Gary Wills says he is a follower of Christ. He even wrote a proclamation entitled Why I Am a Catholic. I assume that he means catholic in its pre-Christian "universal" sense. Universal forces are indeed at work, of which he’s well aware. Wills considers Christ the force that will end all religions. Yet as a regular contributor to The Nation (the most committed Marxist magazine in America), Wills refuses to admit that Marxism is a religion for atheists or a "political religion," as Michael Burleigh so eloquently reminds us in his book Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, from the French Revolution to the Great War.

Wills wrote an article for The Nation entitled What Jesus Meant, in which he uses Christ’s non-violence as his rationalization for not intervening for the cause of freedom, certainly not with weapons, which makes him almost as much a Buddhist as a self-proclaimed Catholic.

Wills is in actuality a Liberation Theologian – a philosophy denounced by the Vatican in the 1960s. Now it’s back, stronger than ever. Now that the end of the Catholic Church as we know it seems imminent, some North American Reds are even picking dates. A feminist Master of Ceremonies for the History Channel quoted some leftist prophet as predicting the fall of the Vatican would occur in 2010. Perhaps that’s why I worry about our Pope’s well-being on the Ides of March of that year.

In John, 18:36, our Lord explains why his followers won’t try and prevent the Pharisees and the Roman Empire from killing Him: "But for now my reign is not of this present order (kosmos)."

Boy, this is heavy, particularly with the Greek original throwing in a cosmological meaning.

Maybe in another cosmos we might see the Second Coming: that is, violence from a non-violent Lord. Not now, though… but then was 2,000 years ago. So Catholics had better lay low until the great Liberation Theologians take over the Church.

Or perhaps, since Wills claims that St. Paul believed the End Times were imminent to his generation (that is, the epoch of Paul of Tarsus), the Second Coming happened already. Christ did hunt hypocrites. Wills is right about that; there’s been never a more institutionalized hypocrisy than the Catholic Church as we’ve known it.

"The answer is," writes Wills, "that Jesus did not come to bring any form of politics."

Wills states categorically that religion killed Christ. I note that this scholar won’t capitalize the pronoun "him" when referring to Christ – a matter of academic taste, I suppose. Wills’ readers, most of them borderline believers in something greater than themselves, are still not ready to believe in God! They think that a better alternative to the Second Coming is on the way.

Well, it’s cheating to give two different translations of the same passage in the same book. Wills quotes Christ’s answer to Pontius Pilate when making two separate points in What Jesus Meant. In the first quote, the word "kosmos" (or "order") is used twice. In the second quote, Wills translates "kosmos" as "here."

So is the author a deconstructionist as well? No, that would be too complicated. When did Wills become a translator of ancient Greek? I began to learn this obscure language at age 16 in the University of Detroit Jesuit High School. I’ve forgotten everything about it except the depth of concentration required to leap back thousands of years and realize how old words really are, and how much importance their absolute meanings contain. We all must agree that "order" does not mean the same thing as "here."

Wills’ Christ seems to have escaped the Vatican with the Protestant Reformation, dropped a few seeds of Christian franchise around the world, then became a Communist for a while, or at least unleashed his final version of the Holy Ghost called Liberation Theology.

Philosopher Simone Weil knew for certain in the 1930s that Christ never left the Catholic Church, which she described as a "great totalitarian beast with an incorruptible core of truth."

And now you, sir, would come snaking your way into the Holy of Holies, sharing Christ the Rebel with us, telling us that religion killed Him, yet Anglicans understand the meaning of "when two or more are gathered together" better than Catholics. You still call yourself a Catholic while patronizing Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II.

I knew how deep a Communist Wills was when he stole the idea of Judas as a hero from a self-avowed Communist playwright, Eric Bentley. However, Wills goes even further: he makes Judas a saint!

You should go into the theatre, sir, or better yet, into film. Yes, join Paul Haggis and write a screenplay showing Judas and Christ hanging out together in heaven, slapping each other’s backs over how well they both played their roles.

A German émigré to Halifax once told me: "Hitler’s in heaven!" I almost slapped her. Instead, I took my wife and stepchildren out of her house, vowing never to "lighten" her door again.

So, I hope and pray that Wills is the last St. Judas to ever darken the history of Christendom again. I know your colleagues in the College of Cardinals need a pep rally, something published in America to let the Yankee Bourgeoisie know "wha’s happenin’," but really, sir, with Judas as your hero, don’t you think it’s about time you found that tree he hung himself from? Despite your loathing for religion, Mr. Wills, you have actually joined the Church of Judas. There’s always a very pagan ritual involving human sacrifice performed for the delight of its congregation.