What does Martin Luther have to do with Bud Light? They both play a cultural role in the current American conservative chaos that we are all witnessing.
These past few weeks have been amazing. Many American conservatives are falling like dominoes to the “woke” cultural agenda. It’s quite astonishing when you think about how far someone is willing to go to destroy their own life work, their own careers, and those of their families in order to perpetuate a lie. But then again, that was what the Covid-scam was all about too.
Here are some of the main stories that have all come out in the past month that should embarrass so-called conservatives, who love baseball, beer, Republicans, Christian-based businesses and Catholics that watch modernist/protestant-based Jesus movies:
We have seen Bud Light sales tank for at least six weeks after someone thought it would be a good idea to use a transexual influencer to sell beer to Americans, who happen to like cheap lagers.
The LA Dodgers, after initially disinviting a group of vile drag queens posing as fake nuns for “Pride” night, backtracked easily under pressure and offered an apology and noted what great public service these “The Sisters of the Perpetual Indulgence” provide the community.
Ted Cruz joined Joe Biden in condemning the recently passed Ugandan law outlawing homosexuality and imposing severe punishments. This should not be entirely surprising, however, because Cruz has a history of claiming the government should not care about what happens in people’s bedrooms.
Chick-fil-A is also coming under fire, and potential boycott, after it was learned the company hired an equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) corporate officer.
Quite recently, even The Chosen, the Christian-based television series depicting the life of Jesus, has been called out after pride flags were discovered on the set. As it turns out, there are several “LBGTQ” crew members and actors, some of whom have now come out on Twitter to defend the “pride” agenda.
These are just some examples within the last few weeks of a conservative melt-down in the face of cultural rot.
Notice the common theme in each of the stories above. Each company or individual involved represents a certain aspect of “conservative” American culture. Sure, we expect woke companies like Target and politicians like Nancy Pelosi to cater to this agenda, but now can anyone trust conservative influencers that seemingly survive off of selling ideas and products to conservatives in America?
We did not reach this point overnight. In fact, this has been a longtime in the making and should come as no surprise to any faithful Catholic. At its core, the rejection of Christ’s Kingship in public affairs has been a long time coming. It begins with rejecting the Church and ends in inevitable cultural collapse.
Follow this progression with me below:
The Protestant Revolt Against the Church
This all began with Martin Luther’s sixteenth century Protestant revolt. Luther, and subsequent Protestant leaders, especially John Calvin, rejected the idea that man is anything other than a hopelessly fallen creature and God is simply helpless to fix this state of wretchedness, even with sacramental graces such as that conferred at Baptism or reception of Holy Eucharist at the Mass. All we can really hope for is that through faith alone, God will ignore and cover up our fallen human nature.
To the extent that Christ redeemed humanity through His work on the Cross, nothing about that could possibly affect our own individual fallen human nature, let alone, our collective depravity as we strive to live together in society. Christ’s work on the Cross, then, is not relevant to our actions in society.
At best, according to Protestant revolutionaries, the redemption Christ offered us is simply ours for the taking if we make our own internal act of faith—but nothing more. For the Protestant, it’s just “me and God,” and that’s it. Our works in society have no meaning and provide no merit in the eyes of God.
This attitude naturally leads one who accepts the Protestant premise of total depravity to focus their lives on achieving financial success and worldly happiness without concern for eternal things because nothing we do in this life ultimately matters to God anyway. Afterall, according to the Protestant, our eternal salvation is guaranteed so long as we proclaim Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior in our hearts.
For the Protestant, a person’s relationship with God is an individual one, a private one, that is separate and distinct from any good work the person could perform in the world. To the extent God may speak to us through His Word, the Protestant becomes empowered to interpret that Word as he sees fit. Thus, a barrier between the natural and supernatural world exists which cannot ultimately be overcome.
The Enlightenment and Secularism
It is not a large step to take from the Protestant acceptance of this individualistic “faith alone” doctrine to the materially based enlightenment philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
When faith is internalized and divorced from concrete structures in society, such as the Church or civil government, then faith becomes more and more a matter of subjective personal opinion, or internal personal feelings, about who God is and what He wants.
This necessarily has consequences for political and cultural life as well. Notions of duties to others, obligations to support the common good of society, and obedience to the Church’s magisterial authority, begin to disappear.
Natural law, once properly understood by St. Thomas Aquinas, as unified with God’s Eternal Law, now becomes a force in and of itself—unmoored from God’s Eternal Law. No longer is man obliged to conform his actions in society to a certain set of laws imprinted on his heart as St. Paul tells us (Romans 2:15)—now he is endowed with natural “rights” that others must respect if society is to flourish. We no longer have duties to others, but rights that others must respect. These rights can be known through pure reason alone without the aid of divine revelation or the Church. They are simply self-evident.
Liberty and Liberalism
Once we establish human reason, free from the aid of Church doctrine, as the sole criteria by which we direct our choices in life, it becomes possible to break free of anything or anyone that restrains our ability to achieve material wealth and satisfy our passions.
To the extent we still need a government to protect each other from the unbridled passions of those who may cause harm to others, a new type of political order is needed. This new order will be distinct and independent from the Church and her influence because we need only rely on human reason to guide us. This political order is called liberalism because it is based on the notion of human liberty—freedom to act without restraint.
Restrain from what? Restraint from overbearing monarchs and clerical authorities who dare impose duties and obligations on the sovereign individual. The ultimate monarch and clerical authority, of course, is the Roman Pontiff. Not only does the liberal not need a Pope or Church—the Pope and Church become enemies of the liberals.
What type of government can be constructed in accordance with the natural liberty of man, which will guarantee freedom from monarchical and clerical tyranny? In the United States, borrowing from several enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke, the Declaration of Independence called for a government among men to secure rights which are not just limited to liberty, but to life and the pursuit of happiness. Happiness—temporal happiness—being the ultimate point of life in a material world. Nothing of course about government, in the American mind, should help us achieve happiness in the next world.
According to the liberal, because the antiquated notion of Christ’s Church with authority and influence in public affairs was long ago dispensed with, government could only derive it’s just power from “The People”—not from Christ or His vicar on earth. Maybe Christ is still up there in Heaven waiting to welcome us if we have faith, but He no longer has a place in public affairs.
From The Declaration to Bud Light
How do we get from Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence to the acceptance and active promotion of sexual perversion in modern corporate America? The leap may not be as far as you think.
A nation built on the notion of liberty, equality and freedom from restraint, must necessarily reject the influence of the Church and her teaching authority—at least with respect to issues dealing with civil affairs.
But this reasoning necessarily means other types of indirect restraint that even American revolutionaries respected, such as public modesty or public manners, can be dispensed with. There is no limit to what subjective liberty may bring.
The only restraint upon the individual within this worldview is his own personal conscience and virtue. But remember, we already established that this personal conscience is informed only by a one-on-one relationship with God. The same goes for virtue. What is virtuous to one man, may not be virtuous to another, and who has the right to impose another man’s notion of virtue? And if one does not believe in God or virtue, then there would seem to be no restraint left at all.
The only other possible restraint left on our personal actions and ideas is to claim that one cannot “harm” another individual out of respect for their liberty. The guiding principle being liberty—not the common good of society. The problem with this should be obvious. Who gets to decide what “harm” is?
At the end of the day, the only one that gets to decide what “harm” constitutes is the one who holds political or cultural power—those who can forcefully impose their own definition of harm on others.
And now, we get back to Bud Light because if I accept all of the above principles that grew out of the Protestant revolt 500 years ago, then who are American conservatives to complain when others simply conform to the expected, but perverse, cultural norms of the day? If I say, I accept liberty—freedom from restraint to act—as an ideal or goal in itself, I have no right to judge those who engage in activities I do not like unless I can prove harm was done directly to me.
Sure, I am free to boycott them economically, but I have no fundamental principle upon which to stand other than I am trying to force my enemy into submission with a boycott. Liberty, as an ideal or principle in itself, is a dead end.
Consequences of Rejecting Christ the King
The consequences of the above progression, beginning with the Protestant revolt to the present day, should be obvious.
A nation focused on, and founded on, the notion of liberty instead of Jesus Christ is doomed to fail and collapse. A society cannot be built on sand—there must be a rock.
The rock, of course, is Truth. The Truth of Jesus Christ and His Church established at Pentecost two thousand years ago. For a while this Church built up Western Christendom, but we are now trying to pick up the pieces from its ruins.
American conservatives and protestant Christians, often without knowing it, have contributed to the downfall of this nation by closing their eyes to the moral depravity gripping the nation in the name of “liberty” and refocusing solely on financial prosperity.
Quite frankly, the Modernists in the Church are no better. Indeed, it was the Second Vatican Council that adopted the Americanist heresy and ironically forced the “liberty” agenda upon the Church—contrary to her traditional teachings.
And now traditional Catholics are pretty much left alone to clean up the mess. That won’t happen without supernatural aid and grace. We know that powerful graces come from the Traditional Latin Mass and praying the Rosary.
But we also need to explain these realities to our conservative, novus ordo and evangelical friends who will not hear this message anywhere else. Together we can not only grow the authentic Catholic Church but restore Western Christendom.
Sources and additional information:
Libertas, Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, 1888.
Quas Primas, Encyclical of Pope Pius XI, 1925.
Dr. John Rao, Calvinism and Americanism (Youtube)
Lefebvre, Marcel. They Have Uncrowned Him: From Liberalism to Apostasy, the Conciliar Tragedy, 1988.
My video companion to this article: Why Catholics Should Care What Happens in the Bedroom.