Lord of the World, by Robert Hugh Benson - 3/27/2015 - Justin Mikula and Zeb Bartels

Hi Joe, if we still don't have a book for next time I saw this about an interesting book Pope Francis is recommending. A revealing book recommendation from the Pope Sounds like it zeroes in on the issue we seem to come to with every book, the perils modernism.

				A revealing book recommendation from the Pope Twice now, Pope Francis has recommended Robert Hugh Benson's apocalyptic novel, Lord of the World. It’s interesting that an English novel—written more than a cen...
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from wikipedia

According to his biographer, Fr. Cyril Martindale, Mgr. Benson's depiction of the future was in many ways an inversion of the science fiction novels of H.G. Wells. In particular, Benson was sickened by Wells' belief that Atheism, Marxism, World Government, and Eugenics would lead to an earthly utopia. Due to his depiction of a Wellsian future as a global police state, Benson's novel has been called one of the first modern works of dystopian fiction.

Writing during the pontificate of Pope Pius X and prior to the First World War, Monsignor Benson accurately predicted interstate highways and passenger air travel using an advanced form of Zeppelin called the "volor". However, he also presumed the survival of the British Empire and predominant travel by rail. Like many other Catholics of the era in which he wrote, Monsignor Benson shares the political and economic views of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.

Papal Statements[edit]

Pope Francis

On February 8, 1992, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger criticized U. S. President George H. W. Bush's recent speech calling for "a New World Order" in a speech of his own at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. In his discourse, the future Pope explained that Monsignor Benson's novel described "a similar unified civilization and its power to destroy the spirit. The anti-Christ is represented as the great carrier of peace in a similar new world order."^[60]

Cardinal Ratzinger proceeded to quote from Pope Benedict XV's 1920 encyclical Bonum sane: "The coming of a world state is longed for, by all the worst and most distorted elements. This state, based on the principles of absolute equality of men and a community of possessions, would banish all national loyalties. In it no acknowledgement would be made of the authority of a father over his children, or of God over human society. If these ideas are put into practice, there will inevitably follow a reign of unheard-of terror."^[60]

In a sermon in November, 2013, Pope Francis praised Lord of the World as depicting, "the spirit of the world which leads to apostasy almost as if it were a prophecy."^[61]

In early 2015, Pope Francis further revealed Benson's influence upon his thinking by telling a plane load of reporters. At first apologizing for making "a commercial", Pope Francis further praised Lord of the World, despite its being "a bit heavy at the beginning". Pope Francis elaborated, "It is a book that, at that time, the writer had seen this drama of ideological colonization and wrote that book... I advise you to read it. Reading it, you'll understand well what I mean by ideological colonization."^[62]