Like all modern tyrants, Karl Marx hated religion, Christianity in particular, because he understood that it was going to be very difficult if not impossible to get men to follow him so long as they continued to follow Jesus Christ, and so the first thing an aspiring tyrant in the middle of Christian Europe needed to do was to uproot and destroy Christianity. With Christ dwelling in the hearts of men there was no room for the atheist humanism that Marx and others were proposing as an alternative. But without God men could be convinced to believe anything, even Marxism.
Karol Józef Wojtyła understood this too. And he also understood that as long as the Christians of Poland, and Eastern Europe, and everywhere else, continued to follow Christ they would endure and outlast any and all tyrannies, Marxist or otherwise. As atheist humanism takes root in American culture and anti-Christian tyrants emerge from among the rich and powerful, we should pray to St. Pope John Paul II for help and guidance. He knew what was happening then in Poland and he knows the same trouble is headed to America.
Having spent years making gay okay in the schools, in Hollywood, and elsewhere, gay activists have now gained enough support from amongst the powerful to simply force their views on everyone. We are all now to accept whatever they want in the way of sex, marriage, family, and gender. We are to accept it not because it is true or good or beautiful or in accord with reality, or nature, or nature’s God, but because they want it, and to deny them what they want is considered a damnable injustice. If anyone dares to point out that what they want, being against nature and nature’s God, is wrong, and does not cease to be wrong simply because they want it and have the power to get it, such people are to be shamed and their views suppressed, and they are to be punished insofar as they continue to hold and act on those views. For these sex and gender tyrants, might makes right, as for tyrants in any age.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
Sign up to get Crisis articles delivered to your inbox daily
In our age this tyranny is to be imposed on the people in the name of “equality,” and “justice,” as defined by an increasingly anti-Christian power elite. These anti-Christians now control the commanding heights of the economy and society including Fortune 500 companies, the entertainment industry, online and print journalism, and the universities. They come mostly from America’s elite professions, zip codes and tax brackets, and they are using their power and privilege to impose their values on working and middle-class Christians from rural “fly-over” country and the South. While according to surveys some 70 percent Americans still at least identify themselves as Christians, it is anti-Christians who now rule America. This has become clear as we watch billionaire CEOs like Marc Benioff bully and belittle anyone who dares to object to the new gender order. Few, including politicians, seem willing to stand up to the new powers that be because they have seen what happens to those who do. Activist corporations and CEOs are now coming together to use their combined economic muscle to crush any last pockets of resistance in those states and among those Americans who have so far refused to bow to the new regime on the grounds of religious freedom.
The anti-Christianism that we see among the American power elite is demanded by the atheist humanism that America’s ruling class was taught in our best universities over the last generation. Now these enlightened ones are “teaching” the rest of us what to believe and how to live. American society is now more or less a huge re-education camp. Pretty soon it might even have a fence around it.
And speaking of re-education camps, it seems clear that we are now living not in a benignly post-Christian society of freedom and tolerance, as some have promised, but in a repressive anti-democratic and anti-Christian one. In fact, one could argue that we are headed toward a society not unlike China; a society ruled by a privileged elite of corrupt politicians, demagogues, party hacks, and crony capitalists, in which laws reflect nothing other than the will of the powerful, and in which religious persecution in the name of “order,” and “justice” and even “freedom” is routine. In this respect it is interesting to note that many of the same U.S. headquartered multi-nationals who have led the corporate effort to undermine religious freedom in the United States also do business in China, a country well-known for religious persecution of the masses and compulsory atheism for the elite. No doubt we will soon be reading white papers from the Business Roundtable promoting anti-Christian social activism as a “global best practice.”
St. Pope John Paull II help us!
Editor’s note: In the image above, Pope John Paul II meets with Polish communist leader General Jeruzelski in Warsaw in 1983.