Just a quick note to say we're wishing all of you a Happy Thanksgiving and a wonderful holiday season. We thank God for the wonders of the internet and the ability to interact with you all through blogs; something that would have been impossible ten years ago. And we thank God that we live in a country in which we are allowed to practice our faith without too much persecution (as long as you aren't a doctor, pharmacist, or judge).
God bless,
Jay
Yes, we should be thankful that it hasn't gotten that bad (in Canada, unfortunately the list has also expanded to teachers and printers - bank tellers had to fight to retain their rights).
We should also hope for repentance. What we must not do is fool ourselves into thinking we can successfully fight to maintain the status quo. The previous Holy Father called for a New Evangelization not a maintenance of a tolerable status quo. Embracing this new evangelization means choosing life over death.
This is ultimately the weakness of current "socially conservative" movements. Almost all the battles are fought defensively. We win some battles and maintain our ground, we lose some battles and lose ground (e.g. Terry Schiavo). But we never gain ground because we almost never ever even try to gain ground (e.g. we've resigned ourselves to common-law marriages and contraceptives).
Have you noticed that the progressives fight a better fight than we do? Have you noticed we let them decide which issues will be discussed and when they will be discussed? The early Christians and Medieval Saints made no such mistake.
Conservatism by definition appeals to those who do not want change. Its strength is its desire to prevent things from getting worse. Its weakness is its reluctance to make things better.
We would do well to listen to our Evangelical brothers who remind us that when Our Lord says the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Kingdom of God, he means that the Gates of Hell are to be under siege from the soldiers in the Kingdom of God - not the other way around. The early Christians stormed the Gates of Hell even though (or perhaps because) they faced martyrdom and persecution. So did the Medieval Saints.