The “Bastardization of the Faith”

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

So wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran, German pastor, and world-recognized theologian, who spoke out against Hitler when few others would, even before “Der Fürher” took power in 1933. Bonhoeffer’s witness to Christ is indisputable. His work to save Germany and our world from the tyranny of fascism is undeniable. Yet his life-long testimony remains largely unheeded in our present day.

In fact, we are reliving the nightmare that Bonhoeffer experienced in the years leading up to and which he lived through during the Second World War. Including his fight against euthanasia and genocide, which we re-experience today in governmental programs that finance abortion, promote infanticide, and enact laws in many states that legalize voluntary suicide and encourage euthanasia. All for the sake of a leftist agenda which coincides with everything the Nazi regime stood for and Dietrich Bonhoeffer fought against.

And we are losing this fight.

This is the consummate issue of our age or any other. Will we fight for life or not? Will we recognize the dignity of all people, as Mother Teresa, now sainted, dedicated her life to—or will we simply walk away?

There is supreme danger afoot. A danger that cannot be denied. 

The recent WikiLeaks scandals have proved this beyond all doubt. John Halprin, a fellow at the Center for American Progress, in his emails labeled all conservative Catholics an “amazing bastardization of the faith.” What he meant by this, I’m convinced, is that American Catholics and the church officials who lead us are backward thinking individuals who have yet to be enlightened by the leftist, progressive establishment.

Add to this the Planned Parenthood exposé by Live Action that revealed the true and nefarious intentions of this infamous organization, paid for by our own tax dollars. But have we really learned anything? Or have we stuck our heads in the sand and ignored reality for the sake of convenience and just felt better about ourselves because it’s more comfortable; lest, God forbid, we should actually speak out against an immoral act and an atrocity that may one day bring the very wrath of God upon our nation, and upon our very own heads? You see, there’s always a price to pay. There always is. The Lord will not ignore the screams of innocents.

Yet, the elites in our world cannot hear the cries of the blameless. They are so full of pride and self-importance, they can only hear what is between their very own ears. They have to be right because they certainly can’t be wrong, even though they have bought into the fallacies of modernism and socialist propaganda. And they know better than the common men and women who populate our world because they do not toil and strive to make a living using their own hands and the sweat of their brows.

They also know better than Holy Mother Church. It is this self-satisfaction and sense of superiority that separates the elite from everyone else. Thus, it is for this reason that they put themselves above the historical evidence, oral tradition, the Gospels, and the books that follow in the New Testament of the Church since Christ walked this earth and the Old Testament writings that pointed to his coming. They even hold themselves above the laws of our own constitutional republic.

You see, it’s all malleable. Like a piece of clay to be molded in one’s own image. Because it’s “progressive” and advances human thought beyond the scope of believing in the transcendental experience of humankind.

This is why I totally disagree with the claims of Margaret Sanger, Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Hillary Clinton calling themselves “progressive.” They are nothing of the sort. They are regressive and do not advance the progress of man any more than the Aztecs did in their horrific human sacrifices to the sun god. But, you can’t talk about this in public because of the political correctness that has dominated public discourse and holds in contempt all real discussions about history, sociology, archaeology, theology, and anything on the order of what used to be called “civics”.

In fact, as a part of school curriculum, Western Civilization courses have gone the way of the dodo. Most of it has now been tossed out the window in an assault on our government, our schools—from the elementary level to our universities—our media, and our entertainment industry. It has even infiltrated our churches, checked common discussions between decent people, and made us somewhat afraid of expressing ourselves. We all know this. We’ve all seen this happening in our lifetimes.

When Christ suffered through the Agony in the Garden, I believe he foresaw all of this. That this was indeed a part of his agony: that people, many of them claiming to his followers, would seek to remake the model. That they would deny and thus redefine him because of their own stubborn pride and belief in their own intellectual superiority. That they would refuse to yield their own will to his words and commands. And would try to fashion their own sense of justice based upon a smug and unwilling attitude to submit to the almighty justice of God. That the Good News is somehow to be interpreted in a new way, without citation, or quotation, or any understanding of what our Lord really meant. Perhaps because it’s uncomfortable or doesn’t meet the modern day standards of acceptability. We now live in a world of convenience for convenience sake. There are no more eternal truths, nor moral paradigms. We have now the license to live as we please, but not the obligation to respect the God who made us or the laws He gave us.

We seem to be in such a hurry to destroy the very things that made us good and decent. Americans, as a whole, have succumbed to the dictates of the elite. We’ve become lazy, expecting government and entertainment to provide for our basic needs. Like the mob in Rome who expected bread, wine, and the bloody extravaganzas in the Colosseum to satisfy them. The god of sport has somehow displaced our duty to live a civilized, respectful life and to respect our flag and those who sacrificed their lives in order to defend it.

Our nation was founded on Judeo-Christian principles as well as the Greek idea of an independent republic. This places a responsibility on each citizen to accept and perform their duties to this republic; that includes their duty to vote with a free and unfettered conscience for what is right, true, and virtuous. Not, as George Washington warned us, for political purposes alone.

There will be a new “Catholic Spring.” And that new spring will be bright and beautiful. As Chesterton noted in The Everlasting Man, “The Faith is not a survival. … At least five times, therefore, with the Arian and the Albigensian, with the Humanist sceptic, after Voltaire and after Darwin, the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died.” And the Faith will not kowtow to the conventions of the political elite who seek only to define us and control us. When John Podesta, Chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, proffered his creations of new organizations, supposedly catholic, to seek to infiltrate and confuse the Church, on issues on life and marriage, he became the bastard child of modernity. He bought into a lie for political gain and wanted us all to follow him and the so-called progressives into damnation. This we shall not do.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I think, would agree. He sacrificed his life at the scaffold after being implicated in an assassination coup on Adolf Hitler. He was not a bastard. He was a true son of God. Earlier in his life, after he was alienated from his church, which was being coopted by Hitlerism, he fled Germany to escape the Nazis and lived and preached in both England and America, yet he returned to his native soil because he could not live with himself if he did not experience the pain and suffering of his own people. He loved life; he loved it so much he gave his life in order for others to live and be free.

We are not bastards either. And, we should do no less.