You Can't Beat Progress

"This isn’t the middle ages anymore", a gentleman told me in a recent discussion that we had over the virtues and need for faith. "We’ve come so far......especially in the last century.....that it isn’t necessary to believe in fairy tales anymore. God isn’t dead, He just never existed, we’ve progressed". I realize that this mindset and viewpoint is becoming increasingly popular these days. Recent developments in our court system, and the popular culture that pushed them, seem to underline that the Church (particularly the Catholic Church) has to ‘get with the times’. You Catholics ‘aren’t perfect’. They point out the many sins, some very grievous, performed by individuals with positions of authority within the Church. They point to the many flaws that individual parishioners have. Just look how far we’ve come, the wonderful things we’ve developed in just the last century. Penicillin and other wonderful drugs; a sewer system that has wiped out major communicable diseases that plagued mankind throughout the centuries; incredible transportation methods; incredible communication methods; everything from computers, to ‘smart phones’, to a sophisticated economic system, to a wonderful standard of living for most folks where diseases like cholera, polio, and others are virtually unknown. We’ve done all of this by man’s own power.....his own cerebral ‘evolvement’. Yes, look at just how we’ve progressed.....amazingly...in the things we all use every day. ‘This isn’t the middle ages anymore’. We don’t need to rely on myths. We’ve got it. We’re so smart.

Yes, look around at those around you. See the anxiety in their eyes.....realize that this world is made up of individuals.....and one can see the ‘spark’ of God in their eyes. Each day they get up and join the world....each fighting their own battles, each struggling with their own faith. Each struggling with illness’, financial worry, and kids with colds. Each one lives his/her own life. They make choices. And, each day in the paper one sees in the obituary folks that have moved on. These are individual battles and choices, each individual person must fight.

Ahhh, yes, the progress in the last century. Amazing. Just look at it. We’ve come so far. All is good.

Progress like the Armenian Genocide in Turkey (1915-1920, 2 million). World War I 1915-1918 (9 million). Josef Stalin starving millions in Georgia and the Ukraine (1932-1933, 8-10 million). World War II (1939-1945, 50 millon). The Holocaust (1940-1945, 11 million). War II. The Cambodian genocide of Pol Pot after our withdrawal from VietNam (1975-1979, 2 million). The genocide in Rwanda (1994, 800,000) . The Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans (1992-1995, 100,000). The Sudan/Darfur (2003-present, 480,000). The current beheading and massive genocide being performed in the Middle East that we don’t even have a number yet, but it will be staggering. Those are flesh and blood folks with the struggles we all have, folks. Under other circumstances, it could be you and me.

Yes, we’ve come so far. We’ve "progressed". We shouldn’t believe in ‘Fairy Tales’. We’ve got everything under control.

I would highly recommend that you remember these points, and think about this ‘progress’ at Mass this Sunday. And, then, say another decade of your Rosary. Pray for more faith, and less ‘progress’.