The Great Liar and the Father of Every Lie who is the Devil, Satan, has scored two victories. Not only has he managed to plunge the World, and particularly the Church, into the gravest crisis ever known in their history, he has also succeeded in presenting this crisis as the Era of Greatest Splendor and Apogee that Humanity has ever enjoyed until now. Within the Modern world, and for the most part within the Church, it is held as evident that the present moment in our History is an irreversible phase of light and progress; no importance is attributed to some slight, still-lingering shadows, which, it is believed, are in the process of becoming extinct. An extinction that will finally occur – it is said – the very moment in which the ubiquitously proclaimed, widely extolled, and seemingly imminent Universal Peace is definitively imposed upon our Planet. We are, at long last, on the threshold of (for all practical purposes, according to many, almost in) that situation for which the human race has been longing throughout the millennia: the Golden Age.

Nevertheless, there is here but a sole discrepancy between the Church and the World. While the latter, as it has been said, admits to the tenacious persistence of some lingering shadows, although about to be dispelled, the Church, on the contrary, goes further in its optimism. On its horizon, that is, in its life and growth, there are no clouds hindering its sunny brightness which has lasted to the present historic moment. The Second Vatican Council, and still more so and especially the post-Vatican era, have become the zenith of a History that, although it has witnessed numerous vicissitudes throughout twenty centuries (the unfortunate ones being preponderant), now contemplates the splendor of a maturity that would rather be considered as Grandeur.

Unfortunately, as is customary with all the events that mark out human existence, and in spite of that presumed universally agreed optimism, persisting voices still proclaim their discrepancy regarding such euphoria. Of course, they are an insignificant number of differing people whom, in turn, the powerful din of the media takes good care to silence. It does not matter that the facts seem to be evident enough, patent, and well enough known as to speak wholly in favor of these dissidents. I have said above that we are in the great Golden Age, fortuitously set up by the Great Liar. Probably not even Lenin (a chief disciple and fervent follower of the Father of Lies) was aware of the enormous strength of the dictum that he invented and ordered to be spread and practiced, according to which, if the facts are against us, it will be worse for the facts.

If we confine ourselves to the Church’s arena, it soon becomes patently obvious (for those who want to see it) that the facts do not substantiate, as logically as they were supposed to, such a publicly declared post-conciliar Golden Age. So much so, that they seem to go in the opposite direction; a fact that would probably surprise anybody who is not aware of the power, the seduction, the farce, and histrionics of The Lie.

It is an evident fact that the old Christian West is de-Christianized; evident at least to those who honestly want to admit the truth. It is equally obvious and patent that Christianity (we refer here mainly to the Catholic Church) has been emptied of its supernatural content and that a large part of the Christian people, consciously or unconsciously, does not believe any more.

There are a great many Bishops who seem incapable of preaching the content of the Gospel. Silenced by their cowardice; moved, many of them, by interests unknown to the common people; turned over to pagan ideologies alien to Christianity; full-time flatterers for no other reason than climbing up official posts or keeping undisturbed their status quo, these Bishops have become collaborators of the System at the same time as they have forgotten their mission.

Meanwhile the Christian people have given up the practice of their Faith, have lost their faith in the Eucharistic Real Presence, have become confused regarding the meaning and substance of the Mass, have lost sight of the importance of the function played by and the necessity of the Hierarchy, have forgotten the concept and significance of sin, and, consequently, do not think about the necessity of penance. If this were not enough, the mass majority of that Christian people has been induced to believe that Morality is mere relativism in which each person is his own arbiter depending upon his own criteria, thus divesting himself from any consideration of the meaning of true objective values (natural as well as supernatural). If one wanted to point to some concrete results, one could mention, for example, the almost total abandonment of Mass attendance, the obliteration of the practice of confession, the desolation of seminaries and novitiates, and the total devaluation – and almost disappearance – of consecrated life.

( Translated from the book Esperando a Don Quijote, pages 377 and ff.)