another 2,000 deacons and priests were in the closely related Priestly
Society of the Holy Cross.
More than half of Opus Dei members, about 47,000, are in
continental Europe.The Neo-Catechumenal
Way has
“more
than fifty ‘Redemptoris Mater’ seminaries
throughout
the world, from which thousands of priests have emerged and been juridically
incardinated in the dioceses, but are often, in fact, at the exclusive
service of the Way.”The
“Way” has about one million members in 786 dioceses worldwide.Focolare
has “several million ‘adherents’ with 80,000 core members” in 1,500
dioceses
in 190 countries.Most
of the youths who flock – in the hundreds of thousands – to Papal
masses
at Youth Day celebrations “do not come from the parishes, but from the
movements: Focolare, the Neocatechumenal
Way,
the Charismatics.
These are to a great extent made up of converts, of lukewarm Christians
who have returned to a strong faith practice.”
All
of these movements “are in practice largely autonomous from the
local Churches.”A
recent critique published by La CiviltàCattolica
– a paper whose contents are reviewed before printing by the Vatican’s
secretariat of state – warns of three dangers associated with the
movements:
“The first danger: ‘The tendency to make absolute their own Christian
experience,
holding it to be the only valid one, for which reason the ‘true’
Christians
would be those who are part of their own movement.’The
second: ‘The tendency to close themselves off; that is, to follow their
own pastoral plans and methods of formation for the members of the
movement,
to carry out their own apostolic activities, refusing to collaborate
with
other ecclesial organizations, or seeking to occupy all the territory
themselves,
leaving scarce resources for the activities of other associations.’The
third: ‘The tendency to cut themselves off from the local Church,
making
reference in their apostolic activity more to the methods of the
movement
and the directives of its leaders than to the directives and pastoral
programs
of the dioceses and parishes. From this arises the sometimes bitter
tensions
that can be created between the ecclesial movements and the bishops and
pastors.’”
Opponents’
accusations against these groups are the standard charges against
cults:
heretical teachings and rituals, secrecy, aggressive and deceptive
methods
of recruitment, rigidly separating young adherents from their families,
idolization of the founder of the movement, overemphasis on the virtue
of obedience, methods of member formation that are akin to
brainwashing,
the teaching that salvation depends on loyalty to the movement,
requiring
members to make their confessions only to priests who are members of
the
movement, demanding public disclosure of faults (the “manifestation of
conscience”) in meetings with fellow-members and superiors, and (in the
case of Opus Dei) use of flagellation and other harsh physical penances
by some members.It
should be a red flag that these movements have spawned groups of
bruised
and disillusioned survivors, organizations such as the Opus Dei
Awareness
Network
and REGAIN,
and that these new ecclesial movements have a place on standard
anti-cult
web sites
– an “honor” not shared by traditional Catholic religious orders such
as
Benedictines, Dominicans, and Franciscans.
Defenders
of the new ecclesial movements reply to these accusations with an
appeal
to authority.Fr. RosinoGibellini,
director of Concilium, a
Catholic
theological journal, said in 2003: “the movements are religious
organizations.
They are not sects, as above all, they refer to the authority of the
Church.
What is more, it could be said that they have a direct line with the
leadership
of the Church.”For Concilium
to praise the new ecclesial movements is, perhaps, an unexpected
instance
of Left/Right unity within the Catholic Church’s structure.Concilium
says that it “exists to promote theological discussion in the spirit of
Vatican II, out of which it was born. It is a catholic journal in the
widest
sense: rooted firmly in the Catholic heritage, open to other Christian
traditions and the world’s faiths.”Cardinal Schönbern,
a conservative, made a similar defense of new ecclesial movements in
1997.In
2000, Cardinal Stafford hailed the movements as “among the most
beautiful
fruits of the Council.”
Some
Catholic bishops have acted against these groups.In
1981, Cardinal Hume, Archbishop of Westminster in the United Kingdom,
gave
credence to charges against Opus Dei by directing that in his diocese,
they must refrain from enlisting members under 18 years of age, that
they
allow young people who wish to join Opus Dei to discuss the matter with
their family, that people remain free “to join or leave the
organization
without undue pressure being exerted,” that members have the freedom to
choose a spiritual director inside or outside of the movement, and that
Opus Dei activities be clearly advertised as such.It’s
most unlikely that the Cardinal would have issued such directives if
these
practices were not common within Opus Dei.Historian
Michael Walsh has said, “Popes before the present one can hardly be
said
to have been enthusiastic in their endorsement of Opus, and for every
bishop
who welcomes Opus into his diocese it is clear that there are many who
either will not accept them, or are unhappy at finding them installed
in
their jurisdiction when they take up their appointments.”The Neo-Catechumenal
Way “has
been
condemned by cardinals, bishops and important episcopal
conferences.”
Nevertheless,
these movements now have Papal favor.As
Jason Berry and Gerald Renner explain, “John Paul saw the Legionaries
as
a sign of Catholic restoration in Latin
America, akin to Opus
Dei
in Spain.”On
the eve of Pentecost 2004, the Pope said, “The ecclesial movements and
new communities are a providential answer, inspired by the Holy Spirit
given the present need of new evangelization.”
There are two
Legionary bishops:
Bishop Brian Farrell, consecrated in 2003, who is second in command at
the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and “Bishop Jorge
Bernal, the prelate ofChetumal-Cancun
in Mexico,
who was consecrated in 1974.”In
1997, Pope John Paul II named MarcialMaciel
as one of 21 Papal delegates for synod of the Catholic Church in
the Americas.In
January 2001, the Pope praised the founder of the Legionaries: “With
special affection I greet your beloved founder, Fr. MarcialMaciel,
and extend to him my heartfelt congratulations …I
especially appreciated his confirmation of your characteristic fidelity
to the successor of Peter.”In
2002, the Vatican’s
Congregation of Bishops held an orientation workshop for all bishops
who
had been ordained in the previous year.The
event “was organized in cooperation with the Legionaries of Christ, and
held at the Legionaries’ university in Rome, Regina Apostolorum;”
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation, noted that
“at the end of each daily Mass the bishops and the Legionaries had
recited
a prayer for the pope” which had been “written by Fr. MarcialMacielDegollado,
the founder of the Legionaries.”In
2003, John Allen commented, “Given the crisis in the United
States and elsewhere provoked by the
sex
abuse scandals, John Paul’s embrace of Maciel
is noteworthy indeed.”(Allen
found this to be “noteworthy” because there are unresolved, public
accusations
of sexual abuse against Maciel.)
The power of Opus Dei
is
also growing in the Vatican.The
founder of Opus Dei, JosemaríaEscrivá,
was canonized, declared to be a saint, by John Paul II in October 2002.Escrivá
was granted this status only 27 years after his death, the fastest
canonization
on record.The Pope’s press spokesman
is Joaquín Navarro-Valls,
a vowed lay member of the order; there are two Opus Dei Cardinals
(Archbishop
Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Lima, Peru,
and JuliánHerranz,
the president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts);
supporters
are rising in the congregations of the Curia, while opponents are
marginalized
or made to retire.As
John Allen noted, “Opus Dei does seem
disproportionately
represented in the Roman curia” for an organization of its size.
The writings of the
founder
of Opus Dei, JosemaríaEscrivá,
express the tenor of much “new ecclesial movement” spirituality and
practice.In
The
Way, he said, “When a layman sets himself up as an arbiter of
morals,
he frequently errs; laymen can only be disciples.”“The
plane of the sanctity our Lord asks of us is determined by these three
points: holy steadfastness, holy forcefulness and holy shamelessness.”“Steadfastness
is not simply intransigence: it is ‘holy intransigence.’Don’t
forget that there also exists a ‘holy forcefulness.’”“If,
to save an earthly life, it is praiseworthy to use force to keep a man
from committing suicide, are we not allowed to use the same coercion –
‘holy coercion’ – to save the Lives (with a capital) of so many who are
stupidly bent on killing their souls?”“Who
are you to judge the rightness of a superior’s decision?Don’t
you see that he has more basis for judging than you?He
has more experience; he has more upright, experienced, and impartial
advisers;
and above all, he has more grace, a special grace, the grace of his
state,
which is the light and powerful aid of God.”“Be
slow to reveal the intimate details of your apostolate.Don’t
you see that the world in its selfishness will fail to understand?”“There
are many people, holy people, who don’t understand your way. Don’t
strive
to make them understand.It would
be a waste of time and would give rise to indiscretions.”“Come
on! Ridicule him! Tell him he’s behind the times: it’s incredible that
there are still people who insist on regarding the stagecoach as a good
means of transportation. That’s
for those who dig up musty, old fashioned ‘Voltairianisms’
or discredited liberal ideas of the nineteenth century.”“You
have come to the apostolate to submit, to annihilate yourself, not to
impose
your own personal viewpoints.”“Obedience,
the sure way. Blind obedience to your superior, the way of sanctity.
Obedience
in your apostolate, the only way: for, in a work of God, the spirit
must
be to obey or to leave.”“It
is human nature to have little appreciation for what costs but little.
That is why I recommended to you the ‘apostolate of not giving.’Never
fail to claim what is fairly and justly due to you from the practice of
your profession, even if your profession is the instrument of your
apostolate.”
The new ecclesial
movements’
approach to the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church (and to other
human rights abuses) exemplifies their arrogance and indifference to
the
suffering of the powerless.
In August 2002, the
conservative
Catholic journalist Rod Dreher wrote
in
a column for the Wall Street Journal that unless the Pope took
“dramatic
action to restore the church to holiness – starting with deposing this
legion of bad bishops – his criticism of modern society will ring
hollow
in the heart of this faithful American Catholic.”The
prominent Opus Dei priest Fr. John McCloskey replied to the Journal
that a “minuscule proportion” of “Catholic priests and bishops” were
implicated
in the scandal, and that “remedies are already being put into effect. I
would hope that Mr. Dreher would be
more
patient in terms of the remedy. The church has a pretty good track
record.
Check in again in about another thousand years.”
Fr. McCloskey’s
millennial
“let them eat cake” attitude toward the victims, families, and their
supporters
mirrors the stance that other prominent Opus Dei and Legionary priests,
and their high-level allies, have taken.In
March 2002, an Italian priest relied on Escrivá’s
maxims to attack a Catholic World Newscolumnist’s criticismof
scandal-tainted priests.The priest
also blamed parents for not teaching children to respect the Church
hierarchy:
“Unfortunately not all priests live in full harmony with the Church and
with their sacred commitments. One of the prominent figures of the
Church
of the last century, Blessed JosemaríaEscrivá,
reminds us accurately of the fact that any priest—whoever he might
be—is
however always another Christ (The Way, 66).…Yes,
there is a crisis in the Church in many countries. And yes, many
priests
continue to contribute to it, but this should inspire us to pray more
for
the priests and for their sanctification, rather than to publicly
ridicule
them as a group or even under pseudonyms. After all, even more
responsible
for the present crises are those parents who educate their children to
all, but not Gospel values, including the lack of respect and devotion
to the hierarchical structure given to the Church by Our Lord.”
In April 2002,
Cardinal Herranz,
an Opus Dei member whom John Allen describes as “the Vatican’s
attorney general,” criticized “a climate of ‘exaggeration, financial
exploitation
and nervousness’ in the United
States. Herranz
also complained of a ‘tenacious scandalistic
style’ in the American press.”In
2003, the Cardinal said, “pedophilia is only minimally identified with
the Church, touching scarcely one percent of priests. Meanwhile for
other
categories of persons, the percentages are much higher.”
A layman associated
with
Opus Dei said in early 2002, in response to the then-emerging abuse
scandal
in Boston, “something
will happen to America
to protect the Church … any country that has historically persecuted
the
Church at the height of its power collapsed.”(In
the same vein, in 2002 Cardinal Oscar
Rodriguez Maradiaga
of Honduras,
who is not a member of Opus Dei, decried “media ‘persecution’ of the
Catholic
church in the United
States,
comparing it to the times of Nero and Diocletian, and more recently,
Stalin
and Hitler.”)
Eight
former members of the Legionaries of Christ have formally accused the
founder
of the Legion, Fr. MarcialMacielDegollado,
of sexually molesting them in the 1950s and 1960s, and of “absolving”
them
afterward.Despite their pleas for
justice, the Vatican
has not investigated the charges.Fr.
Richard McBrien, a liberal critic of
the
Legion, said that if Maciel were an
American
priest facing similar charges by former students, “he would have been
immediately
removed from ministry under the U.S.
bishops’ 2002 charter for the protection of youth.”
In Peru,
the diocese of Opus Dei Archbishop Cipriani
had been the center of a brutal civil war between the Army and the
terrorist
Maoist group “Shining Path.”Cipriani
“consistently defended the armed forces against charges of atrocities,
and argued that ‘Most human rights organizations are just covering the
tails of political movements, almost all of them Marxist or Maoist.’”Such
was his justification for refusing to allow the Catholic bishops’ human
rights groups to enter his jurisdiction.In
2003, after peace was restored, the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation
Commission
(TRC) paid “tribute to the role of the Churches, ‘irrespective of
theological
or pastoral positions’ in ‘saving many lives and preventing many other
abuses.’”
However, “the report made an explicit exception of the diocese of Ayacucho
under its then archbishop, Juan Luis Cipriani,
who ‘placed obstacles in the way of church organisations
working on human rights, and denied the existence of human rights
violations.’Speaking
at the Mass for the feast of St Rose of Lima
on 30 August, Cardinal Cipriani said
the
TRC had not bothered to talk to him, and denounced its report as
‘prejudiced,
biased and petty.’”It
appears that Opus Dei clergy and prelates use similar language against
those who criticize their role in abuse, whether the abuse is wartime
atrocities
or the cover-up of sexual crime.
Be that as it may,
these
“new ecclesial movements” – and high authorities within the Vatican
– remain convinced that these organizations represent the future of the
Catholic Church.Therefore, the movements
and their elite supporters envision a complete reconstruction of the
Catholic
Church.
A Vatican
reporter interviewed Cardinal James Francis Stafford, an American who
headed
the Pontifical Council for Laity in 2002; the Cardinal said, “Despite
whatever
rough edges these groups may possess, Stafford
argued, what he hears from men and women involved in them is that they
know how to build community. Hence, Stafford
said, he hopes the American bishops will become more open to the
movements.”Cardinal
Stafford said the same in 2003 to a reporter from the newspaper of the
Catholic Archdiocese of Boston: “I sense that living forgiveness, that
love, which is a tough love, to be very present in the ecclesial
movements
in a way that I don’t sense them as strongly in the parishes. Also, the
vision of the early communities after the ascension of Jesus, as
expressed
in Acts 2 and 4, are better expressed, better realized, in the new lay
movements than I sense in most parishes.…I
think one of the instruments that the Spirit has given to us would be
these
new lay communities, including the Neocatechumenate.
Despite the fact that so many find objections to the Neocatechumenate
in the United
States,
I am convinced that the means for renewal within the Church rests with
the new communities and it also rests with the Neocatechumenate.”
Should
American bishops open the door as requested, they may be letting a
large
and aggressive camel into the tent.As
John Allen reported in 2003, “Spain
is something of a laboratory for a redefinition of parish and diocesan
structures.One staggering statistic
from [Opus Dei priest] de la Hoz: Of
Spanish
Catholics who attend Mass at least once a month (roughly 18 percent
of Spain’s
37 million Catholics, or around 6.6 million people), more than 40
percent
come from the movements. In other words, almost half of the practicing
Catholics in Spain,
some 3 million, belong to a movement.As
this number continues to rise, I wondered, what will the impact be on
parish
life? Extrapolating from what Gordon and Munoz said, it seems one
scenario
is that the parish will not disappear, but it will play a very
different
role. Instead of being the center of Catholic life, the crucible in
which
one’s spirituality is forged, it will function as a meeting place for
the
movements. The parish would become a sort of ecclesiastical piazza, in
which adherents of the Neocatechumenate,
Opus Dei, Regnum Cristi [sic],
Catholic
Action, Communion and Liberation, etc., meet to share experiences, to
work
on joint projects, and at least sometimes to worship together, before
moving
back down their different avenues. Under this scenario, the pastor
becomes
a facilitator rather than a shepherd in the traditional sense, someone
whose task is to bring the movements into conversation and
collaboration.
The parish becomes the guarantor of communion, but the focus of
Christian
living will be inside the movements.A
related question is what happens to bishops. When the primary identity
of Catholics is defined in geographic terms, i.e., as a member of
such-and-such
as parish, the diocesan bishop is the key authority. But once Catholics
understand themselves in terms of a charism
or spirituality, one that crosses geographic boundaries, they become
analogous
to members of a religious order in the sense that they take their cues
more from leadership of the group rather than bishops.Already
one sees this process at work in Spain,
where KikoArguello
and Carmen Hernandez, co-founders of the Neocatechumenate,
are higher-profile and more powerful figures than most Spanish bishops.
Though Pope John Paul II has encouraged the movements, to what extent
the
institutional Church is prepared for the long-term implications of a
shift
from geography to charism as the locus
of
Catholic identity is an open question.Spain
seems the place where this will be worked out first, and hence it bears
watching.”
In
2004, Allen commented that the European Union’s rejection of any
mention
of the Christian heritage of Europe
in the proposed Union constitution “will probably push a few more
European
bishops to open their doors to new ecclesial realities such as Opus
Dei,
the Neocatechumenate, and the
Legionaries
of Christ. In a culture that often seems not just indifferent, but
positively
hostile, to organized religion, it may be that only disciplined, highly
motivated groups operating outside traditional ecclesiastical
structures
will have the capacity to evangelize and catechize. If nothing else,
the
defeat on the constitution tells bishops that they need help.”
As an Italian
commentator
noted in 2003, the new ecclesial movements “refer directly to the pope
as their one connection to the Church. To different degrees they bear
the
distinctive features of a sect. The risk is that they will transform
the
Catholic Church into a body of memberships in juxtaposed groups that
don’t
communicate with each other: each movement with its own liturgy, its
own
discipline, its own system of authority and beliefs.”The result
of this trend would be the fragmentation of parish life: “with the
parish
conceded to one of the movements. The ecclesial community finally
coincides
with a determined group, the sacraments become a service that is
sometimes
outsourced and sometimes produced from within, the parish pastoral
council
becomes a place for the groups to negotiate over the scarce remaining
resources
in the parish, intraecclesial
associations
lose their specific meaning, episcopal
authority becomes evanescent (eventually replaced by the movement’s
authority),
while papal authority is hailed as identifying, but is far removed and
practically innocuous. At times, even administrative services (at the
diocesan
level as at the regional and national levels) tend to take on the
movement’s
form.”
A
former member of Focolare said the
same:
“A Church in which the movements predominate will no longer be
recognizably
Catholic.Even in the pre-conciliar
period, the sense of a common faith was strong.In
the Church of the future this sense of belonging, of identity could be
fragmented into groups which have virtually nothing in common with one
another.”He
added, “It is ironic that the most pernicious and inhuman idea of the
twentieth
century, the deification of the collective, has found its last refuge
and
most passionate proponents in the very Catholics who fought communism
so
fiercely.”
If
Catholic authorities restructure the Church based on the new ecclesial
movements, Catholic parishes and dioceses would cease to
embody
the unity of the faithful.They would
instead become recruiting grounds for competing authoritarian,
politicized
sects that claim allegiance to the Pope.This
would be a radical revision of the structure and beliefs of the
Catholic
Church, a change that would eclipse the revisions in doctrine and
discipline
now being sought by Call to Action and other liberal dissenters.
Charles Upton draws
out the
parallels between the globalist
syncretism
of the URI and the new ecclesial movements’ replacement of traditional,
local Church structures with allegiance to a movement, its specialized
spirituality, and its charismatic leader.He
says, “The proposed fragmentation of the once-unified Catholic Church
into
quasi-independent ‘new ecclesiastical movements’ appears as the reverse
mirror-image
of the syncretic ecumenism of the URI.
The
marginalization of geographically-based communities such as the parish
(which is seen as too ‘parochial’) or diocese is one of the watchwords
of globalization.In line with the
‘information culture’ and the global, non-localized quality of
cyberspace,
both ‘new ecclesial’ and New Age networks tend to de-emphasize local
and
national cultures and communities while striving to be global in reach.
Like so-called on-line ‘communities,’ New Age networks and the ‘new
ecclesial
movements’ lack the geographical, ethnic, cultural and historical
common
ground that would relate them to other ‘communities’ formed around
other
areas of interest.(So much for the
‘unifying, community-building’ claims made for the information
culture’s
‘global brain’ by its New Age proponents!) The
resulting cultural and religious fragmentation inevitably evokes a
desire
for unity – consciously or otherwise.In
the case of the ‘new ecclesial movements’ within Catholicism, this
desire
seems ready to express itself as the call for a totalitarian pope with
the power to impose unity from above.”
Spiritual
Vulnerability: the Fetishes of Authority and Obedience
Could
Catholics fall for such distortions of their ancient faith?Yes.(Here,
the present heresies of the left-wing dissenters are not the issue.)
Among
some conservative Catholics, the touchstone of the faith is
obedience
to ecclesiastical authority.Thus,
one writer for a staunchly orthodox Catholic magazine claims that in
the
teachings of the early Church Fathers Clement of Rome, Ignatius of
Antioch,
Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus of Lyons,
“we
see the seed developing that later blossoms into the one doctrine that
elevates the Catholic Faith above all others – Papal Infallibility.”Likewise,
another book reviewer for the same magazine said, concerning a book
that
debated Catholic teachings on the Virgin Mary, that prospective
converts
to the Catholic Church must, “at some point,” “cease examining each
point
of doctrine separately, confront the issue of authority, and simply
assent
to ‘all that the Catholic Church believes and teaches.’This
kind of assent is required for Catholic orthodoxy.”He
added that the book’s author “could have highlighted more the fact that
Catholics accept the Marian dogmas because they first accept the
authority
of the Church.…For
prior to the question of specific dogmas looms the question of where
lies
the authority on faith and morals for a Christian.And
here we have the clearest signposts pointing us to Rome,
and thus to what Rome
teaches.”
In
response to the priestly sex-abuse scandal and the ensuing public
criticism
of the Catholic hierarchy, various Catholic commentators propose strict
obedience and respect for the hierarchy as the solution.
Archbishop
Charles Chaput of the Archdiocese of
Denver
spoke for them when – as an antidote to the “prophetic” antics of
rebels
in religious orders – he proposed that we follow one of the “Rules for
Thinking with the Church”
offered during the Reformation by St. Ignatius of Loyola.The
“Thirteenth Rule,” cited by the Archbishop, is: “If we wish to proceed
securely in all things, we must hold fast to the following principle:
What
seems to me white, I will believe black if the hierarchical Church so
defines.
For I must be convinced that in Christ our Lord, the Bridegroom, and in
His spouse, the Church, only one Spirit holds sway, which governs and
rules
for the salvation of souls. For it is by the same Spirit and Lord who
gave
the Ten Commandments that our holy mother Church is ruled and governed.”
The
Archbishop of Denver has put this viewpoint into practice in his
dealing
with lay critics.Rod Dreher,
an orthodox Catholic who has written extensively about the Catholic sex
abuse scandal, reports upon his correspondence with Chaput
in early 2002, when the Boston Globe was breaking the news
about
the priestly sex assaults and ecclesiastical cover-up in Boston: “Then
the Archbishop chastised me for making what he considered an
unwarranted
assumption that the Boston bishops were concerned about Geoghan,
but not his victims. Chaput said, ‘You
don’t know that.’ He quoted a previous letter of mine in which I said,
‘bishops don’t seem to care, except insofar as it affects their
finances.’
His Excellency said – and this I will quote directly – ‘Well, I know
bishops
a lot better than you do, Rod, including their many weaknesses. To
suggest
that they protect their resources before they protect their people is
not
just insulting, but unjust and wrong. If you really believe that, why
would
you remain Catholic?’”With
this comment, Chaput placed belief in
the
hierarchy as the centerpiece of Catholic faith.
Leaders
with such attitudes are capable of doing hideous things in times of
great
crisis, with the approval of their own conscience.As
the Inner Party inquisitor told Winston, the dissident in Orwell’s 1984,
“Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth. It is
impossible
to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.”Acceptance
of this irrational mind-set (perhaps, after spiritual formation in a
“new
ecclesial movement”) prepares the faithful to goose-step off a
spiritual
cliff, if a Deceiver should become Pope – or rather, anti-Pope.
In
normal times, Catholics reject the idea that a Pope could be a heretic
or an apostate – but we are here looking ahead into the Final Days, the
most abnormal of times.And the Catechism
of the Catholic Church says that in that brief time, the Church
will
follow the way of Christ, through her Passion to death and burial:
“Before
Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that
will shake the faith of many believers. The
persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the
‘mystery
of iniquity’ in the form of a religious deception offering men an
apparent
solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The
supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism
by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come
in the flesh.…The
Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final
Passover,
when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The
kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the
Church
through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the
final
unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven.God’s
triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment
after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.”
Outside
the Church, Two Witnesses to the Dual Peril
Scripture, Catholic
tradition,
and reason show the possibility that we face a twofold threat – and
that
the final test may be religious seduction under the leadership of a
False
Christ, not merely oppression by a tyrannical persecutor of Christians
(akin to the Jacobins or the Communists).Two
other witnesses testify to this same possibility – Friedrich Nietzsche,
the apostle of atheism and nihilism, and René Guénon,
a wise and insightful French traditionalist metaphysician who wrote in
the middle of the last century.
The
Nihilist’s Dark Prophecies: Friedrich Nietzsche
First, I present the
testimony
of Nietzsche, the declared foe of God.In
1885, in Will to Power, he saw the emergence of global politics
and global governance: “Inexorably, hesitantly, terrible as fate, the
great
task and question is approaching: how shall earth as a whole be
governed?And
to what end shall ‘man’ as a whole – and no longer as a people, a race
– be raised and trained?”
Let’s begin with
Nietzsche’s
insights into the 20th Century.In
1888, when it could hardly be imagined that the then-ruling European
regimes
could fall, he said in Ecce Homo that soon, “The concept of
politics
will have merged entirely with a war of spirits; all power structures
of
the old society will have been exploded – all of them are based on lies:there
will be wars the like of which have never yet been seen on earth.It
is only beginning with me that the earth knows great politics.”In
The
Gay Science, Nietzsche said in 1882, “I welcome all signs that a
more
manly, a warlike age is about to begin, an age which, above all, will
give
honor to valor once again.”
In Ecce Homo,
Nietzsche
promised, accurately, that “the uncovering of Christian morality is an
event without parallel, a real catastrophe.”In
the 1887 edition of The Gay Science, he elaborated: “The
greatest
recent event – that ‘God is dead,’ that the belief in the Christian God
has ceased to be believable – is even now beginning to cast its first
shadows
over Europe;” however, few yet understood “what has really happened
here,
and what must collapse now that this belief has been undermined – all
that
was built upon it, leaned on it, grew into it: for example, our whole
European
morality.”
In Untimely
Meditations,
Nietzsche prophesied in 1874 about the effects of teaching moral
relativism
and the lack of a fundamental distinction between humans and animals:
“If,
on the other hand, the doctrines of sovereign becoming, of the fluidity
of all concepts, types and species, of the lack of any cardinal
distinction
between man and animal – doctrines which I consider true but deadly –
are
thrust upon the people for another generation with the rage for
instruction
that has by now become normal, no one should be surprised if the people
perishes of petty egoism, ossification and greed, falls apart, and
ceases
to be a people; in its place systems of individualist egoism,
brotherhoods
for the rapacious exploitation of the non-brothers, and similar
creations
of utilitarian vulgarity may perhaps appear in the arena of the future.”He
wrote in 1877 of “this coming generation” that “Perhaps this generation
as a whole will even seem more evil than the present generation – for,
in wicked as in good things, it will be more candid; it is
possible,
indeed, that if its soul should speak out in free full tones it would
shake
and terrify our soul as would the voice of some hitherto concealed evil
spirit of nature.”
In 1887, in Will
to Power,
Nietzsche wrote:“What I relate is
the history of the next two centuries.I
describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the
advent
of nihilism.…This
future speaks even now in a hundred signs…For
some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a
catastrophe,
with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade.”
Additionally,
Nietzsche foresaw
the strife that socialism and Communism would strew across Europe,
and welcomed the failure of that social experiment.In
1885, Nietzsche wrote in Will to Power: “the Paris
commune, which has its apologists and advocates in Germany
too, was perhaps no more than a minor indigestion compared to what is
coming.…I
should wish that a few great experiments might prove that in a
socialist
society life negates itself, cuts off its own roots.The
earth is large enough and man still sufficiently unexhausted; hence
such
a practical instruction and demonstratio
ad absurdum would not strike me as undesirable, even if it were
gained
and paid for with a tremendous expenditure of human lives.In
any case, even as a restless mole under the soil of a society that
wallows
in stupidity, socialism will be able to be something useful and
therapeutic:
it delays ‘peace on earth’ and the total mollification of the
democratic
herd animal; it forces the Europeans to retain spirit, namely cunning
and
cautious care, not to abjure manly and warlike virtues altogether.”He
continues: “the barbarians of the twentieth century…will
come into view and consolidate themselves only after tremendous
socialist
crises – they will be the elements capable of the greatest severity
toward
themselves and able to guarantee the most enduring will.”
Total up the score: in
the
high noon of the Victorian era, the prophet of atheism discerned the
coming
of a Europe-wide catastrophe, unprecedented wars, moral collapse,
nihilism,
political fanaticism, the rise of “brotherhoods for the rapacious
exploitation
of the non-brothers,” Communist victories followed by enormous
bloodshed,
and the rise of a generation that would seem to the men of the 19th
century to speak with “the voice of some hitherto concealed evil
spirit.”That’s
the briefest possible summary of the history of the world since 1914,
and
it was a prospect that almost nobody of his time saw – aside from the
Popes.
Now, we can turn to
what
the anti-Apostle saw for the following era.After
the time of war and catastrophe, Nietzsche saw a dark, majestic rebirth
for humanity.After the destructive
era of nihilism, Nietzsche expected the emergence of new values, to be
defined by a new elite.
In 1887 in Will to
Power,
he said that there will be “a movement that in some future will take
the
place of this perfect nihilism – but presupposes it, logically and
psychologically,
and certainly can come only after it and out of it.”The
nihilist phase “represents the ultimate logical conclusion of our great
values and ideals – because we must experience nihilism before we can
find
out what value those ‘values’ really had.”In
the reaction against the destruction of tradition, “new values”
would be set up to counterfeit and replace what was smashed.(Mikhail
Gorbachev sounded a similar note in 1993: “Revaluation of values is
basic
to the evolution of civilization.”)
In
a section of Will to Power written in 1885, Nietzsche described
how the New Elite, the commanding apostles of the New Values, would be
formed: “A morality with such reverse intentions, which desires to
train
men for the heights, not for comfort and mediocrity, a morality with
the
intention of training a ruling caste – the future masters of the
earth
– must, if it is to be taught, appear in association with the
prevailing
moral laws, in the guise of their terms and forms.”Nietzsche
found it “obvious” that “for this, however, many transitional means of
deception must be devised, and that, because the lifetime of a single
man
signifies virtually nothing in relation to the accomplishment of such
protracted
tasks and aims, the very first thing to be done is the rearing of a new
kind of man, in whom the duration of the necessary will and the
necessary
instinct will be guaranteed through many generations – a new master
type
and caste.”He
added, “From now on there will be more favorable preconditions for more
comprehensive forms of dominion, whose like has never before existed.And
even this is not the most important thing; the possibility has been
established
for the production of international racial unions whose task will be to
rear a master race, the future ‘masters of the earth’; – a new,
tremendous
aristocracy, based on the severest self-legislation, in which the will
of philosophical men of power and artist-tyrants will be made to endure
for millennia – a higher kind of man who, thanks to their superiority
in
will, knowledge, riches, and influence, employ democratic Europe as
their
most pliant and supple instrument for getting hold of the destinies of
the earth, so as to work as artists upon ‘man’ himself.Enough:
the time is coming when politics will have a different meaning.”
Let’s
draw out the implications of these prophecies from the 19th
Century.The creation of the New Elite,
those who would rule after modernism and socialism have spent their
fury,
is a project that will take generations.These
men will be trained to look as if they are “in association with the
prevailing
moral laws;” they, and their teachers, will be skilled users of many
“transitional
means of deception.”The New Rulers
would be formed strictly, “based on the severest self-legislation.”The
New Aristocrats will rise first in Europe,
and will go from there to establish unprecedented, “comprehensive forms
of dominion.”Their strategy will
be based on exploitation of their own “riches and influence,” and will
have as its goal the control of the planet’s destiny and the artistic
redesign
of mankind.This is a summary of the
strategy and aims of certain powerful, elite religious movements
already
in existence.
In Ecce Homo,
Nietzsche
said, “Let us look ahead a century; let us suppose that my attempt to
assassinate
two millennia of antinature and
desecration
of man were to succeed.That new party
of life which would tackle the greatest of all tasks, the attempt to
raise
humanity higher, including the relentless destruction of everything
that
was degenerating and parasitical, would again make possible that excess
of life on Earth …I promise a tragic
age: the highest art in saying Yes to life, tragedy, will be reborn
when
humanity has weathered the consciousness of the hardest but most
necessary
wars without suffering from it.”
In 1887 in Will to
Power,
Nietzsche said that violence would give birth to “a stronger species”
than
the “pampered, weak of will” Europeans of the 19th Century;
a “dominating race can grow up only out of terrible and violent
beginnings.”Hitherto,
the world has looked for the barbarian “only in the depths.There
exists also another type of barbarian, who comes from the heights: a
species
of conquering and ruling natures in search of material to mold.”In
The Gay Science, he stated that the coming “manly” and
“warlike”
age (presumably, the 20th Century) “shall prepare the way
for
one yet higher, and it shall gather the strength which this higher age
will need one day – this age which is to carry heroism into the pursuit
of knowledge and wage wars for the sake of thoughts and their
consequences.”
The new masters, those
who
come after the breakdown of the social system that proclaimed universal
“equality” and “social justice,” would live by the stern principles set
forth in Nietzsche’s 1888 Twilight of the Idols: “In order that
there may be institutions, there must be a kind of will, instinct, or
imperative,
which is anti-liberal to the point of malice: the will to tradition, to
authority, to responsibility for centuries to come, to the solidarity
of
chains of generations, forward and backward ad infinitum.When
this will is present, something like the imperiumRomanum
is founded.”
The Coming Leaders
foreseen
by Nietzsche, the barbarians “from the heights,” will “attempt to raise
humanity higher,” and will engage in “relentless destruction” of
whatever,
or whoever, opposes them or fails to meet their standard.Once
again, it seems, there will be a time when “truth” will ride under
Crusaders’
arms, while “error” – no matter how narrow and distorted
the perspective used to define it as such – will have no rights.
The
Warnings of a Sufi Metaphysician, René Guénon
In
his 1945 book The Reign of Quantity & The Signs of The Times,
the traditionalist metaphysician René Guénon
warned of the approaching end of the age.He
warned against the omnipresent materialism and artificial
egalitarianism
of the West, seeing these as symptoms of terminal illness: “One would
have
to be blind to fail to see the abyss which separates the normal from
the
modern civilization…that
which the vast majority of men now living celebrate as ‘progress’ is
exactly
what is now presented to the reader as a profound decadence,
continuously
accelerated, which is dragging humanity towards the pit where pure
quantity
reigns.”He
added, “the real goal of the tendency which is dragging men and things
toward pure quantity can only be the final dissolution of the present
world.”Furthermore,
“the acceleration of time itself, as it becomes ever more pronounced
and
causes changes to be ever more rapid, seems to lead of its own accord
towards
dissolution.”
The
universal corruption affects its opponents, as well: “those who most
sincerely
want to combat the modern spirit are almost all unwittingly affected by
it, and all their efforts are therefore condemned to remain without any
appreciable result.”Therefore, Guénon
says, “the very idea of tradition has been destroyed to such an extent
that those who seek to recover it no longer know which way to turn, and
are only too ready to accept all the false ideas presented to them in
its
place and under its name.”He
adds, “the work which has as its object to prevent all ‘reaction’ from
aiming at anything further back than a return to a lesser disorder,
while
at the same time concealing the character of the lesser disorder so
that
it may pass as ‘order,’ fits in very exactly with the other work
carried
out with a view to securing the penetration of the modern spirit into
the
interior of whatever is left of traditional organization of any kind in
the West.”
However,
just before the end, Guénon
sees
a sudden, brief reversal of these trends.Instead
of equality, there will be a new hierarchy.Instead
of atheism and materialism, there will be spirituality and religion
galore.Instead
of the open war against tradition, there will be a false restoration of
tradition, a recovery that is in fact a perverse, infernal inversion of
authentic tradition.Antichrist will
claim to bring the Millennium, “the ‘golden age’ into being through the
reign of the ‘counter-tradition’,” and will give it “an appearance of
authenticity,
purely deceitful and ephemeral though it be, by means of a counterfeit
of the traditional idea of the Sanctum Regnum.”In
1945, Guénon discerned only the
“preliminary
signs” of the “counter-tradition,” “in the form of all the things that
are striving to become counterfeits in one way or another of the
traditional
idea itself.”However
destructive may be the “reign of quantity,” the age of materialism and
Godlessness, Guénon says that
“the
merely negative ‘anti-tradition’ only represented the necessary
preparation”for
the emergence of the final “counter-tradition.”
The
Final Enemy “imitates in his own way, by altering and falsifying it so
as always to make it serve his own ends, the very thing he sets out to
oppose: thus, he will so manage matters that disorder takes on the
appearance
of a false order, he will hide the negation of all principles under the
affirmation of false principles, and so on.Naturally,
nothing of this kind can ever really be more than dissimulation and
even
caricature, but it is presented cleverly enough to induce an immense
majority
of men to allow themselves to be deceived by it.”
Guénon
says of the reign of the Final Deceiver: “He will evidently be an
‘imposter’
(this is the meaning of the word dajjâl
by which he is usually designated in Arabic) since his reign will be
nothing
other than the ‘Great Parody’ in its completest
form, the ‘satanic’ imitation and caricature of everything that is
truly
traditional and spiritual … His time will certainly no longer be the
‘reign
of quantity’, which was itself only the end-point of the
‘anti-tradition’;
it will on the contrary be marked, under the pretext of a false
‘spiritual
restoration’, by a sort of re-introduction of quality in all things,
but
of quality inverted with respect to its normal and legitimate
significance.After
the ‘egalitarianism’ of our times there will again be a visibly
established
hierarchy, but an inverted hierarchy, indeed a real
‘counter-hierarchy’,
the summit of which will be occupied by the being who will in reality
be
situated nearer than any other being to the very bottom of the ‘pit of
Hell’.… by reason of his extreme
opposition to the true in all its aspects, the Antichrist can adopt the
very symbols of the Messiah, using them of course in an inverted sense.”The
servants of Antichrist will possess a dark, seductive sanctity: “The
last
degree of the ‘counter-initiatic’ hierarchy
is
occupied by what are called ‘the saints of Satan’ (awilyâesh-Shaytân)
who are in a sense the inverse of the true saints (awilyâer-Rahmân),
thus manifesting the most complete expression possible of ‘inverted
spirituality’.”
In
the regime of Antichrist, “the setting up of the ‘counter-tradition’
and
its apparent momentary triumph will in effect be the reign of what has
been called ‘inverted spirituality,’” a “parody of spirituality.”With
the inversion of spirituality will come the inversion of traditional
symbols:
“The most diabolical trick of all is perhaps that which consists in
attributing
to the orthodox symbolism itself, as it exists in truly traditional
organizations
… the inverted interpretation which is specifically characteristic of
the
‘counter-initiation.”
Guénon
concurs with Christian tradition in noting that the regime of
Antichrist
will be short: “all the prophecies (the word is of course used here in
its rightful sense) indicate that the apparent triumph of the
‘counter-tradition’
will only be a passing one, and that at the very moment when it seems
most
complete it will be destroyed by the action of spiritual influences
which
will intervene at that point to prepare for the final reinstatement.Nothing
less than a divine intervention of this kind would in fact suffice to
bring
to an end, at the chosen time, the most formidable and the most truly
‘satanic’
of all the possibilities”
of the current age.
Charles
Upton, a present-day metaphysician and comparative religion scholar,
sums
up the confusing and disorienting nature of the situation that we may
be
facing:“The looming One World Government
shows many signs of being the predicted regime of Antichrist. But …
it’s
not quite that simple, since the ‘tribal’ forces reacting against globalism
are ultimately part of the same system. According to one of many
possible
scenarios, the satanic forces operating at the end of the Aeon
would be quite capable of establishing a One World Government only to
set
the stage for the emergence of Antichrist as the great leader of a
world
revolution against this government, which, if it triumphed,
would
be the real One World Government. Or the martyrdom of
Antichrist
at the hands of such a government might be a deliberate or even staged
self-sacrifice, counterfeiting the death of Christ and leading to a
counterfeit
resurrection. I am not saying that this will happen; I am not
prognosticating.
I only wish to point out that Antichrist, as a counterfeit
manifestation
of the Divine universality, will have the capacity to use all sides in
any conflict, including a global one, to build his power – except the
ultimate
Messianic Conflict, called Armageddon in the Apocalypse, which
is
initiated and concluded by God Himself.”
What
Is To Be Done?
How are we to
respond to
the dual perils before us – whether or not these constitute the Final
Trial?
In part, and as the
first
step, by examining ourselves, repenting of our own sin and our
participation
in collective evil and deception.The
prayer for our time, as for all earthly times, is “Lord Jesus Christ,
Son
of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”Bernard McGinn
ends his magisterial history of Antichrist thus: “Contemporary forms of
deception, especially deception on a worldwide scale never possible
before,
might spur our meditation on the meaning of the legend of Antichrist as
the image of essential human evil.The
dominance of appearance over substance may not have been invented in
the
electronic era, but some contemporary social critics remind us that
deceit
has reached a new level of sophistication as we approach the beginning
of the third millennium.…If
we are all part of a culture in which forms of deceit, both overt and
covert,
are present in many ways, we can admit that the most dangerous form of
deceit is self-deceit, our ability to convince ourselves that we are
doing
what is best and for the best reasons, even when this is not the case –
and somehow, however obscurely, we know it not to be the case.That
is just another way of putting Augustine’s ancient message: ‘There you
have the Antichrist – everyone who denies Christ by his works.’”
Having removed the
logs from
our own eyes, we may accurately discern the specks that are in the eyes
of our opponents (Mt. 7:3-5).We should
then pray on their behalf, for their salvation and conversion to the
fullness
of Truth; in doing this, we are asking God to bestow the greatest of
blessings
on them (Mt 5:44).Such
prayers may have great, unforeseen effect – results that may not be
known
to us until the Last Day.
In addition to
repentance
and prayer, it is also essential to be spiritually alert and to discern
the signs of the times.As Jesus said,
“Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”
(Matt. 24:42)A holy priest in Michael
O’Brien’s apocalyptic novel Father Elijah reminds us of the
difficulties
associated with this discernment: “The apocalypse is not a melodrama.If
it were, most people would wake up and see the danger they are in.That
is our real peril.Our own times,
no matter how troubled they may be, are our idea of what is
real.It
is almost impossible to step outside of it in order to see it for what
it is.…The
living apocalypse radiates a sense of normality.We
are inside it.”To
use a business cliché: we need to “think out of the box.”Prayer
and repentance are the only way that we will see beyond the confines of
the “box,” to perceive what is really occurring.
Some who read this may
have
a calling to activism, in the churches and in the public square.I
am not an organizer myself, neither a politician nor a cleric, neither
a financier nor a senior executive.Therefore,
I cannot venture a guess at an activist strategy that might
successfully
oppose or mitigate the present trends toward global religious
deception,
apostasy, and tyranny.(I am skeptical
that social and political action can work any longer, but my assessment
of the lateness of the hour may be incorrect.Such
efforts might still turn the tide, and grant the world a season
of peace and liberty.)Each reader
who hears and receives these admonitions has his unique talents and
station
in life; the appropriate response will necessarily be different for
everyone.
However anyone
responds to
these challenges, let it be a response based on love and humility.Everyone
should reflect on the lessons that Solzhenitsyn learned while
imprisoned
in Stalin’s gulag:“In the intoxication
of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was
therefore
cruel.In the surfeit of power I
was a murderer, and an oppressor.In
my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was
well
supplied with systematic arguments.And
it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed
within
myself the first stirrings of good.Gradually
it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes
not
through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties
either
– but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts.This
line shifts.Inside us, it oscillates
with the years.And even within hearts
overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.And
even in the best of all hearts, there remains ...
an un-uprooted small corner of evil.Since
then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions of the
world:
They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every
human
being).It is impossible to expel
evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it
within each person.And since that
time I have come to understand the falsehood of all the revolutions in
history: They destroy only those carriers of evil contemporary
with
them (and also fail, out of haste, to discriminate the carriers of
good,
as well).And they then take to themselves
as their heritage the actual evil itself, magnified still more.”Let
any of us, when tempted to be crusaders, heed this wisdom bought by
Solzhenitsyn
at so high a price!
Sed
Contra: Against Extreme-Right “Solutions” to the Crisis
At the beginning of
the
book, I replied to the objections to my thesis that might be raised by
a challenger from the Left.
I now
reply to some possible – and very undesirable – extreme rightist
responses
to the present and pending crises.
As
a literary convention, I allow the adherents of each of these positions
to speak through one representative; he quotes his allies.
I
have named these zealots after Job’s
friends
(Job
2:11 and 32:2).
The positions that I
describe
are held by relatively few people now, but such fanaticism can easily
spread
as traumatized people react to global upheaval.Who
in Germany
in 1913 would have foreseen what Germany
became in 1933?Who in Russia
in 1897 would have expected 1917?
Eliphaz: You
have
missed the point.You don’t seem to
understand that these are the times of the end, and America
will stand or fall based on whether or not we support Israel
to the hilt.“Israel
is invincible, because it is flowing in the tide of divine prophecy.”A
new Temple – located
on
the TempleMount,
where the Muslim Dome of the Rock now stands – is “an absolute
necessity
for the completion of the prophetic picture.”“If
we want to be observers of prophecy we can, or we can be participants.We
choose to be participants …doing
everything we can to ensure the survival of Israel
and …to support the building of the Temple.”“We
shouldn’t wait for God … but, as it were, hurry Him up.We
should take up the burden first … and afterward He will agree and help
us.”“When
the Temple’s rebuilt,
it ushers in the Second Coming, but it also ushers in the Tribulation.”When
prophecy is fulfilled, “God says he will lay the land of the Arabs
waste
and it will be desolate.”“Any
attempt to divide the land
of Palestine is
contrary
to God’s word, for it has been set aside by God as the exclusive home
for Israel.”“I
see the rise of Islam to destroy Israel
and take the land from the Jews and give East Jerusalem
to [Palestinian Authority Chairman] Yasser
Arafat. I see that as Satan’s plan to prevent the return of Jesus
Christ
the Lord.…God
says, ‘I’m going to judge those who carve up the West
Bank
and Gaza Strip.…It’s
my land and keep your hands off it.’”“Theologically,
any Christian has to support Israel,
simply because Jesus said to.”“If
the US
ever turns its back on Israel,
we will no longer exist as a nation.”
Author:Maybe
you’re right, and we are in the very Final Days before the Second
Coming
of Christ.Even so, what you propose
makes no sense – theologically or morally.The
idea that God guaranteed the land
of Palestine to a
restored
nation of Israel
is not found anywhere in the New Testament or the Church Fathers.It
is, as a Christian mass movement, a sectarian Protestant innovation
dating
to the early 1800s.
Jews in Israel
have the right to life and peace.So
do the Arabs and Palestinians.(Some
of them, by the way, are Christian.)No
peace can be built on oppression and murder; “drive them into the
desert”
is as evil as “drive them into the sea.”
The proponents of
building
the ThirdTemple
are not part of the Israeli mainstream.Every
year, the Temple Mount
Faithful attempt to carry a cornerstone to the TempleMount
to ceremonially begin the rebuilding; every year, they are intercepted
and turned away by the Israeli police.A
historian of the Dispensationalist prophecy movement notes, “In their
obsession
with the rebuilding of the Temple,
these prophecy popularizers ignored
the
fact that most Israelis rejected the whole notion.Epithets
like ‘a bunch of nuts’ and ‘dangerous lunatics’ routinely dotted
Israeli
press accounts of groups like the Temple Mount Faithful.”
The idea that we ought
to
“hurry Him up” to speed the Second Coming is presumption and blasphemy.The
only way that we Christians should attempt to hasten the Kingdom
of God is by faithful
witness
for Christ, works of love and mercy, and praying the Lord’s Prayer,
“Thy
Kingdom come!”
It might be that a
Third
Temple is destined to be rebuilt on the site of Herod’s Temple.If
this is a true view of prophecy, then as Jesus said, “It is impossible
but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom
they
come!” (Luke 17:1, KJV)It is not
necessarily good to act in fulfillment of prophecy; Judas did so when
he
betrayed Christ, and Christ called him the “son of perdition”
(John 17:12).How
could God bless the rebuilding of a structure that He had said would be
destroyed so that “there will not be left here one stone upon another,
that will not be thrown down.” (Matt. 24:2) – especially when that
rebuilding
could start a global religious war?
Those who wish to
rebuild
the Temple are
following
in the footsteps of Julian the Apostate the fourth-century Roman
Emperor
who sought to discredit Christ by rebuilding the structure upon which
Christ
had pronounced a sentence of doom.Julian
ended the reconstruction after the TempleMount
was shaken by repeated earthquakes, and workers were killed by fires of
unknown origin.Soon thereafter,
the forsworn Emperor was killed on the battlefield.
Bildad:Thanks
for dealing with those Christian Zionists.But
you have not looked at the real problem: the entire Jewish race!“It
is no right-wing extremism to claim that money is controlled by a
Judeo-Masonic
clique.”“There
is, of course, convincing bibliographical evidence of a Judeo-Masonic
plot
from the 18th century onwards,”
a plot to destroy Christianity and morality.Indeed,
“the Mystery of Iniquity will find its completion in the earthly
kingdom
of the Jews under Antichrist.”“God
hates Evil, and the Jews after they had our Lord Jesus crucified,
became
the greatest evil.…the
Jews are a band of thieves and murderers, and it is understandable that
the just punishment of God is frequently bestowed upon them for their
bloody
misdeeds.”“Duns Scotus,
the Doctor Subtilis, went still
further
than Thomas of Aquinas and proposed to Christianity a solution to the
Jewish
problem on the basis of the complete destruction of this devilish sect.”Therefore,
“subjugation of the Jews is the theologically, morally and
politically
correct, rational social policy.”The
times are with us, and against the Jews.“A
vast and violent storm is rising up in the distance, a storm that will
sweep away jewish [sic] control in
Western
civilization as surely as it was swept away in pre-WWII Germany...and
for
precisely the same reasons.”
Author:I
regret the need to quote you, and do so only as evidence that there are
those who think as you do.Although
my response is brief, my revulsion against anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism
is profound. I use an Eastern
Orthodox manual for examination of conscience before going to
confession,
and it asks, “Have I honored God as my Heavenly Father by treating
others
as my brothers?…Have
I defamed others who needed help, or failed to stand up for those
unjustly
treated?Have I been cruel to anyone?…Have
I told lies, or added to or subtracted from the truth?”These
questions hold for anyone, and I can’t imagine how the
anti-Semitic
opinions expressed above can pass muster.
Jesus, Mary, and the
Apostles
were all Jewish.Jesus told the Samaritan
woman at the well, “Salvation is from the Jews.” (John 4:22)St.
Paul reminds us that “a hardening has come upon
part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so
all
Israel will be saved; as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from
Zion,
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob;’ ‘and this will be my covenant
with
them when I take away their sins.’ As regards the gospel they are
enemies
of God, for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved for the
sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the call of God are
irrevocable.
Just as you were once disobedient to God but now have received mercy
because
of their disobedience, so they have now been disobedient in order that
by the mercy shown to you they also may receive mercy. For God has
consigned
all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.”(Rom.
11:25-32)The story of salvation is
not about “God hates Jews” (or “God hates fags”),
but about God’s providence and mercy.
Furthermore, the
Catholic Church
opposes anti-Semitism and other forms of racism.In
September 1938, Pope Pius XI told a group of Belgian pilgrims,
“Anti-Semitism
is unacceptable. Spiritually, we are all Semites.”(The
Pope’s view was shared by C. S. Lewis, an Anglican.Lewis
said in 1955 that Christ’s “shocking reply to the Syrophenician
woman
(it came alright at the end) is to remind all us Gentile Christians –
who
forget it easily enough and even flirt with anti-Semitism – that the
Hebrews
are spiritually senior to us, that God did entrust the
descendants
of Abraham with the first revelation of Himself.”)
What one Pope said
privately
beforeVatican
II was said authoritatively by the bishops of the entire Catholic
Church
at the Council.
In the decree Nostra Aetate,
the Catholic Church declared: “The apostle Paul maintains that the Jews
remain very dear to God, for the sake of the patriarchs, since God does
not take back the gifts he bestowed or the choice he made.Together
with the prophets and that same apostle, the Church awaits the day,
known
to God alone, when all peoples will call on God with one voice …Even
though the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed
for the death of Christ (cf. John 19:6), neither all Jews
indiscriminately
at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed
during his passion.It is true that
the Church is the new people of God, yet the Jews should not be spoken
of as rejected or accursed, as if this followed from holy Scripture.Consequently,
all must take care, lest in catechizing or in preaching the Word of
God,
they teach anything which is not in accord with the truth of the Gospel
message or the spirit of Christ.Indeed,
the Church reproves every form of
persecution
against whomsoever it may be directed.Remembering,
then, her common heritage with the Jews and moved not by any political
consideration, but solely by the religious motivation of Christian
charity,
she deplores all hatreds, persecutions, displays of antisemitism
leveled at any time or from any source against the Jews.”
The Council Fathers
added,
“We cannot truly pray to God the Father of all if we treat any people
in
other than brotherly fashion, for all men are created in God’s image.Man’s
relation to God the Father and man’s relation to his fellow-men are so
dependent on each other that the Scripture says: ‘he who does not love
does not know God’ (1 John 4:8).There
is no basis therefore, either in theory or in practice for any
discrimination
between individual and individual, or between people and people arising
either from human dignity or from the rights which flow from it.Therefore
the Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any
discrimination
against people or any harassment of them on the basis of their race,
color,
condition in life, or religion.”
This Conciliar
teaching should be heeded by all Christians, whether they are Catholic
or notIts truth applies to all Christian
confessions and denominations alike.
It might be that,
before
the end, there will be a “religious” neo-Nazi regime, presenting itself
as a forceful and justified reaction against decadence and secularism.This
“New Order” may imitate Hitler, and unleash a global anti-Semitic
pogrom.This
regime – if it comes – will serve Satan, not God.
Zophar:Those
other guys are crazy, and you responded to them well.But
you worry needlessly.America
is a chosen nation, blessed and set apart by God as a “shining city on
a hill.”“God hath graciously patronized
our cause, and taken us under his special care, as he did his ancient
covenant
people.”As Lincoln
said, “All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the
treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with
a Buonaparte for a commander, could
not
by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue
Ridge,
in a trial of a thousand years.At
what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if
it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from
abroad.
If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and
finisher.
As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by
suicide.”America
cannot fall.
But
– even if the worst that you fear comes to pass, there are two answers.First,
everyone should stockpile goods and prepare to retreat to the country
if
the Antichrist arises.Hole up and
wait him out; Scripture says his reign will be short.
And
if need be, we can terminate any tyrant, even the Antichrist, “with
extreme
prejudice.”It’s the American way.God,
guts, and guns made America
great, and will keep us so, till the end.
Author:I
too love America.But
the US,
like all nations, is mortal.As C.
S. Lewis said, “Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations
– these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.”Some
day our nation, like all institutions and associations established by
mankind,
will come to an end.May that day
be long delayed!
The idea of surviving
the
final Tribulation by guarding a hoard of goods in a rural retreat is an
illusion.Prudence is one thing; the
ideology of survivalism is quite
another.When
the Tribulation comes, it will be global.No
one can say where the natural and social disasters, as symbolically
described
in the book of Revelation, will strike hardest.And
there is nothing in the Gospel or the Epistles that commends the
amassing
of possessions as a hedge against disaster.The
truth seems to be otherwise.Jesus
offered a parable against “reasonable” avarice: “The land of a rich man
brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I have nowhere to store my crops?’And
he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns, and build larger
ones;
and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my
soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your
ease,
eat, drink, be merry.’ But
God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and
the
things you have prepared, whose will they be?’So
is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
(Luke
12:16-21)
Nor does armed
resistance
offer a solution to an evil, apocalyptic tyranny.Again,
Scripture offers a consistent witness, from the ministry of Jesus
through
the prophecy of Revelation.Jesus
rejected violent resistance to his arrest by Roman soldiers and the
masters
of the Temple.“Simon
Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s slave and
cut
off his right ear. The slave’s name was Malchus.
Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink
the cup which the Father has given me?’”(John
18:10-11).Additionally, “Jesus said,
‘No more of this!’ And he touched his ear and healed him.”(Luke
22:51).He also warned: “all who take
the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matt. 26:52).Thus
ended history’s shortest war, and the most just, a war in defense of
the
Son of God:
Jesus healed his enemy, and told the first Pope to put his weapon down.
When the Roman
Empire’s first persecution of Christians began under Nero,
the Epistles and Revelation did not sound a call to insurrection or
to tyrannicide.
Peter – who was to be
one
of Nero’s victims – said in a letter sent from Rome
after the persecution began, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every
human
institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors
as
sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do
right.
For it is God’s will that by doing right you should put to silence the
ignorance of foolish men. Live as free men, yet without using your
freedom
as a pretext for evil; but live as servants of God.” (1 Pt. 2:13-16).
In the book of
Revelation,
it seems that an apparently mortal attack upon the Beast does not kill
him; it merely gives the Deceiver an opportunity to show his power with
a false “resurrection:” “And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with
ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a
blasphemous
name upon its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its
feet
were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it
the
dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority. One
of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, but its mortal wound was
healed,
and the whole earth followed the beast with wonder. Men worshiped the
dragon,
for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshiped the
beast,
saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’” (Rev.
13:1-4).
Amidst the frightening
and
obscure symbols, the Revelator offered earthly advice: “If any one has
an ear, let him hear: If any one is to be taken captive, to captivity
he
goes; if any one slays with the sword, with the sword must he be slain.
Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.”(Rev.
13:9-10).This is a call to fidelity
and to endure to the end – not a recommendation that the faithful
should gather
weapons for earthly battle.The absence
of a call to arms in Revelation remains relevant, since most Biblical
scholars
– the orthodox as well as the Modernists – believe that the original
“666”
was the Emperor Nero.
If
we face the end
times, the prudent and realistic World War II counsels of Reinhold Niebuhr
and Dietrich Bonhoeffer would not hold.We
would be facing a different kind of battle, and would be called to use
a different strategy.
Elihu:These
other people are uncouth, Anglo-Saxon barbarians – Protestant heretics
and Americanists, no doubt.They
do not understand history or Catholic culture.
Yes, the Chastisement,
and
persecution of Christians, is coming soon.“The
coming disaster will be of such magnitude that our whole civilization
would
be destroyed were it not for the presence of the Church.It
is the Church that will save civilization.”The
Church, as a visible and hierarchical institution, a “perfect society”
led by the Pontiff, the Successor of Peter, cannot fail.Ever.Remember
Christ’s promise to Peter: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this
rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail
against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and
whatever
you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on
earth
shall be loosed in heaven.”(Matt.
16:18-19)The Roman See never has
been, and never will be, heretical or apostate.
Even now, the ground
is being
prepared for a New Springtime of the Church, to be led by the New
Ecclesial
Movements: Opus Dei, the Legionaries of Christ, the Neo-Catechumenal
Way, and other soldiers of God yet
unrevealed.“If
we consider the manner in which a handful of doctrinally well-trained
and
determined Bolsheviks took over Russia
in 1917, and if we consider that there exists at present [1973] in Europe
an equally well-trained and dedicated association of Catholicswho
are sparing no efforts to sow the seeds of renewal and are spreading
the
sound concepts of Catholic thinkers and philosophers who are just as
unknown
as Karl Marx was in 1850 – but not less capable, one can see, then,
that
God has already set the stage for the marvelous renewal which He will
work.”“To
the extent possible, the Counter-Revolution should try to win over the
multitudes.However, it should not
make this its chief goal in the short run.…An
objective view of history shows that the factor of mass is secondary;
the
principal factor is the formation of elites.”
Out from the coming
chaos,
there will be a real New Order, led by a victorious Great King
and
a Holy Pope – a Pope who will “rule with a rod of iron”
and “restore the former disciplines”
of the Roman Church.“The resurrection
will be spectacular; the Great King will be the Emperor of Western
Europe,
and anointed by the Holy Pontiff.Many
Jews and all non-Catholic Christians will turn to the True Faith.The
Mohammedans will embrace Christianity, as also the Chinese.In
short, virtually the whole world will be Catholic.”This
“era of peace” may last a long time before a new apostasy ushers in the
Antichrist.
So let us not be
afraid,
but rather follow the inspired teachings of St. Escrivá,
the Founder of Opus Dei:“When a layman
sets himself up as an arbiter of morals, he frequently errs; laymen can
only be disciples.”“Obedience,
the sure way. Blind obedience to your superior, the way of sanctity.
Obedience
in your apostolate, the only way: for, in a work of God, the spirit
must
be to obey or to leave.”The
Church will lead; let us follow!We’ll
learn soon enough that secular government and separation of Church and
State are Masonic delusions, “musty, old
fashioned
‘Voltairianisms’ or discredited liberal
ideas
of the nineteenth century.”“If,
to save an earthly life, it is praiseworthy to use force to keep a man
from committing suicide, are we not allowed to use the same coercion –
‘holy coercion’ – to save the Lives (with a capital) of so many who are
stupidly bent on killing their souls?”
The
dark days of the Enlightenment will soon pass.“Liberalism
is a mortal sin.”“If
the Revolution is disorder, the Counter-Revolution is the restoration
of
order.And by order we mean the peace
of Christ in the Reign of Christ, that is, Christian civilization,
austere
and hierarchical, fundamentally sacral, antiegalitarian,
and antiliberal.”
Author:The
promise of an Earthly utopia of the Right is a delusion,
just as illusory as the idea of a leftist utopia.Go
back and read this epilogue again, and think!
Note, as well, that
there
are parallels between the ideology of left-wing utopians and the
beliefs
of the right-wing zealots described here.
In the late
1930s, Escrivá
wrote, “If, to save an earthly life, it is praiseworthy to use force to
keep a man from committing suicide, are we not allowed to use the same
coercion – ‘holy coercion’ – to save the Lives (with a capital) of so
many
who are stupidly bent on killing their souls?”The
Theosophist Alice Bailey likewise exalted Life over individual lives
(or,
as she called them, “form”): “let us never forget that it is the Life,
its purpose and its directed intentional destiny that is of importance;
and also that when a form proves inadequate, or too diseased, or too
crippled
for the expression of that purpose, it is – from the point of view of
the
Hierarchy – no disaster when that form has to go.”
PlinioCorrêa
de Oliveira (the right-wing Catholic founder of Tradition, Family, and
Property) says, “An objective view of history shows that the factor of
mass is secondary; the principal factor is the formation of elites.”Leninists,
with their belief in the “vanguard party,” a leader of Global Education
Associates, with her belief in “creative minorities,”
and Ted Turner, with his disdain for the “dumb majority,”
would agree on him on sociology.Their
only disagreement is the end toward which mankind is to be driven – for
our own good, whether we like it or not.
If you continue as you
appear
to have begun, you will – however sincere you are now – go straight
into
the arms of the Final Deceiver, the one who will counterfeit Christ.Beware!
A
Challenge: Is Orthodoxy Better Than Heresy?
Additionally, I warn
against
a peril that is already emerging among those engaged in the “culture
war”:
an apparent belief that use of bitter invective against enemies is
proof
of one’s own zeal for the cause, that such epithets will rally the good
against the evil, and that foes will be shocked to awareness and
repentance
by the strength of the curses hurled in their direction.Among
some orthodox Christians, as throughout the world, the spirit of hatred
runs free.
A few illustrations of
this
trend will suffice, drawn from some items recently published by those
who
ought to know better.
In its commentary on
the
deepening scandal of sexual abuse and cover-up in the Catholic Church,
New Oxford Review (a steadfast, orthodox Catholic magazine) has
taken
to writing of “fag and/or fag-friendly priests”
and distinguishes itself from Our Sunday Visitor, a centrist
Catholic
publication, thus: “The Visitor ‘respects the human dignity’ of
active homosexuals, but we at the NOR do not.…How
can any Catholic respect their ‘human dignity’?”
Another orthodox
Catholic
magazine,
Culture Wars, has recently gone off the deep end regarding
the Jews.Its editor says, “If salvation
comes from the Jews who prepared the way for Christ and accepted him
when
he came, what comes from the Jews who rejected Christ?The
answer is clear: what comes from this group is the opposite of
salvation,
namely, the work of Satan culminating in the arrival of the Antichrist.The
answer is not only clear; there is no other possible answer to this
question.…the
Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews was a reaction to Jewish Messianism
(in the form of Bolshevism) every bit as much as the Chmielnicki
pogroms flowed from the excesses of the Jewish tax farmers in the Ukraine.…Just
as a small remnant of faithful Jews brought the Catholic Church into
being
after Christ’s death and resurrection, so too a small number of Jews
brought
the ‘synagogue of Satan’ into existence at around the same time.The
‘synagogue of Satan,’ as its name implies, has as its purpose not
preparing
the world for the second coming of Christ but rather preparing the
world
for the coming of the Antichrist.Because
of their rejection of Christ, the Jews who comprise the synagogue of
Satan
will have a special role to play in that event.…The
contemporary Synagogue of Satan, whether in America
or Israel,
now poses the greatest threat to world peace.”
Catholic Answers, a
mainstream
group which engages in apologetics and evangelical outreach for
Catholicism,
sent out fundraising letters in early 2004 saying: “Islam is worse
than
Communism ever was.…Islam
is and always has been a religion of violence.…it
seeks to eliminate Christianity and Judaism.…The
great threat of the twenty-first century is Islam.”
Such vituperation –
and the
attitude toward enemies that it manifests – will not bring victory for
the cause of Christ.Instead, those
who engage in it are fulfilling an apocalyptic prophecy of Christ: “And
because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold.” (Mt.
24:12).They are also acting as predicted
in the Didache: “the sheep
shall
be turned into wolves, and love shall change to hate.For
as lawlessness increaseth they shall
hate
one another and persecute and betray …”
A Catholic and a
Protestant
offer salutary warnings against being possessed by the spirit of hatred
during the present (and pending) conflicts.Philip Trower,
an orthodox Catholic, says in his history of the crisis in the Roman
Catholic
Church, “It is right to feel an abhorrence for heresy.…The
faith has to be defended.But there
are better and worse ways of doing it, and if one is not careful, love
of the Church and faith can become entangled with natural bellicosity
or
the spirit of domination.We can
forget that our opponents need prayers more than maledictions.”An
evangelical Protestant writer for Christianity Today related an
account of her meeting with a spiritually confused, heretical man who
had
been raised by a zealous mother, a preacher.She
concluded her tale with a warning for us all, especially those of us
who
consider ourselves orthodox or faithful: “For being so surrounded with
Christianity, my friend knew nothing of the grace of God.All
he heard and felt was judgment on his inadequacy: that he was not as
fiery
as mom, not as moral as church people, not as powerful as Catholics.Here
was a man who needed more than anything the thoroughly orthodox word
that
his salvation comes by faith, not by works – in particular, not by
religious
works – but no one was speaking it to him.Why
was the open fact of God’s inviting love the one secret he didn’t know
about, and why were the heresies blazing in full neon color?I
take it as a cautionary tale.If orthodoxy
does not lead the hungry to the Bread of Life and the thirsty to living
waters, is it any better than heresy?”
As we face multiple
global
perils that may test us to extremity, I ask all to remember these two
warnings.“We
can forget that our opponents need prayers more than maledictions,”
and, “If orthodoxy does not lead the hungry to the Bread of Life and
the
thirsty to living waters, is it any better than heresy?”
Kyrieeleison!
Lord, have mercy!
Maranatha!
Come, Lord Jesus!
