3,446 Dead

According to Rev. Walter Hoye of Berkeley's Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, that's the number of African-Americans lynched by the Ku Klux Klan during the 31,390 days from 1882 to 1968, AND the number of blacks killed in abortion clinics in THREE days.

Given the xenophobia and the racism of Planned Parenthood's foundress, Margaret Sanger, is anyone surprised? Contraception and abortion may succeed in accomplishing what racists and segregationists failed to accomplish, the removal of blacks from American society. Pastor Hoye predicts that this could occur as early as 2100. He may be wrong on the timing of this demographic implosion, but he is certainly correct about the end result. Below-replacement levels of births in the African-American community necessarily will destroy it, just as the European nations are imploding and will be replaced by Islamic states -- though probably quicker.

Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men—especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point—have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.

Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies. Who could blame a government for applying to the solution of the problems of the community those means acknowledged to be licit for married couples in the solution of a family problem? Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be most efficacious? In such a way men, wishing to avoid individual, family, or social difficulties encountered in the observance of the divine law, would reach the point of placing at the mercy of the intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved sector of conjugal intimacy.

Pope Paul VI in his encyclical letter Humanae vitae accurately predicted where this new sexual frontier would go. In the First World sexual license is leading to depopulation. For the contracepting and aborting population planners in the US and at the UN, the need to impose population control on the Second and Third World grows ever more urgent. Aided and abetting by environmentalists who never met a salamander they didn't prefer to a human being, and global-warming alarmists, the push at the U.N. for universal contraception and abortion to reduce the human population of the world has begun. As Pope Paul predicted, and has already come to pass in China, government mandated and enforced population control won't be far behind.

Saruman's Speech

A reader of Fr. Zuhlsdorf blog (wdtprs.com) had this insight on beguiling rhetoric. Quoting from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, it is an explanation of the power of the wizard Saruman's speech. He applies it to President Obama and the way in which he was received at Notre Dame, though no direct analogy between Obama and Saruman is intended. However, it shows, as the Jesuits always taught, that all sin can be rationalized. Even the evil of abortion.

Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. For some the spell lasted only while the voice spoke to them, and when it spake to another they smiled, as men do who see through a juggler’s trick while others gape at it. For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were far away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.

Some, however, learn the right lessons from history. Here is Newt Gingrich on his ever more conservative turn, as cited on The Curt Jester:

The whole effort to create a ruthless, amoral, situational ethics culture has probably driven me toward a more overt Christianity. I'll give you an example. As a college student at Emory when the Supreme Court ruled that school prayer was unconstitutional [in 1963] after 170 years of American history, I didn't notice it. As a graduate student at Tulane I probably would have said it's a good decision.I've now had an additional 40 years to think about it. And I think about the world of my grandchildren. I don't think American children are healthier, safer, and better off today than they were in 1963. So I have actually become more conservative in response to the failure of the liberal ethos to solve problems.

Our Lord and Savior, ascended to the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us!

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Mene, Mene, Tekel and Peres

Watching the news accounts of the Miss USA pageant, after which openly homosexual judge Perez Hilton trashed a contestant for her convictions about marriage, reminded me of the scriptural passage in which Daniel interprets the "writing on the wall" (Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Peres) for the King of Bablyon (Dn 5:25-28).

The reminder came about because peres is more or less the name of the rude and crude judge who berated Miss California on his blog, and because the incident is characteristic of the intolerance of the left, which brooks no opposition to its cultural and legal onslaught, like the Babylonian regime of Daniel's time.

The interpretation that Daniel makes of the writing on the wall is that Mene (numbered) refers to God having numbered the years of the kingdom of the Babylonians and finished it, Tekel (weighed) to His having weighed it and found it wanting, and Peres (divided) to its imminent division between the Medes and the Persians.

It is clear that we are in such a battle today, with the Babylonians of our times (a term Scripture uses for any kingdom that opposes God). Like King Belshazzar, the modern Babylonians delight in taking the sacred vessels which God's people holds dear -- Christ, Christ's Church, Christ's Vicar, the vocations which make us like Christ (priesthood, religious life, Christian marriage and single life), and even the body and life itself, and showing their contempt for God by polluting them with their abominations. Like the King they think themselves invincible; thus their arrogance and scorn of God's People. However, we know that whatever their ascendancy now, ultimately this worldwide kingdom of Babylon is numbered, weighed and divided.

A question suggests itself, however. Who will be the means of Babylon's chastisement, who will be Media and Persia to divide this modern Babylon, and set God's people free, as King Cyrus of Persia did? Without reading too much into it, Iran contains within it most of ancient Media and Persia. Whomever God uses as His instrument, the victor will be Christ Himself, personally insulted in so much that the modern Belshazzars do.

St. Faustina, pray for us!

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Whither Notre Dame University?

Francis J. Beckwith, the evangelical scholar who reverted to the Catholicism of his youth, has written a thorough article on the Notre Dame controversy over at the First Things website. Included is these gems from Dr. Martin Luther King's "A Letter from a Birmingham Jail":

I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.” Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

And,

There was a time when the church was very powerful—in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth [and twenty-first] century.

Read the full article at: http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1355

Liberalism is a corruptio mentis

Not only do leftists on our campuses not have a sense of humor, they apparently have little sanity.

As many have maintained, liberalism is a corruptio mentis (corruption of the mind). From a Christian perspective this is easy to understand. Owing to the sin of Adam, we are conceived without the integrity of human nature which God intended, and in which our first parents were created, body and soul unified by divine grace. The consequence of original sin is that our passions, which are seated in our animal nature, are in rebellion against our intellect and will, which are seated in our soul. The result is that while we grasp material concepts well (one need only look at the advance of math and science), the acquisition of, reasonning about, and judgment among spiritual principles is accomplished with difficulty.

Through the operation of grace, however, the believer is assisted in restoring the integrity of his nature, and with it, his ability to reason CORRECTLY about spiritual principles, especially moral issues. Not surprisingly the greatest thinkers in philosophical and moral sciences tend to be those who earnestly seek God. On the other hand, the eshewing of God inevitably leads to further and further DISintegration of one's spiritual faciulties. Not surprisingly, this is often accompanied by a morally and intellectually dissolute life.

In an article on OneNewsNow.com conservative columnist Don Feder tells about his recent experience on the campus of the University of Massachusetts. Mr. Feder's article points out the reliance on passion over reason among the socialists and other liberal cabalists who disrupted a speech he was to give at this institution where the cogency of one's idea's, not one's militant ideology, ought to reign.

Read it at: http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=464908

Our Lady of the Incarnation, pray for us.

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Plan B for babies

A federal judge has thrown-out as politically motivated a FDA decision under the Bush Administration that the so-called Plan B contraceptive pill or morning-after pill may not be sold over-the-counter to minors (17 and under). The FDA allows it to be sold over-the-counter to those 18 and over. This means that the Obama administration will revisit, and likely allow, Plan B, which uses the same chemicals used in contraceptive pills requiring a prescription but at higher doses, to be sold to minors.

Naturally, the Bush administration could not have been thinking about the natural law rights of parents to oversee the medical care of their minor children, or the known risks of unsupervised use of the Plan B pill or its acknowledged abortifacient effects. And, of course, the Obama administration will not take politics, that is, its overwhelming ties to the so-called "reproductive rights" movement and abortion industry, into account in its review of Plan B rules.

It so nice to know that the federal courts and the nanny state have the best interests of families at heart.

St. Gabriel, protect us from the enemies of life, from conception to natural death!

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The Long March

This is the title given a dream by St. John Bosco in which he foresaw a time when the Church would seem to march away from Rome, then resolutely, and victoriously, march back.

It is the name given to the Chinese Communist Army's 1934 escape from encirclement, which traversed thousands of miles of rough terrain and enabled the eventual military victory of Chinese communism. Both of these marches represent heroism, spiritual in the former, material in the latter.

For me, the Long March is acquiring another significance, however, one of indecision, vacillation, temporizing and expediency. We are not even a hundred days into the new presidency and already I'm exhausted by the lack of direction, the lack of principle (except on abortion where Obama is resolute), flip-flops, testing of the political winds, Pelosoisms, Reidisms ... My God, America, Bush was wrong on Iraq, but at least the guy had principles, could make a decision, and then stick to it.

Let's see, 62 days down, 1398 days to go. Please, Lord, let it be over!

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