In the days following [November’s] U.S. presidential election, a staggering amount of analysis has been focused on Republican messaging, demographics, and core constituencies, but it misses the most fundamental point entirely.
If the Second Coming of Obama is evidence of anything, it is the godlessness of a nation, the majority of whose citizens worship an idol who not only grants free license to practically every immoral impulse that one can imagine, but who also evidently demands human sacrifice to the tune of more than a million innocent souls each year.
This culture of depravity is the result of an underlying spiritual malady that has been allowed to fester and spread over the last five decades virtually unopposed by the only force capable of overtaking it.
The United States—a land wherein class-envy passes for compassion, same-sex “marriage” is accepted as fairness, and contraception is considered a matter of healthcare—is about to reap the just rewards, not so much of a nation that has abandoned the principles of its Founding Fathers, but of a Church that has abandoned its founder and the mission He has given her.
• When a majority of self-identified “Catholics” (some of whom are priests and bishops, no doubt) vote for a candidate who aggressively promotes objective evil, it is the Church that has gone astray.
• When our prelates speak of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as though it was inscribed by the finger of God on a tablet of stone, it is the Church that has gone astray.
• When the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops stands by a 13,000+ word voting guide that provides succor to those who insist upon promoting the “seamless garment” deception, it is the Church that has gone astray.
• When politicians who are waging war against the most fundamental moral precepts of the Catholic faith can skip up to Holy Communion with nary a peep from their bishop, it is the Church that has gone astray.
• When pastors can cause public scandal by preaching in favor of the homosexual assault on marriage and family without any fear of meaningful discipline, it is the Church that has gone astray.
I could go on, but presumably you get the point. The single greatest underlying cause of the nation’s most serious challenges—economic, social, and political—is really no different than it was for the people of Israel some 3,000 years ago:
“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you,” says the LORD. . . . “He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards; the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your menservants and maidservants, and the best of your cattle and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day” (cf 2 Samuel 8:11-18).
In spite of the valiant efforts of Samuel and those other intrepid prophets of old who spoke on behalf of the Lord who said, “I am your Holy One, your Creator, your King,” the people of Israel would not listen and the results are well known.
In the present case, the new people of God—under the feckless leadership of a hierarchy too timid to speak on behalf of their King—have abandoned Him in favor of a president who has made clear his intention to persecute the Catholic Church by force of federal law.
As difficult as it may be to accept, the anti-Christian oppressor and purveyor of evil extraordinaire, Barrack Hussein Obama, is precisely what the American people and the Church that has failed to properly form them deserves. Yes, deserves.
And in that day when the degradation to which this president intends to enslave us becomes more than we can bear, the Lord will not answer our cries because justice demands otherwise. This, my friends, is the price that an entire nation has to pay for the failure of the Catholic Church in our day to faithfully perform its divinely-assigned duty.
For more than four decades, the overwhelming majority of our prelates has been unable to muster up the gumption to even hint at the sovereign rights of Christ the King in society, and yet many of these very same men have routinely leveraged the power of their exalted office to breathlessly invoke the “rights of the human person” in support of destructive Democrat policies and programs masquerading as valid expressions of Catholic social doctrine.
If the bishops of the world, including the Bishop of Rome, would only find their way clear to proclaiming the social kingship of Jesus Christ just one-tenth as often as they invoke the hyper-inflated sense of human dignity that has been all the rage in the post-conciliar years, it might just be enough to stem the “dictatorship of relativism” that is flooding so much of the global socio-political order.
Based on recent events here in the United States, however, even this is apparently asking too much.
Just weeks before the election, Cardinal Timothy Dolan—the most highly visible member of the sacred hierarchy in the nation—wined and dined Barack Obama at the annual Al Smith Dinner where he publicly anointed him an “honorable man” while praising him for his “love for God and country.”
Seriously? How in God’s name is a man who aggressively promotes intrinsic evil and claims to be a Christian even as he actively persecutes the Church that Christ established considered honorable? Can anyone, Cardinal Dolan included, point to a shred of evidence that isn’t offset tenfold by evil that indicates that Barack Obama has a love for God? (For the record, I’m not referring to the Democrat house god.)
Even in an age when the majority of the episcopate has long since exchanged apostolic zeal for a weak-kneed brand of “can’t-we-all-just-get-along” diplomacy under the banner of religious freedom as conceived at Vatican Council II, Cardinal Dolan’s public act of infidelity is an embarrassment to the Church and accomplished absolutely nothing if not confirm the wayward in their error.
Is it any wonder the majority of self-identified Catholics voted as they did?
After the election, faced with the stark realization (one hopes) that the national flock is teetering on the brink of full blown spiritual bankruptcy, Cardinal Dolan offered his congratulations to the president on behalf of the American bishops, saying: “We pray that you will exercise your office to pursue the common good, especially in care of the most vulnerable among us, including the unborn, the poor, and the immigrant. We will continue to stand in defense of life, marriage, and our first, most cherished liberty, religious freedom.”
While graciousness in defeat is perhaps a virtue (assuming, of course, that Cardinal Dolan doesn’t consider Obama’s reelection a personal victory), I cannot for the life of me conjure up even one good reason to lump the “unborn” together with the rest of the “most vulnerable among us,” especially given the current political climate wherein the party in power advocates for the widespread extermination of the former.
And can our bishops, please God, temper some of this “first most cherished liberty” blather with at least an occasional reference to the first demand of justice; namely, the duty that every man has to offer worship to the one true God, not in the religion and manner of one’s choosing, but in the Church that He Himself established?
To be clear, while I considered my own ballot for Mitt Romney a vote in favor of a step in the right direction, I do not wish to imply that such a vote was a de facto vote for Christ.
What I do wish to state in the strongest terms possible, however, is that invincible ignorance aside there isn’t one single solitary person who worships the one true God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who cast a vote in favor of Barrack Obama.
At the end of the day, America’s woes can be boiled down to good old-fashioned godlessness; either the majority of the electorate is with the Lord or against Him. In the case of election 2012, the latter prevailed and the reason is simple: The Church has gone astray.
Perhaps the dark days ahead will jolt the sacred hierarchy out of its collective slumber, emboldening them to set aside all worldly preoccupations to carry the light of Christ into the world and to proclaim His Kingship once more. This must be our prayer.
Louie Verrecchio is the founder and president of Salve Regina Publications and one of Catholic News Agency’s longest running columnists. His internationally acclaimed “Harvesting the Fruit of Vatican II” faith formation series has been in use in parishes and homes on four continents since 2004. His Vatican II lectures and workshops—an excellent Year of Faith resource—have been hosted by parishes and dioceses across the United States. For more information, please visit www.HarvestingTheFruit.com.
This article has been reprinted with permission and can be found at http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/verrecchio/121115.
