America's Soul is on trial

SATURDAY, 11 FEBRUARY 2012 08:00, RIGHTSIDENEWS ERIC RETZLAFF
  
(Editors Note: Obama's compromise today is just a compromise which would allow more moves by Obama to mandate the Church to compromise further)

     The American Catholic bishops’ battle with President Barack Obama’s administration over the church’s right to follow its teachings on contraception, abortifacient drugs, and sterilization in its educational, health care, and charitable works is part of a larger struggle for the soul of America.

     It is similar to the issue of slavery but more profound. Will America continue to slide into the tyranny that has been humanity’s usual condition for millennia or regain the liberty that grew out of Christian civilization?

     If I were to update part of President Abraham Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech to fit our current situation, with my italic changes, it would sound this way:

     “’A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this nation cannot endure, permanently, half socialist and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of socialism will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike mandatory in all the states,…”

     Socialism is a major threat to America because, under the guise of caring for people, it interferes with every aspect of our lives and ultimately puts the state in the place of God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church points out that, after the Flood, God grouped people into separate families, nations and languages, “under the guardianship of angels,” in order to “limit the pride of fallen humanity, united only in its perverse desire to forge its own unity as at Babel.” We know from the horrors of the 20th century that socialism is that very temptation to create an empire without God, under a ruling elite.

     Our founding fathers, who were well-versed in history and the Bible, also knew that humans were prone to corruption, and so they created a government with written guarantees of liberty and one in which power was diffused by the separation of a national government into the executive, legislative and judicial branches and by the separation of national, state and local governments. They encouraged partisan politics to impede the centralization of power.

     Even if Obama relents, the bishops hopefully are getting a rude awakening that the limited national government created by the founders has gradually morphed, by incremental subversion of the Constitution, into an institution with almost unlimited coercive power. The bishops would do well to heed the warning of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, that "the two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."

     It’s no accident that the size and intrusiveness of government--at all levels—has paralleled an increase of irreligion and immorality among the electorate, because sin has consequences. Many politicians are only too willing protect us from one another and mitigate the wreckage of our misdeeds. Only conversion and prayer will save this country. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” said John Adams, our second president. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Mr. Retzlaff is a free-lance writer living in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, N.Y

Excellent article. Thanks for sharing.

But even tho I agree with the entire article.....I, personally believe that the church sold it's soul to the government a long time ago. ALL DENOMINATIONS! They have caved to the worship of secular ideology. The day the 'church' started to accept government funding/support....was the beginning of the end!

So altho I agree with this article...............I, again personally, believe it is a little too late and makes the church look hypocritical. IMHO

And for the record..........My religious beliefs are not based on 'any' organized religion. It is my own personal relationship with GOD....because it is just that personal!

Quoted from kempis1

America's Soul is on trial

It was good to read the name of Thomas Jefferson, in the text.

Just a few other quotes of Thomas Jefferson on the subject of Religion & government:

~ Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt,
tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

~ I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really
see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789

~ Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes
account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions
only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people
which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

~ History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.
This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail
themselves for their own purposes.
-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

~ In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with
the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

~Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.
-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Correa de Serra, April 11, 1820

I have no doubt that if Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he'd side with Obama and shun today's Conservative
attempt to mix religion and politics.

we all choose what we will die for.....why? because not making a decision means one agrees with the status quo.....

I agree that too many religious leaders play footsie with politicians. With gov't money comes gov't control. And isn't much of the public on the gov't dole in one way or another. "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."
--Alexis de Tocqueville
One Catholic college, Christendom refuses to take that kind of money.
The Catholic Church has never been anti-science. Read Tom Woods' book How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

Quoted from kempis1

I agree that too many religious leaders play footsie with politicians. With gov't money comes gov't control.

And that's the bottom line here. The catholic church sold it's soul decades ago.

It's 'GOV-ALMIGHTY'!!

Hey, I know this author ... good friend of ours, in fact just saw his wife yesterday for a few minutes.

Small world.