The almost-blessed Archbishop Fulton J Sheen gave us in 1947 a paradox. He said then “that we are definitely at the end of a non-religious era of civilization”.
This was still when politicians made a show of going to church on Sunday. The signs of a fading away of (little-o) orthodox Christianity had already begun. Surely he meant the end of a religious era?
Not so. He said the non-religious era which was passing was “one which regarded religion as an addendum to life, a pious extra, a morale-builder for the individual but of no social relevance, and God is a silent partner whose name was used by the firm to give respectability but who had nothing to say about how the business should be run.”
Instead, we were just then, already by the 1940s, entering a great new religious age. He said (my emphasis):
…we do not mean that men will turn to God, but rather that the indifference to the absolute which characterized the liberal phase of civilization will be succeeded by a passion for an absolute. From now on the struggle will be not for the colonies and national rights, but for the souls of men. The battle lines are being clearly drawn and the basic issues are no longer in doubt. From now on men will divide themselves into two religions understood again as surrender to an absolute. The conflict of the future is between an absolute who is the God-Man and an absolute which is the man-god; between the God Who became man and the man who makes himself god; between brothers in Christ and comrades in anti-Christ.
The surrender is complete. I repeat: the surrender is complete. Man has made himself a god. There is a remnant, yes, of those who acknowledge the God-Man. But it is just that: a remnant. The numbers of this remnant grow smaller, especially at the levers of power and all over the West, with each passing year.
The remnant fades not only in the West, but elsewhere, too. African birthrates increase the worldwide share of the remnant, for now. But these will slow. Missionaries from the religion of Man will see to that. Right, Mr Gates? Christianity increases somewhat in China, but the missionaries of the religion of Man in that country’s government is onto these tricks and is working against them. Perhaps there is some hope of increase in Russia. We shall see.
Anyway, what the God-Man said now makes sense. “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
He will, but it will not be faith in Him, but in Man.
Man, and not the God-Man, is now the measure of all things. Sometimes we call Man the law, sometimes science, sometimes medicine, sometimes a vote. But it is all Man.
There has to be a reason for right and wrong. Even if this reason is might makes right, even if this reason is majority rules, even if this reason is science. The reason has to have an ultimate justification—in every instance. If mankind does not look to the God-Man to supply this reason, he must, and has, looked somewhere else. To another god, or to himself.
Man almost everywhere has discovered the ultimate reason for everything that is, and it is himself. This is so even when Man says that nothing has any meaning. For to say that still requires Man to put his judgement atop all things.
Sheen was astonishingly accurate in his assessment. We now have “Pride” parades coursing through every city. Pride. What the God-Man called a sin, Man calls it a virtue. We have science insisting a man who believes he is a woman is a woman, and must be called so by all. Religious tests are being invented to enforce this dogma. And many similar like it.
It is good to honor your father and mother not because the God-Man said you should, out of respect and sense of filial piety, but because an equation derived by Man has said so. Man instead insists that the forces he discovered and categorized are responsible for his existence. Indeed, for the existence of all things. Gone is the word of the God-Man, and his Father and Divine Messenger, who said He did it. Just don’t ask Man where those equations came from.
The smaller this remnant grows, the louder rise the shrieks from the Cult of Man. For Man is a jealous god. This explains what his priests mean when preaching about “Tolerance”. All other gods, even the God-Man, must be silenced.
Still, Man retains a trace of humility. He knows he does not know all. But he believes that it is only from himself that all new knowledge will derive. This is why, as Sheen also tells us, he will one day welcome a super man, a man who will represent himself as the ultimate Man.
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All we need are twelve.
I don’t know, Mr. Briggs. It looks bad but I see more and more young people wearing veils to daily mass at the nearby hippy dippy Catholic church. The confession lines are long there on Saturdays and even longer at my parish on Sundays. The “all natural” crowd in California, of all places, is telling women to dump the pill and use natural family planning, the demographic least likely to look favorably upon extra rights for those who think you can travel from one gender to the next is the youngest one. Bloggers and Vloggers are being discriminated against on the web – but there they are and they aren’t going anywhere. I am old enough to remember a time without the web and I had no idea that there were people like me in this country. But then came Rush Limbaugh and Amazon Books and the internet and I found out I was not an anomaly. I know the bad guys aren’t going to give up without a fight – but I see the ranks swelling in the supernatural religion camp. We now have something they tried to keep from us – we have each other. We know now that there are many of us. The internet is for us what the Roman roads and ships were for the early Christians , it’s the pathway to reach each other and the pagans.
Man has been trying to celebrate himself from the time of Adam and Eve. After all it was picking the forbidden fruit from the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’ that began the quest to reject God and elevate Man. God didn’t want us to eat this fruit because He knew this would lead us into temptation and we didn’t have the wisdom to tell them apart.
Enter Julian Felsenberg.
A timely article given I just finished reading “Lord of the World” by Msgr. R.H. Benson
Don’t be fooled by outward appearances. It’s always been a remnant.
One of the best I have ever read…..all laid out in black and white and in the Cross of Jesus. Thank you!! Pope Francis recommended that all read Lord of the World…after knowing Francis better…..I now wonder why the recommendation as the Pope in that story, stood absolutely firm.
Bishop Sheen was so correct about so much, and he was so very humorous..
A little story, this is close to it, he told, was of a mother who asked her little child what did she think that God thought about sin. The little one answered, Well, God hates mortal sins, but venial sins make Him nervous.
God bless and if any of us are called to defend our faith in Christ our Lord, may He be preparing us now for then. C-Marie
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Science certainly maintains humility and uncertainty and growth-in-knowledge; organized religion not-so-much, just pride, hubris, certainty, and self-absorption.
Catholicism has the full certainty of the Son of God……though some members are, sadly, as you say. And in science, among scientists, some honor God and some do not. Remember, all that scientists discover, invent, find out, are that which God has already put here. There is nothing new under the sun….just different ways of using what is already. God bless, C-Marie
When a religion promotes the activities of the clergy in place of pointing the people towards dependence directly on God, it is part of the problem because God is ignored in the same way that the rest of the culture ignores God. It is faith in Man with a Christian veneer. The clergy is no substitute for God.
And that is why most do not substitute themselves for God and yet God’s priests are filled with human frailties…so why did God choose to ordain men. Ask Him.
God bless, C-Marie
These are perilous times indeed, but don’t be discouraged but rather encouraged! The Holy Spirit is still here, active and working, and until he is removed (2 Thes. 2:7), we have plenty to do: 1) give thanks to God, knowing that God called us for salvation, sanctification and glory, 2) stand fast in the truth of God’s Word (2:13-15). We are also to pray confidently, knowing that not just the Spirit, but that “our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father” will be encouraging and strengthening us “in every good deed and word”. (2:16-17)
“The almost-blessed Archbishop Fulton J Sheen”
On the grounds of a miracle he managed to perform thirty years after he died. Nice work if you can get it.
Yes, miracles of physical healing are wonderful, but the miracles of bringing people to the salvation of Jesus Christ are better, and Bishop Sheen, working in concert with the Holy Spirit, or perhaps say it in the reverse, did plenty of those while alive here in the earth. God bless, C-Marie
@ C-Marie,
“Yes, miracles of physical healing are wonderful,”
They would be if they were genuine (although I’d still ask why only a few people chosen apparently at random are cured). They aren’t, of course, and one of the obvious signs is that they only ever consist of things like remission from cancer, which is known to happen anyway.
Healing that seems miraculous can be explained by placebo.
Placebo is more powerful than people tend to think who consider it always in a negative context.
What is happenin in the body is phsycial. The reason has to do with stress hormones, fear, belief, anxiety or depression and so on. All of which still leave the argument at the mind/body stage, where thoughts and such things as experience and memory come in.
What somebody thinks or believes or remembers actually affects them, they don’t just think it does.
If you think it hurts it hurts. Same thing. There’s no
“it’s in your head”.
So my own belief is that miracles happen for physical and emotional or spiritual reasons in the more mundane sense.
It’s not magic, it’s just truth.
The intriging cases are those where the patient is not conscious. The problem is that they are single cases and can’t be re-examined in a properly objective way. So skeptics can always just blame the witness. Unless they become the witness.
More than likely God is able to actually heal. That should be pretty easy compared to raising from the dead. That one is probably not a placebo.
Just to clarify, God does do miracles. The comment that I made was meant to get people who believe that God’s miracles are a placebo effect to stop and examine what they are believing. We base our whole salvation on a miracle:
I Corinthians 15:12-19:
“12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
Thank you, Jason!! Beautifully written! God bless, C-Marie
Jason, if you’res till there,
“More than likely God is able to actually heal. That should be pretty easy compared to raising from the dead.”
That is Christianity. I’ve argued the same point.
“That one is probably not a placebo.”
‘That one’ cannot be a placebo, since it is not how placebo works and whether or not God exists, that statement stands.
Theres tons to say about this subject and this is never the forum for it. I find so much dishonesty in argument that it becomes tedious.
However, the human body has a remarkable resilience and ability to heal. It’s no use trying to call the faith of others into question on this matter since whatever anybody believes is none of your concern.
Placebo is estimated to be fifty times ‘stronger’ than heroine or morphine.
I did not argue against miracles. I believe that many are not ‘miracles’ but have an explanation that is not ‘supernatural’.
The term miracle does not, to me, mean breaking laws of nature.
To be a Christian means you believe that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. We don’t know how this is done. That we don’t know how means hat it is miraculous and furthermore, more importantly, that other information can be drawn from the resurrection. It is the same for all miracles. I believe they teach you something. If you were all knowing you would also be all powerful.
Faith is entirely part of the placebo process. Not necessarily religious faith. That is not controversial. Nor is understanding its mechanism in any way contradictory of some of the stories in the New Testament.
Placebo is an effect which is present in all procedures, even surgery. Just a conversation can act as a window of time through which healing is facilitated by normal movement and function which in turn feeds back normal and healthy signals/sensations/input. Instilling good information helps healing. Bad information having the reverse effect, potentially.
To project that people lack faith so they fail to heal and are just mere sinners, is a waste of your time.
Hope and faith, must be based on knowledge or evidence of truth. If we had witnessed what was witnessed in the bible would it be easier for us?
I think so. God knows that.
Paul also said:
“For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.”
1 Timothy, 4: 10.