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Sunday, August 14, 2005

From the early days of 1942...

The reason the world is at war is that the rulers of people and the people themselves have spurned or forgotten God and God’s commandments. Many of the sufferers on both sides are innocent victims, thinking and praying as we are thinking and praying for peace, a peace with justice.


We sympathize with them and with ourselves in this predicament, for our hopes and our help go out to all the suffering peoples. Our prayers are with the living and with the dead. Yet we ourselves must look to the lesson that their plight and our own plight teach that we must put our own house in order against those who through malice or ignorance would tear it down. This means that we must be vigilant against internals as well as external enemies.


When I went to school, freedom of the press meant the presentation of facts with decency and sincerity. Now, there are those to whom freedom of the press means license to publish pornographic literature and to distribute it freely with the resulting corruption of minds and morals. When I went to school, freedom of religion meant just what it said. Now it seems to include the freedom to destroy religion. When I went to school, freedom of speech consisted of saying indeed what one believed to be true, but it did not include the prerogative of making venomous, subversive speeches against our form of government and the public advocacy of violent measures to overthrow it. When I went to school, freedom of assembly was not interpreted to mean the right to browbeat and headcrack law-abiding citizens minding their own business.


What are we going to do about it?


We should try to live ourselves and let others live in accordance with God’s commandments and in accordance with the Constitution of the United States. As far as we possibly can do so, we should try to put God back into education, into the home, into government. At the present time there are two very separate camps into which the world is divided. One of these groups is striving to raise the standard of living. It is a much-used phrase and in no place is its meaning wider and more true than in the United States.


We are pioneers and leaders in raising the standard of living. In the spiritual sense, as well as the material, no force has done more the raise the standard of living than the Church. And when I say "standard of living" I mean standard of living in all the possible phases of its meaning but especially do I emphasize the standard of living righteously, living in accordance with the laws of God, God’s commandments.


In that sense not every American nor every Church member is raising the standard of living. There are also destructive forces in America. And for a juxta-phrase, I would say that these forces and these nefarious influences may be characterized as representing hordes who are "raising the standard of killing," not only of killing bodies but of killing souls. God has been taken out of life, education, industry, and political activities. Now we are reaping the whirlwind.


When God is taken out of human life, when God is torn from the foundations of human living, diverted from the motivation of human actions, when God is supplanted by a substitute as the mainspring of human ambitions, then standards of morality are lowered and conversely standards of killing souls and bodies are raised.


-Francis Cardinal Spellman, The Road to Victory

1 comment:

  1. Wow. For a second, I was like, did she write this? Then, I didn't believe it, it doesn't reely sound like you, but I thought, just maybe, until I read the end. "Francis Cardinal Spellman." ;^)

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