ITE MISSA EST: How Modernizing the Church Gave Rise to Christophobia

'Today, the Church is the one bastion of Truth, the only impediment to the global elites’ dream of a “new world order”, the ultimate Freemasonic plot to destroy the Church from within and prop up the eviscerated institution as the counterfeit church of the brave new world, which would give credence to the “moral authority” of the totalitarians and architects of the technocratic 4th industrial revolution.'

From The Remnant

By D.C. Arangno, PhD

There can be no dispute that the mission of the Church is to glorify God, to seek the Salvation of souls, to serve the poor, and to Evangelize – to spread the good news of the Gospel to all corners of the World: to build the Kingdom of Christ on earth.  But among the chief duties of the Catholic Church is to hold the powerful in society to their duty to the welfare of the citizenry, to protect those human rights which derive from Divine Law, and to demand that governments uphold and protect those rights endowed by God Himself and not bestowed by temporal authority.  It is the Church that calls the world to conversion.

 

INTRODUCTION

Christianity is today, as it has been for 2000 years, a threat: a threat to that which is corrupt in society, and the nemesis of those who prosper from society’s moral decay.

From ancient times to modern day, the Church has courageously and unshakably stood in the way of despots, tyrants, and wicked men who would seize power in order to enslave the masses, plunder and despoil, and subject all society to their will.

These things sacred Scripture tells us – in every age, the Faithful are counter-revolutionaries; the Church Militant.  

Today, the Church is the one bastion of Truth, the only impediment to the global elites’ dream of a “new world order”, the ultimate Freemasonic plot to destroy the Church from within and prop up the eviscerated institution as the counterfeit church of the brave new world, which would give credence to the “moral authority” of the totalitarians and architects of the technocratic 4th industrial revolution.

Christianity is singular among the faiths: it alone can provide the essential Truth the world has always needed and needs now to survive a time of chaos, madness, and desolation; to recover our sanity, to reaffirm the sanctity of life and our Human dignity, and most importantly, to restore our sense of meaning and our only hope for salvation.

The true Faith is a beacon of light, in a world in which barbaric atrocities are the norm, not the exception: a world in which slavery has always been and continues to be a venerated institution upon which economies are based; a world in which brutal dictatorships that oppress and de-humanize the masses are the ordinary political and social norms.

On the contrary to what many have been deluded to believe, it is moral relativism that motivates and justifies History’s real horrors – the Holocaust, slavery, abortion, human trafficking, organ harvesting, pedophilia – and it is the Church’s job to condemn such violations of God’s divine commandments.

All cultures outside Christianity couch Humanity in the idiom of “the masses”, or “the whole” or “the brotherhood of Man”.  Only the people of the Old and New Testaments view Humanity as a family under the Fatherhood of God.  Indeed it is the dignity and infinite value of man as the Image of God which under girds the one true and immutable Truth, that the sum total of all reality centers around Salvation and the encounter between the Infinite Creator with the individual Human person, engaged in the intimacy of a personal relationship. 

The fundamental principles of Human Rights are the fruit of Christianity!  A radical innovation of the Gospel.

Christianity alone provides substantial and real answers to the comprehensive range of Human dilemmas, and a promise of enduring peace, both internal to the person’s heart, within communities, and between peoples of different races and nations.

The flourishing of Faith during the Middle Ages, was eclipsed by rebellious forces ushered in during the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution  – a rebellion belief replaced by rationalism.

As Timothy Gordon writes in 2017 in Catholic.com/magazine:

“On June 24, 1717, the Grand Lodge of London and Westminster was founded to unify the Freemasons, whose express, covert goal was to destroy the Catholic Church. Four existing “lodges” gathered that day at the Goose and Gridiron Alehouse in London, St. John the Baptist Day, to gather the principles of the European Enlightenment into a single, powerful, secret society for implementation. The newly minted Masons required no more than seven decades before yielding their first fruit: the anti-Catholic French Revolution of 1789. It was the first of several Masonic-influenced revolutions over the next century and a half.

“The first strike against global magisterial Christendom was the advent of Protestantism in 1517; the culminating atheist blow was struck in 1917 by the Bolsheviks at Winter Palace. But the popular Western culture’s jump from Protestantism to atheism makes little sense without the role of Freemasonry, the Enlightenment’s crowning contribution to the insurgency.” (1)

In the words of Archbishop Vigano, “The task that falls to us is to proclaim the truth, to remind the world that salvation comes only from Christ, the Prince of Peace, whose Lordship over the nations and over the Church, which has been usurped by a rebellious and corrupt authority, must be restored.”

The Mission of the Church

In the words of Pope Leo XIII:

“It is the office of the Church to undertake the defense of truth and uproot errors from the mind, and this charge has to be at all times sacredly observed by her, seeing that the honor of God and the salvation of men are confided to her keeping.  But when necessity compels, not those only who are invested with power of rule are bound to safeguard the integrity of faith but, as Saint Thomas maintains, ‘Each one is under obligation to show forth his faith, either to instruct and encourage others of the faithful, or to repel the attacks of the unbelievers.’ 

“To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe.  In both cases such mode of behaving is base and is insulting to God, and both are incompatible with the salvation of mankind.  This kind of conduct is profitable only to the enemies of the faith, for noting emboldens the wicked so greatly as the lack of courage on the part of the good.” (2)

This is why the Church throughout History has been so vocal in political affairs.

In our current times, Pope John Paul II himself is credited with being the principle force behind the toppling of the Communist regime in Eastern Europe, and Pope Benedict, successor of John Paul II, who continued to speak out forcefully in defense of societies in peril under the looming shadow of despotism, and the abyss of nihilism.

“Today, even in this modern age marked by anxiety and uncertainty, we relive the event of the Resurrection, which changed the face of our life and changed the history of humanity," Benedict said in the traditional papal “Urbi et Orbi” message at Easter in 2006.

He urged us to hopefulness, to faith, even as he spoke of the need for action toward peace and compassion and justice in troubled regions of the world -- civilization in peril and the mounting doom.

There can be no dispute that the mission of the Church is to glorify God, to seek the Salvation of souls, to serve the poor, and to Evangelize – to spread the good news of the Gospel to all corners of the World: to build the Kingdom of Christ on earth.  But among the chief duties of the Catholic Church is to hold the powerful in society to their duty to the welfare of the citizenry, to protect those human rights which derive from Divine Law, and to demand that governments uphold and protect those rights endowed by God Himself and not bestowed by temporal authority.  It is the Church that calls the world to conversion.

Indeed, the Church is mandated to engage in political activism.

And this must constitute a sacred duty of the clergy and the laity alike.

But the allies of the enemies of Christ are ever trying to destroy His Church.

In Modern times we see this decades-long work to dismantle her from the inside!

The efforts to “modernize” her “rigid” ways.  The cant about making her more “inclusive” in “dialogue with those in the peripheries”….  The campaign to “update” the Eternal Truths of Christ! to modernize the Deposit of Faith, and “update” the Catechism, the Sacred Rituals passed down from the Apostles themselves over 2000 years of Holy Tradition, which are denounced as intolerant and inflexible, and ridiculed as “clutching onto past ways”…

These things are efforts to conform that which was established by our Lord Himself to the values and dictates of the World.  To make secular what is Divine.

Secular Humanism in Crisis

We need to understand that this is a defining moment in human history.  The eminent historian Willis B. Glover makes this point the premise of his landmark book, Biblical Origins of Modern Secular Culture:

“For the first time in history a single culture dominates the world.  The culture that slowly arose in Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire has expanded beyond the border of Europe and has proved so far superior to other cultures in a wide range of important [practical] human activities that it can no longer be thought of as having any rival.  Indigenous cultures will give it different flavors and tones in different regions, but none, not even that of Islam shows the slightest promise of withstanding its onslaught….Yet this uniquely successful civilization is now in the most serious crisis of its existence, and the question of its survival is raised by thoughtful and informed people…

“the paradox is not only that Western power is retreating at the same time Western culture is spreading, but that the spread of Western ideas, ideals, and techniques is what produced the retrenchment of Western power.  There is, indeed, a still deeper paradox: just when Westernization is enveloping the whole globe and even the most anti-Western politicians are introducing Western industry and science and political techniques into their countries, the West itself has lost confidence in the value of its own culture. 

It has become a mark of high moral sensibility in many Western circles to assert the superiority of non-Western cultures to our own.” (3)

In particular, the Pope John Paul II observed: “.....Again and again we encounter the signs of an alternative civilization to that built on Christ as ‘cornerstone’ – a civilization which even if not explicitly atheist, is at least positivistic and agnostic, since it is built upon the principle of thinking and acting as if God did not exist.  This approach can easily be recognized in the modern so-called scientific, or rather scientistic, mentality, and it can be recognized in literature, especially the mass media.  To live as if God did not exist means to live outside the parameters of good and evil, outside the context of values derived from God.  [Anti-Christian] currents strike at the very foundations of human morality, influencing the family and promoting a morally permissive outlook: divorce, free love, abortion, contraception, the fight against life in its initial phases and in its final phases, the manipulation of life.  This program is supported by enormous financial resources, not only in individual countries, but also on a worldwide scale.  It has great centers of economic power at its disposal, through which it attempts to impose its own conditions on developing countries.  Faced with all this, one may legitimately ask whether this is not another form of totalitarianism, subtly concealed under the appearances of [pluralism].” (Memory and Identity) (4)

There can be no doubt that the values, ethics, and ideals of the West have been propagated throughout the world, having spread like a wildfire through kindling to every parched corner of the globe. 

Ideals of human rights, social justice, personhood, individual responsibility, personal dignity, and freedom. 

These ideals and values we refer to as “western” are in of course Christian—indeed, Catholic.

WORLD IN CRISIS

The greatest problem facing Humanity today is an existential identity crisis and a profound despair.  Having rejected God and turned our backs on Truth, we are inexorably lost -- bewildered by mounting chaos, in growing terror that our very existence is devoid of purpose. 

This disordered state, is because we have become detached from our moorings, not just left to drift but caught up in the tempest.  We have renounced our citizenship in the City of God, and have rejected Christ’s Kingship over the world.

Having become seduced by our science, and by its prodigy technology, as the salvation of Humanity, we have come to believe that our capacity for scientific discovery and reason are exhaustive and sufficient.  Our very belief system has been reoriented – from traditional theistic religion to atheistic secularism.  And, along with a radical deformation of our world view, is the methodical purging of faith from the public square and from the marketplace.  The conversation is, after all, about Humanity in the world: who are we, and why are we here?  Our inquiry into the nature of Man and questions of the Universe, more and more, excludes anything that is couched in the idiom of Faith. 

Faith is being abominated as naïve wishful thinking and superstition at best, or it is being condemned as extremist ideology – and it is systematically being expunged from the conversation.  All mystery is regarded with calculated suspicion.

Transcendence is dismissed as nothing more than arcane metaphysical parlance, and dangerous fringe ideology.

 In a word, secular humanism has banished God, rejecting with contempt absolute and immutable Truths.

This is the gravest treason of the mind – the consummate deceit – that Man might dispense with God and that human institutions and technology might obviate our need for Him.

In the process, our own meaning eludes us: and we search for our lost purpose, in vain.  And we re-enact the Fall in the Garden once again.

We often think it can be left to institutions, and government, to regulate human behavior.

We often resent the influence of the Church in policy-making.  And we are suspicious of the perceived threat of conservative politics or embrace of tradition.

The modern sophisticate rejects all that, denounces Christian influence in public life, and does not hesitate to ridicule anyone who claims to be a follower of Christ.

It is painfully obvious that the modern secular humanist is “Christophobic”.

Hate speech is celebrated—if it is to vilify Christians; the cultural mob is ready to censor and blaspheme any mention of the word “Christ” that is uttered beyond the vestibule of the church.

And the modernists within the Church have aggressively been promoting the secularization of Catholicism, and are the driving force for the accommodation of sin upending the Faith and contradicting Sacred Scripture.  The heretical attitude toward homosexuality and the open denial of those “last things”: Judgement, Sin, and Hell. 

The inexorable and deliberate result is division, confusion, persecution of traditionalists, and ultimately schism.

Modernism is an abject failure.  It is as a withered dead thing, a branch broken off from the living plant that no longer sustains it.

The Christian in the World

According to the Christian faith, God thought everything into being, therefore it must be so that everything reflects His beauty.

Therefore the Christian loves the temporal, first because it came from God, and consequently it is good.   There is nothing spiritual in the material world itself: it is only good because God created it, and is a reflection of Divine thought.  Civilization however is a spiritual work, which is Man’s yearning to fulfill himself by acting in the world.

Therefore, the Christian must not be alienated from the world and turn his back on it.  The Christian must not simply condemn, but to reclaim, and restore, that which has been disfigured or estranged.  And even love which has been wounded can be restored to wholeness.

Persons of faith must not then be marginalized, as they are today. 

But in that they speak and act in good conscience according to the tenets of their Faith, individuals of faith need to be valued for their transformative and healing power in the natural world and in human society:  especially in that the man of conscience conforms his will to what is right, and seeks Divine grace in overcoming his own evil nature, and guidance in his good works on earth.

As Plinio Correa de Oliveira wrote, “To avoid deserting the Faith, a Catholic must, therefore, as a member of the Church Militant, fight for the restoration of the Kingdom of Christ as the only way to restore the only true civilization”(5)

He adds, “The adversaries of the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ are not only those who directly oppose His plan of redemption. The chorus of these ungodly and renegade voices is echoed by Catholics who distort the words the Divine Master uttered before Pilate when he said that His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). They restrict the meaning of these words and make it seem that His kingship is an exclusively spiritual kingship over souls and not a social Kingship over peoples, nations and governments.  When Our Lord says that His kingdom is not of this world, the great ultramontane Cardinal Pie clarifies, He means that it does not come from this world but from heaven and thus cannot be snatched away by any human power. His kingdom is not like those on earth that are limited and subject to the vicissitudes of the things of this world…. The expression ‘of this world’ [refers to] to the origin of the Divine Kingship and does not mean in any way that Jesus Christ denies His Sovereignty or the character of a social kingdom. If His kingdom were limited to a strictly spiritual sphere or the interior life of souls, Our Lord would have blatantly contradicted Himself when, among other references, He clearly states that “all power is given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18)”(6)

Reject the social reign of Jesus Christ, and all that is left is the tyranny of despots.  As William Penn said in 1668, reiterated by Noah Webster, “Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.”(7)

This was witnessed first hand by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who warned in his address upon receiving the Templeton Prize in 1983, “But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”(8) 

FINAL EPISTLE

It is the follower of Christ who is called upon to purify and transform the world through Grace, to lead others to salvation and eternal life – for His sake.

Surely, we reside in the temporal, but only as transients.  We are denizens of Eternity, and our true abode is the Heavens.  But here on Earth we labor to restore that beauty which it first radiated when it was conceived.  And it is through love alone that the ordinary, even the profane, is elevated to the sacred.

That is our purpose here on earth, wayfarers and pilgrims that we are.  We must toil against the misery and injustice that we encounter.  We must work to redeem the humanity among us, through charity to our neighbors, through good stewardship of the gifts we have received, but not for our own prosperity, rather to God’s glory.  We must seek that transformation – in the world and in our own hearts – which is the Mystery of Salvation.

~ Citations ~

1. Timothy Gordon, The Great Modern Attack on the Church, Catholic.com/magazine, 7/1/2017
2. Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae, January 1890.  (The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII, Benzinger Brothers NY 1903)
3. Willis B. Glover. Biblical Origins of Modern Secular Culture: An Essay in the Interpretation of Western History.  Macon, GA: Mercer University Press (1984).
4. Pope John Paul II. Memory and Identity. New York: Rizzoli International (2000).
5. https://www.tfp.org/why-modern-law-clashes-with-the-social-kingship-of-our-lord-jesus-christ/
6. Ibid
7. https://www.ushistory.org/penn/quotes.htm
8. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag”. Templeton Prize Lecture, 10 May 1983 (London)