Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

Politics:
The State vs. the Church

 
The Illusion | Diversity | Activism | In God We Trust? | Holiness is a Personal Struggle

We live under the illusion that the United States is a Christian—indeed, a Protestant ^[1]—country, but when you look closely at the U.S. Declaration of Independence you can see that it’s really based in deism, not Christianity. Many of our political forefathers, especially Washington, Franklin, Hancock, Livingston, and Randolph, were Freemasons,^[2] and, according to their anti-Christian ^[3] ideals, their “God” was “Nature’s God” ^[4] who made the clockworks of the world and then stepped back to let us govern it all with scientific reason. 

Taken together, the Declaration of Independence, based on a “pursuit of happiness,” and the Constitution, part of whose purpose is to “promote the general welfare,” ^[5a] have no concern for morality, let alone Christian morality, except in so far as morality can be temporarily useful to “insure domestic tranquility.” ^[5b]

Still, up until the last couple of decades, most of the individuals in this country have called themselves Christian, and Christian values have helped to shape and protect this country.

 
Diversity

Up until now, happiness has been weighed against the social danger it poses, and, until now, social danger has been defined primarily in Christian moral terms. But as this country becomes more and more diverse, the general welfare will become less and less Christian, morality will become more and more relative, and self-indulgent “happiness” will take on more and more weight in the determination of what can be socially approved. We have already crossed the border of adultery, divorce, sexual promiscuity, public immodesty, and abortion, and now we are finding that the “happiness value” of activities such as genetic engineering, euthanasia, homosexual “marriage,” cohabitation, sexual “orientation,” sexually explicit entertainment, public nudity, bodily disfigurement, blood lust in sports and games, and recreational drug use make their demands for social acceptance and legal protection.

The ideology of diversity, therefore, makes it more and more apparent today that the advocacy of human “rights” will not only grow more and more indifferent to the preservation of Christian moral values, but that it will work actively to crush them. Though we should desire it, Christian morality in government is not something we can take for granted. And so, even though “we the people” of the United States have benefited from Christian values for most of our history, we should brace ourselves for the day when “we the people” lose the graces of divine protection through our overwhelming contempt of them.

 
Activism

The 2004 elections made it clear that the majority of voters in the U.S. wanted morality in the government. But this will not stop the political activists. They say, “We don’t care what you want. We want what we want, and we will get it, one way or another.” And they will. They will brainwash our children by advocacy in schools, by television programming, by movies, by magazines, by music, and by video games. They will wear away all that is not in their self-interest. They will erode and undermine all that is good and holy. This is how the devil works, and we cannot stop him.

	He proposed another parable to them. “The Kingdom of Heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”
	—Matthew 13:24-30

 
In God We Trust?

“Wait a minute,” you say, “the motto of this country is In God We Trust. America is a spiritual country.”

Well, we can wonder about that. How can the pursuit of “happiness”—with its narcissistic hunger for aggressive political hostility and sniping, angry and hateful protest, violent video games, competitive sports, erotic entertainment, social rudeness, exploitation of the underprivileged, abuse of the environment, obesity, drugs, and gambling—be spiritual?

I predict that in the not-too-distant future the courts will rule that “In God We Trust” must be purged from all our money. When the politicians of diversity finally do that, and this country no longer makes any public plea for divine protection, the whole pathetic mess will collapse into a paganism as appalling and perverted as ancient Rome. And what will this morally empty pursuit of happiness produce? Nothing but more and more weeds for the fire.

 
Holiness is a Personal Struggle

But the truth is, none of this really affects the Church, because real Christianity is not a political system. Christ warned us over and over that His true followers would be hated by the world because of Him. He warned us that true faith necessitates a complete break with the apostasy and paganism of popular culture. And so, if the early Christians could survive—indeed, even flourish—under persecution, then the Church today can too.

	So I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; darkened in understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance, because of their hardness of heart, they have become callous and have handed themselves over to licentiousness for the practice of every kind of impurity to excess.
	—Ephesians 4:17-19

Sadly, many souls will be lost because of a confused belief that sin can be legalized, and the burden will be on bishops and priests to preach the truth, on parents to raise their children in the true faith through education and heartfelt example, and on those who call themselves Christian to live the truth and witness it in society.

In the end, holiness is a personal struggle, not a political ideology; nevertheless, as holiness grows in individuals it can be reflected into the world to enlighten the darkness that surrounds it. Still, as holiness grows, it grows side-by-side with all the weeds of evil.

It’s worth repeating: The struggle for holiness is a profound personal struggle. There is no other path to the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not for the faint-hearted or the complacent, and it is certainly not for the lukewarm.

	I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. For you say, “I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,” and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white garments to put on so that your shameful nakedness may not be exposed, and buy ointment to smear on your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent.
	—Revelation 3:15-19

Therefore it all comes down to one thing: Jesus I trust in you! regardless of what the world does.
 

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1. During WW2, President Roosevelt privately said to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and a Catholic appointee, Leo Crowley, “You know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance.” See The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany 1941-1945 (Simon & Schuster) by Michael Beschloss. An excerpt can be found at “FDR’s Auschwitz Secret,” by Michael Beschloss, Newsweek, October 14, 2002.

2. What is the Catholic Church’s teaching about Freemasonry? See Catholicism vs. Freemasonry—Irreconcilable Forever by Rev. Robert I. Bradley, S.J.

3. Masons often claim that they are not anti-Christian, but this is just a lie, carefully crafted to deceive the general public, so as to shield themselves from the dark mysteries they practice in secret. Far from being based in the true Mystery of Christ’s Body and Blood, their mysteries are based in the cabala (also called kabbala), an occult Jewish philosophy. Occultism functions on the premise that what you know will give you power to control affairs of the world; it rejects all faith in Jesus the Christ (Christ means “the Anointed,” that is, the Messiah) who will lead us to God the Father if we live our lives so as to reject sin and to bear fruit according to His commandments of love. So how can the denial of Jesus as the Christ—whether in principle or in secret mockery—not be anti-Christian?

4. “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.” (The beginning of the unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, July 4, 1776)

5a,b. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” (The Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America)