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Garrigou Lagrange begins: The dangers of modern times are great, and the remedies to which we often have recourse are insufficient. We shall begin, therefore, by saying a few words about the need for greater faith. The poisonous errors in modern life are tending toward a complete dechristianization of society, a dechristianization which began in the sixteenth century with the rebirth of paganism and the reappearance of pagan pride and sensuality among Christians. This turning from Christ advanced another stage under Protestantism, which rejected the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the value of sacramental absolution and confession, the infallibility of the Church and Tradition, her teaching power, and finally, the need for observing the precepts which lead to salvation-four denials which strike at the root of the Christian life. Then the French Revolution with its deism and naturalism lent a hand in the dechristianization of society: God, if He exists, is interested only in a universal ordering of things and not in individual people. Sin, therefore, is not an offense against God, but only an offense against reason which is constantly evolving. Stealing, for example, was a sin so long as the right of private property was admitted; but if, as communists hold, private property is an injustice against the community, then private property itself becomes a theft. This spirit of revolution led naturally to liberalism, which tried to steer a middle course between the teaching of the Church and modem errors. But liberalism could reach no definite conclusions: it neither affirmed nor denied, but always made distinctions; and discussions dragged on because it could not solve difficulties which were springing from a denial of the principles of Christianity. Liberalism failed to provide a norm of conduct and it gave way to radicalism, which was even more opposed to the Church. Because it did not like the word anti-Christian it called itself '4 anticlerical. That is typical of freemasonry. But radicalism led to socialism and socialism to atheistic and materialistic communism, as found in Russia today. Attempts were made to spread communism in Spain and other countries also, and to reject religion, private property, the family, the idea of a fatherland, and reduce human life to economics, as if we had no soul, and as if religion, science, art, and rights were the invention of those who wished to keep others in subjection and, in the name of private property, possess everything themselves. The only effective opponent of materialistic communism is the Catholic Church, because only true Christianity, or Catholicism, contains the truth without any mixture of error.

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