The Call to Arms

In the year 1095, Pope Urban the II called for a Crusade in response to the threats that the Church faced in his age. Hundreds of thousands of faithful headed his call and joined the ranks of the militia Christi.

Today, the Church is faced with far more existential threats to its Message. There are foes on every side, from relativism to drug abuse. This is a world consumed with war. Do you see it? The culture of death is striving to overthrow the Truth of Christ.

This is not a battle fought with conventional weapons over lines in the sand. This is a war for souls. The Enemy's goal is to turn aside and deceive every last soul in Creation. Satan does so with the false wages of sin. His ammunition is the snares of temptation and vice. Since the beginning of his existence, man has been in the midst of a battle for the preservation of his soul. He fights against temptation every second of every day of his life.

Throughout history, this war has raged on. There have been sinners and there have been saints. There have been heroes and there have been monsters. Every man has to wrestle with pride, with lust, with anger. The Israelites faced the same challenges as the Jesuits. In a sense, it is the same today. Certainly, the world appears to be a different place than it was centuries before. But at the core, in his soul, man is still the same.

While our fight is the same, the conditions have changed. The culture of death has replaced a culture of life. The field of battle is no longer in our favor. In the Middle Ages, we still sinned the same sins as we do today. The only difference is that in the Middle Ages, we knew that we were indeed sinning. The culture of death has perverted the concept of morals through the hands of men like Nietzsche and Freud to the point that there is no right and wrong, only what the individual deems best.

The culture of death's cunning goes beyond shifting philosophies. It has penetrated global culture. Relativism and sin have crept beyond the halls of intellectuals into households. This began in the 1960's with the counter culture movement. Drug abuse and sexual permissiveness went beyond being problems, they became normalized, accepted behavior.

Today social media, politicians, scientists, YouTube stars, celebrities, and athletes are all contributing to the moral decay of our world. One needs only to watch the news or look through Twitter to see the effects of this. What people say no longer needs to be meaningful or true, it only needs to be entertaining.

How does the Church of God respond to this cultural crisis? The culture of death is stealing away souls who have been conditioned to feel no remorse if what they are doing "feels" right. We need to teach the world the difference between what is really right and wrong. We need to bring the light of the Gospel into a world that has been overwhelmed with darkness.

That is the purpose of this blog. The Crusade for Truth is a place for Catholic soldiers to gather. It is a base of operations of sorts in this our spiritual warfare. Here we can gather strength and inspiration, learn and share tactics, and encourage each other.

Deus Volt!