My brother in the Faith, Common Patriot, writes (emphasis mine):
Where normally I fancy myself a patriot that focuses on the positive, the best path forward and the return to values and opportunities this great nation was founded upon, I’ve find myself quiet of late, trying to comprehend exactly what it is that’s transpired during the course of this last election cycle. And as I look back, I find it difficult to energize myself with the so-called “forward momentum” of the conservative reclamation movement. I’m at the point where, I must confess, it’s time to let it all burn, the cleansing fires purifying who and what remains.
Indeed. Cardinal George of Chicago, Barack Obama’s hometown, has told us fairly clearly what is ahead for us. Via Father Z, February, 2012 (emphasis mine):
In 2010, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago outlined the degree to which he believed religious freedoms (in the United States and other Western societies) were endangered. After the passage of legislation that enabled Civil Unions in Illinois, his eminence stated:
I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.[i]
In February of 2012, Cardinal George reflected on the seriousness of the Obama administration’s health-care mandate:
At the present moment, Catholics in this country are facing challenges to our institutional existence and our mission that we thought would never arise here. … The laws that used to protect us are now being used to weaken and destroy us, and this quite deliberately.[ii]
Shortly, thereafter, when the Obama administration and the media touted the fact that the Catholic Bishops are alone on the contraception issue and that most Catholics aren’t supporting them in this battle, Cardinal George wrote:
This is the first time in the history of the United States that a presidential administration has purposely tried to interfere in the internal working of the Catholic Church, playing one group off against another for political gain. What isn’t always understood is that the Bishops of the Church make no attempt to speak for all Catholics; they never have. The Bishops speak for the Catholic and apostolic faith, and those who hold that faith gather around them. Others disperse.[iii]
A few days later on at a press conference held at Loyola University on February 18th, he told the Chicago Tribune about the devastating effects of the HHS mandate for Catholic institutions:
The long-term effect is that the Catholic Church will be stripped of the institutions that are her instruments for public service. We will lose hospitals, we will lose universities. That’s not the country I was born in. … Something monumental is happening here.[iv]
SOURCES:
[i] “Ever-increasing attacks on Church calling us to martyrdom”, St. Louis Review, (February 16, 2012). Available HERE, and “In Opposing the Right to Same-Sex Marriage, Catholic Leadership Opposes Laity and Wider Public”, Rainbow Sash Movement Blog (February 9, 2012). Available HERE.
[ii] Cardinal Francis George, “Changes on the Horizon”, Cardinal’s Network (February 6, 2012). Available HERE.
[iii] Cardinal Francis George, “A Timely Visit”, Cardinal’s Network (February 14, 2012). Available HERE.
[iv] “George: Government impinging on religious freedoms regarding contraception”, Chicago Tribune (February 18, 2012). Available HERE.
It seems clear that what is ahead on the horizon for us is burning, and it will be a cleansing fire. A purifying fire. Particularly if the economy crashes and people without faith are thrust into hopelessness, we can expect this country — if it is as godless as we suspect it may be — to go full “leftist” and embrace a government that, like the Reign of Terror in the wake of the French Revolution and like Stalin’s Red Terror, will throw Catholics into the inferno. America burning would be like Mississippi Burning
Clip from Mississippi Burning:
Like Black America in the Sixties under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we Catholics will practice civil disobedience. We may see some of our priests and bishops, other religious, our intelligentsia, and even lay people, hauled to prison, or even killed. But like them, we will overcome. We have the promise of Christ that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. As Father Pavone explains, this means that the Church is on offense, not defense, though our offense is in preaching and in our civil disobedience, not violence. Remember that, and please, don’t leave the fight.We need everyone.
