Thursday, March 13, 2014
Congratulations, Pope Francis
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Financial and Moral Deficits
Our nation's record-breaking budget deficits are in the news lately. President Obama’s recently uncloaked budget bombshell for fiscal year 2014 includes massive and unprecedented new spending increases—largely as a consequence of the pathetically misnamed Affordable Care Act—at a time when the United States of America is still struggling to recover from the worst recession in eighty years. Under President Obama’s corrupt and irresponsible administration over the past five years, which has swollen the federal bureaucracy to double its original size and scope, our nation has been digging itself into a far deeper hole of debt, and at a far more rapid pace, than at any previous point in its 240-year history. Even the dramatic rise in the national debt from $2.1 trillion to more than $10 trillion that marked the George W. Bush administration due largely to its own massive spending and federal bureaucratic growth is quickly being eclipsed by President Obama’s boundless spending extravaganza. Whereas our country gained some $8 trillion in additional debt burden during eight years of President Bush, we have accumulated nearly $7 trillion more on top of that during just five years of President Obama. As a result, our national debt figure now stands at $17.3 trillion and counting. Unfortunately, President Obama and his loyal cronies on both sides of the aisle have abandoned all pretense of concern for rescuing our country from this inconceivable debt nightmare, with the concept of a balanced budget appearing less likely and more laughable with each passing day. If President Obama’s proposed budgetary scheme were to pass Congressional muster, gigantic spending hikes would push our national debt well above the $20 trillion mark before the final three years of his administration are up.
It is shocking to think that just thirty-three years ago when President Ronald Reagan took office, our entire national debt was "only" around $900 billion. It’s even more disturbing to realize that the federal budget deficit projected for this coming fiscal year alone eclipses our nation's total debt figure for the year 2000. Clearly, our dishonest and corrupt reigning establishment politicians in Washington have lost all sense of fiscal discipline and responsibility for the financial health of our country as they unscrupulously sacrifice control of our national financial system to the insatiable appetites of major corporate interests, thereby loading a colossal and unsustainable burden of debt onto the shoulders of future generations of average hardworking Americans and guaranteeing that American prosperity will soon be a thing of the past.
But while we must be concerned about these gargantuan runaway financial deficits and their long-term impact on our economy, we tend to forget that our country is simultaneously experiencing a more serious kind of deficit—that is, a moral deficit. These two kinds of deficits, moral and fiscal, are closely related. Our nation’s financial and economic decline over time has directly resulted from and closely paralleled its moral decline. The profound and clearly evident moral deficit in our nation's leadership and in its citizens must first be acknowledged and duly addressed if we are to have any hope of effectively halting and reversing the national debt—not to mention getting our economy on a sound footing.
Morality involves a sense of responsibility towards God and our neighbor. Religion helps to foster and inculcate this sense of responsibility. Our Founding Fathers and early national leaders were religious and moral men, and under their wise and competent administration, our country's debt incurred by the War of Independence was paid off in a timely fashion and the national debt kept very low thereafter. The Founders and their immediate successors exhibited a healthy fear of even the smallest outstanding debt. Benjamin Franklin encapsulated this early fiscal conservatism in his famous line, "It is better to go to bed supperless than to wake up in debt." President Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt down to zero in 1835. Unfortunately, in more recent times, the religious and moral character of our nation's leaders has tended to decline, with a decreased sense of responsibility to the people they govern, and the result has been a corresponding increase in the national debt. During the last century, America's outstanding debt rose from less than $1 billion in 1900 to more than $2 trillion in 2000. From the 1980s onward, the debt began to rise at a noticeably faster pace. In the last fourteen years it has grown exponentially, dwarfing the entire national debt of America’s previous 200 years combined, reflecting an increasing loss of any sense of responsibility on the part of our most recent national leaders.
What is debt? Debt is something that we owe someone else. When we get a loan or a credit card, a bank gives us a certain sum of money to borrow. Along with the right to borrow money comes the responsibility to use this money honestly and to repay it as soon as possible. When a creditor lends us money, he gives us the right to use it and expects us to pay it back in a timely fashion. Thus a financial debt is a moral responsibility towards our neighbor, because the money we are borrowing belongs to him. When we repay our debts, we are acting honestly and responsibly in accordance with the moral law.
In the world of finance, we have a responsibility to only borrow a sum of money that we reasonably expect to be able to repay and to avoid deliberately accumulating unsustainable debt. Sometimes, through no fault of our own, we may become indebted to someone and be unable to repay what we owe. In this case, it is an act of mercy and a moral thing for our creditor to voluntarily practice debt forgiveness. When he does this, he is saying that the money he lent us is now ours to keep, and we need not worry about paying it back. In the Bible, Jesus urges creditors to practice this form of forgiveness, and not to demand repayment when this is impossible.
Similarly, in the realm of morality, we are given the right to make free choices, and along with this freedom comes the responsibility to act in accord with the moral law. When we abuse our freedom by committing sin, we incur a moral debt towards God and towards our neighbor. We can pay off such a debt by repenting of our sin and making reparation for it by prayer, fasting, and works of charity. Nonetheless, it is a fact of fallen human nature that most of us are walking around with some level of debt to God due to our sins. However, God is merciful and has made an arrangement known as Purgatory to take care of any remaining moral debt we may owe Him at the time of our death. Jesus himself connected the moral debts we owe to God with the moral debts owed to us by our neighbor in the Our Father, which in St. Mark's gospel reads, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
Now, in the financial world, there is (or ought to be) a difference between an honest, responsible person who accidentally falls into a situation of unsustainable debt through no fault of his own, and a dishonest, irresponsible person who runs up many debts and wishes to continue running them up with no intention of ever repaying them. In the first case, mercy (financial assistance) is appropriate; in the second case, there can be only justice (collection agencies). In the moral life, there is a similar distinction between a person who sins and then repents and makes restitution for his sin, and a person who sins freely and wishes to continue sinning with no intention of ever repenting. In the first case, God is merciful and bestows a heavenly reward; in the second, He is just and metes out the punishment of Hell. Just as it is the fiscally irresponsible person’s own fault that he loses his credit card and whatever he purchased with it and must pay what he owes with extra penalties and interest, it is the morally irresponsible person’s own fault that he ends up in Hell for all eternity.
Beneath the economic and financial collapse of 2008 that led to the current recession lay a crisis of personal moral responsibility. It’s easy and partly correct to blame irresponsible lending policies of the banks or unwise housing policies of the federal government for this disaster, but the fact is that all of us Americans contributed to this national financial crisis by our immoral individual personal decisions which helped drive the preceding artificial boom. We chose to borrow irresponsibly, to spend more and save less, to live beyond our means, to take on more and more debt, to buy that nice house and new car and all kinds of gadgets we wanted but really couldn’t afford. In other words, we chose to live dishonestly because we were selfish, greedy, materialistic and corrupt. And these immoral personal decisions of ours contributed to the ballooning growth of our national debt during the Bush administration. As Pope Benedict XVI eloquently demonstrated in his great social encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), you cannot build a sustainable economy on immorality and selfishness. Fidelity to the moral law on the part of everyone involved, i.e., personal moral responsibility, is a prerequisite for a sound economic and financial system.
The word "deficit" comes from the Latin word deficere, which means "emptiness." Benedict XVI pointed out in Caritas in Veritate that financial deficits and moral deficits go hand in hand. When individuals in a society succumb to a loss of personal moral responsibility, one of the natural consequences is a loss of fiscal responsibility that negatively impacts the whole society. Our skyrocketing fourteen-figure national debt with its twelve zeroes is merely a symbol and a symptom of the yawning moral emptiness of our nation’s leaders and citizens in recent years. Without a general and profound moral reform of American society beginning with each individual American, no financial reform project will succeed or bear lasting fruit. Only through a timely return and re-commitment to personal moral responsibility—aided by devout religious faith and the wisdom and example of the Founders—on the part of America’s citizens and leaders alike can our nation yet hope to pull away from the giant black hole of financial self-destruction toward which it is now hurtling at breakneck speed.
Copyright © 2014 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.
It is shocking to think that just thirty-three years ago when President Ronald Reagan took office, our entire national debt was "only" around $900 billion. It’s even more disturbing to realize that the federal budget deficit projected for this coming fiscal year alone eclipses our nation's total debt figure for the year 2000. Clearly, our dishonest and corrupt reigning establishment politicians in Washington have lost all sense of fiscal discipline and responsibility for the financial health of our country as they unscrupulously sacrifice control of our national financial system to the insatiable appetites of major corporate interests, thereby loading a colossal and unsustainable burden of debt onto the shoulders of future generations of average hardworking Americans and guaranteeing that American prosperity will soon be a thing of the past.
But while we must be concerned about these gargantuan runaway financial deficits and their long-term impact on our economy, we tend to forget that our country is simultaneously experiencing a more serious kind of deficit—that is, a moral deficit. These two kinds of deficits, moral and fiscal, are closely related. Our nation’s financial and economic decline over time has directly resulted from and closely paralleled its moral decline. The profound and clearly evident moral deficit in our nation's leadership and in its citizens must first be acknowledged and duly addressed if we are to have any hope of effectively halting and reversing the national debt—not to mention getting our economy on a sound footing.
Morality involves a sense of responsibility towards God and our neighbor. Religion helps to foster and inculcate this sense of responsibility. Our Founding Fathers and early national leaders were religious and moral men, and under their wise and competent administration, our country's debt incurred by the War of Independence was paid off in a timely fashion and the national debt kept very low thereafter. The Founders and their immediate successors exhibited a healthy fear of even the smallest outstanding debt. Benjamin Franklin encapsulated this early fiscal conservatism in his famous line, "It is better to go to bed supperless than to wake up in debt." President Andrew Jackson paid off the national debt down to zero in 1835. Unfortunately, in more recent times, the religious and moral character of our nation's leaders has tended to decline, with a decreased sense of responsibility to the people they govern, and the result has been a corresponding increase in the national debt. During the last century, America's outstanding debt rose from less than $1 billion in 1900 to more than $2 trillion in 2000. From the 1980s onward, the debt began to rise at a noticeably faster pace. In the last fourteen years it has grown exponentially, dwarfing the entire national debt of America’s previous 200 years combined, reflecting an increasing loss of any sense of responsibility on the part of our most recent national leaders.
What is debt? Debt is something that we owe someone else. When we get a loan or a credit card, a bank gives us a certain sum of money to borrow. Along with the right to borrow money comes the responsibility to use this money honestly and to repay it as soon as possible. When a creditor lends us money, he gives us the right to use it and expects us to pay it back in a timely fashion. Thus a financial debt is a moral responsibility towards our neighbor, because the money we are borrowing belongs to him. When we repay our debts, we are acting honestly and responsibly in accordance with the moral law.
In the world of finance, we have a responsibility to only borrow a sum of money that we reasonably expect to be able to repay and to avoid deliberately accumulating unsustainable debt. Sometimes, through no fault of our own, we may become indebted to someone and be unable to repay what we owe. In this case, it is an act of mercy and a moral thing for our creditor to voluntarily practice debt forgiveness. When he does this, he is saying that the money he lent us is now ours to keep, and we need not worry about paying it back. In the Bible, Jesus urges creditors to practice this form of forgiveness, and not to demand repayment when this is impossible.
Similarly, in the realm of morality, we are given the right to make free choices, and along with this freedom comes the responsibility to act in accord with the moral law. When we abuse our freedom by committing sin, we incur a moral debt towards God and towards our neighbor. We can pay off such a debt by repenting of our sin and making reparation for it by prayer, fasting, and works of charity. Nonetheless, it is a fact of fallen human nature that most of us are walking around with some level of debt to God due to our sins. However, God is merciful and has made an arrangement known as Purgatory to take care of any remaining moral debt we may owe Him at the time of our death. Jesus himself connected the moral debts we owe to God with the moral debts owed to us by our neighbor in the Our Father, which in St. Mark's gospel reads, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
Now, in the financial world, there is (or ought to be) a difference between an honest, responsible person who accidentally falls into a situation of unsustainable debt through no fault of his own, and a dishonest, irresponsible person who runs up many debts and wishes to continue running them up with no intention of ever repaying them. In the first case, mercy (financial assistance) is appropriate; in the second case, there can be only justice (collection agencies). In the moral life, there is a similar distinction between a person who sins and then repents and makes restitution for his sin, and a person who sins freely and wishes to continue sinning with no intention of ever repenting. In the first case, God is merciful and bestows a heavenly reward; in the second, He is just and metes out the punishment of Hell. Just as it is the fiscally irresponsible person’s own fault that he loses his credit card and whatever he purchased with it and must pay what he owes with extra penalties and interest, it is the morally irresponsible person’s own fault that he ends up in Hell for all eternity.
Beneath the economic and financial collapse of 2008 that led to the current recession lay a crisis of personal moral responsibility. It’s easy and partly correct to blame irresponsible lending policies of the banks or unwise housing policies of the federal government for this disaster, but the fact is that all of us Americans contributed to this national financial crisis by our immoral individual personal decisions which helped drive the preceding artificial boom. We chose to borrow irresponsibly, to spend more and save less, to live beyond our means, to take on more and more debt, to buy that nice house and new car and all kinds of gadgets we wanted but really couldn’t afford. In other words, we chose to live dishonestly because we were selfish, greedy, materialistic and corrupt. And these immoral personal decisions of ours contributed to the ballooning growth of our national debt during the Bush administration. As Pope Benedict XVI eloquently demonstrated in his great social encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), you cannot build a sustainable economy on immorality and selfishness. Fidelity to the moral law on the part of everyone involved, i.e., personal moral responsibility, is a prerequisite for a sound economic and financial system.
The word "deficit" comes from the Latin word deficere, which means "emptiness." Benedict XVI pointed out in Caritas in Veritate that financial deficits and moral deficits go hand in hand. When individuals in a society succumb to a loss of personal moral responsibility, one of the natural consequences is a loss of fiscal responsibility that negatively impacts the whole society. Our skyrocketing fourteen-figure national debt with its twelve zeroes is merely a symbol and a symptom of the yawning moral emptiness of our nation’s leaders and citizens in recent years. Without a general and profound moral reform of American society beginning with each individual American, no financial reform project will succeed or bear lasting fruit. Only through a timely return and re-commitment to personal moral responsibility—aided by devout religious faith and the wisdom and example of the Founders—on the part of America’s citizens and leaders alike can our nation yet hope to pull away from the giant black hole of financial self-destruction toward which it is now hurtling at breakneck speed.
Copyright © 2014 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.
Monday, March 10, 2014
Quote of the Day
“These hypocritical people [the Pharisees] are good persons. They do all they should do. They seem good. But they are ethicists without goodness because they have lost the sense of belonging to a people! Our Lord gives us salvation through belonging to a people...
“Our perfection, our holiness is linked with our people where we are chosen and become part. Our greatest act of holiness relates to the flesh of our brother and the flesh of Jesus Christ. Our act of holiness today, here at the altar, is not a hypocritical fasting: instead it means not being ashamed of the flesh of Christ which comes here today!
“This is the mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ. It means going to share our bread with the hungry, taking care of the sick, the elderly, those who can’t give us anything in return: this is not being ashamed of the flesh!...
“Am I ashamed of the flesh of my brother and sister? When I give alms, do I drop the coin without touching the hand (of the poor person, beggar)? And if by chance I do touch it, do I immediately withdraw it? When I give alms, do I look into the eyes of my brother, my sister? When I know a person is ill, do I go and visit that person? Do I greet him or her with affection?...
Am I capable of giving a caress or a hug to the sick, the elderly, the children, or have I lost sight of the meaning of a caress? These hypocrites were unable to give a caress. They had forgotten how to do it...
“Don’t be ashamed of the flesh of our brother. It’s our flesh! We will be judged by the way we behave towards this brother, this sister.”
--Pope Francis
Friday, March 7, 2014
The Importance and Potential of the Catholic Vote
(Note: This article originally appeared on the Intellectual Conservative Feb. 13, 2014 at http://intellectualconservative.com/the-importance-and-potential-of-the-catholic-vote/ and was re-published on EzineArticles Feb. 17, 2014 at http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Importance-and-Potential-of-the-Catholic-Vote&id=8326004 )
Almost any candidate running for president of the United States, for a state governorship, or for a U.S. Senate or House seat these days is clearly aware that he or she probably won’t win the election unless the better part of Catholics participating in that election choose to vote for him or her. In twenty-first century America, how Catholics vote generally determines the outcome of national and state election campaigns. The first presidential election of the century, the election of 2000, was an exception to this general rule, with Republican candidate George W. Bush barely scraping victory despite narrowly losing the Catholic vote. But in the more typical election of 2004, 52 percent of American Catholics cast their ballots for the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, resulting in his re-election as President of the United States. In 2008, on the other hand, Catholics opted for the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, by a 55 percent margin, putting him in the White House by a comfortable margin. The historic 2010 midterm elections revealed Catholic voters as a major driving force of the Tea Party landslide: 58 percent of them chose Republican candidates for governor, House and Senate seats. Finally, U.S. Catholic voters tipped the close presidential election of 2012 in favor of Barack Obama by a margin of 50 to 48 percent—the same margin as the rest of the electorate.
The significance of the Catholic vote in American politics is unquestionable. But what exactly is this thing called “the Catholic vote,” and how does it work? To find out, let’s take a closer look at the political, social, and religious characteristics of the Catholics of the United States today.
Catholics are a complex and unique group politically. Although they comprise a substantial chunk of the U.S. population (roughly one-fourth or about 70 million), unlike Jews or Evangelicals, they are not overwhelmingly committed to a single political party. Rather, they’re split about 40/40 between the Republican and Democratic parties, while the remaining 20 percent or so are “swing voters,” those who aren’t firmly committed to either party and whose choices in a given election are shaped by a variety of superficial factors. It is these swing voters in each national election, as well as in most state elections, who determine whether the majority of Catholics goes for one party or the other and thus which party wins high office. So savvy politicians spend a great deal of money and effort to try to win this narrow demographic of Catholic swing voters, who comprise no more than 5 percent of the total U.S. electorate.
Part of the reason why Catholics as a whole are not committed to a single party is that they are a motley bunch, hailing from a variety of ethnic and economic backgrounds. They include Caucasians, Hispanics, Filipinos, other East Asians, African-Americans, rich and poor, business professionals and farm workers, urban and rural folk. Catholics are found in every milieu of American society; they inhabit every state and geographical region of the country (although they are spread more thinly in the South). These characteristics set Catholics apart from other religious groups, such as the Protestant majority (which is mostly white and Republican) and Jews (who are mainly Democrats and confined to the largest cities). Thus, it can be said that, given their political, ethnic and economic diversity, Catholics are generally representative of the nation as a whole.
The political characteristics of American Catholics are greatly influenced by how they believe and practice their faith. Less than one-fourth of them are faithful, practicing Catholics who allow their faith to shape their voting decisions and who follow the guidance of their bishops regarding both the negotiable and the non-negotiable issues at stake. For these good Catholics, the right to life of innocent unborn children, the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, the right of the Church to act in accord with its teachings and the rights of Americans to act in accord with their moral consciences and religious beliefs, and the right to life of the ill and elderly are of fundamental importance in choosing which candidate to vote for. While a candidate’s positions on other issues such as poverty, war, immigration, taxes, health care, or the economy are carefully considered as well, these negotiable issues are ultimately subservient to the non-negotiable issues of life, family, the moral law and human rights that form the very cornerstone of society. Since the Democratic Party has fervently embraced abortion and deliberately ostracized pro-life candidates, these devout Catholics usually end up voting Republican even if that runs against their preference because they have no other choice in good conscience. They are not necessarily loyal Republicans, and many of them are would-be Democrats. They are de facto Republicans whose voting habits are consistent and easily predictable.
Unfortunately, more than 75 percent of American registered Catholics do not even fulfill their basic religious obligation of attending Mass every Sunday, and of these non-practicing Catholics, a substantial portion are “cafeteria Catholics” (heretics) who refuse to accept certain teachings of the Church. Included within this latter group is the 40 percent of all U.S. Catholics who believe that a woman has a right to an abortion under certain circumstances. Also included within this group is the lion’s share of the more than 50 percent of American Catholics who use artificial contraception within their marriages in violation of Church teaching. These staggering numbers indicate a serious crisis of faith in the American Catholic Church, and they betray grave problems in the Catholic vote. Many of these so-called Catholics always vote Democratic regardless of their candidate’s position on life and marriage; some always vote Republican, even when the Republican candidate supports legalized abortion and same-sex “marriage”; and the remainder are swing voters who pick their party and candidate in each election with little or selective regard for Church teaching on the issues. Some nominal Catholics do agree with the Church that abortion is gravely immoral, but this does not stop them from voting for pro-abortion candidates in clear violation of Church teaching.
Within this overwhelming multitude of Catholics in name only, which includes some 60 million Americans, it is swing voters who determine the role that the Catholic vote plays in each national election as well as in most state elections. Catholic swing voters reelected President Bush in 2004 (that was good), elected President Obama in 2008 (that was bad), helped push the Tea Party to gubernatorial and Congressional victories in 2010 (that was good), and reelected President Obama in 2012 (that was bad). The fact that 55 percent of American Catholics helped put in the White House the most radically pro-abortion president in our nation’s history, and that 50 percent chose to reelect him despite his blatant attacks on the moral law, the Catholic Church, religious liberty and moral conscience rights, is a crying shame. These tragic results were due to Catholic swing voters allying with the substantial minority of Democratic pro-abortion Catholics.
Of course, it’s great when Catholic swing voters do the opposite, and join forces with faithful Catholics and staunch Republican Catholics to assure a victory for human rights and traditional values. In a triumphant press release following the historic 2010 midterm elections, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League announced that “Catholics voted 58-40 for the Republican candidates last night.” He noted that “[t]his was a dramatic 20-point swing from two years ago,” but then added, “What caused Catholics to bolt is not clear.” The reason for this dramatic swing was Catholic swing voters riding the wave of Tea Party enthusiasm that swept the country in reaction to President Obama’s unpopular and immoral healthcare reform law—which is now unfortunately in effect, thanks to those same swing voters having reverted to the Democratic Party two years later.
The fact of the matter is that these Catholic swingers, together with the vast assemblage of non-practicing Catholics in general, are essentially indistinguishable from the secular society and culture around them. They think and vote the way the people around them think and vote; their Catholic faith has little or nothing to do with it. Because they are not well-grounded in their faith, they allow the winds of fashion and popular opinion to blow them to and fro like rudderless sailboats. In 2008 the winds were blowing gently towards the Democrats, so that’s the way they headed. In 2010 the winds sharply shifted course towards Tea Party Republicans, so they caught the gusts and sailed along in that direction.
It is unfortunately true that Catholics in name only control the power of the American Catholic vote by virtue of their sheer numerical monopoly. That is a scandal. What’s even worse is that this situation is allowed to persist by another group we have not yet mentioned: millions of otherwise good practicing Catholics who don’t bother to register or go to the polls on Election Day. These Catholic non-voters frequently and adversely affect the outcome of elections by their failure to participate in the political process. Together with Catholics in name only, they are traitors to both their Church and their country. If these otherwise good Catholics were mobilized to do their duty to God and country, they would add to the faithful Catholics who already vote and help to neutralize the deleterious effects of the Catholic swing voters, thus critically influencing the outcome of important elections. It’s a shame to see the Catholic vote split among pro-abortion Catholics, faithful Catholics and swing Catholics who ignore or selectively apply Church teaching on the issues, while other Catholics just sit by and watch. These divisions are preventing the Catholic vote from achieving its true potential as a great force for good in our country. Meanwhile, so-called “Catholic” politicians eagerly exploit the Catholic vote for their own political gain while promoting a woman’s “right” to abortion or attacking the Church’s right to practice its teachings in public life.
The good news, however, is that these grave problems with the American Catholic vote can be overcome. In fact, change for the better within the American Catholic Church is not only possible, it is gradually unfolding before our eyes. Most “cafeteria Catholics” are over the age of 60, while most faithful Catholics are 45 and under. Young Catholics in particular are fervently dedicated to the pro-life cause. This was nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the March for Life in Washington, D.C. in January 2013. Of the more than 800,000 people who took part in this event, a majority were Catholic teenagers and younger adults born since Roe v. Wade. This army of young, pro-life Catholics—some of whom were elected to state governorships and U.S. House and Senate seats in 2010 and 2012—continues to grow, while pro-abortion Catholics in the mold of Ted Kennedy are gradually declining and dying out. Younger Catholic priests are not afraid to speak from the pulpit the truth about the evils of abortion, artificial contraception, and gay “marriage,” and their numbers are slowly on the rise as well.
Imagine what the Catholic vote would be like if American Catholics were solidly united in the full belief and faithful practice of the religion they profess! Just imagine what would happen if all Catholic voters in the United States voted in accordance with Church teaching in every election. No pro-abortion candidate for president or governor would ever make it into public office; nor would most such candidates for U.S. Senate and House seats. Politicians would have a holy fear of the Catholic vote, knowing that to publicly take a pro-abortion or pro-gay “marriage” stand would cost them the support of their Catholic constituents. Furthermore, the already massive and growing pro-life, pro-marriage and religious liberty movements would be much stronger and even more effective if our elected representatives had four times as many Catholic constituents knocking on their doors and pressuring them to do away with legalized abortion, gay “marriage” and the HHS mandate. If every American Catholic citizen took seriously his or her grave moral obligation to form and vote his or her conscience in accord with Church teaching, we would have a different and much better country. And all this would happen if only Americans who currently profess to be Catholic took their faith seriously. The Catholic vote would take on even more formidable proportions if half of all American ex-Catholics—another 50 million people—were to return to the Church and begin voting as faithful Catholics. Imagine the beneficial consequences to our country of such a massive reversion to Catholicism!
As Catholics vote, so goes the nation. Good Catholics make good citizens. The sacraments (especially the Holy Eucharist and Confession), prayer (especially the Holy Rosary), and sound catechesis are the keys to revitalizing and renewing the Catholic Church in the United States—and in so doing, to unlock the hidden potential of the Catholic vote and make it truly a force to be reckoned with in future elections.
Copyright © 2014 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.
Almost any candidate running for president of the United States, for a state governorship, or for a U.S. Senate or House seat these days is clearly aware that he or she probably won’t win the election unless the better part of Catholics participating in that election choose to vote for him or her. In twenty-first century America, how Catholics vote generally determines the outcome of national and state election campaigns. The first presidential election of the century, the election of 2000, was an exception to this general rule, with Republican candidate George W. Bush barely scraping victory despite narrowly losing the Catholic vote. But in the more typical election of 2004, 52 percent of American Catholics cast their ballots for the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, resulting in his re-election as President of the United States. In 2008, on the other hand, Catholics opted for the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, by a 55 percent margin, putting him in the White House by a comfortable margin. The historic 2010 midterm elections revealed Catholic voters as a major driving force of the Tea Party landslide: 58 percent of them chose Republican candidates for governor, House and Senate seats. Finally, U.S. Catholic voters tipped the close presidential election of 2012 in favor of Barack Obama by a margin of 50 to 48 percent—the same margin as the rest of the electorate.
The significance of the Catholic vote in American politics is unquestionable. But what exactly is this thing called “the Catholic vote,” and how does it work? To find out, let’s take a closer look at the political, social, and religious characteristics of the Catholics of the United States today.
Catholics are a complex and unique group politically. Although they comprise a substantial chunk of the U.S. population (roughly one-fourth or about 70 million), unlike Jews or Evangelicals, they are not overwhelmingly committed to a single political party. Rather, they’re split about 40/40 between the Republican and Democratic parties, while the remaining 20 percent or so are “swing voters,” those who aren’t firmly committed to either party and whose choices in a given election are shaped by a variety of superficial factors. It is these swing voters in each national election, as well as in most state elections, who determine whether the majority of Catholics goes for one party or the other and thus which party wins high office. So savvy politicians spend a great deal of money and effort to try to win this narrow demographic of Catholic swing voters, who comprise no more than 5 percent of the total U.S. electorate.
Part of the reason why Catholics as a whole are not committed to a single party is that they are a motley bunch, hailing from a variety of ethnic and economic backgrounds. They include Caucasians, Hispanics, Filipinos, other East Asians, African-Americans, rich and poor, business professionals and farm workers, urban and rural folk. Catholics are found in every milieu of American society; they inhabit every state and geographical region of the country (although they are spread more thinly in the South). These characteristics set Catholics apart from other religious groups, such as the Protestant majority (which is mostly white and Republican) and Jews (who are mainly Democrats and confined to the largest cities). Thus, it can be said that, given their political, ethnic and economic diversity, Catholics are generally representative of the nation as a whole.
The political characteristics of American Catholics are greatly influenced by how they believe and practice their faith. Less than one-fourth of them are faithful, practicing Catholics who allow their faith to shape their voting decisions and who follow the guidance of their bishops regarding both the negotiable and the non-negotiable issues at stake. For these good Catholics, the right to life of innocent unborn children, the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, the right of the Church to act in accord with its teachings and the rights of Americans to act in accord with their moral consciences and religious beliefs, and the right to life of the ill and elderly are of fundamental importance in choosing which candidate to vote for. While a candidate’s positions on other issues such as poverty, war, immigration, taxes, health care, or the economy are carefully considered as well, these negotiable issues are ultimately subservient to the non-negotiable issues of life, family, the moral law and human rights that form the very cornerstone of society. Since the Democratic Party has fervently embraced abortion and deliberately ostracized pro-life candidates, these devout Catholics usually end up voting Republican even if that runs against their preference because they have no other choice in good conscience. They are not necessarily loyal Republicans, and many of them are would-be Democrats. They are de facto Republicans whose voting habits are consistent and easily predictable.
Unfortunately, more than 75 percent of American registered Catholics do not even fulfill their basic religious obligation of attending Mass every Sunday, and of these non-practicing Catholics, a substantial portion are “cafeteria Catholics” (heretics) who refuse to accept certain teachings of the Church. Included within this latter group is the 40 percent of all U.S. Catholics who believe that a woman has a right to an abortion under certain circumstances. Also included within this group is the lion’s share of the more than 50 percent of American Catholics who use artificial contraception within their marriages in violation of Church teaching. These staggering numbers indicate a serious crisis of faith in the American Catholic Church, and they betray grave problems in the Catholic vote. Many of these so-called Catholics always vote Democratic regardless of their candidate’s position on life and marriage; some always vote Republican, even when the Republican candidate supports legalized abortion and same-sex “marriage”; and the remainder are swing voters who pick their party and candidate in each election with little or selective regard for Church teaching on the issues. Some nominal Catholics do agree with the Church that abortion is gravely immoral, but this does not stop them from voting for pro-abortion candidates in clear violation of Church teaching.
Within this overwhelming multitude of Catholics in name only, which includes some 60 million Americans, it is swing voters who determine the role that the Catholic vote plays in each national election as well as in most state elections. Catholic swing voters reelected President Bush in 2004 (that was good), elected President Obama in 2008 (that was bad), helped push the Tea Party to gubernatorial and Congressional victories in 2010 (that was good), and reelected President Obama in 2012 (that was bad). The fact that 55 percent of American Catholics helped put in the White House the most radically pro-abortion president in our nation’s history, and that 50 percent chose to reelect him despite his blatant attacks on the moral law, the Catholic Church, religious liberty and moral conscience rights, is a crying shame. These tragic results were due to Catholic swing voters allying with the substantial minority of Democratic pro-abortion Catholics.
Of course, it’s great when Catholic swing voters do the opposite, and join forces with faithful Catholics and staunch Republican Catholics to assure a victory for human rights and traditional values. In a triumphant press release following the historic 2010 midterm elections, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League announced that “Catholics voted 58-40 for the Republican candidates last night.” He noted that “[t]his was a dramatic 20-point swing from two years ago,” but then added, “What caused Catholics to bolt is not clear.” The reason for this dramatic swing was Catholic swing voters riding the wave of Tea Party enthusiasm that swept the country in reaction to President Obama’s unpopular and immoral healthcare reform law—which is now unfortunately in effect, thanks to those same swing voters having reverted to the Democratic Party two years later.
The fact of the matter is that these Catholic swingers, together with the vast assemblage of non-practicing Catholics in general, are essentially indistinguishable from the secular society and culture around them. They think and vote the way the people around them think and vote; their Catholic faith has little or nothing to do with it. Because they are not well-grounded in their faith, they allow the winds of fashion and popular opinion to blow them to and fro like rudderless sailboats. In 2008 the winds were blowing gently towards the Democrats, so that’s the way they headed. In 2010 the winds sharply shifted course towards Tea Party Republicans, so they caught the gusts and sailed along in that direction.
It is unfortunately true that Catholics in name only control the power of the American Catholic vote by virtue of their sheer numerical monopoly. That is a scandal. What’s even worse is that this situation is allowed to persist by another group we have not yet mentioned: millions of otherwise good practicing Catholics who don’t bother to register or go to the polls on Election Day. These Catholic non-voters frequently and adversely affect the outcome of elections by their failure to participate in the political process. Together with Catholics in name only, they are traitors to both their Church and their country. If these otherwise good Catholics were mobilized to do their duty to God and country, they would add to the faithful Catholics who already vote and help to neutralize the deleterious effects of the Catholic swing voters, thus critically influencing the outcome of important elections. It’s a shame to see the Catholic vote split among pro-abortion Catholics, faithful Catholics and swing Catholics who ignore or selectively apply Church teaching on the issues, while other Catholics just sit by and watch. These divisions are preventing the Catholic vote from achieving its true potential as a great force for good in our country. Meanwhile, so-called “Catholic” politicians eagerly exploit the Catholic vote for their own political gain while promoting a woman’s “right” to abortion or attacking the Church’s right to practice its teachings in public life.
The good news, however, is that these grave problems with the American Catholic vote can be overcome. In fact, change for the better within the American Catholic Church is not only possible, it is gradually unfolding before our eyes. Most “cafeteria Catholics” are over the age of 60, while most faithful Catholics are 45 and under. Young Catholics in particular are fervently dedicated to the pro-life cause. This was nowhere more clearly demonstrated than in the March for Life in Washington, D.C. in January 2013. Of the more than 800,000 people who took part in this event, a majority were Catholic teenagers and younger adults born since Roe v. Wade. This army of young, pro-life Catholics—some of whom were elected to state governorships and U.S. House and Senate seats in 2010 and 2012—continues to grow, while pro-abortion Catholics in the mold of Ted Kennedy are gradually declining and dying out. Younger Catholic priests are not afraid to speak from the pulpit the truth about the evils of abortion, artificial contraception, and gay “marriage,” and their numbers are slowly on the rise as well.
Imagine what the Catholic vote would be like if American Catholics were solidly united in the full belief and faithful practice of the religion they profess! Just imagine what would happen if all Catholic voters in the United States voted in accordance with Church teaching in every election. No pro-abortion candidate for president or governor would ever make it into public office; nor would most such candidates for U.S. Senate and House seats. Politicians would have a holy fear of the Catholic vote, knowing that to publicly take a pro-abortion or pro-gay “marriage” stand would cost them the support of their Catholic constituents. Furthermore, the already massive and growing pro-life, pro-marriage and religious liberty movements would be much stronger and even more effective if our elected representatives had four times as many Catholic constituents knocking on their doors and pressuring them to do away with legalized abortion, gay “marriage” and the HHS mandate. If every American Catholic citizen took seriously his or her grave moral obligation to form and vote his or her conscience in accord with Church teaching, we would have a different and much better country. And all this would happen if only Americans who currently profess to be Catholic took their faith seriously. The Catholic vote would take on even more formidable proportions if half of all American ex-Catholics—another 50 million people—were to return to the Church and begin voting as faithful Catholics. Imagine the beneficial consequences to our country of such a massive reversion to Catholicism!
As Catholics vote, so goes the nation. Good Catholics make good citizens. The sacraments (especially the Holy Eucharist and Confession), prayer (especially the Holy Rosary), and sound catechesis are the keys to revitalizing and renewing the Catholic Church in the United States—and in so doing, to unlock the hidden potential of the Catholic vote and make it truly a force to be reckoned with in future elections.
Copyright © 2014 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Quote of the Day
"For whatever our transgressions, and whatever we have done through the attacks of the adversary, let us pray that we may be forgiven....For it is good for a man to confess his failings rather than to harden his heart."
--St. Clement I, Pope and Martyr
Monday, March 3, 2014
Awaiting the Church's Final Decision on Medjugorje
Earlier this year, the Vatican announced that it had completed its thorough investigation of the alleged apparitions and messages of our Blessed Mother to six individuals in Medjugorje, Macedonia, which began in June of 1981 and continue to this day. The findings of this investigation are currently being examined by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Once this examination is complete, the results of the investigation will then be forwarded to the desk of Pope Francis, who will make the final judgment regarding the authenticity of these apparitions and messages.
What will our Holy Father decide with regard to Medjugorje? It's difficult to predict his decision because of the complexity of the situation. Debate as to the authenticity of the alleged apparitions and messages has been raging for decades among theologians, bishops, priests, and canon lawyers, while millions of lay faithful have embraced the apparitions and messages as authentic. Unless I am mistaken, a number of years ago the Vatican under Blessed John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger did issue a provisional statement to the effect that the alleged appearances and messages of Our Lady in Medjugorje were "worthy of belief" and that therefore the lay faithful were temporarily permitted to accept them and believe in them if they wished.
However, recent signals from the Church hierarchy have sounded a decidedly negative tone. A few years ago, Vinko Puljic, the Bishop of Medjugorje, filed an official complaint with the Holy See regarding the massive goings-on in his diocese surrounding the alleged apparitions, which prompted the Vatican in 2010 to appoint a special commission of selected bishops, priests, theologians, and lay faithful from around the world to investigate the whole matter. Last October, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Vatican office in charge of the commission of investigation), sent a letter to the U.S. bishops ordering them to forbid alleged Medjugorje visionary Ivan Dragicevic from speaking at two public events in the States during which he expected to receive apparitions from Our Lady. Cardinal Mueller pointed out in his letter that the alleged apparitions have yet to be ruled authentic. With regard to the credibility of these "apparitions," Cardinal Mueller stated that "all should accept the declaration" of the former Yugoslavian bishops dated April 10, 1991, to the effect that there is no proof that apparitions or supernatural revelations have taken place at Medjugorje.
For those of us who have uncritically embraced the alleged Medjugorje revelations as authentic for many years, such pronouncements and restrictions from the Church hierarchy may seem harsh and severe, even conspiratorial, designed to persecute true visionaries and to shut down authentic apparitions. However, the Church, as Mater et Magister (Mother and Teacher), is simply doing its job of looking carefully into and rigorously evaluating claims of supernatural phenomena and private revelation in light of Catholic doctrine and discipline in order to provide sure guidance for the faithful. The Church bears a tremendous responsibility in this regard. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would rather err on the side of caution than approve alleged apparitions that turn out to be a fraud. Taking the latter course would cause great scandal and confusion among the faithful, possibly leading to many people losing their souls, and would seriously damage the Church's reputation. Sometimes we children of the Church don't understand why she won't give us what we want when we want it, but our Mother the Church knows what is best for us and we have to trust her judgment.
The Church, upon duly investigating, did find proof of supernatural occurrences in the cases of the apparitions at Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, Knock, Paray-le-Monial (Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Sacred Heart devotion), Rue du Bac (Saint Catherine Laboure and the Miraculous Medal), Banneaux, San Gervasio (Mother Eugenia Ravasio and the Eternal Father), Plock and Vilnius (Saint Faustina and Divine Mercy), Garabandal, and others (I'm not sure about Kibeho, Rwanda, but I think that one has been approved by the local bishop). What is not always remembered, however, is that several of these now approved private revelations were at one time restricted or banned altogether, either by the local bishop or by Rome, or both, before further investigations finally confirmed their authenticity beyond doubt. For example, the Bishop of Fatima once temporarily forbade Sister Lucia from circulating messages she had received from Our Lady in his diocese. Grammatical errors caused Saint Faustina's diary to be condemned by the Church in the 1960s. Even the great Italian mystic Saint Pio of Pietrelcina was severely restricted by the Holy See for many years until the Church was satisfied that he was not involved in any suspicious activities. So keep in mind that recent negative statements from the Church hierarchy concerning alleged supernatural events at Medjugorje do not necessarily portend a final negative decision. These matters are complicated, and many factors are involved.
Church leaders have said little or nothing publicly thus far about the theological content of the Medjugorje messages and whether there is anything in them that conflicts with Church teaching. I'm no canon lawyer, but it seems to me the main questions at stake here are 1) whether the alleged apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje are authentic supernatural events of divine origin or not, 2) whether the alleged messages are theologically sound and in conformity with Church teaching or not, and 3) whether the alleged seers are telling the truth or not. All of these questions are further complicated by the fact that not just one alleged visionary, but six, are involved in the case of Medjugorje.
On one hand, the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje have borne a great deal of positive fruit in the life of the Church that no objective observer can ignore or dismiss. Over the past thirty-three years, millions of people have experienced life-changing conversions and renewal, spiritual and emotional healings, and all manner of graces and heavenly blessings as a result of making pilgrimage to Medjugorje to pray to Our Blessed Mother; millions more have been led through the messages to deepen their personal prayer lives and their commitment to Christ and His Church. The alleged messages emphasize personal conversion, prayer, fasting, and penance for world peace, which is consistent with the content of approved messages from Our Lady in Lourdes, Fatima, and elsewhere. Furthermore, most if not all of the alleged Medjugorje visionaries have demonstrated humility resulting in obedience to their superiors, i.e., their spiritual directors and their local bishop; for example, when the U.S. bishops forbade Ivan Dragicevic to speak at several events in the U.S. at which he claimed the Blessed Mother would appear to him, he cancelled his appearances at those events. All of these things would seem to augur in favor of the authenticity of the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje, and the Church has undoubtedly taken these things into account in its investigation of the private revelations claimed at Medjugorge.
But on the other hand, there has not been a lack of reports and rumors that would seem to detract from the authenticity of these revelations. One of the alleged seers, for instance, is apparently a millionaire, married to a fashion model and residing in a palatial mansion, supposedly having profited immensely from the sale of religious items at Medjugorje. If this scandal is fabricated, it could be a lie spread by someone determined to discredit the apparitions. But if it is true, it would present a serious obstacle for the Church in the path of recognizing the apparitions as authentic and would lend credence to the theory that the apparitions at Medjugorje are nothing more than a hoax and a scam concocted to generate revenue for the alleged visionaries.
In deciding whether a given series of private revelations is authentic, the Church (the local bishop) must carefully examine the personal character, integrity, truthfulness, and holiness of each of the alleged visionaries involved as well as their mental and psychological health. If they have a clean slate in all of these areas, then the Church has to examine the alleged messages themselves for doctrinal error or theological problems. If the messages are determined to be free from such, then the path is clear for the bishop to proceed toward canonical recognition, and thus approval, of such alleged apparitions. If one of the Medjugorje visionaries has grown wealthy by taking advantage of the pious faith of millions of Catholic pilgrims, this could deal a death blow to Medjugorje from the Church's perspective. A genuine visionary would never turn the apparitions to his or her personal profit. And yet it would still be possible that one or more of the other visionaries has been, and is still, receiving authentic apparitions and messages from the Blessed Virgin Mary.
So what will the Church ultimately decide with regard to the alleged apparitions of Medjugorje? A possible indirect critique has already come from Pope Francis, who remarked a few weeks ago that "Mary is our Mother, not a postmaster who sends us messages every day." However, Pope Francis is also greatly devoted to Our Blessed Mother and thus a champion of authentic Marian devotion. Regardless of whether the alleged apparitions and messages of Medjugorje are authentic or not, and regardless of whether any of the alleged visionaries have engaged in deliberate hoodwinkery, it's clear that Medjugorje has functioned for the past three decades as a place of authentic Marian devotion. Therefore, I anticipate a mixed ruling on Medjugorje, perhaps declaring that no genuine apparitions have taken place there, perhaps stating that the messages are free from doctrinal or moral error but are not of supernatural origin, and perhaps allowing the faithful to continue coming there on pilgrimage as to any other Marian shrine. Whatever decision Pope Francis makes will certainly be for the good of the Church, and even as a longtime devotee of Our Lady of Medjugorje myself, I am prepared to accept his judgment without question, even if the decision is more negative than I anticipate.
Since we are not privy to the details of the Vatican's official report on Medjugorje, it is possible that we may be completely surprised by the final verdict. But regardless of what that decision includes, it will be a relief to finally know the Church's definitive position on the matter after more than thirty years of claims, doubt, and controversy.
Copyright © 2014 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.
What will our Holy Father decide with regard to Medjugorje? It's difficult to predict his decision because of the complexity of the situation. Debate as to the authenticity of the alleged apparitions and messages has been raging for decades among theologians, bishops, priests, and canon lawyers, while millions of lay faithful have embraced the apparitions and messages as authentic. Unless I am mistaken, a number of years ago the Vatican under Blessed John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger did issue a provisional statement to the effect that the alleged appearances and messages of Our Lady in Medjugorje were "worthy of belief" and that therefore the lay faithful were temporarily permitted to accept them and believe in them if they wished.
However, recent signals from the Church hierarchy have sounded a decidedly negative tone. A few years ago, Vinko Puljic, the Bishop of Medjugorje, filed an official complaint with the Holy See regarding the massive goings-on in his diocese surrounding the alleged apparitions, which prompted the Vatican in 2010 to appoint a special commission of selected bishops, priests, theologians, and lay faithful from around the world to investigate the whole matter. Last October, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the Vatican office in charge of the commission of investigation), sent a letter to the U.S. bishops ordering them to forbid alleged Medjugorje visionary Ivan Dragicevic from speaking at two public events in the States during which he expected to receive apparitions from Our Lady. Cardinal Mueller pointed out in his letter that the alleged apparitions have yet to be ruled authentic. With regard to the credibility of these "apparitions," Cardinal Mueller stated that "all should accept the declaration" of the former Yugoslavian bishops dated April 10, 1991, to the effect that there is no proof that apparitions or supernatural revelations have taken place at Medjugorje.
For those of us who have uncritically embraced the alleged Medjugorje revelations as authentic for many years, such pronouncements and restrictions from the Church hierarchy may seem harsh and severe, even conspiratorial, designed to persecute true visionaries and to shut down authentic apparitions. However, the Church, as Mater et Magister (Mother and Teacher), is simply doing its job of looking carefully into and rigorously evaluating claims of supernatural phenomena and private revelation in light of Catholic doctrine and discipline in order to provide sure guidance for the faithful. The Church bears a tremendous responsibility in this regard. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would rather err on the side of caution than approve alleged apparitions that turn out to be a fraud. Taking the latter course would cause great scandal and confusion among the faithful, possibly leading to many people losing their souls, and would seriously damage the Church's reputation. Sometimes we children of the Church don't understand why she won't give us what we want when we want it, but our Mother the Church knows what is best for us and we have to trust her judgment.
The Church, upon duly investigating, did find proof of supernatural occurrences in the cases of the apparitions at Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, Knock, Paray-le-Monial (Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque and the Sacred Heart devotion), Rue du Bac (Saint Catherine Laboure and the Miraculous Medal), Banneaux, San Gervasio (Mother Eugenia Ravasio and the Eternal Father), Plock and Vilnius (Saint Faustina and Divine Mercy), Garabandal, and others (I'm not sure about Kibeho, Rwanda, but I think that one has been approved by the local bishop). What is not always remembered, however, is that several of these now approved private revelations were at one time restricted or banned altogether, either by the local bishop or by Rome, or both, before further investigations finally confirmed their authenticity beyond doubt. For example, the Bishop of Fatima once temporarily forbade Sister Lucia from circulating messages she had received from Our Lady in his diocese. Grammatical errors caused Saint Faustina's diary to be condemned by the Church in the 1960s. Even the great Italian mystic Saint Pio of Pietrelcina was severely restricted by the Holy See for many years until the Church was satisfied that he was not involved in any suspicious activities. So keep in mind that recent negative statements from the Church hierarchy concerning alleged supernatural events at Medjugorje do not necessarily portend a final negative decision. These matters are complicated, and many factors are involved.
Church leaders have said little or nothing publicly thus far about the theological content of the Medjugorje messages and whether there is anything in them that conflicts with Church teaching. I'm no canon lawyer, but it seems to me the main questions at stake here are 1) whether the alleged apparitions of Our Lady at Medjugorje are authentic supernatural events of divine origin or not, 2) whether the alleged messages are theologically sound and in conformity with Church teaching or not, and 3) whether the alleged seers are telling the truth or not. All of these questions are further complicated by the fact that not just one alleged visionary, but six, are involved in the case of Medjugorje.
On one hand, the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje have borne a great deal of positive fruit in the life of the Church that no objective observer can ignore or dismiss. Over the past thirty-three years, millions of people have experienced life-changing conversions and renewal, spiritual and emotional healings, and all manner of graces and heavenly blessings as a result of making pilgrimage to Medjugorje to pray to Our Blessed Mother; millions more have been led through the messages to deepen their personal prayer lives and their commitment to Christ and His Church. The alleged messages emphasize personal conversion, prayer, fasting, and penance for world peace, which is consistent with the content of approved messages from Our Lady in Lourdes, Fatima, and elsewhere. Furthermore, most if not all of the alleged Medjugorje visionaries have demonstrated humility resulting in obedience to their superiors, i.e., their spiritual directors and their local bishop; for example, when the U.S. bishops forbade Ivan Dragicevic to speak at several events in the U.S. at which he claimed the Blessed Mother would appear to him, he cancelled his appearances at those events. All of these things would seem to augur in favor of the authenticity of the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje, and the Church has undoubtedly taken these things into account in its investigation of the private revelations claimed at Medjugorge.
But on the other hand, there has not been a lack of reports and rumors that would seem to detract from the authenticity of these revelations. One of the alleged seers, for instance, is apparently a millionaire, married to a fashion model and residing in a palatial mansion, supposedly having profited immensely from the sale of religious items at Medjugorje. If this scandal is fabricated, it could be a lie spread by someone determined to discredit the apparitions. But if it is true, it would present a serious obstacle for the Church in the path of recognizing the apparitions as authentic and would lend credence to the theory that the apparitions at Medjugorje are nothing more than a hoax and a scam concocted to generate revenue for the alleged visionaries.
In deciding whether a given series of private revelations is authentic, the Church (the local bishop) must carefully examine the personal character, integrity, truthfulness, and holiness of each of the alleged visionaries involved as well as their mental and psychological health. If they have a clean slate in all of these areas, then the Church has to examine the alleged messages themselves for doctrinal error or theological problems. If the messages are determined to be free from such, then the path is clear for the bishop to proceed toward canonical recognition, and thus approval, of such alleged apparitions. If one of the Medjugorje visionaries has grown wealthy by taking advantage of the pious faith of millions of Catholic pilgrims, this could deal a death blow to Medjugorje from the Church's perspective. A genuine visionary would never turn the apparitions to his or her personal profit. And yet it would still be possible that one or more of the other visionaries has been, and is still, receiving authentic apparitions and messages from the Blessed Virgin Mary.
So what will the Church ultimately decide with regard to the alleged apparitions of Medjugorje? A possible indirect critique has already come from Pope Francis, who remarked a few weeks ago that "Mary is our Mother, not a postmaster who sends us messages every day." However, Pope Francis is also greatly devoted to Our Blessed Mother and thus a champion of authentic Marian devotion. Regardless of whether the alleged apparitions and messages of Medjugorje are authentic or not, and regardless of whether any of the alleged visionaries have engaged in deliberate hoodwinkery, it's clear that Medjugorje has functioned for the past three decades as a place of authentic Marian devotion. Therefore, I anticipate a mixed ruling on Medjugorje, perhaps declaring that no genuine apparitions have taken place there, perhaps stating that the messages are free from doctrinal or moral error but are not of supernatural origin, and perhaps allowing the faithful to continue coming there on pilgrimage as to any other Marian shrine. Whatever decision Pope Francis makes will certainly be for the good of the Church, and even as a longtime devotee of Our Lady of Medjugorje myself, I am prepared to accept his judgment without question, even if the decision is more negative than I anticipate.
Since we are not privy to the details of the Vatican's official report on Medjugorje, it is possible that we may be completely surprised by the final verdict. But regardless of what that decision includes, it will be a relief to finally know the Church's definitive position on the matter after more than thirty years of claims, doubt, and controversy.
Copyright © 2014 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Thanks be to God for Pope Benedict XVI
I think sometimes we fail to appreciate the significance of Benedict XVI's papacy. True, he was not perfect, and he made some mistakes, but I think most of these mistakes can be attributed to the fact that communication was not his greatest strength; he did not always make clear why he was doing this or that, which often led to misunderstandings that were amplified by the secular media. But that aside, I think's it's fair to say his papacy was a remarkable success, and that history will ultimately pass a favorable judgment on his reign. Benedict XVI deserves our heartfelt gratitude for his service to the Church as the 264th Successor of Peter. Thank you, Your Holiness! You are in our prayers and our hearts as you continue to serve the Church in the role of Pope Emeritus.
In comemoration of his wise and courageous resignation one year ago today, here are a few excerpts from his final Wednesday audience address attended by some 200,000 pilgrims and viewed by millions around the world on TV on February 27, 2013:
"I feel that I carry everyone in prayer, in a present that is God’s, where I recall every meeting, every trip, every pastoral visit. I gather everyone in prayer to entrust them to the Lord, so that we may have full knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, and so that we may comport ourselves in a manner worthy of Him, of His love, bearing fruit in every good work (cf. Col 1:9-10).
"At this time, I feel great trust, because I know, all of us know, that the Word of the truth of the Gospel is the strength of the Church, it is its life. The Gospel purifies and renews, it bears fruit, wherever the community of believers listens and receives the grace of God in truth and lives in charity. This is my trust, this is my joy...
"I always knew that the Lord is in the boat, and I always knew that the boat of the Church is not mine, not ours, but it is His. And He will not let her sink, it is He who leads it, certainly also through the men he has chosen, because so He has willed it. This was and is a certainty, that nothing can obscure. And that is why today my heart is filled with gratitude to God because He has never left me or the Church without His consolation, His light, His love...
"I would like to invite everyone to renew their firm trust in the Lord, to trust like children in the arms of God, certain that those arms support us always and are what allow us to walk every day, even when fatigued. I would like everyone to feel loved by that God who gave his Son for us and has shown us his boundless love. I want everyone to feel the joy of being Christian. A beautiful prayer to be recited daily in the morning says: "I adore you, my God, I love you with all my heart. Thank you for having created me, for having made me Christian..." Yes, we are happy for the gift of faith; it is the most precious thing, that no one can take from us! We thank God for this every day, with prayer and with a coherent Christian life. God loves us, but expects that we too love Him!...
"I would like to thank from my heart all the many people around the world who in recent weeks have sent me touching tokens of attention, friendship and prayer. Yes, the Pope is never alone, now I experience this again in so great a way that it touches my heart. The Pope belongs to everyone and many people feel very close to him...Here one can touch firsthand what the Church is - not an organization, not an association for religious or humanitarian purposes, but a living body, a community of brothers and sisters in the Body of Jesus Christ, who unites us all. To experience the Church in this way and to be able almost to touch with your hands the power of its truth and its love, is a source of joy, in a time when many speak of its decline. But we see how the Church is alive today!....
"I will not return to private life, to a life of travel, meetings, receptions, conferences and so on. I am not abandoning the cross, but remain in a new way with the Crucified Lord. I no longer carry the power of the office for the government of the Church, but in the service of prayer I remain, so to speak, within St. Peter's bounds. St. Benedict, whose name I bear as Pope, will be for me a great example in this. He showed us the way to a life which, active or passive, belongs wholly to the work of God...
"I thank each and everyone for the respect and understanding with which you have accepted this important decision. I will continue to accompany the journey of the Church through prayer and reflection, with the dedication to the Lord and to His Spouse, with which I have tried to live every day until now and with which I want to live forever...
"Let us invoke the maternal intercession of Mary, Mother of God and of the Church, that she accompany each of us and the whole ecclesial community; we entrust ourselves to Her, with deep confidence.
"Dear friends! God guides His Church, he sustaines her always, and especially in difficult times. Let us never lose this vision of faith, which is the only true vision of the Church and the world. In our heart, in the heart of each of you, may there always be the joyous certainty that the Lord is near us, he does not abandon us, he is near us and surrounds us with his love. Thank you!"
Thanks be to God for Pope Benedict XVI!
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Quote of the Day
“The spirit of war has taken a hold of us...
“There are acts to commemorate the centenary of some Great War, millions dead...And everyone is scandalized! But today it is the same! Instead of a great war, there are little wars everywhere, divided people...And to preserve one’s interest they kill, they kill each other...
“So many die for a piece of land, for an ambition, for hate, for racial jealousy. Passion brings us to war, to the spirit of the world...
“Usually in front of a conflict, we find ourselves in a curious situation: to solve it, arguing, with the language of war. The language of peace doesn’t come first! And the consequences? Think of the starving children in the refugee camps...Think only of this: this is the fruit of the war! And if you want, think of the big banquet halls, of the feasts that are done by the owners of the arms industries, who manufacture weapons, the weapons end there. The child that is sick, starving, in a refugee camp and the great feasts, the good life of those who manufacture weapons...
“How many families are destroyed because the father, the mother are not capable of finding a path of peace and prefer war, to sue...War destroys!
“May the Lord help us understand this and save us from getting used to news of war."
--Pope Francis
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Uganda Criminalizes Homosexual Acts
Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has signed into law a bill that criminalizes homosexual acts committed in that country. It's refreshing for a change to see a country conform its laws to the sovereign Law of God instead of succumbing to the dictatorship of a morally relativist, radically secularist, and--dare I say--intolerant homosexual agenda that is waging all-out war on God and his supreme Law in the name of false concepts of "love," "freedom" and "happiness" and infecting the Western world like a cancer.
Uganda's law makes perfect sense to me. Every country's laws should conform to the Law of God, also known as the natural law, for the good of the whole society. No human society can flourish or endure unless its citizens recognize and accept the objective truth of the natural law established by their Creator and build their society on the unshakable truth of that immutable Law. Religion and morality are the foundations of true human freedom. It just doesn't work any other way.
President Museveni is absolutely right to insist that the West should not attempt to impose its own values on Africa. That's because the values of the West, as represented by President Obama and homosexual activists, are sick and perverted. It's a shame that Africa has to remind us how far we have strayed from the Creator's design on which the Founders built our nation. Faithful adherence to the Law of God is what makes a people free and happy.
Here is the text of the comment I entered on ZENIT's website regarding this story:
"Human acts that violate the natural law of God should be criminalized in any society. The increasingly relativist and secularized West could learn a thing or two from Africa's tenacious adherence to and respect for the objective moral law, the law that God has written in all human hearts and revealed to mankind through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of the Church. Only a society founded on this natural law of God can endure and prosper. I applaud President Museveni's courageous decision, although I could dispute some of his reasoning. Even if science were to discover that there are genetic predispositions to homosexuality, such a finding would not justify legalizing acts that are intrinsically immoral for every human being."
Uganda's law makes perfect sense to me. Every country's laws should conform to the Law of God, also known as the natural law, for the good of the whole society. No human society can flourish or endure unless its citizens recognize and accept the objective truth of the natural law established by their Creator and build their society on the unshakable truth of that immutable Law. Religion and morality are the foundations of true human freedom. It just doesn't work any other way.
President Museveni is absolutely right to insist that the West should not attempt to impose its own values on Africa. That's because the values of the West, as represented by President Obama and homosexual activists, are sick and perverted. It's a shame that Africa has to remind us how far we have strayed from the Creator's design on which the Founders built our nation. Faithful adherence to the Law of God is what makes a people free and happy.
Here is the text of the comment I entered on ZENIT's website regarding this story:
"Human acts that violate the natural law of God should be criminalized in any society. The increasingly relativist and secularized West could learn a thing or two from Africa's tenacious adherence to and respect for the objective moral law, the law that God has written in all human hearts and revealed to mankind through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of the Church. Only a society founded on this natural law of God can endure and prosper. I applaud President Museveni's courageous decision, although I could dispute some of his reasoning. Even if science were to discover that there are genetic predispositions to homosexuality, such a finding would not justify legalizing acts that are intrinsically immoral for every human being."
Monday, February 24, 2014
Quote of the Day
"To give oneself completely to God is to find the path of true freedom."
--Benedict XVI
Thursday, February 20, 2014
Quote of the Day
"The Christian experience is not ideological; it is marked by a non-negotiable originality, which springs from amazement at the encounter with Jesus Christ, from marveling at the person of Jesus Christ. And our people preserve this, and they manifest it in popular piety. Both the leftist ideologies and this now triumphant economic imperialism of money write off the Christian originality of the encounter with Jesus Christ, which so many of our people still live in the simplicity of their faith."
--Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Pope Francis), January 2002
Monday, February 17, 2014
Quote of the Day
"Jesus does not merely stress disciplinary observance and external conduct. He goes to the root of the Law, pointing above all to the intention and so to the heart of man, from where our good or evil actions originate. To act well and honestly juridical norms are not enough, deeper motivations are necessary, which are an expression of a hidden wisdom, God’s Wisdom, which can be received from the Holy Spirit. And we, through faith in Christ, can open ourselves up to the action of the Spirit, who makes us able to live divine love."
--Pope Francis
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Article Heritage Series #2: "The Two-Party System: A Catastrophic Failure"
Continuing with my "Article Heritage" series begun last fall, installments of which appear every few months or so, I here present a second article from my early days as a writer. This one, originally written and published in 2007 and entitled "The Two-Party System: A Catastrophic Failure," became my most popular article published that year. It was accepted for publication on five different websites (some "conservative," some "liberal") and generated dozens of reader comments, most of which were positive, a few of which were negative. Furthermore, it was reprinted in its entirety without my permission on a website called "Nigeria Village Square" by a certain Dr. Gary K. Busch, who in addition inadvertently neglected to credit me as the author. When I contacted him to complain about this, he apologized for failing to properly credit me and put my name at the top of the webpage where he ran the article. He added that my article was well written and informative, and that he had re-published it to give it additional exposure. That mollified me somewhat, so I did not insist he remove it from the website. However, this experience did highlight my predicament as a starving writer (which I still am today), since I never received a penny for this article (ditto for most of my other articles).
This article expresses my honest opinions regarding the American two-party political system. In it, I contend that this system has inflicted and is continuing to inflict great harm on our nation by dividing the American people over fundamental moral issues on which our nation is built and on which we should be in agreement; by hampering clear and objective discourse on national issues through the excitement of emotional partisan fervor; and by corrupting politicians of both parties to support big business interests that have nothing to do with the common good of our nation. I point out that our nation's Founders objected with good reason to the establishment of a partisan political system, and argue that the two-party system must be abolished for the good of our country. Reading this article today, I find it still pertinent to our country's current situation, and even (if I may say so) a bit prophetic. Below is the article as originally written, albeit slightly revised to incorporate the emergence of the Tea Party and polished a bit to bring the style more in line with my current authorship standards. Your civil and constructive comments are most welcome.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Two-Party System: A Catastrophic Failure
by Justin Soutar May 23, 2007
For a number of years now, respected pundits have lauded the American two-party political system as an excellent balance between the dictatorship of a one-party system and the instability of a multiparty system. Yet the two-party system has done and continues to do our country great harm. The Republican and Democratic parties have divided the American people over fundamental moral values; they have failed to rectify longstanding national problems; and their existence chiefly benefits special interest groups, politicians, and mega-corporate executives. Most unfortunately of all, however, the two-party setup does not represent the people of the United States.
Many people believe that political parties are essential in a democracy such as the United States. These individuals claim that since a democracy encourages dissent and disagreement, it is only natural that such differences of opinion will find expression in organized factions. But this strain of thought clashes with the judgment of our nation’s founders. In his Observations on History, Benjamin Franklin wrote that parties engender confusion. In The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay warned against the evils to the general public that a “spirit of faction” would cause. And George Washington refused allegiance to any political party during his eight-year service as first president of the United States.
Despite this initial rejection of partisanship, opposing factions emerged at the end of the 1700s representing two different opinions about the role of the federal government. The emergence of these factions marked the beginning of a two-party system that would dominate American politics for the next two hundred-plus years. The Federalists urged a strong central administration that would dominate the states and ensure national unity, while the Republicans believed that the individual states should have more power than the central government. In fact, the form of government officially established by the Constitution was a federal republic, so these parties were emphasizing the importance of either national or state power. Alexander Hamilton became the leader of the Federalist camp, whereas Thomas Jefferson sided with the Republicans—although neither prominent national founder held the rigidly partisan or doctrinaire outlook typical of many American politicians today. Moreover, the chief disagreement of these early parties was over the distribution of power within the United States government. Members of both camps initially saw eye to eye on most moral, economic, social, and foreign policy matters such as slavery, domestic trade, traditional family values, and isolationism.
During the 1800s, the parties evolved and grew further apart, especially over the issue of slavery. Federalists changed their name to Republicans and opposed slavery and the secession of the South, while the heretofore Republicans became Democratic-Republicans and declared support for both slavery and secession. At this stage, one party was championing a grave injustice which most Americans instinctively understood was evil. The Democratic-Republicans received backing primarily from wealthy Southern landowners, who insisted on keeping Negro slaves for cheap labor. After Republican president Abraham Lincoln waged the Civil War, declared emancipation, and brought the South back into the Union, the Democratic Party remained the faction of Southern landlords’ continued rebellion against the North and repression of Black political rights. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Democrats also gained membership from blue-collar workers in Northern cities as the Industrial Revolution created a new underclass. Meanwhile, Republicans attracted backing from the new class of wealthy Northern capitalists and from supporters of African-American civil rights nationwide.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the importance of economic and foreign policy issues increased. The Republican Party came to stand for Northern farmers, retention of the gold standard, fiscally disciplined government, and isolationism, while the Democratic Party represented Southern landowners and Northern industrial laborers, a flexible money supply, growth of the federal government, and foreign engagement. During the Cold War, the two parties achieved a significant level of bipartisanship, agreeing on the necessity of confronting Communism and promoting freedom abroad. Another major change occurred in the 1960s, when Democratic president Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. From then onward the Democratic Party took up the “liberal” causes of civil rights and urban workers, leading the “conservative” faction of farmers, limited government and big business—the Republican Party—to dominate the South.
Another element was added to the American political landscape with the social upheavals of the 1960s and the Supreme Court’s decision of Roe v. Wade which legalized abortion in 1973. When a number of Democrats who had favored the abandonment of traditional social and moral values came to realize the bitter failure of those upheavals, they converted into social “conservatives” and found a new home in the Republican Party. President Ronald Reagan emerged as the standard-bearer of these new Republicans, who established their party on the firm foundation of God’s Law and strove to restore our nation’s identity as a Christian country.
The end of the Cold War signaled the arrival of two more simultaneous factional changes. One was President Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats”, who championed unrestricted globalization and free market economics alongside social spending. The other change had been planted during the Reagan administration, hibernated under the Clinton administration, and blossomed fully after the events of September 11, 2001: the ascendancy of neoconservatives within the Republican Party. Led by President Bush, these individuals likewise championed unrestricted globalization and free market economics, but they also demanded an aggressive military response to “Islamic” terrorism with vast increases in military spending and in the size of the federal government, as well as cuts in social spending and foreign economic aid.
Towards the end of the Bush administration, public disapproval of neoconservative excesses and corruption fueled the rise of the Tea Party movement within Republican ranks. This no-holds-barred populist movement, led by Ron Paul and Sarah Palin, earnestly strove to return America to the Judeo-Christian religious and moral principles that made her great. Its platform, solidly grounded in those principles, included strict Constitutional government in line with the intent of the Framers; reversal of Roe v. Wade; drastic reduction in federal government size and spending; elimination of federal budget deficits and reduction of the overall national debt; abolition of the Federal Reserve and income taxes; and opposition to costly foreign wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. With its staunch Christian, pro-life and family values combined with an ethos of limited government, low taxes, fiscal responsibility, and a balanced budget, the Tea Party movement was essentially a reincarnation of the Reagan Republican Party of the 1980s, albeit adapted to the particular challenges facing a new generation of Americans. Tea Party Republicanism gained widespread support and respect from Republican and Democratic Americans alike due to the consistency of its political philosophy, the soundness of its clearly articulated positions, and above all the character and integrity of its leaders. In 2010, a growing wave of public discontent and anger with the recently elected Obama administration and corrupt Washington politicians in both parties swept more than a hundred Tea Party candidates to power in state governorships as well as in the U.S. House and Senate. However, despite strong public support, the Tea Party movement lost its bids for the presidency in both 2008 and 2012 because it allowed the corrupt Republican establishment to dictate the choice of its presidential nominee.
We can learn some important lessons from this condensed review of American partisan history. One reason for the pendulum dynamic of swinging back and forth between the parties is that the country has different needs at different times. After Democratic-Republican President James Buchanan (1857-1861), the American people swung to Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1860 because of his firm stand against slavery and his leadership abilities during a critical time in the nation’s history. In 1932, after four years of Republican President Herbert Hoover, American voters swung to Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, opting for increased government spending and control of the economy to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression. In 1980, the voters swung from Democratic President Jimmy Carter to Republican candidate Ronald Reagan in reaction to economic stagnation and other domestic and foreign problems. In 1992, following twelve years of Republican presidential rule, economic recession influenced voters to swing to Democratic contender Bill Clinton. And in 2008, after eight years of Republican President George W. Bush, American voters swung to Democratic President Barack Obama to address the financial crisis as well as health care and immigration reform issues that the Bush administration had not adequately dealt with.
But though our country has different needs at different times, the two major political parties are not the proper instruments to satisfy these needs. According to George Washington, the constant alternation of two parties in the federal government would be a “frightful despotism.” The main reason for this pendulum dynamic, especially in the past few decades, is that neither party is adequately solving the key problems America faces.
Two factors explain this failure. First, each party stands for some of the values and policies America needs. For example, the Republican Party traditionally stands for the right to life of each human person from conception to natural death; a free market economy; limited government; low taxes; a balanced budget; a strong national defense; secure borders; and strict interpretation of the Constitution. The Democratic Party traditionally stands for the rights of the poor, disabled, and elderly to health care and financial assistance; the rights of ethnic and religious minorities to an equal place in our society; abolition of the death penalty and reform of our prison system; fair wages and decent working conditions for employees; common-sense regulation of the economy for the sake of the common good; protection of the environment; the development of clean renewable energy resources; increased economic aid to impoverished countries; and multilateral nuclear disarmament. However, the U.S. really needs both sets of values and policies. We need pro-life laws and prison reform, lower taxes and renewable energy, a free market economy with common-sense regulations—not one or the other.
The second factor explaining the failure of the two-party system is corruption. When a new president is elected, people anticipate that he will get things done. When he fails to meet even reasonable expectations and his administration becomes plagued by scandal (as has happened all too often in recent decades), people turn with hope to the other party, which generally does not improve matters much. This is because most members of both parties have been corrupted by special interests. Our last three presidents have been mega-corporate moguls whose ownership of major industries presented flagrant conflicts of interest. In addition, wealthy and vocal lobby groups have bullied our senators, representatives and president into enacting policies that benefit a few large companies at the expense of the average American citizen.
For example, President Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 on a platform that featured tax cuts, economic growth for everyone, and an ambitious social welfare program. Although the economy did grow, Clinton broke other promises by instituting the largest tax raise in American history, keeping social spending to a minimum, and permitting corporations such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and McDonalds to reap the lion’s share of gains. Then in 2000 President George W. Bush was elected on a platform that featured the right to life, tax cuts, free-market economics, secure borders, and fiscal discipline. Although Bush has generally held to his pro-life pledge and did sign into law some token tax cuts, in September of 2006 he declared support for the Plan B contraceptive pills for minors. Furthermore, President Bush has allowed big businesses such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, McDonalds, Halliburton, Boeing, Verizon Wireless, and News Corporation to choke the “free” market; has pandered to illegal aliens; and ran up the largest federal budget deficits and national debt in American history. Both presidents ended up serving the interests of mega-corporations first and foremost.
The two-party political system does not accurately represent opposing viewpoints of the role of the federal government as it did in the young United States. Though it was a bad idea to begin with, since the latter part of the last century the system has become decrepit with corruption and has fallen sadly out of touch with the average American. Most of the Republican and Democratic candidates allege certain principles and make attractive promises during their campaigns, but upon entering office compromise overtakes principle like a weed and promises are thrown to the wind. Unfortunately, the current corrupt political climate is hostile to honest, traditionally-minded candidates with unwavering principles from Middle America such as Rand Paul, Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz. In general, only those individuals who habitually cater to—or are susceptible to manipulation by—hawkish pressure groups have a chance at federal public office.
Despite the manifest failure of the modern Republican and Democratic parties to deliver, however, most American voters across the map of the United States continue to choose congressional and presidential candidates along major party lines because no viable alternatives are in sight. They feel it is useless to vote for a third party or independent candidate because such a candidate has no real chance of making it into office. These dedicated factional adherents are stuck in the rut of the two-party system. Economics has long vied with fundamental moral convictions as a major factor determining political affiliation. In the US today, richer individuals (who generally dominate rural areas) tend to vote Republican, while poorer individuals (who generally dominate cities) tend to vote Democratic. These choices are based largely on the economic policies and moral positions that the parties stand for and on the hope that new candidates will do a better job than their predecessors. Some Republican and Democratic senators and representatives actually keep their campaign promises and work hard to protect innocent unborn children or help financially struggling Americans, or both, and it is those few exceptions that keep alive what little hope is left in the reigning system.
On the other hand, contented middle-class individuals (who generally dominate suburbs and small towns and comprise a significant minority of the American people) tend to hold a more independent, traditionally-minded outlook and are more likely to spread their votes around based on fundamental moral convictions as well as their common-sense perception of local and national needs. These are the “swing voters” to which enterprising candidates of both parties direct so much of their campaigning energy.
The degree of distinction between the two parties is a matter of controversy. To figure this out, it is helpful to distinguish between theory and practice. In theory, the Republican and Democratic factions are ideological opposites, with Republicans focusing on traditional values and responsibility while Democrats are grounded in progressive values and opportunity. But in practice, thanks to the endemic corruption of the system, there is little difference between parties. Republicans turn out to be not really Republican, and Democrats turn out to be not really Democrats: both sets of politicians operate together in a hazy and confused middle ground defined by special interest groups. This has been clearly demonstrated on a number of occasions, such as the overwhelming Congressional approval for war in Iraq in 2002, the Republicans’ passage of a bill that would have provided federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research involving abortions in 2006, and the refusal of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to consider impeaching President Bush. All of these decisions were driven by mega-corporations, which stood to profit immensely from them. Even though President Bush vetoed the embryonic stem-cell act, soon afterward he accepted limited access to contraceptive pills for minors in order to mollify the big business executives.
Some might point to these occasions of crossing party lines as examples of bipartisanship. However, selling one’s fundamental principles to money-hungry American firms does not make for true bipartisanship. Real bipartisanship involves consistent agreement on fundamental, non-negotiable moral values such as the right to life and frequent compromise on the wide range of negotiable issues such as national security, economic policy, environmental protection, domestic poverty relief, and foreign aid. But instead of the way things should be, the pressure of the unrestricted free-market ideology has inverted values. Republicans and Democrats treat the negotiable issues as the most crucial of all and generally are absolutely unbending on them, whereas the fundamental moral values elicit disgraceful compromises and persistent disagreement. After all, big business tycoons do not like to have their enormous profits curtailed by the Ten Commandments, and they demand a totally unregulated market in order to reap those profits.
The two-party setup in the United States has severely divided our nation. Having names and labels for different political persuasions can be helpful, but they have too often led to pigeonholing and name-calling which hampers a free exchange of ideas. “Republican” and “Democrat”, “conservative” and “liberal”, “right” and “left” have degenerated into terms used to ostracize and vilify the opposition and to stifle discussion of topics deemed politically incorrect. A private citizen or political candidate who opposes US involvement in foreign wars should not be dubbed a “radical leftist” any more than a private citizen or political candidate who advocates illegalizing abortion should be denounced as a “right-winger”.
Moreover, the true meanings of the terms “conservative” and “liberal” have been obscured. In modern parlance, a “conservative” is someone who defends fundamental moral values and wishes to preserve traditional national ideals, and a “liberal” is someone who disputes fundamental moral values and wishes to radically change our country around. But these meanings are inadequate. The words originally referred to political approaches, not to a person’s moral values or lack thereof. “Conservative” basically means someone who applauds the status quo, while “liberal” means someone who wishes to effect change. Neither conservatism not liberalism is good or evil per se; it depends on what specific policy you wish to maintain or to alter. Continuing a bad policy such as torture of terrorist suspects is just as detrimental to our national well-being as changing a good policy such as the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research involving abortion would be. Beneficial policies need to be maintained and harmful policies need to be changed. Thus in the original sense of the words, few if any human beings could be described as completely conservative or completely liberal.
Political factions tend to be driven by ideologies that, in their members’ pursuit of particular goals, obscure rather than clarify the truth. Indeed, truth itself has been politicized. Inconvenient truths (such as the inability of embryonic stem-cells to cure diseases) are derided as falsehood, while falsehoods that make a few people rich (such as the impossibility of conducting a dialogue with terrorists) are glorified as absolute truth. Nowhere are these destructive elements of partisan politics more evident than in the meteoric rise of the neoconservative ideology following the terrorist attacks of September 11. This intolerant, extremist, and totalitarian belief system seems to have become a religion for many people, yet it is a deception that worships the false gods of national security and an unfettered free market. It was cunningly crafted by a handful of rich American tycoons to justify an aggressive foreign policy that enables them to engage in the age-old practice of war profiteering, to expand their globalized business operations across the world, and to exploit more and more human beings without hindrance. In contravention of history, it insists that terrorism is an act of war rather than a criminal tactic employed to draw a government’s attention to real grievances, and that only all-out armed force can “defeat” terrorism. Its view of the terrorist threat is based on mistaken assumptions, numerous fallacies, and blanket denials of many important facts that contradict their view.
Although it masquerades as patriotic, the neoconservative ideology and its loyal adherents have done tremendous harm to the American political landscape. Neoconservatives have viciously attacked their opponents, twisted moral values, and used false guilt to silence opposition. They are utilizing the ancient strategy of divide and conquer to destroy American public debate and ultimately to dominate the world. Their ability to find common ground with Americans of other opinions on negotiable issues is nil. In the pursuit of greed and power, they are willing to exacerbate partisan divisions among the American people and make them forget their nonpartisan heritage.
According to our nation’s founders, it would be better to have no political parties at all. Individuals should form their opinion on each individual negotiable matter through a careful review of all the relevant facts and without pressure from a corporate-controlled media, comfortable politicians, wealthy pundits, celebrities, or mega-corporate leaders. If that were to happen, if Americans were to discard ideologies and agree on the fundamental moral values, they would find much common ground on the negotiable issues. Instead of constant bickering and division, we would begin to experience true reconciliation and unity.
With each Congressional partisan victory and each new presidential administration, the newly elected have vowed to make a fresh start precisely because the previous faction led America to a dead end. The Democratic Party is now taking advantage of the myriad failures of the Bush administration and of Congressional Republicans to shore up their image as the faction that America desperately needs, the party that will rescue Americans from the clutches of right-wing insanity and deliver than a brighter future in 2009. For Americans weary of Republican mistakes and desirous of substantial changes in many political areas, the carrot held out by Democratic candidates looks tempting. It would be easy to accept this carrot and elect Democrats to Congress and the presidency alike. But if Americans choose this easy route next year, they will find that it leads to a dead end. A Democratic triumph next year will simply turn out to be a repetition of recent political history. How long will Americans dance to the tune of this dishonest and corrupt two-party scheme? Choosing the easy route will not get us anywhere. Instead, we should make known loudly and clearly our intense desire for candidates whose integrity is unsullied by a web of political connections and whose records are unsullied by corruption (such as “Average Joe” Schriner, Mick Huckabee or Sam Brownback for president), and then write the name of one of those candidates on the ballot in state primary elections and again in the November 2008 election. Otherwise, Americans eight years from now will again be whining about the dishonesty, corruption and ineffectiveness of Washington, D.C.
The “frightful dictatorship” and corrupt farce that is our two-party system should be dismantled. Parties give us temptations to attack opponents, become demagogues, and garner followers, distracting us from seeking the true good of the country. If we nevertheless wish to belong to a particular group of Americans with a clear identity, let us unite with all Americans of good will. Instead of saying, “I am a Republican” or “I am a Democrat”, let us rediscover the heritage bequeathed to us by our wise and farsighted national founders and try to grasp what it really means to say, “I am an American.” The United States was established by our founders as a nation that is too great to be defined by just two colors. Interestingly, the American flag contains some red and some blue, but the color most evenly spread throughout the flag is white. White can be thought of as a mixture of all political shades, and thus as a symbol of unity. Unity on the basis of the fundamental, universal moral truths enshrined in the hearts of all Americans and willingness to compromise on negotiable issues is what America needs now more than ever.
Copyright © 2007 by Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.
This article expresses my honest opinions regarding the American two-party political system. In it, I contend that this system has inflicted and is continuing to inflict great harm on our nation by dividing the American people over fundamental moral issues on which our nation is built and on which we should be in agreement; by hampering clear and objective discourse on national issues through the excitement of emotional partisan fervor; and by corrupting politicians of both parties to support big business interests that have nothing to do with the common good of our nation. I point out that our nation's Founders objected with good reason to the establishment of a partisan political system, and argue that the two-party system must be abolished for the good of our country. Reading this article today, I find it still pertinent to our country's current situation, and even (if I may say so) a bit prophetic. Below is the article as originally written, albeit slightly revised to incorporate the emergence of the Tea Party and polished a bit to bring the style more in line with my current authorship standards. Your civil and constructive comments are most welcome.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Two-Party System: A Catastrophic Failure
by Justin Soutar May 23, 2007
For a number of years now, respected pundits have lauded the American two-party political system as an excellent balance between the dictatorship of a one-party system and the instability of a multiparty system. Yet the two-party system has done and continues to do our country great harm. The Republican and Democratic parties have divided the American people over fundamental moral values; they have failed to rectify longstanding national problems; and their existence chiefly benefits special interest groups, politicians, and mega-corporate executives. Most unfortunately of all, however, the two-party setup does not represent the people of the United States.
Many people believe that political parties are essential in a democracy such as the United States. These individuals claim that since a democracy encourages dissent and disagreement, it is only natural that such differences of opinion will find expression in organized factions. But this strain of thought clashes with the judgment of our nation’s founders. In his Observations on History, Benjamin Franklin wrote that parties engender confusion. In The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay warned against the evils to the general public that a “spirit of faction” would cause. And George Washington refused allegiance to any political party during his eight-year service as first president of the United States.
Despite this initial rejection of partisanship, opposing factions emerged at the end of the 1700s representing two different opinions about the role of the federal government. The emergence of these factions marked the beginning of a two-party system that would dominate American politics for the next two hundred-plus years. The Federalists urged a strong central administration that would dominate the states and ensure national unity, while the Republicans believed that the individual states should have more power than the central government. In fact, the form of government officially established by the Constitution was a federal republic, so these parties were emphasizing the importance of either national or state power. Alexander Hamilton became the leader of the Federalist camp, whereas Thomas Jefferson sided with the Republicans—although neither prominent national founder held the rigidly partisan or doctrinaire outlook typical of many American politicians today. Moreover, the chief disagreement of these early parties was over the distribution of power within the United States government. Members of both camps initially saw eye to eye on most moral, economic, social, and foreign policy matters such as slavery, domestic trade, traditional family values, and isolationism.
During the 1800s, the parties evolved and grew further apart, especially over the issue of slavery. Federalists changed their name to Republicans and opposed slavery and the secession of the South, while the heretofore Republicans became Democratic-Republicans and declared support for both slavery and secession. At this stage, one party was championing a grave injustice which most Americans instinctively understood was evil. The Democratic-Republicans received backing primarily from wealthy Southern landowners, who insisted on keeping Negro slaves for cheap labor. After Republican president Abraham Lincoln waged the Civil War, declared emancipation, and brought the South back into the Union, the Democratic Party remained the faction of Southern landlords’ continued rebellion against the North and repression of Black political rights. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Democrats also gained membership from blue-collar workers in Northern cities as the Industrial Revolution created a new underclass. Meanwhile, Republicans attracted backing from the new class of wealthy Northern capitalists and from supporters of African-American civil rights nationwide.
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the importance of economic and foreign policy issues increased. The Republican Party came to stand for Northern farmers, retention of the gold standard, fiscally disciplined government, and isolationism, while the Democratic Party represented Southern landowners and Northern industrial laborers, a flexible money supply, growth of the federal government, and foreign engagement. During the Cold War, the two parties achieved a significant level of bipartisanship, agreeing on the necessity of confronting Communism and promoting freedom abroad. Another major change occurred in the 1960s, when Democratic president Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. From then onward the Democratic Party took up the “liberal” causes of civil rights and urban workers, leading the “conservative” faction of farmers, limited government and big business—the Republican Party—to dominate the South.
Another element was added to the American political landscape with the social upheavals of the 1960s and the Supreme Court’s decision of Roe v. Wade which legalized abortion in 1973. When a number of Democrats who had favored the abandonment of traditional social and moral values came to realize the bitter failure of those upheavals, they converted into social “conservatives” and found a new home in the Republican Party. President Ronald Reagan emerged as the standard-bearer of these new Republicans, who established their party on the firm foundation of God’s Law and strove to restore our nation’s identity as a Christian country.
The end of the Cold War signaled the arrival of two more simultaneous factional changes. One was President Bill Clinton and the “New Democrats”, who championed unrestricted globalization and free market economics alongside social spending. The other change had been planted during the Reagan administration, hibernated under the Clinton administration, and blossomed fully after the events of September 11, 2001: the ascendancy of neoconservatives within the Republican Party. Led by President Bush, these individuals likewise championed unrestricted globalization and free market economics, but they also demanded an aggressive military response to “Islamic” terrorism with vast increases in military spending and in the size of the federal government, as well as cuts in social spending and foreign economic aid.
Towards the end of the Bush administration, public disapproval of neoconservative excesses and corruption fueled the rise of the Tea Party movement within Republican ranks. This no-holds-barred populist movement, led by Ron Paul and Sarah Palin, earnestly strove to return America to the Judeo-Christian religious and moral principles that made her great. Its platform, solidly grounded in those principles, included strict Constitutional government in line with the intent of the Framers; reversal of Roe v. Wade; drastic reduction in federal government size and spending; elimination of federal budget deficits and reduction of the overall national debt; abolition of the Federal Reserve and income taxes; and opposition to costly foreign wars in the Middle East and elsewhere. With its staunch Christian, pro-life and family values combined with an ethos of limited government, low taxes, fiscal responsibility, and a balanced budget, the Tea Party movement was essentially a reincarnation of the Reagan Republican Party of the 1980s, albeit adapted to the particular challenges facing a new generation of Americans. Tea Party Republicanism gained widespread support and respect from Republican and Democratic Americans alike due to the consistency of its political philosophy, the soundness of its clearly articulated positions, and above all the character and integrity of its leaders. In 2010, a growing wave of public discontent and anger with the recently elected Obama administration and corrupt Washington politicians in both parties swept more than a hundred Tea Party candidates to power in state governorships as well as in the U.S. House and Senate. However, despite strong public support, the Tea Party movement lost its bids for the presidency in both 2008 and 2012 because it allowed the corrupt Republican establishment to dictate the choice of its presidential nominee.
We can learn some important lessons from this condensed review of American partisan history. One reason for the pendulum dynamic of swinging back and forth between the parties is that the country has different needs at different times. After Democratic-Republican President James Buchanan (1857-1861), the American people swung to Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln in 1860 because of his firm stand against slavery and his leadership abilities during a critical time in the nation’s history. In 1932, after four years of Republican President Herbert Hoover, American voters swung to Democratic candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt, opting for increased government spending and control of the economy to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression. In 1980, the voters swung from Democratic President Jimmy Carter to Republican candidate Ronald Reagan in reaction to economic stagnation and other domestic and foreign problems. In 1992, following twelve years of Republican presidential rule, economic recession influenced voters to swing to Democratic contender Bill Clinton. And in 2008, after eight years of Republican President George W. Bush, American voters swung to Democratic President Barack Obama to address the financial crisis as well as health care and immigration reform issues that the Bush administration had not adequately dealt with.
But though our country has different needs at different times, the two major political parties are not the proper instruments to satisfy these needs. According to George Washington, the constant alternation of two parties in the federal government would be a “frightful despotism.” The main reason for this pendulum dynamic, especially in the past few decades, is that neither party is adequately solving the key problems America faces.
Two factors explain this failure. First, each party stands for some of the values and policies America needs. For example, the Republican Party traditionally stands for the right to life of each human person from conception to natural death; a free market economy; limited government; low taxes; a balanced budget; a strong national defense; secure borders; and strict interpretation of the Constitution. The Democratic Party traditionally stands for the rights of the poor, disabled, and elderly to health care and financial assistance; the rights of ethnic and religious minorities to an equal place in our society; abolition of the death penalty and reform of our prison system; fair wages and decent working conditions for employees; common-sense regulation of the economy for the sake of the common good; protection of the environment; the development of clean renewable energy resources; increased economic aid to impoverished countries; and multilateral nuclear disarmament. However, the U.S. really needs both sets of values and policies. We need pro-life laws and prison reform, lower taxes and renewable energy, a free market economy with common-sense regulations—not one or the other.
The second factor explaining the failure of the two-party system is corruption. When a new president is elected, people anticipate that he will get things done. When he fails to meet even reasonable expectations and his administration becomes plagued by scandal (as has happened all too often in recent decades), people turn with hope to the other party, which generally does not improve matters much. This is because most members of both parties have been corrupted by special interests. Our last three presidents have been mega-corporate moguls whose ownership of major industries presented flagrant conflicts of interest. In addition, wealthy and vocal lobby groups have bullied our senators, representatives and president into enacting policies that benefit a few large companies at the expense of the average American citizen.
For example, President Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 on a platform that featured tax cuts, economic growth for everyone, and an ambitious social welfare program. Although the economy did grow, Clinton broke other promises by instituting the largest tax raise in American history, keeping social spending to a minimum, and permitting corporations such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and McDonalds to reap the lion’s share of gains. Then in 2000 President George W. Bush was elected on a platform that featured the right to life, tax cuts, free-market economics, secure borders, and fiscal discipline. Although Bush has generally held to his pro-life pledge and did sign into law some token tax cuts, in September of 2006 he declared support for the Plan B contraceptive pills for minors. Furthermore, President Bush has allowed big businesses such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, McDonalds, Halliburton, Boeing, Verizon Wireless, and News Corporation to choke the “free” market; has pandered to illegal aliens; and ran up the largest federal budget deficits and national debt in American history. Both presidents ended up serving the interests of mega-corporations first and foremost.
The two-party political system does not accurately represent opposing viewpoints of the role of the federal government as it did in the young United States. Though it was a bad idea to begin with, since the latter part of the last century the system has become decrepit with corruption and has fallen sadly out of touch with the average American. Most of the Republican and Democratic candidates allege certain principles and make attractive promises during their campaigns, but upon entering office compromise overtakes principle like a weed and promises are thrown to the wind. Unfortunately, the current corrupt political climate is hostile to honest, traditionally-minded candidates with unwavering principles from Middle America such as Rand Paul, Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz. In general, only those individuals who habitually cater to—or are susceptible to manipulation by—hawkish pressure groups have a chance at federal public office.
Despite the manifest failure of the modern Republican and Democratic parties to deliver, however, most American voters across the map of the United States continue to choose congressional and presidential candidates along major party lines because no viable alternatives are in sight. They feel it is useless to vote for a third party or independent candidate because such a candidate has no real chance of making it into office. These dedicated factional adherents are stuck in the rut of the two-party system. Economics has long vied with fundamental moral convictions as a major factor determining political affiliation. In the US today, richer individuals (who generally dominate rural areas) tend to vote Republican, while poorer individuals (who generally dominate cities) tend to vote Democratic. These choices are based largely on the economic policies and moral positions that the parties stand for and on the hope that new candidates will do a better job than their predecessors. Some Republican and Democratic senators and representatives actually keep their campaign promises and work hard to protect innocent unborn children or help financially struggling Americans, or both, and it is those few exceptions that keep alive what little hope is left in the reigning system.
On the other hand, contented middle-class individuals (who generally dominate suburbs and small towns and comprise a significant minority of the American people) tend to hold a more independent, traditionally-minded outlook and are more likely to spread their votes around based on fundamental moral convictions as well as their common-sense perception of local and national needs. These are the “swing voters” to which enterprising candidates of both parties direct so much of their campaigning energy.
The degree of distinction between the two parties is a matter of controversy. To figure this out, it is helpful to distinguish between theory and practice. In theory, the Republican and Democratic factions are ideological opposites, with Republicans focusing on traditional values and responsibility while Democrats are grounded in progressive values and opportunity. But in practice, thanks to the endemic corruption of the system, there is little difference between parties. Republicans turn out to be not really Republican, and Democrats turn out to be not really Democrats: both sets of politicians operate together in a hazy and confused middle ground defined by special interest groups. This has been clearly demonstrated on a number of occasions, such as the overwhelming Congressional approval for war in Iraq in 2002, the Republicans’ passage of a bill that would have provided federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research involving abortions in 2006, and the refusal of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to consider impeaching President Bush. All of these decisions were driven by mega-corporations, which stood to profit immensely from them. Even though President Bush vetoed the embryonic stem-cell act, soon afterward he accepted limited access to contraceptive pills for minors in order to mollify the big business executives.
Some might point to these occasions of crossing party lines as examples of bipartisanship. However, selling one’s fundamental principles to money-hungry American firms does not make for true bipartisanship. Real bipartisanship involves consistent agreement on fundamental, non-negotiable moral values such as the right to life and frequent compromise on the wide range of negotiable issues such as national security, economic policy, environmental protection, domestic poverty relief, and foreign aid. But instead of the way things should be, the pressure of the unrestricted free-market ideology has inverted values. Republicans and Democrats treat the negotiable issues as the most crucial of all and generally are absolutely unbending on them, whereas the fundamental moral values elicit disgraceful compromises and persistent disagreement. After all, big business tycoons do not like to have their enormous profits curtailed by the Ten Commandments, and they demand a totally unregulated market in order to reap those profits.
The two-party setup in the United States has severely divided our nation. Having names and labels for different political persuasions can be helpful, but they have too often led to pigeonholing and name-calling which hampers a free exchange of ideas. “Republican” and “Democrat”, “conservative” and “liberal”, “right” and “left” have degenerated into terms used to ostracize and vilify the opposition and to stifle discussion of topics deemed politically incorrect. A private citizen or political candidate who opposes US involvement in foreign wars should not be dubbed a “radical leftist” any more than a private citizen or political candidate who advocates illegalizing abortion should be denounced as a “right-winger”.
Moreover, the true meanings of the terms “conservative” and “liberal” have been obscured. In modern parlance, a “conservative” is someone who defends fundamental moral values and wishes to preserve traditional national ideals, and a “liberal” is someone who disputes fundamental moral values and wishes to radically change our country around. But these meanings are inadequate. The words originally referred to political approaches, not to a person’s moral values or lack thereof. “Conservative” basically means someone who applauds the status quo, while “liberal” means someone who wishes to effect change. Neither conservatism not liberalism is good or evil per se; it depends on what specific policy you wish to maintain or to alter. Continuing a bad policy such as torture of terrorist suspects is just as detrimental to our national well-being as changing a good policy such as the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research involving abortion would be. Beneficial policies need to be maintained and harmful policies need to be changed. Thus in the original sense of the words, few if any human beings could be described as completely conservative or completely liberal.
Political factions tend to be driven by ideologies that, in their members’ pursuit of particular goals, obscure rather than clarify the truth. Indeed, truth itself has been politicized. Inconvenient truths (such as the inability of embryonic stem-cells to cure diseases) are derided as falsehood, while falsehoods that make a few people rich (such as the impossibility of conducting a dialogue with terrorists) are glorified as absolute truth. Nowhere are these destructive elements of partisan politics more evident than in the meteoric rise of the neoconservative ideology following the terrorist attacks of September 11. This intolerant, extremist, and totalitarian belief system seems to have become a religion for many people, yet it is a deception that worships the false gods of national security and an unfettered free market. It was cunningly crafted by a handful of rich American tycoons to justify an aggressive foreign policy that enables them to engage in the age-old practice of war profiteering, to expand their globalized business operations across the world, and to exploit more and more human beings without hindrance. In contravention of history, it insists that terrorism is an act of war rather than a criminal tactic employed to draw a government’s attention to real grievances, and that only all-out armed force can “defeat” terrorism. Its view of the terrorist threat is based on mistaken assumptions, numerous fallacies, and blanket denials of many important facts that contradict their view.
Although it masquerades as patriotic, the neoconservative ideology and its loyal adherents have done tremendous harm to the American political landscape. Neoconservatives have viciously attacked their opponents, twisted moral values, and used false guilt to silence opposition. They are utilizing the ancient strategy of divide and conquer to destroy American public debate and ultimately to dominate the world. Their ability to find common ground with Americans of other opinions on negotiable issues is nil. In the pursuit of greed and power, they are willing to exacerbate partisan divisions among the American people and make them forget their nonpartisan heritage.
According to our nation’s founders, it would be better to have no political parties at all. Individuals should form their opinion on each individual negotiable matter through a careful review of all the relevant facts and without pressure from a corporate-controlled media, comfortable politicians, wealthy pundits, celebrities, or mega-corporate leaders. If that were to happen, if Americans were to discard ideologies and agree on the fundamental moral values, they would find much common ground on the negotiable issues. Instead of constant bickering and division, we would begin to experience true reconciliation and unity.
With each Congressional partisan victory and each new presidential administration, the newly elected have vowed to make a fresh start precisely because the previous faction led America to a dead end. The Democratic Party is now taking advantage of the myriad failures of the Bush administration and of Congressional Republicans to shore up their image as the faction that America desperately needs, the party that will rescue Americans from the clutches of right-wing insanity and deliver than a brighter future in 2009. For Americans weary of Republican mistakes and desirous of substantial changes in many political areas, the carrot held out by Democratic candidates looks tempting. It would be easy to accept this carrot and elect Democrats to Congress and the presidency alike. But if Americans choose this easy route next year, they will find that it leads to a dead end. A Democratic triumph next year will simply turn out to be a repetition of recent political history. How long will Americans dance to the tune of this dishonest and corrupt two-party scheme? Choosing the easy route will not get us anywhere. Instead, we should make known loudly and clearly our intense desire for candidates whose integrity is unsullied by a web of political connections and whose records are unsullied by corruption (such as “Average Joe” Schriner, Mick Huckabee or Sam Brownback for president), and then write the name of one of those candidates on the ballot in state primary elections and again in the November 2008 election. Otherwise, Americans eight years from now will again be whining about the dishonesty, corruption and ineffectiveness of Washington, D.C.
The “frightful dictatorship” and corrupt farce that is our two-party system should be dismantled. Parties give us temptations to attack opponents, become demagogues, and garner followers, distracting us from seeking the true good of the country. If we nevertheless wish to belong to a particular group of Americans with a clear identity, let us unite with all Americans of good will. Instead of saying, “I am a Republican” or “I am a Democrat”, let us rediscover the heritage bequeathed to us by our wise and farsighted national founders and try to grasp what it really means to say, “I am an American.” The United States was established by our founders as a nation that is too great to be defined by just two colors. Interestingly, the American flag contains some red and some blue, but the color most evenly spread throughout the flag is white. White can be thought of as a mixture of all political shades, and thus as a symbol of unity. Unity on the basis of the fundamental, universal moral truths enshrined in the hearts of all Americans and willingness to compromise on negotiable issues is what America needs now more than ever.
Copyright © 2007 by Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.
Quote of the Day
"Those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord… We know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world… We have been recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own."
--Abraham Lincoln, 1863
Monday, February 10, 2014
Quote of the Day
"But how beautiful is this mission to give light to the world! It is a mission that we have. It is beautiful! It is also very beautiful to keep the light that we have received from Jesus, protect it, keep it. The Christian must be a shining person, who brings light, who always gives light! A light that is not his, but a gift from God, it is Jesus’ gift. And we carry this light. If the Christian extinguishes this light, his life has no meaning. He is a Christian in name only, he does not bring light with him, his light is without meaning. But I would like to ask you now, how do you want to live? Do you want to live like a light [“lampada”] that is on or one that is off? On or off? How do you want to live? [The people in St. Peter’s Square respond, “On!”]. A light that is on! It is God himself who gives us this light and we give it to others. A light that is on! This is the Christian vocation."
--Pope Francis
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Reflection for the Presentation of the Lord
"When Paul applies the word hilasterion [expiation] to Jesus, designating him as the seal of the Ark of the Covenant and thus as the locus of the presence of the living God, the entire Old Testament theology of worship (and with it all the theologies of worship in the history of religions) is 'preserved and surpassed' and raised to a completely new level. Jesus himself is the presence of the living God. God and man, God and the world, touch one another in him. The meaning of the ritual of the Day of Atonement is accomplished in him. In his self-offering on the Cross, Jesus, as it were, brings all the sin of the world deep within the love of God and wipes it away. Accepting the Cross, entering into fellowship with Christ, means entering the realm of transformation and expiation."
--Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth--Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), pp. 39-40
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Quote of the Day
“Meekness is necessary in order to dialogue, without shouting. It is also necessary to think of the other person as something more than me, and David thought of this: ‘He is the anointed one of the Lord, and is more important than me.’ Humility, meekness. In order to dialogue, it is necessary to do that which we ask for today in prayer, at the beginning of Mass: to do everything for everyone...
“Jesus has done it: he humbled himself until the end, he has shown us the way. And it is necessary that too much time doesn’t pass. When there is a problem, as soon as possible, in the moment in which it can be done, after the storm has passed, come together to dialogue, because time makes the wall grow, the weeds grow and impede the growth of the grain. And when the walls grow, reconciliation is very difficult. It is very difficult!...
“Even in our hearts, it is possible to become like Berlin and build up a wall against others. I am afraid of these walls, the walls that grow everyday and encourage resentments and hate.”
--Pope Francis
Friday, January 24, 2014
Quote of the Day
"Do everything calmly and peacefully. Do as much as you can as well as you can. Strive to see God in all things without exception, and consent to His will joyously. Do everything for God, uniting yourself to him in word and deed. Walk very simply with the Cross of the Lord and be at peace with yourself."
--Saint Francis de Sales
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Forty-Plus Years of Legal Mass Murder
Today we Americans observe with great sorrow the forty-first anniversary of the unconstitutional, unjust, and tragic Roe v. Wade decision.
On January 22, 1973, seven men on the U.S. Supreme Court arbitrarily decided that a woman has a right to kill her innocent unborn child for any reason whatsoever. In producing this ruling, the Court misinterpreted the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution, which states, “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This passage, along with most of the Fifth Amendment, was written to protect the rights of persons accused of crimes. When our nation’s Founders authored this text, they meant that no one could be executed or deprived of his freedom or land without first being properly tried and convicted of a crime. But the irresponsible activist Court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger chose to ignore the intent of the Constitution’s authors and, through some incomprehensible twist of logic, arbitrarily reinterpreted the Fifth Amendment due process clause to justify legalizing the murder of innocent unborn persons—something the Founders would never have approved of in their wildest dreams. Roe v. Wade represented nothing less than an attack on the integrity and meaning of the Constitution of the United States by the very institution that is supposed to protect it, the U.S. Supreme Court.
Not only was Roe v. Wade an unconstitutional decision, it was also an unjust decision. In the Declaration of Independence, we the people of the United States declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights with which God the Creator has endowed all human beings. This right to life is an “unalienable” right, meaning that it cannot be taken away. Human life is sacred because it is a gift from God the Creator. To deprive an innocent human being of life is a violation of that person’s unalienable right to life. It is also a violation of the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Our nation’s devout Christian Founders took these principles of the natural law for granted. They could scarcely have imagined that, two hundred years later, the judicial branch of government would somehow justify allowing innocent human beings to be killed in their mothers’ wombs right here in the United States of America. They did warn, however, that the United States would not long endure without what George Washington referred to as the “indispensable supports” of religion and morality. If the people of a nation don’t believe that human rights—especially the right to life—come from God, then those rights will be perceived as coming from the state and the state will claim the authority to give or take away those rights as it sees fit. And if people don’t believe that it is wrong to deprive an innocent person of his or her right to life, then human life will not be respected.
Finally, Roe v. Wade was an immensely tragic decision. During the past forty-plus years, some 56.5 million innocent unborn human beings—an average of 1.38 million a year—have been murdered in their mothers’ wombs through legalized abortion. That is an alarming and staggering figure. That’s more than nine times the number of innocent Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It’s also more than the fifty million people killed in World War II, the deadliest conflict in modern human history. It is difficult to comprehend the full magnitude of this loss of life or to calculate the full impact of this massacre of the unborn on our nation over the past forty years. Excluding miscarriages, accidents, disease, and other causes of death outside the womb, our country is currently missing some 56 million inhabitants; in addition, many of those aborted in the 1970s and 80s would now be married and raising children of their own, so our country is really missing somewhere around 70 million people, and our nation’s population should be around 388 million instead of the 318 million it is now. Think of how much different—and better—things would be in our country if we had all these missing people contributing to our economy and using their God-given talents to serve our nation in a variety of professions and fields. We will never know how different the United States would be in 2014 if nearly all the innocent unborn had been born and were alive today. The absence of 70 million citizens is an incalculable loss to our nation.
Blessed John Paul II once said, “The condition for the survival of America is to respect every human person, especially the weakest and most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn.” The appalling legal mass murder of the unborn in our nation must be brought to an end. Roe v. Wade must be overturned so that the unalienable, God-given right to life of every innocent unborn human being in the United States is once again protected by our Constitution and guaranteed by our laws. We must not rest until we achieve that goal.
On January 22, 1973, seven men on the U.S. Supreme Court arbitrarily decided that a woman has a right to kill her innocent unborn child for any reason whatsoever. In producing this ruling, the Court misinterpreted the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution, which states, “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This passage, along with most of the Fifth Amendment, was written to protect the rights of persons accused of crimes. When our nation’s Founders authored this text, they meant that no one could be executed or deprived of his freedom or land without first being properly tried and convicted of a crime. But the irresponsible activist Court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger chose to ignore the intent of the Constitution’s authors and, through some incomprehensible twist of logic, arbitrarily reinterpreted the Fifth Amendment due process clause to justify legalizing the murder of innocent unborn persons—something the Founders would never have approved of in their wildest dreams. Roe v. Wade represented nothing less than an attack on the integrity and meaning of the Constitution of the United States by the very institution that is supposed to protect it, the U.S. Supreme Court.
Not only was Roe v. Wade an unconstitutional decision, it was also an unjust decision. In the Declaration of Independence, we the people of the United States declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights with which God the Creator has endowed all human beings. This right to life is an “unalienable” right, meaning that it cannot be taken away. Human life is sacred because it is a gift from God the Creator. To deprive an innocent human being of life is a violation of that person’s unalienable right to life. It is also a violation of the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Our nation’s devout Christian Founders took these principles of the natural law for granted. They could scarcely have imagined that, two hundred years later, the judicial branch of government would somehow justify allowing innocent human beings to be killed in their mothers’ wombs right here in the United States of America. They did warn, however, that the United States would not long endure without what George Washington referred to as the “indispensable supports” of religion and morality. If the people of a nation don’t believe that human rights—especially the right to life—come from God, then those rights will be perceived as coming from the state and the state will claim the authority to give or take away those rights as it sees fit. And if people don’t believe that it is wrong to deprive an innocent person of his or her right to life, then human life will not be respected.
Finally, Roe v. Wade was an immensely tragic decision. During the past forty-plus years, some 56.5 million innocent unborn human beings—an average of 1.38 million a year—have been murdered in their mothers’ wombs through legalized abortion. That is an alarming and staggering figure. That’s more than nine times the number of innocent Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It’s also more than the fifty million people killed in World War II, the deadliest conflict in modern human history. It is difficult to comprehend the full magnitude of this loss of life or to calculate the full impact of this massacre of the unborn on our nation over the past forty years. Excluding miscarriages, accidents, disease, and other causes of death outside the womb, our country is currently missing some 56 million inhabitants; in addition, many of those aborted in the 1970s and 80s would now be married and raising children of their own, so our country is really missing somewhere around 70 million people, and our nation’s population should be around 388 million instead of the 318 million it is now. Think of how much different—and better—things would be in our country if we had all these missing people contributing to our economy and using their God-given talents to serve our nation in a variety of professions and fields. We will never know how different the United States would be in 2014 if nearly all the innocent unborn had been born and were alive today. The absence of 70 million citizens is an incalculable loss to our nation.
Blessed John Paul II once said, “The condition for the survival of America is to respect every human person, especially the weakest and most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn.” The appalling legal mass murder of the unborn in our nation must be brought to an end. Roe v. Wade must be overturned so that the unalienable, God-given right to life of every innocent unborn human being in the United States is once again protected by our Constitution and guaranteed by our laws. We must not rest until we achieve that goal.
Quote of the Day
"All of us through Baptism have been elected by the Lord. We are all elected. He has chosen us one by one. He has given us a name and looks at us. There is a dialogue, because that is how the Lord loves. Even David later becomes king and made a mistake. He maybe made many, but the Bible tells us of two big mistakes, two mistakes that really fall heavy. What did David do? He humiliated himself. He returned to his smallness and said: ‘I am a sinner’. And he asked for forgiveness and did penance. David guarded his smallness, with repentance, with prayer, with weeping...
“Christian faithfulness, our faithfulness, is to simply guard our smallness, so that we can dialogue with the Lord... For this reason humility, meekness, and gentleness are so important in the life of the Christian, because it is a container of smallness which the Lord likes to see. And there will always be a dialogue between our smallness and the greatness of the Lord.”
--Pope Francis
Monday, January 20, 2014
Quote of the Day
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“An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Friday, January 17, 2014
Quote of the Day
“It is in the Gospel that Christians find inspiration for their daily lives and their involvement in worldly affairs—-be it in the houses of Parliament or the stock exchange. Christians should not shun the world; they should engage with it. But their involvement in politics and economics should transcend every form of ideology.”
--Benedict XVI, “A Time for Christians to Engage with the World,” Financial Times, Dec. 20, 2012
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Quote of the Day
"Peace is also threatened by every denial of human dignity, firstly the lack of access to adequate nutrition. We cannot be indifferent to those suffering from hunger, especially children, when we think of how much food is wasted every day in many parts of the world immersed in what I have often termed "the throwaway culture". Unfortunately, what is thrown away is not only food and dispensable objects, but often human beings themselves, who are discarded as "unnecessary". For example, it is frightful even to think there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day; children being used as soldiers, abused and killed in armed conflicts; and children being bought and sold in that terrible form of modern slavery which is human trafficking, which is a crime against humanity."
--Pope Francis
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Reflection for the Baptism of the Lord
"Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind's guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross. He is, as it were, the true Jonah who said to the crew of the ship, 'Take me and throw me into the sea' (Jon. 1:12). The whole significance of Jesus' Baptism, the fact that he bears 'all righteousness,' first comes to light on the Cross: The Baptism is an acceptance of death for the sins of humanity, and the voice that calls out 'This is my beloved Son' over the baptismal waters is an anticipatory reference to the Resurrection. This also explains why, in his own discourses, Jesus uses the word baptism to refer to his death (cf. Mk. 10:38; Lk. 12:50)."
--Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth--Part One: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 18
Friday, January 10, 2014
Culture of Corruption
Four years ago, I celebrated his election to the U.S. House of Representatives. This morning, I signed a petition calling for his removal from office.
Four years ago, U.S. Representative John Boehner, a good Catholic family man from Ohio, was elected to replace Representative Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. As a leader of the Tea Party Republican movement, he was elected on a platform that included protection of the innocent unborn, smaller government, lower taxes, spending cuts, reduction of the national debt, and the repeal of ObamaCare. For several years, Speaker Boehner fulfilled his campaign promises, leading the U.S. House opposition to President Barack Obama's immoral and irresponsible policies. Unfortunately, during the past few months, Boehner's leadership has proved disappointing. In October of 2013, he led the House in approving federal funding for ObamaCare, shamefully betraying his own professed values of respect for unborn life, marriage, religious liberty, moral conscience rights, the moral law, and the right of the American people to make their own healthcare decisions.
Speaker Boehner typifies the culture of corruption that has been affecting our federal government for a number of years now. New candidates for the House, Senate and presidency run promising to bring real change to Washington, but once they get to Washington and into their work, they simply assimilate into the corrupt establishment and end up representing the big abortion, agricultural, biotechnology, financial, insurance, junk food, pharmaceutical, and other interests that generally control how Washington operates instead of representing the true interests and common good of all Americans. New candidates with impeccable moral and religious credentials who are determined to deliver exactly what they promise are forced to contend with mass media smear campaigns and voter fraud, and those who do make it into the U.S. House or Senate find themselves a tiny minority, unable to accomplish most of their agenda for our nation. Such candidates cannot even win their party's nomination for the U.S. presidency these days because both the party establishment are so corrupt.
All of this is very frustrating for us, the American people. However, as good Catholics and good citizens, we cannot simply give up and surrender our nation to its enemies in high places. There are still things we can and should do to change our federal government. The first is to pray daily for our elected representatives and for our country. The second is to take action. Sign this petition calling for Representative Boehner's removal from office. Register to vote, if you aren't already registered, and don't miss the upcoming elections this November. Vote only for candidates who affirm traditional values and who are determined to challenge and defeat the Obama administration's unjust and unconstitutional laws, including ObamaCare. Real change is possible, but we must demand it and work hard to achieve it. And above all, we must trust in God, who guides the affairs of nations.
Four years ago, U.S. Representative John Boehner, a good Catholic family man from Ohio, was elected to replace Representative Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House. As a leader of the Tea Party Republican movement, he was elected on a platform that included protection of the innocent unborn, smaller government, lower taxes, spending cuts, reduction of the national debt, and the repeal of ObamaCare. For several years, Speaker Boehner fulfilled his campaign promises, leading the U.S. House opposition to President Barack Obama's immoral and irresponsible policies. Unfortunately, during the past few months, Boehner's leadership has proved disappointing. In October of 2013, he led the House in approving federal funding for ObamaCare, shamefully betraying his own professed values of respect for unborn life, marriage, religious liberty, moral conscience rights, the moral law, and the right of the American people to make their own healthcare decisions.
Speaker Boehner typifies the culture of corruption that has been affecting our federal government for a number of years now. New candidates for the House, Senate and presidency run promising to bring real change to Washington, but once they get to Washington and into their work, they simply assimilate into the corrupt establishment and end up representing the big abortion, agricultural, biotechnology, financial, insurance, junk food, pharmaceutical, and other interests that generally control how Washington operates instead of representing the true interests and common good of all Americans. New candidates with impeccable moral and religious credentials who are determined to deliver exactly what they promise are forced to contend with mass media smear campaigns and voter fraud, and those who do make it into the U.S. House or Senate find themselves a tiny minority, unable to accomplish most of their agenda for our nation. Such candidates cannot even win their party's nomination for the U.S. presidency these days because both the party establishment are so corrupt.
All of this is very frustrating for us, the American people. However, as good Catholics and good citizens, we cannot simply give up and surrender our nation to its enemies in high places. There are still things we can and should do to change our federal government. The first is to pray daily for our elected representatives and for our country. The second is to take action. Sign this petition calling for Representative Boehner's removal from office. Register to vote, if you aren't already registered, and don't miss the upcoming elections this November. Vote only for candidates who affirm traditional values and who are determined to challenge and defeat the Obama administration's unjust and unconstitutional laws, including ObamaCare. Real change is possible, but we must demand it and work hard to achieve it. And above all, we must trust in God, who guides the affairs of nations.
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