Coming of age in the early 60s as an adolescent with a sensitive, serious conscience, my worldview was structured by five recent and current realities, five "Dominions from Hell": the genocide of the Jews, Soviet Communism, American slavery and Jim Crow, the Axis fascisms, and world hunger and poverty.
The Holocaust. The deliberate massacre of 6 million innocents, including women and children, because of their ethnic/religious identity, is beyond human comprehension: it is not natural, not human; it is supernaturally evil. This is further confirmed in that it targeted the very people that gave us the scriptures, our Savior, Mary, the apostles, patriarchs, prophets, Pentateuch and first saints. Real antisemitism is more than a political or psychological reality: it is Satanic. Already in high school I learned from Monsignor John Oesterreicher (The Bridge) that Nazi hatred of the Jew was not a development of historic Christian anti-Judaism, but a neo-pagan hatred of the God of the Jews and of Jesus Christ the Jew. This event remains, for me, after the death of Christ and the original sin of Adam and Eve, the most significant and sinful historic event in human history.
Soviet Communism takes second place among the demonic dominions. The decisive geo-political reality of the first 42 years of my life was our conflict with communism. In late adolescence and throughout adulthood I would learn of the failings of Western, democratic, liberal capitalism. But in childhood I learned and still see that communism is a pure form of evil in its hatred of God and systemic destruction of the human person in his freedom, rights and conscience. In that bipolar world, the USA and its allies were never perfect, but always substantially the actor for good against evil.
Slavery in America of Africans, and specifically the deliberate destruction of the black family, rivals the previous two in purity and profundity of evil. Jim Crow, even in my childhood, in our South, continued this legacy. I came of age when the Civil Rights Movement was cresting and it is to the credit of our society that it destroyed this system of evil, due to an aggressive federal government but even more to the virtually unanimous moral consensus of our Judeo-Christian culture. KKK was iconic of this vicious racism but that group despised Jews and Catholics as well so our historic racism was never construed in my mind as a white/black binary. Rather, the fearful, vile racism targeted ethnics, Jews and others as well as blacks. Our Catholic memory of persecution by bigoted WASPs evoked a sympathy for the cause of Martin Luther King.
Poverty and Hunger of the Undeveloped World. This was, at that time, seen as an evil of a different sort. This suffering around the globe was lamentable, but not clearly due to any human agents. Therefore, this was not a pure, moral and spiritual evil. However, our own newfound prosperity aroused a moral urgency to share our resources and technology to work against this suffering. And so, especially in the early 60s, there was a fervent crusade in the global Catholic Church as well in the USA (Peace Corps, etc.) to share our wealth and help the less privileged. As I read the NY Times "News of the Week in Review" every Sunday I followed two plots: the Cold War and the crusade to assist poor countries (and keep them free of Communism at the same time.)
Axis Imperialist Fascisms of Germany, Italy and Japan had recently been defeated at the time of our childhood. Interestingly, this was not much mentioned. Our uncles and family friends, who had served in that war, never spoke of it. We knew of it more from the movies. But there was an abiding, unspoken sense of pride and honor: in John-Wayne-fashion, our men had defeated these evil empires. It was as if a faint halo of virility, honor and heroism was over them. Never a touch of pride or bravado. Silence and humility. I was born two years after the war: I do not recall derogatory comments about our recent enemies. It was past history. Like last years football championship.... Life moves on. The current opponent was international Communism. It was a regrettable necessity that we were forced to cooperate with authoritarian regimes in that cosmic conflict.
These five evil realities were real to me but quite distant. My immediate world was sheltered from all of the above. Catholic, parochial, patriotic, prosperous, confident, clear, certain, fertile, hopeful, secure...carefree and happy and sheltered by a remarkable network of institutions: large family, strong Church, powerful government, expansive economy, powerful unions that defend workers, the Democratic Party, NATO, and United Nations. And so, if the world had five reigns of terror, we were peaceful and protected by a different Kingdom, one of light and goodness. That world of interlocking, essentially good (however imperfect and flawed) institutions has surrounded me and mine with remarkable peace and prosperity since my birth.
We seem now to be emerging into a new era, of chaos and violence, more similar to the 1930-40s than 1945. In year of our Lord 2024, approaching 77 years of age, I ask: Does the worldview and ideology of my youth still serve? Or do I need to adjust in view of change? Notwithstanding the monumental, especially technological, change in these years, we clearly are facing the same demons that attacked us in the 1930-40s.
Antisemitism. To my surprise and horror, since Oct. 7, 2023 and the Hamas attack, our world is again invaded, from hell, with a surge of hatred for the Jew. Far more than a compassionate sympathy for the suffering of the Palestinians, in the West, this new expression replaces the racist nationalism of the Nazis with a neo-Marxism, simple and absolute, that sees everywhere and only the oppressor/oppressed binary: white/black, male/female, straight/gay and now Jew/Palestinian. Clearly antisemitism is not the same as anti-Zionism or anti-Judaism; but nor are they entirely detached from each other. The state of Israel and by implicit extension the Jewish people are impersonalized as an embodiment of the despised "powerful." The "woke" paradigm erases all complexity, contingency, and freedom and Hamas becomes the victim and their captives (symbolically) the culprit. With Hamas and Hezbollah we are back with Hitler and Himmler.
Communism, in its Soviet expression, has simply been replaced by a capitalist-friendly Chinese form that is even more totalitarian in its enhanced technology of control and equally ambitious in its imperialism. We are again in the Cold War.
Racism, decisively renounced by the Civil Rights Movement and the overwhelming consensus of our society in the 1960s, has by some diabolic miracle resurrected itself after 50 years of steady progress in race relations (contemporary with a color blind class/culture of poverty with inordinate black participation) culminating in the presidency of Obama. We face the perverted inverted perversion of "anti-racism," Black Lives Matter, and Critical Race Theory that again erases the person on behalf of an abstract, ideological binary of white-on-black. The spirit of slavery and Jim Crow has now covertly taken over our progressive, godless elites who posture with lawn sides in condescension to the underclass of "deplorables."
Global Poverty remains persistent and urgent but has a more complicated, confused nature than what we perceived in the innocence, confidence and positivity of our 1960s prosperity. It is undeniable that global, technological, market economics has lifted millions out of hunger, including in China. We also see more clearly that corporate capitalism, for all its efficiency in the material domain, has a systemically corrosive effect on the family, traditions, faith, morality and authority as it isolates the autonomous individual, inducing a passivity and dependency upon big tech, big state, and big business. That challenge remains but has become more convoluted and difficult.
Fascisms, of nationalist nature, are again resurgent around the globe. The most vile expressions are the totalitarian imperialisms of Russia and Iran; both uncompromisingly evil. However, as in World War II and the Cold War era, other populist nationalism are a more ambiguous, dense mixture of the good and the bad. Think: Brexit, Franco, Trump, Diem, the Shah of Iran, Salazar, Orban and Meloni. These populist movements are in part wholesome reactions against the "totalitarianism of relativism" of the pretentious "enlightened" secular, neo-Marxist elite and protective of the integrity of the family and the gendered person, powerless life, religious liberty and other human freedoms. At the same time they easily lean into ethnocentrism, bigotry and authoritarianism. Often, we have no option but to work with them to minimize the negative and enhance the positive.
Today's world is essentially like the one in which I was raised: we face the same demons. There have been immense changes: fall of the Soviet empire, the rise of Islamic terrorism, developments in technology including weapons of war, environmental damage, bioethical challenges, and the complicated influence of the internet and social media, especially upon our youth. All of these are small compared with the single, defining event of my lifetime: the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.
This event (from hell, in my view) destroyed the post-war Christian Pax-American Pax of the West and created two opposed cultures: the traditional Christianity of the underclass and the secular, technology-worshipping, sexually-liberated, neo-Marxist progressivism of the elite. We are now effectively two competing cultures, divided over the nature of the person, gender, sexuality, abortion/euthanasia, authority, faith and freedom. We are now fighting an exhausting Civil War as we face our traditional demons: antisemitism, racism, communism, fascisms, and poverty. Our world today is more dangerous and ominous than at any time since World War II.
I remain a Roman Catholic, a patriotic American, a strong internationalist; even as I am the culture warrior I became in early adulthood. It remains to be seen if we, now a divided and conflicted society ourselves, have the moral vitality our parents demonstrated in their time in the conflict with these five global demons.
Our call is to fight this battle, on all these fronts, and leave the outcome to God's Providence!
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