There is something to be said for Holland’s view, though, in the opinion of the present writer, it represents an over-simplification. Nonetheless, if the origins of radical progressivism are not to be found entirely within Christianity, it is undoubtedly true that the victory of progressivism, or wokeism, or whatever we want to call it, which we now see playing itself out throughout the West in all its ugliness, was undoubtedly made possible through the cooperation of the mainstream Christian churches, and most especially of the Catholic Church. They may not have been the originators of progressivism, but they certainly became its facilitators.

Before looking at that, however, I want to say something about the origins of progressivism as a political philosophy.

The Masons, beginning apparently in the late seventeenth century, preached a completely novel gospel, one which blended and confused the salvation of the individual Christian with the progress of humanity as a whole and the eventual creation of a paradise here on Earth, through the mastery of nature.

Progressivism, or radical socialism, might well be described as a modern variant of an ancient myth; that of utopia, or the perfect society. Most religions and mythic systems described such a world at the dawn of time. Ancient philosophers, both of the West and of the East, revisited the idea, often describing what, in their opinion, would be the ideal state.^[2] None of these, however, seriously imagined that any political system, no matter how well organized, could produce a paradise on Earth. That was an idea that had to await the coming of the Age of Science. Around the sixteenth century a new optimism about the possibilities of human advancement took hold in Europe. “Science”, previously a word which just meant “knowledge”, now began to assume something approaching its modern meaning: i.e. that of a system of investigating nature with a view to mastering her and thereby improving life.^[3] By the seventeenth century another old word, “progress”, began to change its meaning. Previously understood as movement towards the achievement of a particular goal, “progress” now began to assume something like its modern usage; i.e. the movement of civilization as a whole towards an ever-better and more perfect model. Seduced, perhaps, by the results already delivered by the scientific method, Enlightenment authors began to imagine a world in which poverty, disease, and maybe even death itself, could be overcome by Science.

Such ideas very naturally had their impact in the political field, and it is no coincidence that the activists who launched the French Revolution were inspired and animated by the writings of Enlightenment authors. But though the French Revolution is rightly held to mark the birth of modern progressivism, it never went the whole way into an entirely anti-religious political philosophy. True, there was a strong anti-Christian undercurrent to the pronouncements of several of the revolutionaries, yet these remained a small minority, and the victory of a purely materialist vision was something that had to wait till the middle of the nineteenth century, with the writings of Proudhon and Marx.

The Christian churches were not, of course, idle observers to the social revolutions sweeping Europe and North America from the late eighteenth century onward. From the beginning, Christians were involved on both sides. It is an undeniable fact, as Tom Holland pointed out, that concepts such as “human rights” as described in Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man, were theologically (rather than scientifically) based, and very clearly founded upon Christian ethical concepts. And, although he denied that he was a moralist or idealist, there is no doubt that Marx’s popularity owed much to notions of justice that were implicit in Christianity. Christians, including clergymen, were prominent in the revolutions that shook America and France in the late eighteenth century, and which continually shook Europe throughout the nineteenth century. This continued even after the revolutionary movements had become, on the whole, explicitly anti-Christian and anti-religious. How is this to be explained?

The Masonic ideal, of a blending of science with religion, became more and more popular in the seminaries. A “Modernist” theology, which could have been written by any Masonic Grand Master, began to insinuate itself into the highest posts in the Catholic as well as the mainstream Protestant churches.

There can be no doubt that the poverty and hardship caused by the Industrial Revolution had a profound impact upon the thinking of many Christians. Indeed, the great majority of movements advocating for the urban and rural poor during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were explicitly Christian. The temptation, in face of the overwhelming misery of the poor, to make common cause with the anti-Christian revolutionaries, was very strong; and many Christians succumbed to it. This continued even after the revolutionaries had proved themselves to be extremely dangerous allies. It was Christian allies such as these that Lenin termed “useful idiots”.

Alongside those Christians who worked with the progressivists to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, there existed another group – generally of a more educated variety – which had partly or wholly bought into the materialist concept of Progress and had welded it, in a most seductive way, with the Christian concept of individual spiritual progress. The two things were of course completely different, but bringing them together flattered the vanity of certain intellectuals who, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, spent a huge amount of time examining the material universe purportedly for the benefit of humanity. The Progress of Science therefore became, as it were, a religious and sacred pursuit.^[4] For a long time, the mainstream Christian churches resisted this impulse and, holding onto the spiritual and supernatural purpose of the Christian faith, refused to see scientific enquiry as a sacred or even an especially moral pursuit. This was not the case, however, with certain secret or semi-secret societies, which came to be categorized under the general title of Masons. These latter, beginning apparently in the late seventeenth century, preached a completely novel gospel, one which blended and confused the salvation of the individual Christian with the progress of humanity as a whole and the eventual creation of a paradise here on Earth, through the mastery of nature.

The sheer seductive power of this idea, coupled with the undeniably spectacular results delivered by the scientific method during the nineteenth century, meant that, by the end of that century, the supernatural dimension to Christianity, and religion in general, was increasingly sidelined, with secular humanism becoming in effect the only real religion of the West. After Darwin, even life was “explained” as a chemical accident, and “philosophers” now appeared who openly mocked the very concept of a supernatural dimension to life. The churches too, and their clergymen, were affected. The Masonic ideal, of a blending of science with religion, became more and more popular in the seminaries. A “Modernist” theology, which could have been written by any Masonic Grand Master, began to insinuate itself into the highest posts in the Catholic as well as the mainstream Protestant churches. It was just at this point that a series of popes, beginning with Pius IX, began a purge of this movement within Catholicism. The “Syllabus of Errors” (1864) clearly identified Modernism and the myth of Progress as a mortal threat to the church and to Christian civilization as a whole. This was followed, in 1907, by the papal document “Pascendi”, in which Pope Pius X outlined a program for the elimination of Modernism in the Catholic seminaries and amongst the hierarchy.

The details of what transpired at Vatican II are not the subject of this paper. Suffice to say that the Church which emerged, following publication of the final document in 1965, was a radically different institution. Vatican II unleashed a revolution, a veritable second Reformation, which swept away centuries of Catholic tradition. Not one area of Catholic life escaped.

Such efforts were successful to a point. However, in retrospect it is clear that they merely slowed the advance of this world-view which, in the West, was becoming almost unstoppable. For less than sixty years after the publication of “Pascendi” the Modernists were back, though now they had one of their own in the Chair of Peter.

The accession of Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (John XXIII) to the papacy in October 1958 marked an epoch-making change; one however that would not become apparent until after his death. Shortly after his accession, the new Pope announced his intention to call a Vatican Council, a continuation, it was suggested, of the first such Council, Vatican I, which had been called in 1868 by Pius IX specifically to address the challenges posed by the modern age – and by the issues alluded to above; namely the challenges of rationalism, progressivism and materialism. But the new occupant of the papal throne was a very different man to his nineteenth century predecessor. Whilst Pius IX had rightly viewed the spirit of the modern age as inherently hostile to religion, John XXIII was a devotee of that spirit, an allegiance he demonstrated almost from the beginning of his pontificate. There is strong evidence that Roncalli was a Mason, a suspicion supported by the fact that he immediately began to appoint liberals to positions of authority throughout the church, most especially packing the College of Cardinals with such men. And this tendency displayed itself in the way he directed the Council, as soon as it convened in October 1962. Many of the delegates, under the naïve impression that the Council was intended to battle the tendencies of the modern age, were soon disabused of this idea, as Roncalli pushed his own radical agenda. His death in 1963 failed to stop the process, as the next occupant of the papal throne, Paul VI, was one of his proteges, and an even more radical figure.^[5]

The details of what transpired at Vatican II are not the subject of this paper. Suffice to say that the Church which emerged, following publication of the final document in 1965, was a radically different institution. Vatican II unleashed a revolution, a veritable second Reformation, which swept away centuries of Catholic tradition. Not one area of Catholic life escaped. Not even church buildings were sacrosanct, as old and venerable structures were ripped apart. Ancient altars of marble and teak, some of incredible beauty, were torn down and replaced by minimalist modern monstrosities, whose ugliness echoed the “brutalist” utilitarian architecture of concrete and steel which began to disfigure the cities and towns of Europe in the aftermath of World War II. And the rituals of Catholic worship were vandalised as much as the buildings. Gregorian chant was replaced by modern “hymns” of mind-numbing mediocrity and banality. Guitars, tambourines, and even sets of drums, appeared on the altars, which themselves now began to assume the appearance and atmosphere of stages rather than places of worship.

But if the damage done to Catholic art and ritual was bad, that done to Catholic teaching was catastrophic. All mention of moral accountability, including reference to Hell and Purgatory, was dropped. The talk was all of “love” and “mercy”. Congregations were encouraged to “love themselves” – in direct contradiction of all earlier Christian teaching. Guidance on sexual morality was quietly abandoned, and Christ’s teachings on such issues became as it were a taboo subject.

Not one of the post-Vatican II popes made any real attempt to call a halt to the revolution. On the contrary, all of them, even the allegedly “conservative” Benedict XVI, did little more than manage the decline. However, if by early 2013 the Catholic faithful thought things couldn't get any worse, they were in for an unpleasant surprise.

Before moving on, it has to be emphasized that, until the Vatican II revolution, the Catholic Church acted as a bulwark against the progressivist movement. From 1934 onwards the Catholic-founded Legion of Decency exercised an effective control over the output of Hollywood and the media in general. Attempts to introduce explicit sexual material into the mainstream during the 1930s, 40s and 50s, were met with the threat of Catholic (and other Christian) boycott, a threat fully supported by the Catholic hierarchy. The impact of the Legion of Decency is not to be underestimated. As long as it remained active and with the support of the bishops, liberal progressivism met a brick wall. Furthermore, the Church of the 1930s, 40s and 50s was an expanding and confident institution. In every area, from sheer numbers in the pews to influence in the media and popular culture, Catholicism was on the ascendant. Every year saw a steady flow important and influential figures, from politics, academia, art, and entertainment, into communion with Rome. The talk of the time was of “triumphalism”. Individual clergymen such as Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen had an immense impact upon American cultural life. Indeed, so powerful and pervasive was the influence of the Church that it is said to have become a major source of concern to the Kremlin. It is alleged that in the 1930s Stalin ordered the KGB to infiltrate the Catholic priesthood with a view to undermining it from within.^[6] In furtherance of this goal, hundreds of Communist Party members in America and elsewhere are said to have applied for training to the religious life. Hundreds, and eventually thousands of such persons, it is alleged, eventually joined the program and changed the very nature of the Church. Whether this claim is true or not, it is undeniable that throughout much of the first half of the twentieth century large numbers of Catholic clergymen moved inexorably (though unobtrusively as yet) in the direction of modernist progressivism. The publication of the documents of Vatican II afforded such persons a license, under the “spirit” of the Council, to push the revolution onto their flocks.

An ominous signal of what was to come is alleged to have occurred at a meeting between senior Catholic clergymen and leading members of the Kennedy family at the latter's home in Connecticut in 1963.^[7] There, the Kennedys were informed that the Church would no longer strive to influence state law from the pulpit and would in effect remain silent should politicians wish to “liberalize” laws dealing with such issues as pornography, abortion, etc.

Whether this meeting took place or not, it is a fact that by the middle to late 1960s most Catholic bishops in America as well as in Europe and other parts of the world ceased to offer guidance on matters of sexual morality. Concomitant with that, seminaries throughout the West, in the spirit of “openness” preached by the Council, now opened their doors to huge numbers of people who were manifestly unsuitable for the priesthood or religious life. There had always, of course, been a problem with sexual deviants in the Catholic Church, as well as in other churches and in other faiths. Previous to the 1960s however some attempts were made to identify such persons and to curtail their activities (not always successfully, it has to be admitted). However, from the mid-1960s it is clear that little or no effort was made to screen candidates for the priesthood, and in the decades to follow literally thousands of pederasts who displayed an unhealthy interest in adolescent boys began to pass through the seminaries and to be placed in parishes throughout the world. Even worse, in accordance with the spirit of “mercy” emphasized by the documents of Vatican 2, the crimes committed by these clergymen were neither effectively punished not curtailed. On the contrary, when such criminal behavior became a matter of common knowledge amongst the population, the offending priests were simply moved to other localities where they could begin their activities anew.

The papacy of Francis therefore revealed itself as nothing more than the “spitiual” arm of the globalist/progressivist establishment. And it is worth noting that the lockdowns and general tyranny of the past three years could not have succeeded without the Vatican's full support. Had the church refused to lock down and had it refused to endorse the vaccine-mandates, the total control exercised over the world's populations could not have been established or maintained.

It goes without saying that the eventual exposure of these “priests” and of the bishops who protected them, which began to come to light in the late 1990s, had a devastating impact upon a church already reeling from the effects of what can only be described as a decades-long mass apostasy. Religious practice among Catholics had begun to plummet in the late 1960s, very soon after the introduction of the vernacular mass. This was accompanied by the departure from the priesthood of tens of thousands of priests and other religious. On every indicator, it was the same story. Baptisms went down; church attendance went off a cliff; enrollment in Catholic schools plummeted. And that was the situation before the 1990s, when the sexual abuse scandals came to light.

Not one of the post-Vatican II popes made any real attempt to call a halt to the revolution. On the contrary, all of them, even the allegedly “conservative” Benedict XVI, did little more than manage the decline. However, if by early 2013 the Catholic faithful thought things couldn't get any worse, they were in for an unpleasant surprise. For it was in the Spring of that year that Benedict XVI retired and was replaced as pope by Jorge Bergoglio, who took the name of Francis. With the accession of this man, the final nail was about to be hammered into the coffin of traditional Catholicism. While the Vatican 2 church, as a whole, moved inexorably to embrace the secular world and secular concerns (environmental issues, poverty, global warming, etc) and became largely indistinguishable from the culture at large, the popes at least regularly made orthodox statements and issued orthodox documents. Francis however broke the mold. Here now was a man whose focus was entirely on the things of this world. And nothing made the situation more clear than the COVID “emergency” of 2020. Whilst some politicians and world leaders, conscious of the devastating social and economic consequences of locking their countries down, tried to resist overwhelming pressure from the billionaire-owned media to do just that, Pope Francis announced the closure of all Catholic churches in Rome, and encouraged bishops throughout the world to do the same – thereby undermining the attempts of politicians to resist the pressure. For Bergoglio, then, the church and her sacraments represented “non-essential” services. And this applied even to ministering to the terminally ill in care-homes and hospitals, whom Francis was quite prepared to let die without the comfort of family-members, friends, clergymen, or sacraments. In short, Francis revealed himself to be a genuine secularist, whose only concern was the (alleged) physical welfare of the people. And, as a true disciple of the progressivist/globalist establishment, he went even further, demanding that all staff in Vatican City take the experimental mRNA “vaccine”, even though it was widely known that this “medication” had been developed using cellular tissue from aborted babies.

The papacy of Francis therefore revealed itself as nothing more than the “spiritual” arm of the globalist/progressivist establishment. And it is worth noting that the lockdowns and general tyranny of the past three years could not have succeeded without the Vatican's full support. Had the church refused to lock down and had it refused to endorse the vaccine-mandates, the total control exercised over the world's populations could not have been established or maintained. The pulpit, after all, is a platform quite independent of the mainstream media, and a vigorous pushback against the media fearmongering on the part of priests would certainly have thrown a spanner into the works. However, a look at the lists of guests welcomed at the Bergoglian Vatican on a regular basis, which includes some of the most notoriously anti-Christian members of the globalist establishment, should convince any observer where Pope Francis' sympathies lie.

And so we find ourselves in the present day. As a tidal wave of progressivist “wokeism” washes over the West, toppling all moral taboos and attacking sanity itself, the Catholic clergy and hierarchy remain silent. Yes, a few “maverick” priests and bishops do speak out, occasionally, but they are immediately disowned and silenced by their confreres and superiors. Neither Bergoglio nor the vast majority of his bishops and cardinals have anything to say about the disintegration of the family, about mass illegitimacy, about the sexualisation of children and attempts to normalise pedophilia, about gender ideology and the surgical mutilation of children, about the tidal wave of abortion, about the inexorable advance of euthanasia, about the forced vaccination of millions of people, about the mass excess deaths that have resulted, about the stripping away of every freedom, including the freedom of movement for the poor and working classes, etc.

It is unclear where all of this will end, but it is certain that future generations will be less than impressed by the present “leadership” of the Catholic Church.

Emmet Sweeney is the author of several works dealing with problems in the history of the ancient Near East.

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[1]According to Holland, the so-called culture-wars are “less a war against Christianity than a civil war between Christian factions.” cf. Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution remade the World (2019). For Holland, the whole idea of human rights, upon which modern progressivism largely rests, is entirely inexplicable without Christianity. In this he is correct, to a certain degree. However, modern progressivism has other sources of inspiration.

[2]Plato's Republic is one obvious representation of the theme. Contemporary philosophers in China and India also had much to say about the ideal society and its administration.

[3]The rupture between Science and Religion, between Faith and Reason, also began aound this time; though why the two should have gone their separate ways, and only in the West, is another and more involved question.

[4]This is not to suggest that the effort to alleviate suffering through research into diseases and their causes is not a worthwhile and a moral pursuit. However, when the aim of curing/preventing illness entirely supplants the goal of spiritual advancement – as it has in the modern West – then the scientific quest becomes as it were a purely Satanic one. This was the theme of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; a work intended as a warning against the attempt to play God. The full horror of the latter impulse is now on open display, where the “transhumanist” ramblings of lunatics such as Yuval Harari (as in his Homo Deus) are applauded by the great and the good.

[5]The liberal/modernist takeover of the Catholic Church has been the subject of many books and studies. And the fact that it happened is actually celebrated by some of its chroniclers. This is the case, for example with  Ralph M. Wiltgen's  The Rhine Flows into the Tiber (1967), who highlights and approves the impact of extreme modernists/liberals from the German, Dutch and French-speaking regions of Europe during the Council. For a traditionalist view of the Council, see Rama P. Coomaraswamy's The Destruction of the Christian Tradition (1996).

[6]Bella Dodd, an American ex-communist, was the original source of the claim. According to Dodd, during the 1930s she “helped place over a thousand communist men in Catholic seminaries.” See eg. “Bella Dodd and the Communist Infiltration of the Catholic Church,” Crisis Magazine, December 15, 2022. www.crisismagazine.com See also Taylor Marshall, Infiltration: The Plot to destroy the Catholic Church from within (Crisis Publications, 2019).

[7]I cannot recall where I heard this, yet it is beyond question that from the mid-1960s the Catholic hierarchy in America and elsewhere ceased to give guidance upon questions related to sexual morality, and in America support for the Legion of Decency's work was quietly withdrawn. The result was that the Legion quickly lost its influence and was disbanded in the early 1970s.