Christians: Get Out There and Fight!

We’re not supposed to leave God in the pew:

Catholics need to wake up when it comes to politics, and stop leaving “God in the pew,” says a Vatican aide.

Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, said this today when he addressed a conference organized by Retinopera, a network of Italian organizations that promote the Church’s social teachings.

The meeting, under way in Assisi, is reflecting on the idea of the common good and, according to its organizers, seeks “to consider development understood as a moral question.”

Bishop Crepaldi said Benedict XVI’s call in Cagliari, Sardinia, earlier this month for “the birth of a new generation of Christians involved in society and politics” was addressed to the Christian communities “who, as far as the formation new generations involved in society and politics is concerned, seem to be falling asleep.”

The bishop explained the need for Catholic laity involved in politics in the context of the “the idea, perhaps unexpressed, that secularization is an unstoppable process, a kind of ‘destiny’ of the West if not the entire planet.”

“Secularization, as God’s ejection from the world to the point that he ceases to speak to it, is not the destiny of modernity,” the bishop remarked.

The prelate noted this is precisely “the principal challenge” that Pope John Paul II faced, and that Benedict XVI is currently confronting. “We must confidently join them as real protagonists, and not see ourselves as tired bit players in a script recited by others.”

We can surrender the field to the secularists, or we can get out there and do battle for what we know is right. The crisis we face today isn’t really economic, but moral…only in a demoralized society which is sunk in despair could we get a situation where politicians connive with corporate bosses to defraud the American people…and then these same people blame those who fought against them, and demand that the people defrauded pony up to fix the problem. It is we, the believers, who have allowed this to happen - because we’ve been asleep at the switch, and afraid to tell the truth to those who are destroying our civilization.

The great battle here in the United States is, of course, the upcoming election - and its not really about Barack Obama. He’s a nobody - the problem is that he’s such a weak, ill-informed and morally confused man that those who seek to destroy Judeo-Christian civilization will find him easy to manipulate for their own ends. If we Christians refuse the battle - or temporize in our judgments - then we’ll get an Obama who will agree to appoint the most kook left judges imaginable…not because Obama wants kook left judges, but because he doesn’t know any better, and corrupt advisors will prevail upon him to make the appointments. You think Roe is horrific? Wait until an Obama-appointee decides that people have a right to euthanize their aged parents, or that taxpayers must pay for abortions…its coming, if we just sit back and allow it to happen.

Get out there and fight - as Obama put it to his troops, get in their faces and let them know how you feel…call them on their lies, each and every time they say them; tell them they are doing evil, even if they don’t recognize it. With mercy and love mixed with firmness and determination, lets carry the battle to them, and defeat them for the benefit of our civilization.

Tags: Catholic Church, Christianity, religious voters

40 comments September 30th, 2008

The Religious Divide

Pretty stark:

A new Gallup Poll claims to show that registered voters who say religion is important in their lives tend to support presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain by a margin of 50 to 40 percent, while those who say religion is unimportant to their lives tend to support presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama by a margin of 55 to 36 percent.

About two-thirds of the registered voters surveyed by Gallup said that religion is important to them.

According to the Gallup Poll, which surveyed 95,000 registered voters from March through June 2008, the divide in voting preference is not confined to white Protestants but is manifested among non-Hispanic white Catholics as well.

Non-Hispanic white Catholics who say religion is important in their daily lives support McCain over Obama by 53 percent to 37 percent. Those who say religion is not important slightly favor Obama by a margin of 47 percent to 45 percent.

Hispanic Catholics, black non-Catholic Christians, and those who do not have a specific religious identity reportedly tend to support Barack Obama, but their support apparently is little affected by the importance of religion in their lives.

Hispanic Catholics who say religion is important in their lives support Obama over McCain 57 to 31, while those who say religion is not important support Obama by a margin of 63 to 30 percent.

Meanwhile, among the 12% of respondents who have no religious identity, Obama cleans up with 65% to McCain’s 26%. Obama will, of course, try to move some religious voters his way; McCain, meanwhile, will try to expand his appeal to religious voters…and the election may very well turn on just who shows up…believers, or unbelievers.

There is a sad note in this, however - we are, in many ways, a house divided against itself, just as we were in the 1850’s - and just as it was back then, we will not forever remain divided, but will become all one thing, or all the other. Our fervent hope, of course, is that the passions which divide us never lead us to view those who disagree as our enemies.

This election may settle a lot of things, one way or the other - an Obama Presidency would cement ultra-liberal control of the judiciary while the Obama plan to massively increase government may place such a large number of Americans on government dependency (in one form or another) that we’ll have an European style electorate wedded to welfare and unwilling - even at the cost of national destruction - to modify their demands. On the other hand, the election of McCain will cement a conservative majority in the judiciary, while McCain’s proposals to reign in government spending and end pork would get government further out of Americans’ lives, and thus retain in America that sense of independence which is one of the two mainstays of our national strength (the other is our continued strong religious belief, especially as relative to the rest of the western world).

It is a crucial election, and pettifogging complaints that the candidate isn’t pure on ideology are worse than stupid - for each side, to stand aside is to give up the fight, perhaps for good and all.

Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain, Polls, religious voters

28 comments July 16th, 2008