What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
|
by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
Useful Idiots
Lenin referred to capitalists and other intellectuals who bought into the theory of Communism as useful idiots. Their heads would be the first to roll in a Communist takeover but meanwhile they served a useful purpose in funding and lending respectability to Communism. Useful idiots still abound in our society.
Look at the following decisions made by various judges at different levels in our nation:
· A federal judge in Kansas ruled a university's prominent display of a sculpture that mocks the Catholic faith did not violate the Constitution. The sculpture represents a Catholic bishop with a distorted face wearing a phallus miter. The statute has a caption “Holier than Thou.” The purpose of the statue according to the Campus Beautification Committee was to have “one of the most beautiful campuses in Kansas.” The Judge ruled that the statue did not involve the state in impermissible mockery of Catholicism, but serves to improve the campus aesthetically. Nothing, it seems, beautifies a place more than anti-Catholic pornographic art.
· The Massachusetts Supreme Court has suddenly discovered a right in the state constitution to same-sex marriage.
· Jewish menorahs and Islamic crescents are permitted in New York public schools but a judge ruled that Christmas crèches are religious symbols and therefore forbidden.
· A federal appeals court ruled that a five year old student who gave his classmates gift pencils inscribed with the words, “Jesus loves the little children” was guilty of religious advocacy in a public school.
· The California Supreme Court has decreed that Catholic Charities must provide contraception to the female employees on its health plan. The court said that Catholic Charities is not a religious organization. If courts can compel Catholic entities to violate their own moral code how long will it be before Catholic hospitals will be required to perform abortions?
· The Boy Scouts of America have leased and maintained a public park in San Diego since 1918. After the ACLU sued, a judge decided that they may no longer do this because they are a religious organization.
You may think that if the Boy Scouts are a religious organization then certainly Catholic charities must be. Are not these rulings inconsistent? Not from the secular perspective. The way to punish the Church for its various moral stands is to declare Catholic Charities a business to remove from it constitutional protections of religion. The way to chastise the Boy Scouts for its stand against atheism and openly homosexual members and leaders was to declare them a religion. Secularists are flexible. They can go either way to penalize those who oppose their ideology.
· A Protestant church ejected some disruptive members who complained that the preacher was not pushing liberalism. A judge ordered them restored because the church belongs to all its adherents and the expelled members were being denied their property rights. Now judges decide church membership.
· Two Oakland employees were barred by city supervisors for posting a bulletin board flyer advertising a group that advocated “the natural family, marriage and family values.” The city contended that the flyer was “homophobic” and the judge came close to saying that the words could constitute “hate speech” if they were disruptive. How long will it be before biblical condemnations of homosexuality will count as hate speech?
· A Colorado judge ordered a former lesbian in a child custody case not to teach her daughter that homosexual behavior is wrong although that is what the custodial parent believes now that she has converted to Christianity. Judges now decide the religious content of instruction for children in opposition to the rights of parents.
· In California the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the words “under God” must be removed from the Pledge to the Flag.
Anyone who does not recognize that there is a cultural war in the United States and that the Courts have adopted a religion of secular absolutism hostile to religion in general and to Catholicism in particular must have been dwelling in a cave for the last thirty years.
These judges did not appear uninvited like weeds in a garden. They were appointed by politicians who share their ideology. The politicians were elected by voters. The tragedy is that many of the politicians who appoint judges that push a secularist, anti-religious agenda were elected by Catholics. Like the useful idiots who blindly aided Communism even though it was ultimately opposed to everything they stood for, Catholics vote for politicians who oppose everything they espouse. The Communist useful idiots were taken in by the promises of equality for all even as the Communists trampled on civil rights and engaged in the killing of opponents. Catholic useful idiots are taken in by programs that purport to help some disadvantaged group even as these same politicians promote the destruction of human life in abortion and embryonic stem cell research and the elimination of religion from the public arena.
We now have the sorry spectacle of Catholics who elect Catholic politicians that push abortion. Richard L. Sassone did an analysis of Senate votes on life issues. He concluded that US Senators from the 25 states most Catholic by percentage were twice as likely to vote anti-life (pro-abortion) and about half as likely to vote pro-life (anti-abortion) as the US Senators from the 25 states least Catholic by percentage. The secularists undoubtedly are drinking beer on some beach and muttering, “It just doesn’t get any better than this. Catholics are taking the lead in our battle against the Church. We couldn’t succeed without these useful idiots.”
Catholic voters are largely responsible for the appointment of anti-religious judges. Why do they vote for people who despise the Catholic value system? Probably for some economic advantage. Surely they must understand that some people are disqualified from office for certain stands. A terrorist is one who murders innocent children in order to achieve some objective. If a terrorist were running for office we would not vote for him no matter how many playgrounds he promised or how much child care he provided. No matter what other good programs he may support the fact that he is a terrorist utterly disqualifies him from public office. An abortionist is a one who deliberately murders innocent unborn children in order to achieve some objective. Come to think of it, that is the same as the definition of a terrorist. Why do Catholics not see that voting for abortion supporters is as stupid as voting for terrorists? An abortionist does exactly what a terrorist does, so why are politicians who support abortions not as vigorously opposed as those who support terrorism?
The only way to create a judiciary that respects the Constitution and freedom of religious expression is to vote for politicians who possess these values. Some Catholics need to look at their past voting behavior and determine whether or not they have enabled the appointment of anti-religious secularist judges. Examine your consciences on this point. If you have voted for politicians who favor abortion you may have been a useful idiot. Repeating that act makes you neither useful nor idiotic but malicious.
(Printed May, 2004)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
