Summary of The Religion of the Day by the University of Mary (Prime Matters)

This book is a sequel to From Christendom to Apostolic Mission (click here for my summary). Since the authors hope this book “furthers a living conversion” (14), here is my attempt to further it.

The Three-Front Battle

“God in Christ came among us to wage a spiritual battle and, in every age since the time of its founding by Christ, the Church has been engaged in a kind of three-front war. On one front, Christians fight an external battle against the unbelief of a fallen world; a second front is an internal battle against disloyalty and corruption among Church members; and most importantly, the third front is a fight against the darkness and unbelief of one particular member of the Church: namely, ourselves. Much of the nature of that battle is the same in every age: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8), and human nature, despite what many current philosophies want to suggest, is fundamentally constant” (9).

Since we do not want to be like an army “fighting the last war,” using technology or tactics that worked well in their day but no longer meet the demands of a new situation, this book provides some guidance for how we can “fight the war today” along 3 main fronts.

1st Battle Front: Evangelization – “The Church VS. The World”

The first front of the “three-front Christian battle” is in the field of evangelization, that is, the battle between the Church and the external forces of darkness for the salvation of souls. To win this battle, the authors present a provocative question that needs to be answered:

“What is the religion we need to be converted out of if we are to be truly converted to Christ?” (11)

The “religion” people need to be converted out of is the authors’ creative way to go past the idea of the so-called rise of the “nones” (those who identify as non-religious) and instead affirm the truth that if religion can be “understood as the particular set of beliefs and practices that a person or a society holds in order to provide a meaningful vision and narrative for life” (15), then there is always a “Religion of the Day” since every person is “religious” insofar as every person seeks a meaningful story (16).

So… What is the religion we need to be converted out of if we are to be truly converted to Christ?

The fancy title for the “Religion of the Day” is: “Modern Neo-Gnostic Progressive Utopian Revolutionary Religion” (17). Try telling your secular friends they belong to that religion! Haha! Or for short: “Progressive religion.” I like to think of it more as the deadly sin of pride that acts like a virus or parasite that adapts itself to “host” religions and philosophies of every age. Here are two key ways the parasite of pride has twisted two fundamental doctrines of Christianity.

1st: The Doctrine of Original Sin… It’s not my fault!

The parasite of pride has twisted the doctrine of Original Sin. Instead of the traditional idea of being born into the “slavery of sin” and in need of freedom from a saviour, we are now born free from the “slavery of sin” and it is the world that enslaves us.

The Progressive religion appeals “to both the good human desire to confront evil and the bad human tendency to deny personal guilt and to seek an external source of the world’s ills” (50). This parasite of pride has morphed “Moral Therapeutic Deism” (MTD) into something more pernicious. We are now called to fight against the world’s injustices and evils with remedies totally against the wisdom of Christ. Instead of loving the poor, there is often a resentment of poverty. Instead of caring for the elderly, there is a hatred for the ravages of age. Instead of aiding the sick, there is indignation toward disease (just think of Covid!): “It is not so much love for those who suffer, but anger rooted in pride at the fact of suffering that provides the deepest motive power in the drive for societal change among Progressive faiths” (33).

“Not my fault!” is the universal Progressive religious mantra (28). The problem is not me but the world, or oppressive structures in society, or… God! It’s not my fault! This prideful hostility towards God – often unconscious and hidden until tragedy occurs – is the essence of all Gnostic sects according to St. Irenaeus.

2nd: The Doctrine of Salvation… Let’s find the Silver Bullet!

The parasite of pride has also twisted the doctrine of salvation. Instead of the traditional idea of relying upon God’s power and initiative for salvation with an attitude of humility, obedience, and patience, the Progressive Religion achieves salvation through human effort alone.

The Progressive religion has a “silver bullet mentality.” All will be well “if…” says the experts who possess the silver bullet. For Progressive believers, salvation is achieved by finding a “silver bullet” – whether spiritual, political, social/cultural, psychological, biological, technological or maybe all of them at once, “that would give us the power to save ourselves and set ourselves free” (36). In this context, politics becomes the primary place where positive change in the world can happen.

Therefore, the Progressive religion presents a strong dualistic view of history in which everything of the past is bad (“the dark ages”) and everything to come will be good (“the utopia”). The Progressive religion also presents a strong dualistic view of humans in which you are either part of the “knowledge elite” (or gnōsis club) who really know what is wrong with the world and how to fix it, or you are stuck in the past and preventing real progress.

“Again, it is an article of Progressive faiths that they are on the “right side of history” and are “morally up-to-date,” and that those who resist the doctrines of their faith are necessarily dark and bad. Progressive believers are therefore “nice” while their opponents are “nasty” or “scary” (42). There are absolute categories of good and evil and no middle ground exists. You are either enlightened or not. And you’ll get “cancelled” if you are not! “Since Progressive religion denies the existence of evil spirits, it becomes necessary to demonize whole segments of the human race who are then marginalized and, if necessary, eradicated for the health and salvation of the world” (43).

Revolution becomes the process by which salvation is achieved. In order to get rid of these oppressive structures of current evil in the world, we need to destroy what currently exists: “It provides the confidence of feminists, queer theorists, sexual liberationists, and black power proponents that the destruction of patriarchy, heteronormativity, white privilege, and traditional ideas about marriage and sex will automatically bring about a new era of happiness and freedom” (46).

Overall

Here is a religion that (1) issues a high and compelling moral call; (2) promises to overcome the aching sense of not fitting into the world; (3) looks toward a glorious future of increasing perfection; (4) has an adventurous edge and issues a decisive call to action; (5) appeals to the inventive capacity of the human mind to solve problems and to improve existence; (6) absolves the believer of personal guilt; and (7) echoes the truths of Christianity in ways that appeal to our created nature and respond to certain desires given us by God” (54). How compelling indeed!

2nd Battle Front: Purification – “The Church VS. Herself”

The second front of the “three-front Christian battle” is the struggle within the Church. In order to understand this battle of purification and not fall into the utopian, neo-Gnostic mindset that the Church should be free of error and problems, we need to understand what and who the Church is.

1: The Church Militant

The Church Militant – the portion of the Church here on earth – is a kind of resistance movement behind the lines of our ancient enemy, battling for the salvation of souls. As Christ’s Mystical Body here on earth, Christ continues to lead the Church into battle today.

Paradoxically, the battles that emerge within the Church Militant are “perhaps the more intensive and of greater strategic importance. It is the fight for truth on behalf of humanity that takes place inside the Church” (84). This is not foreign to Jesus though. He spent almost all of His time on earth with the Church, often engaging in His fiercest battles with those in Church authority to “purify them” of their errors. The early disciples continued the fight Jesus had begun, often battling fiercely inside the nascent Church. Every book of the New Testament addresses conflicts among the Christian people. The struggles inside the Church seemed much more important than the struggles outside the Church.

The same pattern can be seen throughout the history of the Church’s life. It is often through “great saints, who through brave witness and in the crucible of suffering become themselves the healing antibodies in the Church’s bloodstream” (94). These saints, through goodwill, “did not think that the Church’s internal battle was a waste of their time or a distraction from their real business. They had learned from Jesus that this fight was exactly their real business” (94). Today, those who have positions of highest authority and influence in the Church Militant must engage in this battle most energetically.

“Just as Christ in his body of flesh contracted all the diseases of fallen humanity and generated the immunity in his blood, so also the Church – Christ’s mystical body on earth – contracts the diseases of each age. The Church (through some of its members) is prone to catch the special diseases afflicting the human race in each generation, the current variant of the virus of error or the strain of moral corruption, the particular scandal of fallen humanity in a given time. The Church then suffers and grows sick, and once again a feverish battle takes place within the body of Christ. Afflicted and tempted in its members, the struggle and heartbreak are great. But, by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the Church possesses the spark of divine life. This ensures that the Church is never ultimately vanquished but instead overcomes each virus of error or sin, generating a costly immunity and priceless antibodies which it is then able to offer as medicine from its bloodstream to the world, so as to draw more and more of the rest of humanity into the experience of divine life: healed, healthy, free” (85).

2: The Church Triumphant

Although the human element of the Church often fails (“We are the ones who will not take our medicine, who do not follow the divine physician’s protocols, who stubbornly resist the action of God’s grace” (86)), Christ in the Church – the divine element – NEVER fails. He is always triumphant! The medicine of God has a 100% success rate. It is a recurring drama of every age. Tragic then triumphant. This is a key element of the Church’s mission. The Church fights the battle on behalf of humanity.

The vast majority of the Church’s members have won the battle and are already Home in Heaven. They are free from sin, death, and the power of the enemy. They experience no sin, no injustice, no scandal, and no imperfection: “Blind to this high vision, the reductionist and worldly conception of the Church sometimes gives rise to this question: “The way things are going, will the Church be able to survive?” But when the reality of the Church’s nature is perceived, rightly and truly, it becomes clear that there is no question of the Church “surviving.” The Church is gloriously alive and beyond the reach of death. It is the fallen world that will not survive” (76-7).

3rd Battle: Sanctification

To effectively fight the two battles above, we need to engage in the interior battle of our minds and hearts. This first requires an “examination” or “check-up” with Christ the Doctor (as I like to call it). Here are some questions that I have come up with.

Q.1: Have you been infected with the “not my fault” disease?

Since the Progressive religion pridefully denies the Doctrine of Original Sin or at least our personal implication in the guilt of a fallen world, we can unconsciously assume this idea that people are fundamentally good. But Jesus did not hesitate to call His beloved disciples “evil” (Mt 7:11) and say that the road that leads to eternal life is narrow and difficult, and few find it (see Mt 7:13-14).

“As our awareness of sin fades and the idea of universal salvation becomes an unconscious assumption in our minds, the awe-inspiring figure of Christ – Lord of the Universe, the divine warrior who battled the prince of darkness, and who by an act of unfathomable love and suffering brought to his followers forgiveness of sin, freedom from demonic slavery, and the gift of eternal life – gets lost in favor of a different Jesus: the nice guy, the non-threatening personal life-enhancer who offers his followers wealth, wellness, self-realization, and a therapeutic program for coping with personal challenges” (104).

Q.2: Have you been infected by “Silver Bullet” syndrome?

The Progressive religion disease says that the “silver bullet” of “psychology will sort out our inner world; sociology will show the way to peaceful relational harmony; political science will do away with war; economics will eradicate poverty; and scientific technology will make life on earth pleasurable and will extend our lifespans indefinitely. Nothing stands in the way of our advance toward ever more perfect happiness except the reactionary elements of humanity that refuse to embrace the age of freedom and are stuck on the wrong side of history” (109).

We can be infected by the “silver bullet” syndrome and “think it will be money, influence, talent, political power, and intelligence that will keep the Church alive and thriving. It is true that God can and does use these means for his own purposes. But he goes out of his way to make clear that these are not the ways his kingdom fundamentally grows. To gain a supernatural kingdom we need to use supernatural means” (115).

Q.3: Have you been infected by the “Utopian dreamworld” disease?

The Progressive religion infects us with an illusion of finding true happiness in this world by constructing our own world of meaning. We lose sight of the cosmic order and become obsessively fixated on the seen and the temporal.

“We have become experts in the art of visible distraction; we fill our eyes and ears with a constant stream of diverting content; we so speed up the pace of life that an atmosphere of peace and silence, so necessary for an awareness of the unseen world, is ever harder to come by. Under the constant pressure of a Niagara of sensual and informational distraction, we can be caught by the illusion that puts physical health ahead of spiritual health. We can get lost in the fog that counts economic prosperity as the main goal of life. We can be afflicted by the blindness that views human suffering and tragedy in this world as final and irreparable. We can subtly re-translate and reduce the Gospel into a this-worldly remedy for temporal poverty, sickness, and injustice. It is hardly surprising that in such an environment, believers have a hard time keeping their gaze on the deeper realities opened up by faith” (107).

Furthermore, we can expect things to go well for us here on Earth. We can be surprised when they do not go well and blame God when it does.

Q.4: Have you been infected with “dualistic eyesight”?

“We have seen that neo-Gnostic religions posit two radically distinct kinds of humans: the good people, or those who have embraced the correct Progressive dogma, and the evil people, or those who are standing athwart the progress of humanity” (112).

We can be infected by the same dark dualistic error. We can look at the problems inside the Church with this dualistic mindset & separate those in the Church into “we good ones” VS. “those bad ones.” We can “become prey to conspiracy theories – a typical symptom of the Gnostic desire to gain control of the world by figuring everything out – and we can speak of the Church’s being “infiltrated” by bad people” (113).

Winning the Battle: Sanctification

“In determining how best to serve Christ in our time and place, there will be a thousand things to learn and do. Each of us will have a missionary vocation that will demand all the prudent thought and enterprise we can muster. But whatever we are doing, it can help to see the encouragement we are given concerning our fundamental stance as believers, families, missionaries, soldiers, and servants of Christ” (118). “Our most pressing practical concern in waging the spiritual battle is to ask how we, each one of us, might be more deeply converted in thought and action to the truth of Christ and ever freer from the false gospels that surround us” (98).

I have simplified all of the insights in the book into the 3 theological virtues.

1st: Faith

“In the face of the ravages of a fallen world, Christians must cultivate a vision of faith. We need to place the primacy of invisible realities rather than get caught up in the shadowy world of entertainment and breaking news or the delusion of politics as our only hope for the future. When we look at the Church with a vision of faith, we will not be scandalized or discouraged by the evil we encounter within the Church” (130).

To develop a vision of faith, we need a strong intellectual life. Every day, we should be filling our minds and hearts with truths from Scripture, the Catechism, and the spiritual classics. These sources of truth will help us develop a “true narrative” – “the true story of humanity, an epic saga of high drama, which is also the story of each person’s life and the only story that will provide the meaning we are so desperately seeking” (125). With a vision of faith, we can once again place primacy on mystery and the invisible world (which our proud age rebels against because it is beyond the grasp of our understanding).

Ultimately, in faith, we know that Christ is the only answer to the problems in the world. “To be a Christian is to belong to Jesus, to know him, to be in union with him, to become a part of him. Everything else is encompassed in and given meaning through this encounter and communion with the living God-made man. Christ is the absolute center, the beginning, and the end. To be rightly related to Christ is to be rightly related to everything else. Our time needs once again to be amazed and overwhelmed by Christ himself – not a system, or a theory, or a socio-political scheme, but by the Divine personality himself” (123). Then, we need to go out and share this vision of faith with others.

2nd: Hope

The second theological virtue we need is hope. We need hope to “stand!” our ground in the battle (see Eph 6:10-17) and trust that if we stand in the will and truth of our Father like Christ, even if Satan wages an all-out war against us and we are martyred, we will rejoice with the Church Triumphant in victory.

Christians attack the evil of the world and challenge the supremacy of the prince of darkness by refusing to be moved off their ground, by staying in the fight no matter what, and by fearlessly speaking God’s word of truth even in the face of persecution and death. They imitate Christ, the great champion of truth and goodness, precisely by “standing” (120).

“Standing” shows why the defeated martyr, rather than the externally victorious conqueror, is the quintessential Christian hero. Christians always win when they stand in the truth of Christ, whatever their circumstances. 121. As long as we keep fighting, we always win!

“The devil knows this iron law of spiritual warfare. He knows that he cannot defeat Christians by making life miserable for them, or by stirring up persecution against them, not even by slaughtering them wholesale. The only way he can overcome them is to find a way to get them either to abandon the truth or to lose hope and quit the fight, by somehow getting them off the secure rock upon which they are standing, the rock of Christ” (121).

“Jesus taught his followers that they would grow strong, conquer, and gain a kingdom according to the pattern of his Cross: not by wealth but by poverty; not by power but by humility; not by strength but in weakness; not by coercive force but in defenselessness; not by the world’s wisdom but by the seeming foolishness of God. Like Christ, Christians triumph just when it seems that they are failing. Not that they set out to fail. Following the example of their Master, Christians attempt to be faithful, diligent, wise, competent, zealous, and patient. In doing so they are given the privilege of being channels of his grace and truth. They see God at work in their own lives and they know the joy of seeing fellow captives set free. Yet they find that at crucial times, despite all their best efforts, they seem to fail. They and their work are nailed to the Cross and crucified. It is just then that heaven’s power is mysteriously released and that new life comes bursting from the grave. The Church is weakest and most vulnerable when it most relies on worldly categories of strength and success. It is strongest when it is most reliant on God and least wedded to the powers of a fallen world” (122).

3rd: Love

The third theological virtue we need is love. For Christians, our real motivation for all action is the love of Christ (see 2 Cor 5:14). Like Christ, we destroy enemies by turning them into friends! “Every Christian has made the transition from being an enemy of God to becoming his friend, and we should desire that the same blessed event happen even for our worst enemies, however unlikely it may seem in a given case” (113).

“[O]ne act of self-denial for the sake of the Gospel, one single heartfelt prayer or act of charity toward those we are called to love, will have more power in advancing the cause of Christ than months of angry listening to podcasts, or hours of sparring on social media, or years of stirring up those around us with the latest evil reports from news articles. The devil is dismayed by humility, devastated by charity, and terrified by the Cross. But when he sees Christians trying to press the works of the flesh – greed, anger, calumny, and power politics – into the service of the Spirit, he only laughs” (117).

“We will keep firmly in mind the destiny and mission of the Church as the main locus of the battle for humanity, and we will not succumb to anxiety about the ultimate fortunes of the Church nor settle into anger over the sins of fellow Christians, neither of which attitude will help us to cooperate with Christ. When we face modern Judases within the Church, or when we encounter the Judas that dwells within our own hearts, we will respond like Christ: not with anger, not with anxiety or discouragement, but impelled by divine charity, with calm zeal, ready to follow the way of Christ even to crucifixion” (130).

Conclusion: Be a Saint

“When we face the challenges of living in an increasingly non-Christian culture, we will remember that we have been born into precisely this age by the thoughtful providence of God, and that he has special plans to work in and through us. We will remember that there is always grace enough to deal with whatever comes our way, and we will resist all doomsaying and desperate attitudes. We will neither be lost in nostalgia for a distant time in the past, nor will we fall into the trap of thinking that Christianity is now “outmoded” and needing a fundamental change of belief or morality. Instead, we will seek wisdom to understand how Christ is responding to our times, as the Gospel of the One who is “ever ancient and ever new” continues to reach out to save the lost. We will do our best to recapture the faith-filled sight of the early Christians, who though a tiny and entirely insignificant minority refused to be overwhelmed by the power and immensity of the pagan world around them, because they knew that they were at the center of God’s saving plan and that much depended on their faithfulness” (130).

“When our gaze turns to ourselves, we will keep hold of the truth that the most effective way to change the world, and the most genuine way of cooperating with Christ for the world’s salvation, is to become a truly converted person. We will remember that the really strategic battle is the one we encounter morning by morning in our cooperation with the Holy Spirit as he engages and enlightens the darkness in our hearts and fans into flame the divine life he has planted in us. We will strive at all times to remember who we are: adopted and beloved sons and daughters of the King of Heaven, now living a hidden and exiled life, battling against our ancient foe, but soon to be revealed as bearers of divine light to the joy and astonishment of all the inhabitants of heaven. This is our time; this is the day the Lord has made; this is the age for which we were chosen; this is a time of God’s energetic action as he continues to deal with the world and with each of us in love and mercy. Let us then take hold with both hands of the life and the time God has given us, in all their light and shadow, with genuine faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (131).