The Republican Platform: Keeping First Things First!

I think this is the best article yet re the upcoming election and how one should vote. There really is only one choice. 

Donald Trump and the Sovereign Rights of God

Barbara Farrah summarizes some of the positions already presented over the last few days, but she also points to Kennedy Hall's view which goes beyond politics.

Farrah's summary of the situation adds another thoughtful perspective to your discernment. Here's just a bit of what she writes:

Kennedy Hall gives us an entirely different way of viewing the election in his Crisis article “How the Pro-Life Movement Has Been a Trojan Horse for a Greater Sin.”

Like [Edward] Feser, he argues that there is a hierarchy of issues when it comes to casting our Catholic vote. But while Feser looks at the hierarchy in terms of specific human rights (the right to life, for example, takes priority over foreign policy), Hall looks at the hierarchy God gave us in the Ten Commandments. He emphasizes that the first three are devoted to the “rights of God”; and only then, once those rights are established and prioritized, does He give us the commandments regarding the “rights of man.” His rights take priority over our rights.

Hall then points out that America, along with all Western countries today, supports the sin of religious freedom—not religious freedom in the sense of all men being free to choose what to believe in, a right we all possess, but rather religious freedom in the sense in which it is meant and observed throughout the post-Christendom world today: religious indifference—the notion that all religions are equal—that gives the devil the “same rights as Christ.”

Kennedy Hall doesn't let the bishops off the hook either. Ever since the heresy of Americanism tainted our shores and our Church, many of our bishops have tried to just get along so Catholics will be accepted. We've seen how well that works, haven't we.

Farrah goes on:

In his book Changing Witness, Michael Warner traced how the U.S. bishops shifted their focus from saving souls to saving society, from changing hearts to changing laws, from promoting the rights of God to promoting the rights of man. Looking at the pro-life movement from the perspective Hall suggests, we can see that it has followed the bishops down this same path.

Its focus on ending abortion by ending the laws allowing it has made it just another wing of the Social Justice Movement in America. While liberal Catholics focused on defending the human rights of the “already born,” the pro-life movement focused on defending the human rights of the unborn—with neither side defending, first and foremost, the rights of God.

As happened within the Church when our focus shifted from God to Social Justice, so too has it happened outside the Church, as community after community fell away from believing in and trusting in—and most importantly fearing—God. We’ve seen the long-term effect that shift has had inside the Church, as more and more Catholics view their primary mission as saving the poor and oppressed (rather than saving souls) and viewing the means to attaining that as the secular State rather than the Sacraments.

We're in a mess, that's for sure. And much of it is directly due to the idolatry of "rights", not God's rights, but man's. Even our clergy have been deeply affected by it. Farrah describes the differences between the party platforms. The Republican platform recognizes God and calls for protecting us against the invasion by Islam; the Democrat platform champions Islam and religious indifferentism. 

Farrah comes to the conclusion, "When seen in this Light, it is clear that Catholics of all stripes have only one choice: to vote for Donald Trump and the sovereign rights of God."

Perhaps it's all lip service, but it is certainly a legitimate position to vote between the party platforms. That choice is as clear as a bell and it's the one that will define my vote. At the same time, I will never embrace the position, "My party right or wrong." When I was a precinct captain in Alexandria, I refused to give out literature for John Warner because of his radical pro-abortion stand. Since my precinct was a bastion of liberalism and they had no one else willing to head it, I got no argument. I always set up a pro-life table with fetal models and abortion info. That got me harassment from the folks inside one year and threats from the police. They backed down when I got the ACLJ involved. The saddest moment was when a neighbor whose children were adopted got into it with me. She only had children because their moms chose life, but she seemed to see no contradiction in her pro-abortion views.

I hate what Trump just did in Florida promising to make all Americans pay for immoral IVF treatments. He has no right to raid the taxpayers' pockets to do that and must be fought tooth and claw if he wins in November. That he might lose by his continued attacks on his base is a very real possibility at this point. If he does, I will see it as God's will that we deserve the Marxist sledgehammer that will descend on us for our lukewarm defense of the sovereign rights of God.

God illustrated in the Old Testament that he would use evil men and women and evil nations to punish the chosen people. Why would he not do the same to us? Do we deserve less than the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? In 1917, Mary gave the three little children at Fatima a message for the world: "Do not offend the Lord our God anymore, because He is already so much offended." Have we listened to Mary's admonitions at Fatima? Is the 21st century less sinful than the world 100 years ago? It would be hard to make a case that it is. 

Those who treat warnings of a third world war as doomsaying obviously have no sense of history or of God's warnings at Fatima and Akita. 

Remember this: God called King David, an adulterer and murderer, a man after His own Heart. Why? Because David always recognized the sovereignty of God. His Son Solomon, on the other hand, who started out well, ended up badly offering worship to his wives' idols. God used pagan rulers and nations to punish His chosen people for placing "strange gods before Him." Whatever happens in November will, no doubt, involve punishment for us. Let us try to minimize, to the point possible, the evils that befall our children and grandchildren.

O Jesus Christ, Sovereign King, have mercy on us.