The battle cry of our Age

On Christ, Communists and Sentimentalists
Posted by Ann Barnhardt - November 15, AD 2011 1:24 PM MST

This isn't me. This is Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in his 1958 masterwork, "Life of Christ". Let's call this the battle cry of our Age. I am hard pressed to remember another passage that was so explicitly relevant and piercing as this one is. Read every single word, then read it again. Then print it off and hang it on your refrigerator, mirror and monitor. As far as I'm concerned, this says it all:

It may very well be that the Communists, who are so anti-Christ, are closer to Him than those who see Him as a sentimentalist and vague moral reformer. The Communists have at least decided that if He wins, they lose; the others are afraid to consider Him either as winning or losing, because they are not prepared to meet the moral demands which this victory would make on their souls.

If He is what He claimed to be, a Savior, a Redeemer, then we have a virile Christ and a leader worth following in these terrible times; One Who will step into the breach of death, crushing sin, gloom and despair; a leader to Whom we can make totalitarian sacrifice without losing, but gaining freedom, and Whom we can love even unto death. We need a Christ today Who will make cords and drive the buyers and sellers from our new temples; Who will blast the unfruitful fig-trees; Who will talk of crosses and sacrifices and Whose voice will be like the voice of the raging sea. But He will not allow us to pick and choose among His words, discarding the hard ones, and accepting the ones that please our fancy. We need a Christ Who will restore moral indignation, Who will make us hate evil with a passionate intensity, and love goodness to a point where we can drink death like water.

-Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
"Life of Christ", AD 1958