We live in the midst of confusion, uncertainty, chaos, turmoil, near anarchy, and violence. The thesaurus could provide many more negative terms to describe our miserable plight.  Our elite offer us the option of complete rejection of our heritage, institutions, culture, and history in favor of a radical world view and agenda that conform to nothing of the good we have known. Moreover, not only are they rejecting the good that can be found in American life, they are also corrupting it further with the gender and sexual agenda of a minority who regard themselves to be on the moral high ground. No solid foundation for the public school system has existed since the dissolution of Protestant Christian morality in the classroom.  Now we are promoting the antithesis of it among our children.  In short, we are corrupting them.

It is true that America has many faults.  Any Christian would certainly believe that we have fallen very short of the ideals on which this country was founded and the virtues and commands of Christian morality.  We have been found wanting.  Our history shows injustices from our mistreatment of immigrants (the Irish, Chinese, and others) to black slavery, to oppression of workers in the factory, to the subjugation of women, to the disregard of the welfare of the Native American tribes. Is not the deaths of millions of the unborn a terrible injustice? We are called to a greater righteousness, not to silly illusions that don’t match historical and other truths.  We are certainly not called to a profound secular psychosis.

The recent reaction to real or unreal injustices, most especially by the elite, has been an enormous non sequitur. We have failed in some ways; therefore, our national life should be destroyed is their argument. But, our faults shouldn’t mean our extinction as a nation.  If it meant such, every nation on earth would have to be destroyed.  It appears that the “powers” wish to establish some sort of contrariety that would eliminate our culture and form of economy.  Socialism is favored to a free market.  The injustices of socialist/communist states that have actually existed are not recalled by our amnesiac intellectuals and leaders.  It’s as if they have misplaced the 20th century in their memory.  The Constitution of the United States is an inconvenience to them.  They have goals that contradict it, wishing to establish a new order.

This then is the environment in which we witness to the Christian faith among the people of our country.  Christian teaching has something to say about our present social, cultural, and political condition.  Contained within the message is a call for the peace of the Kingdom.  Thus, it renounces violence.  No economic system should be allowed to oppress the people.  Thus, we preach justice, as the prophets and Jesus preached justice.  Christian teaching calls the nation to serve God.  Thus, we renounce nihilism and atheism.  No ideology should go uncontested in its reach  beyond proper moral limits.  Thus, the Church condemns the illusion of multiple genders (and all such nonsense) and sex outside the biblical standard of its proper limits within marriage.

When we witness to others, we are representing a long and sacred tradition.  To repudiate any essential of it is to depart from faithfulness to Christ.  We may suffer ridicule or worse; nonetheless, we must stand where our Lord wishes us to stand.  The Church did so on the issue of abortion.  And now, we live in an era of the great turnabout.  Abortion has been rejected by the Supreme Court as a constitutional right which it never was.

The Gospel must be shared with respect for others.  Such respect does not mean that we make concessions to wrong or evil.  We must pray for the cardinal virtue of courage as we serve the Lord in the world.

 

Michael G. Tavella

July 6, 2022

Jan Hus, Martyr, 1415