By Judie Brown
The world is turning upside down. One by one, people are dying like flies because they either want to die or because they want their babies to die. The Hippocratic principle of “first do no harm” is now a relic.
In Peru, a psychologist who contracted a rare disease went to court to get permission to kill herself and it was granted after she argued, “I want to accede to euthanasia when I can no longer sustain suffering in life.”
In North Carolina, a law exists that prohibits most abortions after the preborn baby is 12 weeks of age in utero, and this law is described as a threat by the proponents of abortion on demand. The law is unprincipled, yet it is a threat to the purveyors of death. Planned Parenthood will spend 10 million dollars in that state to elect enough Democrats to overturn a flawed law that literally permits most abortion! You see, Planned Parenthood has its own principle: Kill as many as possible and make a killing doing it.
According to one study, young people between the ages of 18 and 30 are turning to sterilization or tubal ligation rather than practicing chastity before marriage and fidelity within marriage. In other words, the generation to which many of our children and grandchildren belong is anti-natalist from the get-go!
This is a tragic result of a national loss of faith in God, let alone the attitude that the truth will set you free. In this nation’s arrogance, the people have lost the sense of truth contained in the Gospel of John (14:13), where we read Christ’s words, “Whatever you ask in my name I will do.” But if our fellow citizens do not know these profound words or trust in the mercy of God, how can we begin to turn the tide away from the evils that comprise the culture of death?
We are seeing a growing trend to ignore or deny the natural law, preferring instead the type of self-absorption that leads to rack and ruin.
Yet into the malaise comes the voice of reason in the person of Bishop Joseph Strickland, who recently tweeted,
I urge all faithful Catholics to speak up, enough is enough. Enough with silent shepherds, enough with a corrupt Vatican, enough with blasphemies & desecration of Jesus Christ. Let us denounce so called bishops who bless sin & hide wolves among the sheep. ENOUGH! pic.twitter.com/EVQ20pEei9
— Bishop J. Strickland (@BishStrickland) April 23, 2024
“I urge all faithful Catholics to speak up, enough is enough. Enough with silent shepherds, enough with a corrupt Vatican, enough with blasphemies & desecration of Jesus Christ. Let us denounce so called bishops who bless sin & hide wolves among the sheep. ENOUGH!”
And therein resides the solution. If the pulpits were alive with authentic teaching, Catholics would be inspired to stave off and defeat the enemy. Our foe is voracious, while many of our alleged leaders are weak. We know this is not news to you, but at times we should take a step back and note the depth of this horror. Rotting from within can be ruinous, but we know that Christ is victorious.
This is why we will not stop encouraging the men of God to teach simple truth from the platform provided to them by the fact of their ordination to the priesthood. We pray they will teach Catholics why in vitro fertilization is wrong. We pray they will help their flock understand that contraception was condemned by the Church long ago because it is the gateway to promiscuity, abortion, and so much more that is wrong in the eyes of God and that it goes against the teachings of the Church.
As we do this, we keep in mind the words that Saint John Paul II wrote in Veritatis Splendor (#42): “Patterned on God’s freedom, man’s freedom is not negated by his obedience to the divine law; indeed, only through this obedience does it abide in the truth and conform to human dignity.” We are called to use the power of prayer, fasting, and teaching to help others see that respecting the principles contained in the Ten Commandments, including “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” will heal the culture, restore respect for the innocent, and pave the way toward cultural renewal, one precious soul at a time.
