The Sun Sets On America

As a veteran of the American culture war for many years, I have watched many election returns that left me disappointed. Paradoxically, the 2012 presidential election was one in which the challenger – a Mormon neo-conservative – was someone for whom I had serious misgivings. That said, the reelection of Barack Obama – and the many other defeats for the pro-life and pro-marriage movements – hit me like a punch to the gut. It is not as if I expected the American populace to become virtuous overnight, but all the same I was shell shocked.

Three things in particular made this election different in kind from our gradual cultural and religious downward slide: (1) the war for the soul of our nation has been lost; (2) faithful Christians will now become an object of public scorn among the elite, the Hollywood types, and the media; and (3) the de facto schism of the Am-Church has come out into the open.

When our history is written, 2012 will be seen as the beginning of the end of Christian society in America. It will be seen as the beginning of the new totalitarian age.   I am reminded of one of the first scenes of the original Star Wars movie in which Peter Cushing's character, Governor Tarkin, triumphantly pronounces that, "[t]he last vestiges of the old republic have been swept away."

There were other dates: 1865 (which saw the centralizing powers of the Federal Government under the guise of the Civil War Amendments); 1932 (the beginning of American socialism in the New Deal and end of the American gold standard); 1973 (when the Supreme Court allowed the unfettered destruction of American babies in utero).  There things were more or less foreordained by the founding documents themselves, which of course, were creatures of Enlightenment.

While Traditional Catholics are generally no fans of the American political system – standing in stark contrast to the Vatican II apologists who laud the American system as divinely ordained – we should be able to acknowledge that what made it generally better than virtually any contemporary alternative was its spiritual and practical impotence. Stated differently, while the American Constitutional model did not posit the Truth – it nonetheless left those privy to the Truth alone.

But that day is now passing.

With the sound defeat of pro-life and pro-marriage efforts across the board, even the very basic elements that make a civilized society possible (life, family and marriage) have been defeated.  And these losses cannot be overcome in future elections for two reasons:  First, what Governor Romney said about the culture of dependency of 47% of the American people and therefore their collectively hostility to the message of limited government and personal responsibility was politically toxic but nonetheless accurate.  Plato's critique of democracy was prophetic:  a larger and larger proportion of people feed at the trough of government largess and use their expanding numbers to enhance their lifestyles at the expense of others.  Their values and self-respect diminish accordingly.  We have reached a tipping point, and the party in power will, in demagogic fashion, continue to nurture their dependency in decadent symbiosis.  

Second, the Republican Party is a "white" party and the demographics do not favor a majority "white" party attaining a majority status ever again.  It is unfortunate indeed that Hispanic Catholics or Black Baptists will not vote for the politicians who advocate life and marriage, but identity politics have trumped all other considerations.

What amazes me is that it was only a dozen years ago when sodomy was criminally punishable; now "relationships" based in sodomy are deemed to be on par with a woman and a man—a mother and father—joined together in holy matrimony.

It was only forty years ago when back-alley abortionists were imprisoned for killing babies in the womb.  But now these murderers are celebrated as heroes of civil rights, freedom riders.  What Larry Flynt was imprisoned for thirty years ago is now available on cable television in millions of homes – with stuff one-thousand times more debauched, on demand, at virtually in every hotel in this country.  

This conflict between the forces of good and forces of evil has been going on for years but what distinguishes 2012 from the past is that the forces of evil – at least in a secular and political sense – have triumphed.  This country will never outlaw abortion again and will raise homosexual liaisons to the status of "marriage" in the whole of American society.  

We have seen the last obscenity prosecution. Most children will be born out of wedlock.  Fewer and fewer heterosexuals will bother with marriage and simply shack up.  The few children left to be adopted will be apportioned among homosexuals and childless heterosexual married couples. God forgive us.

The loss of culture war means that the victors will – in true totalitarian fashion – refuse to tolerate dissenters.  This ideological purification will be multifaceted but the flashpoint will be homosexuality.  An economic persecution will follow for those who merely  speak the truth regarding homosexuality – facilitated by modern reeducation camps (i.e., mandatory diversity training for the employed and the student).  The days are coming to an end when an essay such as this one will be tolerated.  There will be a parental persecution:  homeschooling, the last vestige of defiance of a secular education monopoly, will come under assault.  The rights of parents – the very bonds between mother and father and child – will be redefined within a generation.  The state will become co-parent and ‘protector’ of children from their own parents.  Dissemination of religious ideas that contravene the prevailing ideology will be outlawed.  

Gross exaggerations?  Please! Forty-five years ago contraception was illegal in some states and restricted to married couples in other states.  Today, even Catholic institutions are mandated to pay for it because it is, according to our leader, a great social good.  

In the face of these assaults, the first line of resistance should be the Church.  But herein lies the problem:  the fifth column within the Church agrees with many of these changes.  They see the takeover of economic activity in a socialist frenzy as the logical working out of our Lord's social ministry.  They see the acceptance of homosexuality as an outgrowth of Christian compassion.   They dodge criminalizing abortion on the grounds of religious pluralism.  And yet, even still, the Society of Saint Pius X is harassed around the world as "schismatic" for clinging tenaciously to what was taught from time immemorial in the face of modernist assault.  The cowardly modern bishops, on the other hand, have allowed their flocks to be devoured by wolves.   

What we need now more than ever is an uncompromising voice in the Church:  we need Bishops who will proclaim the whole Gospel – not engage in mind-numbing dialogue with those who persist in error. We need Bishops who will proclaim the truth that outside of the Roman Catholic Church there is no hope and no salvation.  We need Bishops who excommunicate public officials who perpetuate the "legal" murder of the innocents in the womb.

If there were any clearer proof of the utter failure of Vatican II's "openness" to the world, it is the complete collapse of Catholicism in the United States.  How can any serious Catholic celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the catalyst of our own demise?  It makes as much sense as the people of Dresden celebrating their firebombing as a public works project. 

The day of reckoning is coming for a Church that provides its flock with a flaccid liturgy and watered-down gospel of sentimental claptrap.  Two generations have been lost thus far:  the results are clear – a majority of Catholics voted for a President who was willing to force Catholic institutions to pay for birth control.  We have come a long way from the days when Catholics would listen to their bishops.  Two millennia of Catholic authority was destroyed in two generations:  unbelievable.

The de facto schism among our cowardly bishops and many priests will lead to a situation much like that of the French Revolution when there were two kinds of priests – one state-approved and one an outlaw; one apostate, and one Catholic.  Already we see signs of this.  Canadian pastors are being prosecuted for hate crimes merely for paraphrasing the biblical admonition against homosexuality.   History is repeating itself. All of this happened in Mexico only eighty years ago; it happened in Eastern Europe sixty years ago, and it is happening in Western Europe now.  

Already in our own "Christian" families division has set in—moral and religious differences that now make even shared holidays impossible. The decision to have a lot of children is seen as irresponsible, even by grandparents sometimes.  The decision to homeschool is viewed as bizarre, by neighbors, friends and even family members. Religiosity is seen as sanctimonious.  Conservative social views are troubling and regarded as bigoted.  

But there are precedents for it all.  If we must be outcasts for the Lord, then outcasts we will be.  Like our forefathers in similar periods of history, we will raise up Christian warriors who will face challenges that most of us would never have believed possible.  We rally behind those priests and religious who speak the Truth – and we must resist.  

The silver lining in any great persecution is that the gray areas all disappear.  It will be easy to tell the enemies from the friends of God.  We will know them and we will not be alone.  

So we pray, and we vow not to give up the fight for the unborn, for children, for old people, for the disabled.   We continue doing the best we can every day to build up Christian relationships that will provide the support and succor to see us through.  We band together in prayer and faith – to think our Christian friends as extended family. We will build whole communities of economically sufficient traditional Catholics.  We will rediscover our connection to the land and take up the plough again.  

There is much to be done – but hope and faith will see us through.