Sins crying to Heaven for Vengeance: murder (Gn 4:10), sodomy (Gn 17:20-21), oppression of the poor (Ex 2:23), and defrauding workers of their just wages (Jas 5:4).
The Four Sins crying to Heaven for vengeance have all been approved of by either positive law or popular majoritarian moral sanction:These serious sins are reflective of America’s war on Jesus Christ and His Commandments and it is a war that was embedded deeply in our foundational attitudes and documents (if only by omission).
- MURDER of the unborn in the womb is legal.
- SODOMY is legally codified and morally praised by most.
- OPPRESSION of the poor is being accomplished by mass immigration (which is an assault on the wages of the working class) and treaties which have destroyed manufacturing (manufacturing, mining, farming are the three aspects of a healthy economy).
- DEFRAUDING workers of their just wages via mass immigration and usury which is legally sanctioned (but morally illegal) loans (Vix pervenit)
Jesus Christ is King of Heaven and Earth and any nation that is at war with Him by legislating that which He condemns is doomed to defeat and destruction.
What is most amazing about our plight is His patience.
Long ago, these United States deserved to be utterly destroyed
Friday, October 28, 2016
It's a wonder God has withheld his just judgment this long
Some sobering thoughts and dark humor from Amateur Brain Surgeon:
Your righteous indignation regarding certain evils is well taken.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it is arguable that there is no inherent or intrinsic necessity that these evils have been or are promoted within this republic.
The waxing and waning of the evils you mention has occurred in regimes throughout history, and this one's span has proven no exception.
Its flaws or vulnerabilities have, at times, been compensated for or tempered by individuals and groups who have responded to divine graces, and there is no impossibility that such may not yet occur to some degree again.
Finally, even though certain persons idealize or postulate eras or regimes in the past when all was purportedly optimal, nonetheless, those political orders, as well were subject to degradation and eventual corruption in one form or another, whether due to internal flaws that became dominant or to unrectified weaknesses subject to attack from without.
Sins should be condemned, but we cannot presume to condemn persons. Analogously, a similar tempering of judgment might be recommended concerning polities or regimes, unless they can be shown to be utterly and intrinsically or essentially evil.
But I doubt one can accomplish this in regard to the Declaration, the Constitution and its fundamental principles, as imperfect or lacking as they may be in certain ways.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the important caveats you have raised regarding ABS's 'thesis' in this post. While he may answer for himself, I will add my two bits to facilitate this discussion because I think the issues raised by him and you are of singular importance.
You suggest that as we are often told to judge the sin but not the sinner, so perhaps we ought to limit our judgments to the sins of a nation but not judge the nation. After all, God Himself allowed Abraham to negotiate down His wrath against Sodom to the point that He agreed not to destroy it if there were only ten righteous men in Sodom.
First, I once read a counter-thesis against the idea that the sin can be so easily separated from the sinner. The argument was based on a very detailed analysis of how the Bible treats the issue, and it seemed to me quite compelling, even if it did leave unresolved the very dangerous issue of human beings judging the intentions of others. I wish I had recourse to the article setting forth the argument here and had the time to present it if I did. I have neither. But perhaps we should be aware that a counter argument can be made against the proposed thesis. While we may not discern the interior motives of individuals in certain cases, perhaps it's not hard to infer from Mr. Obama's declaration before a Planned Parenthood clinic: "God bless you. And God bless Planned Parenthood." or from his and Hillary's promotion of partial-birth abortion and same-sex so-called 'marriage' and opposition to Catholic Church teaching that they are hardly benign morally-speaking. I simply raise the question.
Second, from the reference to Abraham above we might infer that since there were less than ten righteous men in Sodom, God destroyed Sodom even though Lot and his family were among the inhabitants.
Third, even though Lot and his family were delivered from the destruction of Sodom, it is not true that God withholds His wrath from nations just because a portion of them (even their leaders) may retain godly. I frequently cite II Kings 13:25-27. Thus Jerusalem was sacked and Burned by Nebuchadnezzar even despite the godliness of King Josiah, because the cumulative wickedness of Judah (and Manasseh) had reached abominable proportions.
There is likely much more that could be said, but I raise these questions and examples to help prime the pump for further discussion among readers.
It is, indeed, seemingly easy for us to be tendentious and, in one way or another, presume to 'divine' Providence.
ReplyDeleteApparently, there were not even ten righteous in Sodom, but it is disputable whether an exact analogy can be made between a true nation or political society and what is depicted as Sodom, Gomorrah, and Zoar.
And as for the narrative's continuation about the elderly Lot and his daughters who abused him in a cave, well, such depravity does exist in this republic, but thus far there is no justification to presume it is condoned, much less prevalent.
My point is that Providence is 'in' and 'through' our (and others') hands. The future is not yet fully determined concerning the destiny of this republic or its citizens.
The very recent superb reflection delivered by Fr. George Rutler at "The Red Mass" of the New York Guild of Catholic Lawyers two days ago (reprinted at the Catholic World Report website) illustrates this very well.
Noteworthy among his remarks are the following:
"1245 was thirty years after Magna Carta. Its text does not resound with soaring rhetoric for it is a turgid and rather tedious web of feudal laws and intricate customs without contemporary parallels, but its clarion declaration, almost missed if you do not read it carefully, is that the king himself is subject to laws of justice. As Archbishop of Canterbury, the saintly Stephen Langton helped compose it, based on an earlier charter of Henry II. Its chronology is complicated, for Pope Innocent III had excommunicated King John seven years earlier for rejecting the appointment of Langton in violation of the Concordat of London. Then he became the king’s protector when he condemned Magna Carta Libertatum, not for its assertion of the rights of freemen, but for lack of consultation by the king as a vassal of the pontiff. The pope, born Lotario dei Conti di Segni, had been elected at the age of 37 and was a trained lawyer, reforming legal codices and abolishing abuses of justice such as torture in trial by ordeal. He would sanction Magna Carta when John was succeeded by his son Henry III. There is a connection between those then and us now, not only legally, for while no one signed Magna Carta, (the twenty-five barons attached their seals to it), twenty four of them were the direct or collateral ancestors of George Washington.
It was also for subtle caution that in 1752 the theologians of the Sorbonne and the Holy See condemned Monestquieu’s “Spirit of the Laws” which became a fountainhead for the separation of executive, legislative, and judiciary powers. The author of “De l’esprit des lois” was far from irreligious, even if his theology was shaky. He says, “What a wonderful thing is the Christian religion! It seems to aim only at happiness in a future life, and yet it secures our happiness in this life also.” This hero of Hamilton, Madison and Jay as they wrote the “Federalist” papers died with the sacraments of the Church."
Our era, like every era, is one of trials and struggles. We can be persons of dis-courage and lament what is lacking, or we can be persons of courage and fight to supply for those lacks.
Good points. And I agree. People need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Yet in order to know what direction needs to be taken to be part of the solution, we do need to be aware of the problem.
ReplyDeleteThe prophets of Israel and Judah who went up and down their lands crying "Woe!" and "Repent!" were sent by God to call their kingdoms to repentance. We need to see that the Church is imploding and our democracy is being undermined in order to offer an informed prayer for help to God and to our kindred spirits.
As to our country, while it was never a Christian nation in the full Catholic sense, I grant that the Christian faith played an important role in the thinking of many of those who established our institutions.
But so did non-Catholic and anti-Catholic movements. In many ways this Republic at its founding was a Protestant and Masonic dream come true.
After WWII many Catholic scholars (like Fr. John Courtney Murray, SJ, and Jacques Maritain) called for Catholics to whole-heartedly get behind the American experiment, thinking that what was good for America's 'secular faith' (separation of church and state) and generic 'civil religion,' would be good for Catholicism. Even in the previous century, prominent US Catholic bishops were lining up with a 'denominational' view of Catholicism behind the American vision of religious liberty, condemned as the heresy of 'Americanism' by (I think) Leo XIII.
Where has this vision of 'Liberty' brought us today? One need go no farther than the morning news. But a terrific analysis is that of Christopher A. Ferrara in Liberty: The God That Failed. 'Liberty' has come untethered from any notion of natural law, responsibility, much less Christian faith.
This doesn't mean that we don't work to join forces with the residual good in America. We are obliged to do that much; and so we pray and work for a positive outcome in the November election, even if that means no more than stopping Killary's juggernaut toward the White House.
One of the best treatments I have seen of the sort of cooperation with the residual forces of light you seem to be suggesting is John Horvat II's Return to Order, which, however, is not sanguine about our fortunes in the short run. Things may collapse. Our national debt alone is $20 trillion; and few have a clue what THAT means. Furthermore, our younger generations are dropping out of Church in droves in proportion to their ignorance of the Catholic Faith, just as they are backing socialistic and oligarchic candidates in proportion to their media-fed ignorance about their own national (not to mention world-) history.
The hour is late.
I should leave it to others to take the discussion from here.
ReplyDeleteYes, overall your sober last paragraph in your response is accurate.
But it is not 'this vision of "Liberty"' that has brought us where we are today. Rather, one has had the fierce imposition of evils and injustices by factions seeking their own selfish and ungodly objectives.
What has failed secularity is not 'this vision of "Liberty",' but rather Catholics. Since the post-Vatican II era it is they who have been the ever more absent coherent leaven within secularity.
And with that ever more brazen and more evil ideological secularism in all its forms has eroded any residual sound customs and residues of natural law within contemporary society.
One can agree with many particulars proposed by Mr. Ferrara while having a reservation or two about whether 'liberty', as such, is the evil he seems to portray.
And, arguably, the Church will not again be a leaven in exactly every manner or style it was in prior eras.
I wouldn't say it's "liberty" as such that was the problem, but a conception of liberty increasingly untethered from a larger context of values. Three ideas that, properly understood, serve as checks on one another are 'liberty,' 'equality,' and 'justice. The two most abused ideas the the first two, unhinged from properly-understood justice. To grossly overstate, laissez faire capitalism isolates and absolutizes 'liberty', while communism does the same with 'equality.' What has happened to 'liberty' in the atomistic and individualistic post-Christian culture of the West is that it has shifted in meaning from the 'liberty' we have as slaves of Christ (liberty governed by original justice), to the liberty of doing whatever the blazes we want (original ungoverned at all).
ReplyDeleteDear Doc. I have had a Britt family (From Salisbury) of six staying with us so I am quite tardy addressing the response of anonymous and I can do so now only by firing from the lip.
ReplyDeleteAmerica seceded from the Crown in a revolution led by Judaised Protestants who desired their self-serving establishment be liberated from a religion that should on an even footing vis a vis opposition to their political will.
Privatising religion meant that the one true religion would be kept permanently at war with the various false religions and that war would tend to have the result that the oligarchs would remain relatively free from effective opposition.
Off the top of my head I can not think of any country that has legally done what this crummy country has done vis a vis the Sins Crying to Heaven for Vengeance.
I do not see how it can be said that these United States are not at war with Jesus Christ given what we have legalised in positive law directly against His Kingship.
The Papal Encyclicals of Pope Leo XII alone ( I will include others when I can return) illustrate how insane, evil, and sucicidal, it is for a country to do what we have done.
O, and I just skimmed through your excellent response and I saw a reference to Abraham and Sodom and it reminded me of when I was in CYO (Catholic Youth Organization) in the 1960s when the Priest teaching the class asked us adolescent males what we though of the reading and I said that it most certainly represented the first historical instance of someone jewing another down.
That was not the only time i was asked to leave the class (even though the priest did have a hint of a smirk) nor was it the only time I risked punishment for a laugh from the crowd.
MJGNM,
ReplyDeleteYour last line brought a smile to my face. At my erstwhile institution in NC, a Jewish Biblical professor actually used that very phrase in the same context: Abraham was "Jewing God down," he said. Seems pretty harmless to me, as well as eminently amusing. Jews are smart negotiators.
Dear Mr. Jagger. Probably, there are many things in general about which I would agree with you.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you obviously make no acknowledgement of the specifics involved in the historical context in which this republic was founded.
As well, you do not consider at all which specific factors or agents, in differing times, ways and intensities, have actually undermined sound principles operative in this republic in order to bring about its adulteration and degradation.
As for that degradation, one of the principal causes, I would argue, was the (temporary) disorientation and disintegration of the Catholic Church during the last half century.
I again observe that the adulteration of liberty to an 'atomistic and individualistic post-Christian' understanding is not absolutely pervasive.
But it is prominent because powerful influence of ideological secularism use all their resources to make it so and to accelerate its dominance.
However, a great number of persons who comprise this 'polity' still manifest lives in fundamental accord with natural and divine law. They use their liberty to live in accord with primary virtues, to have and defend their families, and to serve others and God.
Of course, we are at a threshold of no return for this republic, humanly speaking, but it is not prudent to condemn what still manifests the true or good because some (even though it might be a large number who comprise 'some') abuse both understanding and desire.
I would no more judge this republic in terms of specific persons who have adulterated and abused its principles to undermine true law and turn this republic's enormous power and wealth towards evil ends than I would judge the Catholic Church in terms of its (for the most part) for a time dominant mediocre and cowardly prelates, clergy, religious and muddled laity.
Best regards.
Let me get this right. You admit that 'some' (who you seem to admit could be the majority of people in this country) have been corrupted by secularism, that we're at the point of no return, but you nevertheless see the American republic as basically intact, and, like the Church, essentially unblemished by the crimes and misdemeanors of its caretakers?
ReplyDeleteActually, I did not say or imply that 'the majority' of citizens in this country have been corrupted by ideological secularism. We have no certitude concerning this matter.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I did say that we are at 'a threshold of no return,' in that this election is truly critical since Clinton will undermine any possibility of reestablishing conditions for sound principles that its founding implies, while with Trump there will, at least, be efforts to bring about certain of those essential conditions.
I made an effort to choose my words carefully when phrasing statements and using qualifiers, but if you wish to criticize what I said without taking those things into account that is your choice.
Best regards.
Not at all (no intentions to ignore the intent behind your words). Just curious, that's all. You seem to be somewhat realistic about the dire straits in which we are politically at present, yet also more optimistic about the integrity of the American republic than most conservative Catholics are today and more sceptical than most about our ability to tell which way the wind of public opinion is blowing. I think it's pretty obvious.
ReplyDeleteYou may be correct that I differ from certain 'conservative Catholics'.
ReplyDeleteSome look at the proverbial half-empty or three-fourths-empty glass and insist it is necessarily going to be utterly empty by 'x' point in time.
Others, in contrast, insist upon the possibility that, if certain factors or conditions come to exist, [e.g.: reestablishing certain fundamental conditions that encourage natural law to be operative among greater and greater numbers of the citizenry; encourage the founding and conservation of integral families; encourage the expansion of true subsidiarity and all that implies, etc.], then this republic's historical demise is not necessarily as imminent as some conjecture.
Providence often achieves some surprisingly rectified outcomes with crooked lines; yet one should always be cautious in presuming to 'divine' Providence.
Perhaps, just having lived as a Catholic for a few decades tends to incline me to not be as pessimistic as some are tempted to be regarding any presumed utter corruption of human beings or their ability to respond to graces; just as it restrains me from ever assuming that they are or ever will be in this life utterly perfect.
ReplyDeleteI would no more judge this republic in terms of specific persons who have adulterated and abused its principles to undermine true law and turn this republic's enormous power and wealth towards evil ends than I would judge the Catholic Church in terms of its (for the most part) for a time dominant mediocre and cowardly prelates, clergy, religious and muddled laity
Well, Jesus Christ has always been the head of His One True Church and He sent the Holy Spirit upon it to teach it all truth and it has never changed its teachings because that would mean that Jesus Christ has changed whereas who is the head of this Republic who guards it from creating error until the end of time?
As for the putative republic that Franklin said we had if we could keep it, many atavists have their favorite satan who destroyed it but I like to think of Abe Lincoln, the slayer of state sovereignty, as the tyrant who iced the republic and used the Constitution as a Toe Tag.
Who do you think it is who will restore the Republic and cause it to rise from the dead so Uncle Sam can, once again, beside the fruited plains insisting on the spiritually suicidal separation of Church and State?
Yes, Jesus the Christ established and is head of the One True Church and it is guided by the Holy Ghost.
ReplyDeleteAnd it has certainly has its ups and downs and ins and outs during the last 2000+ years(and one should not forget many regimes that waxed and waned that in varying ways and degrees were influenced by the true Church), so why should one be so utterly condemnatory and disdainful of this republic.
Franklin's remark remains just as pertinent now as when he first reportedly said it. And Lincoln, indeed, along with many others, has contributed to compromising and undermining the original intent and operative principles of this 'polity'.
As for who might 'restore' it, I suppose one can only say that, as usual, Providence is in the hands of all those here and now who are willing and capable of striving for what needs to be done. Whether and what will be achieved is being forged at present.
Incidentally, the 'separation' issue is obviously more subtle than what is caricatured by advocates of ideological secularism, just as the notion of a 'confessional state' is more complex historically than what that notion designated during the Protestant 'Reformation'.
There is not one thing that can be done by any true patriots for their votes literally do not count. If you think their votes did count and if you think there are more than a few patriots alive then explain how we ended up with the POTUS candidates we have.
ReplyDeleteAmerica ended a long long time ago and it ain't ever coming back. The best that can be hoped for is only a reasonable amount of internicene violence as our evil empire collapses back within itself.
The restoration I hope for is one along the lines of the original secession from the English crown with our crummy country breaking-up into regional confederations.
Let the souless bastids in the northeast and the far west keep their crummy states with their baby-killing sodomitic creed and I will live in the southern confederation where at least there remains a bit of christian civility and a shit ton of men with guns. I know I am leaving out a lot of states but, frankly, those stases are too damn cold of heart and climate for me too care much about.