Many years from now, someone might well write the history of our age in almost the same terms as this passage from Maccabees. In our age it is not just one man like King Antiochus Epiphanes who is intent on destroying our religion: many people try to seduce the faithful to compromise, to make an alliance with the world and its spirit of secularism. This spirit denies the reality and value of the spiritual and would want to make "all the peoples of the earth into one people" The unity of all humanity is, of course a very desirable ideal. Precisely because it is an ideal, however, it can only be achieved by raising up all the peoples of the world to a higher spiritual plane, where spiritual values will shape a whole new world outlook of compassion, care and acceptance. Secularism tries to achieve this unity by reducing everyone to the lowest possible level. By debasing humanity, secularism will bring us to a totally worthless unity as the dregs of civilization. The unity we seek is that of Pope John Paul II: the new civilization of love, whose foundation is the gospel of life and which is opposed absolutely to every culture of death.