Sunday Meditation: Catholicism and Liberalism Can't Coexist! Why? Because of What it Means to be Catholic.

The fullness of the truth and the glory of God expressed in art, architecture, and music are found in the Catholic Church. She invites us to a closer union with God through the true, the good & the beautiful.

To know and understand the world you live in serves in many ways to free one from the tyranny of confusion and chaos that swirls around us. The fact is that we live in Liberalism Land. I could call it Liberalism Loony Land for it often seems we slog through a Slough of Despond where everything is upside down, backwards, and inside out. A number of isms control the narrative today, a predominant one being liberalism, a philosophy of lunacy.

Let's define it. Liberalism is a belief system that replaces God with man. Those who embrace liberalism no longer look to God, the author of all life and creation, for the answers to life's challenges. The proponent of liberalism instead embraces man, his ideas and desires, as the primary arbiter of all things. Liberalism also bases its authority on the individual and his personal conscience, rather than the collective. It denies any absolute truth outside the individual's own will. Reality as what he perceives and interprets internally. That's why you hear so many liberals say, "You have your truth; I have my truth." There can be no common understanding about the world, because there is no objective truth binding on all, only the beliefs and choices of the individual which are sacrosanct and can't be questioned. 

It would be good here to review Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany's definition of liberalism from his work, Liberalism is a Sin. He gives four principles describing liberalism's "propaganda."

1.  The absolute sovereignty of the individual in his entire independence of God and God's authority.
2.  The absolute sovereignty of society in its entire independence of everything which does not proceed from itself.
3.  Absolute civil sovereignty in the implied reight of the people to make their own laws in entire independence and utter disregard of any other criterion than the popular will expressed in the polls and in parliamentary majorities.
4.  Absolute freedom of thought in politics, morals, or in religion. The unrestrained liberty of the press.

Considering all these points, it's obvious that liberalism is the "religion" of many people and, in fact, the secular religion of the United States. Separation of Church and state is a pernicious doctrine that has led to the current disastrous situation where abortion is a federal sacrament and reality is nothing but an opinion, where the state thinks it owns our children who would be better off raised by homosexuals. "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!" "Parents are domestic terrorists!"

 The first amendment freedoms of speech and press have devolved into absolute license to spew sewage into the minds and hearts of our people including innocent children, not to mention mutilating the bodies of minors before they are mature enough to have any idea about what they are doing to themselves. 

Let's face it. The government wants all of us -- body and soul -- as slaves of the imperialist gods of the bureaucracy. Bend the knee to Caesar or prepare for the swat team invasion.

Contrast this dismal picture with the Catholic world. What does it mean to be a Catholic? A Catholic recognizes God as the creator and Lord of both heaven and earth. As creatures, we belong to Him, not ourselves. He gave us free will, not so we could be free to sin, but to love Him freely. Catholics know that their greatest happiness is to conform their wills to the will of God who wants us to be happy with Him for all eternity. He knows us from the tip of our heads where every hair is counted to the soles of our feet which were made to walk in His ways. 

The Creed gives a brief summary of our beliefs. We worship a Trinitarian God, the Father Who Created all things through the Word, Jesus Christ Whom He sent to redeem us after our rebellion. Jesus reopened the gates of heaven so we are no longer permanent exiles. After His Resurrection, He sent the Holy Spirit to fill us with zeal to spread the good news of God's sacrificial and limitless love and inspire us to imitate Him and love our neighbor and work for the common good. 

We believe in the Holy Sacrament of the altar that feeds our souls and unites us with our brothers and sisters in the one, holy, universal, and apostolic faith. We believe in the Mystical Body that unites us with those in heaven and the poor souls in Purgatory. We believe that God has given us the sacraments as sources of grace. We believe in the ministerial priesthood where our beloved spiritual fathers forgive our sins, nourish us with Christ's Body and Blood, and aid us in our dying in persona Christi.

The Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ and passed on through the ages through Scripture and Sacred Tradition is the unfailing guide to bring us to the safe harbor of eternal life. How grateful I am that I was born into a Catholic family, nurtured in the faith, forgiven for my many sins, and united to Christ in the Holy Eucharist. I often pray for all my ancestors who passed on the faith and protected what became my birthright. How much I want to pass it on to my children and grandchildren and everyone whose life I touch. I love the faith and thank God for it and beg my guardian angel to never let me stray from the path.

May Jesus Christ be praised!