Which Cornerstone?, preached on October 27, 2026

Christ is not only the foundation of the church, it's the foundation of all civilization.

There's a commentator, author I follow from time to time, Stefan Molyneux, he claims to be an atheist.

He's just a garden variety atheist, nothing challenging there.

But he's got interesting things to say, and he himself has said, civilization is Western civilization, and Western civilization is the Catholic Church.

I was reaching for my holy water and was going to invite to baptize him, but I didn't have his phone number.

But he saw it to be true.

I mean, all the things we like about what's called civilization, like the rule of law, the enforceability of contracts, high trust society, science, education, the arts, etc., That all stems from Christendom built on the foundation of Christ, the cornerstone.

And then, of course, the one church he founded.

But some clever people figured out, you know, that live in that first commandment, That's really tied to the Sixth Commandment, and that's kind of a deal breaker for us, so let's look for alternatives.

Now, a lot of the people who got that ball rolling, they spoke French, later a lot of them spoke German, and nowadays a lot of them sound like real Americans.

But the point is, Christ had to go because of the sixth commandment and because of the accountability to God implied in the first commandment.

So it all had to go.

And the lie was that all the things we liked about civilization, like reason and order and the rule of law and education and science and contracts, that would all stay.

We would just get rid of those pesky first and sixth commandments.

and that illusion that fantasy became known as secularism and if you follow the headlines i hope you don't follow the headlines as much as i have to i really don't but if you follow the headlines secularism isn't doing so well these days and they keep loading it up with drugs and putting electric paddles on it and the body bounces a little bit, but it's dead.

And it's not coming back.

And nature abhors a vacuum.

So secularism got rid of the cornerstone, Christ.

And then in recent years, some other people, variously known as adherents of the religion of peace, said, hey, nice place you got here.

You mind if we move in? This is my family.

And by the way, we have our own cornerstone.

That's not going to be a problem, right? And the secular said, now who needs a cornerstone? And then senior Catholic cadres of the people who should really know Better Club said, no, it'll be fine.

And if you look around the headlines, that isn't working out too.

So we really only have three options.

We have the no cornerstone option, which is secularism, which is obviously not doing really well.