Let us imagine that we travel through time to the 1950s occidental world. We step into a New York cafe, a London pub, or a Paris bistro, and we strike up a conversation with an average, intellectual, decently paid, Christian citizen – in other words, a classic representative of the medium class of its country. 

We would start describing to them how the future would look in January 2020 (before the pandemic). 

Let’s start by telling them that what they call ‘decency’ would be overcome and that clothing would be considered cool the more it would be damaged or foul. 

Let’s tell them the man of the future would think their politeness ‘overrated,’ that hypocrisy of egalitarianism would replace that of respect. 

Or that 70 years in the future, their descendants wouldn’t have the chance to smoke in a bar if they were to smoke regular cigarettes. But they would have the freedom to take drugs – sometimes legally, but most of the time, semi-legally (what police officer would now make a big deal when smelling ‘grass’?). 

They would find out that it is no longer trendy to be married to a woman. You can now live with her in a partnership. However, they would find out that it is now fashionable for homosexuals to marry and even adopt children. 

But we will tell them about what conservative values would look like in 2020. In 70 days, it would be ’a la mode’ to change your gender as per your wishes, and not necessarily through an operation. The government would accept your desire without asking too many questions – all to prevent discriminating against you, of course. 

They would also find out that churches would ‘evolve’ and would give up most of their ‘uncool’ doctrine. For example, some priests could be gay, and the story about Sodom and Gomorrah would be removed from the Bible. Some churches would allow women to be priests. Some might be lesbians and married to their girlfriends, but that would no longer be an obstacle in the way of them becoming bishops. 

They would also learn that universities would have given up their classic dogma just to make the ‘marginal’ ones feel privileged – who aren’t marginal without any reason. 

They would find out that the silliness that amuses them when reading the papers with regard to psychoanalysts would become not just ‘official science’ but would also be imposed through laws… that it would be impossible to do anything without the approval of a psychoanalyst. 

Moreover, they would learn that abortion would no longer be considered a crime. Instead, it would become a contraceptive method… that old and depressed people would be euthanized civilly, by request or depending on the severity of their disease. 

They would find out that all of the above aren’t just trifles. No!

All of them would be protected by law and imposed through censorship. 

While they would fear that their world and liberties would be threatened by the communist plague brought by the Soviets, they would have to be worried that in 2020, their freedom would be censored by political correctness, by authorities that would ensure that calling white ‘white’ and calling black ‘black’ does not happen—all of this under the spectrum of being accused of fascism or even communism. 

We would have so much to tell them… 

Let’s try and tell them that in February/March of 2020, the Western world would give up any trace of liberal democracy so as not to suffer from the flu. 

Do you think this 1950s individual would feel other than bemused by our musings? What decent person living in the 1950s would or could have imagined that 70 years into the future, logic and rationality would be replaced by desire and whim logic – and that illusions or dreams would be discriminated against by reality and consequently be censured? They would think that we, the ones telling them this, would merely be oddballs with a somewhat deranged imagination. 

In 70 years, the Western world, on the background of unparalleled economic development along with an intellectual frenzy that started in several artistic vernissage outlets, would conquer universities, the media, and then, the political class would decimate Christian civilization, Christian morals, and the common sense of being a Christian. But that rationality, logic, and coherence would be their weapons. 

Unfortunately, this frenzy would also have a bill to pay. 

A bill already noted in Scripture and by the Patron Saints:

Anthony the Great: A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, “You are mad; you are not like us.”