Most of us wonder from time to time what the future has in store for us. But as Doris Day first sang way back in 1956, “The future’s not ours to see.”
In 1969 then still Father Joseph Ratzinger predicted a smaller Catholic Church in the future, by the year 2000. But the gift of prophecy may not have been his. His prediction seems to have been off the mark.
Since 1969 the Church has actually grown in numbers. In 1970 there were 653.6 million Catholics in the world. Today there are over 1.3 billion Catholics in the world. We’ve even gone from just over 191,000 to over 223,000 parishes worldwide.
Unfortunately the supply of priests has not kept pace with the growth. In 1970 there were 419,728 priests worldwide. Today there are about 5,000 fewer priests than in 1970.
So the Church is smaller today if the number of priests is the gauge, but as a percentage of the world’s population it has not really changed. In 1970 about 18% of the world population was Catholic. That number is the same today.
On the other hand, not all of the 1.3 billion Catholics in the world are good, devout Catholics. As most of us know, a sizable percentage does not go to Mass regularly and, as we learned last year, 69 percent of Catholics in the U.S. do not even believe in the Real Presence.
Dissidents
Far too many Catholics today are cafeteria Catholics. A better term is dissidents. And there may also be a sizable number of material heretics among the dissidents.
Folks like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Dick Durbin may be baptized Catholics but that does not make them good Catholics. At best they are in the dissident group, just like the Catholics for Biden group that is shilling for Joe.
So in some respects, maybe Father Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI was right. This makes one wonder what the Church will look like in another 20 years. And that can lead to wondering what life in general will be like in the future.
Persecution?
Author Rob Dreher sees dire things ahead for Christians. He says the progressive left is taking us down the road to totalitarianism. He predicts that in the not too distant future Christians will be persecuted by the state.
Dreher is not alone in this prediction. As Cardinal Francis George famously said in 2010, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”
Both Dreher and Cardinal George were commenting on the attacks on Catholicism, Christianity, Christian beliefs, morality, and religious freedom that have been taking place for some years now.
This concerns me because the average life expectancy for men in the U.S. right now is 76 years of age. So I may be around for a while. Of course my Uncle Frank just turned 99 years old. That being the case I may make it to 2040 or even 2045. I find that thought a bit unsettling for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost, Dreher and Cardinal George might be right. What the Left calls ‘progress’ is anything but progress. The Left is taking us down the road to secularism and socialism. The future does not seem too bright.
Socialism as Liberalism
A guy by the name of Norman Thomas predicted this. Thomas was the Socialist Party USA’s presidential candidate during the late 20s through the 40s. He said, “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But under the name Liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without knowing how it happened.”
(The Thomas quote is from the 2016 EWTN documentary “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.” You might want to check it out if you have not seen it. The film is about “Saul Alinsky and how his “Rules for Radicals” has significantly contributed to the situation that we are experiencing today.” It can be watched at EWTN on demand for free until November 3, here. The documentary “A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing II – The Gender Agenda” is currently airing at various times on EWTN.)
Clues to Where We’re Headed
Seventy-Five years ago the elderly were cared for and even looked up to for just having made it to old age. Now society thinks the elderly are a drain on our resources. Many think the kindest thing we can do for the elderly is to help them to kill themselves.
Fifty years ago no rational person would have thought murdering unborn babies would ever be legal. Now it’s celebrated as women’s reproductive health rights.
Just 30 years ago no sane person would have envisioned that immoral sexual acts would be openly celebrated. The very idea of same-sex ‘marriage’ would have been laughed at.
And just 10 years ago if a man insisted he was a woman he would have been advised to seek professional counseling. Now he’s told he should feel free to compete in women’s sports and even use the women’s rest rooms.
None of this insanity is progress.
I don’t think I want to be around to see what comes next if the Left gets control. And I fear for the all the kids growing up right now. What kind of idiocy will they be facing when they become adults? Will they have to hide their Catholic/Christian beliefs out of fear of persecution?
The Singularity
Secondly, futurist, author, inventor, and entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil predicted in 2006 that 2045 will be the date for Singularity.
By 2045, “Intelligent nanorobots will be deeply integrated in our bodies, our brains, and our environment,” he says. This technology will enable us to overcome pollution and poverty, and will provide vastly extended longevity, he says.
“The “killer app” of nanotechnology is “nanobots,” which are blood-cell sized robots that can travel in the bloodstream destroying pathogens, removing debris, correcting DNA errors, and reversing aging processes” says Kurzweil. Nanorobots could enable human beings to live for “hundreds” of years.
This non-biological intelligence – Artificial Intelligence or simply AI – sounds very sci-fi and also a bit scary. Will we be able to control it or, as so many sci-fi movies predict, will it take control over us?
AI will likely be bereft of true wisdom. This apparently does not bother Kurzweil who seemingly conflates terms like wisdom, morality, and truth with intelligence and knowledge.
According to Kurzweil, “As systems evolve—through biology and technology—we find that they become more complex, more intelligent and more knowledgeable. They become more intricate and more beautiful, more capable of higher emotions such as love. So they grow exponentially in intelligence, knowledge, creativity, beauty, and love, all of the qualities people ascribe to God without limit. . . . The Singularity will represent an explosion of these higher values of complexity.”
Science Replacing Religion
Kurzweil’s vision of the future is what happens when man plays God and science replaces religion. Today we call this Scientism but it is also Gnosticism run wild. Truth, wisdom, morality and true beauty being replaced with intelligence, knowledge, creativity, beauty, and love – all as defined by an “artificial intelligence.” What could go wrong!?
But it gets worse.
“In my view, death is a tragedy,” says Kurzweil. “It’s a tremendous loss of personality, skills, knowledge, relationships. We’ve rationalized it as a good thing because that’s really been the only alternative we’ve had. But disease, aging, and death are problems we are now in a position to overcome.”
Kurzweil is expressing the atheists’ concept of life: There is no life after death. Death is problem. It is something to be feared. That’s why many on the Left have been saying it is so vitally important to continue wearing masks and social distance and not go to Mass during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kurzweil is wrong, of course, as are all the Coronavirus fear mongers. We should not fear death. Christ conquered death. Our immortal souls live forever and they will be reunited with our physical bodies just prior to the Last Judgement. The only question is will we live on in complete happiness and joy or in endless anguish.
Regarding Science . . .
Only God knows what the future will bring, but based on current trends I don’t think I want to be around in 2040. I can say for sure that I don’t want to be part of the Singularity.
An article a few years ago at First Things, called out the many problems affecting science and the scientific communities. The article opened with a surprising statement: “The problem with science is that so much of it simply isn’t.” Then again, given all the contradictory and outright misinformation over the COVID-19 do’s and don’ts, that statement is not all that surprising.
Science is a human enterprise, said the author. This makes it prone to all the imperfections that come with being human. “We’ve seen example after example of how the human element of this enterprise harms and damages its progress, through incompetence, fraud, selfishness, prejudice, or the simple combination of an honest oversight or slip with plain bad luck.”
So excuse me if I put my Faith in God rather than science. The thought of having dozens or hundreds or thousands of nanobots coursing through my veins gives me the willies!
Regarding Culture . . .
I also do not relish the idea of going into hiding and practicing my Faith in secret.
Ask most people what ‘secularism’ is and the response will probably be something like ‘secularism is the separation of church and state.’ However, it is much more than that. Secularism is the rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations.
A secular society just doesn’t separate religion from politics; it emphatically rejects and excludes religion from all social systems altogether. When it comes to moral truths, in fact to morality in general, secular progressives want the government to be free to determine what is moral and what is not – without any pesky interference from the Church – or from God.
God’s truths are irrelevant as far as socialists and secular progressives are concerned. We saw ample evidence of this in ACB’s confirmation hearings. The message from the Left to ACB was ‘You better not let your Catholic Faith interfere with our man-made laws.’
Final Thoughts
There is, however, a ray of hope. The second part of the Cardinal George quote mentioned earlier is often overlooked.
Cardinal George said that his successor “will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”
If I’m still around in 2040, and the Singularity happens, I think I may become a Luddite. But, maybe, hopefully, I’ll still be able to practice my Faith in public in the future.
Think about all this when you vote (if you have not yet voted) this year. And even take a look at National Catholic Register’s Oct. 17 editorial “Voting for a Vision, Not a Person.”
Do you want to live in a secular socialist country? Or would you rather live in a Christian nation that is the land of the free and the home of the brave?
21 thoughts on “The Future is Coming – Are You Excited?”
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” It’s only hubris until you do it.” attributed to Julius Caesar
“For the LORD of hosts will have his day against all that is proud and arrogant, against all that is high, and it will be brought low” Isaiah 2:12.
Gene,
One of the articles you link to is an essay with many factual assertions but no footnotes so I can’t check on whether they are true.
The other is an interview with a contrarian climatologist. Most of the piece is the interviewer putting his words into her mouth. If one reads the quotes carefully one sees she doesn’t deny that global warming exists and we are causing it. The only dispute seems to be over how bad it is and the uncertainty of the predictions. Given the incredibly high stakes, even if there’s only a 100-1 chance that a climate apocalypse will happen, it would be irresponsible toward our children and our children’s children not to undertake the relatively modest measures that have been proposed.
Captain – here are two more to try out. You can always find reasons to reject these scientific positions out of hand as well (the way the “fact checkers” did in the Wrigthstone article – only to be forced to reverse their position). Look – there’s nothing wrong with cleaning up the world – it needs it and legit Catholics are all for it if done properly. But there are worse outcomes than climate change (which, by the way, is mostly a hoax as illustrated in the many references you’ve been given) – specifically the loss of souls to a globalist/atheist ideological.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/10/27/meet-the-climate-scientists-that-social-media-censors-dont-want-you-to-know-about/
https://www.lomborg.com/
Mr. Van Son – thanks for another fine article. And Kurzweil is now working for Google – heaven only knows what creepy things they’ll cook up together!
Mr.Smith, thank you kindly. Good point about Kurzweil. I wanted to work that in to the article but it got too wordy!
The first article is by a guy with impeccable credentials. Check him out. If he says x is true, I would not doubt that it is true. And notice that he points his finger at both Democrats and Republicans. It’s all about Money and Power. Psalm 146:3 – “Put no trust in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save.”
The climatologist, also with impeccable credentials, is certainly NOT a contrarian. She is a very level headed individual who is telling it like it is. She is not denying that global warming MAY exist, but she is also saying that there are way too many variables involved in climatology to say mankind is causing it. She is also saying data over the last year shows it could be changing. She is saying what If all of this is natural and the ‘global warming believers’ are looking at the wrong things as the cause? If that’s the case we are not preparing for it in the right way. And all those “relatively modest measures,“ which are not modest at all, and which will drive many companies out of business and create more wealth for the already very wealthy, will be for nothing.
You do realize don’t you that none of the disaster predictions are based on actual science? They are based on computer models. And out of thousands and thousands of models only the few that predict disaster get talked about. This is because, “Fear is a good motivator and those in power know how to use it to their advantage.”
Lots of countries are doing better than us in reducing carbon emissions. None of them have become the totalitarian horror stories you mention. Most are perfectly well functioning democracies.
Both with global warming and with wearing masks to contain Covid-19, I see a childish refusal to eat one’s vegetables mentality at work here, exemplified by our current President, who at age 74 remains a spoiled rich kid.
Sure there are countries with lower carbon emissions. But it’s an apples and oranges comparison. All of them have a small fraction of our population and a small fraction of our GDP. They also allow in a minuscule number of immigrants each year compared to us. You are still not seeing the forest for the trees.
?
How did immigrants figure into this?
Population growth (increased energy demand) has to be taken into account. We allow in over 1 million LEGAL immigrants each year while low carbon emission countries like Finland allow in less than 35,000.
I see what you’re saying but we’re still pretty bad.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/each-countrys-share-co2-emissions
Even worse is the heads of our federal government saying global warming is a “hoax” and stopping efforts by the states to address it. That makes us all but unique in the world.
Where are you getting the info that the Federal Government is stopping states from addressing “climate change,” which is a more accurate term than global warming? Note the following —
“The Trump administration may have pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, but most states and many rural areas in America have developed their own plans for reducing carbon emissions and moving away from fossil fuels as they maneuver—often aggressively—to address the threat of climate change.” (Sept. 9, 2020 Insideclimatenews.org.)
Glad to hear that. Also glad to see you reading Inside Climate News.
The article you linked to mentions Appalshop, an arts place in Whitesburg, Kentucky. I’ve been there. A beautiful area, though depressed (maybe not any more — this was in 1983). June Appal records turned out some fine folk and bluegrass music and each year I would purchase their “simple living calendar” (each day had a suggestion on how to make a better world). My girlfriend and I stopped in to their office and had an instructive conversation with their Executive Director. Even then, they saw how destructive coal was to health and the environment, and were trying to encourage solar and wind power going, a brave stand to take in the heart of coal mining country.
” Kurzweil’s vision of the future is what happens when man plays God and science replaces religion.” ” What could go wrong ? ”
I wonder if God thought that when he created the water that He would use to virtually destroy all mankind. Man is just playing man and there’s nothing more to be read into it.
God knows exactly what He’s doing and how everything will turn out in the end. Humans, however, tend toward hubris. Too many of us abuse His gift to us of free will and turn our backs on Him.
Where’s my jet pack?
Your duty as a Christian is to announce the Gospel and defend the truth!!!!!
Wearing a mask is a Christian duty. It is preventing others from catching what you might be unknowingly carrying. I suppose it’s motivated by a “fear of death” — the death of other people.
My main fear for the future is, of course, global warming and the fact that American conservatives are currently in power and deny it, like they deny so much of reality. Otherwise I feel good about the emerging generation. They’re less homophobic, misogynist and racist, they are in favor of an expanded social safety net to take care of old people, the disabled and the poor, and because they know how to properly use the internet they are a lot better informed than I was at their age. Their attitudes on abortion are mostly in reaction to pro-lifers who are motivated by viewpoints they rightly find objectionable, but in time knowledge, justice and peace will prevail and the issue will sort itself out.
CAPTCRISIS: A duty my foot! It is not scientifically proven that the masks protect us from the virus or the spread. Your main fear should be the salvation of your soul and others!!!!!!!! Homosexual rights will not make them happy! what you have to announce to them is what truly will make them happy which is to follow God’s will!!!!!!!!
I see you are still drinking the Kool-Aid caprcrises. Fear is a good motivator and those in power know how to use it to their advantage. You might want to read this article on the Coronavirus pandemic. It’s a long article, I hope you can get all the way through it — https://americanmind.org/essays/the-covid-coup/ Then you might want to read this article on global warming —
https://www.city-journal.org/global-warming I pray you will read these articles with an open mind and that they will open your eyes a bit.
As for gens x, y and z, far too many of them have been weaned on fear and educated on a steady diet of socialistic garbage in our public schools and universities. Happily many of them are rejecting it and returning to the Church. Surveys also show the majority of them are, in fact, pro-life.