At Mass today, our pastor made plain that we might have to engage in civil disobedience for we cannot obey laws that run counter to God's laws. He cited Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" that outlined King's own thoughts and experiences with civil disobedience as he fought unjust discrimination laws in the early 1960s. As you read the letter, you'll note that he invoked both St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo, both Doctors of the Church.
Other Christian leaders are also considering civil disobedience. Reverend Bill Owens, president and founder of Coalition of African-American Pastors, said on Tuesday (prior to the Obergefell v Hodges ruling ) told Breitbart News that should the ruling happen (and it did), he envisioned "another civil rights movement of Christians of various churches and massive civil disobedience." Read the article.
IMHO, he's spot-on correct. Until we elect leaders with firm moral convictions and spinal fortitude, we'll have no alternative. I'll now link to some helpful tips from the American Family Association and Alliance Defending Freedom. There are measures that can be taken to stave off attacks from the get-go. In any event, we must stand firm and pray to Our Lord for strength and guidance.
Thanks so much for a very informative post. I am sending the link of the American Family Association 'tips' to my Pastor, and also one of the more faithful Deacons of my Parish. The scary part is that most Catholics will sit by and do NOTHING to promote the truth in their own Parishes. The days of passive silence in the face of evil within Catholic communities is long gone. I do believe the Lord God is now requiring us to take a side. He has thrown down the gauntlet and now we MUST choose between His truth and pure evil. No more fence sitting. If Catholics know what's good for their own immortal souls they will have to speak out. They are being forced to choose between God and Satan himself. They will have to take up the fight within their own Parishes. Lord Jesus help us with your courage, strength and perseverance.
ReplyDeleteThis is the kind of forthright, courageous Catholic commentary that we all need to hear.
ReplyDeleteI know this may sound odd, but the fact of the matter is that, in the new circumstances, Catholics now have very formidable allies in the American Muslim community. They will not permit people like Hillary Clinton to change their beliefs. Who does she, and they, think they're kidding? Catholic priests are being spat upon after "Gay Pride" parades. Try doing that to Muslim clerics and see exactly what response you receive from the Muslim community. This issue is not going away any time soon; that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteUortunately I see the same pattern emerging as it did post Jan 20, 1973. My fear is that we will write horrified essays to one another about how shocked, shocked, shocked we are, complain about the media not covering our protests, form multiple organizations working at cross purposes, and suffocate the truth in terminal philosophical politeness and religious jargon that will not reverse anything.
ReplyDeleteSo then, what to do? It is most important for all of us who are still sane 1) to get on the same page; 2) to act massively and immediately. That much is obvious. We have very little time left to exercise free speech, so we need to say “No!” at the top of our lungs and together.
Practically, I think the following three steps would do it:
1. Throw out our televisions. This has to do with conserving our sanity, for has it not driven us mad as a nation? Televised sports, for example, is a shot of heroin between the ears. We simply cannot afford any more escapism. The technology may be neutral, but at the moment it is a satanic instrument. In this culture war, it is Axis Sally in our family rooms.
2 .Remember we are obviously dealing with a body politic with the attention span of a fruitfly (too much TV) and who have had no philosophical or moral formation whatever. An argument with pictures would be the polemical equivalent of showing aborted babies in the pro-life cause. The question then becomes, what pictures? Vox Cantoris had a paragraph the other day that was very suggestive: He wrote:
“Anal cancer (with caution, you can google the pictures and see what sodomy can cause) is 50% higher than the normal. Parasites such as amoebiasis and giardiasis, gonorrhea and anal warts abound in the population. Anorectal sepsis, Epstein-Barr Syndrome, Burkitt’s
Lymphoma, Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma, Karposi’s Sarcoma, Hepatitis, AIDS, Prostrate Cancer, colitis, enterities, proctitus, proctocolitus and diseases of the mouth which would cause horror to view.”
So why not cause some horror among the general population and the young in particular by passing out pamphlets with such pictures out at high school and college campuses? Here we are no longer defending anything, but taking the war to the enemy by attacking homosexuality itself. Yes, it has a huge “yuck” factor, which is the very reason for doing it
In other words take the gloves off immediately and stop talking in latinate phrases and framing our arguments in philosophical and theological jargon. Leave phrases like “traditonal understanding of marriage” etc., etc. out of it, and go for the throat by attacking homosexuality directly and incessantly with pictures of its consequences.
Of course, we have to present the teachings of Christ in the public square, but showing what a horror homosexuality is at the physical level would be a motive of credibility to listen to the Church in her monitums about that and other crimes against human beings.
3. Frame the leftist advances as “The war on children.” In other words, up the rhetorical ante enormously and raise the decibel level to painful levels . . . in unison and immediately.
Were we to do all this together, incessantly, implacably, we’d have a good chance of turning the situation around.
Or maybe "mocriage" would be an appropriate name for this nonsense.
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