John 3:19
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
To that wisdom I would add the dark rumination of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor.
In the story, Jesus returned to Earth at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. Not long after He returned and started preaching his “heresies”, he was brought before the Grand Inquisitor. You have come to make people free, the Grand Inquisitor said, but people do not want to be free.
I wonder about the timing, myself.
They pulled this on the Solstice which is often observed with pagan ritual sacrifice.
I do not believe in coincidences.