And after they were departed, behold an angel of the Lord appeared in sleep to Joseph, saying: Arise, and take the child and his mother, and fly into Egypt: and be there until I shall tell thee. For it will come to pass that Herod will seek the child to destroy him. Who arose, and took the child and his mother by night, and retired into Egypt: and he was there until the death of Herod. (Matthew 2:13-14).
After reading and reflecting on the above passage last weekend, something came to me, which seems related to the current spiritual crisis. It struck me that the globalists, politicians, and others who promote the Great Free-Masonic Communist Reset, including many Church authorities, rely on the fact that those under their charge will simply abandon their consciences and their knowledge of the true God in order to comply with the supposed dictates of SCIENCE.
How does this post-Christmas scene in Holy Scripture lead to that conclusion? Notice that Joseph is required to make an immediate judgment call in the face of new information received from the angel. Notice Mary does not question Joseph’s decision, despite the uncertainty and risk this decision is going to entail. I think we can tie this back to how we are asked to make important decisions in the post-COVID world.
Faith in God vs. Faith in Science
How disturbing this must have been for Joseph to have such a dream and then to have to tell his new teen-aged, post-partum wife that it was time to pack up again (remember they hiked to Bethlehem from Nazareth because of a required government census) and immediately flee to Egypt, a foreign land. What must have been going through their minds? Should they even take such drastic action based on something Joseph heard about in a dream? How was Joseph going to support the family in Egypt? Why not just return home?
Can you imagine the ridicule and scorn such a young couple would receive from their friends and family if this happened in today’s post-COVID world? They would be told that it was a “conspiracy theory” to believe King Harod would actually seek out their child to murder him. They would be told how dangerous and risky it would be for them to travel on foot to a foreign land just because Joseph had a bad dream—how foolish and uncaring! Joseph would be criticized for being an overbearing chauvinist to insist that Mary and the newborn travel at night to a foreign land where he had little prospects for a job or way to support them.
Joseph’s reliance and trust in God to take drastic action would be scorned because it flies in the face of what the world considers rational. The world tells us to comply with social norms and avoid making decisions based on our own “morality” or faith. We are supposed to blindly accept what the culture (and the government) tells us and reject irrational superstition.
Isn’t this similar to our modern American culture today where we are told every decision must be based on expert knowledge? Those insisting that healthy citizens must wear face masks, that economic shutdowns are necessary, and that it is unquestionably necessary to inject ourselves with a barely tested vaccine to manage a virus with a 99% survival rate, simply tell us we must rely on “science”. It is SCIENCE they tell us that actually requires these actions we are asked (forced) to take—not the political calculations of those who stand to make billions off the vaccine and wield unprecedented power never before seen in American history. Nope, it is just the SCIENCE!
The Problem with “Science”—a Legal Analogy
What is curious about those who insist on relying on THE SCIENCE to determine public policy and what government orders must issue, is that someone has to ultimately decide what SCIENCE requires. If there is a test done, someone has to interpret it. Presumably, this would be a “scientist,” but then someone must choose which scientist to listen to. What happens if a different scientist conducts a different test and arrives at a different conclusion? Who then decides which scientist is correct?
Having litigated and tried numerous court cases in my career where “experts” are retained to support a litigant’s position, I can tell you that this notion that we need only “follow the SCIENCE” is woefully inadequate. Any lawyer worth his or her salt will tell you that just because someone has an expert lined up to support their case at trial, does not mean they are going to win the case before a judge or jury. Why? Because the expert does not get to make the final decision. In almost every legal case that goes to trial where experts are involved, both sides will have experts in the same field who hold opposite opinions on the same issue. It is up to the trier of fact, usually a judge or jury, to determine which expert is correct.
Think about it. There would never be a need for a legal trial if all someone had to do was hire an expert to give an opinion on what the ultimate outcome should be. In fact, we could probably avoid 90% of the trials in this nation if we just hired an expert to get an answer and went with it. How easy!
The reason, of course, this does not happen is because “experts” who presumably tell us what the SCIENCE indicates are not in the position to resolve the ultimate questions in dispute, which require analysis, judgment and application of principles outside their expertise to the circumstances. It makes sense to listen to and consider what an expert may think, but we do not let the expert make the final decision. The role of the expert is to aid the trier of fact, not to substitute himself as the judge.
As a civil attorney who has cross-examined and taken the depositions of many qualified experts in a particular field, I know how flimsy and unsupported these expert opinions can be. It is quite frustrating to listen to politicians and even commentators throw the term SCIENCE around to support whatever governmental action they think should be imposed, as people’s lives and national economies are destroyed in the process. And then to watch the American public eat it up as if what the expert says— like Dr. Fauci—is the Gospel. Maddening!
The Heresy of Scientism
What we are witnessing being played out is the heresy of scientism, a dogma of the atheist/communist political left, that is taking over public policy and literally controlling our everyday lives. Even many political conservatives have abandoned reason and logic, to use “science” to support their own pet projects or arguments.
But, we must be clear about what scientism is, and what it is not. Scientism is not “science” per se, it is an “abuse of the scientific method and of scientific authority,” as Brother Francis Maluf expressed it in 1946. It essentially claims that science can explain all of reality, and that all knowledge can only be gained using the scientific method.
As I showed above, when referring to typical court litigation, expert opinions and truth are not necessarily the same thing. They can be, but they do not have to be. Yet, this notion that we can only know the truth through SCIENCE is an obvious logical falsity because it is self-refuting. The scientific method does not tell us that we can only know truth through the scientific method, therefore, the proposition itself must be false. In other words, no one has ever conducted a scientific experiment that shows the scientific method is the only means to acquire knowledge of reality.
Not only is scientism a false and illogical idea designed to obfuscate rational thinking and the proper exercise of judgment, but it is also a heresy. It is a false, quasi-religious teaching that has creeped its way into Christian thought, even Catholic thought. It is a subset of the arch-heresy of Modernism.
Scientism Infected the Church
Sadly, Catholics are now faced with bishops and priests who have sacrificed their authority and duty to shepherd their flocks at the altar of SCIENCE. For example, Catholic laity are told it is acceptable to ignore proper reverence for the Lord by handling Him with unconsecrated hands when receiving communion. We see hundreds of bishops abuse their authority when abrogating the Third Commandment requirement to attend Mass on Sundays in the name of SCIENCE. We see bishops and priests require healthy Catholics to socially distance from each other and wear a filthy face mask, a practice which was always designed to dehumanize the population and mark allegiance to the false religion of the Communists.
A common retort from liberal and even conservative Catholics is that God would never require us to abandon reason. They argue that faith and science work together, and we must exercise prudence when navigating difficult questions that require some scientific knowledge.
Indeed, this is very true! Except that is not what is happening when a great number of Americans choose to abandon their family members to lonely deaths in hospices, violate the Third Commandment requirement to worship God, abuse the sacraments (if they receive them at all) and stand by while their fellow citizens are rendered unable to financially support their families in the name of SCIENCE.
What these so-called pastors are telling us to do is to put our faith and trust in SCIENCE and the government’s hand-picked expert prophets who are charged with telling us what the SCIENCE actually says. The government, with approval of our own religious leaders, are telling us to abandon our consciences and put our full faith and trust in the “experts”. We are told to forget everything the Church has taught about the necessity of sacraments for eternal salvation and just listen to the secular authorities instead. This implies that SCIENCE and its experts are the sole, infallible source of truth; failing to listen and follow their commands constitutes disobedience and is uncharitable. The problem is that this notion is heretical because it rejects the Truth of Christ’s sovereign authority—it is a false lie from Satan himself.
One more point needs to be made about this cult of scientism that is being used to guilt the American public into abandoning common sense and avoid seeking the truth. It also serves as a wall of fear and effeminacy that politicians and church leaders hide behind in order to avoid making difficult decisions.
If your governor or pastor is telling you that they have no choice but to force you to stay home and away from worshiping God or participating in society because of SCIENCE, they have abandoned their God given duties and rejected you as human being worthy of dignity and respect. They claim it is out of their hands—but it is not. They are lying to you. Your elected politicians and your pastors have a duty to consider the facts before them, just as judge or jury would do, and apply their own judgment under the circumstances—not surrender you to the wolves and then blame someone else. They will be held accountable to God for this.
Standing for Truth
Circling back to Holy Scripture, it seems to me that St. Joseph exercised his fatherly duties and made the difficult choice to pack up and move to an entirely foreign land, accepting huge amounts of risk, in order to defend and protect the Blessed Mother and the Christ Child.
A real man or woman of virtue, someone who accepts their duties and vocations in life, regardless of whether they made a conscious decision to accept such duties, or found themselves in the situation due to circumstances beyond their control, will never pass the buck off to a government official or “expert” to make important life decisions for them or their family. Saint Joseph certainly did not cower in fear and sidestep his duty to make the difficult decision of leaving his homeland to protect his new wife and newborn. As it turns out, he made the right decision to listen to an angel in his dream rather than trust in Herod and take the easy way out.
If only our own government and faith leaders would be so bold as to listen to God for a change when making decisions that will impact the lives of millions of people and their eternal salvation. It is not too much to ask of our public officials or our pastors. And do not be shy to call them out on their failures to do so either. It might just help them save their own souls.
For additional background and commentary on scientism and the abandonment of common sense, check out the 1946 Brother Francis Maluf article referred to above in this post.