Posted on 07/04/2015 12:23:13 PM PDT by Morgana
This is a tough Vortex to speak. I’m as patriotic as the next guy. I remember being a young lad of 15 as my country celebrated its bicentennial back in 1976.
I watched TV that day from six in the morning until well past midnight as the non-stop, commercial-free, wall-to-wall coverage on the giant national birthday party was broadcast from sea to shining sea.
I watched the tall ships sail into New York harbor, saw the explosive fireworks show over D.C. I listened and sang my lungs out with a lump in my throat as Arthur Fielder conducted the Boston Pops on the Esplanade playing one stirring American hymn after another. I watched Walter Cronkite move effortlessly from one sprawling scene of Americana to another. There was no other place I would have rather been on that glorious Fourth of July all those years ago.
But that is all gone now.
What I did not know in my innocent youthful naïveté was the seeds for America’s self-destruction had been in place from the beginning. See, America at her core has always been at war with the Catholic Church.
Few know that it was illegal to be Catholic in 10 of the original 13 colonies. Even after the War of Independence, hostility to Catholicism remained intense. But more importantly, it is the philosophical underpinnings of America that are the very heart of the problem.
America was born from the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Those philosophers were driven by their hatred of scholastic philosophy — the mind of Aquinas, you might say. Aquinas expounded a philosophy as solid as rock: that God is the center of the Universe and man is bound to certain codes and creeds in face of that reality.
In order to break away from those codes and creeds, Enlightenment philosophers set out to change the perception of reality. What sprang up in place of Aquinas and the Catholic Church was a new system of thought: that MAN was the center of the universe — or at least the functional center.
Sure there may have been a God of Nature, but that God had little to do in reality with man’s day-to-day life. So man was free to set course to develop his own religions, moral codes, even separate truths, when the time was right to pull that trigger. All of this social philosophy came to a legal, formal construct in the birth of the American nation.
As an aside, a few years later, this same philosophy would be responsible for the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror where thousands and thousands of Catholics were beheaded.
Here in America, a new nation emerged from the Age of Enlightenment, and although it was decidedly divorced from the past politically, it still took a couple of centuries to shake off the morality it had learned from the Catholic Church. The PEOPLE were now the arbiters of truth. No longer crushed underfoot by kings and monarchs, power would be derived from the consent of the governed.
And THERE is the problem, the decidedly anti-Catholic proposition. What happens when the consent of the governed now agrees with contraception, abortion and sodomy? What happens when the majority of the governed accept no-fault divorce, cohabitation, pornography, single parenthood, explicit sex education in schools and a host of other evils?
In America, these are all allowed because the majority of the governed accept them — and that places faithful Catholics on the outside looking in. America says man gets to decide. The Church says God gets to decide. Those two principles cannot co-exist. Either America will be converted by the Church, or the Church will be converted by America. We know how that turned out.
Too many Americans who are also Catholic have twisted themselves into theological pretzels to insist a person can be a good Catholic while also being a good American. As long as America remained essentially Catholic in its morality, that tightrope could be walked, however gingerly.
But once Protestant-majority America — with all the diversity that description contains — realized it was living Catholic morality, without adhering to the underlying Catholic theology, it threw off the morality and turned secular. Catholic Americans took more pride in their country than they did their Church, always struggling for a place at the table, always ready to compromise or accommodate their Protestant neighbors.
Even John F. Kennedy in 1960 was willing to sell out his faith in front of an audience of protestant preachers to be accepted and win the White House. He learned that groveling act from a succession of bishops in the American hierarchy stretching back more than a couple hundred years, and who the present crop for the most part continues in that sad tradition.
The silly appeals to so-called religious liberty will fall flat. What Catholics in America have not understood is that the will of the governed could be turned on them at any point — and now has.
This is one of the topics Church Militant was able to discuss with Bp. Athanasius Schneider when we were in Rome recently when he sat down with us and granted us an exclusive far-reaching interview.
We’ll be presenting that to you soon, so look for it.
I had a spell where I was doing gunsmithing after I retired and my house was finished.
Boohoo. Take a number and line up for your hurt-feelings check.
Without blood you can not live. That is why we drink the blood of Christ. To have his divine life. Pretty simple.
PROTESTants, picking and choosing what they want to believe in the Bible for over 550 years and counting.
Roman Catholics: 2000 years of “I don’t need no stinking Bible!”
They must have needed it, it came out of the Catholic Church. And protestants use the Bible the Catholic Church compiled and determined what scriptures were divinely inspired. Have good day.
You are correct sir. At that point in my life, where I was COMPLETELY spiritually blind, and just did not understand my sinful lost state, I started out by reading the catholic Bible. The salvation verses, like Ephesians 2:8-9 say the same as my Bible, so I don't know why the catholics can't figure it out. Spiritual blindness I guess. Anyway, later, I got a copy of the ONLY Bible that the Apostle Paul approved of, the King James Version. 😆 I think in the near future, I might tell you that you don't have to watch me anymore, because I am going to reach a point, where there is not any chance that I will EVER swim the Tiber. For the time being, however, keep an eye on me. I just wanted you to be aware, that soon, you will be loosed from your obligation of watching me. Hey, I just loosed something on earth, so it must be loosed in Heaven, right? 😂 Isn't this great? Is there anything you can think of to loose on earth? I think I am beginning to like this. How about you Els? Is there anything you would like to loose on earth? There must be something. Go for it bro. 😱
I'm next to one. Will that count for anything?
How shall I ever know??
We in Indiana can now subtract from ours!
http://www.guns.com/2015/02/05/indiana-senate-approves-measure-allowing-short-barreled-shotguns/
Is that ALL?
You know; it’ll be a tossup at this years FR Baghdad Bob Lookalike Contest as to whether you or verga will take home the prized Loving Cup.
Oh, honey...my feelings aren’t hurt. I’m just amused by the consistent duplicity from y’all.
Please ping me if you post the interview of Bishop Athanasius Schneider mentioned, I’d be most interested in that. Thank you.
Yes, it is the duplicity
Takes away from the simplicity
Oh my goodness, I'm an aspiring rapper, I love my dog, I love my mom, I'm getting my GED, I'm turning my life around.
Will that do? 😂😇😎😆
How shall I ever know??
Keep up the good work. 😂😇😎
Since we haven't been raptured yet, am I correct in assuming that these "tools" are to help prevent anyone from trying to burn you at the stake for your Biblical beliefs? 😂😇😎😆
Naw, the pagans can martyr me for My Lord. Like Hus I would go without harming them. The tools are for dealing with the thuggery and feral criminal element our current regime are encouraging and building up for community organizing.
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