https://archbishopgomez.org/blog/reflections-on-the-church-and-americas-new-religions

Right now, confusion seems to abound as there is alot of misunderstanding being thrown about the place as concerns the themes of identity politics, intersectionality, critical race theory etc. Actually, to clear the air of confusion on this topic, all these whacky sounding terms are fairly straightforward when it comes down to their actual role in today’s vernacular. For these are merely academic terms, scholastic terminology that attempt to describe sociological trends in society and the various realities and challenges of politico-social tension in our world today. They are in reality neutral mechanisms, explanatory means, methodologies or simply tools that can be utilized to examine the nature of human behaviour whatever your religious persuasion. The Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard would tell you this any day. Even C.S. Lewis and Dorothy Day would. Frankly, it’s like with any methodological lens of analysis, you can look through it but what you end up seeing is often coloured by not only what plays out in front of you but also by your own interior judgement, the stuff within your mind and heart that helps you to understand the logic of your observations. If interiorly you lean this way or that or opt plainly for balance, this, and not the lens of analytical objectivity as such, will determine how you end up viewing that which the lens frames within your field of view. This is why it is important to see any methodological or analytical tool objectively for like a microscopic or telescopic lens, it is merely a tool to assist in our field of study. The subjectivity comes from the person using the tool, not from the tool itself. It’s a pity that Archbishop Gomez may have lost the thread of logic there, and so it is important to recognize that it is not these analytical tools that originate from and have their being with these secularist social movements as such but it is these movements themselves who are trying to monopolize in many instances these tools as weapons in bolstering their own agenda.

We people of faith should have the nouse to recognize that it’s time to take back control of such tools of educational prowess and use them to advance the Kingdom of God. For goodness’ sake, don’t let the Devil monopolize the means of knowledge dissemination for his own ends. Let’s reclaim it as rightfully belonging to us, the Children of the Light, who care about building the Civilization of Love in place of the Culture of Death. This will disenfranchize the power of the Enemy of our souls because the secular forces will no longer be able to continue to manipulate, hijack and control these educational media for their own deceitful ends.

That said, Archbishop Gomez was spot on in how he understands the climate of social action to be generally swaying away from that of the faith and spiritual life rooted in Christianity. It is, as I have gregariously pointed out in my previous post on the same subject, a problem of viral prportions in our world today which has complex roots deeply embedded in a plethora of historical contradictions.

Gomez, as I alluded to in my previous post on this same issue, has beautifully and with genuine sensitivity of heart retold succinctly the story of Christianity and with such a candour that imparts the blessing contained therein for its listeners, yes!….let those who have ears, hear.

It’s equally true that he illustrated the woefulness of today’s lost sheep who have strayed so far away from the realm of faith that the spirit of the secular age has become their god. May I reiterate, it is not actually “wokeness” as such that they are so deluded by, since “wokeness” can be used to describe the situation of being awakened in one’s consciousness to the reality of how things really are as is the case when someone awakes from the spiritual slumber of being unconverted to being converted. But rather, their situation is one of a “woefulness” that enthrongs the masses who have succumbed to the deception of the secularist myth. And as the Archbishop rightly pointed out, it is nothing more than a secularist myth that projects the fatalistic fantasy that these poor souls are ‘the ultimate creators of their own destiny’ and that their only hope comes from trusting in the limited solutions offered by a materialistic science coupled with the excessive reliance upon (aka idolatry of) self-belief. These ideologies become the master of their souls while they remain in the stupor of their spiritual slumber and because these are Godless ideologies, their souls are in a state of, as Karl Marx aptly put it, “lumpenness” or “lostness” to the corruption of the world’s system, a system that relies on the limitations of anthropocentric wisdom that the Bible rightly reproofs as folly since such ‘wisdom’ originates in the flesh, that is, the dictum of the fallen nature, the “old man” as St Paul calls it which in essence contrasts to the spirit of the New Man, the reborn spirit of one’s God-given nature, regenerated by the saving action of the Holy Spirit.

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Keywords: Scholastic Terminology, Sociological Trends, Christianity, Spiritual Life, Wokeness