The False Unity

IF the prayer and desire of Jesus is that “they may all be one” (John 17:21), then Satan too has a plan for unity—a false unity. And we see the signs of it emerging. What is written here relates to the coming “parallel communities” spoken of in The Coming Refuges and Solitudes.

 
TRUE UNITY 

Christ prayed that we would all be one:

…by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind… (Phil 2:5)

What mind? What love? Of what accord? Paul answers it in the next verse:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who… did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant…

The mark of Christianity is love. The apex of this love is self-denial, a kenosis or emptying of self for the other. This is to be the mind of the Body of Christ, a unity of service, which is the bond of love.

Christian unity is not one of mindless submission and conformity. That is what a cult is. As I often say when I speak to the youth: Jesus did not come to take away your personality—He came to take away your sins! And so, the Body of Christ consists of many members, but with different functions, all ordered toward the goal of love. Difference, therefore, is celebrated.

…the Apostle is eager to communicate… the idea of unity among the multiplicity of charisms, which are the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Thanks to these, the Church appears as a rich and vital organism, not uniform fruit of the one Spirit, who leads everyone to profound unity, because she welcomes differences without eliminating them and thus bringing about a harmonious unity. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, Angelus, January 24th, 2010; L’Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, Jan. 27th, 2010; www.vatican.va

In Christian unity, all is ordered toward the good of the other, either through acts of charity, or by adherence to the natural and moral laws as revealed to us through creation and in the person of Jesus. Thus charity and truth are not and cannot be divorced, for they are both ordered toward the good of the other. ^[1]cf. At All Costs Where there is love, there is no compulsion; where there is truth, there is freedom.

Thus, in the unity of Christ, the human soul is able to grow into its full potential within a loving community… which is the image of the first community: the Holy Trinity.
 

THE FALSE UNITY 

Satan’s goal is not that we would all be one, but that all would be uniform.

In order to build this false unity, it will be based on a false trinity:  “Tolerant, Humane, Equal“. The enemy’s objective is to first tear down the unity of the Body of Christ, the unity of marriage, and that inner unity within the human person (body, soul, and spirit), which is made in God’s image—and then rebuild all in a false image.

At present, man has power over the world and its laws. He is able to dismantle this world and reassemble it. —POPE BENEDICT XVI (Cardinal Ratzinger), Palermo, March 15th, 2000

In being “Equal”, there is no longer such thing as “man” or “woman” or “husband” and “wife.” (It is important to note that the modern secularist mind does not mean by the word “equality”: each human being’s equal and eternal value—but rather a kind of bland sameness.) The radical feminist movement was fostered by Satan to erase the different but complementary roles of man and woman.

Human fatherhood gives us an anticipation of what He is. But when this fatherhood does not exist, when it is experienced only as a biological phenomenon, without its human and spiritual dimension, all statements about God the Father are empty. The crisis of fatherhood we are living today is an element, perhaps the most important, threatening man in his humanity. The dissolution of fatherhood and motherhood is linked to the dissolution of our being sons and daughters.  —POPE BENEDICT XVI (Cardinal Ratzinger), Palermo, March 15th, 2000

Having accomplished this, he moves to the next step: the erasure of the differences in masculine and feminine sexuality. Now manhood or womanhood is a matter of preference, and thus, man and woman are essentially “equal.” 

Relativizing the difference between the sexes… tacitly confirms those bleak theories which seek to remove all relevance from a human being’s masculinity or femininity, as if this were a purely biological matter.  —POPE BENEDICT XVI, WorldNetDaily, December 30th, 2006 

But this false and limited sense of “equality” is not restricted to man and woman; it spills over into a distorted understanding of  nature in being “Humane.” That is, animals and plants are to be considered, albeit varied in form and of lesser intelligence, equal creatures. In this symbiotic relationship, man, woman, animal—even the planet and the environment—become equal in value in a kind of cosmic homogenization (and sometimes, humankind takes on less value in the face of, say, an endangered species.) 

Spain, for example, has passed the Great Ape Project into law, declaring that chimpanzees and gorillas are part of the “community of equals” with people. Switzerland has declared that individual plants have “intrinsic dignity” and that “decapitating” wildflowers is a great moral wrong. Ecuador’s new constitution provides for “rights of nature” that are equal to those of Homo sapiens. —Homo Sapiens, Get Lost, Wesley J. Smith, senior fellow in human rights and bioethics for the Discovery Institute, National Review Online, April 22nd, 2009

As the Holy Spirit flows as Love between the Father and Son, so too this false unity is bonded by “Tolerance.” While keeping or holding to the outward form of charity, it is often devoid of love for it is founded on feelings and distorted logic rather than the illumination of truth and reason. The natural and moral law are thus exchanged for the elusive concept of “rights.” Thus, if something can be considered a right, it should therefore be tolerated (even if the right is simply “created” by a judge or demanded by lobbyist groups, regardless if these “rights” violate truth and reason.)

As such, this false Trinity does not have love as its end, but the ego: it is the new Tower of Babel.

A dictatorship of relativism is being built that recognizes nothing as definite, and which leaves as the ultimate measure nothing but the self and its appetites.  —POPE BENEDICT XVI (Cardinal Ratzinger), Opening Homily at Conclave, April 18th, 2004.

On the surface, the words tolerant, humane, and equal are terms that appear good, and can in fact be good. But Satan is the “father of lies” who takes that which is good and twists it, thereby ensnaring souls through confusion.

UNIVERSAL FALSEHOOD 

Once this “trinity” of falsehood coalesces in all three of its aspects, it prepares the way for a false unity that itself must be carefully monitored and enforced. Indeed, the very nature of Tolerance is that it cannot tolerate that thing, person, or institution which holds to the idea of moral absolutes.  Scripture says, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” ^[2]2 Cor 3:17 Conversely, where the spirit of antichrist is, there is coercion. ^[3]cf. Control! Control! The false unity, expanding now as a global phenomenon, thus, prepares the way for the Antichrist who ensures that each individual must be accounted for. Control is the underbelly of Tolerance; it is the Antichrist’s glue—not love. One loose bolt in a machine can destroy the whole mechanism; likewise, each person must be carefully organized and integrated into the false unity—bound and conformed to its political expression, which is fundamentally totalitarianism. 

The Apocalypse speaks about God’s antagonist, the beast. This animal does not have a name, but a number.

In [the horror of the concentration camps], they cancel faces and history, transforming man into a number, reducing him to a cog in an enormous machine. Man is no more than a function.

In our days, we should not forget that they prefigured the destiny of a world that runs the risk of adopting the same structure of the concentration camps, if the universal law of the machine is accepted. The machines that have been constructed impose the same law. According to this logic, man must be interpreted by a computer and this is only possible if translated into numbers.

The beast is a number and transforms into numbers. God, however, has a name and calls by name. He is a person and looks for the person.  —Cardinal Ratzinger, (POPE BENEDICT XVI) Palermo, March 15th, 2000 (italics mine)

But this is not unity. Rather, it is conformity.

It is not the beautiful globalization of unity of all Nations, each one with their own customs, instead it is the globalization of hegemonic uniformity, it is the single thought. And this sole thought is the fruit of worldliness. —POPE FRANCIS, Homily, November 18th, 2013; Zenit

As Christianity is based on freedom and responsibility to the truth—and it is this which fosters genuine unity—the false unity will come about by an outward semblance of freedom: security in the name of peace. A totalitarian state will be justified so as to bring about this false unity for the “common good” (particularly if the world is in the turbidity of a Third World War or buckling under catastrophes, natural or economic.) But a false unity is likewise a false peace.

For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night… A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy. (1 Thess 5:2; John 10:10)

They have healed the wound of my people lightly saying, `Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace… I set watchmen over you, saying, `Give heed to the sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, `We will not give heed.’ Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them. Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing evil upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not given heed to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it.  (Jeremiah 6:14, 17-19)

The Antichrist will thus come like a thief in the night of confusion. ^[4]cf. The Coming Counterfeit

…when we are all of us in all parts of Christendom so divided, and so reduced, so full of schism, so close upon heresy. When we have cast ourselves upon the world and depend for protection upon it, and have given up our independence and our strength, then he [Antichrist] will burst upon us in fury as far as God allows him.  —Blessed John Henry Newman, Sermon IV: The Persecution of Antichrist

Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 675

THE FALSE  CHURCH

Then this false unity will become “universal”—a word which comes from the Greek katholikos:  “catholic”— an attempt to morph and displace the true Church and true unity in which the plan of Christ will otherwise be accomplished.

For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Eph 1:9-10) 

I saw enlightened Protestants, plans formed for the blending of religious creeds, the suppression of papal authority… I saw no Pope, but a bishop prostrate before the High Altar. In this vision I saw the church bombarded by other vessels… It was threatened on all sides… They built a large, extravagant church which was to embrace all creeds with equal rights… but in place of an altar were only abomination and desolation. Such was the new church to be… —Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824 A.D.), The Life and Revelations of Anne Catherine Emmerich, April 12th, 1820

Pope Francis calls this compromise of one’s beliefs, this growing spirit of worldliness within the Church, a “fruit of the devil.” Comparing our times to that of the ancient Hebrews in the Book of Maccabees, the Holy Father warned that we are falling into the same “spirit of adolescent progressivism.”

They believe that to go forward in any type of choice was better than to remain in the habits of fidelity… This is called apostasy, adultery. They are not, in fact, negotiating a few values; they negotiate the very essence of their being: that faithfulness of the Lord. —POPE FRANCIS, Homily, November 18th, 2013; Zenit

Thus, we need to stay awake in these times, especially as we see so many people being drawn into the deception of compromise. For at the same time, the Church is increasingly being painted as the “terrorists”of peace and of a more tolerant “new world order.”  Thus, it is clear that the Church is going to face a persecution that, ultimately, will purify her.

The Church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes… She will lose many of her social privileges… As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members.

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek… The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain… But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already with Gobel, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death. —Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (POPE BENEDICT XVI), Faith and Future, Ignatius Press, 2009

First published January 4th, 2007. I have updated and added more references here.