“. . . and a time to be vigilant”
         [cf. Ecclesiastes 3]

The liberation fever that triggered the French and Russian revolutions evolved into an epidemic that turned many churches into centers for the conversion of worshipers into adherents of a world infected with Marxism. This Christ-denying creed invaded even the Rock – the Apostle Peter – chosen by Jesus Christ to be the foundation for his Church. It is now, however, being run by a hierarchy at odds with Christ’s teachings.

Faithful Christians are wondering why the present occupant of the Seat of Peter is AWOL from his job of proclaiming and promoting the teachings of Jesus Christ, desperately needed in today’s morally crumbling world. Was the pope, like many other pastors, lured by Liberation Theology into abandoning his faith? Did he not notice that Christianity and Marxism don’t mix because they are incompatible, that making them merge is impossible? Did he fail to see the critical difference in each of the core principles? Was he, like multiple church leaders, duped by the big lie that Marxism and Christianity are equivalent?

Such mindlessness persists at the Vatican, whose hierarchy act -- I must say it -- as though the mission of the church is to liberate Christians from Christianity.

Reduced to essentials, “liberation theology” teaches that there is no such thing as sin. You are therefore good with God when you follow the State, as if you are following God, and support whatever “makes a difference,” whatever that means in today’s morally mixed-up world. But Christ never said give all to Caesar; he reserved a principal portion for God.

Looking beneath its rhetoric mantle, the “updated gospel” is a roadmap to a world run by Godless men. Those at the World Economic Forum are a good example. Leaders like that would trash the world, including its inhabitants, to have their way. The projected subhuman, unnatural, God-free world of such men is a product of profound ignorance regarding reality and human life. This coincides with a hatred of God and His Creation. Whatever their “better world” might be called, its real name should be Hell on Earth.

The arrival of such a world would be good news to the morally and mentally brainwashed, which could indeed make people love such a man-made paradise -- the way the stubbornly defiant Winston Smith (in Orwell’s 1984) came to love Big Brother after his will was at last broken and his mind thoroughly washed.

How did the maneuvering for such a dystopian world get so far as it has in today’s world? That’s too big a question for a small essay. But I can point out that it began with unintended consequences of the Enlightenment. It was unenlightened intellectuals and activists who turned the spirit of the Enlightenment into an instrument for rebellion against all forms of authority, as they stoked a fever of liberation from tyranny, real or imagined, true or false. The result was inevitable: fellow humans turning violently against one another, tragically demonstrated during the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Killing and destruction in the name of enlightenment or in the name of progress smells too strongly of the demonic to be tolerated in civilized society. This mania associated with “liberation fever” persists, it seems, among today’s leftists. A hint of it is the obsession among many of them with a culture of death.

Sadly, many Christians have yielded the high ground to neo-Marxists, whatever their updated label may be, a platform where Christianity and morality are not welcome. The wiles and deceptions of neo-Marxists of whatever brand have effectively drawn people into their ranks. Because the Gospel stands in the way of Godless rule, the tactic for Christians was to offer worshipers a sinless, no-fault, feel-good version of the Gospel that helps purge their minds and hearts of the Word of God and inclines them the Left.

Reduced to its essentials, the message of the new gospel is: There is no way you can offend God. Be rid of guilt and repentance, and forget all that stuff of the Ten Commandments.

But what about that message written on the heart by the Creator? Well, if you must be read, do it with a mind and a will in step with “the times.” There must be no veering from the path of “progress” laid out for you by “experts.”  

And so the “updated” church is no longer the Church founded by Christ upon his Rock, Peter. Its pews, once filled with people seeking strength and communion with God, have been emptying and refilling with people with notions of Christianity that reveal their ignorance. The general idea is that whatever you do is O.K. as long as you believe you are doing good by God, when in fact you’re following the rules of the State and managing to “make a difference.” If that is what it means to be a Christian, what reason is there for going to church? It can all be done at home.

Why such profound ignorance about being a Christian? I won’t go into the confusing role in the matter from Pope Francis. I’ll simply point out that it is precisely Christianity’s freedom of the will that allows manipulators and schemers to skip its mandate of justice to humanity and do anything they please. After all, is it not part of the wonder of Creation to be “free” to do whatever is possible, even if it means letting the gate of hell open wider?

In their passion to improve the world, religious leaders who see no difference between the Kingdom of God and the Domain of Man are succeeding in making the world worse. For they have been dismantling, whether they know it or not, the spiritual foundation of human life.

Conforming the eternal Word of God to the temporal Word of Man mocks and stalls what Christ calls for in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as it is in Heaven.”

And that requires conforming oneself to “the Truth, the Way, and the Life [John 14:6], the best way there is to liberation.  

Image: Jack candlestick, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed