by Jack Rigert:
Dinner was spectacular, as was the wine and dessert. But that is to be expected at the weekly Thursday night gathering at mom and dad’s house. Mom is a retired professional chef and restauranteur and has yet to disappoint me or anyone else who stops by to relax and be refueled. What was not expected were the number of issues brought up for discussion. Forced vaccines, the planned immigration crisis on our southern border, morally corrupt criminals in the government, morally corrupt criminals in the Church, teaching critical race theory and gender ideologies in our schools, and labeling parents who speak up against them as domestic terrorists.
We barely began to address some of these issues when someone added the planned destruction of small businesses in favor of the big corporations who line the pockets of politicians and can be counted on to speak “woke” as well as back policies that weaken the economy, cause inflation, and solidify power in the hands of Socialists and Marxists. And what about the closing of Churches, the forced taxpayer funding of abortion, worldwide governments who use a virus to instill fear and consolidate power (never let a crisis go to waste), not to mention the horror of human organ harvesting by the Chinese Communist Party.
We could have gone on, but thankfully dad, a 95-year-old World War II veteran, wondered out loud, “most of this just doesn’t make rational sense.” He is right, of course. It never does when the morally corrupt rule the world. I answered him, “dad, what is even more disconcerting is to think about how many citizens of our country not only vote the corrupt into office but go one further; they accept and condone their practices and policies. Do you want to know why? The answer comes from a prophet who saw all this unfolding sixty-years ago.”
“Only those who live by faith really know what is happening in the world; the great masses without faith are unconscious of the destructive processes going on, because they have lost the vision of the heights from which they have fallen.”—Bishop Fulton Sheen
Sister Deirdre Byrne, M.D., a retired U.S. Army officer and graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Medicine, said the push to force everyone to receive abortion-tainted COVID-19 shots ‘has a diabolic flavor to it.’ A religious sister, general surgeon, and U.S. Army veteran, Sister Byrne took the nation by storm last year when she appeared at the Republican National Convention in full religious habit to give a stirring pro-life address while wielding her weapon: the rosary.
Now Byrne’s message for America is to pray and remain in a state of grace in the face of experimental COVID-19 vaccine mandates and a government she fears is headed toward communism. “This battle is not between the right and left, it’s not between conservatives and liberals or Republicans and Democrats, this is a battle between Our Lord and the devil,” and warned that everyone must choose a side.
In his homily on the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe late last year Cardinal Raymond Burke warned of the danger of “certain forces” who are using the cover of COVID-19 to promote “Fear,” attack freedom and the family, and so advance the “Great Reset.” He added, “Our nation is going through a crisis which threatens its very future as a free and democratic. The worldwide spread of Marxist materialism, which has already brought destruction and death to the lives of so many, and which has threatened the foundations of our nation for decades, now seems to seize the governing power over our nation.”
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano in a video message transmitted on a giant screen on Piazza Castello in Turin, where anti-green pass (vaccine pass) protestors were gathered for a “no fear day,” denounced the establishment of a health dictatorship in which both lay people and clerics have taken part: “It is disconcerting to see how all political forces, including the ones you might have expected to oppose the establishment of this health dictatorship, become accomplices of an elite of criminal conspirators,” he said, “rulers, magistrates, police forces, doctors and scientists, public and private officials, journalists, but also bishops and priests, and the Vatican leaders themselves. We have all understood, I think, that the pandemic is being used to bring about that Great Reset which has been planned at the World Economic Forum in Davos.”
This is an old story of course, a battle between the forces of good and evil, Our Lord and Satan, and one which man has been involved in since the fall. It is a history of suffering and a struggle for freedom and faith that my grandparents were only too aware. They fled Socialism and Communism in their native countries for the hope of a better life in the land of the free. They would be disappointed by what the country they so loved has become.
The man behind communism is Karl Marx. He was an evil man who thrust his evil ideology upon the world. He wrote, “This heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it well.” No other theory in all of history has led to the torture, starvation, and murder of so many innocents, with over 100 million killed in the last century. “Any ideology with a trail of rot like this is not of God but of the forces against God. It is not of God’s creation but a fallen angel’s anti-creation. It is not of the light but of the dark.” (Paul Kengor, ‘the Devil and Karl Marx)
In conclusion, the words of Abraham Lincoln to honor the soldiers that sacrificed their lives in order “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” were spoken at Gettysburg, but these words apply as well to the countless soldiers that died for the cause of democracy in the following 150 years. In the middle of the American Civil War he said, “We know that by his divine law nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world.” He believed that the American Civil War was a chastisement from God and that America had to humble itself and pray. On March 30, 1863, he proclaimed a National Day of Prayer and Fasting. He said, “It is the duty of nations, as well as of men to own their dependence on the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon.”
Then as now it will take a citizenry united in a cause greater than themselves to bring about the true, the good and the beautiful. It is obvious that we no longer have an Abraham Lincoln to lead us. Now each of us must muster the humble strength and courage to stand up for the truth knowing that until the man-made powers of the world subordinate themselves to the Truth and Wisdom of Christ, the chaos of force and power will prevail.
In the words of Saint John Paul II, “Be Not Afraid!”
