Fr. John A. Perricone: Heaven Is Only in Heaven

By Fr. John A. Perricone, Crisis Magazine, May 9, 2024

Fr. John A. Perricone, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of philosophy at Iona University in New Rochelle, New York. His articles have appeared in St. John’s Law Review, The Latin Mass, New Oxford Review and The Journal of Catholic Legal Studies. He can be reached at www.fatherperricone.com.

Secularism tries to turn this world into a atheistic heaven. Our only defense against this lie is the Ascended Christ.

No morning passes these days when a Catholic does not wake up to the unsettling presence of that two-headed beast that roams about our society: secularism. One of its heads is atheism—modern man’s passion to be god, and the other is utopianism—man’s other obsession to turn this world into some kind of heaven. These are twin evils, feeding off one another. Seldom can a culture survive their terrors. Christ’s grace alone can slay them.

Christ’s grace alone lets us even see them, for their greatest triumph is to convince men that they are his greatest triumph. Thus, Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass: “Nothing, not God, /Is greater to one/Than one’s self is.” Percy Bysshe Shelley is even more chilling in Prometheus Unbound, when he shrieks at an image of Christ Crucified, “O Horrible! Thy name/I will not speak/it has become a curse.” Indeed, this is nothing less than a beast in our midst. …

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