It’s seems everywhere we turn new statistics and polls are heralding a grand revival of spiritual rebirths and conversions, even in the most unexpected places and cultures, and not just here in America but all around the world. I just read yesterday about the dramatic, unexpected increase in the number of baptisms, confirmations, RCIA candidates, conversions, and even confessional lines happening in various Catholic dioceses across America. And this increase is not just in Catholic Churches but in Protestant churches of nearly every stripe, particularly among evangelically-minded denominations. What’s especially surprising to an old, stuck-in-the-mud Boomer like me is that this seemingly exponential increase is especially noticeable among the younger, “digitally-addicted and social-media obsessed” generations. And given the disheartening rise in paganism, violence, amoral lifestyles, as well as the ever spreading infestation of Islam into every aspect of our modern world, how could one not celebrate this seemingly Spirit-led explosion of converted hearts and minds? How could we not raise our hands and proclaim, “Praise be to Jesus!”

Given this, some might even be moved to quip triumphantly that “the whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself saved!” This may not be the most obvious quip to enter your mind, but something similar was said many centuries ago. A fifth-century Catholic scholar by the name of Saint Jerome has often been quoted as saying, ‘The world groaned and was astonished to find itself Arian.” Arianism was a heresy that arose in the early fourth century in the eastern portion of Christendom. The Council of Nicaea was called to address this problem, and for a time, the Church believed this theological disease had been nipped in the bud, as Deputy Fife might have said. But it didn’t go easily away. Within fifty years, Arianism had so raised its ugly head that a disheartening majority of not so much laity but priests and even bishops across the known world had succumb to this heresy. For a time it looked as if traditional Trinitarian Christianity would not survive, thus leading to Saint Jerome’s troubling quip. Fortunately, traditional Trinitarian Christianity did in time not only win the day, but became the voice of authentic Christianity around the world. (For a good discussion of this topic, and how the heresy of Arianism is, unfortunately, still alive and well in our modern world, please read Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s fine article here. 

Jump ahead, if you will, to the early 21st century. In an email discussion I was having with a good Monsignor friend, I once quipped that in the decades after the Second Vatican Council, “the world groaned and was astonished to find itself ecumenical”. I’ve since discovered that I was certainly not the only or even the first to make this observation. What I meant by this was not a critique of the Second Vatican Council, but of what has happened since in the Church, as well as in Christendom in general. When good Saint John XXIII called the council, he emphasized that, in the ecumenical battle-lines between Christians, one must recognize that more unites us than separates us. His point was not to approach ecumenism as a reduction to the least-common denominators (i.e., “All that’s necessary is that we believe in Jesus!”), but rather as the starting point for opening the doors to fruitful dialogue, so that the Catholic Church can “speak the truth in love” with the hope of reuniting a divided Christendom to traditional Trinitarian Christianity. 

This didn’t happen, however, as he and many others had hoped. Instead, now sixty-plus years later, Christendom is even more divided, with new independent churches forming every week. Even the churches and worship services of traditional Main-line Protestant churches are hardly recognizable when compared to how they were sixty years ago. And daren’t we point a finger, the Catholic Church herself is far more divided that she ever was before the Council, especially when one considers the irreconcilable distance between radical-traditionalists and “rainbow”-progressives. 

Certainly, we see everywhere great signs of renewal, as we’ve seen consistently in the decades since the Council, but yet, what seems disturbingly apparent—at least to me—as one steps back and observes the state of Christendom, the continuous increase of independent churches, the divisions within Catholicism, and the surprising phenomenon of spiritual renewal, even conversions, seemingly everywhere, one still sees not just the pervasive influence of least-common-denominator ecumenism, but the even more pervasive infestation of another long-standing heresy: universalism. In other words, “the whole world groaned and was astonished to find itself saved!” 

We celebrate the increase of spiritual awakenings all across our culture, but what is it these new spiritually awakened souls believe? Who of trustworthy authority are they listening to and following? When any of these people ask, as a man once did to Jesus, “What must I do to be saved?”, what are they being told? Which of the myriad of Christian—and pseudo-Christian—traditions forms the basis for their “assurance of salvation”? I think about this whenever I attend a funeral, or am informed of someone’s death, and then hear almost universally, regardless of how that person lived his life or what he believed or which church he attended, if he attended one at all, “It’s just good to know he’s gone to a better place!” 

At what point in the history of Christianity did we start assuming that every person who dies just goes to a better place? 

Before we start unquestionably celebrating all of these supposed spiritual awakenings and conversions, let’s review what Jesus Himself said was necessary to be His disciple, and to thereby experience authentic conversion and salvation by grace. Here’s a short list of what He said a person must do if he wished to follow Him:

• Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand! (Mt 4:17)
• Turn away from active sin
• Follow him (Mt 4:19-20; 8:21-22; 9:9; 10:34-39)
• Believe in him (Jn 6:35; 7:38; 11:25-26; 12:44; 14:1, 12)
• Be born-again through baptism (Mk 16:16; Jn 3;3-5)
• Live the Beatitudes (Mt 5:1-12) —choose to be “poor of spirit, meek, mourn, hunger for righteous, pure of heart, etc.”
• Let people see your good works & give glory to God (Mt 5:13-16)
• Be more righteous than the scribes and pharisees (Mt 5:17-20; 23f)
• Obey God’s commandments from the heart: (also, Mt 19:16f)
• Let what you say be simply “Yes” or “No” (Mt 5:37)
• Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:43f)
• Give alms, pray, and fast without fanfare but quietly (Mt 6:2f)
• Lay up treasure in heaven (Mt 6:29f)
• Beware of greed: one cannot serve God and mammon (Mt 6:24)
• Be not anxious about life but seek first his kingdom and righteousness (Mt 6:25f)
• Let the day’s own trouble by sufficient for the day (Mt 6:34)
• Judge not lest ye be judged (Mt 7:1-2f)
• Guard the faith from those who can not understand & appreciate it (Mt 7:6f)
• Pray, have faith, & ask God for what you need (Mt 7:7f; 24:3f)
• Live the Golden Rule, which is in essence, “the law and the prophets” (Mt 7:12)
• Enter by the narrow gate (Mt 7:13f)
• Beware of false prophets, whom you will know by their fruits (Mt 7:15f)
• Do the will of the Father if one desires to enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 7:12f; 12:46f)
• Hear and do the words of Christ (Mt 7:24f)
• Endure to the end (Mt 10:17-22; 24:3f)
• Fear only God and acknowledge Christ before men (Mt 10: 26-33)
• Take up the cross of Christ, even if it costs you your family, friends, life (Mt 10:34f)
• Hear and understand the gospel, and produce fruit (Mt 13:3f)
• Give up everything to gain the kingdom of heaven (Mt 13:44f; 18:8f)
• Recognize the authority of the Church Christ established on Peter (Mt 16:16-19
• Turn and become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 18:1f)
• Forgive that you might be forgiven (Mt 18:15f)
• Rid yourself of any attachments that keep you from God (Mt 19:16f)
• Renounce all if one wants to be His disciple (Lk 14:33)
• If called to leadership, be a servant to all (Mt 20:20f)
• Have faith and never doubt (Mt 21:18f)
• Love God with all one’s heart, mind, soul, & strength and one’s neighbor as one’s self (Mt 21:34f)
• Humble yourself (Mt 23:8f)
• Do not neglect the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy and faith (Mt 23f)
• Do not focus only on externals but clean the heart first (Mt 23:25f)
• Watch and be ready for the coming of Christ (Mt 24:3f; 25:1f)
• See Christ in your neighbor, especially the poor and needy, and take care of their needs (Mt 25:31f)
• Partake of the Eucharist in memorial of his death for the forgiveness of your sins (Mt 26:26f)
• Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching and baptizing them (Mt 28:16f)

I can hear, especially, my old Protestant friends and co-workers quickly downplaying this long list, replacing it with some simpler, condensed formula akin to “grace alone through faith alone”, or possibly “once saved—always saved”. But it’s crucial to remember—as everything I’ve alluded to in this reflection, both the increase in corruption and apostasy as well as the continual thread of renewal, are signs of the End—that one of the last things our Lord is reported to have said is “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay every one for what he has done” (Rev. 22:12, emphasis mine). 

Preaching a simplified universalism—“All one needs is a simple faith in Jesus, based on a simple reading of the Bible”—can be just as much a whisper of the Evil one, as it might be a beckoning of the Holy Spirit. How does one know the difference? Certainly everything that is necessary for salvation has been recorded in the Scriptures (cf, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 107), but look at the myriad of conflicting opinions, based upon Scripture alone, amongst these newly awakened believers? How can these new believers know for certain they are believing correctly, sufficiently, when those leading them are looking askance at every other bible-believing church around them, warning them that they might loose their salvation if they walked across the street to try a different flavor?

One might argue that even I’ve mentioned the divisions within the Catholic Church—how can this be a better, more reliable source? Well, first I’ll admit this is a problem, and again, in my mind, a sign that, as Saint Paul VI once said back in 1972, during the upturn of hyper-ecumenism, “the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God through some fissure”. But even amidst the eye-burning, heart-wrenching presence of this smoke, both inside and outside the Church, one can still trust that the “Sacred deposit of the truth”, as taught by Christ to His apostles, as preserved in Scripture and Sacred Tradition, continues to be guarded, practiced, and professed by the Magisterium in union with Peter.

I realize how hard it is to accept this, especially by any who have lived their entire lives outside the Catholic Church—as I did for the first forty years of my life. But as I once looked at the confusion and contradictions amongst so many non-Catholic Bible-believing Christian Churches, and still see even more so in the increasing conversions we hear about in the news, I can only say, after my nearly seventy-four years, that it has only been in the Catholic Church—even with all her scandals and apparent divisions—that I have felt certain I have found salvation, by grace, through faith in Christ, in the Church He founded in His apostles. In stepping outside of this, a person can be in danger of becoming “tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles” (Eph. 4:14).

I pray that these new on-fire believers discover the fullness by grace in Christ and His Church.