Reflection: Now is the time of monsters

Excerpts from following reflection were published in the March 2025 Peace Current newsletter.

By Tom Cordaro
Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace
Written December 2024

As the results of the 2024 elections became clear, a dread overcame me as I pondered at the precipice of the abyss. It was in these early days after the election that I ran across a quote by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian writer, politician, and Marxist political theorist, written while he was imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascist regime in 1929: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”¹

Gramsci was not referring to the frightening imaginary creatures that populate Hollywood movies and popular literature. The word “monster” probably derives from the Latin monstrare, meaning “to demonstrate,” and monere, meaning “to warn, remind or instruct.” Monsters reveal, portend, show, and make evident, often in frightening ways. Monsters are not to be feared; they are to be exposed in the light of faith and reason.

What I find attractive in Gramsci’s quote is the way he combines a hopeful insight — “the old world is dying, and a new world struggles to be born” — with a realistic assessment of the dangers inherent during times of great upheaval: “Now is the time of monsters.” To equip ourselves for the time ahead, we will need to do more than offer words of hope and encouragement. We also need to give a name to the evils that beset us.

For many liberal/progressive Christians, this begins by interrogating the “myth of progress” that has shaped our political worldview and our religious imagination. The myth of progress refers to the belief that human society is constantly moving towards a better future. One progressive articulation of this belief is the famous quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”²

The problem with the myth of progress, especially for privileged people like me, is that it often leads to the mistaken belief that “progress” is inevitable, and the forces arrayed against it are doomed to failure. There may be setbacks, but the march of progress is irreversible and cannot be stopped. It can become easy to think that the “moral universe” operates on the principles of Newtonian physics. Progress operates like gravity; the victory will come as surely as the apple falls from the tree.

During this past election, we heard many versions of this mythical belief in progress:

• People of color benefit from liberal policies so they can be counted on to keep supporting liberal politicians. There is no need to be attentive to their needs. 
• Demographics is destiny! As we become more multi-racial, we will become more inclusive. 
• If our fellow citizens are shown the truth, they will reject ignorance, fear, and hatred and welcome a more progressive economic, political, and social future.

The November election showed us that nothing about the future is inevitable. We Christians believe in the victory of the Cross and the coming of the Reign of God. But the vindication of God’s justice at the end of time is the vision of a people who are struggling to bend that “arc of the moral universe” towards justice. …

What are we to do?

God’s time is not chronological. The God of history is not bound by calendars, clocks, or historical processes. In Scripture, God’s great acts of redemption happen “in the fullness of time” (Ephesians 1:10 and Galatians 4:4.) The Greek word for this in-breaking of God’s grace in history is kairos. Kairos Time compels us to make choices. We do not choose whether it is a Kairos time. It is God’s activity that determines the kairos. Our task is to recognize and respond. Political evil and economic injustice are a part of the context of kairos, but they are not its determining features. In a Kairos Time, God’s spirit exposes, addresses, and challenges unfaithfulness among churches and calls the People of God to repent and be reborn.

In the place of the myth of progress we are called to embrace an apocalyptic understanding of salvation history. Unfortunately, this word has become trivialized by con artists and religious cults with no knowledge or comprehension. The word apocalypse comes from the Greek word apokálypsis, which means “revelation” or “uncovering.” It is derived from the Greek verb apokalyptein, which means “to uncover, disclose, or reveal.” 

To embrace an apocalyptic understanding of salvation history means staying awake, cultivating a discerning spirit, looking in the right places, and asking the right questions. If the Gospel teaches us anything, it is that the truth is better discerned from the margins of power and privilege—not at the centers of power and privilege. For white faith-based social justice activists like me, it means learning to decenter whiteness and follow the lead of those who reside at the margins. 

Embracing an apocalyptic understanding of salvation history also means adopting a biblical critique of our Church and the wider Christian communion. All our social, economic, political, and cultural crises stem from a bankrupt moral vision that embraces Jesus as a mascot in service to the prevailing power structures. The Church is not peripheral to our justice concerns, it is central.

For decades, progressive Catholics have urged compassionate action for the common good by quoting Catholic Social Teaching, offering political, environmental, and economic analysis, and praying, studying, and acting for justice. We need something more.

An excellent template for naming the evil that besets us and countering the myth of progress is the statement written in 1989 by Christians from the Global South. “The Road to Damascus: Kairos and Conversion” was written as an appeal to Christians in the Global North³. It was written in the spirit of John the Baptist, who called the people to repentance and conversion in preparation for the messiah’s coming. 

In laying the charge against their privileged brothers and sisters, the authors write, “We have wished to make it quite clear that those Christians who side with the imperialists, the oppressors and the exploiters of people are siding with the idolaters who worship money, power, privilege, and pleasure. To misuse Christianity to defend oppression is heretical. And to persecute Christians who are oppressed or who side with the oppressed is apostasy – the abandonment of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What we are dealing with here is not simply a matter of morality or ethics. What is at stake is the true meaning of our Christian faith. Who is God? Where is the true Jesus?”⁴

At a time when White Christian Nationalism has become synonymous with Christianity in the United States, we need to act with the urgency of Martin Niemöller, Karl Barth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in their resistance to the Nazification of the Christian Church in Germany. As Bonhoeffer is credited as saying, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

To rise to the challenge of this Kairos time, we need a new vocabulary to interpret the “signs of the times,” one that goes beyond the ideologies, theories, and policy positions of the liberal political class. Fortunately, in their indictment of the Church of the Global North, our brothers and sisters of the Global South have provided us with the vocabulary we need. 

We need to call the Church to repent for the sins of:

• Idolatry, choosing to serve the idols of death rather than the God of life. Idolatry demands absolute submission and blind obedience. It thrives in the absence of hope. Idolatry’s propaganda is a series of lies, and it demands the creation of scapegoats to blame when things go wrong. Ultimately, idolatry demands human sacrifice. 

• Heresy is a form of belief that selects some parts of the Christian message and rejects other parts. Right-wing Christianity replaces Christian responsibility and trust in God with submission to the yoke of political, economic, and social power. It promotes authoritarianism and domination in family and society.

• Apostacy goes much further than heresy. It abandons the Christian faith altogether. It continues to formally profess the Christian faith but no longer believes, much less lives, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus becomes an object of worship and ceases to be “the way, the truth, and the light” (John 14:6).

• Hypocrisy was one of the things that Jesus condemned in the strongest terms. It is the practice of not practicing what is preached. It involves spiritualizing the ethical and moral demands of the Gospel to protect power, privilege, and entitlements. Whited Sepulchers is a term associated with hypocrisy and refers to those whose public image appears godly and religious but are self-serving and death-dealing. 

• Blasphemy is to misuse the name of God in defense of power, privilege, and entitlements. Among the worst forms of blasphemy are those that twist sacred truths about God into lies.

I would add to this vocabulary list the term “anti-gospel.” Acts done in the name of Christianity that are contrary to the life, teaching, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth are anti-gospel. (This term is less likely to be misinterpreted than the label “Anti-Christ.”)

Discerning the kairos is not something we control or make happen. It is something we recognize. We will not see it if we are not looking for it or if we insist that it conforms to our preconceived notions of how and why God acts in the world. 

I don’t have any answers. These are dangerous times, and there is no guarantee that things will turn out alright. We will need every bit of courage we can muster, and I will need every bit of courage I can summon to prepare for whatever comes next.

As we move forward with what little insight we have, let’s take to heart Thomas Merton’s admonition: “The awful problem of our time is not so much the dreams, the monsters, which may take shape and consume us, but the moral paralysis in our own souls, which leaves us immobile, inert, passive, tongue-tied, and even willing to succumb.”

1. English translation Selections from the Prison Notebooks, “Wave of Materialism” and “Crisis of Authority” (NY: International Publishers), (1971), pp. 275-276. ↩︎
2. From a speech he gave at the Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968. ↩︎
3. “The Road to Damascus: Kairos and Conversion,” signed by Christians from El Salvador, Guatemala, Korea, Namibia, Nicaragua, Philippines, and South Africa, published by Catholic Institute for International Relations, London, UK 1989
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4. Ibid.
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