As We Come Closer to Christmas

Believe it or not Christmas is just three days away. In the next two days people will be preparing gifts for loved ones, hustling to the store to buy that last gift, and some people may even be freaking out about preparing a Christmas dinner, decorating the house, and making sure everything is just right. Except that is, for their souls.

One of my observations of this Advent season is when I recently traveled to the mall to perchase a gift for my girlfriend. There were two teenage girls who were fighting over a set of earrings. I found this disturbing and as I went about making my purchases I found similar scenes. What have we become as a people? Have we become so materialistic about Christmas that we cannot love our brothers and sisters in Christ? Yes we must prepare for Christmas. But I must stress that in these next two days we focus on preparing the soul as well as our house.

Let us remember that Christ did not come to be born in a palace with the Pharisees and Sadducees and the High Priest of the Temple tending to His every need. Jesus humbled Himself and was born in a stable. He chose to be born amidst animal feces and hay and was placed in a manger or in other words a feeding trough. Jesus Christ, God incarnate, whom the the universe cannot contain, became humble to the point of being born in the most unsanitary of conditions. He chose to humble Himself even further "to the point of death, death on a cross. Because of this God exulted Him and gave Him the Name above all other names, so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend."

So what is Christmas all about? What are we celebrating? We celebrate when He came and we prepare for His second coming when He will come in glory to judge the living and the dead. So with what is left of this Advent season let us prepare our souls to receive the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and the Prince of peace. Let us celebrate that hour when the Blessed Virgin Mary gave birth to our Redemption and became the Mediatrix of all grace. Then let us rejoice with the Angels and give thanks and adoration to God. Most of all, while we are decorating our homes let us decorate them as if Christ Himself were coming over to stay and eat with us as he did with Zacheus the tax collector.

Pope Benedict on Population Control

In the Pope's message for the World Day of Peace (January 1st, 2009), he discusses the relationship between poverty and population control. He rejects the widely held belief that higher population leads to more poverty; in fact, he says, the evidence shows otherwise. He points out that there are four billion more people than at the end of World War II, yet many nations have managed to come out of poverty.
A LifeSite article explains that rather than coming out of altruistic motives, developed nations developed a strategy in the 1970's to reduce the birth rates around the world so as to limit competition. This strategy was drafted by Henry Kissinger, and in many ways has been realized through the promotion of abortion and contraception abroad.
Pope John Paul II spoke of this in Evangelium Vitae:

The Pharaoh of old, haunted by the presence and increase of the children of Israel, submitted them to every kind of oppression and ordered that every male child born of the Hebrew women was to be killed (cf. Ex 1:7-22). Today not a few of the powerful of the earth act in the same way. They too are haunted by the current demographic growth, and fear that the most prolific and poorest peoples represent a threat for the well-being and peace of their own countries. Consequently, rather than wishing to face and solve these serious problems with respect for the dignity of individuals and families and for every person's inviolable right to life, they prefer to promote and impose by whatever means a massive programme of birth control. Even the economic help which they would be ready to give is unjustly made conditional on the acceptance of an anti-birth policy. -Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae 16

A way in which this plan has backfired is the demographic decline of the Western world. The birthrates of European nations have fallen below replacement levels. The European average of 1.3 children/woman falls well below the 2.1 needed to sustain the population. The Russian population is expected to decline by a third by 2050. Here in America, it's right at 2.1, but that is largely due to higher birthrates among immigrants. At some point in this century, the world's population is going to plummet dramatically. Economies will follow if there are not enough people to sustain them. Our own country's strategy could prove to be its undoing. This topic is explored in the documentary Demographic Winter.

Whether it is in developed or developing countries, we should not view this decline as a positive. All should be welcome at the table of life, and policies that attack human life will have disastrous results.

Persecution of Christians is Alive and Well

AsiaNews reports that 50,000 demonstrators marched last weekend in India to protest a murder which, although the police have pointed to Maoist groups as the culprit, has been unfairly blamed on Christians. The marchers called for an end to Christian conversions in their country.
A Zenit report shows that there was an intimidation campaign against Catholic churches ahead of Venezuelan elections. Vandals spraypainted "Homeland, socialism, or death" on the walls of churches in the state of Barinas.
Add that to Christian persecution in the Middle East and China, and we see a pretty grim picture.
I think that we in the Western world, however, have long felt that this a distant concern. Sure, we may suffer ridicule for our beliefs, but at most it is a soft persecution; our society's belief in human rights and religious freedom should protect us from anything like this happening here. And in that sense of security, we ignore what is happening before our very eyes.
Look at how many reacted after Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage, passed in California. There was a website created as a blacklist of those who supported the measure. An elderly woman holding a cross at a protest had it knocked out of her hands, before it was trampled on. A group of Christians praying were threatened and abused just for being in a "gay" district.
Look at the fight over abortion. Many bishops are concerned that if the Freedom of Choice Act (which Barack Obama has promised to sign) passes, Catholic hospitals will be forced to choose between performing abortions or losing their funding. If this were to happen, a large number of Catholic hospitals could shut down rather than comply with the new law.
Look at some of the more militant atheists, such as Richard Dawkins. Some atheists have taken on a new approach, promoting atheism with a "missionary" zeal. As they attack faith in God as unreasonable, they cling to a far more unreasonable faith in "chance".
There is a split in our culture between two irreconcilable ideologies. The truths of Christianity cannot be changed because they are out of favor with the public (although many try to do so). "Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies just because they become fashions," as GK Chesterton said. But those fallacies ARE the fashions today. Abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, etc., will continue to be promoted as "rights", and anyone who attacks these so-called "rights" will be painted as intolerant, unreasonable, and fanatical. This is where we are today- we are marginalized for our belief in absolute truth. The relativistic society of today promotes the idea that there are no absolutes as an absolute truth. It says with Pilate, "what is truth?"(John 18:38)

I feel we are coming to a time of a more overt persecution of the Church in the West. The world is moving in a direction that is incompatible with the Gospel, and I feel that we will only shift course with great difficulty. Human rights are no longer to honor and protect the dignity of the individual, but the desires of the individual. Freedom of religion is giving way to freedom from religion. Everything is being redefined.
I have felt in recent months that something is coming that we need to be prepared for. That Christians can no longer be complacent. That we need courage for the future. I'm sure this sounds odd to a lot of people, but I know there are many out there who feel the same way.
Whatever happens, we can't face it with fear. Today we celebrated the Feast of Christ the King. Christ is Lord over all, and we need to give all to Him. We need to allow Him to reign over all of our selves, to claim His dominion over our weaknesses and failings as well as our strengths. We cannot give in to fear, for Jesus is the Lord of love, and "perfect love casts out all fear." (1 John 4:18) But we have to be aware of what is going on around us, as well, and awake from our slumber.

We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel and the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It is a trial which the whole Church . . . must take up. —Cardinal Karol Wotyla, reprinted November 9, 1978, issue of The Wall Street Journal

From Pro-Abortion to Pro-Life

LifeSite has an article about an abortionist and his profound conversion. Stojan Adasevic was the most well-known abortionist in Serbia for decades, performing 48,000 abortions. He had a dream where he saw a large group of children in a field, along with a man who identified himself as St. Thomas Aquinas. The saint told him that these children were the victims of the abortions he had performed. This led Adasevic to profoundly change his life and start advocating pro-life causes.

This is a great story and calls to mind Norma McCorvey, the Roe in the Roe vs. Wade decision, who became a committed pro-life activist in the 1990's. She entered the Catholic Church and now has her own pro-life ministry. This was an incredible conversion and a moment of rejoicing for the pro-life community.
I bring these up because a lot of us, myself included, have been demoralized about the future of the pro-life movement after the election of Barack Obama. His campaign promises and previous votes on the issue should be cause for concern for all who believe in the sanctity of human life. However, as the above stories demonstrate, we should NEVER UNDERESTIMATE GOD'S POWER TO WORK MIRACLES. God can work wonders in a person's heart, and we need to pray for this to happen with our President-Elect and all elected officials. We need to pray for those who provide abortions, that God may touch their hearts and awaken them to what they are doing. We need to pray for all those who advocate abortion, that they may instead seek to promote a Culture of Life. We need to pray for women who have had an abortion, that they may find the healing they need. Now do I think it's likely that all of the sudden Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are going to start being pro-life activists? Of course not, because in human terms, it's impossible. But then again, nobody thought it was possible for Dr. Adasevic or Norma McCorvey, either.