Faith, Life, and Creed

Random Thoughts and Concerns about The End of The World as We Know It

Part 4

God never said the journey would be easy.

The Great Heresies

Without Christian witness … resist Islam, by Peter M.J. Stravinskas, http://www.catholicworldreport.com

Just a few months ago, a Catholic school teacher in the Diocese of Orlando was accused of “hate speech” because he assigned his students a reading from St. John Bosco on the nature of Islam. A very ill-informed, politically correct, but theologically ignorant, low-level, diocesan bureaucrat called for his removal. She went so far as to suggest that the teacher was promoting heresy by sharing the insights of John Bosco. Fortunately, due to a nationwide public outcry and the direct intervention of the Bishop, the teacher’s contract was renewed.

Seventy-nine years ago, the indomitable Hilaire Belloc wrote The Great Heresies. Within that category, to the amazement of many a reader, he named Islam. Today, most commentators tend to regard Islam as a new religion appearing in the seventh century. Belloc thought otherwise.

He maintained, and demonstrated very convincingly, that Islam is a heretical spin-off of Christianity. He believed that the principal doctrines of Islam were appropriations of Old Testament teachings, like those assumed into Christianity: The unicity of God, His transcendence, human immortality, and divine justice and mercy.

It denies, with a passion, all the distinctives of Christianity, because the Christians Mohammed encountered were Nestorians; themselves Christian heretics. Islamic theology is very simple: It’s easy to understand and easy to practice. That said, the level of theological ignorance of the average Muslim is even greater than that of the average Catholic!

How did Islam expand so rapidly, especially in Christian strongholds like North Africa? Belloc puts it succinctly, “It won battles.” Further, he prognosticated that Europe would become easy prey to Islamicization, because “it has forgotten its nature in forgetting its religion.”

As the European Union was being finalized, Pope John Paul II pleaded with the leaders to acknowledge, even in a sentence or two, the Christian roots of Europe: He was roundly ignored. In Belloc’s own time, he saw in this attitude a European death wish which would result in “the return of Islam.”

Belloc wasn’t Madame Zelda on the boardwalk gazing into tea leaves or a crystal ball; he was merely an astute student of history and human nature. He probably would not take delight in saying to his European descendants, “I told you so!”

Islam gains adherents, even suicide bombers, by highlighting the immorality of the secularized (pagan) West. Abortion, artificial contraception, same-sex “marriage”, pornography, and gender theory are all abhorrent to “People of the Book”: Which unfortunately, are the sacred cows of all liberal western democracies. As horrifying and despicable as the various ISIS-inspired attacks are, we must admit that much of what presents itself as “modern” culture is repugnant to our own God of Revelation!

Long before Charlie Hebdo in Paris made the fatal mistake of caricaturing Mohammed, it had been spewing blasphemes against Christ and His Church. Just before the massacre in the Paris concert hall, Ariana Grande informed the tween girls at her concert, in song, about her sexploits with her latest boyfriend.

What I am saying is just this: If the Christian witness were strong, coherent and consistent, Islam would not gain a foothold.

Pope John Paul, President George W. Bush, and Pope Francis, among so many others, constantly assert that Islam is a “religion of peace”. Does the Koran and the historical record support that assertion? There are Koranic citations aplenty to encourage violence against “infidels,” and there are texts to counsel living at peace with Jews and Christians. In other words, there are contradictory teachings on this very critical topic.

A fair observer would also note that there are apparent contradictions in the Bible. Catholicism has a magisterium to deal with such situations, which Islam and most protestant churches do not. Even more importantly, the Judeo-Christian Tradition holds up a God of Reason; indeed, a God bound to Reason.

The God of Islam is totally sovereign, which means that He can declare something good today and evil tomorrow. Not to understand that theological fact is to misunderstand why Christian-Muslim dialogue is so fraught with difficulties. Nothing short of a “reformation” of Islam can confront the problem of violence “in the name of God”, and in fact, Islamic scholar, Wael Farouq, has made this very appeal.

Someone may point to the recent (and welcome) condemnation of the jihadi attacks in the United Kingdom by nearly 200 imams, calling for the denial of religious burial rites for the jihadists. That is all well and good, however, it only takes another 200 other imams to contradict them.

Eastern European countries like Hungary and Poland, castigated by the EU for supposed insensitivity to immigrants, has shown the way by strengthening their Christian identity: Interestingly, one does not find jihadist assaults there. Poland’s bishops and national leaders even rededicated their nation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

First: Christians cannot afford to be deluded about the nature of a religion that almost equals Catholicism in number of worldwide adherents.

Second: We must do everything possible to return the secularized West to its Christian roots.  That will happen one believer at a time. Our commitment to a biblical way of life will be the best response to Islamic extremism.

Chronicling the Suicide of Western Civilization

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, by Douglas Murray, Bloomsbury, 2017

The civilization we know as Europe is in the process of dying, and neither Britain nor any other Western European country can avoid that fate; because they all appear to suffer from the same symptoms and maladies. Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself, or even take its own side in an argument.

Indeed, European elites seem persuaded that it would not matter if the people and culture of Europe were lost to the world. To dispel any doubt, the author asserts that Europeans currently alive will have lost the only place in the world they call home “by the end of [their] lifespan”. This dire situation came about because of two simultaneous sets of events.

First: The mass movement of millions of people into Europe, which is resulting in the “home of the European peoples” becoming a “home for the entire world”.

Second: The loss by Europeans of their “beliefs, traditions and legitimacy”, has brought about an “existential civilizational tiredness”; the pervasive feeling that Europe has run out of steam.

Although large migrations into a society confident about its identity might have positive results, “the movement of millions of people into a guilty, jaded, and dying culture cannot”. This is especially true when many of the millions in question have a strong religious faith and culture, the history of which is characterized by relentless and prolonged conflicts with Christendom.

As Europe becomes a home for the world, it must re-define itself using criteria vague enough to encompass the world. That can only be achieved through the erosion of elements traditionally associated with European identity: The rule of law, separation of Church and State, freedom of speech and religion, equality between the sexes, and so forth.

This cultural and moral erosion is already well advanced, as attested by the fact that European leaders speak of the ethics and beliefs of Europe reduced to the notions of “respect”, “tolerance”, and especially “diversity”. Such shallow self-definitions may get Europe through a few more years, but they have no chance of sustaining the deeper loyalties that societies require if they are going to survive for long.

For most Europeans, this moral shallowness is largely due to the rejection that the culture of human rights derives from the Christian tradition, while showing little interest in renewing with the latter. A recent survey shows that affiliation to Christianity, in the UK, by 2050, will have fallen by a third, down from almost two-thirds in 2010, and will thus become a minority affiliation. The same trend can be observed in other European countries, and in the US as well.

Muslims migrating to Europe, on the other hand, show little to no desire to join in this secularist momentum. Whether it be in Paris, Birmingham, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rome or Malmo, they are building their mosques and worshipping as they did in their countries of origin. The Paris administrative district of Seine Saint Denis alone has about 230 mosques. At Friday prayers, worshippers spill out onto the streets and several mosques are seeking larger facilities to meet the demand.

The result is that the neighborhoods where the immigrants live bear little resemblance to those where the locals live. In many cases, they have become “no go” areas where authorities have simply lost control due to the high number of immigrants. It’s estimated that there are now more than 1,000 such areas in Europe.

Schism of the Soul

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, by Douglas Murray, Bloomsbury, 2017

What most people in the West fail to recognize is that there are ideological and political aspects to Islam that cannot be treated separately from the religious aspects. Many Western historians and intellectuals (Bertrand Russell, Arthur Koestler, Bernard Lewis) as well as prominent Islamic theorists of the twentieth century (Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and Maulana Mauduni) have emphasized the similarities between Islam and communism.

The Strange Death of Europe is a courageous book, in that it sheds light on the failure of European countries to assimilate Muslim immigrants. In doing so, the author exposes himself to the scourge of political correctness; accused of “gentrified xenophobia” by the media. This same media refuses to address the problems raised by massive inflows of migrants, for fear of being stigmatized.

The authors greatest merit is to have shown beyond doubt that the concerns of many Europeans about the surge of immigration in recent years are well founded; while at the same time emphasizing the need to accommodate the needs of important numbers of asylum seekers.

For Christians, and particularly Catholics, Murray’s book has the additional merit of raising some big questions about the future of the faith. While Murray limits his prognosis to Europe, and particularly to Western Europe, it should not be ignored by North Americans.

Although neither Canada nor the U.S. are likely to experience the massive inflows of Middle East migrants, they do share a very significant decline in religious practice, especially among younger generations. It is hard, perhaps impossible, to imagine how the current trend towards ever increasing secularization might be slowed down, let alone reversed, in the short or medium term.

Another observation is that European or Western decline is not entirely new. The most thorough study of civilizational decline might well be Arnold Toynbee’s 12-volume A Study of History (1934-1961), which surveys twenty-one world civilizations, reaching as far back as the Babylonian and Roman empires. Toynbee famously said that “civilizations die from suicide, not by murder”, by which he meant that, instead of being destroyed by outside forces, they suffer a kind of “schism of the soul” that results in some form of cultural disintegration.

Societies begin to disintegrate, he argued, when people believe that they are no longer bound by a moral law and allow themselves to be led by their impulses. They also yield to a sense of drift, which is a belief that they have no control over their lives and that there is no point in resisting emerging forces threatening the world in which they live.

Toynbee describes this tendency, which he names promiscuity, as “an act of self-surrender to the melting pot … in religion, literature, language, and art, as well as … in manners and customs”. In other words, the surest sign of a civilization nearing its end is its uncritical acceptance that, socially and morally speaking, anything goes.

Toynbee’s theory of civilizational decline appears to enhance the validity and credibility of Murray’s analysis. But should we then conclude that such is the end of our story? Is the United States condemned to a life of spiritual and cultural vacuum?

Civilizational collapse never happens peacefully. When people suffer a “schism of the soul” events become unpredictable. In Europe and the Faith Hilaire Belloc put it as follows, “The isolation of the soul releases in a society a furious new accession of force. The break-up of any stable system, in physics as in society, makes actual a prodigious reserve of potential energy. It transforms the power that was keeping things together into a power driving each component part: In effect … an explosion.”

Christians who take their faith seriously are likely to feel in tune with Belloc’s vision. What distinguishes them from fashionable secularists is that, without disputing the value of Murray’s analysis, they do not ignore God’s role in history.

They are aware, for example, that the current state of what used to be called Christendom is not unlike that of the Jewish people in the years preceding the Babylonian exile; a time when God’s chosen people had forsaken the fountain of living water and provoked the Lord to anger.

Christians view themselves as the new people of God, and despite their sins, they know that whatever the future has in store for them, they are not doomed to a life of spiritual and cultural vacuum foreseen by liberal secularists. Whatever punishment they might have to endure, they know that there will be a return to the faith.

Soft Targets

Christians as Soft Targets, By Howard Kainz, https://www.thecatholicthing.org

The gun lobby and their sympathizers (and some cartoonists) try to bring public attention to the fact that “gun-free” signs on the entrances of museums, schools, churches, shopping malls, etc. can be an unintended invitation to homicidal maniacs or suicidal nihilists who want to take as many souls as possible with them in exiting the world.

Christianity is, in a sense, a “gun-free” zone. The Christian religion is so devoted to peace that it could incite similar aggressive responses in malevolent persons or systems, which introduces a special problem for a “soft-target” religion: It could be the proverbial “sitting duck”, not only for unscrupulous cultures and governments, but also for militant political and/or religious groups.

More Christians face religious persecution in more countries than any other religious group, and at any other time in history. We hear a great deal about Islamophobia in the West but pay too little heed to its anti-Christian equivalent in the East, which manifests itself in violence, ethnic cleansing, and even genocide. That said, I have a serious problem with the religion of Islam, which is currently the second largest religion in the world, and one which is growing rapidly in the United States and other nations.

Either: 1) The militant forces of Islam become dominate through religious jihad, or 2) A non-militant Muslim majority comes to power peacefully. In the first option their ideology will be forced on our population through the use of terror, and in the second option Christianity will give way as Sharia Law quietly replaces our way of life.

In either scenario, the irony is that the religious intolerance made compulsory by Islam will be the result of our Christian capacity for religious acceptance. There are, of course, violent Christians and Christian leaders, but in all the New Testament there is not one sentence that could reasonably incite a Christian to violence or to forced conversions.

Quakers and other Christian pacifists are in part justified for interpreting Christianity as going even further than Buddhism in avoiding all types of violence. They focus on Jesus’ messages to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39), “go the extra mile” (Matthew 5:41), “forgive seventy times seven times” (Matthew 18:22), “lend without expecting repayment” (Luke 6:35), “give them your coat also” (Luke 6:29), and to “put away the sword" (Matthew 26:52). Ethicists call such rules “supererogatory”; going far beyond the basic requirements of duty and justice.

The militant version of Islam we are dealing with in the contemporary world harbors no supererogatory exhortations to non-violence. The fact that Islam is constantly referred to as a “religion of peace” is an anomaly, a species of Orwellian “new-speak”; in the same way that murdering the unborn is called a “reproductive right,” same sex unions are called “marriage,” and sex has been replaced with “gender.”

The stark difference between the concept of martyrdom in Christianity and Islam helps to bring out the dangers for “soft targets.” For Christianity, the martyr deserving of eternal bliss through the vision of God is one willing to suffer and die as a witness for his faith. For Islam, the martyr deserving of an eternal bliss of sensual pleasure is one who is killed while killing “unbelievers” (Quran 9:111), even unknown crowds of men, women, and children, thus advancing the jihadist movement in the world.

I'll admit that I'm worried about this "soft target" argument, especially considering the current immigration crisis. I am not in any way suggesting that America should oppose immigration or that all Muslims (or anyone else) should be registered, imprisoned, or deported. I am suggesting that with immigration comes a serious threat, in that it is the modern equivalent of the Trojan Horse scenario. Even if only one out of a thousand are radicalized, we are "opening the gates" to violence.

Today, about 53% of Americans are against the confiscation of "scary looking” black rifles; but I can only hope that people come to realize that disarming American citizens is a serious mistake. If you are convinced that guns should be taken away from law abiding people, for the common good, then you better be prepared to suffer and die as a witness for your faith.

Jihad

Terrorists Deliver Their Message with Lethal Simplicity, By Scott Shane, The New York Times

In the months after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Jihadist terrorism seemed a menace that would unnerve entire countries and might last a generation. More than a decade and a half later, the threat and fear have proved real and lasting, but the death tolls in the West have remained relatively modest.

This is partly because the assailants have learned that they do not need anthrax or dirty bombs to disrupt capitals, terrify tourists, rivet the attention of governments, capture the attention of the media, and impress potential recruits.

All they need is a gun, or a truck, or a knife, and someone willing to use them against innocent people. With simple preparation, encouraged and sometimes directed by the Islamic State, these plots are difficult to detect even with robust intelligence and law enforcement surveillance.

In the aftermath of the van-and-knife assault that killed seven people in London on a Saturday night, it is hard to remember that years ago many experts predicted slaughter on a far larger scale.

The incidents still seem a harbinger of further mayhem, especially at a time when the slow strangulation of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, means that more young Westerners drawn to its cause are left to plot havoc at home.

The director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, said the recent London attacks by three individuals might be a case in point. “Two years ago, these three knuckleheads would have headed to Syria,” he said. “Now they can’t do that, so they do something else.”

Terrorism proves again and again its ability to draw obsessive media coverage and to polarize society. It is a strategy of provocation, and it is important for leaders not to respond viscerally. Any reaction that’s immediate and emotional rather than sober and considered plays into the terrorists’ hands.

Our previous president usually projected calm and restraint, to a fault some supporters said, and always distinguished violent jihadists from Islam and its adherents. His intent was to ensure he did nothing to vilify ordinary Muslims, which he saw as unfair and counterproductive.

Our current president offers a pugnacious contrast to his predecessor, and to some European leaders. He followed a standard message of support for London, with a series of nine messages mocking London’s mayor and claiming vindication for his own proposed “travel ban”; on visitors from certain Muslim countries.

The fear of jihadist terror in the United States has not been as acute as in Europe. Americans feel relatively protected from foreign jihadist terror by oceans and the relative affluence and assimilation of its Muslim population, which is small by European standards.

Unfortunately, this relative calm is being spun into another argument for additional gun control. The argument is that, “Such divergent levels of fear may partly derive from the usual level of lethal violence, far higher in the United States than in Europe”.

Gun control advocates including former Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, are unwilling to admit that guns are just a tool, and taking guns away from law abiding citizens will not curb violence. Trucks, knives, and explosive backpacks are out there just waiting to be used as lethal weapons.

The same night as the London attack, a firecracker panicked a crowd watching a soccer match on a large outdoor screen in Turin, causing a stampede that injured 1,500 people, including a 7-year-old boy left in a coma.

Despite its brutality, the Islamic State which claimed responsibility for the London attack, has so far largely avoided the backlash that is sometimes provoked among potential recruits by the killing of innocents.

Jihadists showed no revulsion over the recent bombing of young fans of the singer Ariana Grande in Manchester. For the Islamic State, even more than for other extremist groups like Al Qaeda, part of their brand is, “we’re the most violent”, and it seems to be working.

The Future You

The Future You, By Pope Francis, http://www.ted.com

During a recent TED Talk, Pope Francis addressed their conference on The Future You with the following remarks.

The future is made of yous [plural], it is made of encounters, because life flows through our relations with others. Pope Francis's conviction is that each and everyone's existence is deeply tied to that of others: life is not time merely passing by, life is about interactions. He wanted to remind the conference, and us, that we all need each other, none of us is an island, an autonomous and independent "I", separated from the other. He also wanted to remind us that we can only build the future by standing together and including everyone.

We don’t think about it often, but everything is connected, and we need to restore our connections to a healthy state. This includes the harsh judgment I hold in my heart against my brother or my sister, the open wound that has never cured, the offense that was never forgiven, the rancor that is only going to hurt me, are all instances of a fight that I carry within me, a flare deep in my heart that needs to be extinguished before it goes up in flames, leaving only ashes behind.

Many survivalists and/or preppers, nowadays, seem to believe that a happy future is something impossible to achieve. While such concerns must be taken very seriously, they are not invincible.

They can be overcome when we don't lock our door to the outside world. Happiness can be discovered in the harmony of the whole and each single component. Even science points to an understanding of reality as a place where every element connects and interacts with everything else.

Solidarity is a term that many wish to erase from the dictionary. Solidarity, however, is a free response born from the heart of everyone. Yes, a free response! When we realize that life, even in the middle of so many contradictions, is a gift and that love is the source and the meaning of life, can we follow the urge to do good to others.

To do good, we need memory, we need courage, and we need creativity. Love itself requires a creative, concrete and ingenious attitude, because good intentions and conventional formulas, so often used to appease our conscience, are not enough. Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the other is not a statistic or a number. The other has a face. The "you" is always a real presence, a person to take care of.

The story of the Good Samaritan is the story of today’s humanity. People's paths are riddled with suffering, as everything is centered around money and things, instead of people. And often there is this habit, by people who call themselves "respectable," of not taking care of the others; thus leaving behind thousands of human beings, or entire populations, on the side of the road. Fortunately, there are also those who are creating a new world by taking care of the other, even out of their own pockets. Mother Teresa understood this when she said: "One cannot love, unless it is at their own expense."

Before, during, and after a SHTF event we will have so much to do, and to get it done we must do it together. How can we do that if we're focused on all the evil we breathe every day? Thank God, no system can nullify our desire to open up to the good, compassion, and our capacity to react against evil. You might tell yourselves, "These are beautiful words, but I am not the Good Samaritan, nor Mother Teresa of Calcutta." On the contrary: each of us is precious, and each and every one of us is irreplaceable in the eyes of God. Through the darkness of today's conflicts, each and every one of us can become a bright candle, a reminder that light will overcome darkness, and never the other way around.

To humanity, the future has a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve while ignoring the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a heart that doesn't lock itself into darkness, that doesn't dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a better tomorrow. Hope is the door that opens onto the future. Hope is a humble seed of life that, with time, will develop into a large tree. It is like yeast that allows the whole dough to grow, that brings flavor to all aspects of life.

It is powerful because a tiny flicker of light that feeds on hope is enough to shatter the shield of darkness. A single individual is enough for hope to exist, and that individual can be you. Then there will be another "you," and another "you," which turns into an "us." Hope doesn't begin when there is "us", it begins with one "you." When there is an "us", it brings a revolution.

The message is about revolution: the revolution of tenderness. Tenderness is the love that comes close, recognizes the other, and becomes real. It is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches our eyes, our ears, and our hands. Tenderness means using our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, and our hands to touch the children, the poor, and those who are afraid of the future. We must also listen to the silent cry of our common home, our sick and polluted earth.

Tenderness means to use our hands and our heart to comfort the other, to take care of those in need. This is the path the Good Samaritan took and this is the path that Jesus himself took. God himself descended into Jesus to be on our level. He lived his entire human existence practicing the real, concrete language of love.

Tenderness must be the path of choice for the strongest, most courageous men and women. Tenderness is not weakness; it is fortitude. It is born from humility and solidarity. The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly. If you don’t, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other.

The future of humankind is not exclusively in the hands of politicians, of great leaders and big companies. Yes, they do hold an enormous responsibility, but the future is firmly in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a "you" and themselves as part of an "us." We all need each other. So, please think of yourselves as well with tenderness, so that you can fulfill the task you have been given for the good of the other, the good of everyone.

“Every time we find the courage to grant and receive forgiveness, we experience the resurrection. Every time we put behind us our long-standing prejudices and find the courage to build new fraternal relationships, we confess that Christ is truly risen.”

The Common Good

The Common Good, By Neale Wade, https://confessionsofaliberalgunowner.blogspot.com

The whole idea that in this country, little by little, our freedom is being eroded probably sounds unbelievable to some. America might truly be the greatest country in the world, but it's time to recognize that it is in serious trouble.

Our lives are being changed forever by the creeping gradualism of social and ethical tolerance required of our populations by those who are promoting the common good. When we do loose our freedom, it won't be through the on-slot of tanks and guns, it will be because we have let freedom slip away while listening to others tell us it's for our own good! Unfortunately, in this scenario, losing our freedom means losing our way of life, and probably our very lives.

Specifically, there is a tsunami of intolerance rushing toward the Church in the United States, but most American Christians today are blissfully unaware and completely unprepared. There are numerous and ominous signs that elements of religious persecution are coming to the Church in America, and that the Church itself is being confronted by our own hostile government and society.

May the Church (interdenominational) always be a place of mercy; a place where everyone is encouraged to live the good life of the Gospel; a place where the culture of life reigns in every human heart; a place where people work for justice; a place to pray for an end to tyranny, persecution and every trace of hatred in our world; a place where we are given strength to surrender ourselves in obedience to the Kingdom of God.

Apathy

Apathy, By Unknown, Source Unknown

No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge their actions. In 1931, Joseph Stalin cynically remarked that Communism had two main enemies: The Roman Catholic Church which he was already trying to subvert, and the moral foundation of America which he planned to target through education, entertainment, and the media.

The moral deterioration and cultural decline of the United States, regardless of the degree of responsibility assigned to Communist influence, can hardly be denied. What’s more disturbing is the success of the Church’s enemies in undermining her authority and weakening her doctrinal and sociological unity.

Americans today are much less respectful toward and much more suspicious of all forms of tradition and authority, and the church is not exempted. Authors and experts, both religious and secular, have written volumes on the widespread loss of faith, or at least the weakening of moral values and religious commitments on the part of America’s citizens.

The Church (in all its forms) simply cannot go on living in apathy, blindly confident of a never-ending “American Dream”. This foolish delusion has kept us from discerning the times that lie ahead. It appears that our incredible standard of living and ease of life have disconnected us from the realities and the cost of discipleship. While it’s probably not the Great Tribulation, one thing is sure: This nation is heading toward calamity.

Oil and Water

Politics and Religion: Oil and Water, by Dan Baer, Parish Presentation

It’s amazing what a person can see in a day living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Last month at an education conference in Hillsborough, I listened to a young Harvard post-doc deliver a presentation called “The Confluence of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science: Deep Learning in the Brain and Mind” and I learned about all the layers of neural networks a visual image is filtered through on its way to becoming a recognizable phenomenon in a person’s mind, just as it can become a recognizable piece of sense-data in a machine’s “mind”.

On the same day in the civic center of San Francisco I skated by a shirtless fellow sitting on the sidewalk staring transfixed into the distance. He had one hand on the ground to prop himself and the other one on his head holding what I thought was a pen, he looked like a poet in a swoon. Upon closer inspection, I realized he was holding a hypodermic needle with just a bit of the tell-tale brown color of heroin still in the barrel. I thought about him for a while, thought about the reality that his brain, his actual neural structure is probably so compromised by that level of drug use that he will never be married, never have a family, never hold a meaningful job again.

The forces that allowed one of these people to become a successful researcher in a cutting-edge field and the other to become a street-bound drug addict certainly have a personal dimension, but they have social, political, and spiritual dimensions as well.

The title of this presentation is “Politics and Religion: Oil and Water?” with a question mark. As you know, under normal circumstances oil and water don’t mix, the oil separating from and floating above the water. So, we will use the analogy to explore the relationship between politics and religion, which is considerably more complex than two species of molecules retiring to their preferred locations.

What this talk is about: The talk is not really about the Catholic Church and U.S. politics. Each of those two entities contains so many elements and so many perspectives, that it would be useless to try to tackle the relationship, number one because it would take more than a single evening, and number two because the crises the world faces, crises that extend beyond the borders of this country and the rosters of baptized Catholics, are severe enough that the thinking surrounding politics and religion must go far and cut deep.

The crises I have in mind include, but are not limited to, the deterioration of livable conditions for all species on Earth, the threat of nuclear war, human overpopulation, global refugee crises, and the yet-to-be-settled question of what the purpose of self-conscious life in the universe is.

What we mean by politics: politics is the organization of human community, which includes group decision-making, who exercises authority, and how resources are accessed. Politics entails questions like, “Should government make decisions according to the greatest good for the greatest number, or does government have a responsibility to minority opinions and needs as well?” Or, “should government honor rights of individuals, if the defense of said rights leads to unfair or unjust circumstances for others?” But our focus this evening includes another aspect of human life at least as old and certainly as deeply woven into civilization, religion.

What we mean by religion: Now this is a challenging reality to define. It’s easy to hear, for example, the word “Church” and mentally default to an image of several dozen bishops in Rome discussing moral teaching or the language of the Mass, as if “Church” or “religion” is something institutional like Congress. This would be a narrow conception of religion. Here are some additional images of “religion” that might occur to you: A woman puts out her hands to receive the communion wafer and makes the Sign of the Cross after consuming it; A man closes his eyes and recites, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God”;  A man grocery shops in the kosher food aisle to ensure he eats in conformity with Jewish dietary laws; A woman carefully dons a hijab before she meets her friends to run errands; A man purchases a train ticket to Varánasi, India to celebrate Kumbh Mela with a pilgrimage to the River Ganges.

But religion can also mean more than profession of faith, sacred ritual, or traditional custom. Consider: The image of a Negro family in the 1850s trekking across an expanse of snow-covered fields, toes numb, while singing, “Swing low, sweet chariot, coming to carry me home, I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? I saw a band of angels coming after me”. This of course, is a well-known spiritual likely from the days of the Underground Railroad, with obvious references to the Biblical Promised Land and the assumption into heaven of the prophet Elijah, by chariot; The image of St. Joseph’s Catholic House of Hospitality opening in Rochester, New York in 1941 to provide food, clothing, and shelter to every visiting person it can; The image of Catholic Sister Dorothy Stang, who for decades advocated for the rights of the rural poor and the natural environment in Brazil before being murdered for what they perceived as her obstructionism to industry; The image of a man named Hippie Jack, a socially conscientious, pot smoking, long-haired hippie who drives a rainbow-colored bus to deliver peanut butter, winter coats, new white sneakers, and hope to the invisible people of Appalachia.

Worldviews

Politics and Religion: Oil and Water, by Dan Baer, Parish Presentation

So, when we consider the relationship between politics and religion, we’re talking about concepts that manifest in so many different ways that it’s difficult to enumerate all the points of interplay. Perhaps we’d do better to consider the foundation of them both, which is called “world view,” taken from the German word Weltanschauung, which means one’s fundamental perception of the world and orientation within it.

What we mean by truths and worldviews: When I teach religious studies classes, we first must recognize that human language is composed of numerous types of statements, that serve very different functions. When you’re in middle school, you learn about the differences among declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory statements. You also learn about what distinguishes facts from opinions, or perhaps more obscure expressions like morals or promises. One concept that the students and I explore is whether there are statements that might be true but that are not provable.

Thinking as a scientist or a materialist, we might say that we only take as true what can be proved either empirically or through logic, but it’s important to note that every system of thought rests on certain axioms that are not provable within the internal logic of the system. Kurt Gödel wrote about this notion in mathematics as “the incompleteness theorem.” Consider that in arithmetic, there is no proof that numbers exist or that numbers always come in an order: 1, 2, 3 but not 2, 3, 1. These are unprovable “givens”. We all, every day, operate by unprovable givens.

A person who calls himself an atheist, with a purely scientific world view, often still appeals to unprovable truths. For example, the truth that “all persons have dignity and certain inalienable rights” cannot be proven but is a truth taken as given. For many people in Western religious traditions, we see the world as fundamentally good, a truth that isn’t easily relegated to the arena of mere passing opinion, but that is also not provable the way a fact is.

Some truths seem good and reasonable, but can pose unintended problems; for example, the “truth” that all persons are created equal. From that axiom it’s easy to assume that people are responsible for pulling themselves up out of whatever circumstances in which they find themselves, when in reality many people need, more than mere equality, equity, which provides them a reasonable shot at achieving in society from a position of disadvantage.

So how then do we define “truth” in this regard? I would say a “truth” is an unprovable conviction that becomes real through our actions. It cannot be proved because it cannot be found in the world, you don’t find human rights or a sense of dignity under a microscope; rather, truths, in the sense I mean, are introduced into the world by us, maybe in the same way that you don’t prove that music exists; rather, you play an instrument, and through your action, the music manifests in the world.

We might hear talk of “politics and religion” either in conflict or one maybe tainting the other, but what’s really at hand is a conflict of worldviews and the truths behind them. The conflicts, considered impartially, are usually between two perspectives that are in themselves good.

Take these three examples: abortion, free speech on campus, and female genital cutting. The abortion debate at root is a conflict between the truth that human life is sacred and the truth that all persons have a right to self-determination. The free speech on campus debate is a conflict between the truth that persons have a right to express their beliefs freely and the truth that groups who have historically experienced marginalization or victimization have a right to be protected from hurtful messages. The female genital cutting debate, probably abhorrent to most of us, is a conflict between the truth that all persons, particularly children, have a right to be protected from bodily harm without their consent and the truth that traditional cultures have a right to be protected from the imposition of Western values, which to a great degree have been disseminated through colonialism and imperialism.

Conceptions of God

Politics and Religion: Oil and Water, by Dan Baer, Parish Presentation

What we usually call “politics” is merely the public arena within which worldviews conflict, and often one or more of the worldviews in a given conflict has its foundations in truths or axioms that come from religious belief. Many of the truths that undergird the world views of religious persons issue from or are connected to their conceptions of God.

It must be stated frankly that every conception of God we have is flawed. We might consider harboring no conceptions of God at all, which is not to say that there is no God, but is only to say that the nature of God so explodes our every attempt to think or speak about it that we remain silent. I doubt it occurred to those who dwelled on the image of God as judge that such an image psychologically enabled them to hang moral offenders from the gallows, say, in colonial America.

Or those of us who still think of God in terms of “the highest”, that kind of thinking still has us subscribing to the Great Chain of Being, with humankind conveniently at the top of the earthly realm and all other creatures at the disposal, even whim, of our massive collective appetite for food and resources. The consciousness of a chicken or cow doesn’t count for much in a universe governed by an anthropomorphized God, who, by the way, as a male, has extended tacit consent for the subjugation of women through the ages.

But probably the most problematic conception of God is “the all-powerful.” The Abrahamic god is surpassingly more powerful than any previously worshipped being; we aim to become, most often unconsciously, like that which we venerate, and obviously God is the most venerated being for most believing people. When we attribute omnipotence to divinity, do we not attribute divinity to omnipotence? It’s worth noting too that four of the nine choirs of angels in Christianity have titles associated with power: such as Thrones, Dominions, Powers, and Principalities.

Like Phaethon, the son of Greek solar-deity Helios, who recklessly decides to take the reins of the sun from his father and scorches the earth, has our deification of omnipotence landed us at the control panel of nature, and have we not similarly scorched the earth? Is there still time to turn around the human obsession with power, domination, and control?

Suffering

Politics and Religion: Oil and Water, by Dan Baer, Parish Presentation

I’ve thought a lot about whether there are any concepts that we should associate with God. Truth and Love seem like the best candidates, though Christians have associated these two concepts with God for going on twenty centuries, and it’s hard to say the degree to which they’ve borne upon the collective behavior of Christians.

I will suggest one concept that I might associate with divinity, and that is pain. Now that might sound strange, even offensive. Isn’t pain the one thing we seek always to avoid, and isn’t pain the one certain characteristic of hell, the place from which God is absent? Perhaps we should have our understandings of heaven and hell turned upside-down, along with the notion that God could be absent from any place or world.

I arrived at the thought that pain is somehow characteristic of divinity because the theme of pain and suffering runs through the stories, words, and actions of numerous thinkers and holy persons through the ages. I’ll share four examples.

The first that occurs to me is a story about Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, who when asked questions like, “How did the universe begin?” “What lies beyond the stars?” or “Where do we go when we die?” replied to each that he didn’t know. But to his inquisitive disciples he responded thus: “If you came across a man lying curled on a forest floor, struck by an arrow and bleeding, would you or he ask such questions as “Of what wood is this arrow made?” or “How far away was the hunter standing when he shot this arrow?” or “Who are the hunter’s parents?”

His disciples responded that such questions would be absurd given the circumstances, to which Buddha replied, “Similarly, I’m not here to answer useless metaphysical questions. The reality is that people suffer, and I teach the way out of suffering”.

The second example that occurs to me is Jesus of Nazareth. Notice that his ministry almost entirely hinges on addressing pain and suffering. He restores the sight of the blind, cures the diseased, heals paralytics, restores withered hands, and even more than this he addresses the anguish of the alienated and marginalized, be they lepers, prostitutes, despised tax collectors, or Samaritan women.

His campaign against the religious leaders of the day arose from his recognition that their system of laws and accounting of people’s sins kept so many otherwise good people trapped in the misery of being outcast by society.

Centuries later, saints who made the imitation of Christ their top priority also sought to alleviate the suffering of others, I have in mind Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day, and Saint Mother Teresa, all of whom saw divinity through suffering, that somehow holiness is found directly through those who suffer.

The third example of where I’ve seen this connection between suffering and divinity, though in a negative way, comes from Noam Chomsky, who, when asked whether he believes there is a god, responded that there are two possibilities: either there is no god, or if there is, he’s a devil.

Now for those of you who know Noam Chomsky and his thought, you know he’s a good and brilliant man, so why would he respond so shockingly to the question? Chomsky, like Howard Zinn, is I think more deeply aware of the expanse and depth of suffering in the world than most people.

In his mind, there cannot be any being that is simultaneously all-powerful and benevolent. And unlike the author of the Book of Job or Dostoyevsky or Elie Wiesel or Rabbi Harold Kushner, all of whom attempted, among many others, to reconcile a good God with the suffering of innocents on earth, Chomsky just throws in the towel and says such a God, at least as we traditionally think of God, is evil or isn’t at all.

The final example of a thinker who contributed to, at least in my mind, the connection between divinity and suffering is Yuval Noah Harari, author of the recent, popular book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Harari explains that one of the major reasons why human beings have been so successful as a species over the last several thousand years is our ability and willingness to abide by what he calls fictions; aspects of our lives that have no objective reality but are only believed in or trusted by so many people that their intersubjective weight almost lends them an objective reality.

Examples include companies, nations, borders, deities, human rights, and, what Harari calls the most successful fiction in history, money. In an interview Harari was asked, if so much of what makes our experience of the world is fictitious, then can anything be called real? He paused for a moment and responded that the only thing we know with certainty is pain is real.

From this realization he says that we have a responsibility to address and abate all the pain and suffering in the universe that we can, which includes the enormous total pain and suffering we have inflicted and continue to inflict on non-human sentient beings.

Politics and Religion

Politics and Religion: Oil and Water, by Dan Baer, Parish Presentation

As Christians, we should be careful not to allow our reflection and meditation upon the crucifixion to be overshadowed by the Resurrection. In the crucifixion, we see what seems an impossible juxtaposition, even intersection, divinity and suffering become one. I think that perhaps the image of the crucifixion is the most we can behold of God’s reality in pain and suffering.

I think no one would ever want to see God directly because in doing so one would see all the pain and suffering in the universe at once, since, after all, God, as love, bears all things and endures all things. If the universe exists in God and at once God is the heart of all things in the universe, then God experiences all. The question then would be not why God made a universe that includes suffering, but why does God endure all the suffering of the universe? We’ll leave that question standing.

To what degree should politics influence religion: I think that when political and social issues challenge the thinking of a person of faith, that person has two options. She or he can either hold their position and use the logic of their stance to fend off or discredit the issue at hand, or he or she can subject their position to reevaluation in response to the issue and decide whether to stand against the issue, or whether to change position given the new challenge.

One thing that should be said in a room full of Catholics is this. Growing up, when learning about conscience formation and moral decision making, we learned that genuine discernment should involve reading Scripture, consulting Church teaching, and praying. But shouldn’t discernment also include the willingness to try to understand the perspectives of those who hold a different or opposing position?

We should consider that sometimes it’s not a matter of politics influencing religion but rather politics causing people to simply ignore the tenets of their faith. Take for example the way that the Polish people are handling immigration and the refugee crisis. Poland is 85% Catholic, the highest percentage of any large country, exceeding even Italy by a little bit, and Poland has the highest church attendance of large European countries. Even with the current pope asking every parish to host a refugee family, Poland is the most anti-immigrant of the major European countries.

A news story on the issue two months ago indicated that of the more than 27,000 refugees who applied for asylum, Germany agreed to take 8,300. Of the almost 20,000 refugees who applied for asylum, France agreed to take 4,500. Of 6,000 refugees who applied for asylum, Poland agreed to take…zero. Hungary also agreed to take zero refugees. Now one might argue that Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have GDP per capitas around $27,000 USD/year; a little more than half that of Germany and France. But Syria has a GDP per capita of less than $5,000; Afghanistan less than $2,000.

One can imagine a Polish child asking, “How come Egypt was nice enough to take the holy family when they fled from Herod, but Poland isn’t nice enough to take poor families fleeing from war”? Perhaps the parent responds, “Honey, we have to protect our country”.

The Franciscan speaker and writer Richard Rohr writes about how religions are always in danger of deteriorating into what he calls “belonging systems”; this occurs when one’s faith is no longer personally transformative, no longer a challenge to one’s world view or the status quo in which they find themselves, but rather becomes something not much different from being the fan of a given sports team or a member of a country club, emphasizing identity over service.

Frankly this is when religion becomes the opposite of religion, something with boundaries rather than open doors. It’s hard to blame the vociferous atheist crowd when so much of the religion they see and criticize really is just systems of belonging rather than welcoming.

To what degree should religion influence politics: For those of you who have studied ethics formally, you might recall that there are three basic theories of ethics: consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Consequentialism is the theory that decisions should be made ultimately according to their outcomes, their effects, their consequences. Deontology is the theory that decisions should be based on duties and obligations; one chooses to do the right thing purely because one has a duty, obligation, or responsibility to do so, regardless of outcomes. Virtue ethics is the theory that decisions should arise from tried-and-true virtues that have held cross-culturally through the ages. One makes a decision out of courage or generosity, kindness or honesty because any one of those virtues is objectively good in and of itself.

Having taught comparative religions for years, I noticed that every major religion adheres to deontology and virtue ethics, while none of them subscribes to consequentialism. Hinduism is a perfect example of this. In perhaps the most celebrated story in the Hindu tradition, The Bhagavad-Gita, Lord Krishna advises the mortal warrior Arjuna that he must act always from his dharma, his duty according to his station in life, and never from what he calls “the fruits of action”, the consequences.

The Catholic Church teaches that an action can be called morally sound if the act in and of itself and the intention behind it are both positive. Circumstances, which can include outcomes, might lessen the wrongness of an act, but they are not a determining factor. People are called to do what is right because it is right and not defer to circumstances or outcomes to rationalize what are otherwise wrong or selfish acts. It’s important to note that trying to legislate people into behaving virtuously is generally a futile effort. Virtue can’t be forced or coerced, only modeled and inspired.

In an article entitled Some Political Issues Should Be More Important Than Others for Catholics, the president of St. Ignatius Press, a Catholic publisher in San Francisco, wrote, “Abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell experimentation, human cloning, and same-sex marriage have been called non-negotiable issues in certain Catholic circles … because they involve intrinsic evils that government can never legitimately authorize.

They involve issues on which all Catholics are obliged, as Catholics, to agree. Most other concerns, even very important ones such as capital punishment or the Iraq war, are subjects about which Catholics can legitimately disagree. Not so with the five non-negotiable issues. On these issues, there is such a thing as the Catholic position, whether or not certain Catholics choose to embrace that position”.

Gospel Message

Politics and Religion: Oil and Water, by Dan Baer, Parish Presentation

The Gospel reading from this past Sunday, in my humble opinion, is the most important single teaching of Jesus, and it’s the criteria upon which Christians believe personal salvation is decided. Simply: feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the ill, visit the imprisoned.

If you are an El Salvadoran woman with two daughters who has spent every last centavo traversing Mexico seeking asylum from the poverty and violence of your home country in the United States, only to find yourself sitting in a hard, plastic chair on the polished concrete floor of the Otay (Oh-Teye) Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, California, which matters to you more: embryonic stem cell experimentation or welcoming the stranger?

If you are an African-American boy born to a single mom in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago surrounded by drug and gang culture, and one day find yourself, predictably and sadly, not in class being called by name but in the Cook County Department of Corrections being processed as a number, which matters to you more: human cloning or visiting the imprisoned?

If you are a 26-year old man who was born in and lived your entire life on a garbage landfill in Guwahati, India, and your two-year-old daughter falls seriously ill from infection, which matters to you more: same-sex marriage or caring for the ill?

If you are a mother of six children in rural Uganda and have to trek 30 minutes each way to obtain buckets of potable water, which matters to you more: euthanasia or giving drink to the thirsty?

Now perhaps you might accuse me of creating false dichotomies, that I’m trivializing important ethical issues by confronting the listener with what seem like more urgent, real-world issues. But this isn’t my intention. I’m only asking the listener to consider the inescapable message of the Gospel. Discussion and debate surrounding the nature of marriage, the sanctity of motherhood and birth, the sacredness of life, especially at its most vulnerable, and certainly the strange ethical dilemmas posed by science at this advanced stage is very important.

I recently heard a RadioLab episode called The Primitive Streak that described how scientists, no longer beholden to religious authority but still beholden to their own consciences decided as a community to honor a fourteen-day rule; that they would not experiment on human embryos beyond fourteen days following conception, and they have reasons for having chosen the number fourteen.

Debates like these demand attention and discussion, they matter. But let’s be clear: in the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Christ says we are judged not by the moral or political positions we held on earth, but by the degree to which we alleviated the suffering of others on earth. That is what the Gospel says. It is non-negotiable. It is, as they say, the bottom line.

I have two conclusions regarding religion, and I believe Pope Francis understands and embodies both of these conclusions better than I.

First: In the same way that some types of exercise are shown to be more effective than others, for example by gauging change in muscle mass, blood pressure, and so on, so are some types of “religion” superior to others. To my mind the single most important measure of religion is whether it challenges a person always to move from selfishness to selflessness, from self-centeredness to embracing a larger and larger circle of concern.

The purpose of religion is not to make us feel well-defended, vindicated, and righteous but to pull us out of ourselves, which happens most effectively by suffering through challenges, and through compassionately experiencing the suffering of others; carrying our own crosses and certainly helping to carry the crosses of others.

Second: It might appear to persons of faith that they have two choices: either remain steadfast in their traditional beliefs, customs, and practices, or else subject their beliefs and traditions to arbitrary change in response to the changing culture around them. But there is a third way that is neither remaining fixed nor changing arbitrarily, and that is to grow, which entails change, but change in a direction. A boat can throw down the anchor and stay still or it can sail around haphazardly with the winds, but it can also make use of its rudder and sails, the sun and the stars, to aim for a destination.

Any religious world view should always be subject to growth in response to its environment. Maybe it grows slowly like a bristlecone pine or quickly like bamboo; what is certain is that, rather than making resistance its default setting, it should grow, deepen, and develop in response to the cultural and intellectual environment.

Faith

Faith, By Father Matt, Excerpt from Sunday Homily

Someone once said, “the number one reason people resist change is because they focus on what they have to give up instead of what they have to gain”. We live in a world of flux and constant change; we see changes in our families, changes in our society, and changes in our government.

Many find change disconcerting and unsettling which is why amid change we seek constants, like our favorite comfort food. We generally find change easier to manage if at least some things remain the same, because to help us manage change we need some element of stability.

Jesus spoke about change, not just on a small scale but change on a cosmic level. He visualized heaven and earth as passing away, and who can imagine a more SHTF change than that. Yet, after predicting this radical change, he immediately promises that something will remain; something permanent, lasting, and eternal. Jesus said, “My words will never pass away.”

His message will not go away, for it is the word of God anticipating a new heaven and new earth. Weird as it may seem, this very imperfect, sometimes chaotic, world will be transformed. When and if things go south, forcing major changes on humanity, we need to hold on to our Christian faith.

Amid disconcerting change, we should remember that God abides: When everything else seems to be out of control, God remains God, and our connection with him and our relationship to him will keep us stable; especially when everything around us is going to pieces.

End Times

End Times, By Neale Wade, https://confessionsofaliberalgunowner.blogspot.com

People have been predicting the end of the world since Jesus promised that he would return to bring history to its culmination and establish God’s eternal kingdom. It was rampant among the first generation of Christians who lived in intense anticipation, believing He would return before many of them died. So, they lived with this expectation believing that the world, at least as they knew it, would end before their deaths.

Not surprisingly this led to all kinds of apocalyptic musings: What signs would signal the end? Would there be massive alterations in the sun and the moon? Would there be plagues, great earthquakes, and wars across the world? Even today, it continually pops up in popular literature and the messages of misled religious leaders; like Harold Camping.

Eventually the early Christians understood the promise of Jesus’ return to be fulfilled in the coming of the Holy Spirit. Generally, most of us take Jesus’ advice and believe that it is useless and counterproductive to speculate about the end of the world, or about what signs might accompany the end.

That doesn’t change the emphasis on vigilance, on staying awake, or on being ready for the end. God’s invitation is to enter the fullness of life right now and not be lulled asleep by the pressure of ordinary life; or a fear of the future. That challenge is still valid for us today: Our real worry should not be that the world might suddenly end or that we might unexpectedly die, but that we might live and die asleep, without really loving, without doing what we can for others, and without tasting the real joy of living.

We must guard against becoming so consumed by the pressures of the present, or the concerns about the end, that we never quite get around to living fully. Buddha warned against something he called “slouching”. We slouch physically when we let our posture break down because of laziness, depression, anxiety, and tension, but it can also happen to us psychologically and morally. We can let a combination of busyness, pressure, worry, and fear break down our spiritual posture so that, in biblical terms, we “fall asleep”, we cease being vigilant and no longer alert.

We need to be awake physically and spiritually, not slouching. That means maintaining love and reconciliation as our chief concerns, thanking others, appreciating diversity, affirming our belief in God, forgiving those who trespass against us, apologizing to those we have harmed, and being more mindful of the joys of living in human community and within the sure embrace of God.

Yes, Jesus is coming again as promised, but we shouldn’t be concerned about the end of the world as we know it, nor should we worry excessively about when we will die. What we should worry about is in what state our dying will find us.

Viva Christo Rey

Christ The King, By Father Michael, Excerpt from Sunday Homily

Today, Mexico is a nation with a very strong Catholic identity, and yet, not too long ago the Catholic Church was outlawed. The Church was not allowed to own property, run schools, or celebrate the sacraments.

The Cristero Rebellion (1926–1929) was a widespread struggle against the secularist, Anti-Catholic and anti-clerical policies of the Mexican government. President Calles was attempting to suppress popular religious celebration by enforcing the anti-clerical articles of the Mexican Constitution of 1917. As Church authorities suspended public worship throughout Mexico, Catholics rose up in arms. The massive, popular rural uprising was tacitly supported by the Church hierarchy and was aided by urban Catholic support.

A US Ambassador brokered negotiations between the Calles government and the Church, and the uprising ended in 1929. During the conflict, however, Mexicans were often imprisoned for wearing crosses or saying “Adios” (which literally means “with God”) in public. If anyone questioned the government, they were put in prison for a very long time.

Father Miguel Pro was a young Jesuit who continued to celebrate Mass and preach the Gospel in secret. After being captured and just before being executed, he raised his voice in a prayerful shout: “Viva Christo Rey”, which was a greeting used by the Mexican people of his day to preserve their faith in the face of fierce persecution.

Long Live Christ the King was their prayer of hope. One day, at the end of our lives, we must all stand before Christ the King and He will ask us this question: “Where are your wounds? Was there nothing worth fighting for?”