Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves

(-bumped to the top- Expect to see this 'bumped' from time to time)

We must have our eyes wide open. As Our Lord admonished us, we must be "wise as serpents and as innocent as doves" (Mt 10,16). The same few men who now occupy the Oval Office, who have strived so hard to obtain so much power and control over the fate not only of this once-great nation but also others so indelibly influenced by the true biblical spirit, are now - if one were to follow the minute yet certain threads of power and control - are now trying their best to tear down and destroy both the credibility and the influence of the sacramental presence of Christ in our world; namely, the Catholic Church.

Like Elizabeth and Lord Cecil (Burghley) in the reign of Tudor terror in England, there is very little these power-mongers will not do, strings they will not pull, to try their utmost to undo the epistemological, anthropological, and theological allegiance of millions of Catholics in this and any other country that happens to be within earshot or readership of their onslaught against Christ's "one holy catholic and apostolic Church."

Read Evelyn Waugh's Edmund Campion. Watch Michael Wood's In Search of Shakespeare. Understand that "Bloody Mary" was a blip on the continuum of religious persecution compared with the model for the modern police state that was conducted behind the skirts of Queen Elizabeth, while hanging, having one's "privy parts" cut off and entrails roasted before your still living eyes, then being quartered was the norm of those sentenced to death at Tyburn Tree.

But our modern Lord Cecil and associates want nothing other than complete and monolithic power. "Whatever it takes" is the pragmatic motto of these officer-class ubermensch leaders. And they are confident they can do it.

Our response must be that recommended by T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets: "prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action" and in that order. Or, as Gil Bailie quotes John Paul II as having quipped: "We ha(ve) two choices: a practical one and a hopelessly naive mystical one. The practical one (is) to fall on our knees and pray for the interecession of Our Lady of Czestochowa. The hopelessly naive one (is) to organize a meeting of politicians and bureaucrats."

You know me: engage in Marian chivalry. And never let go of your faith, hope, and charity - even toward these power-mongers who are forgetful that they must stand before Our Lord on the Day of Judgment. They, too, are forgetful that the Devil tends to break and throw away his "tools" when he finishes with them.

Fight the good fight! Pray! Love! And be Pope's men - and women - all.