Reason for the Need for an Educated Laity # 47,659

Fr Ray Blake has posted a video of a debate between David Berlinski, author of 'The Devil's Delusion' and Christopher Hitchens, author of 'God Is Not Great'. The motion for the debate was, 'Atheism poisons everything', which is a refreshing angle for a debate nowadays.

The need for an educated Laity who can communicate the Catholic Faith has perhaps never been greater. The coming years will without doubt be increasingly difficult. Economic crises, war, terrorism and rising unemployment are not trends that will just disappear. In a World in which nothing is certain and Faith is dwindling, many will have 'itching ears' and it will be all the more easy for opportunistic ideologues to convince populations of their inhuman creeds. Videos such as the atrocious 10:10 climate change awareness campaign, showing 'deniers' being exploded at the touch of a red button, may not be a statement of intent (we can give even those eco-fascists the benefit of the doubt), but they are concerning, underlining a cold, brutal, even heartless, atheistic, scientific rationalism and reductionism, driven by propaganda, designed to frighten populaces of a grave, unseen threat to humanity's future survival.

While we have, in Pope Benedict XVI, a Supreme Pontiff who can communicate the dangers of atheism, warn of the pitfalls of celebrity culture and speak lovingly to the hearts of men and women of the truth that happiness is in serving and loving Our Lord Jesus Christ, drawing vast crowds, we are running short on highly respected, influential, billionnaire celebrities who are widely credited with having invented and established the Internet.

In fact, if you take the 'new atheists' in our country, such as Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins (we can probably add Stephen Hawking) and the like, many of them are exceedingly popular. In the US, the liberal media and luvvie Hollywood world heralded Barack Obama in almost messianic terms even though just a year down the line it is obvious his presidency will be regarded as far less effective than Jimmy Carter's. The shallow, zeitgeist-led, bandwagon-jumping, profound vacuity and even jaw-dropping stupidity of so many celebrities in the US and UK, so often looked up to in a World dominated by them, does not really change the fact that they are often raised to the heights of walking demi-gods. Not only are 'celebrity types' taken in by just about any passing publicity drive which will help to 'heal the World' and boost their egos simulataeneously, but their voices are taken seriously. Their opinions matter.

This is why the above video is concerning. Bill Gates, the multi-billionnaire philanthropist, who most likely has a carbon footprint the length of the Universe, expands upon the 'climate crisis' caused by the nasty virus taking up all the places where forests, rivers and nature reserves should be - human beings. Set in the context of CO2 emissions, Mr Gates argues that...

"The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's heading up to about nine billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."

And that is probably just the start. As the editor of the video above emphasises, these are striking words. How, for instance, do you use a new vaccine to lower global population? Is it a vaccine that sterilises people? How does health care lower the global population? Is it the kind of health care that kills people off? How do 'reproductive health services' reduce the global population without killing vast quantities of unborn children? Is that enforced, mandatory, chosen, promoted? Will Courts of Protection be used to fulfil the 'final solution' to climate change? Is it mere paranoia to imagine that men like Mr Gates dream of a World Government to supervise this 'final solution' to climate change and a World Court to rule upon global 'initiatives' to combat it? Celebrities and influential, admired men and women will be used in a global battle to convince the World of the need for 'de-population' and 'population reduction' with all of the horrors that lurk behind such innocuous sounding rhetoric, promoted by them, but fed by a global elite of very rich, rather wicked, Godless men.

We need an educated and informed Laity, as well as an educated and faithful Bishops' Conference and Priesthood, obviously, to communicate the essential truths of the Catholic Faith with zeal for souls and love for Christ. We will also need every communicator at the Church's disposal to combat the inhuman, cold, brutal, reductivist, heartless, scientific atheistic ideology which already is and will continue to be promoted worldwide, through celebrity culture, through corrupt politicians, through international organisations like the United Nations and Governments, local, national and supra-national, and through the media, because if it goes unchallenged, it could potentially lead to a man-made loss of life and a man-made holocaust unparallelled since even the beginning of the World.

Bill Gates may be absolutely minted. He may be a 'philanthropist'. He may even have established the very forum by which I can attempt to communicate the Gospel to whoever reads this blog. He may be a very clever and well-respected man, but he is not the Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth, the Successor of St Peter who happens also to be a man who, having lived through the Nazi period and who rejected and condemned the ideology for the gross evil that it was, warns us against ideologies that serve to undermine human dignity. It is his words, not the words of mega-rich global businessmen, like Bill Gates, which are important for the UK and for the World. Let us hope that it is his words, not those of Mr Gates, that are taken seriously. It has long been alleged, albeit in a wholly exaggerated manner, by detractors of the Faith that the Church did not speak out against Nazism enough. Evidence like that above suggests that even greater pressure will come upon societies to embrace a similar ideology in the future. Let the 20th Century be a warning to those in the Hierarchy of the Church today, never to make that mistake again in the 21st and fail to condemn a Culture of Death, fuelled by atheism, which can so easily descend into a new epoch of Nazism.