Joy in the Easter Season

The secular culture loves to remind us that Christmas is a season of joy. Obviously this is a correct sentiment, for the birth of the Lord is a joyous occasion. Yet the truly joyous season is Easter. It's why Easter is a season for Catholics and Orthodox Christians while Protestants treat Easter like a 'festival.' In Easter we celebrate Christ's victory over death all the way until Pentecost.  This celebration hints at our Lord's coming final victory over a world that worships death.

Why do so many of us forget to live the life of joy, especially in this season? For many of us Easter comes in on Easter Sunday and then is quickly forgotten when Monday morning comes. We're reminded of it when we go to Mass the following several Sundays but we largely fail to internalize the joy of the season. Why? In my own life I'll be the first to admit that remembering that God loves me every day (not just on Sundays) is hard. That failure impacts my life through the joy, or lack thereof, that I experience.

On Facebook this morning I saw a friend post that they've decided to make an Easter resolution. Catholics typically make a Lenten sacrifice or resolution but she decided to make an Easter resolution. Why? Because as Mother Theresa said,“Peace begins with a smile,” which my friend posted. We are the vehicles for peace and joy in the world. The world cannot know the peace and joy of the love of Christ unless we are bringers of that joy in the world. “We are ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor 5:20) St Paul tells us in Scripture.

That's easy enough but it starts with internalizing that joy ourselves. We cannot share the love of Christ and the joy of His resurrection without first feeling it ourselves. The only way that I understand how to internalize this joy and share it with others is through having an effective Lent. The Lenten season is meant to bring us closer to Christ through sacrifice and greater time spent in prayer. I don't think I had a particularly effective Lent myself, which I acknowledge as a tragedy. I suspect that I'm not alone in this either. So how do you spread that joy without having had a good Lent?

My old standby is confession and adoration. Yes, turn to the sacraments and prayer. It's cliché but ultimately we cannot come to know Christ without spending time with Him and restoring our relationship to Him in confession. Reading Scripture, a little a day, is essential as well. Again, I said this is cliché sounding but cliches have power because they have essential truths built into them. The sacraments have had staying power over the last 2000 years because they are a direct line to God and as such are our best bet to come to know God directly.

Finally, something more simple may work too. My friend pledged to smile at 5 people every day through Easter. Why? A simple smile from a stranger can brighten a person's day. A smile from a stranger can be one of those intangible things that happens to someone that changes the course of the day for them, so please don't be afraid to smile a little.  

This Week in the Pro-Life Movement:

Yeah, it could be that bad.....

It's been a while since I've done an update on recent happenings in the political world that impact the pro-life movement. I'll try to be better about it in the future. To that end, the following are the three main stories this week in all-things pro-life:

The state of Indiana passed House Bill 1337, which has been deemed 'controversial.' The bill bans abortions sought because the unborn child has Downs Syndrome. I guess controversy is generated whenever the Eugenics-agenda of the anti-life movement is thwarted. Some fun examples that illustrate the degeneracy in some quarters of the abortion movement, such as from Jezebel  (that home of radical intersectional feminist propaganda): “Any other disability is a broad spectrum that might force a woman to bring a baby to term who won't survive long past birth, potentially in great suffering, even if the pregnancy is high risk for the mother." This is obvious code for those being born with birth defects shouldn't be born. This from the same crowd who tells us not to use certain words that might denigrate those born with defects.

Pro-life leaders have said that this bill protects the lives of the most unwanted members of society. According to Life News Indiana Right to Life President and CEO Mike Fichter expressed firm support: “We are truly thankful for the passage of this historic legislation by the Indiana House and applaud the new civil rights protections this bill creates for unborn children, as well as the new provisions this bill establishes for the humane final disposition of aborted babies,' Fichter said.

Salon implied that the passage of this bill was part of a larger conspiracy by virtue of the country being distracted by the Donald Trump show . This is an odd claim given that Salon is part of the Leftist Social Justice Warrior Media Industrial Complex. Activists SHOULD be able to promote various efforts at the same time, though often this isn't the case. I suppose we should all watch to see if the governor of Indiana sends Donald Trump a box of chocolates as a thank-you.

Other 'draconian' bills that protect unborn children are catching fire in Florida, Texas and Oklahoma. In Texas, abortions are down 14% since the passage of recent laws that lead to the closure of several clinics. Of course the anti-life groups call this a tragedy, because more babies being born is apparently a great and unforgivable social evil.

Finally, President Obama announced his nomination to the Supreme Court, a pick that will likely be ignored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Judge Merrick Garland is generally being received well outside of conservative circles, especially for his strong anti-life voting record. The White House blog. sings his praises (as any official propaganda outlet will). Curiously, Cecil Richards, America's Abortionist-in-Chief, was present at the White House on the day of the announcement. No doubt the President was reassuring Ms. Richards that the abortion industry would be well-protected and invincible once his nominee replaces the late and staunchly pro-life Justice Antonin Scalia.

Likely I'll do a piece soon about the consequences of the coming election for the pro-life movement. It's almost a given that the fall contest will be between the ever popular and totally honest Hilary Clinton and the peaceful and overtly Christian Donald J Trump. Both candidates have large swaths of the voting population who refuse to vote for them from within their own respective parties. Yet what many pro-life voters who express this opinion fail to understand is that if the Supreme Court vacancy remains unfilled after the election, and if Mrs Clinton is elected, then the Supreme Court will be lost for potentially a generation. Abortion will remain legal, condemning potentially another 50 million babies to death.

Donald Trump and the Catholic Vote

If you're connected to the Catholic political social media pages you've no doubt noticed the veritable blitz being waged by Catholic Vote and other organizations against Trump's Catholic voting block of supporters. Most notably is the openletter written by Robert P George and George Weigel calling for Catholics to not support Trump in the race for the White House. To quote the letter:

“Donald Trump is manifestly unfit to be president of the United States. His campaign has already driven our politics down to new levels of vulgarity. His appeals to racial and ethnic fears and prejudice are offensive to any genuinely Catholic sensibility. He promised to order U.S. military personnel to torture terrorist suspects and to kill terrorists’ families — actions condemned by the Church and policies that would bring shame upon our country. And there is nothing in his campaign or his previous record that gives us grounds for confidence that he genuinely shares our commitments to the right to life, to religious freedom and the rights of conscience, to rebuilding the marriage culture, or to subsidiarity and the principle of limited constitutional government.”

Those are heavy charges. And, to be truthful, they are true. Trump has said all of these things. He has indeed said that he wants to ban Muslims, that illegal immigrants are rapists, and that terrorists' families are fair game in foreign policy. These stances are troubling for anyone with a conscience. So why are Catholics and other Christians supporting Trump?

Donald Trump gets a lot of support from those who reject the culture of political correctness that is being forcefully promoted by the Obama Administration, Hollywood, and the Democratic candidates for president. Trump speaks in a way that resonates with everyday working people. His language, while brash, is seductive in that it perfectly channels the anger that right-thinking Americans have towards the Democratic cultural Marxist candidates and those who want to engage in censorship. It appears that Trump speaks his mind and says what he means. Clearly he doesn't care about hurting anyone's feelings, and that's a good thing given the madness of the Obama administration and the continuation that Clinton or Sanders administration would represent.

Yet Christians shouldn't be supporting someone like Trump because Trump ostracizes other human beings. He dehumanizes human beings for his own political gain. Sanders does this as well but he does it along class lines, which is why he gets away with doing so. Trump unabashedly does this along racial and ethnic lines. If you're reading this and are Catholic consult your Catechism and you'll understand why this is a problem.

So what are Christians of conscience supposed to do given that both Clinton and Sanders support late term abortion, censorship and the increasingly crazy domination by Leftists of the mechanisms of cultural education (Hollywood, schools, etc)? If the elections continue as they appear they will then Trump is highly likely to be the GOP nominee, and Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. For now, Weigel and George call for Catholics to not support Trump in the primaries, which seems simple enough but it doesn't address the underlying issue: why are Catholics identifying with Trump at all?

One commentor on the posting of the article on National Review's site offers that American Catholics have failed to distinguish support for freedom from support for capitalism and the cult of money that is connected to capitalism. To quote the commentor: “By not distancing ourselves from Capitalism, we have not effectively distanced ourselves from Marxism. We are Clintonians in spite of ourselves: It’s the economy, stupid. And then we try to dress this in Catholic garb, forgetting that we have exchanged Catholicism for a neo-Pelagianism which leads finally to the worst sort of spiritual frustration, as the present Pope has affirmed with great spiritual insight.” Capitalism relies on consumerism, and consumerism relies on the lust for material goods that the Church has condemned since at least Rerum Novarum was published in 1891. This is the stuff of Americanism, which is a condemned heresy, yet I suspect that it is the driving force for Trump's support among American Catholics.

I realize that I haven't addressed why Catholics support Trump. Aside from Trump's stated opposition to the social ills that the Democrats gleefully embrace, one does wonder why Catholics support Trump instead of Marco Rubio (a Catholic who opposes these same ills) or Cruz (who also opposes those social ills). I suspect support for Trump among Catholics is because Trump is a bully. American Catholics are tired of being bullied by Leftists who tell us that if we oppose gay marriage then our business and property-interests are forfeit, that if we oppose abortion then we want to oppress and enslave women, and that if we support freedom of religion in real practice then we are authoritarians. In short, American Catholics have been bullied and Donald Trump represents someone who will bully those who bully us back. It's the only reason I can understand and it is very unsettling. This is the motivation of fascist revolutionaries supporting the ugliest of dictators around the world, and Trump certainly has some things in common with them though I'd not call Trump a fascist.

For the record I don't have a candidate in the American election. I'm, for the moment, a registered Independent and live in a closed-primary state. I have some time to re-register as a Republican if I want to vote in my state's primary against Trump. Sanders concerns me as much as Trump does so I may re-register as a Democrat to vote against him. I do believe that Trump has a better chance of becoming president than the statisticians are suggesting given Mrs. Clinton's corruption charges and her track record of dishonesty. It is a sad state of affairs when a reality show demagogue has a real chance of becoming the President of the United States. It certainly doesn't say positive things about the health of the American republic.