Unlikely Culture War Heroes

The tide has turned in the culture wars. The recovery of common sense may be the first victory for the side of Christian values since the 1960’s. Just when it seemed all hope was lost and the culture found itself at the precipice of utter ruin. This may sound hyperbolic but it isn’t. The stakes were very high. Like a military grade psychological operation, the media and the cultural elite who fund them almost convinced the majority of the population that their gender was a social construct and that all of binary reality was a delusion. If you disagreed you would be cancelled, censured or deplatformed. 

For the Church, this postmodern absurdism was a heresy that reached crisis proportions worse than Arianism. St Jerome is often quoted as saying, “The whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian”. Well in our times the whole world seemed to wake up and find itself awash in the ‘Dictatorship of Relativism’. Oddly enough the one Church leader who warned us by coining that phrase, 'Dictatorship of Relativism' seems to have succumbed to the forces of evil by throwing in the towel early with an unprecedented resignation. 

On many social media sites, Catholic ‘influencers’ who should know better were self identifying their genders by using preferred pronouns. Catholic universities were competing with their leftist secular counterparts on how much they could cede the curriculum and identity to the DEI initiatives of the leftists. Meanwhile, Catholic bishops accepted the label of ‘non-essential’ as they shuddered their churches during the pandemic.

We watched masked priests celebrate a pre-recorded Mass six feet apart from a few altar servers on our screens at home. Some of us started to get comfortable with the arrangement. We opted for social distancing in the name of safety rather than real ecclesial communion in person. Some of us kept our masks on while at home, not because it mattered to science, but because it became an apt symbol of our wimpy willingness to self-censure amidst the attack on free-speech.

As a sign of how dire it became, the three unlikely heroes emerged to save the Christian identity of the West not from the Church but from what we normally consider enemy territory. Make no mistake, the rise of these three voices who spoke eloquently and forcefully for the recovery of sanity was nothing less than a miracle. 

In a world full of lies, the truth tellers seem very weird at first. Noah was mocked, John the Baptist was arrested and Saul the Pharisee was looked at with suspicion. It took them a while to emerge as the friends of sanity and truth, people who are on the right side of history. 

Today's unlikely warriors for truth are no less an odd bunch...

One came from the university system. What’s worse, he was a Canadian professor of psychology from a left leaning school. Another was, what many consider, the person who single handedly reawakened a renewed interest in neo-pagan witchcraft. What’s worse, she was most influential with our youth. The third is a brash, billionaire playboy of sorts whose moral compass seems spotty at best. What's worse, he has fathered fourteen children with four different women. If you haven’t guessed, I’m referring to none other than psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson, author J.K. Rowling and business man Elon Musk.

To be clear, no self-respecting Catholic who is serious about the Faith would have ever sought morality advice from any of the three in their past lives. After all, we not only have the fullness of truth, we have the grace of the sacraments and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in matters of faith and moral life. The difference is they have an effective platform, a super high genius level intelligence combined with a chip on their shoulder or what you might call verve. 

Since they are each coming from the areas of society which we normally associate with the words, 'secular' or 'left leaning', they had credibility among the groups who hate the Church. Given the church sexual abuse scandals and the subsequent cover up by many bishops and the inability of Pope Francis to finally reign it in out from a dark place and into a purifying light, these three non-Christian culture warriors amazingly had more moral credibility than the Church.

Finally, all three of them would probably agree that their status as cultural warriors who are ‘aligned to Christian values’ was even surprising to them. They did not set out to change things or to be liked but I suspect they reached a point of no return where they were called to act and thankfully they did at a great cost to their former selves. 

I’m not ready to glorify, deify or canonize any of them. I think I disagree with much of their presuppositions about life nevertheless, I am thankful. 

Thank you Jordan Peterson for standing up to the tyrannical mob of enlightened academics who imposed on you draconian speech codes. Thanks for giving hope to many young men who have been vilified just for accepting their God-given traits of masculinity. Thanks for caring enough about the truth to suffer for your principles. Thanks for challenging all of us with these words, “When you have something to say, silence is a lie.” -Jordan B. Peterson

Thank you J.K. Rowling for saying what was true even though it felt like the whole world was raining down fire upon you. You stood firm and refused the lie that we must all ignore biology and theology and common sense when it comes to gender and for the most part you won! Thanks for the warning, "Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy."-JK Rowling.  BTW my kids all loved the Harry Potter series and no they did not become necromancers as a result, just more entertained. 

Thank you Elon Musk for giving back to the world free speech at a tremendous personal cost. Thanks for exposing the waste and fraud of our politicians and unelected bureaucrats and for drawing attention to the population implosion. Thanks for the inspiration, ‘When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.’ -Elon Musk