Blogs For Victory

Its not like we’re not noticing it:

Several events in the past few months — and in particular the response of the media and governmental organizations to statements and actions by Pope Benedict — have made clear that the Pope and the Church face an increasingly hostile secularism.

The international attacks on the Pope, by governments and the media alike, most recently on the solution to the AIDS crisis in Africa, show an increasingly secular orthodoxy. This outlook places no value on Christian morality and is willing to ignore facts in its quest for a secular, valueless solution to any social problem.

Pope Benedict’s discussion of this phenomenon in the European context goes back many years. As Europe abandons its Christian roots, it increasingly creates a future where religion has no place in the public square. Some commentators have gone so far as to refer to European “Christianophobia.” After all, polling shows that a third or less of people living in Britain, Germany, Italy and France say that religion plays an important role in their lives.

Speaking to a group of European politicians in 2006, Benedict encouraged them to support the Christian heritage of the continent, and warned of the dangers to democracy of excluding Europe’s Christian tradition from a public role.

While there are strong roots of liberty in the Roman Republic and the Athenian democracy, the fact of the matter is that what we consider “democracy” and “republic” today are outgrowths of Christian thinking. The very idea that an individual has rights which everyone is bound to respect is a Christian ideal – Athenians and Romans restricted rights to a tiny class of citizens, and even in this a lot of the rights accrued to a group rather than to an individual. Over many centuries Christians pondered on such things as the State, the individual, the Church, etc, etc, etc and arrived at the conclusions best expressed in our sublime Declaration of Independence – that all men are created equal, are endowed with rights and that governments exist to secure rights. Here in 2009, secularist bigots presume that they can have this sort of thing without the Christian underpinnings. They are quite wrong.

Over many centuries, and often with great struggle, the desire was an ever better application of Christian principles. Is not the poor man the brother in Christ of the rich man? Then how can the rich man tell his brother he may have no say in government? Is not the black man the brother in Christ of the white man? Then how can the white man enslave his brother? If not the woman the sister in Christ to the man? Then how can the man say that his sister is not equal in rights? On and on it goes – what is good is based on the Christianity at the base of our civilization – and if you take it away, then you may as well try to prop up a building after taking away its foundation.

We’re dealing with fools, and self-destructive fools, into the bargain. They think that they are enlightened because they are ok with rampant pornography. To them, the ability to be blase’ about sexual depravity is proof of intellectual superiority. Standing athwart them and advising them of the error of their ways is Christianity – and there seems to be nothing so annoying to these faux-enlightened fools than those who point out how wrong they are. And so, they attack us – and attack the Church, especially. They do this because they believe they can cure the emptiness in their lives by taking away the example of what living a full life involves.

The really odd thing is that it is we, on our side of the debate, who will save them, in a certain sense. It is Christians who will defend liberty and prevent the complete destruction of the civilization the secularists live off of and don’t understand in the least. Because we respect the individual, we will even respect individuals who are being the worst fools mankind has ever seen – and in return for this grand service, we can expect to be reviled. The latest assault – revolving around Pope Benedict’s correct statements on the efficacy of condoms as an AIDS preventative – are just part of the long-standing and increasingly shrill attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. They do very much want to destroy us – first by driving us out of the public square, then by driving us underground.

And thus we must battle them – and never let our love for them, our desire for peace and our natural desire to not be slandered prevent us from standing up for our beliefs. We will be called all sorts of horrific names; MSM outfits will portray us as idiots when not violent racists; popular culture will continue to hold us up for ridicule. Its all good – the worse they get, the better we shall get…provided we show the proper courage commanded of us.