Only Christ, His Truth, and Membership in His Mystical Body can rescue the World
There is only one Rescuer of mankind from the great frustration of man’s gravitational pull towards egotism (the source of atomization in society, of all conflicts and wars, and social disgregation): the Incarnate Son of God, Christ Jesus.
By being united to the Mystical Body of the Lord of History who once said “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), Catholics know that they too can conquer the “Axis of Evil” made visible so often in the “structures of sin” present in so many institutions of contemporary society. As Christopher Dawson wrote in “The Nature and Destiny of Man”:
“This restoration or recreation of humanity is the essential doctrine of Christianity.
“Jesus Christ is to the Catholic not a prophet and teacher like the founders of other great religions, nor even is He only the divine revealer of God to man: He is the restorer of the human race, the New Man, in whom humanity has a fresh beginning and man acquires a new nature.
“His work was genetic and creative in an absolutely unique sense, for it brought into the world a new kind of life which has the power to transmute and absorb into itself the lower forms of physical and psychical life which exist in man, i.e. the Christian does not simply acquire extrinsic supernatural faculties, his whole life becomes supernatural, and finally even his body shares in the new life, cf. Romans 8:19.
“It is the ‘new birth from above’ (John 3:3) of which Christ speaks to Nicodemus, a mysterious force, the power and reality of which are manifest, while its cause and working are as invisible as the wind. […]
“For it is only through Christ, the second Adam, and in the organic connection with Him, that the new humanity is to be built up.
“By the vital activity of the Spirit of Christ working through the Church and the Sacraments, mankind is remoulded and renewed; the disorder and weakness of human nature is overcome, and the domination of charity in spiritual love is substituted for the blindness of physical impulse and the narrowness and evil of selfish desire.
“Thus, the Catholic view of life involves a fundamental opposition between the new force that has entered human life through Christ, and the disordered material activity which it replaces.
“This opposition shows itself in Christian asceticism, in the monastic ideal of perfection, the cult of virginity, and the mortification of the body…” […]
“The life of the faithful during the present world-age is consequently of a double or intermediate character. They share in the life of two worlds, one dying, the other still in the womb.
“Their bodies are still ‘subject to the bondage of corruption’, the powers of this world-age are against them, the force of spiritual evil is still unsubdued, but by their membership of the Church they already belong to the new world which is being built up invisibly under the veil of the old, and their possession of the Spirit and His gifts is a ‘pledge of the world to come’, an assurance of the reality of the new life.
“Thus the divine life that they possess now by grace is essentially the same as that which will be manifested in the next world in glory. Indeed, the true line of division runs not between Heaven and Earth, but between the natural and the supernatural orders in this present world.
“The gulf between the ‘psychic’ or animal man who lives by the law of his body or by the law of self-interest, and the Christian who lives by the Spirit, is greater than the gulf between the Christian on earth and the glorified souls of the saints in Heaven.” (Christopher Dawson, “The Nature and Destiny of Man” in Fr. Cuthbert [editor], God and the Supernatural, London, 1936, excerpts from pp.74-75)
In conclusion, only the Catholic Faith contains the divinely received knowledge and authority capable of establishing the right order of society according to the requirements of Divine Truth and Love. The Faith alone enlightens man’s mind and overcomes the darkness that plagues non-Christian civilizations. As Newman stated:
“There is in truth a certain virtue or grace in the Gospel which changes the quality of doctrines, opinions, usages, actions, and personal characters when incorporated with it and makes them right and acceptable to its Divine Author, whereas before they were either infected with evil, or at best but shadows of the truth.” (J. H. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine)