George Weigel on Tribulation Compounded by Blasphemy

The following comes from George Weigel:

As the Revised Standard Version renders the 14th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Barnabas remind the proto-Christians of Antioch that it is only “through many tribulations” that we enter the Kingdom of God. The New American Bible translation drives the point home even more sharply: “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.”

Christians in the United States who imagined that, whatever tribulations or hardships they have to endure, they would not include speeches by the president of the United States and the policies of the United States government had better reconsider, in light of President Barack Obama’s April 26 address to the annual Planned Parenthood Gala at Washington’s Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.

It was an appalling speech that had the sole benefit of clarifying the last-ditch commitment of the present administration to the most open-ended abortion license possible. And it drew a line in the sand that those committed to the biblical view of the sanctity of human life cannot ignore—and must challenge.

Planned Parenthood is a multimillion-dollar industry, funded in no small part by the federal government, that has been directly responsible for the deaths of millions of unborn children and is currently responsible for over one thousand such deaths every day; yet the president described Planned Parenthood’s work as “providing quality health care to women all across America.”

Pro-life advocates’ efforts to craft state laws requiring Planned Parenthood clinics and other abortionists to follow the minimal sanitation and safety standards required of true medical facilities are, according to the president, a matter of “shutting off communities that need more health care options for women, not less.”

The clinic-regulation laws that have been passed in states across the country are, the president charged, part of an “orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women’s health”—as if abortuaries that do not meet the health and safety standards required of your local McDonald’s are contributing to anyone’s “health.”

Moreover, such laws are an attempt to mandate “government injecting itself into decisions best made between a woman and her doctor”—as if a butcher like Philadelphia’s Kermit Gosnell, who severed the spinal cords of infants born alive in botched abortions, was any woman’s personal physician.

Perhaps because the Obama speech to Planned Parenthood coincided with Gosnell’s homicide trial, the president did not utter the word “abortion” once. But the timing notwithstanding, that omission was hardly surprising in an address that may have set a new standard for deliberate misrepresentation of reality. For it requires willful moral blindness about reality to say that “what Planned Parenthood is about” is helping “a woman from Chicago named Courtney” make sure she could start a family, by providing “access to affordable contraceptive care to keep her healthy” in the face of a fertility-threatening disease. Today, President Obama noted to applause, “She’s got two beautiful kids. That’s what Planned Parenthood is about.”

About the millions of “beautiful kids” (many of them African-American) who were never born because of Planned Parenthood, the president of the United States had not a word to say. Not a word of remorse. Not a word of compassion, for either the slaughtered innocents of our time or the mothers suffering post-abortion trauma. Just a celebration of “your right to choose,” without the slightest moral pause over the question, “Choose what?” 
But there was worse. For President Obama concluded his remarks as follows: “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you…”

And that is nothing short of blasphemy.

Too harsh? No. For in its discussion of this grave sin against the Second Commandment, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 2148) teaches that “it is also blasphemous to make use of God’s name to … reduce people to servitude, to torture persons or to put them to death.” That is precisely what happens in Planned Parenthood abortuaries. And on that, the president of the United States called down the divine blessing.

Pray for him. Pray for the United States, which is in very, very serious trouble.

Archbishop Chaput: The Gospel of Jesus Christ is for the brave; not the complacent, and not cowards

The following comes from the CNA:

Violence and grief in the Boston area have rightly dominated our news media for the past week. The latest terrorist bloodshed is not at all senseless. It’s the work of calculated malice. Innocent people, including children, have paid the price for other people’s hatred. Our most important task right now is to pray for the victims and their families.

God exists, and God can heal even the worst suffering, despite every human attempt to ignore him and every terrible sin that seems to “disprove” his presence. And yet it’s fair to ask: How can a good God allow this kind of evil to happen?

The answer is both simple and hard. There’s nothing soft-focus or saccharine about real Christianity. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is for the brave; not the complacent, and not cowards. The world and its beauty give glory to God; but we live in it with divided hearts, and so the world is also a field of conflict. God’s son died on a cross and rose from the dead to deliver us from our sins. He didn’t take away our freedom to choose evil. Until this world ends, some people will do vile and inhuman things to others.

The irony of human dignity is that it requires our freedom. It depends on our free will. We own our actions. And free persons can freely choose to do wicked things. Spend an hour browsing through Scripture: It’s the story of a struggle between good and evil that cuts bloodily through every generation in history. And the story is made bearable, and given meaning, only by the fidelity of God – the constancy of his justice, his mercy, his solace, his love.

Within hours of the Boston bombings, public officials were telling the nation that terrorists would not be allowed to destroy “our way of life.” It’s the duty of leaders – an important duty – to reassure and strengthen their people in times of tragedy. Our country has a vast reservoir of goodness built up by generations of good people. America’s best ideals are well worth fighting for. But we also need to remember that our way of life is as mortal as every other great power; and sooner or later, America will be a footnote in history. Only God is forever.

In the coming weeks, in the wake of the Boston tragedy, we’d do well to ponder what “our way of life” is beginning to mean. No one deserved to die in Boston. Terrorism isn’t washed clean by claims of psychological instability or U.S. policy sins abroad. And no one should be eager to see in the carnage of innocent spectators God’s judgment on a morally confused culture here at home.

And yet, something is wrong with our way of life, and millions of people can feel it; something selfish, cynical, empty and mean. Something that acts like a magnet to the worst impulses of the human heart. We’re no longer the nation of our founders, or even of our parents. Some of their greatness has been lost.

The character of our way of life depends on the character of my way life, multiplied by the tens of millions. We shouldn’t waste time being shocked or baffled by the evil in the world. It has familiar roots. It begins in the little crevices of each human heart – especially our own.

In the days ahead we need to pray for the dead and wounded in Boston, and their families. And then, with the help of God, we need to begin to change ourselves. That kind of conversion might seem like a small thing, an easy thing – until we try it. Then we understand why history turns on the witness of individual lives.

Archbishop Chaput: "America is mission territory—whether we recognize it yet or not..."

The following comes from the Catholic World Report:

The following is an excerpt from the Foreword to Russell Shaw's book, American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America, written by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M.Cap., of Philadelphia:

What people really believe, they act on. And when they don’t act, they don’t really believe. For all of us as American Catholics, this issue of faith is the heart of the matter. Real faith changes us. It hammers us into a new and different shape. We too often confuse faith with theology or ethics or pious practice or compassionate feelings, all of which are important—vitally important. But real faith forces us to face the deeply unsettling command given to each of us in the First Letter of Peter: “As he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct” (1:15).

Holiness means being in the world but not of it. It means being different fromand other than the ways of our time and place, and being conformed to the ways of God, as Isaiah says: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Is 55:8, 9).

To the degree Catholics have longed to join the mainstream of American life, to become like everyone else, to accommodate and grow comfortable and assimilate, rather than be “other than” and holy, we’ve abandoned who we really are. Clergy and religious face this temptation just as vividly as laypersons. Like the Jews in the days of Jeremiah, too many American Catholics have too often forgotten the covenant. We’ve “burned incense to other gods, and worshiped the works of [our] own hands” (Jer 1:16). We’ve ignored the final command Christ gave to all of us when he said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” He was speaking to each of us, right here and right now. Catholics are a missionary people led and served by a missionary priesthood.

So I think this, then, is the lesson of the last fifty years for all of us. We need to return to Christ’s call to “repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:15). We need a Church rooted in holiness. We need parishes on fire with faith. And we will get them only when we ourselves fundamentally change; when we center our lives in God; when we seek to become holy ourselves.

Throughout his long ministry, Blessed Pope John Paul II urged Catholics again and again to take up the task of a “new evangelization” of the world. Seeking an armistice with the spirit of the world, both outside us and within us, is an illusion. The Church in the United States faces an absolutely new and absolutely real kind of mission territory every day now, filled with intractable pastoral challenges. We’re a nation of wealth, sophisticated media, and excellent universities. We’re also a nation of aborted children, the unemployed, migrant workers, undocumented immigrants, the homeless, and the poor.

We live in a nation of great material success and scientific self-assurance but also a nation where the inner life is withering away, where private spiritualities replace communities of real faith, and where loneliness is now the daily routine of millions of people.

America is mission territory—whether we recognize it yet or not; whether we live in New York or Atlanta or Phoenix—and we need a new Pentecost. We need to be people who are men and women of prayer, people of courage, people of service, men and women anchored in the sacramental life of the Church. …

Russell Shaw has lived his own life of Christian witness with uncommon integrity, humility, and keen intelligence. His skill animates every page of [The American Church]. He has captured the story of the Church in the United States with honesty and love, and it’s a privilege to call him my friend.

Visit the Ignatius Press website to learn more about the book.

42: A Review by George Weigel

The following comes from George Weigel:

Baseball and movies don’t often play well together. William Bendix as a Marine who dies happy in “Guadalcanal Diary” because he’s just heard that the Dodgers have won is an icon of 1940s Americana; the same William Bendix as the Bambino in “The Babe Ruth Story” is a sad business, to be consigned to the (bad) memory bank. “The Natural” and “Bull Durham” have their moments, but when push comes to shove, they’re both, finally, about something other than baseball. “61*,” Billy Crystal’s made-for-HBO flick about Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and the chase for Ruth’s single-season home-run is a terrific story of male friendship (and gave this lifelong Yankees-deplorer a soft spot for the 1961 Bronx Bombers); but computer-graphic reconstructions of old ballparks being what they were when it was made in 2001—i.e., not that persuasive—“61*” just misses being a great baseball movie.

Now comes “42,” the long-awaited cinematic telling of the Jackie Robinson story, which I recently saw on a snowy April Sunday afternoon in the Twin Cities. I wouldn’t call it a great movie (like, for example, “The King’s Speech”); but it’s a very, very good movie, and an entirely plausible challenger to “61*” as the best baseball movie ever made. Chadwick Boseman captures some of the fierce intensity, and a lot of the raw courage, of the man who broke baseball’s color line. It wasn’t easy to imagine Han Solo, Indiana Jones, or President James Marshall (“Air Force One”) as Branch Rickey, the cigar-chomping, ultra-Methodist general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers whose Christian decency and shrewd business sense led him to take on the entire baseball establishment by signing Jackie Robinson; but Harrison Ford pulls off that role with aplomb. Kudos, too, to Nicole Beharie for capturing the steely grace, beauty and guts of Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s wife, who put up with all the racism that her husband endured and who, with him, embodied for millions of Americans the meaning of the civil rights anthem, “We Shall Overcome.”

Columnist George F. Will once wrote that Jackie Robinson was second—a “very close second”—to Martin Luther King Jr. in the pantheon of African Americans who reversed a nation’s racial attitudes and helped create what is, today, the most racially egalitarian society in history. “42” is a useful reminder of just how much those men, and others, had to overcome: Robinson’s teammates are, to put it gently, unenthusiastic about his presence among them; the Phillies’ race-baiting manager, Ben Chapman, mercilessly harasses Number 42 when he comes up to the plate; the Cardinals’ Enos Slaughter deliberately spikes Robinson on a routine play at first base; Pirates’ pitcher Fritz Ostermueller throws a killer pitch that smashes into Robinson’s temple (in the days before batting helmets); potty-mouthed fans remind us just how foul American racial epithets could be—and how children were taught to imitate the sins of their parents.

And through it all, Jackie Robinson, in that first, crucial season, stuck to the promise he had made Branch Rickey: he would have the courage not to fight back, save in playing some of the most electrifying baseball ever seen, especially on the basepaths.

Branch Rickey was dubbed “the Mahatma” by a Brooklyn sportswriter who thought the Dodger g.m.’s style akin to that of Mohandas K. Ghandi, whom John Gunther once described as “an incredible combination of Jesus Christ, Tammany Hall and your father.”  And to the credit of screenwriter Brian Helgeland, “42” doesn’t gloss over Rickey’s Christian faith, or Jackie Robinson’s, and the role that Christian conviction played in forging their relationship and their ultimate victory. Still, when the packed crowd in that Minneapolis theatre burst into applause at the end of the movie a few weeks ago, I didn’t read it as an endorsement of Methodist theology or piety.

Rather, it seemed to me welcome evidence that, amidst vast cultural and political confusions, Americans still believe in moral truths, moral absolutes, and moral courage—and yearn for opportunities to celebrate them. There’s an important lesson in that for the country’s religious and political leaders.

Russel Shaw calls for US 'Catholic subculture' to regain identity

(CNA) To counter decades of Catholics becoming absorbed into secular American culture, noted author and journalist Russell Shaw is proposing a new Catholic “subculture” committed to evangelization.

“We're no longer evangelizing the culture, we've been evangelized by it, and it's not good for the secular culture, and it's destroying us as a religious community,” Shaw told CNA on April 16.

“My critique of Americanism and of cultural assimilation is very real,” he explained. “What has happened has turned out not to be in the best interest of the Catholic Church in the U.S., but no one started out with bad intentions.”

Shaw is the author of “American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America,” which is published by Ignatius Press and was released at the end of March.

The book contains a foreword by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia, who discusses the dangerous temptation for Catholics to “become like everyone else....rather than be 'other than' and holy,” agreeing that American Catholics have largely “abandoned who we really are.”

Shaw's work, originally titled “The Gibbons Legacy,” begins by examining “Americanism,” which was a “naively optimistic” view of the compatibility between Catholicism and the American ethos of individualism, popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Americanism was championed by such figures as Archbishop John Ireland of Saint Paul and Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore. It was opposed by Leo XIII and by Orestes Brownson, a Catholic intellectual who argued that there is a “radical incompatibility” between the American ethos and traditional Catholicism.

“Whether Brownson was or wasn't correct in his time, it's to a great extent turned out that way today, in the wake of four decades of profound and alarming change in the character of American secular culture,” Shaw said.

He noted the falling number of priests and religious in the U.S., as well as declining participation in the sacraments, an exodus from the Church and the large amount of “Catholics in name only,” attributing these figures to the cultural assimilation of Catholics into the mainstream.

The story told in “American Church,” Shaw said, is one “without villains,” but is it is about “generally decent, good people trying to do the right thing, but often in retrospect not doing the right thing, blundering, making large mistakes, which we're only now coming to realize and understand clearly.”

“And which we need to rectify before it's too late,” he stressed.

Among his reasons for writing the book, Shaw said, is to examine questions of Catholic identity and history in the U.S. and to “call what I think are the right answers to the attention of as many people as possible.”

That way, he explained, “instead of just muddling through and hoping for the best, we can proceed in a rational, self-conscious manner to achieve the sort of goals and objectives that we want to achieve, rather than sometime in the future ending up in a state of affairs that we didn't anticipate and don't particularly like, which could happen.”

As a solution to the problem of the faithful being absorbed into secular culture, Shaw proposed the creation of a new “Catholic subculture” that promotes Catholic identity while being evangelistic rather than being focused inward like the “Catholic ghetto” of the early 20th century.

Shaw agrees with those who would denounce an inward-focused Catholic subculture whose institutions are laughable to secular culture. However, he maintains that a healthy Catholic subculture is necessary for the Catholics to thrive as Catholics: “absent a subculture, you won't have any group identity.”

“You'll be what we are now, a rather amorphous group, a label for convenience's sake: 'the Catholic Church in the U.S.', but a splintered group in which a very large number of the putative members are not really Catholic in any meaningful sense at all.”

“In the late 50s through the 70s, we gave up on the Catholic subculture in a big way, and that's the era when we lost a lot of the older Catholic institutions, and those that remained went secular,” he observed.

More than half a century ago, Shaw noted, Catholicism was “well on its way to becoming a profoundly effective culture-forming factor in the United States.”

But now, he explained, the Church has no significant influence on the broader secular culture because so many American Catholics have plunged “unconditionally” into that culture.

The solution, a new subculture, must be based in “a Catholic identity which is outward looking and which is profoundly and radically committed to evangelization” of the larger culture, the author emphasized.

This subculture must sustain its members and maintain Catholic identity.

“You have to get your identity, values, and commitments right, or you're going to be in serious trouble,” he said.

Shaw sees promising signs of the framework for this Catholic subculture, including new media ventures such as Catholic News Agency, new Catholic educational institutions such as Ave Maria University, and “the return to a more orthodox brand of Catholicism on the part of at least some older academic institutions, such as Catholic University of America.”

He added that a new subculture will require both those deeply immersed in it, who “provide reinforcement and catechesis,” bolstering and sustaining Catholic identity, and those who having been bolstered and are more present “in the midst of the secular world.”

“What I'm saying is predicated on the assumption that we'll have a large percentage of Catholics who are loyal and orthodox...who will be out there in the secular society, working and socializing with non-Catholics, but whose commitment to the Catholic faith will be visible at all times and in all circumstances,” he explained.

“And it is those people who will be agents of the new evangelization in that larger secular context.”

Catholic MIlitary Chaplains and Religious Liberty

The following comes from Fr. George Rutler:

The Geneva Convention’s classification of military chaplains as noncombatants has traditionally been interpreted in the United States to mean that chaplains normally do not carry weapons. This often puts them in precarious positions when they are in war zones. Over four hundred chaplains have been killed in the line of duty. Catholic chaplains are especially exposed to dangerous situations by their obligation to administer Absolution and Anointing. They have received every kind of decoration for valor, and seven have been awarded the Medal of Honor.

All four chaplains awarded the Medal since the Civil War have been Catholic. Among them, Lieutenant Vincent Capodanno, a Maryknoll priest and Navy chaplain, who served with the Marine Corps and was killed while aiding the second Platoon of M Company at the battle of Dong Son in Vietnam, has been proposed for heaven’s highest honor, canonization as a saint.

The military chaplaincy is under threat by our own government as part of its social agenda. One year ago, the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains tried to forbid Catholic chaplains from reading a statement from the Military Ordinary, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who oversees all priests in the Catholic Ordinariate for the Armed Forces, in which he objected to federally mandated health insurance covering sterilization, abortifacients and contraception in violation of the right to religious freedom. Now the government would compel chaplains to acquiesce in “same-sex” simulations of marriage. The Army’s deputy chief of staff in charge of personnel has said that military members who dissent from this agenda are “bigoted” and “need to get out.”

As behavior contrary to Christian morality becomes a civil right, Catholics in particular could soon become, quite literally, outlaws. Our current President recently announced that he will disobey a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by his own hand, which states that chaplains cannot be forced “to perform any rite, ritual or ceremony that is contrary to the conscience, moral principles or religious beliefs of the chaplain.”

I am always edified by the sacrificing spirit of good soldiers, and as a chaplain to West Point alumni here in New York, I am pleased when cadets serve at Mass. Governments that have tried to manipulate soldiers and doctors and teachers in perverse ways have always had a short shelf life. The nineteenth-century French political philosopher Frédéric Bastiat warned: “When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns its back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe.”

Military chaplains do not bear arms, but they have recourse to another arsenal: “Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect” (Ephesians 6:11).

"Democracy Without God?" by George Weigel

Religious Freedom and You

The following comes from the First American Freedom site:

Religious freedom is our first American freedom. It is a founding principle of our country, protected by the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. It’s a fundamental human right, rooted in the dignity of every human person—people of any faith or no faith at all. It’s not a Catholic, Jewish, Orthodox, Mormon or Muslim issue—it’s an American issue, a civil rights issue.

Religious liberty includes your freedom of belief, speech, and worship. But it also protects action—the freedom to serve the common good in accordance with your faith. It means that you and your community—not the government—define your faith. It means the freedom to help the needy in accordance with the principles of your faith. It means the freedom to participate fully and equally in public life, regardless of your faith. It means the freedom to work in business without checking your faith at the door.

In short, it means that nobody should be forced to act in a manner contrary to their own religious beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, unless it is necessary to keep public order.

Cardinal Dolan: Reflections on Election Day

The following come from Cardinal Dolan:

The 2012 campaign is over, and the dust is settling.

After asking me how our recovery from Hurricane Sandy is going, most folks these days then inquire about how I think “the Church did” on election day.

Such a question usually triggers a mini-catechism lesson from me, as I reply that, actually, “the Church” wasn’t on the ballot, and the election was hardly a referendum on “the Church.” The Church, I go on, was founded by the one who stated that “My kingdom is not of this world,” and whose members consider the statement of St. Paul, “We have our true citizenship in heaven,” as inspired by God. The Bible’s caution, “Put not your trust in princes,” would today probably be rendered, “Put not your trust in politicians.”

All true enough, and, in a genuine way, this attitude gives us a benign indifference to politics and elections. We “seek first the Kingdom of God,” not the power and platforms of worldly politics.

But this “indifference” is tempered by the fact of faithful citizenship. We are, as a matter of fact, very concerned about matters in this world, precisely because God has revealed truths about the human person that have serious implications for people of faith. So, yes, while we are much more passionate about heaven than earth, about the teachings of Jesus and His Church than the platforms of any party or the promises of any candidate, we do have a duty to bring the values of faith to the political process.

Did we, Tuesday a week ago?

The data is still coming in, and will be months in arriving and being interpreted. But, once again, it seems as if “we won some, we lost some.”

One issue of deep concern to Catholics and many, many others is the defense of marriage from those who would presume to redefine it to suit contemporary movements (e.g., divorce on demand, “trial” marriage, or “same sex” marriage.) Up until this election day, 32 states had given their people the chance to “redefine marriage” (an oxymoron for us), and 32 said no! (Some states took a more sinister route, ignoring a referendum, and allowing the legislature to tamper with the definition.)

The news last election day was not as bright, as the dilution of the essence of marriage won in three states. So, it’s 32-3. But, there’s no denying that the “winds are changing.” I’m told that the results were close in those three states, and that the exit polls showed that people of faith voted not to redefine marriage.

The death penalty is another issue of concern to those who believe that the promotion of the dignity of the human person and the protection of human life is the normative guide in our voting. Here again the results were not positive. The electorate in California had the chance to reject this lethal and unjust penalty. The Church in California did its best to preach the “Gospel of Life,” but apparently was less than effective. The referendum lost.

Better news in Maryland, where the Church was true to our birthright of advocacy for the immigrant, and was part of a coalition very successful in pushing for the Dream Act, allowing immigrant children to attend college; and a ray of sunshine in Massachusetts, as Cardinal Sean O’Malley led a strong ecumenical and community based effort to defeat euthanasia.

It gets touchy when we try to analyze the presidential election with the lens of faith. Some assume that the re-election of the president was a setback for people of faith. That may be an exaggeration. There is no denying that the president and his party are on record in promoting guidelines that gravely intrude upon religious freedom, and in their desire to expand unfettered access to abortion at all stages. These two issues are of towering import to people inspired by the principles of human dignity and the sanctity of life.

The polls show that Catholics voted for the president, but that such support was lower than four years ago; and that Catholics who attend Sunday Mass regularly heavily supported his opponent. These statistics would support a contention that Catholics do indeed let their faith have a say in the politics.

Of course, through the eyes of faith, neither candidate was perfect, as no political leader ever can be.

Some general impressions and worries do seem dominant 10 days later:

• Thank God we are citizens of a country where campaigns and elections occur peacefully. Not every country, tragically, can say that.

• While we may be weary of conflict over political issues, even within the household of faith, it at least shows that we Catholic take our citizenship seriously, and do try our best to let the light of faith illuminate our political decisions.

• I do worry about campaigns that let candidates off easy when it comes to substantive content on urgent issues, concentrating instead upon soundbites and caricatures.

• I am concerned about the lopsided influence of well-oiled PACs, funded by the rich on both sides. (The bishops in the state of Washington report that they were outspent 12 to 1 in their attempt to defend marriage; Cardinal O’Malley tells us that his opponents, promoting euthanasia, had all the money they needed for ads.)

• I worry that the Democrats have gone from wanting to keep abortion “safe, legal, and rare” to the party that wants abortion at every stage of pregnancy, with no defense at all of the baby in the womb, completely funded by the government.

• I fear the Republicans have turned their backs on immigrants, succumbing to the old American curse of nativism.

• I’m concerned about a growing sentiment in our country that turns John Kennedy’s lofty challenge on its head, as more and more now chant, “Ask not what I can do for my country, but what my government can do for me.”

• I worry about the popular wave of branding people who want to protect the life of the baby in the womb, and defend marriage as traditionally understood and given, as narrow-minded bigots trying to “impose” their outmoded views on others.

• And I fear the dictatorship of the self: those on one side who insist that my money, my property, my income are all mine, and I have no duty to others, especially the poor; those on the other side who claim that my body, my urges, my sexual preferences, my life, my choices are supreme, and will not be subject to the common good. (Even to the right to life of the baby in the womb).

When all is said and done, we plod along, knowing that this side of Gabriel’s trumpet, we’ll never have a perfect setup, that Christ is our King, that “we have here no lasting home,” and that faith and the freedom to live it out is the greatest protection of all to the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life.

"Risus abundat in ore stultorum"

The following comes from Fr. George Rutler:

In the wake of the recent hurricane, a sibilant television commentator said, “I’m so glad we had that storm.” Apologies aside, his words betrayed a view: people are expendable for the sake of promoting a political program. In this instance the program was a form of socialism that has brought so much sorrow to other nations.

When free people vote against their own freedoms, they knock down the columns of a free society on themselves, the way Samson brought down the temple on his own head. The first column to collapse will be the First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Naïfs who thought this could not happen will be startled when the Church has to close charities, hospitals and schools, and even parish churches if they are subject to tax intimidation. This will be far more disastrous to our civilization than the looming fiscal chaos and international instability. Although certain areas on November 6 reported massive voter fraud, the election results cannot be blamed just on corruption. Voters deliberately rejected warnings clearly made by moral and political leaders.

At least we have a beacon of honesty shining on the Catholic Church in the United States. The 70 million or so Catholics were a Potemkin village, and the numbers of faithfully practicing Catholics are a small portion of that. Long before he became pope, Benedict was a prophet who said, “The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.” As the state’s lions begin to roar, the nominal Catholics will skip out of the arena.


For a long while Roman Catholicism became for many a nervously self-conscious kind of Cute Catholicism, with leprechauns, mariachi bands and Santa Claus instead of confession, prayer and fidelity to doctrine. But behind each leprechaun St. Patrick stares, and behind every mariachi band Our Lady of Guadalupe weeps, and behind every Santa Claus, Christ Himself judges.

Catholics could have saved the best in America, and they can only blame themselves for what has fallen down: marriage breakdown, contempt for chastity, a record low birth rate, and destruction of infants. Looking at his own decadent empire, Cicero wrote:

“Do not blame Caesar; blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the ‘new, wonderful, good society’ which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean: more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.” 

We can feast with Caesar, but he will soon feast on us, and we can laugh with him, but he will soon laugh at us. “Risus abundat in ore stultorum.” There is much laughter in the mouth of the foolish.

The Bullet Proof George Washington

The following is a quote from the back of the book entitled "The Bullet Proof George Washington". I found it at the Marcus Allen Steele blog:

“George Washington’s part in the July 9th, 1755 battle during the French and Indian War is undisputedly one of the most significant events of his early years: his life literally hung in the balance for over two hours. This dramatic event helped shape his character and confirm God’s call on him. “During the two-hour battle the twenty-three year old Colonel Washington had ridden to and fro on the battlefield delivering the General’s orders to other officers and troops. The officers had been a special target of the Indians. Of the eighty-six British and American officers, sixty-three were casualties. Washington was the only officer on horseback not shot down. 

 “Following the battle Washington wrote a letter to his brother in which he readily and openly acknowledged: ‘By the all powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot under me, yet I escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me!’ 

“Fifteen years later, an old, respected Indian Chief sought out Washington. The Chief, explaining that he had led the Indians against them in the battle fifteen years earlier, revealed to Washington what had occurred behind the scenes: ‘I called to my young men, mark yon tall and daring warrior. Himself is alone exposed. Quick let your aim be certain, and he dies. Our rifles were leveled, rifles but for you, knew not how to miss-–twas all in vain, a power far mightier than we shielded you. Seeing you were under the special guardianship of the Great Spirit, we immediately ceased to fire at you. I come to pay homage to the man who is the particular favorite of Heaven, and who can never die in battle.’”

The Few, The Proud

The Marines did a fantastic job on this commercial! I saw it and I couldn't help but think of the many Priests and Religious who also serve this country and our world each and every day. We may be few, but we must be proud as well! We have to have pride in the great richness of our faith and in the beauty of our charisms! God has been so good to us and continues to bless us... I only wish we could get that message out as effectively as the Marine Corps! God bless our men and women in the service of our country!

God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood

Pope Leo XIII On America and George Washington

As we are on the eve of another American election (and Guy Fawkes Day) it might be good to recall the words of Pope Leo in regard to the Father of our County.  The following comes from the Vatican site on the Encyclical On Catholics in the USA: 

“Nor, perchance did the fact which We now recall take place without some design of divine Providence. Precisely at the epoch when the American colonies, having, with Catholic aid, achieved liberty and independence, coalesced into a constitutional Republic the ecclesiastical hierarchy was happily established amongst you; and at the very time when the popular suffrage placed the great Washington at the helm of the Republic, the first bishop was set by apostolic authority over the American Church. The well-known friendship and familiar intercourse which subsisted between these two men seems to be an evidence that the United States ought to be conjoined in concord and amity with the Catholic Church. And not without cause; for without morality the State cannot endure-a truth which that illustrious citizen of yours, whom We have just mentioned, with a keenness of insight worthy of his genius and statesmanship perceived and proclaimed. But the best and strongest support of morality is religion.”

George Washington's Prayer for the Nation

George Washington's prayer for the nation:O eternal and everlasting God, I presume to present myself this morning before thy Divine majesty, beseeching thee to accept of my humble and hearty thanks, that it hath pleased thy great goodness to keep and preserve me the night past from all the dangers poor mortals are subject to, and has given me sweet and pleasant sleep, whereby I find my body refreshed and comforted for performing the duties of this day, in which I beseech thee to defend me from all perils of body and soul. Direct my thoughts, words and work, wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the Lamb, and purge my heart by thy Holy Spirit, from the dross of my natural corruption, that I may with more freedom of mind and liberty of will serve thee, the ever lasting God, in righteousness and holiness this day, and all the days of my life. Increase my faith in the sweet promises of the gospel; give me repentance from dead works; pardon my wanderings, and direct my thoughts unto thyself, the God of my salvation; teach me how to live in thy fear, labor in thy service, and ever to run in the ways of thy commandments; make me always watchful over my heart, that neither the terrors of conscience, the loathing of holy duties, the love of sin, nor an unwillingness to depart this life, may cast me into a spiritual slumber, but daily frame me more and more into the likeness of thy son Jesus Christ, that living in thy fear, and dying in thy favor, I may in thy appointed time attain the resurrection of the just unto eternal life. Bless my family, friends and kindred unite us all in praising and glorifying thee in all our works begun, continued, and ended, when we shall come to make our last account before thee blessed Saviour…
Hat tip to Thus saith the Lord blog.

Archbishop Chaput on politics and secularism

A look at the 9/11 Memorial

Road Trip USA

Road Trip USA from Menassier Gabriel ///mg image on Vimeo.

Archbishop Chaput: Government cannot take away true freedom

Washington D.C., Jul 4, 2012 / 12:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Government cannot give or take away the ultimate freedom found in obedience to God, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said at the closing Mass of the U.S. bishops' “Fortnight for Freedom.”

“True freedom knows no attachments other than Jesus Christ,” Archbishop Chaput said in his July 4 homily at Washington, D.C.'s National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

“True freedom can walk away from anything – wealth, honor, fame, pleasure … It fears neither the state, nor death itself.”

“We’re free only to the extent that we unburden ourselves of our own willfulness and practice the art of living according to God’s plan,” Philadelphia's archbishop said. “When we do this, when we choose to live according to God’s intention for us, we are then – and only then – truly free.”

“This is the kind of freedom that can transform the world. And it should animate all of our talk about liberty – religious or otherwise.”

The Archbishop of Philadelphia preached at the last Mass of the U.S. bishops' two-week religious freedom campaign, which was spurred by the federal mandate requiring religious employers to provide contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing drugs.

The Fortnight for Freedom began June 21 – the vigil of the Feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More – and ended on the U.S. celebration of Independence Day. Its closing Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, D.C., with a homily delivered by Archbishop Chaput.

He began his homily by greeting the congregation on behalf of the Church in Philadelphia, “the cradle of our country’s liberty and the city of our nation’s founding.” It was there, he recalled, that “both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were written.”

In his sermon, the Philadelphia archbishop taught that the human right to religious freedom is needed “to create the context” for the “true freedom” offered by Jesus Christ, which involves liberation from sin and the gift of eternal life.

While religious liberty “is a foundational right” and “necessary for a good society,” it is not “an end in itself.” Rather, it must be used to find and live out the truth in order to attain to holiness, the highest form of freedom.

This higher form of freedom, found through God's grace, “isn’t something Caesar can give or take away,” Archbishop Chaput taught.

“In the end, we defend religious liberty in order to live the deeper freedom that is discipleship in Jesus Christ,” he reflected.

The right to religious freedom only finds its fulfillment when believers “use that freedom to seek God with our whole mind and soul and strength.”

Among the Scripture readings for the July 4 Mass, was the confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees on the subject of taxation. As Christ observes Caesar's image on the Roman coin, he tells his listeners to “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”

Archbishop Chaput, whose 2008 book “Render Unto Caesar” took inspiration from the same Bible passage, told the congregation at the national shrine that Jesus was not merely “being clever” or offering “political commentary.”

Christ's reasoning, he said, harkens back to the creation of mankind in the “image of God.” While the coin “bears the image of Caesar” and “belongs to Caesar,” the human person bears the image of the creator rather than the governing authority.

In this way, the archbishop said, Jesus is “making a claim on every human being.  He’s saying, 'render unto Caesar those things that bear Caesar’s image, but more importantly, render unto God that which bears God’s image' – in other words, you and me. All of us … We belong to God, and only to God.”

“Caesar is a creature of this world, and Christ’s message is uncompromising: We should give Caesar nothing of ourselves.”

While patriotism has its place, as an expression of justice and charity, believers cannot ultimately identify themselves with an earthly homeland. God, as Archbishop Chaput reminded the congregation, “made us for more than the world. Our real home isn’t here.”

As believers commit themselves to securing the Church's freedom in society, they must also ask themselves “some unsettling questions” about what they “really render to God” in everyday life.

“The political and legal effort to defend religious liberty – as vital as it is – belongs to a much greater struggle to master and convert our own hearts, and to live for God completely, without alibis or self-delusion,” Archbishop Chaput observed.  

“The only question that finally matters is this one: Will we live wholeheartedly for Jesus Christ? If so, then we can be a source of freedom for the world. If not, nothing else will do.”

“When we leave this Mass today, we need to render unto Caesar those things that bear his image. But we need to render ourselves unto God – generously, zealously, holding nothing back.”

In this way, he said, Catholics will fulfill their legitimate civic duties – while also, “much more importantly,” offering their lives “as disciples of Jesus Christ.”

Fr. Robert Barron comments on Ross Douthat's "Bad Religion"