BY PAULY FONGEMIE
APRIL 15,
Feast of Saints Basilissa and Anastasia, Christian Martyrs of Rome
I am a lifelong practicing Catholic who could no more leave Holy
Mother
Church than I would will to take my own life in an act of suicide. To
abandon the Catholic faith for me is an unimaginable act beyond my
ability to comprehend, yet many do so every year. Those who depart have
always been a mystery and of great concern to me. One of
those is a man I find myself agreeing with on many issues of import to
those who care about our country, although I am definitely not a
libertarian, nor besotted with our Founders, who were all too often
imbued with the Masonic spirit, essentially at heart, anti-Catholic,
although they professed religious tolerance. For instance, I
could never compare or equate the virtues of faith, hope and charity
with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, as Glenn
Beck once did. And he is no longer a Catholic, which is perhaps why he
holds some of the ideas he now espouses. But I do know he is
sincere and seeking with all his might to do the right thing in all
things. I pray for this man and ask that God bless him with the gift of
knowledge, wisdom and supernatural charity, and most especially, for
his sake, the gift of true faith realized.
Glenn Beck is one of a handful of prominent men in America who are
awake, diligently alert - ablaze for authentic justice and truth
unparsed and unspared. In normal times,
if there be any such state of being, ordinary attributes of the good
man would not be considered heroic virtue. However the time we live in
is most unusual, even by preternatural norms, for truth is openly
reviled and spurned, its adherents scorned and vilified, meriting
suspect class automatically. Thus, I
deem Glenn Beck a man of natural heroic virtue.
I believe that Mr. Beck fears not the intelligentsia
of the prevailing esprit de corps that
mandates
political correctness or else,
meaning, personal destruction by any and
all means possible, without scruples, for Glenn Beck fears more the
loss of integrity of his soul and his mind, his honor as a man and as a
citizen with a manifest duty to his country.
When I first learned of him he was advocating libertarianism. What is
this ideology, and why is it not accepted by the Catholic Church?
Libertarianism is a
group of associated political philosophies that
uphold liberty as the
highest political end. This includes emphasis on the primacy of individual liberty, political freedom, and
voluntary association. Libertarians advocate a society with a greatly
reduced state or no state at all in the most extreme form, a rarity
actually.
At first glance this all seems perfectly in keeping with the
natural law and the dignity of the human person and his natural rights
as given by God, which inhere in his very nature as created by God,
i.e., in His image and likeness. Rights are not a "collective" moral
and
ontological good. Rights granted by God are the sole attribute or
possession of individual persons; persons as unique human beings were
redeemed by Jesus Christ. Each
person has a soul that is solely his.
Society, or to use the term of the ruling American illuminati, "the
collective" consists of unique individuals but it in of itself is not
an entity with a soul, although we do apply the notion of soul to a
nation
or a society poetically, figuratively speaking, without intending the
metaphor or
simile to be taken literally. We have rights because we are created by God with the
purpose, to know, love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with
Him in the next. The first right God gives to man, is his
inalienable right to life as long as he is innocent or not
"living by the sword" to use the aphorism.
All other rights follow from
this first and primary right, and are said to be adjuncts of the right
to life. Because man has been given the precious gift and right to life, he has certain irrevocable responsibilities
before God above all else, and then, and only then, to his fellow man
in
a more limited sense. By this is meant that his neighbor in of
himself or his intermediary, has
no right to impose spurious obligations on him in violation of his
dignity or in the name of "Caesar." The rights of and obligations under
"Caesar" must be in accord
with the natural law and its requisite mandates. Of course, each man
owes to his fellow man that which is in harmony in justice, not only
charity, with his natural dignity as well, but this cannot be consonant
with just any claim at all, no matter how many support a false claim.
Furthermore, these responsibilities, which
assist society, do not become the
property of society, but
remain with individuals. Why?
Yes, man was created to be a
social being as well, but this does not mean that his rights are
transferred to the group. His rights remain always his rights, period,
by definition and necessity of being because
it is the person who has the responsibility to God for the gift
of life - he is an ensouled being that cannot be dominated by the group
which may consist of individuals with varying degrees of the plenitude
of grace or the lack thereof. It is the individual man who stands
before God at his particular judgment, not the group or "collective". It is
not the group that saves in of itself, but God and God alone, although
society is designed by God to assist man in his striving for salvation
and everyday existence in that quest. Often society is an obstruction because
there is no certitude that it is made up of persons who believe and
honor God as He truly is in His very essence and who acknowledge His
dominion over man in the temporal sphere, not just the spiritual. In
fact, this is the usual state of things because of Original Sin and the
multiplication of discord and diverse beliefs of men fractured from
their original nature and the only one true God.
The body of work on the natural law is in large part due to St.
Thomas of Aquinas, the premier standard for theology in the Church, who
wrote extensively about the natural law. He said: "the light of reason
is placed by nature [by God using nature, that is] in every man to
guide him in his acts." Therefore, human beings, alone among the
creatures of God, use reason, not instinct, to lead their lives. The
law of natural reason can be known by every man by virtue of his
humanity and nature, provided he attains to the age of reason,
beginning approximately at the age of seven years, in rudimentary
fashion and developing as he grows in age and grace. The master
principle of the natural law wrote St. Thomas was that "good is to be
done and pursued and evil avoided." He taught that reason reveals
particular natural laws that are good for human persons, such as
self-preservation, marriage [traditional definition only], and family,
and the desire to know God. Reason, he said, also enables men to
understand things that are evil such as adultery, suicide, and lying.
While natural law is universal, applying to every single person and is unalterable, human law could vary with time,
place and circumstance. He defined this kind of law as an ordinance of
reason for the "common good" made and enforced by a ruler or
government. However he issued this
caveat, that people are not
morally bound to obey human law that conflicts with the natural law. In
fact, the Church clearly teaches we have a duty to resist such a law,
to do everything in our power not to co-operate with it and to abolish
it through legitimate, moral means.
He also addressed the reality of even laws that are actually directed toward the common
good that do not necessarily conflict with the natural law but are
unduly
burdensome, and thus unjust on their face. These too, can be morally
resisted by the people; they are free to disobey because they cannot
really obey without incurring a grave injustice or disobeying right
reason and or common sense themselves. This does not mean anarchy or a
free-for-all, only that as long as man retains the use of right reason and
exercises natural virtue, etc., he and his neighbor who shares
equally in his human nature, and who dwell side by side incurring the
same conditions imposed by an inherently unjust - unduly burdensome -
law, will arrive at the
same conclusion that is uniform, and not unsettling to harmony and
peaceful accord. The common good does not absolve personal
responsibility or negate individual rights, but, indeed, it depends on the very exercise
of the same.
We all know, if we are honest enough to think for a
moment, that when one missteps and characterizes a group as having
rights as such, that the responsibilities that flow from the rights
that God bestows to persons as individuals, one at a time at
conception,
get lost or passed off to others and in the end, no one has any real
individual rights, no true liberty, and no one takes rightful
responsibility
ultimately - one of
the reasons that big bureaucratic government is so irresponsible and
unresponsive in a helpful, honest way. What happens? Human nature, in
its deformed state, not beholden to Almighty God as the first source of
all good and acted upon in this rebellious frame of mind, cut adrift
from sanctifying grace, considers persons who are deemed unworthy by
"the state" to be rendered scapegoats for whatever ails that society at
any
given time. Currently, strains of the government apparatus are
beginning to label Bible-believing Christians as possible threats to
the so-called "social order". It would be the same if the outcasts are
Jews, or any other group in general. In a Christian country with
a constitution in keeping with the rights and responsibilities of
persons under the dominion of God, we would still not say that society
or "the collective" has rights, although real, natural, God-given
rights would most likely be under less threat, if any at all.
Individual rights are so paramount that even the deceits and conceits
of the ever-encroaching government we labor under today acknowledges
this reality, albeit in a
specious, manipulative manner, by calling their tyrannical attempts
into being through word play, or adopting "rights talk" - "in the name
of rights" they are curtailing some, such as the supposed free speech
codes on campuses that are repressive, curtailing speech. This is
almost always conducted on a broad incremental basis, because to do
otherwise would be to provide ammunition to the people who are
scheduled for victimization and tyranny, the enslavement of the human
spirit. To further disarm the more astute among us our power hungry
elites like to style themselves "progressives" - in other words, to
conquer by progressive steps. One of the casualties of such a morbid
disease, and a government that refuses to acknowledge the dominion of
God in human affairs is a cancer that spreads oer the land, is that
freedom of conscience is easily dismissed. We only have to look at the
rise of cases where a Christian is persecuted or otherwise penalized by
governments and courts because he or she refuses to abet the sin of
sodomy, so highly regarded by our rulers as a sanctified right above
the very right of conscience!
So one would surmise that libertarianism would be a good
political ideal to espouse. Yes and
No. The No, which is Catholic, is
that society and partly the government of that society, must
assist man not only in his earthly well-being but at the very least
must not hinder him in his aim to save his soul. God must be
recognized by society because He, too, has rights, which are above
those rights adhering in individual men who live and work as part of a
society. So Catholics, at
least those who still maintain Tradition as
all Catholics are bound to, also acknowledge that government is
a good
thing and in the hands of good men, a very good thing. Where
the conflict arises is how much government and what kind, etc. Good men
often disagree on the degree. On the whole, libertarianism while close
to
much of the traditional idea of government rightly proportional to the
rights and responsibilities of men created by God, as held by many, if
not all
libertarians, tends to reject government mandates in private actions
loosely called "bedroom issues", for want of a better term. And mostly
they are on point. The Catholic Church does not promote the full force
of government here because the good that might result is outweighed by
the more probable harm. This is what is meant by the Church as due
tolerance, while admitting that as individuals we cannot approve of
certain human actions, transforming these actions into "rights" in of
themselves. But most Americans, including
libertarians, now
assign the classification
of "bedroom" or privacy rights to include and thereby endorse abortion
and "gay
marriage" as actual "rights", for instance, if only by default, if not
outright proclaiming so-called "rights" as "right".
When I first listened to Mr. Beck, I understood that he had put
these two issues on the back burner, so to speak, as many libertarians
seem to do. As a Catholic I have an absolute duty otherwise. Hence, I
do not associate myself with libertarianism.
Having said this, in order to stipulate it and get it out of
the way for the purpose of this little monograph of salutation, I think
I may have been initially mistaken or else, Mr. Beck has moderated some
of his views in re the scope
of libertarianism.
Mr. Beck is without equal in non-Catholic circles in his defense
of the rights of the preborn baby.
Before we can adequately address a
moral and societal evil, we have to be able to name the thing in our
midst by what it correctly is. Too many of those with a public voice
spend too much time in nuance, bending over to be "fair" to both sides
of an issue, even if it means the issue is distorted, and as if those
who advocate intrinsic evils themselves have a just right to a hearing,
as if evil and good are moral equivalents. This is why the people are
so benighted and confused, even bewildered at times. They have been
relegated to the state of active indoctrination in the guise of passive
indifferentism of the pseudo equitable, not that which is irreducibly
just
and fair by common sense, not to mention the natural law itself.
Glenn Beck is a powerful voice, an unwavering proponent of the
necessity of the truth and the duty to defend it with honor and
steadfastness, in service to the truth for its own sake and for the
common good of
all of mankind. By truth we mean those self-evident truths, the
permanent things that do not change and that can be
known by reason, aided by grace, and those which are revealed by God.
Problems arise because some men not only consider themselves the
guardian of truth, they have decided to renounce the only true, the
only God that is and will ever be, and devise their own definitions of
the good and the true. Objective truth is good, it is
everlasting, it is beauty
itself, because
it directs man to his ultimate end, union with God forever, and it is
not divisible; it is one, a unified whole. One element cannot be
tinkered
with, re-written or denied without all of truth being inexorably
harmed. Today too many men regard truth as subjective only which not
only divides society, it destroys its very nature as designed by God,
in keeping with the purpose He created men.
While Mr. Beck is no longer a Catholic he is still endeavoring to know
truth completely as humanly possible, with
all of his mind, soul, and heart and may God bless him mightily for it!
The truth of the humanity of the preborn baby is so paramount that its
denial has put a stake into the very heart and soul of our nation, so
that we can truly speak of two societies at large: the one that
recognizes the humanity and the natural inalienable rights of the
littlest of children among us, and those who no longer understand or no
longer care and insist on "the right" to kill at will these precious
tiny human
beings. That society is dead although holding much of the power in its
hands, but it is truly dead, because it is without heart or soul, it is
a spent thing that must use the despotic vise, the kind that crushes
the
other in order to
maintain itself, because it cannot perpetuate its grip in any other
manner. Because it is a spent thing, a grotesque thing, it can
only destroy, in imitation of its Father, the devil who prowls the
world seeking the ruin of souls. The ruin of the soul of society - its spirit of
noble justice and supernatural charity - that is, many many dead souls
who no longer know what these virtues are, nor desire to obtain them -
more
than suffices for his plans.
The Dr. Kermit Gosnell case in Philadelphia is a real moment of truth
story for all of America. Until Beck's THE BLAZE network - TRUTH LIVES
HERE - began storming the citadel of the fourth estate's silence on the
case because they are so pro-abortion they fear anything that might
bring a more righteous perspective to the attention of the American
public, this shame-filled saga of ignominy was being buried by
pernicious
neglect.
Beck's courageous decision to show the pictures, just as the Jews
insisted we see the pictures of the Holocaust, is inspired because it
is surely a picture of such stark reality and cruelty that speaks far
more than
all the eloquence he himself is capable of, and Mr. Beck is capable
most excellently. These savaged, ravaged little babies tore my heart
out and I am a bona fide
"member of the choir."
Gosnell is the strangest of ghouls beyond a shadow of a doubt. There
were jars of small
baby parts scattered throughout his macabre, sordid urine-smelling
blood-drenched "clinic" where he aborted women who were "Black and or
minorities"
because he thought that White women would complain. Gosnell, by the
way, and this is the only reason I mention it, is Black. Imagine the
contempt he has for those of his own race to think this way! But, then,
what is this contempt in comparison to the contempt he has for the
sanctity of human life? At one point he laughed about a baby that he
had murdered after birth. As Beck listed all of the charges stemming
from admissions by employees, some as young as fifteen and still in
school, I could not fight the tears, and I am an old pro at this and
should have been steeled, but one can never get used to this if he or
she is in love with God and on fire with zeal for those things He has
given and has dominion over, human life being prime. I am grateful that
I cannot be stoic about such matters. Such emotion is a blessing and a
sign of life still worth it all.
Gosnell, a one-man holocaust machine specialized in inducing live
births or aborting late term babies who survived the initial brutality;
he then murdered them by using scissors to sever their spinal nerve.
There are so many the count is now lost, although the state has only
charged him with 8 such murders. The state of Pennsylvania aided and
abetted this "doctor" because he was cited by state agencies for years
on end for gross violations of even the lax abortion regulations that
tend to proliferate. Abortion is the most under-regulated "procedure" -
a term I use advisedly, believe me - in the world. The state did not
penalize him, he was given mere warnings that became permission slips
in reality, given human nature at its worst, and wanton murder is
always human nature at its worst.
Glenn Beck is dynamic, convincing, compelling in pointing out that
there is
no essential
distinction between a baby at 6 months gestation and one just before
and so forth. Precisely. Too
many of the media is wont to shade the
truth by degree, quibbling over the value of one baby versus another
based on gestational age or in the womb versus out of the womb. Beck
has demonstrated great insight because he told his BLAZE audience -
THE GLENN BECK PROGRAM, my favorite early evening [5 PM Eastern time]
news
show - that the media can see Newtown, Connecticut children, but
because it cannot see the babe in the womb it thinks it can pretend he
or she is not there and thus does not matter.
Of course, this does not thoroughly explain why they still try to avoid
the by now more than self-evident obvious - the struggling, screaming
baby who is being tortured to death with the instruments devised to
foster life in such bitter agonizing irony! Still these "watchdogs"
turn away so easily in order to avoid the truth, as if memory is such a
fragile thing. Glenn Beck is determined that this will not happen.
Although the terror event in Boston this week has temporarily
superseded the Gosnell trial, Beck's web site THE BLAZE.COM is keeping watch and
bearing witness, so that there is a memory to be remembered, the memory
of the thousands of little children who were sacrificed on the altar of
convenience and "rights", yielding so much money for this self-made
millionaire. Words fail actually as they should. Thus the pictures ...
these babies are your and my brothers and sisters in the family of man.
The "collective" does not think they have any rights at all, and that
any child who survives the womb and the Gosnells among us, belong
ultimately to them to dispose of as they see fit. Did I say bitter
irony? Need I repeat?
So Catholic Tradition web site salutes Glenn Beck for his bravery and
resolute tenacity, for the willingness to be the scourge of those who
scourge mankind with their hideous edicts and meglomaniacal deeds, born
of pride and much worse. Beck called Gosnell "a monster".
Indeed! But then, the behometh we struggle to disgorge ourselves
from is a monster in every sense of the word, because it withholds
obedience to the very Word of God, written in
the heart of every man by virtue of his creation by God, that word
being the natural law.
Won't you please join me in thanking Glenn Beck for his service to
America, for the inspiration he provides, the hope he instills in us
all who know the man he is working to become. And won't you please also
join me in praying every day for him and his family, that one day they
will come home at last to their true home on earth, the bosom of Holy
Mother Church, the Catholic Church, the only ark of salvation by
Christ's will. For He sayeth, "And other sheep I have, and them also I
must bring, and they shall hear My voice and there shall be one fold
and one Shepherd." John 10:16
Meanwhile I join my one small voice to his mighty one, that silence
about the wretched and utter evil of abortion will not will out. One
man with his convictions and the means to propagate them is a majority,
if he persists. This goes, too, for one woman, perhaps even more,
because she is a woman and a mother
...
The above image is a composite of two images we altered, then fused
together for this article. We wanted the image of Glenn Beck to be as
perfect as possible. We have the full size at 1600 x 900 pixels
for those who would like to view or download it,
HERE.
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