Let the Battle Begin AS I WRITE NOW, scarcely 20 hours since the murder of Terri Schiavo was at last accomplished, tears still well up in my eyes, tears for her courageous family who fought so valiantly and without falter for all these years, tears for those who put her to needless death as our culture commits mass homicide one person and one moral virtue at a time, tears for those who are blind, tears for a nation that obeys an imperfect rule of law without heeding the higher law written in our hearts by Almighty God, tears seemingly without end, I am overwhelmed to the point of sheer exhaustion, but not despair. Let the battle for the sanctity of life begin! This is, indeed, not the end, but the beginning: let not Terri's cruel death be for naught, but in that hidden moment, as she struggled with all her might to gasp for breath, as her sunken eyes darted in vain for help, with no cameras permitted that the truth be known, God and His Angels were making the record for all eternity, her death struggle known by Him Who sees all, knows all, judges all, and still He calls us to battle as soldiers for His Kingdom, not only in Heaven, but on earth. Commentator after commentator remarked that never before has the nation been so captured by one single tiny person and one so great a cause. Some said that her case caused a great chasm in the land. Not so, dear folks, not so. The crack in our social and moral  foundation was already there, ever since the first legal abortion. It widened a bit with the death of Hugh Finn, who died in almost anonymity because television news was not as it is today back then. And as thousands upon thousands of such innocent souls, who were not terminally ill, have been put to death because this nation's elites who deny the primacy of the soul and who have erected altars of worship to the body, human imperfection cannot be tolerated, with the standard ever changing in sheer madness! Terri's fight caused nothing of a divide, it exposed it! We could see Terri, but very few of us see the baby in womb who struggles, recoils from the abortionist's instruments of death, much less hear his silent scream. In the millions! every year. Down deep, in our very souls, where a little grace still abides, we all know this, we really do, you know. But our hearts have become calloused and hardened and we look away so easily now. Two nations: one under God and another under Mammon. The great divide: Pat Buchanan's culture war writ large. Terri's fight was more than just her fight to live, it was a a clarion call for honesty, for naming things as they are, not denial by self-serving nuance. A number of commentators lamented that we cannot come together as a country, called for a sham peace by impossible compromise, castigating those who will not cede ground. This is an impossibility and utter folly to even think it possible. To cede ground on a matter of right and wrong is to ultimately surrender the principle. How can error and truth decide to agree on a little truth and a little error as if equals? Madness! Truth, and the sanctity of human life is such a Truth, that is, with a capital T, is by its very nature unchanging and intolerant of untruth. Right is always right even if no one is willing to acknowledge that it is, and wrong is always wrong even if every one says it isn't. Virtue and vice do indeed exist together, the wheat and the tares, but it is vice that pays homage to virtue, and never the other way around. I cannot, must not! LET THE BATTLE BEGIN, inter alia ... August 3, 2005 DOWNLOAD THE COMPOSITE IMAGE OF CHRIST, PLAIN Contact Us www.catholictradition.org/Life/inter-alia.htm