Under the title provided by the Homo Legens editorial, Don Manuel’s War, its author Manuel Guerra Gómez, offers his life experience surrounded by historical controversies of current relevance within our society; in what has come to be called “Globalization”.
Throughout his life and academic and personal career, as a priest, Professor Manuel Guerra has offered us his concern and his occupation of Freemasonry and sects – in addition to his teaching on Patrology at the Faculty of Northern Theology from Spain–, with works such as Las sectas and its invasion of the Hispanic world. A guide (2003), The sects (2011), Freemasonry, religion and politics (2012), Encyclopedic dictionary of the sects (2013), The Masonic Tree (2017), among others.
Within the work we find a life experience, his first memories, his awakening for artistic beauty, his priestly vocation between the human and the divine, his explicit devotion to the Virgin, his love for the hidden and his hobbies, which are seasoned with controversial issues for social policy that are seriously affecting our societies around the world. These issues have been reflected and have their influence in legal, social, political, educational, economic circles and in national and international forums.
Sects, Freemasonry, secularization and secularism, have created a series of discrepancies from the French Revolution to the present day, which begin to forge after the Protestant reform. Subjects of study of our author, to whom he has dedicated a large part of his life, becoming one of the greatest experts in these delicate social affairs.
All these issues that are dealt with in the text are directly related to the loss of religious freedom and its exercise, even in countries that enjoy the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, more so in those countries that do not enjoy it. . Situations that create conflicts between those who believe and those who want to eliminate from society and the State any hint of a religious nature.
Taking this situation into account, he exposes those concepts and their roots that give us a general and level view of the issues that arise. Sects, Freemasonry, secularism, are taking shape in our societies, not as something static, but as something dynamic, through the New World Order: «International organizations control the supreme political, judicial, military, and legislative power, also the social and religious ethic. A new religion is imposed, which is relativistic, syncretic, secular, dialogical and gnostic, that is, Masonic »(p. 133). Situation that will have its consequences in the medium term against the Catholic Church:
«The New World Order will especially marginalize the Catholic Church […] not without first, as far as possible, having infiltrated its institutions in order to bend it and corrupt it from within […] It is post-truth, absolute and endowed subjectivism . And it imposes it in all the educational centers, state and private »(p. 134).
Professor Manuel Guerra’s experience is presented to us within the public and the private. Within the public sphere, its general space for everyone in which Christianity has a place in today’s society in the face of religious secularism so pressing today. Within the private sphere, in the person, who needs a space of security, in teaching, in politics… Both spaces, public and private, are articulated in diverse problematic situations within not only the national but also the international arena.
There are fundamentally three factors that seem to have led the author to carry out this study throughout his career as a teacher and priest: the defense of Christianity, the love for the Church and the tension that society is facing in the face of secularism and globalization. .
The context of Freemasonry and religious sects have a significant value in our social, political, cultural and historical environment. Knowing that the sectarian religious is not bad in itself: «I think that the word sect must stop being a” taboo word “, or almost intrinsically bad» (p. 165), but the ideology that is inserted through that environment religious, especially when that ideology lives in the extracts of power of the society and in the institutional.
See the significant example that the work establishes on the previous Presidents of the Government in Spain: Rodríguez Zapatero, Mariano Rajoy (pp. 193-194) or presidents of the Supreme Court and Constitutional Court (p. 178), representatives and presidents of institutions that are supposed to They should be guarantors of our rights and today of the rule of law, which are part of Freemasonry. Association that together with secularism and relativism, is being inserted within the educational field in schools and even within the Church itself, giving way to an ethical, moral and religious destruction of the human being, materializing his spiritual condition. Proof of this is the emergence of gender ideology, a field of discrimination:
«Substitute parents and guardians in their training tasks for their children and minor guardians. Furthermore, they impose a gender ideology on teachers, rushing […] and precipitating teachers in totalitarianism and indoctrination »(p. 199).
In the global of the work, it does not pretend to be a criticism, although it does take a certain position with respect to society and the Church, making a concrete exposition on the problems that we have previously warned about and opening a line of research within the academic environment , towards where the society is going and its consequences in spite of the ethical-moral degradation: «A Christian cannot not be optimistic. It will be basically in the measure of their faith in Jesus Christ and, accessory way, in that of their knowledge in the history of the Church ”(p. 246).
Within the work, which comes to be a brief compilation of his thought, based on a huge number of references that give a detailed vision of the topics he deals with, together with life experiences, the critical judgment of the social debate is illuminated. Reading the text, in simple language, without excessive technicalities, in order to reach everyone, contemplates the aspects of reality, appealing to the need for “Truth” through personal, institutional, human and social responsibility.
Society has to give an effective, coherent response to the controversy installed by the State, taking into account the social, political, religious and cultural problems faced with globalization. What is the legitimacy before globalized secularism, before the public and private expression of the religion? Is ideological gender discrimination an expression of identity? Can personal and public rights and freedoms be arbitrarily restricted by very minority groups or individual criminal actions?
Impartiality, neutrality and the rule of law can never imply going against personal property, freedoms and rights. Laicism, relativism or Freemasonry can never be the ideological confessionalism of the State, as if it consisted of a state theocracy of a new global social order. That is, minorities that seek to impose the totalitarianism of the afflicted and the restriction of personal rights within the public space and already within the private space. Absolutisms that are not what some claim to call “progressive politics”; rather, rights and freedoms are receding back into centuries past, destroying constitutional democracy and the international struggle for rights, freedoms and equality.
Given the above, in my opinion, along with the personal experience of the work, there are a number of important issues that affect society that must be taken into account. The secular, the masonic, the relativistic … cannot be constituted in a game of harmony with the anthropology of religious freedom, values, ethics, morals and customs in a peaceful expression, given that they do not they have a respect for the religious, nor a dialogue with it, but the destruction and the attack against the same human dignity before the religious; which creates controversial legal security conflicts in the short or medium term.
It is striking that study, critical vision and love for the Church can lead our author to offer himself as a holocaust for defending what he loves, justice and duty: “the two death threats, one in my house, the other in Rome […] come from the same organization ”(p. 165), without ceasing their investigative and priestly work. We can affirm that the objective is accomplished by giving us a general and personalized vision of his life and career and the foundation of his study and works.
In conclusion, Don Manuel’s War is placed on the proscenium before society as a way of raising awareness of “where we are headed”, in the face of the current lack of values and the gradual destruction of the dignity of the human being and divinity. In this context of globalization, it would be necessary to guarantee the rights of citizens to religious and educational freedom, individual and public liberties, and political rights.
