(1) Hope in the world, i.e., security as citizens and Catholics.
(2) Could you explain what you meant by the natural law, I never hear about it anymore. And what about abortion, why don't we hear about it so much?
The virtue of hope is a supernatural gift from God, bestowed at Baptism; through its efficacy we trust that God will grant salvation by providing the means to attain it if we cooperate with Divine grace through the reception of the Sacraments and obedience to the Commandments, hold the Catholic faith whole and entire and are consecrated to Mary. It includes the desire for eternal life, and the expectation of it, always aware of the difficulties in achieving it [work out our salvation in fear and trembling (St. Paul)].
Most people use the term, hope, as if it is synonymous with optimism. Optimism is the belief that things will get better here on earth if we work hard and try to be positive. Many Americans---and Canadians---consider optimism a virtue and frown on those who do not express their shared "hopes". Optimism is an attitude or psychological approach to the problems in life, not a virtue, because there is no promise from God that if we strive our utmost and obey the "rules" we will achieve worldly success, etc. There isn't anyone in the world who can promise it either. And this is one cause for so many unhappy people. In a sense it can be said that optimism is hope in earthly hope for the sake of "hope". It also tends to be a moral judgment in that optimists are extolled with accolades and those who are not considered optimists are depicted as not quite American. While those of faith often ask others for prayer during a time of crisis, still yet how many times have we heard peole say of a loved one who is lost while hunting or hiking, that "we remain optimistic", or someone wishes them "the best of luck" as if the expression of this sentiment will bring the loved one to safety; that if they think that the worst might happen, the thought alone will make it happen; but how often have we heard later they found the body of the lost? Better to pray for that person's safety, but that if he is to meet death that he will have time to prepare his soul. This is hope in the Providence and Mercy of God. Still yet, if you and I ever suggested this to many of our neighbors, who are very good people, they would be scandalized and hurt. The very thought that the loved one might have the stain of sin on his soul or meet death is to commit a heresy against the American spirit: when the person is not found alive, who ever thinks of the failure of good old American optimism as the body is brought in? How far removed we are from the eternal verities, among them the Four Last Things, death, judgment, Heaven or Hell.
If God spares a life, we can always rejoice and we ought to ask for this because it is right to want the life of another to be spared---because we do not know the will of God.
Optimists can take matters to extreme so that they are ill prepared for less than optimum results, leading people astray in the process, leaving them with shattering disappointment from unreasonable expectations. For instance, people are not bitter because they may have lost their jobs to outsourcing, they are bitter, if they are at all, because people in better circumstances who sneer at them behind their backs, keep promising them panaceas that never come. American optimism did them no good. They do not understand how their own countrymen could have betrayed them by pursuing the policy of short-sighted madmen for mere profit or the chimera of peace, the peace the world cannot give. A little realism might have served them better, they would have applied more scrutiny and only then, elected more worthy advocates; justice, too, requires diligence, not only liberty. Politicking is the business of peddling optimism like quacks hawk bad medicine to people who are ailing and vulnerable; it is rank, sniveling cant and emotional extortion. It goes by the deceptive name of "hope in humanity" or "the human spirit" or "change you can believe in".
Every four years or so we hear the groundswell of "Change!", endless change that is the same old thing but worse, with only the veneer of personality and style a little different. Real change and a sign of true hope would be America on its knees as she is consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary! I don't think the secular media could handle it! After the country had sung Happy Birthday to the Pontiff, what wonder of wonders if only he had said not only Thank You, but instead added, Now it is my turn to bestow a gift to you, America, asking us to kneel as he consecrated America, then said "God Bless America!" But that would have been considered impolitic and rude by our secular, "sophisticated" standards. We want the Pontiff to act as a Head of State, but not as the Vicar of Christ. It also would have been thoroughly Catholic and exactly what is needed. Some respond, America is a diverse country, he can't impose something like that on us. Well, he already did impose something just like that, only not so fully: he said "God Bless America!" What is this but an invocation for the grace of God? Did he violate the rights of atheists? A Pope who is not a Pope but a hail fellow well met? How unCatholic, actually. Why not! Did he not exude gratitude for our "religious faith?" Laud our freedom of religion? Is he not free to practice his? Ours? The consecration would not demand anyone to believe anything he did not want to. The consecration would not be a condemnation of any single person. No, we all know what was meant by "God Bless America!" given the context and why everyone was inebriated with the gloss of the phrase that washed over them like Baptismal waters. Bless her as she is. Our Benediction. At least we can be grateful that TIME magazine did not select the Pope for its favorites list. Now that would have been a triumph for the spirit of the age! How many babies were being slaughtered and tossed away like rotten refuse, as the Holy Father pronounced those three little words! I need say no more.
When we have hope, we trust in the Providence of God because it is His will, not ours, because He is all-good and only wills the good of each person. Some people call this disposition a gloomy or pessimistic one, unrealistic; in reality it is the only reasonable one; however, when we trust in Divine Providence alone, placing not our trust in princes as the Bible teaches us, prepared to give thanks whatever the outcome, we have more reason to hope in the natural things, too---greater than we can expect from our fellow men---in His mercy, which is above all His works.
Christ has told us that if we follow Him, the world will hate us as it hates Him. By the world He does not mean every single person and thing, as if creation is evil in of itself irreparably tainted. This is the heresy of Puritanism. Christ means the spirit of the world and those that foster it, that is, that God, if He exists, is not personally involved with earthly matters, that man determines what is good and evil for himself, that might determines right, that if there is a God he is unjust because He permits evil to happen to the innocent; that we are not really certain if there is an afterlife, or if there is, most people are "good" and we should not worry about it. Happiness is here and now and a person's right to happiness as he defines it is paramount over that of the common good or the good of his own soul. The soul cannot be seen so it is not given much consideration unless it is "spirituality" according to the gospel of Oprah et al. Religion is a private matter at best and must be kept separate from public life and all religions are more or less equal. This last characteristic is of more recent development. In former times pagan religions were a part of public life, even commanded. The state religions were considered supreme. I have, of course, simplified the spirit of the world, but these are the essential components.
Regarding the security of citizenship and freedom from injustice, it has not been until the modern era that there has been any long-standing expectation of the former; as to the latter, it tends to be more elusive in some eras than in others and often beyond the ordinary person's control and that of his government. Physical safety concerns the laws of the physical universe---not subject to human government---or laws of nature, and the threats to personal safety from governments and or persons, which is a function of justice, such as freedom from persecution, or the natural law. Death, deliberate, calculated death, has come through government more than from the actions of small groups or individuals in the last two centuries especially. Hitler, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, Idi Amin, to name but a few. The Civil War in America to name another; government sanctioned abortion, government sponsored abortion worldwide, still another. We have all read about the on-going genocide in Africa.
We cannot place all our trust in government, no matter how benevolent it appears to us because we are living in an age of worldwide apostasy in which the powerful and influential no longer recognize the natural law and the limits of human power. The state of unjust wars, long-reaching terrorism, and the threat of nuclear or biological warfare and complex, nefarious alignments are a constant now, much more threatening in scope because of technology not available to previous centuries. A collision of world views itself, not only conflict over and competition for the goods of the earth. The City of God [the only true God] or the City of Man, to borrow somewhat from St. Augustine.
The laws of nature and the natural law intersect while remaining distinct from one another. A number of people think they are equivalent. Let us use an analogy. Because of the law of gravity, one of the laws of nature, a law of physicality, I can only jump so high. It is part of the natural law, that my ability to jump so high and no further, is not autonomous, just because gravity allows me to. I am morally prevented from using my God-given power to leap off a cliff just to see what will happen, or to intentionally kill myself, for example. I can jump high enough to do this because of the laws of nature, but I must not always use the physical skills I am capable of because I know it is wrong. The natural law, which is the Divine law in its most simplified expression, is that which is basic to human society and the dignity of the human being, and which is written in the heart of man because he was created by God for God. It can be known by human reason, such as the taboo of cannibalism, the ban against marriage to one's own children, murder, theft and so on. The tablets of Moses were the official codification of this natural law, because man, having had the One True God revealed, had begun to disregard it. All cultures have recognized the natural law whatever their cult or worship has been. The fact that there are exceptions here and there does not negate the inherent nature of this body of law; there are always exceptions---given Original Sin---and these have been recognized as such, ergo, the universality of the natural law in general. The Catholic Church is the special guardian of the natural law, which is part of the Divine law, because it is to her that Christ entrusted His teachings. While the discipline of science expounds on the laws of nature, it, too, is subservient, to the higher law, the natural law and ultimately the Divine Law which is the domain of the Church. This is the natural hierarchy which corresponds with the use of right reason, or the "law of moral gravity".
While all men can know the natural law by reason alone, it is the Church that fully explains it, interprets it when conflicts in understanding its application arise and teaches it as a coherent body of knowledge. The law schools used to teach the natural law as developed by the Church---their heritage from the Church---until the Protestant revolt. Later the schools maintained the natural law in curricula less and less as the centuries passed until it is now relegated secondary, minor status if at all. A footnote. All of positive law, meaning, man-made law, was based on the natural law. Common law, which is from the Anglo-Saxon tradition, while not specifically a part of the natural law, point by point, did not discount its authority either in the broader scope. This is why court buildings and other official halls of justice often had the Ten Commandments carved on them. There is no way to have man-made law that honors God as it is the duty of all governments and all men to do, ennobles man, and upholds traditional society without the natural law as the foundation.
The natural law is incarnational; it exists in the creation of each human person; the Church is incarnational---Christ came in the nature of Man; to say that there is no real unchanging natural law is to say that Christ's Human Nature was corrupted, not by sin, but by constitution of His Nature as Man, is to blaspheme! Western culture is largely the work of the Church so this is why Western societies were once especially imbued with its wisdom and guidance. It is much better to be ruled by a just and humble Catholic monarch, who adheres to the natural law, even as a non-Catholic subject, than to be a voting citizen who is Catholic in a non-Catholic republic or state. A priori, by Divine design.
The trials at Nuremberg, Germany, after the Second World War were called to judge "crimes against humanity", which is another way of saying a violation of the natural law in a most egregious way. The proceedings were not religious in tone and there were no specific Church or religion formally represented. It was not necessary because at that time the natural law was still being upheld in principle, if not in the breach.
We have rejected the natural law both in principle [the refusal to be guided by the natural law] and in the breach [Roe v Wade], in our legalization of infanticide in the womb; this, too, is a "crime against humanity" it is genocide against a group of people because of its place of residence, the womb, and the just claim that those who temporarily dwell there make on the other person intimately present, a woman, who thinks she does not want the baby to be born. Roe v Wade was a break with nature itself, for it severed the bonds between mother and child, granting the mother alone the power over life, the purview of God alone. The rights of women were raised above that of the rights of God! Thus that decision can also be said to be a formal break with the Divine Law and the Divine Lawmaker. It violated a principle of natural law, to be sure, but it also breached the natural law because it contradicted the nature of that law
Just prior, the Vatican violated the "natural law of worship", nullifying the principles of Tradition, established under the Divine law, and gave us the "New Mass". No Mass had ever been devised by committee, then permitted, before. It was a colossal rupture, not only a blunder. All Hell is let loose ever since. Two sweeping diabolical disorientations, and wide is the path to perdition and many there are that find it. Two sacred wombs violated, the womb that nourishes the precious child of God, and the womb of the Church, the Tabernacle, the Sanctuary, from which we are nourished by God.
The holocaust of abortion has claimed the lives of millions and millions beyond the holocaust of the Jewish people and others. The Nazis thought they were justified and those who support abortion here think the same. The only difference is that one group to be exterminated could be seen while the other usually is not. This is why abortionists refuse to permit an ultrasound, when used to assist the killing of the baby, to be placed where the woman can see what is happening. She would see her baby as a baby and abortionists do not want to risk her deciding against killing her child. The ultrasound could do much to put the butchers of innocent children out of business.
Over time our society has become habituated to abortion, just as the German people did the disappearance of their Jewish neighbors. We say we are for abortion in the first trimester but not so much in the other two. Yet abortion on demand in all three trimesters is a fact of life. You cannot succeed in having only a little abortion. To restrict one abortion but not another appears arbitrary and unfair. After all, if it isn't a baby, why should it matter? The claim of advocates of abortion that they want to make "abortion safe but rare" is the self-congratulatory ruse of the charlatan in the Garden. Try legalizing theft in small amounts and see how long before grand larceny is on a grand scale, and legal, too. Well, okay, we have already effected this through the unjust power of the government in violation of first principles. Only the government calls it something else and we lie to ourselves and go along because it is easier or because ... Evil operates this way---it corrupts everything in its path. Just as one small good deed can implant the desire for more goodness, so evil begins in the lesser offense or first steps.
The mass murder of the Jews did not start with one large roundup and then immediate slaughter. A psychologist who interviewed members of the SS in custody after the war asked one of them how he came to kill so many people. He answered her that it began with the first person he murdered, just one. The rest became easier. The German people had to become conditioned to accept genocide. They were a highly civilized and cultured society with many universities, scientists, artists, composers, writers and churches. First the Jews were ridiculed and belittled with almost unbelievable cruelty. They became "politically incorrect" in the extreme. In other words, they were viewed as less than fully human. Rationales that sounded "reasonable" were proffered and the people accepted them incrementally. Remember this the next time you hear someone say "We are not advocating ----, the people are not ready for that." Never are truer words spoken to use the idiom. Let me provide a case, one that occurred here in Maine which illustrates one of the rules of Politics 101: Some twenty years ago I had occasion to question a lesbian activist about future goals, such as "gay marriage". She was a guest on a local radio talk show. She answered me and the audience, "Oh we don't want marriage, the people aren't ready for that." Her precise words, I will never forget them because they were so instructive in the art of sophistry and persuasion by misdirection. Later Mainers said to me, see, we don't have to worry, they are not interested in marriage, just equal rights and words to that effect. I rejoined, no, you did not pay attention. She did not say they don't want marriage, only that we the people who are not like them are not yet prepared to accept it. Get a transcript and read her answer. Today Maine legislation grants benefits to "partners" as if married. We are well on our way. We, too, became conditioned, unable to marshall the resources within ourselves to repel the abnormal, unable to uphold the natural law. Once the process of an all-out assault on normalcy began it was only just under eleven years before the sodomites gained their first important Maine victory. It is never enough! Not until degeneracy and the abnormal are crowned!
In the year, 2012, Mainers learned firsthand their former folly in trusting in the empty promises of those avowed to overturn the natural law in favor of government sanctioned vice of the worst kind, so-called "gay marriage" is now the law of the state. No earthly good can possibly come to our no longer fair state any longer. Its approval for abortion on demand had already pulled it to the brink of social and economic suicide; now it is too late for any hope of a comeback at all.
The German people had the vote, they were not under a dictatorship when they voted Hitler into power by a plurality vote. The economic times were harsh; once Hitler declared war, he took advantage of the psychology of war under such conditions to seize total control and became an autocrat. Optimistic Americans were so busy exercising their right to optimism that we did not really believe the horror stories that had begun to trickle out passed the barbed wire. Many Jews could not obtain asylum here. There is a big difference between being a perennial "gloomy Gus" and realism based on an honest assessment of experience and human nature, to calculate the probabilities.
Jews who were also German citizens discovered the folly of optimism in the extermination camps. The more realistic [pessimistic to detractors] Jews fled while they still could, if they could!
Democratic republics are no guarantee of human rights, just as a monarchy can have a king who is a Saint. Much of the policy against the Jews and the other unwanted was through the courts and the medical profession which were corrupted first as appointed officials. It was only in Catholic Bavaria that the greatest votes against the Nazis occurred. The good Catholics were in the minority, although substantially Catholic to the core. Germany had ceased being a Catholic country and was largely Lutheran with some occult sects going back to older pagan times. While the Catholics were still Catholic and united, the Lutherans were Protestant, thus fractured. Protestantism by its very nature is an unlimited series of splitting and recombining, over and over again. Each man is his own "pope" so to speak. Some of the Lutherans were heroic, and saved many, thanks be to God! But they were too few. Eventually the Jews, who had enjoyed full citizenship and status, that is, were Germans, too, were limited to the activities they were permitted to participate in and the professions and trades they could make a living in. Then they were told where they had to live and how they had to dress so they could be readily identified. They had not done anything against their country. Their country betrayed them. It can happen again, here, if it could happen there. At the time ordinary people could not imagine such a thing. This dehumanization process took years. By the time the internment and massacres began---the "final solution", too few non-Jewish Germans were willing to object, better not to know, it is safer that way. Those who did were often martyrs as they were either betrayed or discovered by the Gestapo which had unlimited means to spy and intimidate the citizenry. Priests were dragged from their pulpits and sent to the camps and their deaths. Also the German law permitting weapons in the hands of citizens had become repressive, further leaving those who were willing to risk their lives to help, less protection than ever. For many, it was "out of sight, out of mind". The stench of human flesh burning was not as easy to ignore but there are those who said they learned to suppress the evidence of their senses. Do we not do this also every time we read about the bodies of aborted babies being discovered and nothing is done, except to try to see it does not happen again? We must not stir up controversy or be confronted with the evidence of our evil deeds, oh no!
The treatment of the Jews is what we do with the baby in the womb, a tiny, helpless, developing human being, a person under the natural law which supersedes man-made constitutions. Only this time there is no Catholic Bavaria to raise an objection, Catholics are sometimes in the forefront of keeping abortion the law of the land since Vatican II and the New Mass which teaches a "different religion", in essence compounds the Judas kiss. There is no need for me to cite the shameful list of the Congress, nor the Catholics on the Court who uphold Roe. They mistakenly say we can't impose our religion; well, who wants them to? I surely don't. I simply want them to impose the natural law, which they have a legal duty to do. The only Catholic aspect that applies is that we presume they are supposed to be more versed in the natural law because the Church is the custodian on earth; It is not Catholicism they would be imposing at all, but the natural law, until the twentieth century recognized as an universal principle of justice. It was invoked at Nuremberg!
Let us briefly look at Judge Antonin Scalia, a devout Catholic who sits on the US Supreme Court. He is one of two "originalist" justices, the other being Justice Clarence Thomas, also a Catholic. Now Justice Scalia, a brilliant jurist with a keen intellect that can "cut to the chase" is also a confused man, though he seems to know it not. Somehow he lost his bearings, his grounding in the natural law. I leave the why to God. I have every right to make observations on the state of affairs that affect society. Justice Scalia is on public record asserting that if they want to, the states can enact abortion laws, that is fine with him. He bases his rejection of the validity of the Roe v. Wade decision on the fact that the US Constitution never mentioned abortion, true enough. I am sure Antonin Scalia intends no specious reasoning, he simply is not that kind of intellect nor that kind of human being. He is a godly man, upright and disciplined. However, he has forgotten the first principle of the natural law itself: No law that violates the natural law can be enacted licitly. Thus no state law or state constitution has the right under the natural law to legalize abortion, period! He also fails to address the idea that if the state constitutions can be amended to legalize abortion, so can the US Constitution. Of course, he recognizes, and rightly, that the US Constitution was intended by its establishers to make it difficult to amend its grants. But once the principle is accepted that constitutions can be amended, he can't just pretend the US Constitution is exempt. How would he rule then? He has based the premise of his argument against Roe on our national "charter" not saying anything about abortion, which is not relevant actually. It is the natural law which has something to say, which is above man-made law---and charters---that is cogent, commanding. Again, period! The Church, the guardian of the natural law, teaches that any law which violates the natural law is null and void a priori and must be abrogated or formally recognized as null and void, by men who have the power to do so! Period, period! It is simply astonishing that a man of Justice Scalia's breadth and depth no longer perceives this cardinal rule, or if he does, he has dismissed it anyway! I repeat, I don't want him or any other justice imposing Catholicism, I simply want them to impose the natural law, which they must do under the natural law itself. The natural law predates the Church, it is as old as the first man.
Catholics predominate in the population [ratio] in three of the northeast states, all in New England, and their representatives in Washington are overwhelmingly pro-abortion. Catholics no longer impose the natural law on themselves, let alone anyone else. Not only is there no Catholic Bavaria, there is no identifiable Catholic vote. Look at how many support Hillary Clinton for president. Those of us who form our political consciences with the mind of the Church as traditionally understood are lost in the crowd, the impact of our numbers which are still substantial given the appearance of being diminished because they are dispersed. If we all lived in one state and one district, there would be a resounding clarion call that would go out to the nation! This does not mean we give up because we think it is useless, it is that we need to redirect our efforts more wisely and persistently. We begin with first principles, the natural law itself. This is because most Catholics are reluctant to "impose their beliefs", having internalized the lie of the enemy. We have to begin in our own parishes and with our own priests, unfortunately. More often than not this means we have to go up against our neighbor in the pew who may have other ideas and is used to having them prevail, and the bishops. Despite all the Pope's speechifying, the Vatican will always back up the bishops unless there is some public scandal. If you do not believe this, why did he not speak to pro-abort Catholic pols who would be attending his Masses, insisting they must not receive Holy Communion? He did not want to upset the bishops on their own turf and left the matter to them. The Pope has plenary power, if he would only wield it! Catholic pols received Communion for the whole world to see. Now we have the ridiculous spectacle of one of these bishops berating one of the pols after the fact when public scrutiny and outrage were brought to bear! Another prelate said we would not refuse Communion and was seen giving the Body and Blood of Christ to one infamous pol! This is a scandal, the full effect of which may not be known for years. This means we can't count on the bishops as a whole; we have to be prepared to be martyrs, to become hated out of love of our smallest, most helpless neighbors. Why do you suppose I am here on the internet writing instead of just posting devotions? To try to reach the most people possible with one small voice.
Oh sure, I am speaking to the choir as they say, but only some of the time. You would be surprised who visits these pages. For those of you who are not public persons with published books and national forums or do not have your own web site, I will let you in on an inside secret. A number of these people either conduct their own web search for their names and books and related subjects they are interested in, or have staff to do so. They want to know who is talking about them and from where; who is covering the same issues they are interested in and what they are saying. If I touch one heart, spark one mind, salvage one soul, my simple, but unceasing efforts will have been worth it. I have to keep saying the same things over and over because there is always someone who finds them for the first time. I place all my trust in Christ.
How did we come to accept abortion in policy if not personally, why are there so few protests anymore?
Like the Jew, the preborn baby was first dehumanized by being reduced to a blob of tissue or mass of human cells with a "potential for life", instead of what he is, a member of the human race, a life with a potential as we all began. Then when the strategy of most euphemisms was no longer necessary because we had been complicit and hardened in sin by refusing to vote out of office the thugs we tolerate, abortionists and their media cohorts changed the mass of cells to the medical term, fetus, not because this is not accurate, but because it speaks to developmental stage, while not resonating with personhood, specifically. When I first joined the pro-life cause everywhere the term, "blob of tissue" was employed. Twenty years later it was "a woman's body". Now it is fetus. The sole exception is the canard of "choice". It sounds so generous, giving people a choice, you know, fair and balance, you decide. Choice. The one being led to slaughter is the only one who has no choice. Thus the canard. The layman's canard, not the professional's. Today most abortionists admit they are killing an unborn baby [fetus] but that it is a woman's right and necessary. According to them all abortions are necessary because they believe that it is necessary to have abortion no matter what. Of course no abortion can be done out of necessity, just as I cannot kill you, an innocent, to save food for my children, a necessity to be sure. Those who support abortion, some of them, Jews with an organization behind them, who use the sympathy they receive because of the holocaust, object to the comparison because they say it demotes the significance of the holocaust, or the holocaust was so unique it cannot be compared to something else. Well, it can and is, precisely because it has turned out to be a fact it is no longer unique. All the preborn mangled bodies in dumpsters testify to this! [1] The Jews want us to see the pictures of the mass graves in Europe and well we should, so that we shall never forget, and we ought not. But when pro-lifers try to show the pictures of the tiny babies identically brutalized, these Jews are among the first to raise objections. Therefore we know that this claim is spurious; they know it, too; it convicts them in their consciences that they are hypocrites and advocates of mass murder themselves. They hope they can silence or marginalize those who support the sanctity of human life in the womb. Do not let them undermine your common sense with their perverted logic or lack of it, I should say.
There is also hypocrisy here: recently the Connecticut school slaughter of twenty innocents was likened to a holocaust with nary an objection from the usual suspects.
Too many people who once knew better, compromised on the lesser things, intimidated and induced to powerlessness by the shrill and vehement attacks against them, their just outrage rendered more and more mute, until they just ceased protesting with vigor. Then they gave up. No one was listening they thought. Other protest movements have not given up. They haven't forgotten an important rule of human nature and social change---persistence---if nothing else. Every imaginable evil possible now has a forum for social change---for the worse, except the pro-life movement which no longer speaks with one voice. Some of the groups are corrupt themselves because they advocate contraception or just dismiss it as an issue. They are always willing to settle for second best, because they believe as they are told, "where else do you have to go, this is the best you are going to get, take it or leave it." They take it, unwisely thinking they have the luxury of choosing the lesser of two evils. They may be in good faith, good faith does not prevent someone from being wrong. Unfortunately once the enemy sees you are willing to settle, it knows it has you where it wants you---that you will always comply with the lesser evil. But there is no such actual thing as the lesser evil, in the real world. It makes a pretty theory. Let's look at it this way. Say pol 1 is for killing only babies at 3 months gestation; and pol 2 is for abortion all the time. What difference does it make?---the same number of babies will be killed, just sooner at 3 months rather than 6 or 9, once the people know that this is the available option. Of course you will not have 3 months only because some legal eagle will arise to make the case of necessity to push the limit further. We have been there, done that, over and over again. Until we embrace the compelling justice, the nobility and righteousness of the natural law, take back our God-given dignity, we will not defeat Mammon---the massacre of the innocents; if and when we do, only then will we, too, recover our own innocence as a people. It is, indeed, all or nothing and nothing else will suffice.
God told the Israelites to choose life or death, not some life to avoid some death. Now, He was speaking to His People on two levels, the spiritual and the physical. We know the physical also applied from the context of other Scripture passages. God slew Onan for spilling "his seed" on the ground. Contraception leads to death, the death of the soul, then the body as a people declines. And compromise or "contracepting" some of the truth leads to the "death" of truth. In the same way the Catholic people are largely a contracepting people. They contracept and sterilize because their bishops and priests do not teach them otherwise. And the bishops and priests do not preach on these absolute evils because they either are heretics themselves or they are "afraid to offend their flock." They are not afraid of offending God, however. One pastor told me that he would not preach on this because if he did, "I would lose people." Well, he didn't, and he lost people. Fewer children were being born and he helped those who were, to risk the loss of their souls. A contracepting people commit the sin of Onan, essentially, and are worthy of death: God lets them slay themselves by withdrawing the use of reason on one level and preventing the birth of the priests they need on another, so they cannot be sanctified as they ought to be and require for salvation for eternal life. Choose life or death.
God also teaches us in the New Testament that He has come that we might have life and have it abundantly. That we are not to give into anxiety for we should not fear if we have life in Him. Yet the more we withdraw from His commandments, the more anxious our society becomes. Families of only two children where they could have had more now worry about their old age. The burden they will be and what will happen to "social security"? Social insecurity. We have to raise immigrant levels to replace the children we refuse life to; we are blind so enact unreasonable PC laws that allow social unrest because we permit immigrants to non-Americanize essentially, dictating that contradictions trump reason. We refuse the public acknowledgment of the one True God but allow Muslims to teach their religion in our public schools, imposing it in one district during a holy season. We are filled with anxiety and rightly so. We have not chosen life. Why does God permit a false religion, Islam, to prosper here, despite our prayers? Because the law-abiding Islamic people do not abort their children, do not contracept, whatever other faults they may have as human beings. It's so easy to see, only a man who blinded himself in an act of rage could not see. Roe v Wade is an act of rage against God! We are afraid and cannot acknowledge our nakedness before God. We drape ourselves with PC and berate pro-lifers---our national fig leaf.
Once the Nazis accepted genocide, they lost what little actual grace they had from God and they submitted themselves to all manner of personal evils apart from the killing. They had become not only evil incarnate, but irrational. The more they strove to succeed at world domination, the more stupid they became, despite their cunning. This is what is happening to us, America just gets blinder, more bumbling and incompetent with no end in sight. This is why after a federal bill is passed by both houses of Congress, a well-connected partisan can slip in an addition, no matter how costly, and unless detected by accident or by an alert employee before printing, it will pass and you and I have to pay for it. This is why cities in violation of federal law are permitted to declare themselves "sanctuary cities" that welcome, aid and abet lawbreakers, some of whom are gangsters, rapists, and drug-peddlers, with impunity. This is why the laws at the border conflict with each other or seem to, so we cannot enforce the laws still on the books and where there are patriotic government officials willing to enforce our just laws at great risk to themselves. We are disintegrating from within, for we have lost common sense from killing the innocent, and do not see that we no longer see. Our lack of vision and sorrow for sin, for this "crime against humanity" vitiates our ability to exercise the right use of reason and sound judgment, emboldening those who ought to know better to become debased in their own actions.
The ruinous legacy of the leviathan, abortion, has one more tentacle, a twist with a twist:
The largest abortion provider in the United States, Planned Parenthood, which is partially funded by our tax dollars---300 million per year---targets Black and Hispanic babies. Margaret Sanger, the founder was an eugenicist-racist, an apostate Catholic. Now a dead baby is still a dead baby and no baby is of more value or worth fighting for because his skin is not white. I point out the racial slant because of the comparison with Nazi policy. This is a very special kind of genocide, for the baby is not only unwanted, he is more at risk of being unwanted just because of the possibility of his skin color or "race". When was the last time you heard our candidates for President and Congress address this crime against humanity, this atrocity? The so-called "Black" candidate loves PP and favors abortion, period. PP says it receives the money under Title X of US law for "Family Planning Services". This is technically correct. The funding provides them the freedom to use other funds for abortion subsidies for the poor. If I give you $10 to purchase some milk and you already have money in your pocket, this is $10 you don't have to use from your own resources to spend on cigarettes, whereas if I had not given you the money you would not have been able to get the cigarettes as you had to have the milk for your children.
I spoke of the blindness of American leaders. Let us look at PP and one Congressman. Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana, who wants to stop PP funding by the government, still favors "family planning", an euphemism for contraception some of which are abortifacients, condoms and the like. He is unable to see the connection. Another example of government imbecility is that we have a law, called "the Mexico City law", which prevents foreign aid to be used for abortion so that organizations that kill babies in the womb cannot receive US aid. But we give PP tons of money [and PP makes over a million PROFIT annually] anyway here, internal aid. Foreign abortions bad, local abortions good.
Black leaders who are funded by PP and do its bidding will not speak out about Black and Hispanic genocide. They have been bought and sold. And to think they are against slavery! And they dare suggest that sovereignty people are racists! I could almost scream it is so ludicrous! One liberal, who is partly Hispanic, says that we want to control the border because we are panicked over Latinos. His-panic, he calls it. Ain't he clever, now. He can add punster to his résumé. Wrong! If Lithuania or Belgium were on our southern border and they were doing what the Latinos are we would be just as outraged. Invasion is invasion, the refusal of our officials to obey just laws is insurrection and revolution no matter who is doing it! We must be clear here and not let the enemies of life and common reason and national sovereignty use these shibboleths to discredit our righteous concerns. They must be challenged, every time.
The unwanted based on race soon spreads to other categories, such as the aged or disabled. In Germany it was the other way around, but the trajectory is always the same. Anyone for a slow boat to Holland? How about a slow taxi to your nearest hospital where actual death has been transformed to "brain death" so the person can be killed when they plunder his body for living organs to give to others who are considered more worthy of life? Ask John Vennari of CATHOLIC FAMILY NEWS [905-871-6292] to send you a copy of the interview Randy Engle had with an honest, knowledgeable physician. Or read an excerpt HERE on the web.
Lest you may think that I am using hyperbole, especially about Catholics, in this presentation, I answer, if only that were true!
Do you know the following, which is only the most recent incident, another being from California:
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts informs us that state leaders of the Knights of Columbus refused to allow a vote at their annual convention on a measure that would have required suspension of the membership of politicians who support abortion or same-sex marriage.
A resolution proposed at the state K of C convention would have directed the state deputy "to summarily suspend those members of the Knights of Columbus who are public officials, present or former, or candidates for public office, who through their votes, campaign literature, web sites or public statements openly support abortion or homosexual marriage." Joseph Craven, who introduced the resolution, cited the rules of the K of C, which require suspension or expulsion for members "giving scandal, scandalous conduct or practice unbecoming a member of this Order."
Two-thirds of K of C members who serve in the Massachusetts legislature recently voted in favor or a proposal to expand "buffer zones" outside abortion clinics, while more than three-quarters voted against a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage.
Supreme Advocate Paul Devlin, who was attending the Massachusetts convention, ruled the measure "unconstitutional." The Catholic Action League called the ruling "a disgraceful example of the disconnect between rhetoric and policy when it comes to the Knights of Columbus and Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life and the integrity of marriage."
Imagine!
Meanwhile our jurists are accorded the highest honors and deference. We are appallingly weak, stumbling in confusion, our national elections a never-ending cartoon series and Sunday Mass a three-ring circus! Only, who is laughing but those who expect to profit from our ignorance and debauchery? It is simply no coincidence that the dates of both cataclysms correspond so closely in succession.
1.This is the most recent incident only: A funeral Mass burial for eighteen unborn babies was offered Saturday, May 3, 2008 by Bishop John Quinn of Detroit. Their bodies were discovered in dumpsters at the Woman Care abortion clinic on Southfield Road in Lathrup Village, Michigan, operated by abortionist Alberto Hodari. Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, called upon all of the nation's Catholic priests to offer a Mass for the "Hodari babies." Citizens for a Pro-life Society, headed by Monica Migliorino Miller, found the bodies in the dumpster and brought the matter to the attention of the police. Outrageously, Miller was billed $1,100 by Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality [DEQ] for the removal of the evidence from her home---yet the abortionist has not been equally penalized.
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www.catholictradition.org/times1-1.htm