Daniel J. Mahoney, The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity

Excerpt

At the end of an episode of Life Is Worth Living, Venerable (soon to be Blessed) Fulton J. Sheen pronounced, “the choice before the world is not some humanitarian state or Communism but Brotherhood in Christ or Comradeship in Antichrist… It is up to [America] as a free nation to choose the good, to choose the truth, to choose God and the freedom of the people of the world.” For Sheen, only Christianity, especially Catholic Christianity, could defend human freedom as well as reveal its highest good in Christ, and only nations could defend that freedom. Insofar as nations were merely divided between “humanitarian” and “Communism,” however, Sheen saw not merely the failure to defend freedom and its proper object but even stop the spread of totalitarianism. With the same vigor and learning as “Uncle Fultie,” Daniel J. Mahoney proclaims the same message, but the troubling issue for Mahoney is that he must prophesy not to the American public but the Church Herself. …