(Breitbart) In an exclusive telephone interview with Breitbart News, Laura Wilkerson, whose son was tortured to death by an illegal alien, explained why she cast her early ballot today for GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump.
“Trump will get in there and do something about [immigration]. I believe him. I want someone in there who has said they’ll do it and will do it… So many people stay home because it doesn’t affect them,” Wilkerson said. “And I understand that. I was the same way until [my son] Josh was murdered. But at some point, we have to close the door and deal with who we have here before anyone else comes.”
By contrast to her support for Trump, Wilkerson said that she “gave no consideration to voting Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)
… I do not trust him for one second… He does not speak to the victims [of illegal alien crime],” Wilkerson explained. “Obviously, Rubio wants more immigration, no borders. That’s what his backers want and that’s the way he’s going to vote.”
Wilkerson, who described herself as a deeply religious person, defended Trump from the attacks by Pope Francis.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard the Pope say one thing about our families [families who have lost loved ones at the hands of illegal immigrants]. I’m not sure he understands the loss we have felt. Is he just ignoring that? It rubbed me the wrong way,” Wilkerson told Breitbart.
Wilkerson’s 18-year-old son Joshua was tortured to death by a so-called DREAMER — i.e. an illegal immigrant who allegedly came to the country as a minor. Wilkerson said:
I follow Jesus Christ. I still sin sometimes, but I follow Jesus Christ. I am a Christian, and I have sympathy for everyone. I think God asks me to love everyone. He created us all equal, but I do not think God is asking me to help a whole country. I don’t think I can do that. I do not think he wants us to give up our family– because that’s what has happened. It tore my family to shreds. I had a solid, 25-year marriage, and we lost our last child. I had a take-your-kids-to-church-small-bussiness-obeyed-by-all-the-rules family. And this tore it to shreds. There’s nothing about me that’s racist or non-sympathetic. I don’t care who you are, I want to help you, but not at the expense of my own family.
Wilkerson explained that wanting to defend America’s sovereignty and close the border does not make her “not Christian:”
I am a Christian… I know I’ll go to heaven when I die, just like Josh did when he died. The Pope’s comments rubbed me the wrong way. Everyone in religion knows that no one can judge what’s in a man’s heart. That’s one of the very first things you learn in your faith. No man can judge another man. That’s why the Pope’s comments rubbed me the wrong way. I did not like that… I believe we need to do what we can for other people, but not at your own family’s expense. God doesn’t call us to ignore our families. God doesn’t call us to take care of other families first, or help other families at the direct expense of our own… I believe in God, family, country.
Earlier today, Wilkerson says, “I voted for Trump. It was a long, hard decision for me, but I came to the conclusion that it was really the best way for me to go. I usually vote more with religion. It was a hard vote between Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), but I just feel like Donald Trump can get in there and do the things that need to be done quickly.”
Wilkerson made a point of noting that “Cruz was so kind to me when I testified about Josh’s death.”
However, Wilkerson proceeded to explain that given her adamant desire to have a federal immigration policy that puts the interests of the American people first, she felt she had to vote Trump: “I realized that, having gotten into the fray of illegal immigration, this [voting for Trump] has to be my stance. It’s such chaos and I just believe that Mr. Trump will get in there and get it done quickly.”
Wilkerson said that she appreciated Trump’s full-throated support for law enforcement and American police officers, Wilkerson said: “I think everybody is starting to hear Trump [talk about immigration]. We know he’s recognizing problems that no one else will say. And I think the police — with the Black Lives Matter movement — feel undervalued, when they should be so overvalued. Our teachers, our policemen, the people who care for our children and our safety should be valued. There’s not one person who won’t call policemen when you need help. [When Josh was murdered], the policemen couldn’t have been any better to us. It was a terrible situation, but they could not have been any better to us...” (continued)
(Breitbart) On Friday, in response to the shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon in which Christians were targeted and murdered, Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey minced no words in his concise message to Christians and those who believe in the values of Western Civilization: buy guns.
Ramsey issued his statement on Facebook, linking it to a New York Post article headlined, “Oregon gunman singled out Christians during rampage.” Ramsey pointed out other recent mass shootings as he posited that the targets were the same: Christians and defenders of the West. His post read:
As I scroll through the news this morning I am saddened to read the details of the horrible tragedy in Oregon. My heart goes out to the citizens of Roseburg — especially the families and loved ones of those murdered.
The recent spike in mass shootings across the nation is truly troubling. Whether the perpetrators are motivated by aggressive secularism, jihadist extremism or racial supremacy, their targets remain the same: Christians and defenders of the West.
While this is not the time for widespread panic, it is a time to prepare. I would encourage my fellow Christians who are serious about their faith to think about getting a handgun carry permit. I have always believed that it is better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it.
Our enemies are armed. We must do likewise...
(Breitbart) On Monday’s broadcast of “The O’Reilly Factor,” host Bill O’Reilly
took real estate mogul and GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s
side in the immigration.
O’Reilly said Trump was correct on two calls – the wall on the
southern border he had proposed and who was responsible for the death of
Kate Steinle, which was the result of murder by an illegal immigrant
that had been deported five times.
“So Trump is correct in saying that only a massive wall will stop the
chaos and even then drugs and people will get through although not to
the extent they do now,” O’Reilly said.
“Apparently Sanchez has seven felony convictions,” he later added.
“[He] has been deported five times. Yet, he’s still walking around the
streets of San Francisco, this guy. That’s because Mayor Ed Lee and the
11 members of the San Francisco City Supervisors refuse to cooperate
with the federal government on criminal aliens.”
“The feds asked the city of San Francisco to keep Sanchez in
custody,” O’Reilly continued. “The city refused. Ms. Steinle paid for
that irresponsible and unconstitutional decision with her life. San
Francisco is a sanctuary city and proud of it. And violent crimes
committed by criminal aliens have happened there before. City
authorities refuse to say how many because they know it’s a huge
scandal, a black mark on the history of San Francisco, the most tolerant
of cities. The family of Kate Steinle asking for calm, not vengeance,
but ‘Talking Points’ is not as charitable.”
Update from Catholic Online: "Earlier we posted a misquote from our sources. We originally attributed
the statement "a professional well-equipped army" to Pope Francis. This
quote is correctly attributed to the Chaldean Patriarch, Louis Sako.
Pope Francis has joined with Christians facing genocide in Iraq and
Syria, calling upon the world to join him in "Prayer and Action' to
bring peace to the troubled region. Calling for international action, he
has asked the world to "stop these crimes."
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Pope Francis, widely appreciated as a practical and realistic man, is calling for an end to the violence in Iraq.
Referring to military action, Archbishop Giorgio Lingua, the Vatican's nuncio to Iraq, told Vatican Radio, "This is something that had to be done, otherwise [the Islamic State] could not be stopped."
Such a call is virtually unprecedented for a papal envoy in modern times, but our age is an extraordinary one and the Islamic State has no interest in a bargaining table. Instead, the Islamic State is bent on genocide and barbarism, ruthlessly exterminating anyone who opposes them.
On Sunday, Pope Francis said he held "dismay and disbelief" over what is happening in Iraq.
"The situation is going from bad to worse," he warned.
Meanwhile, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako of Baghdad said, "There is a need of international support and a professional, well-equipped army. The situation is going from bad to worse."
Pope Francis and Patriarch Sako are not the only clerics calling for swift and decisive action to end the genocide in Iraq. The Episcopal Vicar of Iraq, Canon Andrew White, managed to visit the town of Qaraqosh under cover and personally assess the situation in that community following Islamic State capture.
His words are chilling. "Today, Qaraqosh stands 90 per cent empty, desecrated by the gunmen of the fanatical Islamic State terror group now in control. The majority of the town's 50,000 people have fled, fearing that, like other Christians in this region, they will be massacred.
"The militants, in a further act of sacrilege, have established their administrative posts in the abandoned churches."
Canon White reported that one woman had her finger hacked off after she could not remove her wedding ring fast enough. A caretaker of one of White's parish churches in the community said his youngest son, aged five, was hacked in half as he watched.
A child, just five years old, hacked in half alive, before his father. The boy happened to be named Andrew, after the vicar himself.
The atrocities are real. The genocide is real. That the press barely reports on them is absolutely baffling. However, even the most religious, peace-loving figures are recognizing that this is not a usual evil. Normally, conflicts arise because of ancient grievances and they can be talked over and hashed out. Warring factions tire of burying their sons and eventually dialogue and other pressures forces peace.
However, the Islamic State has recruited fighters from most of the world's nations and more arrive every day. They are motivated by an aggressive, rabid interpretation of Islamic scriptures. Most notably, they are consumed with bloodlust and willing to commit and publicize every atrocity. This attracts sadistic men from across the Islamic world to their cause who commit even more atrocities.
These men don't have to be told what to do. They murder on their own accord, for pleasure.
Where is the rest of the world? Where are the UN resolutions? Where are the condemnations from the world's Islamic countries? Saudi Arabia? Where's the edict or the fatwa? Why isn't the world combining forces against these terrorists?
This is the purest form of evil the planet has seen in generations. They cannot be reasoned with. As all Christians do have a recognized right to self-defense in the face of an existential threat, the time has come for all Catholics to join with Pope Francis and the Christians of Iraq and Syria in 'Prayer and Action' with the intent of ridding the world of the evil of the Islamic State.
...In your charity, please pray for the repose of the soul of young Fr.
Kenneth Walker, and for the healing of Fr. Joseph Terra, and for their
families.
Oremus: O God, Who didst give to thy servant, Kenneth, by
his sacerdotal office, a share in the priesthood of the Apostles,
grant, we implore, that he may also be one of their company forever in
Heaven. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. Requiem Aeternam dona ei, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace.
Fr. Kenneth Walker celebrating his first Mass in June 2012.
(CNN) -- A priest was killed and another critically wounded in an attack at a Catholic church in Phoenix, police said early Thursday.
The Rev. Kenneth Walker was fatally shot, and the Rev. Joseph Terra is hospitalized in critical condition, police and church officials said. It was not clear what type of weapon was used to attack Terra, Sgt. Steve Martos of the Phoenix Police Department said.
A 911 call came in about 9 p.m. Wednesday (12 a.m. ET Thursday) from the Mater Misericordiae (Mother of Mercy) Mission Catholic Church, Martos said.
The emergency call to police was for a burglary and was made by Terra, Martos said. It was unclear if Terra made the phone call before or after he was injured.
When police arrived, they found the two priests badly injured. Walker died at the hospital.
Terra, the injured priest, was only able to minimally speak with authorities about what happened, Martos said. The priority is for him to be treated.
"Hopefully, once that individual receives treatment and is able to pull through, we can gather more information," Martos said.
The church, in a statement on its website, referred to more than one armed burglar breaking into and entering the property. Police have not confirmed or denied that assertion, saying only that it is not an official police statement.
A green 2003 Mazda Tribute was stolen from church property, police said, and it was found abandoned.
The vehicle is being examined for clues, but as of Thursday morning, nothing significant had been found, Martos said.
"The police are still gathering information and trying to sort through the details of this senseless act of violence," the Diocese of Phoenix said in a statement. "We ask that people offer prayers for both priests, the religious community, their families and the parish."
Investigators have gathered physical evidence at the crime scene, but they lack witness information, police said. Authorities asked for anyone with information to call in tips to police.
Walker, 29, was a member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a small community of priests founded in 1988 and dedicated to reviving the traditional Latin Mass. Terra, 56, is also a member.
A Catholic blog, Rorate Caeli, said Walker was born in upstate New York in a family that became intrigued by the traditional Latin Mass. He was ordained as a priest two years ago.
The blog described the area around the church in downtown Phoenix as "deserted and dangerous at night" but asked followers to avoid speculation about a motive for the crime. It suggested prayer instead.
(ABC News) Evans did not give a specific reason for the killings, but said that he
didn't "really like people's attitudes" and said people were "verbally rude to
each other."
"I guess this is really selfish to say, but to me, I felt like they were just
suffocating me in a way," he said calmly. "I don't know.Obviously, you know, I'm
pretty, I guess, evil..."
"Just to let you know, I hate the feeling of killing someone. I'm going
to be messed up," he told the operator. "I'm really worried about
nightmares and stuff like that. Are there any type of medications for
that and stuff?"
"There's a little bit in what he said that sounds a little
psycho-pathological in a sense that he does not seem to have the
emotional response to what he did," (Dr. Laurence Steinberg) said. "Being callous and
unemotional is a classic sign of a psychopath, so maybe he has some
tendencies in that direction."
(Town Hall) Americans witnessed a remarkable drama this week when some of our
most exalted politicians frantically scrambled to reassure voters that
they, too, believed that the United States ought to permit the
deliberate killing of at least some innocent human beings.
They apparently did so to persuade the public they are caring, compassionate and -- above all -- reasonable people.
The drama started when Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee in the
U.S. Senate race in Missouri, expressed his view that no innocent human
being ought to be deliberately killed.
However, that was not the only thing Akin expressed.
"What about in the case of rape. Should it (abortion) be legal or
not?" Charles Jaco of KTVI in St. Louis asked Akin in an interview
broadcast over the weekend.
"Well, you know, people always want to try to make that as one of
those things, well, how do you slice this particularly tough ethical
question," said Akin. "It seems to me, first of all, from what I
understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape,
the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's
assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know, I think
there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the
rapist and not attacking the child."
Akin's answer had two distinct parts. In the first, he made a claim
about the physiological likelihood of a rape victim conceiving a child
as the result of the criminal act committed against her. In the second,
he made a policy statement about whether aborting such a child ought to
be permitted.
The first part of Akin's answer was worse than gratuitous. It made a
claim he could not back up and did so in language that itself raised
questions.
But what about the second part of Akin's statement -- that rapists
ought to be punished but not children conceived through rape?
Is this a logical, morally defensible, even laudable and courageous position?
A good place to find the basic premises for conducting that analysis
is on the website of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. It includes a
statement explaining Romney's position on abortion.
"Mitt Romney is pro-life," says the first sentence of this statement.
"Mitt believes that life begins at conception and wishes that the laws
of our nation reflected that view," it further says. "Because the good
heart of America knows no boundaries, a commitment to protecting life
should not stop at the water's edge. Taking innocent life is always
wrong and always tragic, wherever it happens," it also says.
"Americans have a moral duty to uphold the sanctity of life and
protect the weakest, most vulnerable and most innocent among us," it
concludes. "As president, Mitt will ensure that American laws reflect
America's values of preserving life at home and abroad."
Now, I have not quoted here every word from Romney's campaign
statement on abortion. But the term "rape" does not appear in it
anywhere.
So, here is the syllogism a logical person might begin to construct
from what Romney's campaign say about Romney's position on abortion: 1)
"Life begins at conception," 2) "taking innocent life is always wrong
and always tragic, wherever it happens," 3) "Americans have a moral duty
to uphold the sanctity of life and protect the weakest, most vulnerable
and most innocent among us," and 4) "Mitt will ensure that American
laws reflect America's values of preserving life at home and abroad."
Therefore?
Given Romney's premises, what would be the logical position for
Romney to take on whether American law should permit the taking of an
innocent human life conceived through a rape?
"Gov. Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin's statement,
and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances
of rape," Romney campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg told multiple
news organizations on Monday.
This has been Romney's position ever since he declared himself
pro-life. "I am pro-life," Romney wrote in a July 26, 2005, op-ed in the
Boston Globe. "I believe that abortion is the wrong choice except in
cases of incest, rape and to save the life of the mother."
So, if abortion is not the "wrong choice" in cases of rape, what kind of choice is it?
Who exactly benefits when the government permits the deliberate killing of an innocent child conceived through rape?
"And in the quiet of conscience, people of both political parties
know that more than a million abortions a year cannot be squared with
the good heart of America," says the abortion statement on Romney's
website.
Do those same consciences think permitting the deliberate killing of
some innocent children can be squared with the good heart of America --
as long as it is only certain categories of children, such as those
conceived through rape?
Rep. Todd Akin's substantive position that we should protect the
right to life even of those conceived through rape -- who are themselves
a second victim of that evil act -- is not only in keeping with the
good heart of America, it is plain and simply right.
November 3, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A medical school graduate who admitted to severing the spinal cords of around 100 living and breathing newborn babies at Philadelphia’s notorious “House of Horrors” abortion clinic, has plead guilty to two counts of third-degree murder.
Although Steven Massof never had his medical license, that didn’t stop Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the owner of the Philadelphia clinic, from hiring him as an abortionist, and introducing him to his staff and clients as “Dr. Steve.”
The murder charges stem from Massof’s role assisting at two “abortions” where the babies were born alive (in one case Massof testified that he saw the baby’s leg “jerk and move”) only to have their spines promptly snipped by Gosnell.
However, those two murders were simply a drop in a bucket of Massof’s misdeeds. A Grand Jury report released earlier this year notes that Massof “admitted that there were about 100 instances in which he severed the spinal cord after seeing a breath or some sign of life.”
Massof has now become the fourth member of Gosnell’s staff to plead guilty.
Last week Adrienne Moton admitted her part in the murder of one baby, while Sherry West pled guilty for helping to drug abortion client Karanaya Mongar to death during a botched abortion. Neither women had any medical training or licensing.
A Grand Jury report released in January of this year had detailed testimony from clinic staff who said that “killing large, late-term babies who had been observed breathing and moving was a regular occurrence” and “standard procedure” at the filthy clinic: one staffer said such events happened “hundreds” of times.
Massof told investigators that about 40% of the second trimester “abortions” performed by Gosnell were past 24 weeks, at which point the babies would be viable outside the womb. He also said that he believed Gosnell would perform even later term abortions on Sundays, when the rest of the staff were away.
Another clinic worker, Tina Baldwin, told the investigators that Gosnell once joked about a baby that was writhing as he cut its neck: “that’s what you call a chicken with its head cut off.”
After news of the conditions in the clinic broke earlier this year, “scores” of women stepped forward to tell their horror stories of forced abortions and abysmally poor care at the hands of Gosnell and his employees.
Investigators who raided the facility wrote that they found that the abortion equipment broken, dirty, and rusty; downstairs, the dismembered remains of newborn and nearly-born children were stuffed into jars, bags, milk jugs, and cat food containers. Others shared space in a refrigerator-freezer with employees’ lunches.
Upon entering the building, investigators were hit by the stench of cat urine and the sight of drugged and moaning women lying on blood-stained blankets. Flea-ridden cats defecated freely on the bloodied floors.
Massof also testified that he often saw Gosnell take photographs of women’s genitalia and of dead fetuses for no perceivable medical reason.
The Grand Jury report released in January had issued scathing indictments of both the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Department of State for turning a blind eye to the clinic. The report said the government agencies had allowed the clinic to wallow in filth for years, and ignored several complaints lodged against the abortionist, while allowing his official record to remain clean.
DUBLIN -- Militant Protestant supporters of a Scottish soccer team beat to death a Roman Catholic man in the latest sign of how sports rivalries inspire sectarian bloodshed in Northern Ireland, police and politicians said Monday.
Witnesses said more than 20 Protestant supporters of Glasgow Rangers, many of them wearing the team's blue-and-white jerseys and scarves, drove into a Catholic district of the town of Coleraine after Rangers clinched the Scottish Premier League championship Sunday.
Billy Leonard, a former policeman and politician from the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, said several carloads of anti-Catholic extremists came armed with clubs "and literally attacked the first person they came across."
Kevin McDaid, 49, was fatally bludgeoned while his wife, Evelyn, and a 46-year-old Catholic neighbor, Damien Fleming, were both injured. Fleming was reported in critical condition...
A large number of endangered, unwanted, and unborn children held a town hall meeting on the 4th of July--alarmed at the brutal and untimely killing of millions of their brothers and sisters in recent years. That the murderous war waged on them had the full force and respectability of the law made their plight all the more terrifying.
Their complaint was humble and it was simple. They were not distressed by rising gas prices, or the deteriorating economy in general. They were not even frightened by the exponential increase of natural disasters. The threat of global warming or global terrorism did not greatly disturb them.
They had become an endangered species, and little had been done to answer their terrified and silent screams from the womb. They decided that the barbaric treatment that they and their fellow unwanted unborn human beings have had to endure for perilous decades was unconscionable and unbearable. They cried out to their Creator for inspiration and protection, and then unanimously they put forth a declaration. It began as follows:
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, THAT AMONG THESE ARE LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS….” THAT AMONG THESE IS LIFE; THAT AMONG THESE IS LIFE; THAT AMONG THESE IS LIFE!
The first and pre-eminent right is the right to life. This truth the Founding Fathers were sure of, and anyone with any common sense at all is equally sure of it. 232 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed the amount of common sense that seems to be operative in many spheres of influence—most notably the courts and the political arena-- can easily be poured into a very small thimble.
The United States of America seems to have a death wish, and we have traveled far down the road to having that wish realized.
When law divorces itself from common sense and spawns the illegitimate offspring of distortions of law, resulting in illegal laws—based neither on the natural law nor divine law--this undermines law itself, generating disdain for the law. Erosion of trust in the courts, or the system in general, is inevitable.
The genesis of the death wish is rooted in the fall of man that we see in the Book of Genesis. The substance of the fall is wrapped up in Lucifer’s pride, transferred to Adam and Eve—“You can be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The unholy, yet inevitable, consequence of that pride is disobedience—eating the forbidden fruit. The ultimate end is death, as God said it would be. That’s the way it was in the beginning. That’s the way it is now. That’s the way it will be until time breathes forth it’s last moment.
The prototypical sin is pride, the pride that seeks to exalt the creature above the Creator: “I can be like God.” Then, subjectively and arbitrarily, man tries to assert himself, imagining that he knows what’s good and evil for himself without reference to God and God’s law. This was the fall of the angels and the fall of man. The attempt by creatures to usurp what is only the province of God. Only God knows what is good for His creation.
In recent years it took the form of a self-inflicted heart wound when some dissident Catholics rejected the teaching of the Church, a teaching that clearly held that artificial contraception is intrinsically evil. Then, as Pope Paul VI had warned, it metastasized into abortion. From abortion it degenerated even further into partial-birth abortion. It was then a short and easy step to infanticide.
The exclamation point at the end of the death wish is that now there is yet another candidate for the office of president of the United States who has in an extraordinary way done everything possible to breathe life into all of the barbaric elements of the death wish. He and his party make no apologies for their support of abortion, partial-birth abortion, and even infanticide. It’s hard to believe that we have degenerated to the point that we’ll murder a helpless baby should it escape the violence of an abortion and be born alive. Can a Catholic vote for such persons? We are told, “yes” for a “proportionate reason.” What, I might ask, is the proportionate reason so weighty as to excuse supporting those responsible for what is tantamount to genocide?
The judges and politicians that support such barbaric practices are truly guilty of genocide: genocide—the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, racial, religious, national, or social group. “What is the group so targeted?” you might ask. The group is unwanted, unborn children--tens of millions of them.
The Supreme Court justices that gave us Roe v. Wade will have to plead temporary insanity in the court of history. There will be no defense in the highest Court that is the judgment seat of almighty God if they do not repent of the incalculable evil they have wrought.
Yet, despite the life and death importance of this travesty of authentic law, there will be no serious discussion among political candidates, or anyone else. It is as if society has been bewitched, blind to the splendor of truth, deaf to the cries of the most innocent, most vulnerable, and most utterly helpless.
From artificial contraception to abortion to partial-birth abortion, then on to infanticide we march toward the abyss of oblivion, a society marked for death. Is it any wonder we can rationalize the killing of the elderly or the sick through euthanasia? The tragic murder of Terri Schiavo is a logical extension of a morally numb society’s mad march toward its own suicidal death. She wasn’t sick. She wasn’t dying. They murdered her, starved her to death--one of the cruelest forms of death. She was innocent, yet subjected to a most cruel and unusual punishment. Why? Because she was helpless? Because she was too much trouble, too hard to look at?
As Abraham Lincoln asserted, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” We are dying by suicide, moral and spiritual suicide, and the moral demise of a nation almost always precedes the ultimate demise of a nation.
Many of our leaders, political and legal, are reminiscent of the horrid witches in Act 1 Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” chanting shrilly to a morally sick public all too eager to be confirmed in their sins,
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
Good is evil, and evil is good. The truth is a lie and lies are the truth, hover through the fog of moral relativism and the filthy air of a world gone mad with the madness of sin. The words of the prophet thunder through the ages, “ Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20).
We have inverted the poles of the moral power grid. We have begun to call the negative pole the positive, and the positive the negative. This inversion of reality begets disaster: The power fails, the lights go out, darkness falls—and indeed, if your light is darkness, how deep, how very deep will the darkness be! (cf. Mt 6:23).
This death wish has marched toward its logical and inexorable conclusion with little opposition from leaders--political, legal, or religious. The world knows the Catholic Church and any self-respecting and faithful Christian roundly reject abortion and all of the other nails in the coffin of contemporary society, but the defense of life has been weak. Weak leadership, whether in society in general, or in the Church in particular, is punishment for sin. The Old Covenant has examples enough of the Chosen People being turned over to exile and their enemies because of infidelity. They lamented, “We have no priest, prophet, or king.” These were taken away because of infidelity. In recent times large numbers of Catholics and other Christians rejected Pope Paul VI’s landmark and prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae, on Human Life. A majority of the bishops of Canada did so publicly, formally, and in writing with their infamous Winnipeg Statement.
The clock is ticking. Midnight is approaching. Time is running out for our nation, a nation that once was great, and could be great again if enough of us wake up and renounce this curse of a death wish. Will God turn his friends over to His enemies as He has done multiple times in the past? Will radical Islam overrun us? Will the planet cook? Will one too many natural disasters grind us into dust? Will we collapse economically? All of the above? Perhaps these are all merely effects of the underlying cause—a death wish that chokes the life out of us.
In the end it is likely that President Abraham Lincoln had it right: “Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.” Thus forgetting that we are one nation under God, we become a nation gone under (President Ronald Reagan). And, indeed, “If destruction be our lot we ourselves will be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
May God grant us the grace to awake from this deadly moral slumber, renounce the death wish, and live like truly free men and women—in the glorious freedom of the children of God.
