Today is a very interesting day in the history of the United States of America, one among many interesting days in recent years, as the forces of secularism and relativism struggle for ascendance in the hearts and minds of Americans. The recent election was a turning point in my mind, for in this election, for the first time, a majority of Americans voted for their own perceived desires as opposed to voting for the good of the republic as a whole, the "common good". They did so as the result of a massive campaign of disinformation, that has been ongoing for decades, to dissociate our political life from a moral one.
It is interesting how, when we turn away from God in the idealism of self-determination, the foundation upon which we place our premises becomes quite malleable, and it is interesting how forces that we have no idea could exist take that soft ground and shape it into something which sounds good and yet shields a rotten interior. We fall for the fake sell over and over again — history proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt, and I believe we have reached this point in the United States of America. Enough people shied away from embracing the "self-evident truths" in our foundational documents and instead have embraced a centralized form of government, enticed by promises that government can efficiently and FAIRLY take care of the needs of the populace. The first rewards we are reaping have nothing to do with money, but instead attack our moral fiber and what makes us a country unique in the annals of history.
NATURAL LAW
The American Constitution was founded on the basis of the natural law, ie that set of presuppositions about who we are and why we are here that are innate to our very selves, and that can be divined in every society at every time in the history of the world. Why? Because it is truth! Natural law is the visible sign of God, who created order: physical law, chemical law, natural law. The concept of natural law has been protected and promoted by the Catholic Church since at least the days of St Thomas Aquinas. It is mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God". Well, over the course of the last 50 years the understanding of these laws has been eroded, the moral framework which is the outcome of natural law has not been taught in schools, and there are now enough people of voting age who believe that they can exchange these laws for their own self-interest, and still remain free. And they voted for it.
I have news for everyone reading this. It won't. We have entered an era of majority rule, what Nietzsche called the "will to power", and the end result, if we do not check it soon, will be an authoritarian state or even a totalitarian one. Join me in fervent prayer is that this not be so, but God's will be done, for it is our choice.
MARRIAGE
So, here we are, today, Friday, November 30, 2012 and the Supreme Court of the United States of America is going to decide if it will take up the cause of marriage,
This is interesting because it has implications for the entire United States. If marriage is redefined as the public recognition of a committed relationship for the benefit of adults and not an institution that evolved for the nurturing of the children that are conceived, then the natural truth of marriage will have been denied and marriage will enter a phase where it can become whatever one wants it to be— a chaotic situation for sure. I note that throughout history and geography it can be seen that humans have attempted to make their surroundings as safe as possible in order to more easily raise children. As these groups of individuals grew into communities, they codified laws to support the union of adults and the protection of the resultant offspring. Yet marriage as the union of man and woman in a committed relationship for the sake of the children actually predates the codification of laws! This is natural law in action.
Historically marriage has sustained itself as a natural institution with minimal assistance from the state. Same-sex marriage, however, cannot exist on its own without intervention of the state. It is not a self-sustaining institution and has never in history existed on its own. It is sterile and thus corrupts the basic unit of society, the family. The only way a situation such as this can exist is through force. Laws that are not self-evident and not self-sustaining are forced upon the whole in a kind of bullying. It is taking the desires of a few and forcing it upon everyone else, just because they want it. How did this happen? There has been a decades-long campaign manipulating and cajoling people to accept not what they know is natural in their hearts, but what they think they should do because 'everyone says so'. History, biology, religion all work against it, yet soon it may become the law of the land.
HHS MANDATE
This morning I came across another interesting article, written in February by Elizabeth Westhoff of the Diocese of St Louis, entitled "Attacks on the Church calling us to martyrdom". Here is another interesting fact. Just because the government decides to force a populace to accept something that is contrary to nature does not mean that the Church will accept it. She has been in this situation before and has been willing to be martyred for her faith in Christ and His teaching.
The article was written in response to another attack on the Church by the present administration in the form of the HHS mandate, in which Catholic and other Christian-ordered institutions will be forced to offer treatments contrary to firmly held beliefs. The federal government is working to deny the most fundamental right we, as Americans, have, the right to freedom of religion. The founders knew this is the first freedom, for it is only with a moral populace that a self-governing people can exist. The Church calls it "Our First, Most Cherished Liberty". It is a major attack on the Bill of Rights and the devastation it will cause could very well be fatal to America as a constitutional republic. I spoke on how depriving people of freedom of religion has played out since the Enlightenment earlier this year. This is very serious business indeed.
Here is a possible outcome.
If the Supreme Court takes up the case of California's Proposition 8 and overturns it, then the redefinition of marriage from the historically verifiable institution that exists to unite people in a loving relationship for the good of their children will have been turned into a convenient system of partnership for the benefit of adults. It will have corrupted natural law, and the Roman Catholic Church as well as other people of faith will have to become breakers of the law in order to bless marriages. There is no other choice. The new health plan is being implemented even as I write this— the recent election decided that— and the HHS mandate will have to be disobeyed by people of faith as well. If it is defied, and if the fines are not paid, the recourse will have to be the jailing of the perpetrators, perhaps beginning with our bishops (read midway through, where Cardinal George states that he will die in his bed, his successor in jail and his successor a martyr in the public square)
CONCLUSION
In my opinion, the real war going on here is not about the redefinition of marriage, or the availability of contraceptive pills, but the foundational documents that undergird our country and the trust in God that permeates them. It is an assault on God, an out and out rejection of morality and truth in the name of a perverted "social justice".
It is hard to write this, but I recall that lo, Jesus Christ makes all things new. As we enter into the Advent time of waiting, we can ponder how God uses the events of history to draw us closer to Him. The events that are about to unfold may be uncomfortable, they may spell the end of the America our founders created, but the love that is Jesus Christ will be more easily visible through the purification that results. In the article I link to above, taken from Catholic New World, The Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Chicago, by Cardinal Francis George, he states at the very end,
"God sustains the world, in good times and in bad. Catholics, along with many others, believe that only one person has overcome and rescued history: Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, savior of the world and head of his body, the church. Those who gather at his cross and by his empty tomb, no matter their nationality, are on the right side of history. Those who lie about him and persecute or harass his followers in any age might imagine they are bringing something new to history, but they inevitably end up ringing the changes on the old human story of sin and oppression. There is nothing "progressive" about sin, even when it is promoted as "enlightened."The world divorced from the God who created and redeemed it inevitably comes to a bad end. It's on the wrong side of the only history that finally matters."
Michele Coldiron, CCWF
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