Translating a World on the Edge

A couple of years ago, my husband and I were in Destin, Florida over Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. We went to Mass at the Catholic church closest to where we were staying and met a very interesting priest. Nearly twenty years ago, many of his congregation left his church for other churches in the area, saying that they were tired of listening to his preaching of politics.

The priest told about the exodus of those parishioners in a Sunday homily. He said he’d never preached politics, never talked about a candidate or a political party–not even once during his time as pastor. But what he had preached was morality. And that was so true.

The blurring between morality and politics has been going on for decades. One of the first blurrings came to fro with the Roe v Wade decision in the 1970’s and rapidly germinated in the political platform of the Democratic party. Ever since, abortion has been a political flag for them, bringing along in the passing years a growing despise of religious freedom, including the sanctity of marriage. But during these years, pastors and priests did not speak up. To speak up would have sounded “intolerant,” according to budding and growing political correctness that sought to stifle priests and pastors–and succeeded in doing that.

Now, I ask you to consider how morality has been made to seem “Intolerant” because politicians can USE it for their own gains.

Morality is part of worshipping God, and if fact, required by God. Therefore, according to the present Democrat Party, worshipping God must be gotten rid of. After all, without the stops of believing in a higher authority, if people are told they can do anything they want, many people will do just that. And, of course,  vote Democrat.

Except—Morality is concerned with the distinction between right and wrong, or good and bad behavior. And that has to do with the human soul.

So, the Democrat Party has made War on Morality, and war on the soul of America.

I ask you:

Is it Politics or morality to preach against abortion?

Is it politics, or morality, to preach against sex outside of marriage?

Is it politics, or morality, to preach that marriage is created by God as a sacrament between a man and a woman?

Is it politics, or morality, to preach that drugs harm not only the physical body, but the human soul?

Is it politics, or morality, to preach that lying–especially under oath–is a sin?

You may be able to bring up other similar examples that are referred to as political, but are actually moral questions.

Do you see an underlying–and current–problem here? Topics that have long been considered part of morality are, today, suddenly political questions where the answers are wishy-washy enough to be voted on as morally correct behavior. And worse— it is politically correct to adhere to them, even when the opposite is true. This is evil made to look like good. And it is abhorrent!

What is the next step? A complete elimination of Truth itself?

We have a chance in this election to right the wrong. We can vote for strong leadership with Donald Trump. Or we can vote for more lies, more cover-ups, more dishonest dealings, political correctness, federal investigations, and foolery by Hillary Clinton and her Democrats, who have already given us a broken country.

Personally, I see a win coming for Donald Trump. And for that, I say THANK GOD, and HALLELUJAH!

Let’s bring back strong leadership and TRUTH to a broken America.

Nobody talks much about evil anymore, especially the personal evil we are all capable of when greed and power are involved. It’s as if evil doesn’t exist, as if anything we do is A-Okay as long as it brings us what we want.

Nobody talks much about the devil, either, as the cause of that evil. A lot of people won’t even call Satan by name. So, it isn’t surprising that we may not recognize evil, especially when it is being disguised as something beneficial, and then fed to us.

Evil is being politically disguised today as a sumptuous meal. We are urged to take it, urged to swallow it. But if we choose that meal, we will poison our country.

The personification of evil is referred in Scripture as the devil, Satan, or the Father of Lies.

He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44

A chronic liar will use any means to get others on his or her side.  Promising a do whatever you want attitude is one of those means.  We see that attitude growing day by day in our present society. We have forgotten that America was founded on truthfulness, on the principles of attaining a moral system of government that works for everyone–not a system of government that uses everyone to its own dishonest ends.

Where are those honorable principles  in this election?

We cannot be complacent. Satan attacks us in our complacencies, in our inattentiveness. We must take the blinders from our eyes to see that in our own government, good is being called evil, and evil is being called good.

Satan also attacks us personally through what we desire. He lures us by our addictions, the things we think most about, the things we’ve tied ourselves to. He yanks on the chain of those addictions, leading us further and further away from what is good until we become his devoted ‘pet,’ believing anything he says. Then he’s got us just where he wants us.

No, we don’t want to hear this. We say, “Look, I want what I want, and what I want is okay.”

Well, that depends. Because we weren’t given life on earth in order to fulfill ourselves. Believe it or not, each of us has a greater mission than our own existence. There is a reason for our having been born. God knows our mission even if we haven’t yet discovered it. And it has nothing to do with evil, and everything to do with good.

Our country is starving for good government.  Who will serve it best?

Each presidential character is almost like a chef preparing a meal for us.

One candidate promises to satisfy the appetites of those who support her, not using the ingredients of leadership, but for her own self-aggrandizement. She will increase her own power and importance by ignoring the Constitution, by playing God with human life, and by destroying the laws of our Creator. Killing the unborn is part of her poisonous meal. And slapping down the sanctity of marriage is its dessert. Both are part of the devil’s package of  deadly candy, yet many have been lured to devour it.

The other candidate is a flawed man. His imperfections have been pointed out, and he is surely not a saint.

But we don’t need a saint. We need a strong leader.

Throughout human history, God has used flawed people to lead the good fight because no one is without imperfection. Think of Adam, King David, the apostle Peter, St. Augustine, and even Mother Theresa.

The meal this imperfect presidential candidate offers us is much more genuine than the other candidate’s plate of over-used, thirty-year old words and moldy ideas which have already weakened America. However flawed, this candidate’s plate does not present lies as truth, or evil as good.  His meal is made with ingredients that include and are based on the Constitution and Bill of Rights upon which America was founded–not the bloody destruction of human life itself. That destruction is, of course, the true goal of the devil.

So today, we had better remember the devil and how he can fool us. We had better call him by name, look him in the face, and refuse the plate of evil prepared for us. Because if the wrong candidate is elected, our own country of America may be poisoned forever.

Photo in Public Domain

If we believe there is a God who created each of us, then each of us is a child of God. And each human person has the divinity of God within him, or her. We call this divinity within us, the soul. It is the only part of us that doesn’t die. That makes the soul, and what happens within it, essential.

“I decline to accept the end of man… I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” ― William Faulkner

As Faulkner says, the soul is spirit, just as God is spirit, and capable of great compassion, enormous sacrifice, and inexhaustible endurance. We see these capacities expressed in many good people that we know, and sometimes we express those same qualities ourselves.

But often, compassion, sacrifice and endurance are not expressed by a person’s spiritual nature. Sometimes, he or she expresses the opposite. To an author, this is food for a story. This is the opportunity to illuminate the battle between good and evil, as Faulkner does in his work.

Because there is today, and always has been, a battle between what is inherently good, and what is inherently evil–and despite what we say or how we act, I believe each human being knows the difference.

It is natural for an author to write about this very real battle between Truth and Lies. In a story, this plays out in particular characters—-people who struggle with what they believe is right and what they know is inherently wrong. All of this happens in the soul of a fictitious character, where his or her intentions lie. But it is the same in real life.

In each of our lives, we either shine our soul, or sully it, by our various decisions to accept Truth, or Lies, Good, or evil.

Most of us don’t like to hear that we can choose between good and evil. Some of us don’t even recognize evil anymore. We  put an acceptable face on evil because of today’s saccharine tolerance for ‘anything goes,’ and that the end justifies the means. We are allowing ourselves to be blinded to the better call in our soul. But a thing is not good or evil because it’s trendy or popular. The better call of our soul is  to set aside our pettiness, our selfishness, and our conniving natures, and to lift up the dignity of the human person as a child of God, from conception to death. For that is an absolute Truth God has implanted in our soul.

I think, deep down, most of us know this. And deep down, we know that absolute Truth will endure, that it is not relative to public opinion, and that it is a twin of immortality. For me, it is most important for a writer to remember that, too.

In 2014, I released on Amazon Kindle, and in Paperback, my new futuristic novelette called, Mary’s Mountain. I wrote it because I was concerned about our country. Today, I am even more concerned.

The story is about a teacher turned famous author–Paul Dunaway– and his struggle to re-shape his affluent but joyless life, while opposing forces in the out-of-control, politically correct America he helped to create literally take him down.

Mary’s Mountain is a story of Tolerance taken to the extreme.

I hope you will read it–soon, before the Presidential and Congressional elections–because much of what happens in the story of Mary’s Mountain is already happening today. Please make yourself aware of what Tolerance really is, as opposed to the malicious propaganda masquerading as Tolerance, and the gush perpetrated by many of our present leaders for their own agendas.

Please read, too, the following excerpts from “A Plea for Intolerance,” written by Fulton J. Sheen, one of the greatest theologians of the Twentieth Century, and so accurate for today.

A PLEA FOR INTOLERANCE

“America is suffering not so much from intolerance, which is bigotry, as it is from tolerance, which is indifference to truth and error, and a philosophical nonchalance that has been interpreted as broad‐mindedness. Greater tolerance, of course, is desirable, for there can never be too much charity shown to persons who differ with us. Our Blessed Lord Himself asked that we ʺlove those who calumniate for us,ʺ for they are always persons, but He never told us to love the calumny.”

—

“In the face of this false broad‐mindedness, what the world needs is intolerance. The mass of people have kept up hard and fast distinctions between dollars and cents, battleships and cruisers, ʺYou owe meʺ and ʺI owe you,ʺ but they seem to have lost entirely the faculty of distinguishing between the good and the bad, the right and the wrong. The best indication of this is the frequent misuse of the terms ʺtoleranceʺ and ʺintolerance.ʺ There are some minds that believe that intolerance is always wrong, because they make ʺintoleranceʺ mean hate, narrow‐ mindedness, and bigotry. These same minds believe that tolerance is always right because, for them, it means charity, broad‐mindedness, American good nature.”

‐‐‐

“What is tolerance? Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience towards evil, and a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. But what is more important than the definition is the field of its application. The important point here is this: Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error.”

—

“The government must be intolerant about malicious propaganda.Tolerance does not apply to truth or principles. About these things we must be intolerant, and for this kind of intolerance, so much needed to rouse us from sentimental gush, I make a plea. Intolerance of this kind is the foundation of all stability.” — Fulton J. Sheen

*******Some of Mary’s Mountain takes place in the hills of Alabama, to which Paul, the main character returns in a misguided mission– therefore, this song–but you’ll have to read the novelette to find out what he ultimately discovers there.

I don’t know many people who would say they want someone to lie to them. Yet today is a time of mass deception by one political candidate.

And what are we doing about it? We say we want truth from our leaders, but we’re going for the reverse. We’re going for her lies.

We may cover it over and say that her lies are best for us. Well, we’re fooling ourselves. Lies are destructive.

We may even admit her lies are wrong, but we don’t want to hear the truth out of some self-serving motive. We even become defensive. We use her brand of political correctness to define what is true because–why? I want what I want, and in politics it’s okay??? And then we might even attack the messengers of what is actually true.

We are going down the road of ME with this political candidate, where truth is relative, because no one else is as important as she is. Why do we take this?

Hers is a Pontius Pilate deception. She uses clever words. She washes her hands, so she won’t be blamed, and she allows the real truth to be hung on a cross.

Sadly, some of us barely notice the hanging.

The general population seems more concerned with the newest electronic device, or the latest reality show. Don’t we care about the ethics, morality, and honesty of our political leaders? Don’t we care if they lie?

Many must not care, because they react to her lies like G.K Chesterton says, as dead fish floating with the current.

All sorts of clever ‘talking tools’ are used and passed by a silver tongue to make her lies seem like truth.

BUT–no matter what she does to put a mask on it, the real Truth is still there.

Truth is the light that truly leads.

And if no attention is paid to it, Truth will be the light that follows–until it grabs the necessary attention of all of us.

Let’s fix this, and fix it now!
Let’s follow the real light of TRUTH, and let it guide us home to the America we love and respect and are proud of.

May God Bless America. 

We are in desperate need of His blessing today!

Some of you are way too young to remember Frank Sinatra. I know from my parents that his songs helped get them, and many others, through World War II.

Below are the lyrics to one particular song Sinatra loved to sing–a simple song about simple American things that may soon be lost to us, unless we speak out. The song is “The House I live in.”

What is America to me?
A name, a map, or a flag I see
A certain word, democracy
What is America to me?

I sometimes wonder if we’ve forgotten what a great country our founding fathers came up with, how hard they fought for it. Why were individual freedoms so important to them?— Because they were being taken away by the greed of a controlling English crown. But today, our freedoms are again in jeopardy.

The house I live in
A plot of earth, a street
The grocer and the butcher
Or the people that I meet

We still have the right to live where we want, not where a government tells us to live. But we are taxed on  property and small business as if the government owned them with us.

The children in the playground
The faces that I see
All races and religions
That’s America to me

Our children on school playgrounds are told now, what they can play and what they cannot play. The government imposes their brand of curriculum in our state’s public schools, whether we like it or not, where our children are taught a government imposed morality that only parents have the right to teach at home.

To say that our Religious liberty is at stake is more than an understatement. Christianity is not only being mocked, but connived against.

The place I work in
The worker by my side
The little town the city
Where my people lived and died

Small business owners, like the grocer and butcher and many others, are being told what to do. They can’t run a small business except by government imposed standards.

The howdy and the handshake
The air a feeling free
And the right to speak my mind out
That’s America to me

Where is our civility to each other? Can we really speak our mind? What happens to those who do?

The things i see about me
The big things and the small
That little corner newsstand
Or the house a mile tall

The once-strong values of America have weakened to the strength of a wet mop.

The wedding and the churchyard
The laughter and the tears
And the dream that’s been a growing
For more than two hundred years

The dream of America was Freedom. It’s being chipped away, one law at a time. We cannot even decide our own healthcare.

The town I live in
The street, the house, the room
The pavement of the city
Or the garden all in bloom

States rights are practically nil today. The government bureaucracy has a finger in every state pie.

The church the school the clubhouse
The millions lights i see
But especially the people
– yes especially the people
That’s America to me

But here is the saving grace–THE PEOPLE–you and I. Our hands, our mouths, our votes. I pray we will not be fooled again. I pray that America is restored to the great and noble country she once was. I pray for a new day of Freedom—a day that truly is OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, and under GOD, not the government.

This year’s critical election revolves around 4 core principles:

Supreme Court Justices
Religious Liberty
Defense of the unborn
Support for Israel

Only one team can say yes to all of those: Trump/Pence.

Please pray for this election and our nation and its leaders.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know. –Harry S. Truman, the 33rd President of the United States (1945–53).

There is much to be learned through history, which provides lessons for the present, and guidance for the future. But first, we must be aware of it. Look at the eight-year history of this administration.

It is an administration that promised change—and delivered it by attempting to change our very culture. An administration that divided America by race, ignoring inner cities, and mocking religion. An administration that lied about Obamacare, and trounced over the middle class with their heavy boots of taxes and regulations, leaving small business crushed. An administration that opened up Isis in the Middle East, giving it potential to move into America, as it has in Europe. An administration that ignored the many calls for help of an American diplomat and his staff in Libya, and then, lied about it. An administration that produced the soul-less, utilitarian Common Core and forced it into our state’s education system. An administration that pushed Roe v Wade so far that a newborn baby, taking in its first breath outside the womb, can be mercilessly killed. An administration that allows an open border for deadly drugs and any criminal who wants to cross. An administration that has ignored the Constitution, appointing judges who make the laws instead of interpret the laws–until America has become less prosperous, less safe, less educated, has less jobs, and is less moral, altogether. In fact that very word—LESS- describes America after eight years of this dishonest administration. Why would we ever want to continue it?

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. –Maya Angelou

Below is the history of another country ruined by ineptness. Nothing else needs to be said–except if Hillary Clinton is elected,  prepare your children and grandchildren to live in an America that is much, much LESS than the one you grew up in.

This emotional video was produced by Jerry Rye Productions in 2015.

I grew up in south Alabama at a time when children could literally play all day, anywhere in their neighborhood, without worry. The only warning I heard from my Catholic mother upon leaving the house was,”Play nice, now.” And so I tried to.

I tried not to lie, not to ridicule others, or bully anyone. And for the most part, other children did the same. If any of them did lie, ridicule, or bully, they were made to say they were sorry for their bad manners.

As an adult, “Play nice,” still resounds in my head when I make many of my decisions.

But not this time!

Not when my Catholic faith is put on the chopping block in the leaked emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Not when Christians are called deplorable and unredeemable.

Not when Catholics are designated as an “amazing bastardization of the faith.”

Not when the Clinton campaign asserts that conservatives “must be attracted” to Catholicism for its “severely backwards gender relations.”

Not when Lie to protect your power seems to be a new commandment for Hillary Clinton who apparently sees nothing wrong with it.

Not when the word, “Constitution,” is left out altogether when asked what type of Supreme Court justice she would nominate.

Not when Hillary Clinton supports abortion on demand, even to the moment of crowning–partial birth abortion–when a baby is ready to take it’s first breath!

When did Hillary Clinton and her campaign become God??

Christians Take the Gloves OFF!!
Take no more manipulation through Political Correctness!
No more swallowing lies and cover-ups!

No more “Playing Nice.”

Absolutely, one hundred percent–DONE.

Photo by The Brass Glass, 2014, MorgueFile.com

On June 8, 1783, George Washington reminded the new country of America that “without a humble imitation” of “the Divine Author of our blessed religion” we “can never hope to be a happy nation.” His own adopted daughter said of Washington that you might as well question his patriotism as to question his Christianity.

Fast forward to today.

Have we become gravediggers burying GOD?

If we do so, we are burying part of ourselves as well.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher and atheist, who claimed God is Dead. He thought the exemplary human being must craft his/her own identity through self-realization and do so without relying on anything transcending that life—such as God or a soul.

Of course, this is ridiculous, a contradiction to who we are. We have a soul–each of us, and that soul came from God. When we say we’re made in God’s image, our human soul is what we’re talking about. It is the one and only way we are like God, who is pure spirit.

However, my human soul, and yours, are not pure spirit. Spiritual, yes–but not pure spirit. Man is a spirit in matter, in the form of a body. He is spirit and body. God and the angels are pure spirits because they are not dependent on matter, as we are, either intrinsically or extrinsically. To be completely independent of matter for any material being is impossible. The human soul is intrinsically dependent on matter for some of its activities. But our soul is not purely material either, because for other activities it is not intrinsically dependent on matter.

So the human soul of man belongs to both the realm of the spirit and the realm of matter. Man is the lowest of the spirits, and the highest of the material beings, and he alone belongs to both the realm of the spirit and the realm of matter. As the new Catholic Catechism explains, spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature. (CCC 365).

Most human beings understand that the soul, by its nature, is often in opposition to the body. This is the struggle of every human person. Because we have free will–we can choose.

Nietzsche struggled with many questions, and used his free will–a component of his soul, and part of his human spiritual make-up–to come up with his own wrong answer about a living God, only because that living God gave him the freedom to choose.

We have the same freedom as Nietzsche, and many other God-despisers like him, because despite what they say, they have inherited spiritualty from God.

When we make personal, even political, decisions, are we helping to dig those societal graves that want to bury God, too?

Well, it cannot be done without burying ourselves–we are part of Him.