The Right and The Left

"My kingdom does not belong to this world, if my kingdom did belong to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here."     John 18:36

"Heaven forbid that we should forsake the law and the commandments. We will not obey the words of the king by departing from our religion in the slightest degree."     1 Maccabees 2:21-22

The Church is not a political entity. She is a spiritual entity. In this day and age, we are all too caught up in our convenient ideological labels. This person is a conservative. That person is a liberal. He is only saying that because he is a member of that party. She would think differently if she were on the other side of the aisle.  But God defies our categories.

God is not a Republican. God is not a Democrat.

It is a fundamental flaw to look at religion in terms of politics. All too often, Christ is reduced to a merely political figure of history by pundits and social commentators. Quite frankly, such people fall somewhere in between insane and idiotic. You cannot judge Christ without first reading His Word. Jesus was in no way political! He did not instruct us on how to govern ourselves, he taught us how to love God and how to love one another. He certainly did not, as others might assert, endorse Communism! What part of "my kingdom does not belong to this world" is unclear?

We like to look at believers in terms of politics as well. Catholics tend to fall into the middle of the political spectrum on average, and that is not a bad thing. There is no 11th Commandment that says you must be a liberal or a conservative. It simply does not matter. In His earthly ministry, Jesus welcomed them all, conservative and liberal, tax collector and prostitute, Pharisee and poor. He made no distinction.

The Catholic Church was born under the watch of the Roman Empire. Soon (relatively) afterwards, She coexisted (also relatively) with the feudal states of Europe. The Catholic Church predates American democracy by seventeen centuries! She cannot be limited by a democracy. We have more than a few kings and queens for saints. I have a feeling that it does not count for much before the pearly gates whether or not you are a Republican, a Democrat, or even a monarchist. Heaven is an open primary.

This is the Truth. The problem is that the Truth rarely finds itself acted out in reality. In America, religion has become very much political. It seems that you can no longer discuss theology without discussing politics. There is a reason for this. Though Jesus defined political categories, His moral teachings look quite similar to the social policies of conservatives today. Politics has decided to become an arbiter of morality as well as policy. In 1973, Roe v Wade made abortion legal across the United States. It was, as a whole, applauded by Democrats, and criticized by Republicans. President Reagan was a firm supporter of the pro-life movement. President Obama might well be mistaken for a Planned Parenthood spokesman. Though you might be able to find a Democrat who is against abortion if you tried hard enough, it would be nearly impossible to find an elected Democrat who is pro-life. The opposite is true for the Republican party. The current field of Republican presidential candidates are all, to one degree or another, against abortion. This carries into other moral teachings as well. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court made the rather asinine assumption that it had the authority to rule on the nature of marriage, and legalized an abomination. Like a broken record, history repeats herself. Republicans supported traditional marriage. Democrats supported the abomination.

The Republican party is not the Church, though it tends to coincide with Her teachings more than the Democratic party. Often times, conservative politicians focus more on justice than compassion. They become out of balance on the side of the law when it affects the poor and suffering. Its stance on sin and sinners is not as refined or as merciful as that of the Church. There is nothing at all wrong with having liberal Catholics. In fact, it is a very good thing. They remind us about the need to address the human suffering in the world.

The first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, was a Catholic. Many social reforms that eased the suffering of our poor were passed under that great humanitarian, FDR, also a Democrat. The Democratic party is not, contrary to popular belief, the spawn of Satan. It just happens to look like it at the moment. 

Catholic Democrats are placed in a rather nasty position by their leadership. Some of the social policies of the Democratic party are in direct violation of the teachings of the Church. Abortion is murder. It is that simple. Marriage is between a man and a woman. Also simple. The Church is not interfering in matters of politics. Politicians are interfering in matters of the Church. The great Bishop Fulton Sheen addressed this point perfectly. "The Church does not interfere in politics... The Church does not judge such a philosophy. But when it does this, it is not interfering with politics, for such politics is no longer politics, but theology."

True Catholics cannot vote for pro-choice politicians. By doing so, they help to perpetuate the genocide against infants. Their vote is stained with blood. Likewise, our vote must be an emphatic "No!" for any politician who interferes in matters of theology and tries to legitimize sin. That spurs on the disintegration of the family and the acceptance of sin in our society. That is not right.

You can be a Republican. You can be a Democrat. But first and foremost, you must be a Catholic. You must vote as a Catholic. Politics has no authority when it comes to the teachings of the Church. When theology becomes involved, we must vote according to the teachings of the Church and not the policies of our party. When it comes to moral issues, use the Catechism as your guide,  not political rhetoric. 

If only modern Catholics would have the same zeal as our ancestor in faith, Mattathias. Despite all the riches he was offered, he rejected the commands of the king. He would rather die that betray the law of God. Let his words echo in our hearts whenever we watch the news or walk into a voting booth! "We will not obey the words of the king by departing from our religion in the slightest degree."

Deus Volt!

Why Rand is Wrong

"I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

Ayn Rand is one of the most famous intellectuals of the twentieth century. She is also wrong. The writings and philosophy of Rand are, in the old-fashioned way of referring to things, heretical. She denies the existence of God. She takes upon herself the Devilish task of raising up man into a god of his own to replace the throne she tries to empty.

Ayn Rand was born in Russia and emigrated to America during the early 20th century. She was well-educated, acquainted with the study of philosophy. Through the course of her education, Rand developed a philosophy of her own called Objectivism that she expressed through her writing, most of which was fiction. Atlas Shrugged, the source for the above quote, is one of the most popular novels of its century. In her novels, Ayn Rand examines the relationship between the individual and the state, and man's actualization of his own existence. She concludes that the "right" way to live is wholly for oneself, that there is no greater value than the individual and the mind.

Like most lies, Rand's philosophy contains some shreds of the Truth. Lies are only perversions of Truth, they can never be wholly original. To a certain extent, Rand's emphasis of the value of the individual is a good thing. The aggregation of mankind into statistics and Volksgeist is just as bad as his arbitrary godhood. We must never lose sight of the importance of each and every soul in the eyes of God, what Rohr calls "immortal diamonds." Concern for the "working class" but not for the worker himself is the great hypocrisy of socialism and liberalism. Rand reminds us of the inherent importance of the individual self through her unequivocal rejection of collectivism.

But Rand goes too far. She makes the world the altar of man. She exalts an imperfect creature as God's replacement. Her mistake is that of the Ancient Greeks who modelled their gods after exceptionally flawed human beings. Rand is wrong because she denies the existence of God. She places sinful man on a pedestal that is far too high. She rejects the concept of altruism, of compassion for our fellow men, of living "for the sake of another man."

There is certainly an appeal to Rand's work. The quote from the beginning resonates with a lot of people. Especially in the corporate monotony, people want to hear that they are special, that they are something more than their income or social security number. Rand's words are those of the snake in the garden or the tempter in the desert. We become inflated with pompous imaginings of self-reliance and transcendence that turn out to be nothing but an illusion. 

"No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main."

Above is an excerpt from "No Man is an Island" by John Donne. It is very fitting to counter the illusions conquered by Rand. Life is not the way Rand paints it. We cannot only be concerned for our own affairs. Rand says that "His own happiness is man's only moral purpose." She is wrong.

When it comes to our age of lies, they often come in pairs. Rand revealed a world of self-aggrandizement and fantasy where the only good is the happiness of the individual. At the same time, the Communists revealed a world where the individual is absorbed into the state and simply becomes a number, where "fraternity" really means anonymity.

Neither is the world that Jesus revealed to us. "A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you," (John 13:34.) And Jesus did not love us with vague, disinterested humanitarian feelings. He did not love us as a charity. He loved US. He loved each and every "immortal diamond." He loves us in spite of the fact that we are not perfect. We are made perfect through him. Jesus Christ taught us to live our lives for the sake of another man. It is far too easy to see statistics and not people. It can be far too easy to satisfy our consciences with a check or a protest or a meme instead of with a heart and a prayer.

"As I have loved you." Jesus love us so much that he died for us! He died on the Cross for us! There is no greater love!

For too long, the teachings of Christ have been put down to merely social instruction. Jesus was not asking us to create a world of forced equality where that equality becomes as meaningless as the individual. He was not asking us to try to reduce the poverty in the world simply to get rid of a number, a statistic.

Jesus did not ask us to exalt ourselves. He told us quite the opposite, actually. "And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled: and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted." We are great through our humility and love, not through our pride.

This is the Truth that Rand misses. She does not see the light of love of Jesus Christ. She only sees the light that souls reflect from God. She mistakes that brightness for being that of the individual. She tries to say that the Moon is its own light while all the while blind to the brilliance of the Sun.

Deus Volt!

Peace in Our Time?

What is our world coming to? Last Friday, on November 13th, the city of Paris suffered her worst attack since the Second World War. 129 people died. Several hundred were injured. Why? This was the work of truly depraved men, men who believed that they were fighting for the sake of religion. "Allah Ackbar," they cried as they stole innocent lives and covered the streets of the City of Lights with blood. These are not men of God. These are men of hate. These are not holy warriors fighting for their faith. These are cowards who target civilians and blow themselves up. These are not martyrs. These are murderers. In a recent address, His Holiness Pope Francis called these monsters and all who kill in the name of religion "blasphemers." Islamic terrorists like the ones who perpetrated the attacks in Paris make a mockery of the name of God by using it as their final words as they kill innocents. That is not what God is. That is not the truth. That is a lie.

The taking of innocent lives is never justified by religion. It is never justified by anything. We must always remember that a single life, a single soul, is so precious that Jesus Christ would have died on the Cross for them alone.

That is the problem with Islam. The Bible does not say "kill the unbelievers" seven times. The Quran does. The Bible does not sentence basically all woman to damnation. The Quran does. Jesus did not reclaim his holy city by massacring Jews. Muhammad did.

The heresy of these Islamic terrorists is that they think that God is pleased by acts of violence, by their killing of the unbelievers. They believe that they can appease him with the shedding of innocent blood. What damned nonsense.

They are dying for a lie. They are killing for a lie. They are truly monsters. Their violence and blasphemy is not limited to Paris, not by any means. Our Christian brothers and sisters in the Middle East are callously murdered by the same lie that murdered 129 in France. Every single day, the Islamic State and others like them blow themselves up, behead, rape, and murder all for the sake of their "religion," their lie.

What should we do? What can we do? Is there anything that we can do in the face of such utter violence and depravity?

Have faith in the justice of God. His righteousness is so much greater than our own. His justice comes in His own time. Make no mistake, these monsters that call themselves holy warriors, mock the name of God, and murder His true believers will have their day before the Throne. They will not be able to escape the judgement of God for their depravity.

What we should do is pray. Pray for those who lost their lives in France, in the Middle East, and around the world because of the lies of hate and blasphemy. And though it might be hard, pray for those souls that have somehow become so consumed with hate that they think that it is acceptable to take a life. And pray for better times. Pray that we might have peace in our age, as impossible as it seems, for nothing is impossible with God. This age of hate and apostasy should make us yearn all the more strongly for the coming of the Kingdom of God. Just as the Israelites prayed for deliverance during their years of captivity and oppression, so too should we Christians pray for the love of God to blot out the hate of our world.

The only thing in this world stronger than this hate is love. We have no shortage of examples of radical love in the face of hate. Do not be afraid of these terrorists. Have hope. They are not the first to promise the destruction of Christianity and all we hold dear. We have two millennia of true and holy martyrs to prove this. The Romans could not extinguish the love of Christ, regardless of the numbers of Christians sacrificed to the beasts or burned alive or tortured to death. The Church survives. She has survived fire and blood, schism and hate. The Church is well and alive!

This attack on Paris was the act of cowards, but they are doomed cowards. They have taken on a futile task because the Church of God will never fall. We are established on a rock, not on bloodied sand as they are. Await God's judgement eagerly, for He will bring peace in our time. He alone will bring peace in our time.

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.

Saint Genevieve, patroness of Paris, pray for us.

Deus Volt!