Church Persecuted April 7, 2024
One of the most insightful recently published offerings, that reveals the current state of the Western world, is the three-volume set of the late George Cardinal Pell’s Prison Journal where he has a unique view of worldly events both past and present from a prison cell. Here is an excerpt from Volume 1, The Cardinal Makes His Appeal (pg. 310-311).
“We are entering a new world of ideas with the collapse of monotheism, especially in the middle and upper classes. The WASPs [White Anglo-Saxon Protestants] have morphed into the WASSs, the secularists. Human beings no longer have an innate dignity because they are made in God’s image; men and women are no longer made for one another, by any divine providence, because there is no such thing as human nature and therefore no moral laws to enhance human flourishing, despite the fact that many unbelievers adhere fiercely to the laws and truths that must be followed to enhance human physical health, personally and publicly, and to protect the environment.
“Western civilization has made us what we are, and one reason for its achievements is the creative tension between Athens and Jerusalem. Both cities are under attack. Jerusalem and Rome (her ally) bear the brunt of this assault, the frontal assaults, but her weakness makes it hard to defend Athens. When God is lost in the fog, whether it is the fog of lust or of possessions or of power, the defenses of reason and truth are breached. Only now, at least in the English-speaking world, are we coming to terms with the second reality, the changes to public life which follow from the dissolution of Christian convictions.”