One road to heaven, a thousand roads to hell

We are, every one of us, made for heaven, made to see God. That is the only reason we were created; and all the business of life, with its ceaseless struggles, its getting and spending, its transient joys, its abiding sorrows and regrets, has, at the last, no other significance. St Augustine stated the issue at the beginning of the fifth century, and nothing has changed—Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God, and our hearts are not at rest until they rest in Thee.[1]

The devil knows this, even if we choose to close our minds to it. Having himself lost the reward of eternal beatitude, he wants to prevent men achieving it.[2] The same Augustine wrote: If the devil could do everything he wanted, there would not remain a single living human being on the earth.[3] The testimony of St John Chrysostom writing at about the same time is to similar effect: No one can feel such implacable hatred for his worst enemies as the Evil One feels for the human race.[4] And St Bonaventure, in the thirteenth century, agreed: The cruelty of the devil is such that he would devour us at any moment if the divine power did not protect us.[5]

Almighty God will not let the devil have his way with us directly. He does allow him, however, to tempt men to folly and to sin, and so to achieve his ends indirectly. The evils that beset us today—divorce, contraception, pornography, abortion, homosexual behaviour, the fertilisation in vitro of human embryos, and experimentation on these embryos; and the daily raft of murder and destruction that fills the news bulletins, are each of them a product of the success of the devil in achieving his ends in the heart of mankind. In this way does he vent his hatred for the human race; does he devour us daily; does he endeavour to destroy every single living human being on the earth.

In his 1999 study, Catholics versus Masons, Sydney philosopher and mathematician, James Franklin, remarks—Freemasonry does not have any international central controlling body—something… the Catholic Church found hard to understand.[6] Franklin’s approach to his subject does the Church less than justice for she understands something about Freemasonry that modern commentators, like Franklin, do not—that it has a universal, preternatural, controlling mind—that of Satan.

Freemasonry is not alone in this. The same mind, the mind of the devil, directs and controls the various Gnostic cults and religions. It drives the Muslim extremists who think, foolishly, that kidnapping, murder and the destruction of property are meritorious. These actions deserve, not reward, but eternal punishment and, absent repentance, those who commit them will be punished accordingly. Their conduct betrays the influence over them of the devil for, as Christ said, He was a murderer from the beginning.[7] That they should assert that in their killing of the innocent they are doing a holy duty for God only confirms the frightful influence over them of that being who is a liar and the father of lies.[8]

The greatest irony surrounds the suicide bombers, the so-called Muslim ‘martyrs’, urged on by evil ideologues promising them eternal rewards. At the very moment when, in their folly, they think to gain eternal happiness, they achieve, instead, eternal damnation. Every death of a Muslim ‘martyr’ is a triumph for the devil as he takes another soul to hell.

* *

The mind of Satan interferes with the direction of the multitude of human religions so as to divert, or pervert, whatever good intentions their founders may have had. In some—those that preach hatred of their fellow man—it is clear the devil was at work at their very inception. The same mind is at work among heretics and schismatics to mislead them. The same mind is at work even in various members of the Catholic Church to pervert their faith, or to divert them from carrying out the Church’s appointed task of getting souls to heaven.

Every aberration in religion, every false religion, and every quasi-religion, has, to a greater or lesser degree, the same characteristics—

a gnostic assertion of a superior knowledge,
based on nothing more than that assertion,
coupled with obduracy, ie, a refusal to concede that it may be wrong.

These characteristics appear (in an order of increasing turpitude) among—

private revelationists, in which are included the followers of Medjugorje, Garabandal, Bayside, Fr Gobbi and other alleged revelations which do not have the Church’s approval;
schismatics, in which are embraced members of the Orthodox Churches, the Old Catholics, Lefebvrists, and sedevacantists;
heretics, which include Modernists (who assert they are Catholics but deny elements of the Church’s Creed), Anglicans (since the Church of England has departed from Catholic doctrine), Lutherans, Calvinists and all other Protestant sects;
false religions, which include Seventh Day Adventism, Jehovah’s Witness-ism (which is a species of Arianism), Mohammedanism, and others;
cults, such as Scientology;
quasi-religions, all of which implicitly (explicitly, in their higher echelons), give worship to the devil, such as Mormonism and Freemasonry, and the many Masonic sects like Theosophy, Rosicrucianism and the Knights Templar;
the occult, in which explicit worship is given to the devil.

To the worse of these aberrations is added a further characteristic, namely esotericism, or secrecy. This is a characteristic of all cults, of Mormonism, of Freemasonry and of the occult.

* *

It is Almighty God Who has established the end of human life—union with Him. It is only logical that if we want to achieve that End, we should follow the way that He has established to get us there. That way is the Catholic Church. God is its Head[9], God is its enlivening Spirit[10], just as God is its End.

The truth of the Catholic Faith is based on its founder, Jesus Christ, who proved his claims by signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly give witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth.[11]

The weak and the scandalous priests and bishops who infest the Church should not distract us. We can get to heaven in spite of them. What matters is the Thing itself, the Church. There Christ has instituted His seven sacraments to aid us in our growth in grace. There He gives Himself each day in the Blessed Eucharist to nourish us in our journey on the road—Whoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood has eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day.[12]

There are a thousand ways to go to hell. There is only one way to get to heaven.

Michael Baker
15 th August 2005—Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady into heaven

[1]Confessions 1, 1

[2] Wisdom 2: 24—It was by the envy of the devil that death came into the world.

[3]De Malo, 16, 11, ad 10

[4]On the Priesthood, 6, 13

[5]Diaeta salutis, VII, cap. 1

[6] Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 20 (1999), 1-15

[7]John 8: 44

[8] Ibid

[9] As we have said before, the Head of the Catholic Church is not the Pope; it is Jesus Christ—that is, Almighty God. The Pope is His vicar.

[10] The soul of the Church is the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity.

[11] St Thomas Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles Bk.I, 6 [4]

[12]John 6: 54