On Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s Life is Worth Living show of February 2, 1953 — the episode entitled “The Death of Stalin” — Sheen enacted Mark Antony’s eulogy for Julius Caesar, substituting Malenkov and Stalin as the two characters. “And now Malenkov speaks: ‘Friends, Soviets, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Stalin, not to praise him.’” At the climax of his soliloquy, Sheen thunders, “Stalin must one day meet his judgment!”

On March 1, Stalin suffered a stroke at age 75, and by March 5 the Soviet leader was dead. Some attribute the timing to mere coincidence; others, to something more. Sheen seemed to have a prophetic vision that I found captivating. Current events show many of his predictions have come true. Moral relativism, destruction of the family unit, situation ethics, increased fornication and abortion are some evils of atheistic Communism that he saw would infect the West.

The epic biography Mao: The Unknown Story (by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, 2005) tells how Mao depended on Stalin to effect the rise of Communist China. While Stalin lived, Mao cleverly manipulated him to help build a superpower nation with atomic weaponry. This was financed by extorting grain and other food stuffs from Chinese peasants made to live in squalor and starvation. Mao imposed such unbearable demands on Chinese farmers that peasant parents sold or even ate their children to survive. Mao was unmoved by such evil, and in fact welcomed it to subdue the masses to his will.

Bishop Sheen kept abreast of Mao’s megalomania, his personality cult, and his total disregard for human life, which led to the eventual destruction of 100 million rural people who meant nothing to him. Meanwhile, Mao sated all his sensual appetites in lavish comfort. The story is distressing to read.

Communism turned a once-Buddhist nation toward a pseudo-religion demanding devotion to its leader.

The entire story is important because there are startling parallels between modern Communist China and what’s happening in America today:

China’s social-credit scoring and widespread surveillance is effectively the god-state monitoring every citizen’s behavior. Pushes for replacement of church-based charitable organizations with the public dole is another example of the government-god.

The recent political power-grab via pandemic mandates is akin to Communist tactics to strike fear into the hearts of all who dare resist conformity. Government meddling and coercion, shown in the extended eviction moratorium’s “watch us hurt the bad landlords,” echoes Stalin’s “massacre the landowners.” Bans on personal weapons mimic Communist firearms round-ups to control the citizenry.

The destruction of churches and historic statues occurred in China’s “Great Leap Forward.” Public self-denigration by designated political scapegoats is the atheistic version of confession of sins. As for the intelligentsia, Mao purged most academics but exempted the scientists.

Mao made a religion of the Party and aimed for conversion of all nations to Communism, saying, “Democracy, freedom, equality, fraternity were but propaganda for political purposes.” After Russia handed over the atom bomb, Mao declared, “We must control the Earth.” He said “half of China may have to die” and was prepared “to lose 300 million Chinese for our victory in the world revolution.”

Bishop Sheen’s Communism and the Conscience of the West (1948) explains our vulnerability. “The Western world generally has lost the concept of man as a creature made in the image and likeness of God, and reduced him… to a component part of the universe… This distortion of the true nature of man was due principally to the philosophy of historical liberalism, which saw man as endowed with no higher destiny than the economic. There is no word more dangerous than liberalism because to oppose it is a new unforgivable sin.”

Chinese Communism is a pseudo-religion devoted to its leader, currently Xi, who has a lifetime presidency. Xi, Mao’s successor, could conquer the world. An America no longer standing on the Rock of Ages may be unable to stop it.