Religious Persecution

Our Lord never said it was going to be easy on earth.  In fact, he said that the world would hate us because of his name (Matt. 10:22, John 15:18) and that it hated him first.

The current administration’s policy requiring Catholic health insurance plans to cover contraception and abortafacients for women - as well as the so-called “compromise” to that policy - is government-sponsored persecution and an assault on religious freedom that is unprecedented in American history.  If history warns us of anything – it’s that the initial steps in the attack against religious liberty are just as crucial as the final steps.

Many people living in Germany in the 1930’s thought nothing of Hitler’s methodical attack on the Jews.  It wasn’t until the atrocities came to light that people cringed – and not until the end of the war that they saw the depth of the evil that was perpetrated on the Jews and others.

One of the most frightening commentaries about what happened during that time was encapsulated in the poem, “First They Came . . .” by German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller, who suffered in the German concentration camp, Dachau.  It chronicles the downfall of society in Nazi Germany and begins with the list of who the Nazis went after - and the complacent attitude of much of the public:

“. . . then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
If all Catholics voted according to Christian ethics instead of a politically-correct, liberal agenda and stood up against this kind of governmental persecution and constitutional manipulation, we could put a stop to it.  If all Christians – Catholics and Protestants - took a stand against the atrocity of abortion, we could end it tomorrow.  If we all sit around and do nothing or continue to vote for those who proliferate these policies – we can expect more of the same or worse.  Scripture tells us that we will be judged for what we didn’t do – just as we will for the things we did do (Matt. 25:14-46).
There is an old saying that states, “The only thing necessary for evil to exist is for good men to do nothing.”  Unfortunately, we are living in a time of horrific change. How long can we simply stand by and do nothing?   What is it going to take before all Christians join hands and finally say, “Enough!”

Liberation Theology

Liberation theology is a theological movement that has its roots in Latin America in the late 1960s.  It posits that the Gospel message is intended to liberate the impoverished from their low station in life.  The problem is that it almost completely ignores the idea of s true sin

As we read in the Bible, Jesus was concerned with the needs of the poor and destitute and took pity on them.  He commanded that we care for them.  However, He was more concerned with leading us to the Father and to be with Him in Heaven.

Many people use the Gospel to further their socio-political agendas.  For example, the LGBT community is constantly alluding to Scripture to promote a misdirected view of “tolerance” for their sinful behavior.  The same can be said of those who promote other sinful ideologies such as abortion and artificial contraception.

Those in the Liberation Theology camp constantly blur the lines between legitimate Christian doctrine and secular politics to promote their agenda.  To proliferate the idea that true Christianity all boils down to promoting government entitlement programs does a great disservice to the Church – and to the poor.  Whereas, there are consistencies between serving the physical needs of the poor and Christianity – the idea that this is the ultimate goal of Christianity is not only incorrect – it’s a misrepresentation of the Gospel message. 

We must remember that our ultimate goal in life is faithfully serve the Lord and endeavoring to spend eternity in His presence.  This is done by faith, obedience and endurance - which are manifested through our service to God by serving one another.

We must also remember that Jesus came to free us from the clutches of sin – not to increase our worldly wealth.

Voting the “Non-Negotiable” Issues

During an election year, discussions tend to become very heated – especially when the subject includes matters that one cares very deeply about.

Many issues like the death penalty, war, immigration, health care, education, etc. are debatable matters for Catholics.  There are pro and con arguments for all of these issues.  For example, whereas, the Church doesconsider healthcare and education to be basic rights – it does not go so far as to say that they must be paid for by the government.

By contrast, issues like Abortion, Euthanasia, Embryonic stem cell research, Cloning, and Same-sex “marriage” are non-negotiable issues for Catholics because they are intrinsically evil.  There are never acceptable reasons for any of these abominations.

For example, education is an important issue – but it does not trump abortion.  There may be just reasons for war but there is never a just reason for euthanasia.  The economy and how we approach the solutions for making it better are important issues – but they are debatable.  Homosexual “marriage” on the other hand, is not debatable.  It’s always contrary to the will of God.

Another hot-button topic is illegal immigration.  Although we need to remember that there is a reason it is referred to as “illegal” immigration - there are arguments for both sides.  However, regardless of which side of the debate you stand on, it will never trump the proliferation of embryonic stem-cell research or human cloning which are direct affronts to the dignity of life. Our responsibility as Catholics is to vote for candidates who do not include these non-negotiable issues on their agenda.

Who we vote for is just as important as what we are in favor of.  If we purposely vote for a candidate because they stand for non-negotiable issues like abortion, then we are placing ourselves in a spiritually-dangerous position, even limiting our ability to receive communion.  However, we might be free to vote for a candidate, even if they are Pro-Choice – IF there are mitigating proportional reasons.  These could include the fact that the other candidate might be in favor of all five of the non-negotiable issues, whereas the only other candidate might only support the one.  It’s the “lesser of two evils” conundrum.

We must always remember our faith and conscience when voting and not just to concentrate on popular “cause celeb” issues. Our favorite celebrities are not always right – but God is right 100% of the time.  No celebrity or society as a whole is going to judge our eternal soul.  We will have to give an account to almighty God for everything we did, including those candidates and laws for whom we voted . . .

L.G.B.Transgender?

Lately, there seems to be an epidemic in the media of those who are identifying themselves as “transgender.”  Many feel that God made a mistake and trapped their true persona in the body of the opposite sex. Did God really make a mistake – or is Moral Relativism once again at the heart of the matter?

Some think that the way they feel is what determines their “reality”.  Unfortunately for them, their feelings are not what determines reality, but they won’t let facts get in the way.  I may “feel” that it is okay to kill somebody because they wronged me or I might steal something from somebody because they have more than I do.  The reality, however, is that these things are intrinsically wrong.

There are those who identify themselves as “transable”, rejecting their lives as able-bodied people in favor of life in a wheelchair or on crutches - even though there is nothing physically wrong with them.  For some reason, they are labeled as “weird” - but not the transgendered.  Where was the Liberal Left when the head of the NAACP in Spokane, WA was recently forced to resign because she was white?  She identified herself as an African American – just as many so-called transgendered people identify themselves as the opposite sex.   Why wasn’t her case defended with the same fervor as that of Bruce Jenner?  The simply answer is that it’s not their turn yet - but that day will come as long as we continue to sink further into the mud of moral relativism.

We live in a very narcissistic and self-centered society whose only rule it seems, is to do whatever makes us “feel better".  It’s a good thing for us that Moses and the Prophets and the Apostles didn’t feel that way.  They were persecuted or murdered for doing the will of God.  They surrendered their own collective wills in order to serve the Lord.

Why are people in our society being hailed as “heroic” for coming out of the closet while refusing to live their lives according to the will of Almighty God?  His Word is absolute truth – and it condemns all sexual immorality – from adultery and fornication to homosexuality and sexual perversion (Gen. 19:1-11, Leviticus 18:22, Lev. 20:13, Judges 19:16-24, 1 Kings 14:24, 1 Kings 15:12, 2 Kings 23:7, Rom. 1:18-32, 1 Cor. 6:9-11, 1 Tim. 1:8-10, Jude 7).  The Bible is clear about what is naturally ordered and what is disordered. Those who stand up against the evil of ISIS and Al Qaeda and are being martyred for it are heroes.  The men and women in our military who fight for our freedom are heroes.  Refusing to live according to the will of God doesn’t make you heroic.

The Karolinska Institute in Sweden performed a 30 year study on hundreds who underwent gender “reassignment” (sex change) surgery.  The study found that the suicide rate was 20 times greater than that of non-transgender people.  These people need our prayers - not surgery, just as our society as a whole needs God - not moral relativism. 

Voting Our Conscience

It seems like we are always in an election season.  We are bombarded about the candidates and issues from all sides and are left to make the decisions of picking new leaders or voting in new laws and ordinances.  For the Catholic voter, there are some non-negotiable issues that we should remember before going to the polls.  They include, Abortion, Euthanasia, Embryonic stem cell research, Human cloning and Homosexual “marriage”.  

Many candidates run their campaigns in support of these issues while others either oppose them or avoid them altogether.  The truth is that many Catholics vote with a complete disregard for the truths of God as taught by his Church.

The Church, being the mystical Body of Christ, is the pillar and foundation of truth on which Christ himself bestowed his authority (Matt. 16:19, 18:15-18, Luke 10:16, John 16:12-15, 20:21-23).  The truth is not optional – it is not up for grabs.  John 14:6 tells us that Jesus the truth itself.  Rejection of the truth for one’s own version of it is called moral relativism, which simply put, is the sin of pride.

If every Catholic in the U.S. voted according to Biblical principles and what is taught in the Catechism, abominations such as abortion could be a thing of the past in this country.  The tragic fact is that many Catholics do not vote according to their faith and choose instead to elevate a variety of other, lesser important issues to the forefront.  For example, it can be said that Abortion is arguably the most important and urgent issue of our times, yet many Catholics will vote for candidates who are in full support of Abortion “rights”.  They vote against issues like Parental Notification while voting for euthanasia laws that are cleverly disguised as “Death with Dignity”.

In Matt. 5:14, 16, Jesus said “You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”  We must stop thinking as worldly people and think instead as Godly people.  We are, after all, his Body of which HE is the Head. Pope Pius V stated, “All the evils of the world are due to lukewarm Catholics.”  Sadly, his analogy was dead-on accurate.

We must remember that support of issues such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research are diametrically opposed to our beliefs as Christians.  Voting to proliferate this evil makes us partakers in it. We cannot claim innocence in the face of evil when we have done nothing to stop it - and we certainly can‘t claim that we are innocent when we actively participate in it.  Popular Catholic Evangelist, Fr. John Corapi once said, “You can’t be Catholic and pro-Choice – get that straight once and for all!”  Amen to that.

Tolerance

The word, Tolerance is one of the most abused and misrepresented words in the English language today.  In our society, if we are not tolerant of every deviant behavior, we are labeled as being “hateful, right-wing wackos” or “close-minded”.  The secular world loves to throw Bible verses in the faces of Christians such as, “Judge not, lest ye be judged” (Matt. 7:1), without having a real grasp of what that means.  This verse means that we are not to condemn anybody for their actions because we will be judged with the same measuring stick that we held others to (Matt. 7:2).  Judging a person’s heart is God’s business – not ours.

However, the Scriptures call us to discern from what is right and wrong and to be intolerant of sin, but always being respectful of others (Lev. 19:17, 2 Tim. 4:2, Gal. 6:1, James 5:20).  This harkens back to the old adage, “Love the sinner but not the sin”.  Abortion, pornography, divorce, homosexual “marriage” and sexual promiscuity are among the many things in our society that we are not only expected to tolerate - but celebrate.  Most of us are afraid to leave the room with the television on for fear of an immoral commercial or preview being viewed by our children.  But, we cannot blame society as a whole without taking some of the blame ourselves.

We simply acquiesced and caved in to this onslaught of immorality and have allowed it to happen.  Maybe part of the reason is that we were concerned with the way we would be looked upon by others for standing up for what is right.  After all, we wouldn’t want to look too religious or extreme before our friends or co-workers.

We must stand firm in our Christian principles, being careful not to fall into the “tolerance trap”.  In an effort to be overly-fair with others, we sometimes find ourselves at odds with those principles, siding instead with the culture at large.  We are Christians first and foremost – before being citizens of any country or government.  We belong to God – not to the world - and we were paid for by Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary.  As Jesus told the Apostles, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s” (Matt. 22:21, Mark 12:17).  We must give an account before God for what we did - and did not do in this life.

The great Catholic philosopher, G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions.”  When we look at the permissive world in which we live, we suddenly realize how right he was . . .

Gay “Marriage”

Just about every year, we vote on various propositions.  Some of them go away once they are defeated and others seem to reappear every so often.  One issue that always seems to come back to the forefront is the idea of homosexual “marriage”, which we as Catholics cannot condone.

As American citizens, we are guaranteed certain inalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which are not reserved for heterosexuals alone.  Homosexuals possess all of the human rights that are reserved for the rest of us.  However, there are limits to these rights.  For instance, a man can never be a duck nor can we ever consider a little girl to be a stone.  Their behavior may resemble those things but they will always be human beings.  Their respective biological make-up limits their existence to being representatives of the human race.  The same can be said of marriage, which is the union between a man and a woman (Gen. 2:21-25).  This is why Gen. 2:24 tells us, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”  When God created man and woman, he made it so that only a man and a woman could conceive children - regardless of what scientists may concoct within the environs of a laboratory or Petri dish.

No matter how many operations a person undergoes to resemble their favorite idol – they will never actually become them.  Just as blue is blue and red is red – members of the same gender cannot be married.  Nobody ever questions why a non-Jewish boy doesn’t get a Bar Mitzva or why a man cannot give birth – or even why beef jerky cannot be made out of chicken.  There are no lawsuits nor is there any litigation on these matters because they are pre-ordained.  Simply put - they are what they are.

The Catholic Church usually bears the brunt of the bad press on this topic.  We are represented as gay-bashers or as being intolerant of any lifestyle that we don’t agree with.  Just as we are not to be tolerant of any other sin such as stealing, adultery or fornication – we cannot be tolerant of anything that is considered sinful in the eyes of God.  The Bible explicitly teaches that the homosexual lifestyle is gravely sinful (Lev. 18:22, 20:13, Rom. 1:26-7) – as is all sexual immorality (Acts 21:25, 1 Cor. 10:8, 1 Tim. 1:9-11).

Liberalism

The word, Liberalism, has its roots in the Latin word for freedom (Liber).  Originally, the theological position of liberalism was in the realization that we are truly free with God, who has bestowed upon us a free will to accept and cooperate with his grace. The social and political application of liberalism was embodied in the belief of the freedom to educate oneself and to be free of totalitarianism and tyranny.  The rights guaranteed by the framers of the Constitution extolled this form of freedom.

Today, liberalism has been co-opted by those who have perverted its original meaning.  Instead of the true freedom of God’s grace, a rejection of God, an embrace of secularism and an air of moral relativism have taken over.  True liberty has given way to a sense of entitlement - if I’m free to want something, I must be allowed to have it.  The reality is that if we use our freedom for what it was intended for - we become all the more, free.  Today’s liberalism believes that we are enchained and imprisoned by God.

In our society, a person’s “right” demands that another person or entity has a duty to provide that right for me – no matter how much that so-called “right” infringes on others. The right to kill babies by abortion or to peddle pornography within reach of our children has been disguised as the “freedom of choice” and the “freedom of speech.”

Today’s Liberalism has infected some in the Church – even some clergy and religious.  Occult practices like Wicca, Reiki and other New Age philosophies – even the demand for homosexual “marriage” and the ordination of women priests have taken root within the Church.

Out Liberal society tells us that we are to be tolerant of everybody and everything – until it interferes with their agenda.  It has tolerance for every evil under the sun, yet it cannot and will not tolerate God.  21^st century liberalism hides behind the moniker of being “Progressive” while attacking anybody who disagrees with it as a “right-wing whacko”.  This convoluted logic is what led the late Catholic philosopher, G. K. Chesterton to quip, “Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions.”  In Matt. 10:33 Jesus said plainly, “… whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”

As Christians, our responsibility is to the truth – first and foremost. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth 5 and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  The only other entity that is recognized as “the truth” in all of Scripture is the Church (1 Tim. 3:15), which is the Body of Christ (Eph. 1:22-23).

Can a Catholic be a liberal?  It all depends on which definition you use - the original meaning or the hijacked 21^st century definition of the word.