Advent 2025 marks the beginning of a new liturgical year and the celebration of the birth of Christ ~ the true King of the Universe yet who entered into human history not in pomp or splendor but in absolute meekness, a vulnerable swaddling infant born in a humble stable. This same Christ our King would later pronounce as an adult, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. (Mt 5:5) Yet if there is anything that the powers of this world truly despise in this present age of technological sophistication, it would be the very idea of meekness or the meek. We occupy an age of bravado, self-importance, and self congratulation where there seems to be very little appetite for meekness, humility, or quiet contemplation in the mad scramble to make one’s “mark on the world.”

This coming year also represents the 250th anniversary of the founding of our nation which, by God’s grace, has grown and developed into an American empire. But in those 250 years many Americans seem to have forgotten a key foundational principle, that this was to be a Christian nation under God. We would needed no earthly sovereign because God was proclaimed to be our sovereign. That notion began to evaporate with the end of the Cold War which left the United States as the sole reigning world power, however. The ensuing 21st century hubris which came to exemplify American ‘elites’ (along with their European globalist allies) has led the entire Western world disastrously away from its former sense of dependence on God. At the same time it has created a very unstable if not outright delusional model of society.

In fact the state of Western society has become so degraded, noticeably accelerating since the Covid debacle, that it becomes a challenge to even comment intelligently on the depraved state of affairs. Where does one even begin when children are being mutilated in the cause of “gender fluidity” or being trafficked under the guise of “immigration rights?” Civility and courtesy in public debate forums has all but collapsed into bare knuckle partisanship signifying a level or polarization unprecedented in this land since the pre-Civil War confrontations over slavery. Our larger cities have degenerated into crime infested, barren wastelands of social-political polarization, wokeism, substance abuse, and massive homelessness. As a case in point America’s urban crown jewel, New York City, just elected an openly and unapologetic Marxist mayor. Climate activists and Green energy advocates distort data and twist the very laws of physics to justify forcing their ideological agendas on a reluctant public which pays the price in lost jobs and skyrocketing energy costs. Social dislocation has become endemic, visible on our very streets.

Hillsdale College president Larry Arnn recently observed, “We see a generation in which too many have been taught that the only truth is in the human will, which then becomes sovereign. The past is presented to them as a dark time, now happily superseded; therefore they learn no edifying or useful history.” From this he concludes, “When human will becomes sovereign, unencumbered by nature and divorced from God, we are left with movements – people organized to impose their will on their adversaries.” What he is describing is the social philosophy of the nihilist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. But, of course, Nietzsche himself died in an asylum which should serve as an object lesson concerning the inevitable fate of any society foolish enough to exalt Nietzsche’s “will to power” as its guiding rationale. Western civilization is pulling apart at the seams even as it attempts to make the human will sovereign, irrespective of the divine will.

What comes out of this imposition of the human will, alongside a despicable, Nazi-like politics of partisan warfare, is a self-destructive form of cultural insanity where men can “marry” other men or even imagine they are women and be affirmed in their delusions by the powers that be. Yet those who still retain enough grasp on reality to question such absurdities are roundly denounced and ostracized as ignorant and hateful bigots. Yet it is an uncontested lesson from the history of great empires (Greece, Rome, Britain, etc.) that the effeminization of their men was a leading indicator of inevitable decline. Regardless, this emasculation of the male is widely celebrated by today’s leading progressive lights!

“Woe to those who call good evil and evil good.” St. Paul recognized the nature of this human folly which one can rightly describe as diabolical inversion. He writes, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever, Amen. Therefore God handed them over to degrading passions… They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery and spite. Although they know the just decree of God that all who practice such things deserve death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” (Rom 1:25-26;29;32)

The more sobering reality is that it is not just worldly progressives and agnostic elites who have embraced this caustic Nietzschean “will to power” (creating one’s own reality irrespective of nature itself). A great many “progressive” clerics have succumbed, or at least accommodated themselves, to its deadly fallout rather than face the discomfort of opposing such a nonsensical view. For such prelates it is easier to simply dismantle the Church’s infrastructure than to take a principled stand against a corrupting zeitgeist which threatens the souls under their care.

Only this past week the cardinal archbishop of New York announced a $300 million ‘fire sale’ of Church property in order to raise money to cover settlements related to clerical sexual abuses in that diocese. This is the same prelate who famously quipped “we bishops are pastors, not fighters,” and later applauded LGBTQ+ activists marching in drag up 5th Avenue in the annual St. Patrick’s day parade. But in all fairness and charity one can pretend that the good cardinal has never stumbled across that pesky passage of St. Paul’s from the first chapter of Romans.

In truth, the Catholic Church is the soul of the world, meaning that when this soul is indisposed the rest of the world becomes sickened, and that is precisely what we have witnessed over the past 60 years. The Church of aggiornamento or accompaniment with the world has since been infected with the very worldliness that it formerly sough to tame. It seems to have forgotten that it is not through geopolitical power but in true Christian meekness that she can truly imitate her spouse who is Christ. She must be willing, as was her founder, to suffer and be reviled for proclaiming unpopular yet unchanging truths.

Christ is the only way, the only truth, and the only life that can rescue us from the quagmire in which our world has become hopelessly mired. For the Church is Christ’s visible body on earth, uniquely mandated to manifest Him to a world so desperately in need of his light. Yet if the Church does not proclaim loudly and unequivocally the sovereignty of Christ to the world then all will descend into utter darkness. In short the Church needs to lead the world (to salvation), not follow the world (into perdition), an existential role she seems to have become somewhat confused about over the past six decades.

We are preparing to celebrate the birth of a king, and not just any monarch but the Lord and King of all Creation! We must pray fervently that this King’s ordained ministers may find the courage to proclaim Christ boldly to a darkened yet ever so proud and skeptical world. Christ is truly our King, still waiting to be recognized by all his subjects around the globe. Our job is to fight for his kingship as the brave Mexican Cristeros did a century ago, even to the point of shedding their blood. Our turn has come. It is now up to us in this 21st century to be his mouthpieces for those who do not yet know him. Viva Cristo Rey!

Francis J. Pierson +a,m,d,g,