Signs and Portents

Why a this Blog?  And why the title A New Christero?  Because we are struggling against the establishment of an Atheocacy, that's why.  And why the spelling "Christero" as opposed to "Cristero"?  Because I made a typo in setting it up, and want it to stand as a monument to my own limitations and fallibility.

If you wonder about the word "Atheocracy", well, I think I just coined it.  But it's what I see coming at us, full on.  A state where rule is limited to those who have no real religious affiliation beyond those of demographic convenience.  A state where ones Freedom of Religion is supplanted by an spurious "Freedom of Worship" that limits our religious expression to Church services and inside our homes.  A sort of rule that limits our ability to live, in the public square, our religious beliefs.  A government, in fact, that is hostile to all forms of traditional or orthodox Christian belief and will start first with compromising and silencing Catholics as the best organized, most visible and largest Christian body in the country; a government that will move on to any and all of those groups that are capable of seriously opposing them as the moral and ethical underpinnings of Liberty is dissolved by the corrosive effects of dictated choices, forced participation and an agressivly expanding culture of governmental dependance to bribe the masses.

A long time ago Our Lady of Quito  warned us about the conditions in the Church--this was one of our first signs of what was coming up.  Make no mistake--the tolerance and promotion of heresy, crypto schism, and disobedience within the Church, and in our separated brethren of Protestantism, have paved the way for a wave of persecution in the United States that will make the depredations of the No-Nothings, the Nativists and the Klan look like mild annoyances.  And there are signs that this isn't just going to happen someday, but that it has started already, under the current Regime.

First, there is the current of Anti Catholic sentiment that is growing exponentially in the US.  From a low ebb in the 60s and 70s, an ebb low enough to allow the election of our first and only Catholic president, there is a current swell of hostility, fueled by erosion of the public morality, political movements and sheer old fashioned Nativism and paranoia that the Vatican will somehow come to rule America.  This is really stupid, because in the US the Church has had less interference with it's internal affairs than anywhere else, to include those nations which have established Catholicism as their official religion.  The Church doesn't want to change that!

But attacks continue.  The ACLU has filed a court brief equating Catholic individuals objections to paying for abortions, sterilizations and contraception to racism.  This is a rather current story, but I'm sure that many readers will remember the San Francisco City Council's resolution defining the Catholic Church as a hate group, and it's being upheld by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals.  These accusations are as baseless as the 19th century accusations against Convents as brothels and slave parlors. Anyone remember Maria Monk?  These are that kind of smear, yet they are worse, for they originate within the realm of government and the courts.  Think about it, the ACLU has filed a court brief that equates our moral objection to murdering unborn people, preventing the creation of new souls and surgical mutilation of the human reproductive tract with racism, and a city council has defined our moral beliefs as "hate".

Not everyone is a history buff, but those that are will recall that one of the charges leveled against us by the Roman Empire, to justify it's attempted genocide of Christians, was "hatred of mankind".  Once you convince a significant portion of a society that we hate them, the oppression and violence will inevitably follow.

I was disturbed, as were others, when Obama began speaking about "Freedom of Worship", pointing out that freedom of worship is very different than Freedom of Religion.  Freedom of worship restrict activities, when you look at it closely, to what goes on inside of church walls and private homes.  This restriction has already started with the HHS Mandate (since when are Americans governed by mandate?  I thought we were governed by law!) which is so written as to actually exclude Blessed Teresa's Missionaries of Charity's AIDS Hospice in Washington DC  as not sufficiently religious in nature to avoid having to provide funding through insurance purchases for abortions, etc!  The coercive power of the government is being brought into play to limit religious activities by individuals as well.

The main weapon that the Regime is using against us is the IRS, and the definition of the penalties in the Obamacare Act as 'taxes' by the Supreme court, despite their being named penalties in the statute.  This offense means that businesses that do not comply can be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, per employee!  Yet since it is defined as a "tax" and enforced through the IRS there is no legal recourse or redress of grievance as supposedly guaranteed by the US Constitution.  Incredibly, the Obama Regime has stated that individuals do not have religious rights in the public square or business environment.  In the link above refering to the ACLU, the mission statement of the business that is currently in court specifically mentions that it is ran on Christian principles, and in the link above you see the Regimes idea of what that means--we are no longer allowed to have them.  This thinking is pretty widespread--one person tried to sue Chick-Fil-A for being closed on Sunday!  (It didn't fly.)

But the specter of the IRS is powerful.  There have already been numerous calls to revoke the tax except status of various churches on political grounds because of the content of sermons or homilies.  Essentially, preaching that Catholics have a moral duty to vote against those who support abortion--which we do--has resulted in threats to tax the particular parish or diocese in which the truth was preached into penury, by persons--invariably supporters of the Regime--who file IRS complaints against them.  By ascribing political value to moral teachings, the government has leverage with which to blackmail a church into silence.  This isn't just happening to Churches, of course, the US Senate has twice had to intercede to keep Obama's appointed thugs in the irS from attempting to silence political speech as well.

College students, and Catholic Colleges seem to be a particular target of the Regime as well. (If you click on the link to Our Lady of Quito, you can read what she said about children and youth.)   The Cardinal Newman Society calls the first of August as the formal beginning of persecution of Catholic in the US, and points out that the HHS Mandate had rules rushed through, with public comment not allowed until after the 'interim" rules were promulgated specifically to include student health plans for the the 2012-2013 school year, knowing the effect this would have on Catholic institutions. 

But it's not just the "taxes". (Did you know Adam Smith said in The Wealth of Nations that "the power to tax is the power to destroy"?  Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?  In fact, that is the reason that religious organizations are tax exempt, to prevent taxes from being used to destroy them, in whole or in part.)  We are under threat of direct, armed oppression.  Law enforcement in the US is already overly militarized and under controlled--actually out of control--and the Obama Regime is trying to block controls on the actions of it's law enforcers.  Add to this the insidious erosion of civil liberties by the Patriot Act, (passed with bi-partisan support, extended in duration and scope likewise) and things look bleak.  They look bleaker when one remembers the documents circulated in 2009 listing as the most dangerous potential terrorists pro lifers, tax protestors, those who revere liberty, returning vets and so forth.  Yes, those documents were recalled, but unfortunately the political appointees and operatives who wrote them are still in place.  Worse yet, the Department of Homeland Security, America's equivalent of the Reich Sicherheitsdeinst Haupt Ampt, has once again issued documents that identify us as potential terrorists and considering that the President recently signed a bill allowing him, on his own authority, without consultation to authorize the Military to round up and detain without trial, due process or Habeus Corpus, American Citizens within the United States--so much for learning from the evils of the Japanese-American Concentration Camps.  Moreover, the Regime has tried, several time, various strategies for gaining control of the most effective means of Free Speech ever devised, the Internet.  Of course, since Congress won't play, he'll use another executive order, just as he has done in the face of the peoples representatives not passing the dream act, and to finance the Muslim Brotherhood, who not only have called for the destruction of Israel, but are actively persecuting Coptic Christians including murder, arson, rape, forced conversion, forced marriage and enslavement.

Yes, our own Government, which ignores us in issues of voter referendum (Not a single time that the people have voted on gay marriage has it passed, yet the Regime forges on through its' appontment of activist judges and refusal to enforce federal laws.)  our expressions of discontent, our organized lawful opposition, is going to step it's war on against us.  If this Regime returns to power in January, the gloves will be off, and I expect to end up in a camp, or in and American Equivalent of the Forest Brothers.  Plan ahead, and remember this--you cannot get through by keeping your head down.  If you don't believe me, remember Martin Niemoller and the Confessing Church .