If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Sam Adams, August 1, 1776
The American Catholic is proud to participate in this year’s Fortnight For Freedom. The Fortnights were started in 2012 by the bishops of this country in response to the unprecedented assault on religious liberty posed by the Obama administration, to remind Catholics of the preciousness of their inheritance of freedom as Americans and Catholics and the necessity of standing up to threats to it. All well and good, and a very worthy cause indeed. However, the leadership of the Church appears to be schizophrenic on this subject. While Caesar seeks to limit the freedom of the Church, too many ecclesiastics respond by wanting to get into bed with Caesar.
The examples of this are legion.
It is the policy of the Church to aid the Obama administration in flouting the immigration laws of this country, acting as a virtual arm of the State in sheltering illegal aliens.
The Church was all in favor of Obamacare, until the Obama administration targeted the Church with the contraceptive mandate.
The Green Encyclical released this week is one long demand for Caesar to engage in an immense power grab, and regulate business and citizens to fight a mythical global warming threat.
The Church through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development funds hundreds of left wing pressure groups to call for ever bigger government, and, inevitably, further restrictions on freedom.
Welfare States require huge amounts of tax money and huge amounts of government power. The default position of the Church today when confronting any need traditionally filled by private or Church charity, is to scream for Caesar to come fix things. This bastardized parody of the social teachings of the Church inevitably comes back to bite the Church as Caesar will always exact a price for his favors and under the Obama administration that price is for the Church to bend the knee to contraception, abortion and gay marriage. For all too many of our shepherds that is a small price to pay to keep the government largesse flowing. There is a reason why Christ whipped the money changers from the Temple and why He uttered the phrase to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. These days the Church too often seems willing to bow the knee to Caesar, no matter what Caesar demands, so long as the funds from Caesar keep flowing.
So we join with our bishops in standing in defense of freedom, even while so many of them demonstrate that they are willing to sell out our freedoms when it suits them to Caesar.
Don,
I am aware of books that talk about Christian Churches cooperation with the Nazi’s. I am not aware of any about Christian’s cooperation with Communism. Do you know of any? Good to plan for the future.
You always had a few useful idiots among the clergy who viewed Communism through rose colored glasses. More of a problem were the agents and informants among the clergy. This is still a problem with the Russian Orthodox in Russia. Martyrdom in job lots of course tended to be the fate of most clergy in the early years of most Communist regimes.
Thank you for advancing this noble cause, fortnight for freedom. In June of 2012 my colleague and jumped in when Stand of for Religious Freedom organized public square protests. In Traverse City 300 souls listened to eight guest speaker’s including former Bishop of Gaylord, Bishop Hebda. The fight was was instigated by Obama’s HHS mandate, and good God fearing people will NOT sit down and “tolerate” abuses of government. God’s Law comes first.
Please spare extra time in prayer for our Religious Freedoms during this fortnight.
( colleague and I…). & only one was…phone typo’s…excuse me please.
That is not a bed, that is a rack. The HHS Mandate was never voted on by Congress. The HHS Mandate was added after Obamacare was passed by Congress. The voice of the people was silenced by subterfuge and swindle. All tax money being ” redistributed” or being used for charity belongs to the tax payers even while being administered by the administration. Asking for, petitioning for and actually demanding Justice is the business of every person. Man may lose his sovereignty but man can never lose his personhood. St. Agatha was put in a brothel for two years and came out a virgin. Obama is not ignorant of these things. Obama chooses to ignore the very freedoms of the people.
These funds are our money, our blood, sweat and tears. Contraception is only another form of fornication, masturbation and self-abuse. Abortion is human sacrifice, the chief form of worship of Satan being imposed by the state and Hillary Clinton who wants freedom to worship but gives no one a choice for God and country or the devil and be damned.. Sodomy is not sexual intercourse. Marriage is the consummation of the marital act in sexual intercourse. Sodomy is about as much the copulation of two homosexuals as the anus is to giving birth. Gay so-called marriage is perjury in a court of law. Innate human rights to self-preservation and civil rights to self-defense are precedence which give rise to the cry for FREEDOM, EVERY DAY , ALL DAY, FOREVER.
Mary De Voe.
The anus has given birth…He is the acting..ACTing president of these United States. Not nice? No. I am accurate however.
Philip: I love you.
[…] Fortnight For Freedom: Getting in Bed With Caesar […]
Mary De Voe.
God bless you.
The Church now acts and preaches a new gospel: Render to Obama the things that are Obama’s and render to Obama the things that are God’s. Remember Peter’s and John’s response to the Church leaders when the leaders told them “not to speak or to teach at all in the name of Jesus.” Acts 4:18. “But Peter and John answered and said to them ‘whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, decide for yourselves. For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard'”Acts 4:19,20. Donald, Philip, Mary and everyone-speak, speak loud, and I will pray that utterance continually be granted to you all to fearlessly make known the truth and that you may dare to speak as you ought (Eph 6:18-20). For how long are you to speak? check out my Clerical Heretics article at Catholic Lane and read about Alphonse Daudet’s little she-goat that fights the wolf til dawn. Thank you Don and all you commenters-St Dismas, the protoevangelist from his own cross next to Jesus is our patron. Guy McClung, San Antonio
Guy McClung: Thank you for your prayers.
I’d like to hear sermons on the sinfulness of contraception too, just speaking of religious freedom is not enough, it ignores the root cause of the problem which is a lack of teaching on the subject and this lack is too is bending a knee.
Guy McClung.
Amen! This is our time Guy. We will not be this way again. Life on earth is short and to remain silent in this struggle is to side with evil. My opinion may not bode well with many but our homeland, the Church Triumphant, continually sends the graces needed to confront and engage the enemy.
We must fight.
We are here in this time for this conflict.
Do all you can to assist souls to the truth.
God will do the rest. He chose us….we didn’t choose him. We’ve come to love him because he first loved us.
Thanks Guy for your prayers and faith.
Well written. In response to the question about communist fellow travelers in this country, Dorothy Day stands out. The recent revival of her book “House of Hospitality” reflects an effort to promote her cause for beatification and well but not totally, conceals her support for the communist cause. In the US, the church (small c advisedly) latched on to the democrat part early in the 20th centrury because they thought it supported th encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII on working people. Unfortunately, when the democrats left the fold of sanity in 1972 and became the McGovern party of Acid, Amnesty and abortion, the church did not withdraw its support and became a non-opposition ally in order to promote various coercive social programs to the detriment of its religious mission. It has now culminated in an encyclical on the environment based on very poor science, which will most certainly cause another split in the Church. Those who do not learn from history etc.