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Good article. There is nothing new under the sun after all, I guess.

Still, the Pope said something yesterday that I thought was true: there has been some fundamental shift that has occurred in society, and it is impossible to return to what we once had. That is, the entire modern vision of what it means to be human has undergone a profound change, sort of an official adoption of Gnosticism with its complete rejection of physical reality, that makes it impossible for Christians to communicate.

Look at the most elementary of biological facts: men are men and women are women, and no amount of claiming that you are not really what your body is will change that. Yet our society asserts that physical reality means nothing. Since Christianity is based on physical reality (the Incarnation), we Christians find ourselves now living in a completely alien environment where we are speaking and thinking in a suddenly foreign language.

till, the Pope said something yesterday that I thought was true: there has been some fundamental shift that has occurred in society, and it is impossible to return to what we once had. That is, the entire modern vision of what it means to be human has undergone a profound change, sort of an official adoption of Gnosticism with its complete rejection of physical reality, that makes it impossible for Christians to communicate.

I have posted this before and apologize for the repeat but, each time I read such statements, there is a flashback to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Pro Eligendo homily delivered to the College of Cardinals before they entered the conclave that resulted in his selection as pope.

How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.
Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.
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This homily was delivered in April 2005. Like Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, one can regard Ratzinger's homily as quasi prophetic. Insofar as Pope Francis stating that a fundamental shift has occurred in history, we know from history that it repeats itself. Perhaps not in our lifetime, it is conceivable that some future generation may one day experience the conservative values we experienced in post WWII America.