Devotion for today: Please, God, bless America

Prayer for Religious Liberty  

Almighty God, Father of all nations, for freedom you have set us free in Christ Jesus. We praise and bless you for the gift of religious liberty, the foundation of human rights, justice, and the common good.

Grant to our leaders the wisdom to protect and promote our liberties; by your grace may we have the courage to defend them, for ourselves and for all those who live in this blessed land.

 We ask this through the intercession of Mary Immaculate, our patroness, and in the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, with whom you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, DC)

“He who disbelieves in even a single article of the faith 
is justly held guilty of disbelief in the whole faith.”

- St. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester
Martyred June 22, 1535 by order of King Henry VIII

I marvel at the death of outrage among Christians in general and Catholics in particular. It used to be that if an indecent movie would come out, people would actively protest. If a politician slurred the faithful, he would stand a very good chance of not getting re-elected. If a TV network would show promiscuous material on TV, the sponsors would be boycotted. Now, we roll over and play dead. Too many of us have listened to the mind gurus of today who say that to stand for God is to be a bigot, a moron (what did Nancy Pelosi recently say about those of us who are against abortion? “ It’s like something ancient, medieval.” )

 So we find ourselves in the unenviable position today of being eliminated piece by piece until the Church will not be able to be a visible, active part of society. Start with HHS in August, and Catholic Charities and true Catholic Colleges can no longer survive. Catholic business owners must break their faith or go out of business. Start with ideas like the one in Canada where it is illegal for anyone, including priests, to say that marriage is between a man and a woman. That is now labeled hate speech and cannot be taught in the Catholic Schools. There will be a Catholic Church in America; it is poised and ready to take over: The American Catholic Church. They will be like the politically accepted Church in China today and the politically accepted Lutheran Church in Hitler’s Germany. The true churches were driven underground as they were no longer acceptable to a society which had turned its back on God and His teachings.

Wake up, those of you who will celebrate freedom today. Yes, thank God for the freedoms we do enjoy. Our country has been richly blessed, because we were “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.” ALL. That means pre-born babies, the elderly, the sick, the Catholic who says he cannot support abortion inducing drugs. I want those who tolerate the kind of new thinking, which says we must keep our beliefs to ourselves, to stand up and say "No! I have a right to religious freedom in this country. I can and will visibly live my faith and all its tenants". We have, as Mother Teresa so clearly stated many years ago, become a culture of death. We are the poorest nation in the world, as she said, because we value man’s ideas about life and not God’s.

It is time to stop this insanity and decide what we believe. I read recently that only 4% of Catholics in the pews on Sunday actually feel dedicated to their faith as it truly exists. Most of them don’t care and don’t want to care. They will celebrate baptisms and weddings and funerals because they are traditions or family affairs but not because they are opportunities to profess the faith. They will come to Mass on Sunday out of some feeling of obligation, but complain if the music isn’t bouncy or the sermon is too long or the priest is too old fashioned. Forget coming to see the King of Kings, the Lord and Savior of the world, to partake of His feast, to say thank-you, I love you, bless me and help me to live my life as you designed it to be. 

Let freedom ring, yes. God bless America. Please. God. Bless America. 

"Freedom consists not in doing what we like but in having the right to do what we ought." Blessed John Paul II