Politicians, philosophers, journalists, radio and television commentators, poets, compete to explain what the distinctive sign of our times really is. What is the characteristic feature, that which differentiates us from any other epoch in history.
Most of the time, however, these opinions are nothing more than the expression of the crudest propaganda in the service of those who have built our world and who devote all their time, all their power and all their money to ensuring that it does not change. This is not of our time, because it has always been so.
Some say it is diversity. But then the next news item on television shows us an Italian boxer withdrawing from Olympic competition because the very diverse International Olympic Committee has allowed, against the accumulated experience of the International Boxing Federation, a woman with clear male chromosomal signs to beat women without male chromosomal signs. Diversity is not about being beaten in a boxing ring.
Others say that what is typical of our times is pity for the illegal immigrant who assaults the borders of Western nations. Then you turn the page of the newspaper and read that in Spain illegal immigrants slit the throats of two Spaniards in Valencia in less than 30 hours. They slit their throats. And that in Austria, a Syrian immigrant family can receive up to 6,000 euros a month, including housing assistance. Six thousand euros that come out of the pockets of the middle and working classes of Austrian workers, including immigrants who live and work peacefully in Austria. Mercy cannot go against justice; then it is no longer mercy, but programmed suicide.
I believe that is the true sign of the times. And I write this as a Catholic woman, is the absolute disappearance of God from the public arena. Politics is done without God. Economics is done without God. Cities are designed without God. God is dispensed with in international politics; God is shunned in social or cultural policies. This has not happened in Europe for thousands of years. Politics, economy, society, culture, art, advertising or propaganda exclude God. Consciously. Voluntarily.
What is truly distinctive of our time is the institutional triumph of a violent and exclusionary atheism. Even Catholics, Christians in general, have renounced the public presence of God. With a few exceptions in each country, politicians, philosophers, poets, radio and television commentators, give their opinions and act as if God does not exist.
Public debate excludes questions such as what would the creator God, the Father and merciful God, the good and personal God, think about tax increases, unprotected borders, drug use among young people, crimes imported from non-Christian cultures, the hijab, multicultural neighbourhoods, the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, or the fact that public speeches in favour of Hamas terrorism are allowed in European universities?
We have built a political world in which God no longer counts when it comes to designing educational, urban, cultural or fiscal policies. Many people think it is wrong for Christians to give 10% to the Church, but it is fine for up to 60% to be paid to the State. Many criticise Christians for denouncing the bestial sexualisation of our society, but in the name of piety towards immigrants and diversity, they run to close swimming pools when Islamism manifests itself because European girls are wearing swimming costumes in municipal swimming pools. The hallmark of our times is that the ruling elites are in open combat against Christianity.
And in doing so, they are leading us to the total devastation of what we inherited from our parents and grandparents. It is our duty, as if there were no other, to reverse the situation. We must talk a lot about God and bring faith and the demands of faith into the social debate. We will then gain for ourselves a healthier society and for our children a future that the ruling elites deny them.