Revisiting Wednesday - Stop Searching For Loopholes and Make The Salvation of Souls Priority Number One!

Thank you Allison Gingras at  Reconciled To You and Elizabeth Riordan at Theology Is A Verb for hosting "Revisiting Wednesday" each week and those Catholic bloggers who re-post their favorite articles there. 

Go there now. (and every Wednesday). You will be inspired by the variety of spiritual insights these authors share.

 I am sharing the following post:

Stop Searching For Loopholes and Make The Salvation of Souls Priority Number One! 

(Originally posted in a slightly different form on April 19, 2013)

More than fourteen months ago, I offered my few cents on the unprecedented attack on our religious liberty. Sad to say, not much has changed since I wrote those words. If you not already done so, I suggest you read those comments here if the rest of this entry is to make sense.

 

The current Administration still refuses to acknowledge our God-given right to freely practice our religion. In fact, it has expressed frustration and annoyance with our on-going verbal refusal to acquiesce to its intrinsically evil regulations and our stated unwillingness to bow down to their “god” of reproductive rights. One of its agencies had actually classified Catholics as terrorists. Litigation, though not yet finalized, has resulted in mixed and unsatisfactory results.

 

Despite the on-going exposure to the reality of abortion in the Philadelphia house of horrors, the intent of New York’s self-proclaimed Catholic governor to remove virtually all restrictions on abortions performed in that State, and the unwillingness of Planned Parenthood representatives to publicly condemn the practices exposed at the Gosnell clinic and [the selling of body parts] elsewhere, our President continues to attack those who stand up and defend the life of the unborn and vows his allegiance to Planned Parenthood. He has even publicly asked “god’ to bless this evil, earthly arm of the Great Deceiver.

  

The defeat of evil will not occur through litigation or legislation. The unending battle against the dark forces roaming this earth is, has been, and always will be a spiritual one. It will cease only by God's grace and power and in His time. Until then, we must individually and as His Church battle this evil through prayer, fasting, and the courageous proclamation, assent, defense and faithfulness to God's Truth. We may even be asked to suffer civil and economic punishment for defending that Truth. How many of us are ready to do so?

Only God knows but I suspect that number will not be huge. Why? Let me offer a few reasons.

First, there is no indication that fewer Catholics oppose abortion, contraception, embryonic stem cell research, and sterilization now, for example, than when this public battle began.

Secondly, there is little evidence that many Catholic Dioceses and parishes in this country have done much of anything since I last visited this issue to instruct their flock on what the Catholic Church teaches about these intrinsic evils, why it does so, and what the eternal consequences are to those who personally engage in or acquiesce to these evils.

Thirdly, there are few public corrections of, or consequence to, Catholic politicians and public figures who publicly dissent from the Church's teaching on these intrinsic evils. So why should the person in the pew feel he or she needs to adjust their conduct in these areas or get excited about federal regulations they don't really oppose? 

Fourthly, the prevalent unwillingness of far too many of the Church's Shepherds and priests to defend the integrity and sacredness of the Holy Eucharist by withholding it from the mouths of notorious and long-standing dissenting Catholics just reinforces the mistaken and eternally deadly opinion of ill-formed Catholics that none of these issues are that important. In centuries past, bishops, priests, lay men and women died defending the Faith, attempting to save souls and preventing sacrilegious treatment of the Most Precious Blessed Sacrament. Not so much now.

In the end, whether we win or lose the ongoing legislative and litigation battles is of no consequence for those whose souls have already been lost and will be lost because they have chosen to ignore God’s law while most of His Church has remained hesitant or unwilling to remind them that their personal decision to disobey God will result in their eternal damnation. It’s apparently more important not to offend feelings than to lead them away from the never ending inferno that awaits them and any of us who have been complicit by our action, inaction or silence.

Will we ever remove ourselves from the lure of political maneuvering where we are just one of many competing interests begging for a few crumbs from corrupt civil leaders? How much longer will Satan succeed in diverting our attention from the real issue – the salvation of souls?

We Catholics must stop looking for loopholes around God’s Absolute Truth! There are none. Nothing can be more important than winning the war for the salvation of souls. Nothing! Not even our earthly lives!