Introduction
“Ah, you who call evil good and good evil” (Is. 5:20).
As humanity begins the Third Millennium, we continue to witness the
culmination of a long historical process which has been transforming
Western and Christian society since the end of the Middle Ages. This
process has been propelled by agents, both overt and covert, with the
intention of creating a “new man,” one who no longer submits himself to
the authority and law of God, but is free to indulge his pride and sensuality
without restraint.
Great changes in society occur gradually. As the Middle Ages of faith were
built up slowly in the centuries after the downfall of the Roman Empire, so
has the demise of Christian civilization been gradual and at times
imperceptible. The main target of the agents of change has been the Holy
Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church and its moral and social teachings
on the family and human life, as it, and it alone, stands in complete
opposition to their revolutionary agenda. For the Church too has an agenda,
to imitate and propagate the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the world, a
life which calls us “to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (St.
Matt. 5:48).
The new revolutionary philosophy has as one of its slogans “God is dead”
and its values can be summed in the words of the Book of Wisdom: “For
they reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves, Short and sorrowful is our
life ... For we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as
though we had never been ... Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things
that exist ... Let none of us fail to share in our revelry ... because this is our
portion, and this our lot” (2:1-9). The practical consequences of such a new
philosophy threaten to be dire:
“This in turn makes it possible to erase from the countenance of man
and woman the marks of their likeness to God, and thus to lead them
little by little either to a destructive will to power or to a solitude
without hope.”¹
1
Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 1998, # 90.
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