Flipping around the radio dial the other day I made a pit stop on Mark Levin’s program for about 90 seconds, about as long as I can take listening to most conservative talking heads lately.
It’s not that we don’t desire similar things (e.g., the defense of marriage as one man and one woman, an end to the evil of abortion, and a government that doesn’t mandate despicable practices), it’s just that I’ve come to realize what most of them don’t even know about themselves; they are champions of a remedy that is utterly destined to fail.
The clarion call to change the station came from Levin when he contrasted Obama’s minions with “Constitutionalists like us.”
Speak for yourself, Mark.
It has become increasingly difficult for Catholics over the last 40 or so years, thanks to the Second Vatican Council and the behavior of the hierarchy in its aftermath, to realize that the U.S. Constitution is painfully at odds with authentic Catholic doctrine.
It always has been and it always will be, but you wouldn’t know it thanks to the rhetoric of American prelates and neo-con Catholic icons like George Weigel, who never tire of beating the buzz phrase “our first, most cherished freedom” into the heads of anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped within hearing distance.
It’s time for Catholics who are politically conservative to wake up, and to assert their citizenship.
Look, I’m as patriotic as anyone I know. My grandfather came to this country all by himself as a teenager with next to nothing in his pockets, and he made great sacrifices for my father and for me and for my children, and I am deeply indebted to him for his heroism.
Even so, I am proud to say that I’m Catholic first and American only secondarily.
Don’t get me wrong, being an American is a great privilege, but that’s not going to get us to Heaven; being a faithful Catholic is what will get us to Heaven, and as such, I cannot avoid the uncomfortable truth that the U.S. Constitution, in particular its approach to religious liberty, is fatally flawed.
And why is it flawed?
Because it attempts to sustain the unsustainable by avoiding the exclusive rights of absolute religious truth in a world that is ultimately ruled by Christ the King who is Truth incarnate.
This, my friends, is precisely why so many conservatives now find themselves complaining about RINO’s and wringing their hands out of concern for where Chief Justice Roberts might fall in the battle over so-called “gay marriage.”
Wake up! This nonsense will never end.
Allow me to illustrate:
A couple of days before the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act went to a vote in the U.S. Senate, the Democrat Senator in Catholic clothing, Barbara Mikulski, inadvertently drove the point home when she decried the dangers associated with allowing employers the freedom to offer health insurance plans that are amenable with “their religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
Looking squarely into the C-Span camera, Mikulski sneered, “What’s a moral conviction? Where does a moral conviction come from?”
Setting her sarcasm aside, these are actually important questions, and for people like Barbara Mikulski, living in a country where Constitutional law considers every individual religious belief as valid as the next, irrespective of its relationship to the absolute truth that comes to us from God through His Holy Catholic Church (the policy adopted at the Second Vatican Council), the answer is simple:
A bona fide “moral conviction” is whatever the Hell the ruling party tells you it is.
So, what can we do to assert our citizenship in the Church and the Sovereign rights of Christ the King, at a time when even the sacred hierarchy is unwilling to do so?
I would suggest that a great place to start is to get educated on the topic by exploring the following papal teachings:
Pope Pius IX – Syllabus of Errors
Pope Leo XIII – Immortale Dei – On the Christian Constitution of States
Pope Leo XIII – Libertas – On the Nature of Human Liberty
Pope Leo XIII – Officio Sanctissimo – On the Church in Bavaria
Pope Leo XIII – Rerum Novarum – On Capital and Labor
Pope Pius XI – Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio – On the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ
Pope Pius XI – Quas Primas – On the Feast of Christ the King
Pope Pius XII – Ci Riesce – Address to Convention of Italian Catholic Jurists
Pope Pius XII – Christmas Message of 1942