Unfortunately, those who would toss the (Conservative) Catholics out only strengthen our mutual enemies.
Regardless of religion, this is no time to alienate other Conservatives in the face of the Socialist, Statist onslaught. We either hang together or we shall hang separately.
Thanks for the simple wisdom of your post.
Your words reminded me again of one book and two men who helped me enormously in my faith and spiritual life: Fr. Walter Ciszek and Fr. Emil Kapaun.
Fr. Ciszek, American-born Jesuit (yes-—a good Jesuit he was) who was commissioned by his superiors to go to Russia to form a Jesuit center there. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, he was picked up by the NKVD and declared a “Vatican spy” and was sent to the dreaded Siberian gulag labor camp, Lubianka, where he spent 23 years before being liberated in 1963.
His remarkable book “He Leadeth Me”, which has become a “classic”, is a wonderful, life-changing account of his years there, where he shared suffering with Orthodox, Protestant and Jewish prisoners; it could be read by anyone of faith and be an unforgettable testimony to a life lead by one desire: to do the will of God (”Here I am, Lord, I come to do your will”). Catholic, Orthodox, Baptist and Jew, all sharing the same agony at Lubianka, experienced what you mention here, Joe.
Fr. Emil Kapaun was a Kansas farm boy who became a priest and served as a chaplain in the army. During the Korean conflict he was captured by the Communists on the Korean battlefields-—and eventually, because they feared the good he was doing among his fellow prisoners, the Communists killed him.
Fr. Kapaun was loved by prisoners of all faiths, and he ministered to them all. Those who survived their captivity and returned home to America joined together to honor his memory-—they were Protestants and Jews as well as Catholics. Together, they had suffered evil and Fr. Kapaun had been there to serve all of them in their need.
Yes, Smokin’ Joe, you are right. This is not a time for alienation among the believers in Christ Jesus. It will only strengthen those who are militating against us.
“Behold the Christians; see how they love one another”.