The First Lady's Our Father , where she quietly blasted a hole in the 'Wall' separating American Church and State, reminds me....
During the American Civil War, some abolitionist Protestant ministers began lobbying to have our Lord's name inserted into the preamble of the Constitution. Their argument, bluntly, was: God is punishing America for leaving His Son out of its Constitution. President Lincoln met with them and expressed sympathy but was assassinated before his sincerity was ever tested.
The ministers' association's idea was to make the US Government leaders and their bureaucracies pay lip service to Jesus Christ as Lord of the nations. It faded away at the time, but has been visited a number of times since then, never quite catching fire.(until recently? more on that later) The story of the 'National Reform Association' (NRA) is no secret, though it may as well be .
Today's atheist secularists, such as Christopher Hitchens (RIP), have made much hay of the fact that many of America's founding Fathers entertained as much animosity towards the Christian religion as modern atheists do. In this regard, I am afraid Hitchens was closer to being right than many of today's 'consititutionalists' who claim that the U. S. Constitution squares up perfectly with Christianity or at least with 'judeo-christian' values. If America was designed to be Christian, then why has it taken a secularist path?
I am afraid that while our guiding fathers assumed that Religion might be a good help to keep the masses from adopting nihilistic morality, they also assumed that Religion is a dangerous force which must be resisted and contained. If all faiths are to be treated equally, then all faiths must be equally valid. This is logically impossible unless they are all equally fantasies! From such a hidden axiom we get our Jesus-less, platitudinous, public prayers uttered by a neutered clergy.
Thought experiment: Let's rewind the clock and imagine how different America might have acted had the National Reform Association succeeded. Would Pius IX have opposed the NRA's effort? Leo XIII? Pius XI? Would simple act of forcing the State to honor our Lord's Name have done anything to resist:
-the rise of the Ku Klux Klan?
-the mistreatment of American Indians?
-instituting practical atheism in public education?
-banishing public prayers?
-the adoption of social darwinism?
-instituting eugenics laws?
-mass targeting of civilian populations in WWII?
-legalizing abortion?
-redefining marriage?
-etc.?
would our Lord Jesus' name have had no effect?
Bringing the topic closer to today...PPP actually polled Republican voters in 2015 and discovered that most Republican voters, and especially the youngest Republican voters**, want Christianity officially recognized as America's Religion....
Christianity National Religion
Yes/No Support establishing Christianity as the national religion
Age 18 to 45 46 to 65 Older than 65
Favor* 63% ** 57% 51%
Oppose* 27% 30% 31%
*establishing Christianity as the national religion
source 2015 PPP poll of Republican Voters
(http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_National_22415.pdf)
Where am I going with this? I am still wondering myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxkRVdPxDYo
http://kneelingcatholic.blogspot.com/2017/01/trump-promotes-2017-march-for-life-in.html
And to be honest, I don't trust for a moment that Trump is pro life. He is supporting this movement because this is what his supporters are about. It is convenient for him. He made a very blanket statement back in his "liberal" days that although he did not like abortion, he "absolutely" supported a woman's right to choose.
As the Catechism says, echoing what John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae: "2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor." After which it goes on to affirm a preference for non-lethal means, where these are effective, noting that this is quite often the case in developed countries. Nonetheless, it clearly works to stay in some continuity with longstanding Church teaching, which has always allowed room for the state to resort to the death penalty. Were it to do otherwise, it would not only engage in rupture with that teaching, it would also stand in condemnation of the over 180 popes who ruled as sovereign over a polity (the Papal States) which employed capital punishment in its organic legal code through its entire existence (and which remained on Vatican City's code books until 1969).
It is possible as a Catholic to advocate against the death penalty. But it is also possible to advocate for it, too. In this respect, I would recommend Edward Feser's and Joseph Bissette's forthcoming book, "By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty" (Ignatius Press).
The death penalty is designed to keep people safe from those who could do them harm. Those men (and women) living behind bars are of little danger to the rest of us. Our first concern for them should be their souls, for truly they are in eternal peril. Killing them when it is not necessary shows no concern for their souls whatsoever.
We do not live under the Old Covenant where people could be stoned for breaking the Sabbath. Our Lord brought a new way of dealing with sinners, and that is love and mercy and concern for their souls, not vengeance.
Thanks for responding...I thought it was related to your topic because Trump was responding to Muir bringing up the women's march.
regarding the refugees and uncontrolled immigration I would like you people who seem to want a sort of lassaiz faire border to contemplate the following:
Strict controls on immigration save lives.
How?
every year we in South Texas read about hundreds of poor souls who perish out in the sticks here from dehydration, exposure, etc. If there had been a wall or even better enforcement, I cannot imagine a scenario where those deceased people wouldn't still be alive. (probably living happily with intact families in their ancestral homelands.)
a similarly sad situation has occurred in the Mediterranean. On Lampedusa in 2013 the Holy Father highlighted his invitation to boat people. Since that time the annual death toll due to drownings has sky-rocketed 25 fold (( http://mapreport.com/subtopics/d/migrant.boat.accident.html ))
I don't see how the Holy Father doesn't share some responsibility for luring these people out of their homelands.
One of the main reasons we are seeing the terrible tragedies among the refugees is because so many have turned their backs on them, and we will all have to answer for that. If we were there to help them, they would not have to depend on those who are taking advantage and putting their lives at risk.
....as they have for centuries and have lived contentedly. When westerners dangle the prospect of a welfare-state before people used to working with their own hands for a living, many happy people suddenly become unhappy. Their families are roiled and their cultures are subjected to whatever Western fad dominates. Currently LGBT is the rage, in 10 years it might be something even more inimical to those cultures. We must help them. Corporally and spiritually, but promoting mass migration does neither. It disrupts lives and gets people killed along the way.
The Holy Father, and you, seem to think you are doing these people a great favor by transplanting them into secular western-welfare states which eschew God and tradition and worship Hollywood values. Please don't tell me you think America and Europe are something other than that!
People love home. Texans have convinced themselves they are living in heaven....most visitors here disagree. Believe it or not, most people, even Arabs and Africans and Asians, think their native land is the closest thing to heaven.
We must help these people since we funded the wars in Syria and Libya and Iraq and Yemen and Afghanistan and ???. So we do owe them. But we must be careful not to encourage any more deadly migration waves. You and the Holy Father seem unaware of all people who will die along the way.