Our earth in our time, the 80 years since WWII, has been, as all times since the Fall, a battle between the Kingdom of God and the powers of Darkness. So, we do well to identify those voices which come from both kingdoms.
THE KINGDOM OF LIGHT
1. St. John Paul II. Singularly providential and inspired: proclamation of Jesus Christ, announcement of the Divine Mercy, participation in and interpretation of Vatican II, teaching on the gendered/sexual human body as definitive response to the Sexual Revolution, defense of human dignity, combat against Nazism/Soviet Communism/Cultural Progressivism, social teaching, blend of personalism and Thomism and holiness/heroism of life. Once in a Millennium the Church receives such a saint/hero.
2. Silent witness of the martyrs. No words spoken: Stein, Kolbe and victims of Nazis, Communism and violent Jihadism.
3. (Mostly) Women who serve the poor and suffering. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Dorothy Day, Madeleine Delbrel, Catherine Doherty.
4. Mystics and Saints. Padre Pio, Adrienne von Speyr, Marthe Robin, Mother Teresa's dark night of 40 years.
5. American Evangelists of Post War Period (1945-65). Fulton Sheen, Billy Graham, Fr. Patrick Peyton, Thomas Merton.
6. Fathers of Vatican II. John XXIII, Paul VI, the bishops and periti.
7. Leaders of Lay Renewal Movements. Kiko Arguello, Luigi Giussani, Chiara Lubich, and Ralph Martin and others .
8. Thinkers who wed Thomism with personalism and the best of modernity. Hildebrandt, John Paul, Benedict, Balthasar, Schindlers, Marcel, Maritain, Gilson, Pieper, Blondel, Guardini, Mournier, (Jewish) Buber, and (Russian Orthodox) Berdyaev.
9. Critics of modernity as technocracy, scientism, bureaucracy. Ivan Illich, Jacques Ellul, EF Schumacher, Michael Hanby, Paul Kingsnorth, and others.
10. Articulators of a Catholic, Contemporary Anthropology. PopeBenedict, Rene Girard, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Karl Stern, Paul Vitz, and others.
11. Champions of Human Rights and Freedoms. Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Oscar Romero, Desmond Tutu, Vaclav Havel, Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez (notwithstanding depraved personal behavior with women of the last two.)
12. Bill W. and Dr. Bob of Alcoholics Anonymous and founders of other 12-step programs.
13. Great Catholic Fiction Writers. Flanner O'Connor, Walter Percy, Evelyn Waugh, (Anglican) C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Graham Greene, Edwin O'Connor, Myles Connolly, Sigrid Undset, Solzhenitsyn, and others.
14. Marian Apparitions. Our Blessed Mother continues to come to us, inviting us to trust in God, prayer, conversion from sin, and reparation. Through the ages, there are 16 such appearances approved by the Vatican. These include: Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, Knock, Miraculous Medal, La Salette, and (in our period 1981-9) Kibeho. In our time, the following are approved by local bishops: Of All Peoples 1947 Italy, Akita 1973 Japan. The remarkable, fruitful apparitions at Medjugorje (1981-present) remain controversial but were granted Nihil Obstat by the Vatican indicating the cult is tolerated but not guaranteed to be supernatural. For a Catholic, the voice of Mary is possibly the most influential.
THE KINGDOM OF DARKNESS
1. Misogyny. Lucifer's defining envy and hatred is against our Blessed Mother Mary in her queenship and so his obsession is to defile femininity in every possible way: polygamy, honor killings, pornography, prostitution, militant feminism as denial of maternity in favor of "reproductive rights," trans-femininity and other.
2. Desecration of Fatherhood. As the vocation and destiny of the male is to image our heavenly Father (even in our own sinfulness), the erasure of God's presence requires toxic and cowardly masculinity and resentment of "patriarchy."
3. Sexual Revolution including abortion. Contraceptive rupture of sex from spousality/fertility, deconstruction of gender, genocide of the unborn and otherwise incompetent, devastation of the natural family and all its consequences. Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, Hefner, Helen Brown, Betty Friedan, Margaret Mead, Marcuse, Reich, and an army of Freudian-Marxists.
4. Communism. Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Xi, Pol Pot, Tito, the Kim's of N. Korea, as well as Western hemisphere communist-adjacent Chavez, Maduro, and Ortega.
5. Antisemitism. After misogyny and Mary-Phobia, Lucifer's second obsession is hatred of the Jew. This is because Mary and Jesus are Jews. This sets it apart from broader forms of ethnic and racial hatred. Hitler was, of course, the embodiment of this as a unparalleled "anti-Christ." Communism may have killed 100 million through the decades, but it is not so personal and specific: it kills whoever resists it, indiscriminately. Antisemitism is viscerally, personally hateful, and implicitly aimed at Christ, his mother and his people. How troubling is the recent surge of such across Islam and our own political right and left!
6. Islamic Jihadism and Sharia Law. Sunni terrorism and Iranian Shiitism compete with each other in violence and repression.
7. Scientism, Technocracy, State and Corporate Gigantism. Not genuine science, of course, but the philosophical denial of the spiritual and the inflation of a reductive science into a religion is scientism. Conspiracy of gigantisms of technology, bureaucracy, state and corporations work to isolate the individual by deconstructing family/church/community and "progress" to totalitarianism.
8. Racial and ethnic hatred. In our time, happily, Jim Crow was overcome by the Civil Rights Movement and Apartheid succumbed in South Africa. Likewise, European colonies across Africa and Asia became free nations. At the same time, however, genocide prevailed in India/Pakistan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Cambodia
9. Cult of Self: libertarianism of the left (moral) and the right (economic). As Patrick Dineen sees, "liberalism" in the toxic sense of radical individualism expresses itself culturally in Hugh Hefner and economically in Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. It has given us a pandemic of loneliness, isolation, despair, lack of self-agency, and nihilism.
10. Fascism. Monopoly of power, suppression of rights/freedoms, toxic nationalism, xenophobia, cult of the leader...this complex poison remains operative in our time since defeat of Hitler/Mussolini: Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, Putin, Gaddafi, Assad, Ayatollah Khomeni, Lukashenko, Chavez/Maduro, Ortega, Pinochet, Franco, Battista, Somoza, Marcos, Nasser, Peron and others. Freedom House rates about 50 nations today as "not free," 59 as "partially free," and 86 as "free." So less than half of the nations enjoy substantial freedoms of religion, speech, assembly and related.
Conclusion
Do the math! Heaven 14 -Hell 10. It is not close. God wins!
Renounce the Luciferian voices:
SHUT UP SATAN! I AIN'T SCARED OF YOU! GO BACK TO HELL WHERE YOU BELONG!
Receive those heavenly voices:
SPEAK LORD! YOUR SERVANT IS LISTENING1
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