Satan’s Secular War on the Supernatural
All the myriad life-and-death battles being fought on the socio-political and religious fronts today are mere symptoms of the root conflict – Satan and his secular army are at war with the supernatural.
In 1965, Dietrich von Hildebrand had a private audience with Pope Paul VI, in which he “shot from the hip” as usual, saying “Your Holiness, you realize that the Church is going through the worst crisis in history, worse than the Protestant Reformation.” The Pope seemed to be surprised and he continued: “What has taken place is that people have lost sight of the supernatural.”
Dr. Alice von Hildebrand said,
Now let us abolish the terms “conservative” or “liberal”, the terms “left” and “right” which are secularistic. I suggest that we say from now on “those who have kept the sense of the supernatural and those who have lost it”. That is the great divide, that is the essence.
Do you look at the Church and her teaching, whether dogmatic or moral, with a supernatural eye, or do you look at it with secular lenses? That is the divide. Left and right confuses the issue. Let us re-discover the greatness and the beauty of the supernatural and I claim that it is so difficult in the polluted world in which we live, that if we don’t pray for it every single day, we are going to be infected. It is the air that you breathe, the newspaper that you read, the television show that you see, time and again you will see this is a fight and attack on the supernatural.
Dr. Alice von Hildebrand goes on to talk about a series of steps, the final step is going to lead us to the catastrophe that we are experiencing today, when there is an open war on the supernatural …
- Paying lip service to the teaching of the Church. You recite the Credo and you know your Catechism, but there’s no relationship whatever between what you say and your life. You are a Sunday Catholic, you go to church, you bow and the rest of it and on Monday you live as a pagan, very comfortably.
- Watering down the teaching of the Church. Kierkegaard said: “Christ changed water into wine. Modern theologians do a lot better than that, they change wine into water.” Instead of seeing the Church as founded by Christ, instead of understanding that Peter has the keys; where Peter is, there is the Church, that he has this extraordinary position of re-presenting Christ, however unworthy he might be as an individual, he says “Well, you know, sociology has taught us that the Church is basically a human institution, flawed and weak, not to be taken that seriously.” You water it down.
- Ignoring the teachings of the Church and this applies particularly to contraception. You go to confession and you say to the priest “I’m practicing contraception”. The priest says to you “You know, I grant you the teaching of the Church presents an ideal, but the Church is a mother and knows that we are very weak and we cannot live up to that ideal. No one can, we are weak human beings, we’re imperfect. So therefore you can practice contraception, but nevertheless you can go to heaven because the Church does not expect perfection, it just shows a sort of ideal which is good to strive towards, but if you can’t do it the Church will understand.”
Now, apply this to what we are seeing today …
- Looking through a supernatural lens, can I justify killing pre-born children?
- Looking through a supernatural lens, am I fine with having people of faith pay for others to kill their babies?
- Looking through a supernatural lens, can I justify redefining marriage, for the first time in the history of civilization?
- Looking through a supernatural lens, can I justify denying the very words of Jesus by allowing adulterers, or anyone in a state of mortal sin, to receive Holy Communion?
- Looking through a supernatural lens, am I fine with adult men sharing a bathroom with little girls?
- Looking through a supernatural lens, can I just blithely accept corruption and collusion?
Yes, I agree with Dr. Alice von Hildebrand … this is not about left or right, or liberal or conservative … this is about “those who have kept the sense of the supernatural and those who have lost it.” Once Satan has removed a sense of the supernatural in our churches, he has removed our ability to see as God sees. Then … anything goes.
