The case for why ‘culture warriors’ should convert to Catholicism

(LifeSiteNews) –– Around the world, across the political divide of left and right, there is a growing awareness that the world order we have known is passing away, and being replaced by something new, dark, and totalitarian. 

So many people “woke up” during COVID, and are still alert even though the immediate threats of camps and mandates have passed. 

But these people have not only woken up to the reality of some sort of global movement against values of life and liberty. Many have also concluded that this movement has a component which is spiritual, superhuman and actually evil. 

Others – including some of the most unlikely candidates – have concluded that, if we are in a spiritual battle, then the solution must also be spiritual. 

The choice before the culture warriors  

We are all used to the idea of “controlled opposition,” and it is possible that some or other of the pundits appearing to oppose the evil of our day are being tolerated as a pressure-valve.  

The same thing operates in the spiritual realm. This growing awareness of evil and this need for a spiritual solution means that these persons stand poised on the edge of a knife. 

They can turn to God, in the way that He revealed for us, and receive his spiritual aid that they need for the time ahead.  

The dark forces operating in our world do not want that, and will tolerate and promote anything else at its expense. They do not care which way you turn, so long as it is not God’s way.   

Thus, those who do not take God’s way will ultimately be allowing the same dark forces to lead them away into some false alternative which they either contrive, control or tolerate.   

The way that God has revealed is His Son, Jesus Christ. This same Jesus founded a single, supernatural society in which all men could be taught, governed, sanctified, and saved – as well as equipped to “stand in the evil day,” clad in the armor of God.  

This one Church of Christ is the Roman Catholic Church. 

The bond between Jesus and this Church is so close that, in different settings, we call it His body or His bride and even the “Whole Christ” himself, head and members, still living in the world. 

It is to this Church that all these “culture warriors,” concerned with the fate of the world, must turn. If these men want us to stand any chance of fighting against spiritual evil, in favor of goodness, holiness, life, love and liberty – and if they want to save their own souls – then they must enter the Roman Catholic Church, before it is too late.  

It is not enough to be interested in this Church, or sympathetic to it. Christ and his Church do not want observers, admirers, or sympathizers. They want sons, who can be raised into warriors.  

As Christ said: “He that is not with me, is against me.” 

Sooner or later, each one of us realizes we must make a definitive choice: are we with Him or against Him?  

What are the dark forces?  

Perhaps there are many factions behind what is going on in our world. Perhaps some of them are opposed to one another, and perhaps some of them are ultimately nothing more than human. 

But if – as we all seem to believe – there is something superhuman about the drive towards evil, then we Catholics know what these superhuman forces are. We know how they act, and why; we know what they fear; and we know how to fight them.  

They are demons, fallen angels. They are terrible, ancient spirits whose intelligence and power far outstrips anything we could imagine.   

Their actions are motivated by pride and an overarching hatred: hatred of God; hatred of us, the creatures whom he has redeemed; and hatred for the Church and the divine plan ordering our world towards this redemption and return to God.  

That hatred, too, is more powerful than anything we could imagine. 

There is nothing mythical or superstitious about this. Sound philosophy tells us that man is a rational animal, a union of a spiritual or intellectual soul and a body. It is not far-fetched to conclude that spiritual or purely intellectual beings are logically possible; and one who has noticed the existence of spiritual evil operating in the world has already basically concluded that they exist. 

A pure intellect is without the limitations imposed on us by our bodily nature. Revelation tells us – and experience suggests – that such pure intellects are considerably more intelligent and powerful than we are.   

Nonetheless, while these evil spirits could make light work of us mere rational animals, they fear the Cross of Christ and His holy name, His holy sacraments, and everything that is holy.   

They fear she who is most holy: Mary, the blessed virgin Mother of Christ, and St. Michael the Archangel, who are venerated and loved in the Roman Catholic Church.  

And they fear the priests and exorcists of the Catholic Church, who have told us these things so many times. 

Some saints and holy men and women have fought and beaten these spirits in some sort of visible form. But their ordinary way of operating is secret, quiet, subtle, and indirect.  

Most importantly, once they have won us men to their side, we are used as their instruments in this world – either for the petty spread of low-level evil, or for the wholesale transformation of society – perhaps even for the sake of the preparation of the Antichrist. 

St. Paul and the Armor of God 

It is not enough to notice that there is spiritual evil in the world, nor is it enough to set ourselves against it.  

Whether it be in dramatic, visible form, or in the subterfuge that the world is facing today, we cannot hope to stand against spiritual evil without spiritual arms. Those spiritual arms are given to us to the extent that we stand in Christ, united to Him as members of His body. 

Consider the words of St. Paul: 

[O]ur wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore, take unto you the armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day and to stand in all things perfect. (Eph. 6.11-13)

This same St. Paul, who called the Church “the pillar and bulwark of truth,” told us that there is one body and one faith: 

One body and one Spirit: as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all. (Eph. 4.4-6) 

If Christ’s body and its faith are one, then it cannot be made up of a collection of disagreeing bodies who, as he says just a few verses down, are “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine.”  

The early Church Father St. Cyprian followed St. Paul in writing of the Church as the spouse of Christ. Here is what he said: 

The spouse of Christ cannot be adulterous; she is uncorrupted and pure.  

She knows one home; she guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one couch. She keeps us for God.  

She appoints the sons whom she has born for the kingdom.  

Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor can he who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ.  

He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.  

If any one could escape who was outside the ark of Noah, then he also may escape who shall be outside of the Church.^[1]

The one body, with one faith, is the Roman Catholic Church.  

It is from this one body, the Roman Catholic Church, that all other Christian groups have departed – and they will remain unable fully “to stand in the evil day” until they return to the unity, to the oneness of the Catholic Church. 

These words sound harsh to our ears, but we should remember what Jesus said:  

He that is not with me, is against me.

It is not for us to be setting the terms of how much we are with Him. It is all or it is nothing.  

But what does it mean to be “with” Him? 

Sons in the Son 

Regardless of our sex, we are called to share in the sonship of Jesus Christ, as members of his body. God has one Son, and one Son only: Jesus Christ. If we are to be sons (and daughters) of God, it is in and through Jesus’s sonship. 

We achieve this only as members of the supernatural society of the Church. As St. Cyprian said above: “He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother.”  

We might also say that we cannot have Jesus for our brother or share in his filial relation to God the Father, without the Church for our mother.  

To those who conceive of the matter in a “naturalistic” way – which would see the Roman Catholic as one church among many, albeit the “right” one – this may seem hopelessly triumphalist, or even arrogant. Saying, “You must be a member of the Catholic Church,” might appear to be on a similar level to saying, “You must be a member of American Express” or “You must be a member of my political party.” 

But the word “members” has another meaning, namely parts of the body – and this is key to understanding the reality of our choices.  

The body of Christ 

Before his conversion, St. Paul (or Saul as he was then known) was a deadly persecutor of Christians. He oversaw the first Christian martyrdom of St. Stephen, and as the Holy Scriptures tells us:  

Saul made havoc of the church, entering in from house to house: and dragging away men and women, committed them to prison. (Acts 8.3)  

But Jesus knocked him from his horse, blinded him and rebuked him: 

‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?’

St. Paul did not know what he was talking about, and so he asked: 

‘Who art thou, Lord?’ 

‘I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest.’ (Acts 9.4-5) 

Let us note that Jesus could do the same to any of the globalist leaders advancing the demonic agenda today. This is why our prayer should be unceasing. 

In Jesus’s words above, Jesus identifies Himself with the persecuted Christians. This is not some vague moral solidarity: it is a statement of the profound truth that the Church is the body of Christ, such that her members are His members.   

St. Paul internalized this message, and he taught it in many of his letters. He later wrote to the Corinthians:   

For as the body is one and hath many members; and all the members of the body, whereas they are many, yet are one body: So also is Christ.  

For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free: and in one Spirit we have all been made to drink.  

For the body also is not one member, but many. (1 Cor. 12-12-4) 

St. Augustine expressed all this in the following idea: 

Christ is the Head of the Church. 

The Church is the Body of Christ. 

The ‘Whole Christ’ is both the Head and the Body.^[2] 

None of us, not even the most “awakened” culture warrior can hope to “stand in the evil day” and persevere in the face of powerful, spiritual evil – or in the face these superhuman assaults on civilization – unless we stand clothed and robed in Christ Himself, for which abiding in His one Church is absolutely necessary.  

Abiding in Christ 

Jesus expressed the idea of abiding in him very clearly time during His time on earth. In some of His last words to His Apostles before He died, He showed just how closely we are to associate ourselves with Him: 

Abide in me: and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me. 

I am the vine: you the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing.  

If anyone abide not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch and shall wither: and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire: and he burneth. (John 15.4-5) 

He says that without him, we can do nothing. But we should also remember that St. Paul said: “I can do all things in him who strengtheneth me.” (Phil. 4.13). 

We will not be saved or strengthened in our day by awareness of this or that plot, by this or that “anti-globalist” world leader, by leaks made by “Q,” by ideas such as “Christ Consciousness” or by the indomitable human spirit. 

The only “great awakening” which will be helpful to us is that which turns us to the Triune God, through Jesus Christ and in the Roman Catholic Church. 

We must be associated with Jesus just as a branch is to a vine – living the same life, being nourished by the same vine. Where and how can we be grafted onto Him in that way, so as to receive the divine sap of His life?  

We must abide in him. In a certain natural sense, God is interior to us all, holding us in existence at all times. In a supernatural sense, the Holy Trinity dwells within us by grace. But how often do we remember that we must also live in God? And how can we do so? 

It is by being a part of his body, the Roman Catholic Church, and by being animated by His same spirit and life.   

How do we think that we are going to even enter a spiritual battle (let alone win one) without Him, or outside of Him? 

Not only that: he said that if we do not abide Him, then we are like broken branches that wither away and will be burnt up in fire. 

Outside of this Church, we are outside of Christ; and outside of this Church and Christ, the various spiritual arms and weapons are blunt and ineffectual. This is why the Council of Florence taught: 

[O]nly to those remaining in [the Church] are the sacraments of the Church of benefit for salvation, and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service produce eternal reward, and that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved, unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.

This is why it is so important, for every single “culture warrior” who recognizes what is happening to our world, to enter and remain within that one Church which Christ founded, against which the proud gates of Hell cannot and will not prevail.  

Objections and obscurations 

There are indeed problems at present, the most obvious of which is the fact that Francis, who is considered by the world to be the Roman Pontiff and visible head of this Church, is openly a tool of the globalist and naturalist agenda – and indeed, not a Catholic. 

This is not the place to enter this discussion, but by way of a brief comment: this is obviously an enormous scandal, although the problems go further than Francis, back to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.  

It was always clear that the Roman Catholic Church is the Church of Christ, by reason of some of the points discussed above, as well as by certain external miraculous markings which designated her as such. These markings are not absent, but they can be harder to discern at present. These include, as Vatican I taught: 

[H]er astonishing propagation, her outstanding holiness and her inexhaustible fertility in every kind of goodness, by her catholic unity and her unconquerable stability.^[3]

Jesus Christ established a Church which is perpetual and indefectible. If the Roman Catholic Church was the true Church in the first century, or the nineteenth or early twentieth century, then it remains so now, today. There will be no new Gospel preached, and His Church will stand firm forever.  

In our day, there are many traitors who have joined the powers of darkness, and openly abandoned the Catholic faith, whilst retaining the Catholic name and having not been expelled by authority.  

What we are currently experiencing is like an obscuration of the sun by either the moon, or a great mass of clouds.   

Because of this, we face difficulties – which can be and often are surmounted – in locating this Church in our day. But however our situation is to be explained, we can know with certainty that the Roman Catholic Church is the same true Church of Christ today, just as it always was.  

Nonetheless, the question is not whether the Roman Church is the true Church, but rather where we can find the Roman Church today.  

The question seems more complicated than it is, because in fact few people have trouble discerning the Conciliar-Synodal Church of Francis from those who are continuing to represent the true and timeless Roman Catholic Church. 

For this reason, all the points stand. Those culture warriors wishing to join the Catholic Church merely need to exercise some minimal due diligence to do so. 

Concluding thoughts 

There are many people in history who have come to realize that God exists, and that Christianity is true, not because of arguments or goodness, but because of seeing the evil that is in this world. 

Those who have been blessed by God to see the true nature of the conflict in which we find ourselves are being blessed again now, even if by a completely unworthy messenger, by this call to enter the Roman Catholic Church and to join the winning side. 

It is in the Catholic Church that the old, flawed self will be washed away and elevated to the supernatural order in baptism; in which they will be made into soldiers of Christ, in the true Catholic sacrament of confirmation; in which they can be picked up and strengthened each time they fall; and in which they will be fed and nourished by Christ’s body in the Holy Eucharist. 

By this Holy Eucharist, they will be made more and more a part of that body – and more able to “stand in the evil day,” as members of the Whole Christ, clad in the virtue and power of Jesus Himself. 

In this way, and only in this way, will they be able to fight in this spiritual war – fight and win.  

As St. Peter says in the Bible, outside of Noah’s Ark, all were lost in the flood. 

But today, in the New Covenant, the Ark is not only open to Noah and his family and a few of each animal. 

So, to all the culture warriors standing outside the Roman Catholic Church, wondering what to do about the rain, we say: 

Come in! Come into the only place where you will be safe, where you can be prepared for the spiritual battles which are ahead of us!