While everyone seems to enjoy commiserating on how bad this year was, it certainly was an eye-opening experience for others. For me, I learned more in the last twelve months about human nature and the state of the world we live in than in the previous forty plus years of my life. It became clear that the real plague that surfaced was the fear of death in 2020. Death is a topic most of our friends and family avoid thinking or talking about. That is, until 2020, when the entire world was given a permission slip to allow this previously hidden fear to rise to the surface and take control of our minds, lives and society.
Consequences of Fear in 2020
It appears many of our fellow Americans carry in their hearts and minds a significant fear of death and physical suffering to such a degree that it has become disordered and dangerous. I say it is disordered because as a nation in 2020 we were willing to accept unprecedented amounts of economic destruction and intrusion into our personal lives to avoid the threat of a virus with a statistically high survival rate, many estimate up to 99%.
To understand the power this fear holds over people, think about what you have personally observed over the past year:
- We have seen various sectors of American business arbitrarily targeted for shut down and destroyed with impunity, while others have been allowed to stay open at the will of state officials.
- We saw parents willingly remove their children from school and keep them isolated from their friends for almost a year now.
- Student activities, graduations and ability for young people to gather was shut down.
- Christians, Jews and other religious leaders shut down worship services and Masses to comply with government mandates, but often voluntarily as well.
- Despite very little news coverage, we witnessed huge increases in depression, drug use and suicides.
- The elderly were abandoned in their nursing homes and some left to die alone without support from their family.
- Professional sports seasons, movies, concerts and other forms of entertainment and charitable events were suspended or cancelled indefinitely.
- Families abandoned each other over the holidays and spent Thanksgiving and Christmas alone, as decade-long family traditions were ended.
- Billions of dollars in government handouts and payments were made in connection with alleviating the economic destruction that fear of the virus caused.
- And now, Americans are jumping over themselves to get in line to inject their bodies with an mRNA vaccine that has barely been tested on any animal, let alone other human beings, except of course the cells derived from aborted babies.
What especially stood out to me was the willingness of mega-corporation officers to destroy their own companies, fire employees, insult and then ignore needs of customers, while cowardly passing the buck off onto the government or just blame “the virus” as cover for doing so. On a wide scale, there was essentially no effort to actually question the approved virus narrative—they simply were willing to destroy what they were in charge of protecting and defending. Of course, other corporations, think Big Pharma, were encouraged to capitalize on the destruction and profit off of it. It seems to me that a complete and striking fear of government repercussions and media doxing drove the actions of corporate leaders.
Sadly, we received a similar response from faith leaders. Almost all of the American Catholic bishops at some point shut down and then delayed sacraments, prohibited Mass attendance and/or promoted Catholics injecting themselves with an untested vaccine developed using a line of aborted baby cells, all while turning themselves into knots trying to morally justify such actions. Their willingness to play roulette with the souls and faith life of so many Catholics was shocking, eye-opening and disturbing.
Despite all of this chaos, destruction, depression and death—much more caused by the reaction to the virus than the virus itself—the public accepted all of it because they were told it was necessary to avoid wide-scale death that the virus could potentially cause. The American public simply suspended all rational inquiry and accepted whatever information was being fed to them as Gospel. There was more public outrage, shame and even arrests over citizens failing to wear filthy face mask coverings, then there was over the wreckage our society and culture endured because of the reaction to this virus.
The Nature of Fear
Given the events of this past year, the question I pondered is what would make normally rational, well-educated American citizens go along with such insanity in the first place? Answer: a disordered fear of death and physical suffering.
Understanding the nature of fear is important. Fear itself can be good or bad. Every person has a natural inclination to preserve life, both their own and those of their loved ones. That’s a primary precept of the natural law and is a good inclination. The problem is when this otherwise normal and healthy desire to preserve life becomes a disordered fear of death to such a degree that we lose our ability to reason and act contrary to our nature as human beings—sometimes to the level of grave sin.
Father Chad Ripperger recently gave a talk where he explained that fear is “perception of future evil which cannot be overcome.” Excessive fear can lead to the sorrow, anger, and general anxiety we see manifesting itself in our culture today. The key to understanding fear is that it is ultimately based on an attachment to something other than God.
For many Americans, there is a strong attachment to their own lives and comfortable living. Not a reasonably healthy desire to preserve life necessarily, but a strong need to avoid death at all costs. When I say “all costs,” I mean that literally. At the end of the day, when someone is so attached to their own physical existence and comfort, the needs and well-being of others simply evaporate. This narcissism comes to the surface when the narcissist perceives (whether or not that is true in reality) a threat. And that is what we witnessed coming to light in 2020.
To make matters worse, and to justify the obvious selfishness and narcissism that goes along with being willing to destroy millions of other people’s lives to avoid the extraordinarily low chance of becoming sick and dying from the coronavirus, the average American (and sadly many of their pastors) tell themselves and others that overreacting and taking such unreasonable precautions is actually the charitable thing to do!
The problem, of course, with this warped rationalization is that authentic charity must always be grounded in Truth. It is never charitable to lie to someone in order to make them feel better. That is sinful. It is never charitable to steal from Peter to relieve Paul’s financial suffering. That too is a sin. And it is not charitable to let Grandma die alone in a hospice to avoid the risk that a staff member may contract the coronavirus if you happen to walk into the same room.
And of course, there is no shortage of pastors and Catholic apologists out there willing to make excuses for their financial donors seeking confirmation in their disordered fears who want to be told that it is okay to let Grandma die alone in the hospice, to skip Mass as long as they want to, or to inject your body with a vaccine that was tested on aborted baby cells. The fear justifies all of it—you see.
Faith and Hope as the Antidote to Fear
Father Ripperger says to combat fear it is necessary to remove the images that lead to our emotions. It means stop thinking about whatever is causing the fear and stop listening and watching to reports that continue to inject (no pun intended) these negative images into our heads. Being able to step away from the situation and assessing the situation objectively, is the first step in overcoming fear. But, he also says that it requires working on the virtue hope.
The virtue of hope is an important one because it requires us to put trust in God. The problem with that in modern American culture is that most Americans have no faith in God whatsoever, and therefore cannot develop the theological virtue of hope either. Even if some claim to have faith, it often takes the form of pie-in-the-sky, God is “my daddy” who loves me no matter what I do in my life, type vision of God that the Modernist antichurch and new-agism has fostered over the past fifty years.
This surface level faith does nothing—in fact, it just contributes to the ongoing emotional manipulation the secular humanists employ to brainwash innocent people into buying into their political agenda. This is why it is so common to see Modernist Catholics (think Jesuits) also subscribe to purported secular humanitarian social justice efforts that really are nothing more than a sanitized form of Communism justified under the guise of liberation theology. But I digress.
So, here we are back at square one, where in order to combat the fear of death, we must evangelize and convert hearts and souls back to God and Christ’s Church. Leading our friends and family back to an authentic Christian faith will do wonders in combating this plague—not of the virus, but the fear of death.
Faith and hope in God will help us maintain a proper sense of charity, but also help to put the reality of death and suffering into proper perspective. If you think that the only thing in life that matters is maximizing your personal pleasure and avoiding death at all costs, your life will lack a sense of meaning. This mentality turns a person into an animal like creature operating on the level of instinct. Experiencing suffering and death like an animal strips a person of charity for others and love for God. Life becomes pointless beyond simply surviving if there is no understanding of the supernatural or the possibility of eternal life.
On the other hand, faith in a reality that exists above the human level, i.e. the supernatural, drives a person to live with a purpose of attaining eternal life with God. Yes, what we do in this earthly life, and why we do it, matters. This even includes suffering and how we approach death.
Christ, through His passion, death and resurrection not only redeemed us from our sins and conquered death for all of humanity, He also demonstrated how suffering and death can serve a purpose. He did so by willingly taking on the most excruciating and horrible suffering possible in satisfaction of what perfect justice requires when humanity committed sin against the perfect, infinite God. Christ also conquered death by His resurrection on Easter Sunday; not only proving His divinity and power, but giving us hope of eternal life.
We should be able to take comfort in knowing that whatever evils or suffering may come our way in this earthly life, including the threat of a virus, with God’s grace we can overcome such obstacles knowing that something much better is to come. And yes, this may entail some suffering if God allows it, but even then, He is preparing us for eternal life with Him, and giving us the discipline we need to become more holy before we face our final judgment at the time of death.
Looking Ahead to 2021
I previously wrote about how Americans willingly took up face mask wearing in public not simply out of fear of death, but also in order to demonstrate compliance with the COVID-19 religion, which is nothing more than the false religion of scientism or materialism. The solution I proposed there, is the one I do now: Bring friends, family and acquaintances back to Christ and His Church, the true Church of traditional Catholicism. The most important reason, of course, is for the salvation of souls, but also to offer an alternative way of dealing with the reality of death and suffering.
2021 A.D. offers a special opportunity for evangelization, conversions, and rebuilding Christendom. Sitting back and watching the American republic crumble around us as those driving the Great Reset seek to take over the world is not an option for a faithful Christian or anyone who desires the freedom to live a good life. Unlike those who sat back and did nothing, paralyzed with fear, while the world’s elites and experts rushed in to protect us from a “deadly” virus, we must take up the sword of courage and begin rebuilding a new civilization on our own terms.