By Patrick J. Buchanan:

It took Joe Biden’s public embrace of same-sex marriage to smoke him out.

But after Joe told David Gregory of “Meet the Press” he was “absolutely comfortable” with homosexuals marrying, Barack Obama could not maintain his credibility with the cultural elite if he stuck with the biblical view that God ordained marriage as solely between a man and woman. The biblical view had to go.

Obama had to move, or look like a malingerer in secularism’s next great moral advance into post-Christian America.

Consider. Obama had an appearance coming up on “The View,” where Whoopi Goldberg would have demanded to know why he lacked the courage of Biden’s convictions. He has a $40,000-a-plate fundraiser at George Clooney’s, where the Hollywood crowd would want to know why he does not end discrimination against homosexuals.

He has appearances lined up before gay activists raising millions for his campaign. Monday, his press secretary was pilloried for his feeble defense of Obama’s now-abandoned position.

His hand was forced. Yet the stand Obama took could cost him his presidency. Same-sex marriage may yet be a bridge too far, even for a dying Christian America.

On the plus side for Obama, his decision is producing hosannas from the elites and an infusion of cash from those who see same-sex marriage as the great moral and civil rights issue of our time.

But Obama may also have just solved Mitt Romney’s big problem: How does Mitt get all those evangelical Christians and cultural conservatives not only to vote for him but to work for him?

Obama, by declaring that homosexual marriages should be on the same legal and moral plane as traditional marriage, just took command of the forces of anti-Christian secularism in America’s Kulturkampf. And Nov. 6, 2012, is shaping up as the Antietam of the culture war.

Obama’s second problem is that he may soon be seen as America’s champion of same-sex marriage, but an ineffectual advocate. For Obama can do nothing, as of now, to impose homosexual marriageon the American people.

Thirty-one states have voted to outlaw it. A constitutional amendment supporting same-sex marriage could not win a majority of either house of Congress, let alone the necessary two-thirds of both.

Hence, Obama is going to spend six months winning cheers by calling for same-sex marriage. But the price of those cheers will be the rallying of millions of opponents of homosexual marriage, who will fight this battle where they are winning it, at the state level.

Only six states have approved homosexual marriage, while 30 have imposed a constitutional ban. In North Carolina, a ban not only on same-sex marriage but also civil unions, though opposed by Obama and Bill Clinton, carried on Tuesday with 61 percent of the vote.

Republican turnout in North Carolina’s primary was up half a million, the highest in history. And this is a state Obama carried in 2008, a state whose largest city, Charlotte, will host Obama’s convention.

Even in liberal California in 2008, while John McCain was getting a smaller share of the vote than Barry Goldwater in 1964, Proposition 8, restricting marriage to men and women, won.

How does Obama propose to win this battle?

He has one path to victory — the Supreme Court.

The New York Times, declaring that homosexuals’ right to marry is “too precious and too fragile to be left up to the whim of states and the tearing winds of modern partisan politics,” is looking to the court as the last, best hope to impose same-sex marriage on the nation.

Can’t trust voters, can’t trust elected legislators, can’t trust Congress. Homosexual marriage, says the Times, is too important to be left to democratic decision. The republic must be commanded to accept it by unelected judges who serve for life and against whom the people have no political recourse.

That process of judicial tyranny has begun. A California judge has overturned the decision of California’s voters to ban gay marriage, and his ruling is headed for the high court.

The Supreme Court thus will tell us whether this issue is to be decided democratically by voters and their elected state and federal legislators, or dictatorially by themselves.

Four liberal activists on the Supreme Court — Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor — are probably ready to declare that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right, as their predecessors declared abortion to be a constitutional right.

But Obama needs one more justice. If elected, he will get it, and same-sex marriage will be forced on all of America. If Romney wins, the Supreme Court will likely leave the issue of same-sex marriage to be decided by the people and their elected representatives.

Thus everything is up for grabs this November: the House, the Senate, the presidency, the Supreme Court and whether we still call the United States of America God’s country.

Game on!

From Fr. Z:

With the endorsement of the amendment for the State Constitution of North Carolina, I thought that the true “ground zero” for the same-sex debate would now be Minnesota.  It will also now be every ballot in every state in November.

From FNC:

President Obama on Wednesday endorsed same-sex marriages, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to take that position following days of speculation about his “evolving” stance on the issue.
The president used a hastily called TV interview to make his position clear.
“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told ABC News.

[...]

BUT WAIT… THERE’s MORE.

In endorsing unnatural sex, Obama invoked Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross.

“This is something that, you know, [Michelle and I have] talked about over the years and she, you know, she feels the same way, she feels the same way that I do. And that is that, in the end the values that I care most deeply about and she cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated…”

Christ’s Sacrifice?  The “Golden Rule”?

Christians understand that both are reflections of sacrificial love, charity, the former the ultimate example of the God man, the later human and earthly which echoes the former (cf. Luke 10:25-28).

Obama instrumentalized the Lord’s Sacrifice, the ultimate act of the love which is charity, to promote unnatural sex and the overturning of one of our most important societal bonds.

We, according to charity, must act for the true good of the other. It is not for the true good of another person to help them to sin or to undermine Christian morals.  But that is exactly what Obama is doing. This is an astounding example of both scandal and blasphemy.   It is beyond absurd to to invoke the Lord’s Sacrifice in an attempt to violate our human nature and God’s laws.

Obama invoked the Sacrifice of the Cross for the sake of justifying the destruction of the definition of “marriage”, as if that is “good” for people.  It is NOT for the good of anyone, because it promotes and condones a sin that cries to heaven.

We cannot wish that people sin.
We cannot help them sin.
We cannot tell them that sin is good.
We cannot give them the means to sin so that they will sin.
We cannot defend the sins of others.

In charity, we must treat people with the affliction of sex-sex attraction according to their God-given dignity.  In charity, we can NEVER condone their sinful acts.

It is the sin that we repudiate, not the people.

It can NEVER… NEVER be an act of Christian charity to call evil acts good, or to condone them, or to say that they are acceptable, or publicly to undermine morals that stem from our human nature.  It can NEVER… NEVER… be a matter of “Golden Rule”, which is rooted in the true sacrificial love which is charity, to promote a change in the definition of marriage so that “same-sex marriage” can be marriage’s equivalent in any way.

What the President did was vile.  Even though everyone knew that was his position, how vile to hear it framed in that way, publicly given voice.

He is an embarrassment to the United States.  He is actively tearing at one of society’s most important social bonds. What he did is harmful to our country and to every citizen of every age, even those of same-sex attractions.  It was NOT a reflection of either charity or the Golden Rule in any Christian sense.   The Golden Rule does NOT mean “you do what you want and I’ll do what I want”.

Pres. Obama MUST be voted out of office.

St. Augustine teaches about charity, about real love, in his commentaries on the First Letter of John.  Augustine describes three kinds of love.  He explains that the greatest way of earthly love is enemy love, true charity for those who wish you ill and harm you.

I pray that I will be able to come to this sort of charity, in which I – may God have mercy on me and give me grace- fail so very often.

“We are being pitted race against race, gender against gender, economic strata against economic strata, sexual orientation against sexual orientation, religion against religion … The president is leading us into these new wars.”

The opinion piece below describes what is ramping up going into this Summer. I have been trying to warn everyone I know to be prepared!!!  Maybe … if we are not blind-sided by this unprecedented divisiveness that is being planned to try to win an election, we won’t let it destroy our relationships. This is going to be a Summer from Hell … mark my words!!!

From the Washington Times:

Last week, President Obama spoke to a large gathering of journalists at a luncheon sponsored by the Associated Press. “Spoke” isn’t exactly the right word. He chided them:

“This bears on your reporting … I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing, then they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. And an equivalence is presented, which I think reinforces peoples’ cynicism about Washington in general. This is not one of those situations where there’s an equivalency.”

His words sounded familiar.

At the opening day of the Take Back the American Dream Conference early last October, Katrina vanden Heuvel launched a surprising, counterintuitive attack at the media, accusing them of “media malpractice,” because they “[buy] into the fraud of balance.” She said the mainstream media had ignored events such as the then-nascentOccupy Wall Street movement and the previous week’s Keystone XL pipeline protest in front of the White House, where hundreds of participants had been arrested. (One person at my table quipped: “The media ignores 1,500 environmental protesters being arrested in front of the White House while covering everything the Tea Party says or does. This country doesn’t even have 1,500 Tea Party members! It’s all a mirage!”)

Ms. vanden Heuvel continued: “Our views are vastly more in sync with the majority of the nation [than the Tea Party‘s] because the mainstream media think we are only a marginal group. Yet we [progressives] are the mainstream!

“The right is enthralled with extremes … . Due to their religious fanaticism, the right doesn’t believe in truth.” In fact, “The right lives in an alternative reality … the right is not tethered to the truth … . So why does the mainstream media feel it needs to tell both sides of the story, when there is really only one [true story]?”

At the time, her claim that the traditional media ignore the left and cater to the right surprised many Tea Partyers and conservatives. Though her claim came across to many as disingenuous, it turns out that her words foreshadowed the president’s message to journalists at the AP luncheon.

Echoing both the president and Ms. vanden Heuvel, liberal talk-show radio host Bill Press recently insisted there is an “imbalance in the media today,” placing liberals and their message “at a big disadvantage.”

“We have to get the message out, the truth out to counter the lies from the other side. It’s tough to do when there is such an imbalance in the media today … . Of 2,000 news talk stations in this country today, there are maybe 50 – I’ll be generous, 50 – that are progressive talk stations – 1,940 of them are all right-wing all the time. So they start off at a huge advantage, and they also have Fox News. Now, we’ve got MSNBC and now we have Current TV, but MS[NBC] is not all-progressive all day long, and Current doesn’t even have a full day of programming – yet.”

While many might be tempted to chuckle at this now-recurring message, it is a signal that the groundwork is being laid for events that will surround and define the 2012 ideological battle for theWhite House, the Capitol and statehouses across the country.

Last October, the Take Back the American Dream Conference in Washington was poorly attended, so the organizers are taking a mulligan and doing it all over again in June. The Occupy Wall Streetmovement, only a couple weeks old in early fall 2011, has practiced and is ready to go. The liberal intelligentsia’s cadre of academia, media and political activists have taken months to hone their message and attack. The Occupy movement has been embraced and glorified by all of these to the same degree that they have rejected and demonized the Tea Party movement and conservatives.

The movement, a full frontal attack on the cohesiveness of America, is increasingly the message of the president. The two are becoming one. If America is viewed metaphorically as a human body, the White House and liberal activists are attacking the body’s sinews, undermining and untethering the goodwill and trust that hold us together.

We are being pitted race against race, gender against gender, economic strata against economic strata, sexual orientation against sexual orientation, religion against religion.

The president is leading us into these new wars, and now he most definitely is not “leading from behind.”

From Jill Stanek:

Bottom line: There are no aborted embryonic or fetal cells in any of PepsiCo’s final products.

But: Aborted cells are used in the development of artificial flavor enhancers by biotech company Senomyx, with which PepsiCo signed a four-year, $30 million agreement in 2010 for research and development. No Pepsi products containing Senonymx flavor enhancers should be expected until 2013.

Senomyx’s disputed cell line is HEK-293, derived from the kidney cells of an aborted baby. We could go into the weeds at this point, but Wikipedia offers an easy explanation:

HEK stands for Human Embryonic Kidney cells. These cells, which were cloned, originally came from healthy, electively aborted human embryos. Using information from the human genome sequence, Senomyx has identified hundreds of taste receptors and currently owns 113 patents on their discoveries.

Ick factor

A little more on those taste receptors fromcogforlife.org, which originally made the connection between PepsiCo, Senomyx, and aborted cells:

These… taste receptors… produce a chemical signal that lets Senomyx researchers know they have achieved the exact flavor they are trying to develop.

Snopes concurs… sort of

Snopes, in a post last updated on March 18, basically comes to a similar conclusion as the aforementioned, calling the claim that “Pepsi uses material from aborted fetuses in it products” a “mixture” of “false” and “undetermined.”

Snopes states it is “false” to claim Pepsi products contain aborted baby cells, but it is “undetermined” whether Senomyx uses aborted cells in R&D, basically because Senonymx won’t answer the question.

But Snopes goes into great detail, citing articles by CBS News, Forbes, and Miami New Times, to corroborate that Senomyx indeed does. There is actually no question on that point, so Snopes should change “undetermined” to “true.”

Plot thickens with help by Obama administration

LifeSiteNews.com reported on March 5 that shareholders shall remain in the dark, thanks to the SEC:

In a decision delivered Feb 28th, President Obama’s Security and Exchange Commission ruled that PepsiCo’s use of cells derived from aborted fetal remains in their research and development agreement with Senomyx to produce flavor enhancers falls under “ordinary business operations.”

The letter signed by Attorney Brian Pitko of the SEC Office of Chief Counsel was sent in response to a 36-page document submitted by PepsiCo attorneys in January, 2012.

In that filing, PepsiCo pleaded with the SEC to reject the Shareholder’s Resolution filed in October 2011 that the company “adopt a corporate policy that recognizes human rights and employs ethical standards which do not involve using the remains of aborted human beings in both private and collaborative research and development agreements.”

Boycott PepsiCo

Senomyx has since removed the list of all its partners, but cogforlife.org got a screenshot. Those include Kraft and Nestle, future boycott targets according to c4l.

But the boycott starts with Pepsi. From Brad Mattes of Life Issues Institute:

PepsiCo will continue their efforts to keep the controversy quiet, but the pro-life community’s boycott of Pepsi products and exposing the outrage isn’t going to lose its fizz anytime soon.

Here’s what I need you to do.  BOYCOTT Pepsi products.  Click here for the link that will tell you what they are.

Contact PepsiCo directly by clicking here. Tell them why you’re boycotting their products.

Let others know by leaving a comment on the company’s Facebookpage. Post comments on your own Facebook and Twitter pages.

The only way to stop this atrocity is if you and I make enough noise. Together, we must put PepsiCo under the spotlight and expose their willingness to make money off the bodies of aborted babies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaHaiOArGYc

From The Blaze:

This week‘s announcement of the State Department’s placing the Vatican on a money laundering “Watch List” raised many questions about this Administration and what appears to be an ongoing battle with the Catholic Church.

(WATCH THESE VERY TROUBLING VIDEOS)

Is this a new fight? Not really. The Democrats let Conservative Catholics know where they stood back in 2008.

As the political party was preparing to gather in Denver in order to formalize the nomination of Barack Obama, Democrats chose not to invite  the Catholic leader of the host city. Archbishop Charles Chaput (a staunch defender of the unborn and now presiding over the Philadelphia diocese) was not on the list of Catholics who would be leading prayers before and during the convention. There were some prominent, liberal Catholic names on the schedule: Sister Helen Prejean of “Dead Man Walking” fame and Social Justice lobbyist Sister Catherine Pinkerton got an invite.

Archbishop Chaput was eventually offered a couple of tickets to watch the convention from the cheap seats. According to news reports, the Archbishop did not attend the convention’s opening night and the Democrats reported he chose to reject their ticket offer. The reality: instead of sitting in the bleachers and watching Liberal Catholics from outside of his diocese deliver the invocation, Chaput and Dr. Alveda King led a pro-life prayer vigil at Martin Luther King Park in Denver.

But the snubbing didn’t end there. Catholic faith leaders were also absent from the president’s inauguration — they were not invited. Not a single member of the Catholic clergy was asked to be part of the swearing-in ceremonies. There were some faith leaders that were part of Obama’s inauguration to be sure. The Evangelical Pastor Rick Warren (who since has supported Catholics over the Obamacare / HHS Mandate), gay Episcopalian bishop Gene Robinson, and Protestant minister Joseph Lowery from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference were all part of the historic moment. Dr. Lowery delivered the emotional (if not very unique) invocation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pEH37JIgBU

There was faith diversity on the podium at the Inauguration — just no Catholics.

Why were no conservative Catholics invited to the Democratic convention in Denver and not a single Catholic faith leader included in the President’s inauguration?

The reasons may go back to the summer of 2007 when then-Senator (and candidate) Barack Obama made a pledge to Planned Parenthood concerning his first act as President:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf0XIRZSTt8

Obama pledged his allegiance to Planned Parenthood:  “I‘m absolutely convinced that we’re not just gonna win an election, but more importantly, we’re gonna transform this nation.”

Fast-forward to April 29th of 2009 when the President was forced to address his unfulfilled promise to Planned Parenthood, stating that passing the Freedom of Choice Act was not the “highest legislative priority.” It is also worth noting that Senator Obama was a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the bill.

Rewind to 2008 and the Denver snub. After securing enough delegates to win his party’s nomination, Obama and the Democrats proceeded to build their platform for the coming election. In August of 2008, they were adding some teeth to their platform planks, especially in the pro-choice arena. According to a report by Austin Ruse of TheCatholicThing.org:

The new plank talks about supporting Roe in addition to supporting a distinct and potentially broader “woman’s right to choose safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay.”

Mr. Ruse continues:

“it also calls for the adoption of the Freedom of Choice Act, a scurrilous measure co-sponsored by Senator Obama which may escape the notice of those who do not know its details. In it, you will find things like the requirement that government not “discriminate” against abortion in the “provision of benefits” or “information.” Remember Rust v. Sullivan? That was the case affirming the government’s right to favor childbirth over abortion in its funding decisions. The Democrat plank would overturn Rust and require that even programs for adoption and parenting promote abortion.”

With the major planks of the Obama election platform including aggressive pro-abortion language, it is doubtful that the Democrats would invite a staunch pro-lifer like Archbishop Chaput to speak or pray at their convention. Dems certainly wanted to avoid a situation like the one that happened in 2000 when their convention was held in Los Angeles. It was in L.A. that Catholic Cardinal Mahony was invited to address the Democrats and he delivered the following invocation:

It would seem that the current squabbles between the Obama Administration and the Catholic Church are not something born after the passage of the “Affordable Care Act.” Just last week The Blaze reported on Cardinal Dolan’s letter that revealed the administration’s lectures to Catholic Bishops instructing them to listen to “enlightened” voices of accommodation. However, the roots of this fight go back at least five years to 2007 and they are ongoing. The big question is how much longer will it continue?

A hat tip to Michael Voris of “The Vortex.” Three years ago, he noted that President Obama has a history of fighting against the more conservative wing of the Roman Catholic Church.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVN2MMuiedI

From Archdiocese of Washington:

In ancient Greek mythology the dog Cerberus guarded the entrance to Hades (the misty and gloomy underworld, the abode of the dead), permitting anyone to enter but none to leave. Cerberus is usually depicted as a three headed dog and some have tried to link this to his seeing the past, present and future. Cerberus’ name comes to us in a Latinized version from the Greek, where he was called Κέρβερος (Kerberos).

Now, when you and I think of dogs, we think of “man’s best friend.” But, in the ancient world dogs were usually thought of as wild animals that ran in packs and scavenged at the edge of town. They were not as domesticated as today. And Cerberus incorporates not only the fearsome qualities of a wild dog, but was also said to have a mane, not of hair, but of live snakes! He was said to eat only live meat and was the offspring of Echidna, a half-woman, half-snake, and Typhon, a fire-breathing giant. Not the most pleasant of “dogs” to be sure.

You get the picture. In Greek mythology he “welcomed” you to Hades when you died and made sure you did not leave.

So lets apply the images of Greek Mythology: Hades and Cerberus, to what ails our culture today.

Hades, here and now – Pope John Paul II often described, with concern, the Western World as a “Culture of Death.” Essentially what this means is that, in our culture we increasingly see death as a solution to problems. If the child is inconvenient or “defective,” abort. If the old person is suffering and using lots of resources, euthanize. If there is injustice, use violent means such as war to restore it. If there is a serious criminal, kill him. If we want to do research, kill embryos. That others should die to make my life more pleasant, safe, or viable, fine! And so forth.

This is the culture of death and it corresponds in our mythological reference here to Hades, the abode of the dead. And, as our culture descends and increasingly enters this Hades, this abode and culture of death, it is welcomed there by the three-headed dog, Cerberus.

Cereberus, the three-headed dog, or course is not real, but allegorical and he helps ensure our entrance and also our stay in cultural Hades by his three-fold threat of: Secularism, Materialism, and Individualism. These three threats are represented by his three heads.

1. Secularism – The word “secular” comes from the Latin Saecula which is translated as “world” but can also be understood to refer to the “age” or “times” in which we live. What secularism does to pay excessive concern to the things of this world and to the times which we live. It does this in exclusion to values and virtues of heaven and the Kingdom of God. The preoccupation with the things of this world, crowds out any concern for the things of heaven.

Hostile – And it is not merely a matter of preoccupation with the world, but, often, of outright hostility to things outside the “saecula” (world or age). Spiritual matters are often dismissed by the worldly as irrelevant, naïve, hostile and divisive. Secularism is an attitude that demands all our attention be devoted to the world and its priorities.

Misplaced Priority – The attitude of secularism also causes many who adopt it to tuck their faith under worldly priorities and views. In this climate, many are far more passionate and dedicated to their politics than their faith. The faith is “tucked under” political views and made to conform to them. It should be the opposite, that political views would be subordinate to the faith. The Gospel should trump our politics, our world view, our opinions and all worldly influences. Faith should be the doorkeeper. Everything should be seen in the light of faith. But secularism reverses all this and demands to trump the truths of faith.

Secularism is the error wherein I insist that the faith should give way when it opposes some worldly way of thinking, or some worldly priority. If faith gets in the way of career, guess which gives? If faith forbids me from doing what I please and what the world affirms, guess which gives way? The spirit of the world often sees the truths of faith as unreasonable, unrealistic, and demands that they give way, either by compromise or a complete setting aside of faith.

As people of faith, it should be the world and its values that are on trial. But secularism in us puts the faith on trial and demands it conform to worldly thinking and priorities.

Secularism also increasingly demands that faith be privatized. It is to have no place in the public square of ideas or values. If Karl Marx said it, fine. But if Jesus said it, it has to go. Every other interest group can claim a place in the public square, in the public schools, etc. But the Christian faith has no place. Yes, God has to go. Secularism in its “purest” form demands a faith-free, God-free, world. Jesus promised that the world would hate us as it hated him. This remains true and secularism describes the rising tendency for the world to get its way.

Here is the first head of Cerberus welcoming our culture to the abode of the dead. For, to make this world our priority and let it over-rule our faith, is to board a ship doomed to sink with no life boats on board. With secularism, our fascination and loyalty is primarily to the world, and this amounts to arranging deck-chairs on the Titanic. If the world is really all that matters then we are the most pitiable of men for everything we value is doomed and already passing away. Cerberus beckons.

2. Materialism – Most people think of materialism as the tendency to acquire and need lots of material things. It includes this, but true materialism is far deeper. In effect, materialism is the error that insists that physical matter is the only thing that is real, or existent. Materialism holds that only those things which can be measured on scale, seen in a microscope, or empirically experienced (through the five senses), are real. The modern error of Scientism flows from this which insists that nothing outside the world of the physical sciences exists or is real. (More on that HERE).

In effect, materialism says that matter is all that “matters.” The spiritual is either non-existent or irrelevant to the materialist. This of course leads to the tendency to acquire things and neglect the spiritual. If matter is all that really matters then we will tend to want large amounts of it. Bigger houses, more things, creature comforts, are all amassed in order to give meaning and satisfaction to me.

In the end it is a cruel joke however since; All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing (Eccles 1:7). And again, Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. [It] is meaningless….. The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep. (Eccles 5:10-12) But never mind, the materialist will still insist it is the only thing real or the only thing relevant.

The error of materialism is ultimately tied up in thinking that matter is all that exists and that man, a creature of matter and spirit, can be satisfied only with matter. Materialism denies a whole world of moral and spiritual realities that are meant to nourish the human person: goodness, beauty, truth, justice, equity, transcendence, truth courage, feelings, attitudes, angels and God. These are ultimately spiritual realities. They may have physical manifestations, to some extent, but they are not physical. Justice does not walk through the door and take a seat in the front row. Transcendence does not step out for a stroll, give a speech or shake hands with beauty. Such things are not merely material.

To deny the spiritual is to already be dying, for the form of this world is passing away. To deny the spiritual is to have little to live for other than today, for tomorrow is uncertain and one step closer to death.

The second head of Cerberus is materialism. He beckons us and draws our culture to live already in Hades, the abode, the culture of death.

3. Individualism – The error of individualism exalts the individual over and above all notions of the common good, and our need to responsibility live in communion with God and others. Individualism exalts the view of the individual at the expense of the received wisdom of tradition. Individualism demands autonomy without proper regard to rights and needs of others. It minimizes duties toward others and maximizes personal prerogatives and privileges. It also tends to deny a balanced notion of dependence on others for human formation and the need to accept correction and instruction. Individualism also results in a weakening of the Church, schools and other institutions by neglecting our duty to take part in and, support them, crucial as they are to the flourishing of the human family. Just as we could not enter this world without God and our parents, so neither can we live fully in isolation from God and others.

Personal freedom and autonomy have their place and should not be usurped by government or other collectives. But freedom today is often misunderstood as the ability to do whatever I please, instead of the ability, the power, to do what is good. Freedom is not absolute and should not be detached from respect for the rights and good of others.

Excessive and mistaken notions of freedom have caused great harm in our culture and it is often children who suffer the most. Sexual promiscuity, easy divorce, abortion, substance abuse and so forth are an abuse of freedom and cause harm to children, and to the wider society that must often seek to repair the damage caused by irresponsible behavior.

Individualism is the third head of Cerberus. By it he beckons us to Hades, the culture of death, since by it, he breaks down the ties that give life. So pervasive is individualism today that over 40% of people surveyed think marriage is passé. The result is death: contraception, low birthrates, abortion, and the children who are born are increasingly raised in the problematic settings of broken homes, daycare and poor discipline.

So here are, struggling with a culture of death in the West, (Hades) and our own Cerberus bids more of us enter. Pardon my figurative imagery, in this post. Allegorical Cerberus is not to be numbered among the ranks of “man’s best friend.” He’s a wild dog, scarcely trained at all. You will not be his master, he wants to be yours. Resist him, solid in your faith (1 Peter 5:9)

There are good things in our culture and some hopeful trends, among the young especially. We have discussed those here too. But allow today’s blog as a figure of what ails us. When we can name the demons they have less power over us.

Here is probably the most secular song ever written. It is deconstructionist, nihilistic, atheistic, anarchistic, and materialistic. And most Christians sing along with it on the radio with narry a thought. (Pay attention to the lyrics, they are terrible). Some have told me John Lennon disavowed this song before his death, but I have not been able to verify this. It is surely a song emblematic of the age of the triple header threat. Cerberus would be proud.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq7qZrXYtvk

Was a kind of Pandora’s box (explained here) opened in 1968? We were warned. In 1957, just two years before the call for the Second Vatican Council and the crisis of Faith that followed, and just before the revolutionary decade of the 1960s, Sister Lucia (the primary seer at Fatima) said: “The devil is in the mood for engaging in a decisive battle against the Blessed Virgin, as he knows what it is that offends God the most, and in a short space of time will gain for him the greatest number of souls. Thus the devil does everything to overcome the souls consecrated to God, because in this way he will succeed in leaving the souls of the faithful abandoned by their leaders, thereby the more easily will he seize them.”

“Strike the shepherd and the sheep scatter” (Zechariah 13:7). There’s no doubt that the devil has focused his assault on the religious leaders of our day. Why? Because Satan is a supreme strategist in spiritual warfare and he knows that the condition of our leaders affects the condition of our Church. Decades of weakened, lenient, non-confrontational leadership have left the faithful feeble and prone to be “conformed to the pattern of this world” (Rom 12:2).

While many factors may have contributed to the upheaval of the 1960s, we have come to identify the significant tipping point in modern history. It was, quite literally, a sudden momentum shift away from God (or at least a demanding God), as man opted for the self-indulgent and self-gratifying way of the world. Man has free will, and so he has always had the opportunity to go his own way. This temptation to disconnect from the Divine and make ourselves our own god is as old as the Garden of Eden itself. So are the dire consequences of making this break from the way, the truth and the life.

DECLARATION OF SPIRITUAL WAR

After three decades of attempting to use pastoral means to appease the legion of enemies seeking control of the Church and the demise of the culture, Pope John Paul II declared war on Satan and all the evil spirits seeking the ruin of souls. The spiritual wreckage in that short period of time was cataclysmic, and so the pope understood this was not a struggle against flesh and blood, but against the powers of darkness in the heavenly realm (Eph 6:12). He knew there was no more pastoral pussyfooting around – this was a call to spiritual arms to engage spiritual combat.

In his March 25, 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (the Gospel of Life), he coined the term, the “Culture of Death,” and went on to use it twelve times in his encyclical. It was less than one year prior to this bold branding of pure evil that Pope John Paul II called the Church to a renewed vigor in spiritual warfare.

On Sunday, April 24^th 1994, he urged the faithful to offer the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. He also made the strong suggestion that the recitation of the prayer be instituted after Mass once again:

“May prayer strengthen us for the spiritual battle we are told about in the Letter to the Ephesians: ‘Draw strength from the Lord and from His mighty power’ (Ephesians 6:10). The Book of Revelation refers to this same battle, recalling before our eyes the image of St. Michael the Archangel (Revelation 12:7). Pope Leo XIII certainly had a very vivid recollection of this scene when, at the end of the last century, he introduced a special prayer to St. Michael throughout the Church. Although this prayer is no longer recited at the end of Mass, I ask everyone not to forget it and to recite it to obtain help in the battle against forces of darkness and against the spirit of this world.”

Furthermore, Fr. Gabriel Amorth, the official exorcist of Rome, warned: ”I believe that it was a mistake to have eliminated, without a suitable replacement, the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel that we used to recite after every Mass.”

For the greater part of the past century, the faithful had been reciting the prayer to St. Michael at the end of the Mass. It was on October 13, 1884, that Pope Leo XIII had a prophetic vision. After celebrating Mass, the Holy Father suddenly fell to the floor. The cardinals immediately called for a doctor. No pulse was detected, and the Holy Father was feared dead. Just as suddenly, Pope Leo awoke and said, “What a horrible picture I was permitted to see!” In this vision, God gave Satan the choice of one century in which to do his worst work against the Church. The devil chose the twentieth century. So moved was the Holy Father from this vision that he composed the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel: “St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle! Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and all the other evil spirits who roam about the world seeking the ruin of souls.” In 1886, Pope Leo ordered this prayer to be said at the conclusion of Mass in every church throughout the world.

When the Mass of Pope Paul VI was issued in 1968, the prayer to St. Michael at the end of the Mass was suppressed. It is more than interesting that the suppression of this prayer coincides with the perfect storm that blew up in the late 1960s, which is mostly identified as a rebellion against authority.  Only four years later, Pope Paul VI recognized that, as he said, “the smoke of Satan has entered by some crack into the temple of God.” 

Non serviam is Latin for “I will not serve.” This phrase is the very battle cry of Lucifer, who is said to have spoken these words to express rejection to serve his God in the heavenly kingdom. It is the phrase used by modernists today to express radical, sometimes even revolutionary rejection of conformity, especially in faith related matters. Wasn’t the late 1960s about this kind of “non serviam tsunami” that swept across our world, leveling all structures of authority and morality in its path?

1968 … the year restraint was abandoned … the year Pandora’s box was opened? … the year the prayer of St. Michael was discarded.

Who doesn’t know this is spiritual warfare?

From Archdiocese of Washington:

There was something awful about the year 1968.

I was but a lad at the time, merely seven or eight years of age, but almost everything on the T.V. terrified me.Terrible reports from Viet Nam, (where my father was at the time), the Tet Offensive nightly reports of death and casualties (was my daddy one of the ones killed?). Riots and anti-war demonstrations in America’s cities and college campuses. The first stirrings of militant feminism. A second hideous year of hippies with their “summer of love” nonsense, which was just an excuse for selfish, spoiled college kids to get high, fornicate and think they were some how doing a noble thing. There was the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, later that year also of Robert Kennedy, the riots and burning cities that followed King’s assassination. I remember my mother who was teaching on the South Side of Chicago have to flee for her life and finally be rescued by and escorted out by police. There was the ramp up to the yet more hideous Woodstock festival that would happen the following year. 1968 was a terrible year, a year that I do not think we ever recovered from. It popularized the sexual revolution, drug use and lots of just plain bad behavior. In the Church sweeping changes were underway and this added to the uncertainty of those times. Even if one will argue they were necessary changes they came at a terrible times and fed into the notions of revolution. And then the whole revolt against the magnificent and prophetic Humane Vitae, thus ushering a spirit of open dissent that still devastates the Church.

1968 was a terrible year. When I mention that year and shake my head, I often get puzzled looks. But I stand by my claim, 1968 was a cultural tsunami from which we have not yet recovered.

Thus my interest was peaked when I saw an article by James Cardinal Stafford also singling out that year also for being a year of intense darkness. I’d like to share some excerpts of the Cardinal’s article. He focuses particularly on the devastating effects of angry and open dissent set loose in August of that Year by theologians and priests who rebelled against Humanae Vitae. In that decisive moment the Cardinal sees that the violent revolution raging outside the Church decisively entered within her and that we still real for this today.

English historian Paul Johnson dubs 1968 as the year of “America’s Suicide Attempt.” It included the Tet offensive in Vietnam with its tsunami-like effects in American life and politics, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee; the tumult in American cities on Palm Sunday weekend; and the June assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Southern California. It was also the year in which Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical letter on transmitting human life, Humanae Vitae (HV). He met immediate, premeditated, and unprecedented opposition from some American theologians and pastors. By any measure, 1968 was a bitter cup….

The summer of 1968 is a record of God’s hottest hour. The memories are not forgotten; they are painful. They remain vivid like a tornado in the plains of Colorado. They inhabit the whirlwind where God’s wrath dwells. In 1968, something terrible happened in the Church. Within the ministerial priesthood, ruptures developed everywhere among friends which never healed. And the wounds continue to affect the whole Church. The dissent, together with the leaders’ manipulation of the anger they fomented, became a supreme test. It changed fundamental relationships within the Church. It was a Peirasmòs [i.e. a trial, a test of faith] for many.

During the height of the 1968 Baltimore riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I had made an emergency call to [an] inner-city pastor…He described the view from the rectory while speaking on the phone…his parish was becoming a raging inferno. He said, “From here I see nothing but fire burning everywhere. Everything has been set ablaze. The Church and rectory are untouched thus far.” He did not wish to leave or be evacuated. His voice betrayed disillusionment and fear. Later we learned that the parish buildings survived.

Memories of the physical violence in the city in April 1968 [following the king Assassination] helped me to name what had happened in August 1968 [in the explosion of dissent against Humanae Vitae]. Ecclesial dissent can become a kind of spiritual violence in its form and content.

What do I mean? Look at the results of the two events. After the violent 1968 Palm Sunday weekend, civil dialogue in metropolitan Baltimore broke down and came to a stop. It took a back seat to open anger and recriminations between whites and blacks. The…priests’ August gathering [against Humane Vitae] gave rise to its own ferocious acrimony. Conversations among the clergy…became contaminated with fear. Suspicions among priests were chronic. Fears abounded. And they continue. The Archdiocesan priesthood lost something of the fraternal whole which Baltimore priests had known for generations. 1968 marked the hiatus of the generational communio….Priests’ fraternity had been wounded. Pastoral dissent had attacked the Eucharistic foundation of the Church. Its nuptial significance had been denied. Some priests saw bishops as nothing more than Roman mannequins.

Cardinal Shehan later reported that on Monday morning, August 5, he “was startled to read in the Baltimore Sun that seventy-two priests of the Baltimore area had signed the Statement of Dissent.” What he later called “the years of crisis” began for him during that hot… August evening in 1968….Its unhinging consequences continue. Abusive, coercive dissent has become a reality in the Church and subjects her to violent, debilitating, unproductive, chronic controversies.

The violence of the initial disobedience was only a prelude to further and more pervasive violence. …Contempt for the truth, whether aggressive or passive, has become common in Church life. Dissenting priests, theologians and laypeople have continued their coercive techniques. From the beginning, the press has used them to further its own serpentine agenda.  (These are excerpts, Click HERE for the full article).

Yes, a terrible year, 1968. And we have yet to recover. Discussion in the Church has often retained its painful, divisive, and, as the Cardinal notes, “spiritually violent” tendencies. Bishops are excoriated  by the right and left in the Church, and even by priests, who promised them obedience and respect. In effect, Bishops are treated more like elected officials, than the anointed leaders and fathers they are. And whatever imperfections the bishops have individually and corporately, this does not excuse our treatment of them as though they were simply elected officials accountable to us. We are neither docile nor loving and supportive of them. And when we have concerns about the course they set, we do not speak to them, or of them, as Fathers, but we lay them out as though they were political enemies. Discourse in the Church which should be marked by charity and a family love is, instead, modeled on angry and protesting political discourse, the acquisition of power and the hermeneutic of suspicion and scorn.

And this is true not only in our treatment of Bishops but also of one another. Catholics who are passionate about the family, the life issues and the sexual issues go to one side of the room, and Catholics passionate about the social teachings of the Church to the other. And from their sides they both hurl blame, venom, scorn,  and debate who is a true Catholic and who really cares about what is most important.  We do this rather than appreciate the work that each of us does in essential areas and we fail to understand that the Church needs two wings to fly.

The easiest thing in the world is to get Catholics fighting and divided. And we take the bait every time. The media knows it and so does the President. Shame on them for doing it, but shame on us for being such an easy target.

And to a large extent it all goes back to those angry August days back in 1968 when priests and laity took the violence and discord of that awful year and made it the template for Church life; when there emerged a kind of spiritual violence, and discord, when there developed  a hermeneutic of suspicion; and when there was an embracing of a distorted ecclesiology of the Church as a political entity rather the Body of Christ.

Perhaps such tendencies were decades in coming, but, as Cardinal Stafford notes, there was something about that hot and fateful August of 1968, something in that awful year slouched into the Church and grew like a cancer. It is still too much with us today and it is has infected us all. Somehow it’s still August, the scorching heat wave lingers, and the hazy air reminds us of the summer of our discontent, that awful and fateful year of 1968. Usquequo Domine…usquequo?  (Ps 12:1)

Before reading on, please watch this classic two minute scene from the movie Network:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE

Summoning us to courage, St. Augustine challenges us to fight: “Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”

WE’VE GOT TO GET MAD!!!  WE CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!

This blog post comes on the heals of posting articles related to the most revered “sacred cows” of one of the worst generations of all time: Mine!

Here’s the cows:

1. The Porn Industry

2. The Emasculation of Men

3. Cohabitation

4. Secular Assault on Sacred Liturgy, Music and Architecture

5. Contraception

6. Same Sex Marriage

7. Abortion

Jeffrey Kuhner of the Washington Times gives a stirring report on the current state of affairs in our beloved America:

“For the past 50 years, every major institution has been captured by the radical secular left. The media, Hollywood, TV, universities, public schools, theater, the arts, literature – they relentlessly promote the false gods of sexual hedonism and radical individualism.

Conservatives have ceded the culture to the enemy. Tens of millions of unborn babies have been slaughtered; illegitimacy rates have soared; divorce has skyrocketed; pornography is rampant; drug use has exploded; sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS have killed millions; birth control is a way of life; sex outside of wedlock has become the norm; countless children have been permanently damaged – their innocence lost forever – because of the proliferation of broken homes; and sodomy and homosexuality are celebrated openly. America has become the new Babylon.” (Jeffrey T. Kuhner, The Washington Times, 1-20-11).

Thomas Jefferson once said, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.”

Frankly, I’ve had it! I’m sick and tired of being a part of the most egocentric, self-indulgent generation that ever lived. We may be cleaning up after the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1965) for 100 years or more.

I was born in 1958, so I have lived through all of these unbridled years. I now emerge shocked and ashamed of my generation; a generation that has done everything it could to dismantle virtually everything a proud culture once held sacred. Worse than this, virtually all of the Boomer’s sacred cows (listed above) remain veiled and powerful, while those of us responsible for souls remain hushed and cowardly.

Pope Leo XIII warns,

“To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe. The only ones who win when Christians stay quiet he says, are the enemies of truth. The silence of Catholics is particularly disturbing because frequently a few bold words would have vanquished the false ideas. “Christians are,” Leo continues, “born for combat.” It is part of their nature to follow Christ by espousing unpopular ideas and by defending the truth at great cost to themselves. (Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae)

“Who doesn’t know we are at war?” writes Dr. Peter Kreeft, “Who doesn’t know the barbarians are at the gates—no, inside the gates, writing the scripts of the TV shows and movies, writing the public school textbooks and judicial decisions? Only the ones in the lunar bubble of academia or the lunar bubble of establishment religious education with the unprofitable prophets who cry, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace, the ones who compose those dreary, drippy little lullabies we endure as ‘contemporary hymns.’”

In the name of the false god “progress,” we have witnessed a full frontal assault on the most foundational elements of our faith and culture. In our weakened state we’ve sat idly by, watching family members and friends being swept away by a tsunami-like force of secular values and morals, persuading them to abandon God in favor of the next form of immediate gratification.

The crisis of faith we have witnessed since the 1960s begs the question: “Was it really a good idea to discard the amazing treasures of our Catholic faith in favor of modern innovations?” Let’s look at some of the data. These 2002 statistics are alarming, and yet these declines have only accelerated in the past decade:

“In 1965, only 1 percent of U.S. parishes were without a priest. Today, there are 3,000 priestless parishes, 15 percent of all U.S. parishes. Between 1965 and 2002, the number of seminarians dropped from 49,000 to 4,700, a decline of over 90 percent. In 1965, there were 104,000 teaching nuns. Today, there are 8,200, a decline of 94 percent. A 1958 Gallup Poll reported that three in four Catholics attended church on Sundays. A recent study by the University of Notre Dame found that only one in four now attend. Only 10 percent of lay religious teachers now accept church teaching on contraception. Fifty-three percent believe a Catholic can have an abortion and remain a good Catholic. Sixty-five percent believe that Catholics may divorce and remarry. Seventy-seven percent believe one can be a good Catholic without going to Mass on Sundays. By one New York Times poll, 70 percent of all Catholics in the age group 18 to 44 believe the Eucharist is merely a ‘symbolic reminder’ of Jesus.” (These statistics came from a 2002 article entitled, An Index of Catholicism’s Decline.)

A society increasingly disengaged from the Divine Life of God has no place to go but down. Definitely not “progress,” but a sharp regression away from our greatest potential.

YES … I AM MAD AS HELL!!!

As we look forward to 2012, a year marked by the 50^th Anniversary of Vatican II, I plan to do a bit of RECON, exposing the enemy forces disposition and intention (please pray for me too, because this is going to tick off the devil). From here, I will outline what I believe is Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict’s Master Plan for the New Millennium.

It may take 100 years to clean this up, but it begins with you and me. Stay tuned!

UPDATE!

These are the posts thus far in this Church Militant Training Series:

SITREP: What Are Our Current Capabilities?

SITREP (cont.): The Cataclysmic Shift of the 60s and 70s

SITREP (cont.): Dissent and Disposal

SITREP (conclusion): Catholicism’s Decline

RECON: Soft Leadership Begets Soft Faith – The Emergence of Cruise Ship Christianity

RECON (cont.): Abandoned by their leaders, he will more easily seize them

Church Militant Training: Tim Tebow and the Warrior Ethos

Church Militant Training: Vince Lombardi and The Superior Ideal

Church Militant Training: Call for Spiritual Heroism

Church Militant Training: Pope John Paul II’s Master Plan

Church Militant Training: Remember You Are Not Alone

Church Militant Training: You Are a Commissioned Officer

Church Militant Training: Semper Fi

Church Militant Training: One Thing Necessary

Church Militant Training: God Strong

Church Militant Training: O.I.L. for Holy Spirit Fire

Church Militant Training: Risking Spiritual Death

Church Militant Training: Real Love Must Cost

From George Weigel:

Feb. 29, 2012 - In a Feb. 14 note to his people, Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I., the archbishop of Chicago, commented on the question of “who speaks for the Catholic Church,” which had become a subject of public controversy thanks to the Obama administration’s “contraceptive mandate”—which is, of course, an abortifacient and sterilization mandate as well. The cardinal noted the administration’s crude attempt to play divide-and-conquer with the Catholic Church in the United States, a ploy in which some nominally Catholic groups quickly acquiesced. Yet something important in all of this was being missed, the cardinal suggested: “…the bishops of the Church make no attempt to speak for all Catholics; they never have. The bishops speak for the Catholic and apostolic faith, and those that hold that faith gather around them. Others disperse.”

The diaspora, in this case, was entirely predictable: columnists and politicians who had questioned the administration’s mandate, and organizations and associations that had raised serious questions about it when it was first announced, quickly fell back into line when the administration, on Feb. 10, announced an “accommodation” that was an obvious shell game, a ruse that didn’t change the moral issue involved one whit.

Others, however, continued to gather around the bishops, who rejected the “accommodation.” And they will prevail.

The administration is on the shakiest of legal ground in attempting to impose contraception, sterilization and abortifacients as “preventive services” that must be provided, on demand and with no co-pay, in all health insurance programs. As my friends Edward Whelan and David Rivkin pointed out in the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 15, there is every reason to think that the administration’s mandate, even as tweaked by the false-flag “accommodation,” will fail two legal tests: the test of the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion (recently upheld in a robust way by the Supreme Court in a 9-0 decision against the Obama administration), and the test of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. As this battle unfolds, there is every reason for the bishops and those gathered around them to be confident of success.

But what about the diaspora: those Catholics individuals and organizations that re-embraced the administration as soon as Caesar announced his “accommodation” (or, in the case of Sister Carol Keehan and the Catholic Health Association, helped Caesar trot out his ruse)? These individuals and associations typically think of themselves as “liberal Catholics,” a self-description proudly trumpeted by one of their spokesmen, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. Therein, I suggest, lies a great reversal, and an even greater tragedy.

The most significant contribution to the universal Church of pre-conciliar liberal Catholicism in America was the development of a Catholic theory of religious freedom—which led, in due course, to Vatican II’s epic Declaration on Religious Freedom, to the post-conciliar Church’s history-changing defense of human rights, and to the Church’s crucial role in democratic transitions around the world. This achievement, in which the debates on religious freedom at Vatican II were pivotal, unfolded in close collaboration with the U.S. bishops. It was Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York, for instance, who brought Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., to the Council, where Murray became one of the intellectual architects of the Declaration on Religious Freedom. And it was Murray (now falsely enlisted post-mortem into the pro-Obama camp of the Catholic diaspora) who, with the U.S. bishops and others, worked the Council process so that it became clear to a critical mass of the world’s bishops that religious freedom was indeed congruent with what Cardinal George called “the Catholic and apostolic faith.”

That liberal Catholics of the 2012 diaspora refuse to concede the grave threat to religious freedom posed by the administration’s mandate, and that they have given political cover to a gross infringement on religious freedom by a federal government that looks ever more like Hobbes’ Leviathan, is a grave breach of ecclesial communion in itself. It also represents a tragic betrayal of the best in the liberal Catholic heritage in the U.S., even as it illustrates the utter incoherence into which post-conciliar liberal Catholicism in America has tragically fallen.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Weigel’s column is distributed by theDenver Catholic Register, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver. Phone: 303-715-3215.