Archbishop Charles Chaput's Dire Predictions - Part I

Archbishop Charles Chaput’s Dire Predictions – Part I

In pursuit of the truth – www.cinopsbegone.com – Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2011

“Systematic Discrimination Against Church Now Seems Inevitable”* A society where faith is prevented from vigorous public expression is a society that has fashioned the state into an idol. And when the state becomes an idol, men and women become the sacrifice offering. We face an aggressive secular political vision and a consumerist economic model that result – in practice, if not in explicit intent – in a new kind of state-encouraged atheism.

To put in another way: The Enlightenment-derived worldview that gave rise to the great murder ideologies of the last century remains very much alive. Its language is softer, its intentions seem kinder, and its face is friendlier. But its underlying impulse hasn’t changed – i.e. the dream of building a society apart from God; a world of men and women might live wholly sufficient unto themselves, satisfying their needs and desires through their own ingenuity.

This vision presumes a frankly “post-Christian” world ruled by rationality, technology and good social engineering. Religion has a place in this worldview, but only as an individual lifestyle accessory. People are free to worship and believe whatever they want, so long as they keep their belief to themselves and do not presume to intrude their religious idiosyncrasies on the workings of government, the economy, or culture…

In the United States, a nation that is still 80% Christian with a high degree of religious practice, now government agencies now increasingly seek to dictate how Church ministries should operate, and to forced them into practices that would destroy their Catholic identity. Efforts have been made to discourage or criminalize the expression of certain Catholic beliefs as “hate speech.” Our courts and legislatures now routinely take actions that undermine marriage and family, and seek to scrub our public life of Christian symbolism and signs of influence…

The West is now steadily moving in the direction of that new “inhuman humanism.” And if the Church is to respond faithfully, WE NEED TO DRAW UPON THE LESSONS THAT THE CHURCHES LEARNED UNDER TOTALITARIANISM. A CATHOLICISM OF RESISTENCE MUST BE BASED ON TRUST IN CHRIST’S WORDS: “THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE.”…

Living the truth also means telling the truth and calling things by their right names. And that means exposing the lies by which some men try to force others to live. Our societies are Christian by birth, and their survival depends on the endurance of Christian values. Our core principles and political institutions are based in large measure, on the morality of the Gospel and the Christian vision of man and government…

George H. Kubeck, * http://lifesitenews.comIdn/printerfriendly.html?articleid=10082503 this is the address to the 15th symposium for the Canon Law Association of Slovakia on Tuesday- Spisske, Podhradie, Slovakia, Aug. 25, 2010, (LifeSiteNews.com)

P.S. Truth is our most powerful weapon. Action follows.