For you know, venerable brethren, that that most deadly war which from the sixteenth century down has been waged by innovators against the Catholic faith, and which has grown in intensity up to today, had for its object to subvert all revelation, and overthrow the supernatural order, that thus the way might be opened for the discoveries, or rather the hallucinations, of reason alone. — Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Socialism

Reason Alone

Supernatural faith is dead and buried. You will not be able to see it should you cast your gaze over the fruited plane. America is killing religion everywhere. It is doing it by making the world safe for democracy. We imagine we are being reasonable as our Protestant religion continues to shatter into smaller and smaller fragments. This fragmentation has trapped us inside our heads.

The few pleasures we choose are now dependent on technology. And science is in the process of weaponizing tech against our humanity and freedom. It is becoming impossible for societies to choose goodness, truth and beauty. True religion is dying in the West. The horrible consequences of the five hundred year long divorce of revelation and reason is upon U.S.

We were warned, I’m learning. But even the institution that maintained the social and intellectual infrastructure of reason that provided those warnings has now been subverted. Many in the Roman Catholic hierarchy and laity are suffering the effects of this subversion. The Church is weak. She has been weak many times before in her two thousand year history. We need her now more than ever.

Pope Leo XIII continues the thought I started above, “This kind of error, which falsely usurps to itself the name of reason, as it lures and whets the natural appetite that is in man of excelling, and gives loose rein to unlawful desires of every kind, has easily penetrated not only the minds of a great multitude of men but to a wide extent civil society, also.” He doubles down, “Hence, by a new species of impiety, unheard of even among the heathen nations, states have been constituted without any count at all of God or of the order established by him; it has been given out that public authority neither derives its principles, nor its majesty, nor its power of governing from God, but rather from the multitude, which, thinking itself absolved from all divine sanction, bows only to such laws as it shall have made at its own will.”

Can you say America? He is describing the United States of America as it was evolving in the late eighteen hundreds. The Pope published this encyclical in 1878. Have you noticed that we’ve allowed our government to be “absolved from all divine sanction?” Do we even swear on a Christian Bible in the courts anymore? If we do I don’t know why we would. All of us know that the “In God We Trust” motto is nothing more than a political slogan. It means nothing.

If it meant something we wouldn’t be putting the most potent porn delivery system ever invented in the hands of our pubescent sons. We wouldn’t be encouraging our beautiful daughters to appear in public revealing all their charms beneath the thinnest and tightest veneer of polyester ever invented. We wouldn’t be celebrating the homo- sexualization of holy orders, and we wouldn’t be allowing “love” for pets to replace time with children and grandchildren.

Pope Leo’s encyclical is so insightful that I’ll allow him to close this COLUMN. Attend … please.

The supernatural truths of faith having been assailed and cast out as though hostile to reason, the very Author and Redeemer of the human race has been slowly and little by little banished from the universities, the lyceums and gymnasia — in a word, from every public institution. In fine, the rewards and punishments of a future and eternal life having been handed over to oblivion, the ardent desire of happiness has been limited to the bounds of the present. Such doctrines as these having been scattered far and wide, so great

a license of thought and action having sprung up on all sides, it is no matter for surprise that men of the lowest class, weary of their wretched home or workshop, are eager to attack the homes and fortunes of the rich; it is no matter for surprise that already there exists no sense of security either in public or private life, and that the human race should have advanced to the very verge of final dissolution.

Final dissolution. Indeed.