The War

The first major battle of the Civil War, the battle of Bull Run, took place near Manassas, Virginia, not far from our nation’s capital. Most Northerners expected an easy victory, and many civilians, carrying picnic baskets, followed the Union force, planning to watch the battle as if it were a sporting event. You can imagine their surprise when the Confederate troops not only won the battle but forced a Union retreat. Suddenly all those curious civilians became unwilling participants in the battle and ran for their lives. Most managed to escape, although one New York congressman was captured and spent many months in a Richmond prison. The battle convinced many Americans the Civil War would last far longer than anticipated.

Today we, too, are in the midst of a war, a very different war, one against demonic forces. I suspect most Americans don't realize this and assume, as one person recently told me “It’s just politics.” But it's not. It's a full-fledged, declared war against our civilization's foundational religious and moral values. To undermine these values the enemy first disguised their battle tactics as merely political, but then, realizing this couldn’t guarantee success, they decided, rather boldly, to claim traditional values are exactly the opposite of what people generally believe. The moral, then, became immoral, the good became evil, the Godly became diabolic, and vice versa. 

Our president has, willingly or not, joined the demonic forces as he accuses pro-life and pro-marriage Americans of being "white supremacists" and "extremists." Indeed, he slapped the same labels on anyone who objects to his economic agenda and went on to define “MAGA Republicans” as those who believe Americans have “no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who (sic) you love...MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.” Here we see a perfect example of the reversal of good and evil, where the truth is shrouded in a “shadow of lies.” And not surprisingly, he said little about his economic agenda, and nothing about inflation, gas prices, or border security.

And the demonic forces? Radical left or radical right, it makes little difference. Although the communists of the USSR and Mao’s China called themselves “international socialists” and the Nazis called themselves “national socialists,” both sought one thing: power. Both used that power to slaughter millions they considered threats. Both applied near identical methods to achieve total control over their populations. And surprise, surprise! Both claimed to be socialists. Today, though, the greatest threat to our civilization comes from the ideologues of the radical left. Yes, they rule China, a nation determined to replace American influence in the world. But they also educate our youth in high schools and colleges. You’ll find lots of victimized snowflakes, the left’s “useful idiots,” in every college classroom, but you’ll have to search long and hard to find a neo-Nazi on a campus. 

Because many of the radical left’s desired outcomes carry highly negative connotations, euphemisms abound. Abortion, the willful slaughter of today’s Holy Innocents, is disguised and celebrated as women’s health. Total control of our nation's citizenry (that's you and me) is disguised as national healthcare, or the patriotic search for enemies, or gun control, or necessary suppression of misinformation. To criticize an actual enemy — for example, the Chinese Communist Party or the Taliban — becomes racism. Global warming, because the facts keep getting in the way, is redefined safely as “Climate Change.” “Follow the science,” we’re told, even though the science, as always, is far from settled. For decades some scientists and pseudoscientific experts have issued a stream of predictions, each telling us the world will end on some future date that is inevitably forgotten as it moves into the past. But this doesn’t stop those in power from destroying the economy to protect us from terrors that never materialize. Why do they do this? If you want the truth, don’t bother following the science, just follow the money.

As I have often said on this blog, probably far too often, the left has focused primarily on abortion; it’s their sine qua non. For almost 50 years, since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, abortion was legal. But then in 2022 the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, claiming "The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision." The court, then, decided to "return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives.” 

Abortion, no longer nationally legal, suddenly became a state and local issue. And so other moral issues now take center stage and the enemy has extended its reach to include transgenderism, even pedophilia, and the indoctrination of school children in sexual perversion. These are all celebrated as acceptable lifestyle choices and offered as positive alternatives to the intolerance of religion, especially Christianity, the bete noire of the radical left. Yes, indeed, just listen to the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC, et al and you will discover that Christianity is a racist religion of white supremacy. Following the same script, a highly politicized FBI decided that traditional Catholics were likely domestic terrorists and white supremacists. We’re it not so serious, it would actually be humorous since I know people of all races who regularly attend Latin Masses. The feds actually planned to, and likely did, infiltrate Catholic churches in which Latin Masses were celebrated. It doesn’t take a Constitutional scholar to recognize that the Department of Justice apparently isn’t bothered by First Amendment concerns.

It’s not just freedom of religion that’s under attack; it’s religion itself. And believe it or not, some people, far too many people, have bought into this. Let me just highlight one very recent example. Our president just proclaimed March 31, 2023 a Transgender Day of Visibility, and then using Twitter celebrated the day with some remarkable words: 

“On Transgender Day of Visibility we want you to know that we see you just as you are: Made in the image of God and deserving of dignity, respect, and support. We'll never stop working to create a world where you won't have to be brave just to be yourself.”

President Biden then went on to issue a lengthy proclamation on the Transgender Day of Visibility. It’s a bizarre proclamation, but worth your time if only to understand better who our president really is. We know our “devoutly Catholic” president openly rejects Church teaching on most moral and many theological issues. Reading his transgender day proclamation only confirms how distant he is from the Church. I think we can stop pretending Joe Biden is a Catholic since he ignores or openly attacks Church teaching. 

Of course, like all of us, so-called “trans” people were made in God’s image and likeness, but for them, that seems to be the problem. They want to change what God has done, to alter the image and likeness He created. In other words, they and their enablers want to assume God’s power, to become little gods able to recreate humanity in their own image, and a false image at that. If we truly “follow the science” we discover that DNA is forever, that males are males and females are females, just as God made them.

The timing of the president’s proclamation also seems a bit unusual. Just days before, a transgender woman had slaughtered six people, including three young children, at a Christian school in Nashville. She was killed by a team of courageous and competent police officers who responded and surely saved many more lives. Since then, some in the trans community have called her Nashville’s seventh victim, even though she was the murderer of six innocent people, and certainly no victim. To emphasize their obvious disdain for those six victims in that Christian school, a radical trans mob, led by several legislators, stormed the Tennessee legislature protesting guns but not murderer or the death of Christians. It is all, of course, symptomatic of the culture of death that St. John Paul described in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium vitae (The Gospel of Life): 

“…this situation, with its lights and shadows, ought to make us all fully aware that we are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and life, the ‘culture of death’ and the ‘culture of life.’ We find ourselves not only ‘faced with’ but necessarily ‘in the midst of’ this conflict: We are all involved and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life” (Evangelium vitae, 28).

Trans, pro-abortion, LGBTQ, and all the rest…it’s all of one piece, all part of Satan’s effort to undermine and destroy the domestic church, that is, the family, and to lead people away from God and His one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. The deceiver, who was “a murderer from the beginning…a liar and the father of lies” [Jn 8:44], uses whomever he can to spread evil throughout God’s creation. In the end, of course, he will fail, but how many souls will he take with him? 

As Christians we cannot sit on the sidelines and passively observe the battle. Like the tourists at Bull Run, we must eventually recognize and accept our involvement.