The Suicide of the West

 

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Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great,
that made all the nations drink
the wine of her licentious passion.
(Revelation 14:8)

Lord Jesus, our affluence is making us less human,
our entertainment has become a drug,
a source of alienation,
and our society’s incessant, tedious message
is an invitation to die of selfishness.
—POPE BENEDICT XVI,
Fourth Station of the Cross, Good Friday 2006

 

While many faithful are anticipating the “period of peace” promised at Fatima,^[1]cf. What is the Promised Peace? there is a burgeoning anxiety among many believers as we observe the foundations of Western society collapsing. Perhaps this ancient prayer, composed during the decline of the Roman Empire, is now on your lips too: Exicta, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni — “Awaken Your power, O Lord, and come.” 

Today too, we have many reasons to associate ourselves with this Advent prayer of the Church. For all its new hopes and possibilities, our world is at the same time troubled by the sense that moral consensus is collapsing, consensus without which juridical and political structures cannot function. Consequently the forces mobilized for the defence of such structures seem doomed to failure. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, Address to the Roman Curia, December 20, 2010

The entire Western World, through which Christianity once spread to the nations, seems poised to utterly collapse, at least in its present form: America, arguably the last stronghold capable of defending Christianity against an atheistic superpower, is one election away from falling to Socialism; Canada, once the “true north strong and free,” is firmly in the grips of a godless government that is subjugating basic freedoms, as are nearly all the Western nations. China is quietly, steadily rising in military might,^[2]cf. China, and the Storm as Islam is being imported into the West at breathtaking speed. What Pope Leo XIII wrote some 135 years ago could have been penned this morning; that there is rising a…

…spirit of revolutionary change which has long been disturbing the nations of the world… The elements of the conflict now raging are unmistakable… The momentous gravity of the state of things now involved fills every mind with painful apprehension…” —Pope Leo XIII, Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum, n. 1, May 15th, 1891

The goal of this global revolution, the popes warned, “is to drive people to overthrow the entire order of human affairs and to draw them over to the wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism.”^[3]POPE PIUX IX, Nostis et Nobiscum, Encyclical, n. 18, DECEMBER 8, 1849 They intend, said Leo XIII, “the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced,”^[4]Humanum Genus, Encyclical on Freemasonry, n.10, April 20th, 1884 — that is, to overthrow Western civilization, and replace it with a system whose laws and foundations are based solely on naturalism.^[5]The philosophical belief that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are excluded or discounted.

The “they” the popes are referring to is the global secret society of Freemasons, which some eight pontiffs have formally condemned.^[6]Papal and Canonical Condemnations of Freemasonry Since 1738, at least eight Supreme Pontiffs have condemned Freemasonry in one form or another:

• Pope Clement XII, In eminenti apostolatus (1738) • Pope Benedict XIV, Providas Romanorum (1751)
• Pope Pius VII, Ecclesiam a Jesu Christo (1821) • Pope Leo XII, Quo Graviora: On Secret Societies (1826) Pope Pius VIII, Traditi Humilitati: On His Program for His Pontificate (1829)
• Pope Gregory XVI, Mirari vos: On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism (1832)
• Pope Pius IX, Qui pluribus: On Faith and Religion (1846)
• Pope Pius IX, Quibus quantisque malis (1849)
• Pope Pius IX, Quanta cura: Condemning Current Errors (1864)
• Pope Pius IX, Multiplices inter: Pleading for Unity of Spirit (1865)
• Pope Pius IX, Apostolicae Sedis moderationi (1869)
• Pope Pius IX, Etsi multa: On the Church in Italy, Germany, and Switzerland (1873)
• Pope Leo XIII, Etsi Nos: On Conditions in Italy (1882)
• Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus (1884)
• Pope Leo XIII, Officio sanctissimo: On the Church in Bavaria (1887)
• Pope Leo XIII, Dall’alto dell’Apostolico Seggio: Freemasonry in Italy (1890)
• Pope Leo XIII, Custodi di Quella Fede: On Freemasonry (1892)
• Pope Leo XIII, Inimica Vis: On Freemasonry (1892)
• Pope Leo XIII, Praeclara gratulationis publicae: The Reunion of Christendom (1894)
• Pope Leo XIII, Annum ingressi (1902); Source: The Conor Gallagher Show: “Freemasonry, Antichrist, and the End Times” with Joshua Charles This is hardly “conspiracy theory.” Rather, we are now, by all appearances, in the final stages of this overthrow, what these globalists today proudly call “The Great Reset.” What is most remarkable, though, is that it is an overthrow being achieved through collective suicide… 

 

The Suicide of the West

One year before being elected Pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger observed:

We notice a self-hatred in the Western world that is strange and that can be considered pathological; yes, the West is making a praiseworthy attempt to be completely open to understanding foreign values, but it no longer loves itself; from now on it sees in its own history only what is blameworthy and destructive, whereas it is no longer capable of perceiving what is great and pure. In order to survive, Europe needs a new… acceptance of itself, that is, if it wants to survive. —Europe: Today and Tomorrow: Addressing the Fundamental Issues, Ignatius Press, p.33

Commenting on that passage, West African Cardinal Robert Sarah agreed:

Europe seems to be programmed to self-destruct. The only vision that it has of the future is on the economic and military levels. Its Judeo-Christian roots have been forgotten. The West seems to hate itself and to be ready to commit suicide. —The Day is Now Far Spent, Ignatius Press, p. 220

And quite literally. For decades, birth control and abortion have decimated the populations of Western nations, to the point that a “demographic winter” is now in progress: several nations’ birthrates have fallen below replacement levels. At the same time, several countries, including Canada, are euthanizing the aged,^[7]cf. slay.com the sick, and even those suffering from depression. A recent Angus Reid poll shows 77% of Canadians support this suicide of their nation.^[8]cf. angusreid.org  

Now a startling new phenomenon is taking place where Western leaders have essentially opened wide their borders, flooding their lands with foreigners. They’re not just accepting genuine refugees; they’re encouraging mass population movement. Says Cardinal Sarah:

Europe is sterile; it is not replacing itself, for lack of a sufficiently high birth rate. Its house is filling up with foreigners because it is “empty, swept, and put in order” (Matthew 12:44). —Ibid., p. 222

That is a reference to Christ’s warning of what happens to a person who is delivered from evil… but then leaves their heart empty, or in this case, when a continent like Europe was converted and transformed… but has now all but abandoned its Christian roots. Jesus said,

When an unclean spirit goes out of a person it roams through arid regions searching for rest but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my home from which I came.’ But upon returning, it finds it empty, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and brings back with itself seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they move in and dwell there; and the last condition of that person is worse than the first. Thus it will be with this evil generation. (Matthew 12:43-45)

Once a bastion of Christianity, Catholicism has been all but expunged from every facet of Western society. Churches are mostly empty in Europe as city officials have begun to repurpose them as “skateboard parks, gymnastic training arenas, museums, supermarkets, gyms, and even bars.”^[9]cf. summit.org Something worse is beginning to possess the West… 

Europe has lost its nobility. Ugliness is invading all sectors of society. Pretentiousness and pride are serious evils. The search for truth no longer exists. Evil and good are confused… People live in confusion… The rejection of life, the murder of preborn children, the murder of the handicapped and the elderly, the demolition of the family and of moral and spiritual values: all this is the first act in the tragedy of the suicide of an entire people. We are helpless spectators at the decline of a civilization. Europe’s nose dive is unique in the history of humanity. —Cardinal Robert Sarah, Ibid., p. 221

It’s a nosedive that seems to have been prophesied in Scripture…

 

Fall of Babylon

Recent images of revolutionaries setting the streets on fire in America, France, the UK, and other countries evoke a passage from the Book of Revelation on Babylon and the harlot. As I wrote in Mystery Babylon, these passages seem most suited to America and the West.

I saw a woman seated on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names, with seven heads and ten horns… The ten horns that you saw and the beast will hate the harlot; they will leave her desolate and naked; they will eat her flesh and consume her with fire. (Rev 17:3, 16)

In a message to Servant of God Fr. Stefano Gobbi, which bears the Church’s Imprimatur, Our Lady spoke of this beast in Revelation:

This Black Beast has ten horns and, on the horns, ten crowns, which are signs of dominion and royalty. Masonry rules and governs throughout the whole world by means of the ten horns. —June 3rd, 1989, To the Priest, Our Lady’s Beloved Sons, n. 405.d-e

What does she mean by this? Author and researcher, Ted Flynn, writes:

…few people are aware how deep the roots of this sect actually reach. Freemasonry is perhaps the single greatest secular organized power on earth today and battles head to head with the things of God on a daily basis. It is a controlling power in the world, operating behind the scenes in banking and politics, and it has effectively infiltrated all religions. Masonry is a worldwide secret sect undermining the authority of the Catholic Church with a hidden agenda at the upper levels to destroy the papacy. —Ted Flynn, Hope of the Wicked: The Master Plan to Rule the World, p. 154

Now, the key concept here is that the beast uses, and yet “hates” the harlot. How does the beast of Freemasonry use the harlot, that is, use America? By “ideological colonization” — the spread of Enlightenment philosophies, most of which were penned by Freemasons themselves. 

There is not a single philosophical idea in Communism that did not come from the West. It’s philosophy came from Germany, its sociology from France, its economics from England. And what Russia gave it was an asiatic soul and power and face. —Blessed Fulton Sheen, Communism in America, cf. youtube.com

“Russia,” said Pope Pius XI, was considered “the best-prepared field for experimenting with a plan elaborated decades ago, and who from there continue to spread it from one end of the world to the other.”^[10]Divini Redemptoris, n. 24 But “America would be used to lead the world into the philosophic empire,” said author and radio host, the late Dr. Stanley Monteith.

You understand that America was founded by Christians as a Christian nation. However, there were always those people on the other side who wanted to use America, abuse our military power and our financial power, to establish enlightened democracies throughout the world and restore the lost Atlantis.  —Dr. Stanley Monteith, The New Atlantis: Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings (video); interview Dr. Stanley Monteith

The “lost Atlantis” is an allegory of a utopian civilization based on the lost, secret knowledge that Freemasonry claims to preserve. America, in part, was to help form this new Altantis, or Novus Ordo Seclorum — “New Order of the Ages”, as it says on the American dollar bill. Few Americans know that several of their Founding Fathers of their country were Freemasons,^[11]An internet search will often present this list, which is by no means complete:

George Washington — First U.S. president and member of Fredericksburg Lodge in Virginia.

Benjamin Franklin — Signer of the Declaration of Independence and a former Grand Master of Pennsylvania.

John Hancock — President of the Continental Congress and signer of the Declaration.

Paul Revere — Revolutionary patriot and Masonic leader in Massachusetts.

Joseph Warren — Physician, revolutionary leader, and Grand Master of Massachusetts.

William Ellery — Signer of the Declaration of Independence.

William Hooper — North Carolina delegate and Declaration signer.

Joseph Hewes — North Carolina delegate and Declaration signer.

Robert Treat Paine — Massachusetts delegate and Declaration signer.

Richard Stockton — New Jersey delegate and Declaration signer.

George Walton — Georgia delegate and Declaration signer.

William Whipple — New Hampshire delegate and Declaration signer.

James Monroe — Fifth U.S. president and Freemason.

John Marshall — Chief Justice of the United States and Masonic leader.

Robert R. Livingston — New York statesman who administered Washington’s presidential oath. which sheds a curious light on a speech by President George Bush Jr: 

When our founders declared a “new order of the ages”… they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. —President George Bush Jr., speech on Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2005

However, the popes see this “ancient hope” differently, as antithetical to God and human dignity. 

We think of the great powers of the present day, of the anonymous financial interests which turn men into slaves, which are no longer human things, but are an anonymous power which men serve, by which men are tormented and even slaughtered. They are a destructive power, a power that menaces the world. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, Reflection after the reading of the office for the Third Hour this morning in the Synod Aula, Vatican City, October 11, 2010

Another label for these great powers is the so-called “global elite.” Their agenda, the “Great Reset,” envisions global “fraternity,” “equality,” and “justice” based not on the Gospel, but on science and reason alone. “It is the plan of the sects [secret societies] that is now unfolding… especially in what relates to the Catholic religion and the Church, with the final and avowed purpose, if it were possible, of reducing it to nothing,” warned Pope Leo XIII.^[12]Dall’alto dell’Apostolico Seggio, n.2 Of course, the globalists don’t say that outright; they simply tell us they will “build back better.”   

…when conditions are right, a reign will spread across the whole earth to wipe out all Christians, and then establish a universal brotherhood without marriage, family, property, law or God. —Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire (a Freemason), Stephen Mahowald, She Shall Crush Thy Head (Kindle Edition)

 

Case in Point

Recently, a woman told me that she read Prime Minister Mark Carney’s book, Values: Building a Better World for All. She is not a Christian, but she described what she read as “evil”, saying that Carney essentially views the rest of us as “ants.” I gathered that much myself from the passages I read in the book — and his views aren’t insignificant.

Mark Carney has been not only a chief central banker but also an advisor to the World Economic Forum — the driver of “The Great Reset.” So it’s significant to pay attention to what’s written in his book. As Peter Foster of The National Post summed up in his review: 

Carney’s climate plan is much closer to the notion of Soviet central long-term planning… What Carney ultimately wants… is a technocratic dictatorship justified by climate alarmism. — National Post, Jun 05, 2021

Like other Western leaders, Carney has been running massive debts while stifling productivity, driving the economy further into the ground.^[13]From Carney’s book: “To meet the 1.5°C target, more than 80 percent of current fossil fuel reserves (including three-quarters of coal, half of gas, one-third of oil) would need to stay in the ground, stranding these assets. —Value(s): Building a Better World for All, Ch. 11 As in Europe, he is flooding the country with unvetted immigrants, causing housing, healthcare, and employment crises; his government has banned prayer in the military; is censoring certain passages of Scripture;^[14]Bill C-9, the Combating Hate Act and aggressively promoted gender ideology, abortion, and assisted suicide. In a word, a culture of death has replaced the once vibrant culture of life that made Europe and North America free, civilized, and pillars of light to the nations.

A culture which no longer has a point of reference in God loses its soul and loses its way, becoming a culture of death. —POPE JOHN PAUL II, World Day of Peace, January 1, 2001

“The truth appeared like a great candle lighting the whole world with its brilliant flame,” wrote St. Bernadine of Siena. But now, said Benedict XVI, “the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel.”^[15]Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to All the Bishops of the World, March 12, 2009

 

Suicidal Empathy

What is most stunning is how Westerners are going along with the destruction of their nations, or simply blind to what is taking place. “Suicidal empathy” is a dangerous phenomenon whereby empathy trumps logic and misplaced compassion ignores long-term consequences. Far-left news and talk shows, university courses, and social media have made suicidal empathy an opportune platform for virtue-signaling, further fomenting a culture of Political Correctness and the death of logic. Their target undoubtedly is the youth.

Former FBI agent, Cleon Skousen, revealed in 1958 in astonishing detail forty-five Communist goals that have been largely achieved in American society. Among them:

#25 Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

#26 Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

#17 Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

#31 Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history… —from The Naked Communist 

In other words, hate your identity, hate your roots, hate your country. The propaganda has worked brilliantly, just as Pius XI predicted:

…the Communist ideal wins over many of the better minded members of the community. These in turn become the apostles of the movement among the younger intelligentsia who are still too immature to recognize the intrinsic errors of the system. —POPE PIUS XI, Divini Redemptoris, n. 15

 

Suicide by Immigration?

Suicidal empathy is no more apparent than in the unfettered rush to welcome waves of unvetted immigrants without calculating the cost to one’s society, culture, economy, security, and future. While Catholic social teaching recognizes the right to migrate legally and the plight of genuine refugees, it also warns that nations have a duty to regulate immigration. 

States have the right to regulate migration flows and to defend their own frontiers, always guaranteeing the respect due to the dignity of each and every human person. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, “Message on the 97th Day of Migrants and Refugees“, 2011

In what can only be described as a self-inflicted wound, Western leaders have opened their borders wide without regard for proper integration and the common good of local populations. And it is no doubt deliberate — there is no other explanation. For the very same globalists who have pushed abortion and birth control, thereby decimating their country’s native Christian populations, are now the very same men and women who are flooding Western countries with non-Christians. It would seem that this is the final nail in the coffin for the West: Christians, simply, will soon be outnumbered. The ultimate (unstated) goal, as the popes have warned, is the utter overthrow of Christendom… a death by suicidal empathy.

Cardinal Robert Sarah

Europe claims to fight against all forms of discrimination based on race and religious affiliation. In this area, real progress has been made. But some have taken advantage of it in order to impose a utopian spirit. The disappearance of fatherlands and the colonization of cultures could not be a form of progress. The European multiculturalist enterprise exploits an ideal of universal charity that is misunderstood. Charity is not a denial of self. It consists of offering to the other the best that one has and what one has. Now the best thing that Europe has to offer to the world is its identity, its civilization, which is profoundly imbued with Christianity. But what has it offered to the Muslim newcomers except irreligion and barbaric consumerism? How can anyone be surprised when the latter take refuge in Islamist fundamentalism…. if migrants who arrive in Europe end up having contempt for it, this is basically because they find nothing sacred in it. —Cardinal Robert Sarah, Ibid. pp. 223-224

Many do not understand that Islam is not just a religion but “a complete civilizational system — what Islamic primary sources call deen, a total way of life — containing political, legal, military, societal, and religious doctrine.”^[16]cspii.org/trop As a result, it is an objective of Islam not only to maintain dominance in a region where it is established, but to eventually dominate globally through Jihad. This objective is permitted by both non-violent and violent means, according to the trinity of Islamic doctrine: the Koran, the Sira (Mohammed’s biography), and the Hadith (Mohammed’s traditions). However, because Islam does not have an authoritative Magisterium like the Catholic Church, namely a pope to guard doctrinal orthodoxy, Islam’s followers and teachers sometimes interpret Mohammed in vastly different ways.

Yet, it is clear in many countries, including even America, that Muslim populations are establishing parallel societies governed by their own system of law, known as Sharia. As one fatwa (interpretation of Islamic law) states, it’s okay to love a non-Muslim country where one resides, so long as it does not “contradict the rulings of the Sharia.”^[17]islamweb.net But as Cardinal Sarah rightly notes, there is little left in Western society that agrees with traditional Muslim views.  

Hence, many Muslim communities are forming Sharia enclaves, what President of the Middle East Forum, Daniel Pipes, calls “partial no-go zones” where “representatives of the state – police especially but also firefighters, meter-readers, ambulance attendants, and social workers – can only enter with massed power for temporary periods of time.” If they disobey this basic rule, says Pipes, based on his own experience in traveling through them, “they are likely to be swarmed, insulted, threatened, and even attacked.”^[18]danielpipes.org; cf. Washington Times In several Middle Eastern countries, like Iran, women are required to wear hijabs or burqas, and protests against freedoms are met with violence. In countries like Nigeria, the situation is far worse, where kafirs (non-Muslims) are being slaughtered by the thousands — one Christian killed every 86 minutes, according to one report^[19]christianpost.com — and their houses and churches burned to the ground by Islamic jihadists.^[20]cf. The Nigerian Gift In Europe, the wave of immigrants there has been followed by a dramatic increase in sexual crimes. Between 2014 and 2024, sexual violence offenses jumped by 94% (+124 350 cases) and rape offenses by 150% (+58 983).^[21]ec.europa.eu Here, the words of St. John hold particular relevance:

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. She has become a haunt for demons. She is a cage for every unclean spirit, a cage for every unclean bird, a cage for every unclean and disgusting beast… (Revelation 18:2)

Of course, not all Muslims subscribe to the Islamic global caliphate, and many peacefully co-exist alongside their non-Muslim neighbors. Still, watching churches and historic buildings burn to the ground in France, Canada, and elsewhere, one can’t help but wonder if the barbarians of whatever persuasion aren’t already in the house.

Two kinds of barbarism are confronting each other: a materialist barbarism and another Islamist one. I fear that the second one will have the last word. —Cardinal Robert Sarah, Ibid. p. 226

So the windswept house of the West is filling with something potentially far worse than before its conversion. Even atheist Richard Dawkins has sounded the alarm. 

There are no Christians, as far as I know, blowing up buildings. I am not aware of any Christian suicide bombers. I am not aware of any major Christian denomination that believes the penalty for apostasy is death. I have mixed feelings about the decline of Christianity, in so far as Christianity might be a bulwark against something worse. —The Times (remarks from 2010); republished on Brietbart.com, January 12th, 2016

 

A Key Sign of the Times

In St. Paul’s prophetic warning to the Thessalonians, he speaks of something or someone holding back the Antichrist or “lawless one”, as he calls him.   

…the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. But the one who restrains is to do so only for the present, until he is removed from the scene. And then the lawless one will be revealed… (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8)

Theologians and Bible scholars have wrestled with who or what restrains the “lawless one.” Notably, Benedict XVI offered this insight:

Abraham, the father of faith, is by his faith the rock that holds back chaos, the onrushing primordial flood of destruction, and thus sustains creation. Simon, the first to confess Jesus as the Christ… now becomes by virtue of his Abrahamic faith, which is renewed in Christ, the rock that stands against the impure tide of unbelief and its destruction of man. —POPE BENEDICT XVI (Cardinal Ratzinger), Called to Communion, Understanding the Church Today, Adrian Walker, Tr., p. 55-56

On the other hand, St. John Henry Newman points to the Early Church Fathers, who saw the eventual collapse of Christendom, as embodied by the Catholicized Roman Empire, as heralding the coming of Antichrist. 

Now this restraining power [holding back the Antichrist is] generally admitted to be the Roman empire… I do not grant that the Roman empire is gone. Far from it: the Roman empire remains even to this day… And as the horns, or kingdoms, still exist, as a matter of fact, consequently we have not yet seen the end of the Roman empire. —St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890), The Times of Antichrist, Sermon 1

I would argue that the collapse of Christendom is both:^[22]cf. The Agitators – Part I and Part II it is the literal or allegorical weakening or flight of the papacy (which is a main goal of Freemasonry), and at the same time, “the disintegration of the key principles of law and of the fundamental moral attitudes” that once formed the “moral consensus” of the West. But this, said Benedict in 2010, has been “eclipsed” — 

…the capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will. The very future of the world is at stake. —Address to the Roman Curia, December 20th, 2010; vatican.va

Indeed, as consumerism, pornography, and the pursuit of self-interested comfort and pleasure replace the once Christian ethos of the West, it would seem that the final collapse of the Roman Empire is well underway. According to Newman, this collective suicide is the key “sign of the times”:

Satan may adopt the more alarming weapons of deceit—he may hide himself—he may attempt to seduce us in little things, and so to move the Church, not all at once, but by little and little from her true position. I do believe he has done much in this way in the course of the last few centuries… It is his policy to split us up and divide us, to dislodge us gradually from our rock of strength. And if there is to be a persecution, perhaps it will be then; then, perhaps, when we are all of us in all parts of Christendom so divided, and so reduced, so full of schism, so close upon heresy. When we have cast ourselves upon the world and depend for protection upon it, and have given up our independence and our strength, then [Antichrist] will burst upon us in fury as far as God allows him. Then suddenly the Roman Empire may break up, and Antichrist appear as a persecutor, and the barbarous nations around break in. —St. John Henry Newman, Sermon IV: The Persecution of Antichrist

Thus, concluded Blessed Fulton Sheen:

We are at the end of Christendom. Now, not Christianity, not the Church. Remember what I am saying. We are at the end of Christendom. What is Christendom? Christendom is economic, political, social life as inspired by Christian principles. That is finished. We’ve seen it die.

Look at the symptoms. Break up of the family, divorce, abortion, immorality, general dishonesty. Now this is the situation we’re in today, and this is one of the basic causes of our degeneration, of our death. We’re dying.

OSV News file photo

What about it? What’s the answer? The answer is these are great and wonderful days in which to be alive. I thank God that I’m young. Don’t laugh now. I thank God that I’m young in order that I can live in these days. Because these are days of testing. 20 years ago 30, 40 years ago it was easy to be Christian; the atmosphere was Christian; morals were Christian; there was no great problem in adapting ourselves to a Christian society.

But now when everything has turned around, these are days in which masks have got to come off and we reveal ourselves just as we really are. Then we can float with the current today. The current is against us, and today the mood of the world is: go with the world; go with the spirit [ie. zeitgeist]. Listen, dead bodies float downstream — only live bodies resist the current.

And so the good Lord is testing us. That’s why these are great days. He tested the Russians, the Russian Christians with Communism; He tested the German Christians with Nazism, and how many fell; and He’s testing the Western Christians with worldliness, and how many of us are falling.

It is not a gloomy picture; it is a picture of the Church in the midst of increasing opposition from the world. And therefore, live your lives in the full consciousness of this hour of testing. —Blessed Fulton Sheen, Jan. 26, 1947 broadcast; cf. ncregister.com

 

Related Reading

On the Eve

The Fall of Mystery Babylon

The Slow Burn

Exposing This Revolutionary Spirit

By Our Own Hands

The Crisis of the Refugee Crisis

The Coming Collapse of America

In One Hour

The Lactantius Prophecy

 

 

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