Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Fr. Neuhaus has an important post up at First Things arguing that religious freedom is the most important issue in this election. That is what I have been arguing for several weeks, though not quite in as Americanist a way as Neuhaus. This election is about, as I have said, whether we shall continue as a nation to dignify politically the spiritual and moral authority of the Church and the natural family. Barack Obama, who is essentially an heir to the French Revolution, cares little about the authority of either of these. Thus, he has no concern to safeguard religious freedom.

Even the abortion issue is but an aspect of the larger issue of religious freedom. The bishops have not yet spoken out clearly about this. But as the years go on, it will become as clear to them as it was to Leo XIII that political and economic forces are conspiring to silence the Church.

Pro-lifers, it will become clear, are not “single-issue” voters. Indeed, we care about the whole spectrum of issues that pertain to the right of the Church to proclaim openly the truth about God and man. Here are some of the issues that concern us, as put forth by Neuhaus:

There are several issues, all closely related to religion, on which Obama, for all his undoubtedly sincere talk about his own faith and the importance of religion in public life, is manifestly hostile to the vibrant diversity of American life. The first is abortion, of course. The protection of innocent human life should not be seen as an exclusively religious concern, for it is grounded in scientifically-informed moral reason that should be compelling to all. Nonetheless, the pro-life cause is largely driven by the religiously motivated.

Obama makes no secret of his intention to shut down that cause and disenfranchise the millions who are committed to the abolition of the abortion license imposed by Roe. This is evident beyond doubt by his repeated and enthusiastic endorsement of the Freedom of Choice Act, which would, among other things, eliminate all state regulation of abortions—such as informed consent and parental notification—and provide government funding for abortions. FOCA aims to extinguish once and for all the single issue in American public life on which the free exercise of religion has had greatest potency in the last several decades of our history. Similar dynamics are in play in the court-imposed laws favoring same-sex marriage, of which Obama has expressed his approval, such as the California ruling now being fiercely contested in a referendum.

Consider also Obama’s consistent hostility to parental choice in education, even though for millions of African-Americans in our cities having an alternative to the failed government school system is their only hope for a decent education. Parental choice in education is by no means an exclusively religious concern, but religious and moral concerns are typically pronounced among supporters of charter schools, vouchers, and homeschooling. Here again, Senator Obama, in lock-step with the public-school teachers’ unions, is the champion of monism against pluralism in American society.

Then there is his position on the faith-based social initiatives advanced by George W. Bush. Obama says he favors such initiatives, but he also insists that faith-based institutions using government funds must not be permitted to “discriminate” in their hiring policies. This would, quite simply, mean the end of such institutions being faith-based. If an institution is not free to choose leaders who affirm its guiding and motivating mission, it is, in fact, forced to surrender that mission. That applies to any institution, but in this case it clearly violates the free exercise of religion by those for whom the most important thing in faith-based is faith. It is fatuous to say they are not forced to accept government funds. If they are denied government funds because they are determined to maintain their religious character, that is clearly discrimination against religion. Nobody suggests that Planned Parenthood, which also receives government funding, should be disqualified because it refuses to hire leaders who oppose abortion.

On these and other issues, Senator Obama is an ideological statist, determined to impose a monist vision on a pluralistic society. Although some were more explicit about it than others, the American Founders understood that religious freedom is the foundation of all the other freedoms they intended to protect. It is not entirely by accident that the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment is the freedom of religion.

Neuhaus puts his argument for religious freedom in the context of a paean to American “diversity” or “pluralism.” Religious freedom, he seems to argue, serves American pluralism. This is not an astutely theological way of framing the argument, though it is politically expedient. Nevertheless, his point about religious freedom and its connection to important moral issues is clear and necessary to reiterate: the Church must be free to exercise her rightful spiritual and moral authority. She must have liberty from political, legal, and economic coercion to administer the sacraments of grace and to teach us about the meaning of our lives.

All of human history serves one ultimate end: the building up of Christ’s Mystical Body. We could say, invoking another ecclesiological image, that history takes its meaning only in the context of Christ’s preparation of His Bride, the Church, for eschatological nuptial consummation. Politics, economics, law: all of these have meaning only in the drama of this one history of salvation, this one eschatological movement of Christ’s grace in the Holy Spirit.

Even this election has its meaning in the context of salvation history. Nothing is of greater concern: not the stock market, not 401 ks, not the war in Iraq, not American pluralism. Most people remain unaware of the truth and love of Christ. It is of great spiritual importance that the Church be free to spread the Gospel in our land.

Indeed, the Church has great political importance. Because meaning is conveyed through Christ and His Church, human dignity can be upheld in the political order only if the Church is free to exercise an influence over the political and economic domains. We must fight for this right of the Church. It is part of being a member of the Church militant in the modern age, and it is for the good of all humanity.

I would like to take a second to be brutally honest. Barack Obama is not a worthy candidate for political messiah. He is not even in the same league as Uncle Hugo in Venezuela. More on that in a second. But, first, this scary quotation from a commentor in a thread at the Confederate Yankee weblog (see comment #76):

Very soon Barack Obama will be your new President. This is a reality you cannot alter or escape from. It is fact. It is history. It is justice for the world.

Many of you have seen the light and have accepted the truth. And we thank you for your support and aid in electing Barack Obama.

To those who have rejected the truth you have no reason to fear Barack Obama. He is wise and just and he will follow the principals followed by his African forefathers. Barack Obama is the son of Kings and Queens who started human civilization thousands of years ago. Barack Obama remembers his heritage and his obligations to the Truth, Justice and the Future.

Barack Obama understands what is wrong and what needs to be done. Barack Obama has intelligence and vision that has lasted for over a millennium. Barack Obama was born with the appropriate ways of thinking, speaking, and acting and this will inspire you to be liberated for now there is no shackle which can keep you enslaved.

An African Proverb tell us: “Then command the servant, thusly: Make an Elder’s staff causing my son to stand in my place I will instruct him through the speech of the listeners and the counsels of the first of the ancients who listened to the divinities. In so doing troubles will be removed from the people.”

Barck Obama is here now to listen, to instruct and will lead you to your new life.

America will have a new start. A change to right itself. A change to correct its wrongs and address its sins. If you support change that will bring forth social and economic justice, you will stand with Barack Obama. Those who have been denied justice in America will get justice. Those will have been denied opportunity will be given opportunity. Those will falsely imprisoned will be freed. Those who are guilty will be punished. America’s salvation is at hand.

Those who have profited in America will play a role helping others. Justice requires equality and fairness and those who have the means will now be fair and will contribute to equality.

Stand with Barack Obama and you will be honored you for your work, sacrifice, dedication and devotion on behalf of all oppressed peoples.

Stand with Barack Obama and you will be honored and celebrated and remembered in song and praise and by your children.

http://truthfirstnow.blogspot.com

I hope that this quotation was uttered in jest. How on earth could anyone think that Barack Obama, who has never said anything of substance during his campaign for president, is a man possessed of “intelligence and vision that has lasted for over a millenium”? Listen up you political messianists out there. Barack Obama is a shallow, legal-deconstructionist provocateur, with soft, suburbanite sensibilities. He is not a plausible candidate for political messiah. I suppose we that should all be thankful for the suburbs right about now. They can breed wannabee Stalins like Bill Ayers but never the real thing. Barack Obama, however much he may like to be, is no Stalin. Sorry to burst your bubble, Obamaniacs.

Please take a look at each in order:

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

I have not been posting lately for a variety of reasons: a very busy teaching and speaking load, administrative responsibilities, and especially a very debilitating laptop problem in which NTLDR keeps getting corrupted and thus crashing the computer and necessitating completely rebuilding the software load (four times now). I will spare you the details but to note that I have not had a reliable computer for almost a month. Ok, the expression of self-pity has made me feel better…kind of.

One of my excuses for not posting includes a panel discussion this past weekend in which I was a panelist commenting on a paper delivered by an Evangelical church historian on the relationship between Benjamin Franklin, the 18th century liberal Deist, and George Whitefield, one of the most popular Evangelical preachers of the day. Here is the abstract of the talk:

The friendship between George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin is one of the most unusual in evangelical history. Skeptic, deist and man of the world, Franklin seems an unlikely friend to the theologically conservative, Anglican, evangelist extraordinaire Whitefield. But the truth of the matter is that they were close friends, and more so, viewed themselves as compatriots in an era of great volatility. Theirs was a dynamic era which saw the rise of a new nation and a new Christian movement. It is inevitable that such a time will produce world historical figures, a category in which both Whitefield and Franklin belong. That they discovered and developed a deep and warm friendship, when they could have been opponents, or worst enemies, marks them as unusual. That the skeptical deist and evangelical Christian found a way to work together makes them worthy of study.

The friendship and working relationship between Whitefield and Franklin is especially pertinent for us who live at the beginning of the 21st century. Our own time is increasingly polarized and filled with vitriolic speech. Both the radical left and the religious right succumb too often to the temptation to demonize the other. The atmosphere is such that working relationships, not to mention friendship, with political opponents is viewed with great suspicion. The result is that the greater good of the people is lost in the fog of political, and in more subtle ways religious, war. It is here that Whitefield and Franklin can help us. Working out of the bond of friendship, the two men supported each other in their work. The two men found ways to work together for the betterment of society, education and taking care of orphans topping the list.

The right and the left must find a way back to a place where they can work together again. The future of the country and the greater good of the people are at stake, and I believe our evangelical witness. Whitefield and Franklin developed a working relationship based on common interests; it soon blossomed into an uncommon friendship. Their example can help us move forward today.

The talk was prefaced with a sociological theory positing the reason for the extreme, polemical partisanship we are seeing these days. The theory is that ideologies are being reinforced by a “sifting” of society in which large masses of people (5% of the US population annually) are moving and choosing to locate in “like-minded” neighborhoods. This theory is reinforced by the observation that over 50% of the population from the 2004 election lived in landslide counties but the election margin was over all, relatively thin. Thus, we get comments like Dan Rather’s who is confused by the closeness of elections because no one he knows thinks like Republicans.

I suppose that there may be something to this. It is certainly true that the caricatures that each position makes of the other is due in part to a lack of knowledge and friendship among different minded people. However, I suggested that there may be some fundamental differences today not present in the 18th century. While not wanting to minimize the great divide at the time between a Christian and a Deist, there still was a common vision of what society should be.

Deists in general, and Franklin in particular, were convinced of the need for a virtuous populace to permit a healthy democracy. He thought religion was a necessary aspect of society because of its moral teaching. In fact, he was most favorable to Christianity because he thought Jesus’ moral teaching was the best known to man and one that likely would never be surmounted. Thus, there was much room for common ground and common work between Franklin and Whitefield, the significant differences not withstanding.

Franklin’s liberalism was not founded upon the protest atheism that gained ground in the 19th century in which God and religion were seen as enemies of man and his freedom. Thus, fears of a theocracy were not as widespread in the American liberal context. Democracy rather than state imposed collectivism was the liberal political ideal. Franklin’s moral outlook was, by and large, formed by the Christian culture of the time (though clearly until his last years sexual morality was not a great concern of his).

However, today the division we are seeing has license versus moral truth at the heart of it. Social re-engineering that is demanded. Policies are promoted with the apparent intention of undermining the stability of the traditional nuclear family. There is an increasingly troubling move to silence the voices of moral witness against such socially and personally destructive initiatives as the same sex “marriage” and the “gay” life style in general, abortion, exploitative sex education, etc. All of these are manifestations of such a divergence in the end view for society that the area for common ground and working together seems to be ever shrinking.

It is certainly true that the political polemics, magnified by the MM, are exacerbating ill will. There is the unfounded concern that religion in public life is to be feared as attempts to impose religious ideology. Moreover, morality is beginning to be seen as private religious doctrine rather than something derivable from nature and therefore a public necessity.

Close friendships among those with opposing views might very well help in alleviating such concerns and misconceptions. Nevertheless, I wonder how far this could go. If the very presence of a witness to moral truth is such a vexation to those who have committed themselves to another way, then certainly this will not get us very far. Even so, this 18th century friendship might still serve as a reminder that the Christian mission is to witness and convert to the truth rather than condemn persons and to that extent, it perhaps could bear some fruit.

So the question is, can Ben and George be friends today. Certainly it is possible. However, to the degree that being “liberal” is simply a justification for a personal commitment to morally problematic positions such that the mere existence of the other is a continual irritation to the former’s conscience, then I would think that such a friendship would indeed be a major challenge.

Voter attitudes in regard to the coming presidential and congressional elections are presumed by most pundits to be driven by the faltering world economy. Capitalism, it is being said, is dead. Socialism, which is itself mostly discredited, is nevertheless ascendent. But does anyone, even those among the guild of economists, have a clue about the true nature of economy? What precisely does the word mean, and what is the essence of the science that studies it? I would like to look at this question briefly from the standpoint of Catholic social teachings.

Most people presume that the study of economics has to do with wealth creation and with the mechanisms that lead to it, or that it concerns the manner in which a fair distribution of wealth may be accomplished by governmental intervention.

In fact, wealth creation, its mechanism, and its distribution, is only a secondary concern for the science of economics, if we take the word in its primary meaning. Economics, in its primary meaning, has to do first and foremost with the study of the personal relations which constitute the family: husband and wife, parents and children, etc.

Only secondarily does the study of economics have to do with the relationship of the family to external goods. The study of wealth creation, therefore, should only play a subordinate part in economic science.

The very etymology of the word “economy” (oikos nomos) bears this out. The word traditionally referred to the government of the home and of the family. In theology, the term was taken up by the Church Fathers to refer to God’s providential care of creation and to salvation history. We are God’s family, the Church Fathers understood in following Scripture, and He cares for us. Thus, we often hear theologians speak of the “economy of salvation.” 

Following the traditional meaning of the term, ancient and medieval philosophy and theology did not focus the science of economics on the art of money making for its own sake. Economic science, instead, centered on the relationship of family life to the development of moral virtue. The primary concern of economic science understood in this sense is the relation of father to mother, and of parents to children, and how these can be harmoniously maintained and oriented to virtuous living by the State. Only secondarily does the study of economic science understood in this sense concern the procurement of the material goods necessary to enable the pursuit of moral virtue and harmonious familial interaction.

In our own day, the term has been debased. It has come to be applied exclusively to money making or to wealth creation for its own sake. The ancients and medievals, having subordinated the material to spiritual or moral values, could never have countenanced such a crass reductionism. They understood, rightly, that matter is made to serve higher goods. Quantitative gain is not a good in its own right. Matter is intrinsically good, even quasi-sacramental, but it is made for the service of man. Man is not made for the service of matter. More or less matter is not equivalent to more or less goodness. Thus, one cannot say absolutely that more or less flow of money equals more or less economic health.

The main theme of Catholic social teaching has been to reorient the focus of economic science back to its root concern: the good of the family. The economy is rooted in the family, the basic unit of society, and especially to the moral and spiritual formation of children.

We owe a debt of thanks to the modern popes for reminding us of this fact, especially to Leo XIII (for his social encyclical Rerum novarum) and to Pius XI (for his social encyclical Quadragesimo anno). The political realm, they taught us, should be oriented toward the strengthening of family life. The strengthening of the family equates to the strengthening of the economy.

An implication of the social teachings of the Church is that one cannot have economic science detached from consideration of such issues as divorce, “gay marriage,” contraception, and abortion. Indeed, these are the most important issues in economics, not wealth creation as such. These are more fundamental concerns to economic science than taxation, or interest rates on loans, or stock market movement, etc.

Yet, neither major political party in the United States talks about these issues in the same breath. The economy is the economy, our politicians seem to imply, and social issues are social issues. Never shall the two meet.

This is a false separation, from the standpoint of the Church’s social teachings, because the economy is centered on familial relations. Economic issues are of a single fabric with so-called social issues.

Yet, even given the silence of both political parties in the U.S. about the true nature of the economy and of economic science, still, only one party, the Democrat Party, seems unequivocally hell-bent on pitting directly governmental action against the family. The Democrat Party, having lurched into the ideological domain of Communism, fears strong natural families because they wish for the State to have direct and unimpeded control over the individual.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, does not have the same direct, intentional suspicion of the natural family, and its policy platform reflects this fact. It is true that the so-called “blue blood” constituency in the GOP is indifferent to the natural family. That is probably why so many blue blood Republicans are publically renouncing Sarah Palin. She is too much of a convinced believer, in their minds, in pro-family causes. But the platform of the party does not intentionally enable the sort of social engineering policies that one finds in the Democrat Party platform: such as “gay marriage,” no-fault divorce (which many Republicans reject), abortion without restriction, publically encouraged transgenderism, contraception without restriction, the hypersexualization of federal education, etc.

So, in this day when everyone is immensely concerned with the economy, and so many see the prospect of real and hopeful ”change” in Democrat Party promises, we may want to think again about the true meaning of economy.

There is one certain fact about the economy, and few if any professional economists will tell you about it, and that is that social engineering is bad for it. Gay marriage and other social engineering measures may not have an effect on our 401 Ks, or on the stock market, but these measures are much more deleterious to the economy than the loss of retirement funds or a stock market crash.

World Net Daily does important work stirring up news about leftist radicalism in the U.S. This work is important because counteractive media propaganda is necessary given the partisan condition of the American communications industry. Americans seem poised to vote in a leftist supermajority to the federal government in the upcoming election. But do most people even have a clue about the extremist nature of the radical left whose ideology they are about to consecrate with their votes?

Well, WND posted this frightening video of an FBI informant, from 1982, who infiltrated the Weather Underground. As most people know by now, William Ayers, the former head of the Weather Underground, is a long-time friend and collaborator of Barack Obama. Ayers bombed the U.S. Capitol and other landmarks, but was never convicted of his crimes, having gotten off on a technicality.

Here’s part of the World Net Daily report:

While many defenders of Weather Underground co-founder William Ayers have sought to minimize his bomb attacks on the U.S. Capitol and other landmarks because they purportedly did not target people, a former FBI informant who penetrated the group claimed he witnessed a meeting in which members discussed a future communist takeover of America in which some 25 million “diehard capitalists” would need to be killed.

Larry Grathwohl recalled his experience in the 1982 documentary “No Place to Hide,” noted the weblog Confederate Yankee.

In a session with members of the radical group, founded in 1969, Grathwohl said discussion centered on a future in which the communist nations of Cuba, North Korea, China and the Soviet Union would occupy various parts of the U.S., with “re-education centers” established in the Southwest to prevent counterrevolution.

“I asked, ‘Well what is going to happen to those people we can’t reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?’ And the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated.”

Grathwohl, who worked as an operative for law enforcement agencies in Cincinnati, said when he pursued the genocide issue further, the Weather Underground members “estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers.”

“And when I say ‘eliminate,’ I mean ‘kill,’” he continued. “Twenty-five million people.”

There are those, naturally, who find such stories too hard to believe. This sort of genocidal attitude could never exist in our country, could it? In fact, it comes quite naturally to the utilitarianism and pragmatism inherent to American culture. After all, we were the land that initiated the eugenics movement in the 20th century that so inspired Hitler. The compatibility of the social ideas of American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, whose theories dominate American federal education programs, and the economic theories of Karl Marx, the intellectual font of international leftism, has been noted by many philosophers. It is a potent combination that might very easily morph into a type of American Stalinism. It is thus not far-fetched to surmise that a genocidal vision of America’s future could have been inculcated in the pragmatic and utilitarian minds of the American pseudo-intelligentsia of the 1960s and 19 70s.

Does such an attitude still exist today? What kinds of scenarios might the far left be cooking up?

David Warren has an interesting article up at Inside Catholic that brings to mind Sandro Magister’s recent article on Quebec. Warren summarizes the cultural/political situation north of our border, in Canada. This description should in and of itself be enough to scandalize any fence-sitting Catholics to vote Republican across the board in the coming election.

Here’s how Warren summarizes the situation in Canada:

The culture wars are over in the Great White North, and the other side won. “Unity” (really, “unanimity,” also known as “zero tolerance”) is the new standard, as the enemy mops up little pockets of continuing resistance. Opponents of the judicially imposed “Canadian consensus” may be charged with “hate crimes.”

 

In the once overwhelmingly Catholic province of Quebec, a Conservative candidate was verbally attacked by an opposition party leader for being a member of Opus Dei. Ugly spray-paint messages against her soon began appearing around the riding. This, in turn, never became an election issue. Instead, the Quebec media went hunting for other candidates who might belong to this family-values Catholic organization, and found one more.

 

The impending Democrat “supermajority” in the States (according to the MSM polls, they will soon hold the presidency plus sufficient members in both houses of Congress to shut down any Republican resistance, whether to their legislation or to their “strict deconstructionist” judicial appointments) promises a “third wave” of government expansion, building upon the advances of the New Deal in the 1930s and the Great Society in the 1960s. Disoriented by a financial crisis, it appears that Americans are about to endorse a leftward lurch that will make your country just like mine.

 

For American Catholics who have not already embraced Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi as their political role models, I expect this will mean practicing your religion the way we do in Canada, or as the ACLU has already stipulated in the United States. That is to say, you will be welcome to parade a Catholic ethnicity, so long as you do not publicly support any Church teaching.

Warren goes on to describe his disappointment with American bishops. He thinks that they have lovingly embraced the sort of cultural rot and persecution of religion that is found in Canada. However, as reported at this site, this election cycle has brought out the best in a substantial number of our American bishops.

Be that as it may, I would like to suggest that there are two directions that the Church can take should the communist Democrats take the White House and a supermajority in congress in the upcoming election. On the one hand, the Church may willingly fight the governmental suppression of religion that is coming and go underground, just as it has done in Vietnam, and in China.

It is important to note that the Church has great moral authority among all of the Vietnamese people, Catholic or not, because they see it as the true bearer of liberation and freedom.

They know what the rot of communism brings. The Vietnamese government is fearful of the Church precisely because the people there see it as morally authoritative. This is similar to the situation of the Church in Poland prior to the fall of the Soviet Union.

Or, the Church could capitulate to the communist Democrat government and disappear, as in Canada.

Should the Church choose to fight the communists in our government, a question still exists.

Do the American people even want a legitimate moral authority in their lives? Are we as nihilistic as the Canadians? Are we inherently suited any longer to understand the importance of the transcendent, of religious devotion, and of the natural family? Do we care about vulnerable human life?

Or, are we so greed- and lust-ridden, so overexcited about the economy and the value of our 401 ks, and about our sex-addictions, and about our drug habits, that we do not care about anything else?

The Church in Vietnam thrives underground because, in the face of the annihilating suppression of human values, the people their understand the dignity of human life.

We, on the other hand, in the midst of the most libertine civilization in human history, have not a care in the world for what goes on beyond our own individual passions and interests. So, even if the Church should fight the communists, such a struggle will likely be met by most Americans with mocking indifference. No?

Bishop Martino of Scranton, PA deserves our prayers and our thanks. Not only has he spoken out forcefully on the issue of abortion in the coming election, he “crashed” a panel forum discussion on politics and faith in his diocese that was stirring confusion and dissent. Here’s the relevant passage from the local news coverage:

Martino arrived unannounced in the midst of a panel discussion on faith issues and the presidential campaign at St. John’s Catholic Church on Sunday. According to people who attended the event, the bishop chastised the group for holding the forum and particularly took issue with the discussion and distribution of excerpts from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ position on voting issues. The document defines abortion and euthanasia, as well as racism, torture and genocide, as among the most important issues for Catholic voters to consider.

“No USCCB document is relevant in this diocese,” he was quoted as saying in the Wayne County Independent, a Honesdale-based newspaper. “The USCCB doesn’t speak for me.”

What a brave shepherd he has turned out to be. May the Holy Father give us more like him.

A heroic statement has been issued today by the USCCB on the abortion issue. Thomas Peters has all the news of it up on his blog, with full coverage and astute analysis. This shoots down, unequivocally, those who try to claim that the USCCB has, in fact, tried to shut up the likes of Archbishop Chaput on this issue. The statement also puts the smackdown on “outside groups” like Catholics United, who keep rearing their evil little heads whenever stories on the Church and abortion make the rounds.

A prayer of thanks to God for the heroic work of the bishops, and that he preserve them and keep them strong in the coming struggles!

Somehow, I missed this article at Zenit from yesterday. I have said that I lend credence to the general ideas found in the Marian apparitions of modern times that a great chastisement, or direct divine intervention of cosmic proportions, could be in our near future. Given the potential for the defeat of religion in the upcoming election…well, at any rate, we should all be turning to Mary in fervent prayer in these trying times for the Church. Here’s the Holy Father’s prayer, drawn from Blessed Bartolo Longo:

Benedict XVI placed the world in Mary’s hands during his one-day visit to the shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompeii, near Naples.

The Pope’s leading of the Supplication of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary, a prayer written by Blessed Bartolo Longo (1841-1926) was one of the high points of this 12th pastoral trip in Italy.

“We implore you to have pity today on the nations that have gone astray, on all Europe, on the whole world, that they might repent and return to your heart,” the text of the prayer reads.

With the words of Bartolo, the Pontiff turned to Mary, saying: “If you will not help us because we are ungrateful and unworthy children of your protection, we will not know to whom to turn.”

In a gesture of filial love, the Pope then offered the Madonna a golden rose.

Phatmass.com has an excellent and important top ten list: What will Barack Obama do if elected president? This list is a must read for all Double Poxer pro-lifers. There is no moral equivalence between John McCain and Barack Obama on the life issue. I am reproducing the whole thing here, as it is of such great importance. It is a reminder as well that the Republicans have not exactly been “do-nothings” on the life issues.

 1) Roe v. Wade would exist for at least another 30 to 40 years by the US Supreme Court appointments he makes. The next president will make at least one, and probably two US Supreme Court appointments. If elected to a second term, he could make as many as six appointments. The average Supreme Court Justice serves 23 years. Because the next two justices that are likely to retire are both pro-abortion, a pro-life president could position the courts to overturn Roe V. Wade in the next few years.

 

 2) Freedom of Choice Act” would override all state laws regarding abortion and eliminate 35 years of laws that have reduced abortions in the USA. Obama co-sponsored the Freedom of Choice Act (S. 1173) and would make passing it one of his “first priorities as president“. It would eliminate parental notification laws, 24-hour waiting period for abortions, and education of women about the abortion risks and development of her unborn child. The Freedom of Choice act would require taxpayer funding of abortion and make partial birth abortion legal again.

 

  3) A pro-choice president would sponsor a bill for elimination of the Hyde Amendment, and thus force all taxpayers to bear the costs of free abortions for the poor. The Hyde Amendment has protected federal taxpayers from being forced to fund abortions through Medicaid.

4) A pro-choice president would include abortion as a “covered procedure” in any national health care insurance plan making abortions more readily available and forcing taxpayers to fund them.

 
 5) A pro-choice president would require all medical schools to train doctors to perform abortions and force doctors to perform abortions regardless of their personal moral or religious beliefs or convictions.

 6) A pro-choice president would likely issue an Executive Order (probably on his first day in office as did President Clinton) eliminating the Mexico City policy. The Mexico City policy bars US foreign aid money from being given to organizations or companies that perform or promote abortion overseas.

 
 7) A pro-choice president would restore funding for UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) which provided millions of dollars of funding for abortions and forced sterilizations in many Third World countries and China.

 
 8) A pro-choice president would remove the current restriction prohibiting use of US Defense Budget monies on abortions for military personnel.

 

 9) A pro-choice president would lead the way to the repeal of the ban on partial-birth abortions, where a baby’s skull is stabbed with scissors in the birth canal and the brains are sucked out to end its life swiftly and ease passage of the corpse into the pan. Obama co-sponsored S. 1173 making partial birth abortion legal again.
 

 10) A pro-choice president could overturn the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was a law passed by the United States Congress in 2002. It extends legal protection to an infant born alive after a failed attempt at induced abortion. It was signed into law on August 5, 2002 by President Bush.

Patrick J. Buchanan has an insightful post up at the American Conservative magazine weblog. He contends that Barack Obama will actually be in a difficult position of governing, should he win the election. Obama represents the farthest of the far left of American politics. Buchanan says that he comes from the George McGovern wing of the party: though I would suggest that he’s even farther to the left than McGovern. No one that far to the left has ever even come close to winning a presidential election in this country. This is so because we are a center right nation. McGovern lost 49 states because he did not back down publically from his far left positions.

Obama has learned from McGovern’s mistakes. His is a candidacy of flip-flops. Buchanan argues that it must be so, if he wants to win, because he knows that his natural positions are so far to the left that they would be unacceptable to the average American voter. One can take a single example in this regard as a case in point: Obama is clearly a natural proponent of partial-birth abortion. But he denies that he is so because he realizes that his is a position outside of the mainstream of American public opinion.

Should Obama get elected, Buchanan argues, he will be faced with a difficult, Catch-22 situation. If he governs according to his naturally far left instincts, he will face the ire of the American public, who will see that he lied throughout the election cycle.

On the other hand, should he take the more centrist approach to governing that his candidacy has tried to suggest he will do, he will face the ire of his political allies: the Weather Underground types, the Fidel Castros, and so on.

Either way, according to Buchanan, he faces a backlash, a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario.

It is an interesting and insightful idea that Buchanan has, but i don’t think that things are going to play out quite as he predicts.

Obama is going to go very far to the left, over time, on all of the issues, and no one will do anything about it because he will have, in the meantime, shut down oppositional media. There will be no “backlash,” as Buchanan predicts there will be, because there will be no effective public forum for political opposition. That is Barack Obama’s dream scenario, and he will “play the game” of moderation in the meantime, until such time as he can institute the fairness doctrine and an ever-increasing barrage of “hate speech” laws, shut down the internet, and set up “human rights” commissions. By the way, there are plans in the works to replace the internet by a much more tightly regulated form of cyberspace communication….stay tuned!

Conservatives of Buchanan’s ilk are so fed up with George W. Bush and the Republican Party that they wish to see McCain lose this election. What Buchanan does not seem to understand is that his American Conservative Magazine is going to be shut down by the State, over the course of Barack’s presidency, because it will be seen as a threat to the State. Should Buchanan resist, he’ll be forced to go to a “re-education” seminar, or perhaps even to prison.

Paleoconservatives, such as Buchanan, do not have a full grasp of the nightmarish scenario that awaits us. They have too much trust in the political spirit of the American populace to fight this sort of tyranny. They have too much trust in the American “system” to protect them from such potentialites. But no system is infallible. And the American people are not capable of fighting for political or religious freedom at this point, for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into here.

Well, here is another piece of execrable journalism. I’m not entirely sure why I force myself to read this drivel. At any rate, it’s Time Magazine’s report of the Al Smith dinner from last week, where both John McCain and Barack Obama gave comedic appearances. The writer informs us that, after years of suppressed debate and lack of social concern, wherein the Church had overemphasized its rejection of Roe versus Wade to the exclusion of all else, Catholics are now returning to open dialogue on life issues. In making this case, the writer refers to the USCCB guidelines for voting issued last year, and to the emergence of such apostate groups in the Church as Catholics United.

The writer tries to tell us that the Church is now returning to the Bernardinian ”Seamless Garment” approach to social issues, recognizing that the right-to-life issue goes beyond the abortion problem and extends to the wider gamut of socio-economic concerns: war, the death penalty, social justice, etc.

What the writer fails to point out is that, more than ever, bishops have in the past two years in the U.S. spoken out openly and forcefully about the scale of social concerns in our land, and abortion is clearly being pronounced the greatest social evil that we face. Abortion is murder, and it is carried out in our land by legal approval on a genocidal scale. What else can compare to it in its moral significance?

It does not matter what members of Catholics United have to say about it (by the way, Catholics United somehow found their way into that stupid AP article about Archbishop Chaput that I mentioned in my previous post). Their money does not give them the divine mandate to govern, to teach, and to sanctify the faithful. And it does not matter that Al Smith IV, as we learn from this article, found Barack Obama’s speech at the dinner that night to be “awesome.”

The Church’s spiritually ordained guardians of the faith have been more forceful than ever in making clear the priorty of the right-to-life issue among all social issues, which refers first and foremost to legalized abortion. The USCCB ’s guidelines for faithful Catholic citizenship were also clear about the moral priorities that Catholic voters face.

This Time Magazine article, on the other hand, is just one more piece of bad journalism….

The mainstream media is a disgrace. Everyone knows it. The current election cycle has brought out the worst in them, but it has been true for many decades that journalists cannot be trusted. Many people may not realize it, but journalists in the west were rabid supporters of Stalinism. One could hardly find a critical word to be said of “Uncle Joe” in the mainstream press. They wanted us to believe that Stalin was bringing a glorious new era of peace and prosperity to earth. They failed to report on the widespread political executions, the forced famines, the gulags: tens of millions of Russian citizens lost their lives at the hands of their own government in Stalin’s regime, and nary a word about this was reported in the west.

The only western journalist to come out in the open about the Stalinist purges was Malcolm Muggeridge, who is known by most Catholics as the man who wrote the glowing biography of Mother Teresa (and who eventually was converted to the Catholic faith).

The socialistic bent of the journalists continues into our own day. I am not sure why the profession entails adherence to socialism. I suspect that it is because journalism attracts small minds, prone to philosophical materialism, utterly lacking in deep metaphysical sensibility: everything that would predispose one to thinking that confiscatory, coercive politics is the path to social justice. 

By its very nature, journalism attracts those who worship the present moment. Journalists are, to borrow an expression from Jacques Maritain, “epistemological time worshippers,” for whom the only reality is the fleeting instant, the evanescent “now.” The entire past of man is irrelevant to them. They have no historical sensibility at all. Their vision of the future is thus shallow, at best, and incoherent, and prone to the glorification of dystopic tyranny.

I bring all of this up because the AP report on Bishop Chaput’s criticism of Barack Obama, whom most in the media consider to be the Chosen One, the Messiah, is patently infuriating to anyone with any sense. The Bishop made a speech, no doubt drawing on Robert George’s excellent article, that points out that Obama is an abortion extremist. He also pointed out that Catholics who publically support Obama are doing a disservice to the Church.

Naturally, the heretics in the Church, who should be expelled from her sacred precincts, had to issue a public counterresponse: and it was they who were given the last word in the article:

“We are concerned,” the article ends with a quotation from the theologically insignificant Chris Korzen, ”that Archbishop Chaput’s comments - even those made in his personal capacity - will have a chilling effect on this dialogue”… “It is also profoundly unfortunate that Archbishop Chaput has chosen to make personal attacks on lay Catholics acting in good faith to promote Catholic values in the public square.”

So, for the Associated Press, heretics and dissenters have the last word in matters of the Catholic faith. Bishops are, at best, voices of opinion, not of theological authority. Is it any wonder that half of the country hates journalists?

Fr. Neuhaus has a post up today that correlates to what I wrote about a couple of days ago. “We are,” he says, “two nations.” Having witnessed the debate between Obama and McCain a couple of nights ago, he was palpably struck by how different the two men are in character. Obama’s abortion extremism, Neuhaus says, was finally put to the test by McCain. The issue of abortion, he argues, points to the deep fracturing of culture in our nation. This fracturing is especially evident in the different understanding of the ontological status of positive and constitutional law that is held by the different sides of the culture war. Neuhaus’s whole post is an important read. I’ll provide a good chunk of it here:

As abortion extremists put it, the woman has a right to a dead baby. Obama apparently agrees, even saying that it is a constitutional right. In this he goes farther than almost any reputable constitutional scholar, claiming that the abortion license is covered by a right to “privacy” that is found not only in the “penumbra and emanations” of the Constitution but in the Constitution itself.

This, together with his adamant support for the government funding of abortion and for the Freedom of Choice Act, which would eliminate all state regulation of abortion–including waiting periods, parental notification, and other very modest measures–leaves no doubt that Senator Obama is on the farthest edge of abortion extremism. And it highlights what is arguably the most important single issue in this election: Who, as president, will get to nominate the next one, or two, or three, justices to the Supreme Court.

It is time to focus again, and this time relentlessly, on the question of the protection of innocent human life and the related and inseparable question of the role of the courts in our political order. Many who are sympathetic to his argument were nonetheless inclined to hope that Justice Antonin Scalia was exaggerating when, in his dissent from the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which he was joined by Rehnquist, Thomas, and White, he developed the analogy between that case and the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857. What happened then is, in ways ominously parallel, happening now, Scalia said. Claiming to “resolve” a question in passionate dispute, the Court simply takes one side and demands that the nation follow. It did not work then, Scalia argued, and it will not work now.

What in the last several decades came to be called the “culture wars” runs very deep, and there is no end in sight. Nobody who cares about this constitutional order can be happy with our present circumstance. Politics is supposed to be about persuasion, deliberation, and decision-making through the process of representative democracy. It is not supposed to be warfare conducted by other means. And yet it is hard to suppress the impression that we are two nations in conflict. The alignments are not always clear-cut and there are overlappings on some issues, but the general picture is evident to all who have eyes to see.

We are two nations: one concentrated on rights and laws, the other on rights and wrongs; one radically individualistic and dedicated to the actualized self, the other communal and invoking the common good; one viewing law as the instrument of the will to power and license, the other affirming an objective moral order reflected in a Constitution to which we are obliged; one given to private satisfaction, the other to familial responsibility; one typically secular, the other typically religious; one elitist, the other populist. These strokes are admittedly broad, but the reality is all too evident in the increasingly ugly rancor that dominates and debases our public life. And, of course, for many Americans the conflicts in the culture wars run through their own hearts.

No other question cuts so close to the heart of the culture wars as the question of abortion. The abortion debate is about more than abortion. It is about the nature of human life and community. It is about whether rights are the product of human assertion or the gift of “Nature and Nature’s God.” It is about euthanasia, eugenic engineering, and the protection of the radically handicapped. But the abortion debate is most inescapably about abortion. In that debate, the Supreme Court has again and again, beginning with the Roe and Doe decisions of 1973, gambled its authority, and with it our constitutional order, by coming down on one side.

The result is the Court’s clear declaration of belligerency on one side of the culture wars, endorsing the radically individualistic concept of the self-constituted self. In the Casey decision, for instance, it waxed metaphysical in its assertion that the unlimited abortion license is necessary in order “to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.” (Such philosophical speculation, bear in mind, is made by lawyers presumably interpreting the Constitution.) Not only does authentic personhood require freedom from the state, but also freedom from other potentially encumbering communities. From spouses, for example. The Court struck down the requirement that fathers be notified before mothers get an abortion. That, it is said, would be an “undue burden.”

Marriage, the Court declares, is only an “association” of individuals entered into for the fulfillment of personal needs. It is the same way of thinking that has led state courts to impose same-sex marriage. The notion of the unburdened, unencumbered, autonomous self drives the entirety of the Court’s abortion decisions. Casey continued and expanded the philosophical presuppositions of some earlier decisions, as brilliantly described by Gerard V. Bradley in “The Constitution and the Erotic Self” (First Things, October 1991).

Here is a summary of Dappled Things’ latest issue:

As the weather turns chilly, it’s time to grab your favorite reading chair, brew some hot coffee or tea, and cozy up to the computer screen. The Mary Queen of Angels 2008 issue of Dappled Things is now available online!

Our feature by philosophy professor David Rozema revisits the Lord of the Rings trilogy in light of the theological virtues, exploring how faith, hope, and love are typified by Aragorn, Gandalf, and Frodo:

Tolkien was clear as day about his sub-creation being a pre-Christian one, so his characters by definition cannot possess these virtues in relation to their proper ends (i.e. the truths of faith, Heaven, God rightly known and cherished, and one’s neighbor cherished for God’s sake) simply because, in their world, such things were not yet revealed. Even so, I propose that this understanding of the theological virtues and their relationship to the moral virtues is implicit in the characters of Aragorn, Gandalf, and Frodo.

This issue also boasts some of Dappled Things‘ finest poets. J.B. Toner ranges from the somber (”Tears” and “Winter Rain“) to the delightfully parodic (”That My Kitchen Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Extinguisher,” a distressed bachelor’s cuisine-inspired take on Hopkins-read it to believe it). Joseph O’Brien waxes eloquently Hibernian with his tributes to family and fatherhood, “Our Father” and “Irish Wake.” And Gabriel Olearnik muses on human creativity, accomplishment, hubris and desire  in “Pride” and “To Ithaca.”Looking for something more grounded? In prose, Dena Hunt’s vignette “The Salvation of Glorianne” draws a poignant portrait of Southern women struggling in a small Protestant town. For a faster pace, check out our exclusive excerpt from Arthur Powers’ first novel, Shadow Companion, which follows Jaime Bittencourt, a Brazilian scholar, on his thrilling flight from government persecution.

Subscribers can enjoy even more great poetry, as well as Enrique García-Máiquez’s darkly humorous sketch “499,” translated from the Spanish by David Alexander. When the town schoolteacher challenges a young soldier to persuade him of the benefits of revolution, can he fend off violence and save his parish by the power of argument? Here’s a sneak preview, not even available on the Web site:

Blood started off like a convincing polemicist, despite some stops and starts. He began to persuade the astonished teacher-all this to the nuns’ chagrin, who dizzingly followed the twists and turns of the discussion between avemarias.

Don Bartolomé would sigh. “Wow, Manolito, collectivization? It had never really dawned on me before.”

And Blood’s proud chest would swell up like a sponge.

Yet just before dawn and the cock’s crow Don Bartolomé would add, “Well, yes, for collectivization we’d be prepared to be executed at once, vamos! The thing is . . . the Russian Revolution-I don’t know-it just doesn’t do it for me. It leaves me cold, Blood, that’s all.”

Is the suspense killing you yet? Luckily, relief is just around the corner.Finally, in this issue, we’re very excited to offer an interview with author Heather King, whose memoir of conversion, Redeemed, has been widely acclaimed by reviews both mainstream and Catholic. King shares her thoughts with our readers on writing, faith, culture, and life, and invites us to reflect on the value of fully being who we are called to be:

Why am I living my life? Why am I writing? It has to be for the glory of God, even when I want the credit. [Remember] the parable of the woman at the well? Christ talks to the Samaritan woman about living water, and she runs to the town shouting, “You’ve got to see this guy, he’s unbelievable, he knows everything about me.” And everybody just looks up, like they’ve been sitting in front of the TV watching COPS, and says, “Huh?” You want to tell people about this amazing thing you’ve found, this “living water,” and most of the time they’re not very interested. . . . Just keep on making your little lame pathetic movements [laughs] toward the light. Just like in His day, there are always going to be a few people who are just desperate and bereft and lonely and hungry enough themselves. . . . They’ll find you eventually, or you’ll find each other.

They’ll find you eventually, or you’ll find each other. Haven’t we found each other in just this way here at Dappled Things: a community of Catholic readers who share a passion for truth and beauty? As this year draws to a close, consider sharing what you’ve found with others. A Dappled Things subscription makes a perfect Christmas gift for anyone in your life who loves literature and the fine arts. (And if you’re not already a subscriber, that includes you!)
Wishing you every good thing in Christ,

Bernardo Aparicio

President, Dappled Things

The first paragraph could not make it any more clear:

Sen. Barack Obama’s views on life issues ranging from abortion to embryonic stem cell research mark him as not merely a pro-choice politician, but rather as the most extreme pro-abortion candidate to have ever run on a major party ticket.

The rest of the article substantiates the claim.

Update: Here’s a full article about the woman linked to below. This is not a “National Enquirer” story. It is not paranoia, and, yes, I am admittedly partisan in this election, for reasons that I have made abundantly clear.

In my last post, I suggested that it might behoove the Catholic bishops to stand up for the continued preservation of the constitutional right of private citizens to bear arms. Somebody named Joe, no doubt an Obama supporter, questioned if I am fomenting armed revolution.

If this comment  does, indeed, come from an Obama supporter, it brings to mind the coercive tone of the Obama camp. They go so far as to try to throw the weight of the law at their opponents, accusing them of racism, or of inciting violence, and so on.

But whether or not this comment comes from the Obama camp, they have been, on other occasions, caught trying to use the force of the law to silence political opposition.

Below is an example of what I’m talking about, a story drawn from World Net Daily. It is a horrifying story. I am providing the whole of it here. I would be particularly interested in hearing from law enforcement agents: will you be able to exercise your duties if you know that your boss is simply trying to silence his political opposition coercively?

Here’s the story:

After World War II, trying to explain how good Germans allowed the monstrous evil of the Nazi regime, a pastor recalled that the Nazis came for the communists, and he did nothing; then for the trade unionists, then for the gypsies and Jews; then for the Catholics – and each time he did nothing. When they came for him, none were left to defend him.

Last week, here in America, they came for Jessica Hughes, and I will not be silent. I will not turn away, hoping, in the end, they will not come for me.

Jessica Hughes of Lufkin, Texas, former Marine, mother of three, answered her cell phone in the car, coming home from the emergency room. Her 9-year-old had suffered a mild concussion, but was OK.

The caller was a female Obama volunteer who asked if Jessica would support Obama for president.

Jessica replied, “No, I don’t support him. Your guy is a socialist who voted four times in the state Senate to let little babies die in hospital closets; I think you should find something better to do with your time.” Then Jessica hung up.

The next day, a man and a woman in suits showed up at the door of her home,
identifying themselves as members of the Secret Service.

The Secret Service agents stated that the Obama campaign had complained of a death threat. They had quoted Jessica as saying, “I will never support Obama, and he will wind up dead on a hospital floor.”

Jessica’s husband had heard Jessica’s side of the original phone call and verified the actual quote. To which the female agent replied, “Oh? Well why would she (the Obama volunteer) make that up?”

Jessica replied that the Obama volunteer was probably unhappy about what Jessica had said about her candidate. The female agent then said “That’s right, you were rude!”

The male agent then displayed a file with Jessica’s full name prominently printed on it and asked her how she felt about Obama. At this point, the former Marine told the agent “in no uncertain terms” (as she later recounted) that this
was America and that the last time she checked, she was allowed to think whatever she wanted without being questioned by the Secret Service. And was being “rude” a federal crime now too?

The agents then admitted they had no tape of the conversation, just the quote from the Obama campaign.

Responding to Jessica’s questions, the agents would not identify themselves by name, nor reveal the name of the Obama volunteer who had made the complaint. The agents did indicate that Jessica was not in a court of law yet, and that they
were trying to not embarrass her “by going to all her family and neighbors.”

To these implied threats, Jessica invited the agents to speak to whomever they wanted, and stated she would happily go to court since she had done nothing wrong.

Jessica asked the agents, “Look, someone calls me unsolicited on my cell phone to ask me to support their candidate, and I can’t tell them why I don’t?”

The Secret Service left Jessica that day, but she could not get the “visit” out of her mind.

Jessica wrote later, “The fact that the volunteer lied, the fact that the Secret Service came to my house to question me about my thoughts and feelings and threaten to embarrass me to my neighbors and go to court if I didn’t cooperate is not the tragedy here.

“Because that girl on the phone doesn’t have the pull to send the Secret Service to my home. Someone high in the ranks of a campaign working for a man who may be the next President of the United States of America felt comfortable bringing the
force of the Federal Government to bear on a private citizen on nothing but the word of a partisan volunteer.”

Taken together with the intimidation campaign against WGN Radio because it aired an interview about the Obama-Ayers connection, the use of local criminal prosecutors to intimidate TV stations in certain states to not run ads critical of Obama, and the use of race to rally black voters and shame white voters, the Obama campaign’s M.O. in Jessica’s case is a warning.

The pattern is unmistakable. The drumbeat of jackboots echoes now faintly, but persistently, in the fall breeze.

They came for Jessica, and I will not be silent.

 

The way this election cycle is going, it is perhaps more apparent than ever that there are two Americas, and neither America is particularly interested in being governed by the other. This is why both McCain and Obama supporters are hostile and angry about the coming election. There are some interesting commentaries and analyses on the web at present trying to understand this phenomenon. One such analysis comes from the Canadian political commentator David Warren.

Mark Steyn, a British essayist who lives in Canada, comments on Warren’s analysis at National Review Online. Steyn’s is an interesting voice. He faced the wrath of Canadian Socialist Fascism. A “Human Rights Commission” there tried to have him imprisoned for an article that he wrote critical of Islam. At any rate, he asks if we are, in the United States, on the verge of a “Cold Civil War”:

Is that where we’re headed? William Gibson used the phrase a year or so back in his novel Spook Country; the Hyacinth Girl picked it up at her website; and I ran with it for a column north of the border. Now the Hyacinth Girl has returned to the topic.

David Warren thinks another literary concept applies. “Two solitudes” is a term popularized by a Hugh MacLennan novel set in Montreal and, though the phrase originates (if memory serves) with Rilke, it came to sum up the relationship between the English and French in Canada. Mr Warren believes the concept has headed south:

In the United States, especially in the present election, we get glimpses of two political solitudes that have been created not by any plausible socio-economic division within society, nor by any deep division between different ethnic tribes, but tautologically by the notion of “two solitudes” itself. The nation is divided, roughly half-and-half, between people who instinctively resent the Nanny State, and those who instinctively long for its ministrations. And every kind of specious racial, economic, cultural and class division has been thrown into the mix to add to its toxicity.

He regards these as “two basically irreconcilable views of reality”:

Only in America are they so equally balanced. Elsewhere in the West, the true believers in the Nanny State have long since prevailed.

Democrats and Republicans have become two solitudes, and so, the result of the election will be ugly, no matter which side wins.

(PS Mark Levin, as listeners well know, prefers the term “quiet civil war”. I incline toward “cold civil war” not just because it combines two types of actual war but because it gets the idea of a psychological Iron Curtain cleaving our politics. Of course, in that sense, the problem with this election is that Senator McCain is running like one of those 1970s West German chancellors wedded to detente uber alles.)

The last line, regarding McCain, is very interesting. McCain campaigns on the premise of uniting America. Apparently, he has not fully grasped the reality of two Americas.

Be that as it may, I want to raise the spectre of what this all means for the Church, and it is quite troubling. The Church cannot survive “Nanny State” fascism/socialism. This has been borne out in western Europe to a great extent, but most of all in Canada itself. Sandro Magister’s recent article shows that Quebec is basically lost to the faith. A new evangelization is required there. But it is not even clear that Nanny State drones/citizens are capable of being opened up to God’s grace, without divine actions being taken that are, from a worldly perspective, catastrophic.

The upcoming election in the United States portends the coming of Canadian-style, Nanny State tyranny to the United States. The situation is much more ominous than the mocking description “Nanny State” would imply. What does this sort of “soft” socialism, or “benign” fascism, do to the political order? Here is a short list of four inevitable actions taken by Nanny States:

1. They compel citizens to give their children over to moral formation by the State, to the derogation of pre- and extra-political communities such as the family and the Church

2. They compel the legalization of abortion at all stages, of euthanasia, of gay marriage, and of embryonic stem cell research. This all flows from the philosophical materialism that underlies the cosmological vision of Nanny State technocracy.

3. They prohibit free and open discussion about the moral status of the legal actions enumerated in point 2.

4. Tbey force the Church to hand over its freedom to govern itself to the State: Church hospitals and schools, whether they receive federal funding or not, are forced to comply to the moral demands of the State. Otherwise, they are deemed a threat to the harmony of the political order and are forced by law to shut their doors.

Barack Obama, together with a filibuster-proof leftist congress, and a judiciary that he will stock with his Marxian allies, will enact measures that make all four of the above measures (semi-?) permanent political realities in our republic. Will we, then, even continue to have a republic?

There are other horrific measures that he is capable of enacting: the handing over of American troops for trial in world courts, the dismantling of opposition political media, the taking away of the right to bear arms (Catholics are often naive about the goodness of this constitutional right), and the implementation of widespread voter fraud, which will go unreported and will make it impossible for an opposition political party to get elected in the near future. Think Hugo Chavez on this last point.

Ultimately, it seems to me, the Church must oppose all of these measures: given our current political reality, I would even go so far as to say that it behooves the Church, as a practical matter, to defend the right to bear arms in this country.

Be that as it may, the fundamental tenet of the Church’s social doctrine is at stake in the face of the impending Nanny State. What is that fundamental tenet? It is, quite simply, that the Church must be free from political and economic coercion to adminster her rightful spiritual and moral authority.

Most people do not realize that this is the fundamental tenet of the Church’s social doctrine. But it underlies  all of the points of concern that the Church has enunciated in regard to the social distortions of the modern age. Social justice rests on the dignity of the person, and it is the Church alone that teaches the fullness of truth about the person. To blunt the Church’s spiritual and moral authority is to blunt social justice: and this blunting effect is a common consequence of the modern political order.

The problem, then, it seems to me, is that the Church is almost compelled to take a side in this “cold civil war” of ours. This is the underlying point, ultimately, of Deal Hudson’s recent and controversial article at Inside Catholic.

This is not good for the Church, but I do not see a plausible alternative. Many bishops may not yet realize that the Church cannot co-exist with the Nanny State. But they will come, over time, to this realization.

Fact Check: This from Rhett: “…Mark Steyn is a naturalized American Citizen originally from Canada and now living in New England.”

Apropos my last post on the end of the culture war, I thought that I’d share this link from Michael Brown’s Spirit Daily about Howard Storm. Storm claims to have learned about the future of America during his now-famous Near Death Experience. Brown, as many may know, was an atheist college professor who “died” while awaiting surgery on a field trip in France. He had a horrific experience of hell, which he says would have been his ultimate destination if not for God’s grace, by which he was allowed to continue his life on earth.

Storm claims that he was lifted out of hell by God’s divine light, told about his mission on earth, and was given a vision of America’s future, detailed in the link above. When Storm resumed his life after surgery and recuperation, he became a Methodist minister. He claims that he was thereafter filled with religious fervor, and tried to convert everyone he knew.

God is not happy with America, Storm claims from his vision. We have become an ugly and cruel people who lack religious faith. We were willed by God to be a spiritual light to the world, but we foresook our vocation through amorality, greed, and imperialism.

A couple of years ago, Storm predicted our economic demise. Whatever you may think of what he has to say, I think that we can all agree that moderns tend to forget about the fragility of their civilizational bubble. We exist as a wealthy, powerful, and prosperous nation entirely by the grace of God. Our technological civilization is held together by finely interwoven threads that could be rather easily unravelled. Is that what is happening to us now, in the midst of seemingly unprecedented financial crisis?

Only time will tell, of course. But it is foolish to think that our “American empire” rests upon a permanent foundation.