![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/85\/2011\/12\/Ben_Franklin_510.jpg\" "\\"Ben_Franklin_510\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nFor about a few months now, I\u2019ve been mentioning things political<\/a> that should matter to Catholics, and thus to all human beings. A few months back, I mentioned a scandal with our war dead<\/a> that is another marker of trouble. Mark Shea wrote on these issues in a manner that helps bring to light what is at stake here.<\/p>\n For as St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans,<\/p>\n What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? As it is written:<\/p>\n \u201cFor your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.\u201d<\/p>\n No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But, of course, that doesn\u2019t mean we will be immune from difficulties either. Nor does it mean we just ball ourselves up in a corner, pray, hope, and do nothing else. Shea notes the true cause of our general dissatisfaction: these are the fruits of the Culture of Death.<\/p>\n As I mentioned the other day, I think the issue facing our country is not primarily left vs. right or GOP vs. Dem.\u00a0 It is, rather, an elite on both sides of the aisle that is increasingly stronger and more tyrannical vs. a populace that is increasingly weaker and more vulnerable to the depredations of the strong.\u00a0 It is an issue rooted, of course, in our culture of death.\u00a0 But it is something that has now begun to metastasize well past the killing and maltreatment of the weak, sick and old and is beginning to target all of us.<\/p>\n The concern about abortion, since the beginning, has been not merely that the killing of unborn children itself is a grave evil (bad as that is), but that the rationale for doing this evil must and will surely become the rationale for oppressing and killing the weak at every level of society. As Mother Teresa said with characteristic simplicity, \u201cIf a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other?\u201d\u00a0 Ideas have consequences.\u00a0 Once you declare that a human being\u2019s right to live comes, not from the hand of God, but from the generosity of the state, you make all members of\u00a0homo sapiens<\/em> vulnerable to having their rights stripped from them by anybody with sufficient power to do it.<\/p>\n Almost 40 years ago, we chose to do this to the weakest and most vulnerable members of society and have gone on, as a culture, making that choice every day.<\/p>\n But our civilization has not stayed in place.\u00a0 It has built on this fundamental denial of human rights rooted in the fact that we are creatures made in the image and likeness of God.\u00a0 Little by little, but with increasing momentum, we have chosen, always for the sake of \u201cpeace and safety\u201d (i.e., convenience) to snip off from the human family more and more of those who are weakest or otherwise beyond the pale of consideration as ineligible for human rights.\u00a0 Next came the elderly and ill, with euthanasia legislation.\u00a0 It\u2019s sold, again, with the lie that it will bring \u201cpeace\u201d (for the unwanted dying) and \u201csafety\u201d (from loss of too much money by those responsible for the care of the expensive weak person) but the real goal is convenience for bean counters who can\u2019t be bothered to pay for people who \u201cuse up too many resources\u201d.\u00a0 Power, once again, gets concentrated in the hands of the powerful and the undesirable are, on the word of the powerful alone, declared to be unworthy of life and pushed into death.<\/p>\n The culture that has supported this (particularly my own Generation Narcissus) has, with spectacular short-sightedness, never dreamed that somebody more powerful than us might consider\u00a0us <\/em>nuisances who might need to be gotten rid of.\u00a0 Which is how, with quiet efficiency and almost no notice from the media, the US Senate last week was able to pass a bill which (if, God forbid, it becomes law) would place\u00a0all <\/em>American citizens in pretty much the position that the unborn, ill and elderly currently occupy: persons with basic human rights\u00a0if the Powerful say we are entitled to them<\/em>, and non-persons with absolutely no rights if the Powerful decide to imprison and (as we shall see in a moment) perhaps even kill us without charge or right to counsel.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Go and read the whole piece<\/a>. Mark will share quite a bit about the Senate bill I was writing about back in December.\u00a0You remember the one, all wrapped up in a Defense Bill<\/a>, while opening a window on stripping anyone and everyone of their God given rights, not just as citizens, but as human beings. That\u2019s where Mark\u2019s invocation of Benjamin Franklin\u2019s quote, after the Holy Spirit\u2019s words to us via St. Paul\u2019s letter to the Thessalonians, strikes at the heart of the matter.<\/p>\n \u201cThose who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Speaking of windows, here\u2019s an idea whose time came once, and that has come once again.\u00a0Do you think St. Paul would approve of this editorial message? Roll clip:<\/p>\n