More than a decade ago, the late Pope Benedict XVI, sounded an alarm about the menace of accelerating secularism. His concerns were more than justified.

“We live in an age in which the signs of secularism are glaringly obvious,” he wrote. “God seems to have disappeared from the horizon of some people or to have become a reality that meets with indifference.” 

Atheistic secularism has fostered a disdain for religion and the idea of a common morality born of natural law. Morality is nothing more than a manmade construct. A common human nature is a fiction. These ideas have had terrible consequences: the societal spread of transgenderism, abortion and euthanasia. 

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“If there were no such thing as a ‘human nature,’ if human being had nothing in common, the term ‘humanity’ would mean nothing,” writes Toronto author Anthony Schratz, in the just released Paradise Cancelled: Unveiling the False Promises of a Secularist Utopia.

Schratz is a lawyer and director of Ernescliff College, a residence at the University of Toronto. He is also involved with spiritual formation using the teaching of Opus Dei. His book is a much-needed explanation of how we got where we are, and what we might do to return society to Christian values. It will be a monumental task.

Those with religious views, especially orthodox Catholics, have been banished from the public square. Even though we contribute to society through hard work, volunteerism and paying taxes, we are second-class citizens. We are tolerated if we keep our mouths shut.

Secularists insist each person has human rights and all are equal. But it’s a notion built on straw. 

“If one refuses to recognize the existence of a universal human nature, on what grounds can one defend the notion can one defend the notion of equality and human rights — rights that we possess by the mere face of being human — since the term being human would have no meaning?” Schratz writes.

We have already seen the grotesque consequences of what happens when the definition of humanity is defined by the State rather than accepted as God given and universal.

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In the early 1930s, more than three million Ukrainians were starved to death by Stalin’s atheistic regime. Communists believed lives were expendable in the service of the State. Under Hitler, Jews were considered subhuman and needed to be destroyed to keep the German population pure. Mao allowed 40 million to 80 million Chinese to die by starvation as part of a political program that considered human life meaningless. 

By contrast, Schratz writes: “The Christian tradition teaches that the natural moral law is written on the heart of each man. It consists of those principles that indicate how we should lead our lives if we want to thrive and be happy in this life and the next.” 

Paradise Cancelled is not just a good book. It’s a necessary book in this time of cancel culture.

I have felt anti-faith discrimination directly. I volunteered at a hospital palliative ward, left for health reasons, then decided last spring to return. I was told my Catholic values no longer meshed with the hospital’s. It was a blow but not a surprise.  

Much of what Schratz writes about is what he calls “expressive individualism.” On the surface, autonomy seems reasonable as it suggests we are free to map out our own destiny and do what we determine to be right. But because this expressive individualism is not anchored by a solid common morality, it means the individual thinks he is free to do whatever he deems expedient, including killing.

“No one may, under any circumstances, claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being… Expressive individualism’s belief in personal autonomy means that one has a perfect right to end one’s life whenever one wishes. And since one only possess personhood and dignity if one has autonomy and self-consciousness, a fetus is not fully a person and so cannot benefit from the right to life.”

To reinstitute a sane society based on Christian principles means each of us living out our faith without compromise. 

However, that doesn’t mean keeping our heads down, he insists. We should spread the Gospel and fight for religious freedom against those who would restrict our rightful place in society. 

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A big task but what choice do we have?

(Lewis is a Toronto writer.)