www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall well it's over!

I’m not the first to say it, but I’m still going to say that America has officially become an “obamanation” in the sight of God. Obama has charmed and lied his way into the presidency, and the powers of Hell are rejoicing. Lord, what a disaster! Soon we’ll see the Freedom of Choice Act (a.k.a. the License to Kill Act) in place, and there will be no safe haven for unborn children anywhere in this country. Partial-birth abortion will be allowed in every state and all restrictions on abortion will be lifted. Thank you, American people, for the wanton destruction of your own children! This is “your victory,” as your new hero has proclaimed. The genocide will not only continue, but will increase in its bloody vehemence.


We also have to thank especially the “Christian” people of our country. If the Catholics alone would have voted according to the tenets of our faith, the election would have turned out differently. I have been forced to come to a chilling conclusion: the election of Obama was the will of God. This is why I say this. Millions of people were praying to God to spare the unborn from unmitigated slaughter. Many were fasting and keeping vigil. Priests and even bishops were offering Masses. Scripture says that if we pray according to God’s will He will grant what we ask. But God rejected millions of prayers and sacrifices for this urgent intention. It must be that it was already too late. He had already decided that the wheels of the Apocalypse should start to turn. Another frightening thing I read is that there were pagan priests and priestesses praying and offering sacrifices to demons so that Obama would be elected, and their prayers were answered! Look out, America, for the wrath of God is going to fall on you.


(It was interesting to note that on the very night of his election, Obama was already hinting that he’s going to renege on his campaign promises, or at least that we’re not going to see his vaunted “change” anytime soon: “The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term…” Sheesh, he’s already running for re-election!)


There was recently published an insightful analysis into the Obama phenomenon by the Catholic author Michael D. O’Brien. I’ll share some of it now, but if you want to read the whole thing, click here. This is what we’ve brought upon ourselves. This is our new president.


“A few weeks ago a German friend called me immediately after Obama’s speech in Berlin, to say that the presidential candidate had mesmerized the crowds, and that a commentator on German television had said: ‘We have just heard the next President of the United States…and the future President of the World’… From my own reading of Obama’s declarations and stated positions, I knew he was an ultra-liberal, a social revolutionary with visionary pretensions. But the Antichrist? No, not possible, I thought. I felt that he was too shallow a man to be the Son of Perdition, the Man of Sin, the Beast of the Book of Revelation. And I still think so. Obama is a crowd-pleaser with just the right ethos of idealistic crusader. That the crusade and the banners under which it marches are evil does not automatically prove that he is the Antichrist.

“But now that I have seen the video of the Berlin speech I think there is more here than meets the eye. He is indeed a powerful manipulator of crowds, even as he appears ever so humble and wholesomely charming. I doubt that he is the long-prophesied ruler of the world, but I also believe that he is a carrier of a deadly moral virus, indeed a kind of anti-apostle spreading concepts and agendas that are not only anti-Christ but anti-human as well. In this sense he is of the spirit of Antichrist (perhaps without knowing it), and probably is one of several key figures in the world who (knowingly or unknowingly) will be instrumental in ushering in the time of great trial for the Church under its last and worst persecution, amidst the numerous other tribulations prophesied in the books of Daniel and Revelation, and letters of St Paul, St. John, and St. Peter.

“Of course the mystique that has grown up around him is endlessly reinforced by the liberal media, which presents him to us as a high-minded humanist, a kind of secular messiah (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 675). Yet when all the rhetoric is boiled down to its substance, the man is advocating unlimited state-sanctioned murder, and compounds it by indulging in habitual falsehood. He is well accustomed to playing loose with the truth whenever it is expedient for him to do so; or else he is the victim of the largest memory lapses in recorded history; or perhaps he is just not careful about how he expresses things—a blurring or selectivity regarding facts for the purpose of aggrandizing his public image…


“What are we to make of a man who has appeared out of semi-obscurity and become, nearly overnight, so very much an idol of the popular imagination? That he intends to become the most effective advocate of murder of the unborn ever seen in America should give us pause. Murder and lies are as old as the lands east of Eden, of course, but when they are charmingly packaged, proposed as reasonable and just policies (with a smile, a resonant voice, and an appealing flash of the eyes), one begins to wonder just what is afoot in the modern age. It brings to mind a passage from the first Act of Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

“‘That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain…’

“The line is from a scene where prince Hamlet has just encountered the ghost of his father, who informs his son that he was poisoned by his own brother Claudius (the ‘smiling, damned villain’), who after murdering him, seized the king’s crown and his queen.

“Barack Obama is an image-maker, creating his own myth as he goes along. This would be a sad defect in any human being, but it takes on ominous proportions in a person who may become, after November 4th, one of the most powerful figures in the world. How is it possible that such a tragic turn of events may come about, if indeed a majority of Americans choose to believe the smile and the myth? Why is it that so many people have come to believe that a mirage is reality, even destiny? Do pro-Obama voters hanker for a world figure who would heal old divisions between races and religions, thus heralding a new age for mankind? During this time of near intolerable tensions, does he appear to be the one who can reconcile Islam and Christianity, Africa and America, occident and orient, black and white, rich and poor? Do they see his racial origins as a symbolic victory over the history of racial oppression? Do they see in him the good-hearted ‘under-dog’, the gutsy street fighter who agitates for the rights of the ‘little guy,’ whose meteoric rise to a position of maximum influence represents themselves enthroned at last in the high seat of power? Is this why they ignore his every grave fault and hungrily consume his vague idealist platitudes as if these were a kind of new gospel for the third millennium? Our hero. Our visionary. Our Great Friend and spokesman in the forum of the world?…

“So why Obama? And why does he rise and rise as his mouth smiles and smiles, exuding sincerity as he speaks lies and death? And why, most horribly, most shamefully, are so many Christians of malformed or unformed conscience supporting him? Is it because they have never been clearly instructed in the truth, never understood the foundation upon which the moral cosmos is built? Is morality for them merely another system of abstract ‘values’ in a crowded playing field of such systems, from which one may pick and choose? In the case of Catholics, for example, have they been blinded by a diet of theological nuances and deadly little loopholes offered to them by the committees of national episcopal conferences — committees that have absolutely no authority over Catholics, yet which are widely revered as a kind of alternative Magisterium? … One either turns away into a deeper state of denial, or one turns heart and mind toward the splendor of Truth, and changes one’s life accordingly.”


It looks like God has given us up to our own chosen depravities (see Rom. 1:18-32). St Paul, when dealing with a single evildoer in the Corinthian church, commanded the faithful, with the power of Jesus, “to deliver this man to satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1Cor. 5:3-5). Has God just delivered America to satan, that is, permitted us to suffer the consequences of our evil choices so that in the end we may repent and be saved? “Do not be deceived,” says the Apostle, “God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Gal. 6:7). America has sown evil in electing the grinning monster to the presidency. She will reap an evil harvest. Judgment will inexorably come, one way or another. Will America turn back to God? Will she wait until it is too late? “They turn to Me their backs and not their faces; yet in their time of trouble they cry out, ‘Rise up and save us!’ Where are the gods you made for yourselves? Let them rise up!” (Jer. 2:27-28).
+Joseph, Abbot
Mt. Tabor Ukrainian Catholic Monastery

Joe,

Amen, thanks- you have summed up my feelings exactly on the matter (and thanks to Fr. Serge, Alexis Paul B. and others). I believe that the prolife cause is not helped but hindered by negative, fear-mongering, and hateful attitudes that sometimes get attached to it. The Epistle of Diognetus says God does not compel but persuade. Are we to condemn are President and fellow citizens, as dumb, evil, unenlightened, or are we to model love and compassion, and make persuasive arguments?

Blessings,
Lance

No, not an agent of Satan, but I think this is the old cutting off of one's (political) nose to spite one's (moral) face. It seems to be a fairly common phenomenon of this election; in the end both the nose and the face are the worse for it.

I think the issue fundamentally is that those who are pro-life and yet still voted for Obama knowing full well of his plans to remove all obstacles to the killing of unborn children did so, not because they are "evil people" or "pawns of Satan", but rather because they believed that there was a "proportionate reason" to do so. Somewhere, somehow there was another issue which they regarded as more heinous than this which constitutes a most despicable crime against humanity.

Bottom line? From my perspective, it is not a matter of "conservative" or "liberal"..."right wing" or "left wing", "Republican" or "Democrat", rather it is a question of moral reasoning. Pro-lifers who voted for Obama engaged in flawed moral reasoning, IMHO. They are not evil people, but I believe that they may have cooperated in an evil.

Pro-Life is not a matter of party. It is a matter of principle. Were the situation reversed and the Republicans put forward a person equally as radical on this question of unborn (or even recently born) human life, and I had the alternative of a pro-life Democrat or a third party, I would most certainly vote pro-life. It is certainly not the only issue, but it is a pivotal one.

I wonder who the unborn would have voted for?

This approach -- rationale -- has also been expressed in another thread now closed. I am surprised and dismayed to have seen it there, and now here too, since it represents to me evidence of the demise of sound thinking in our society and culture. It is not that most people would vote or support evil in itself but, in its own way it is just as frightening and insidious that they reason the evil away with loose arguments, or because they allow others to think for them, or are the unwitting victims of subtle and not so subtle manipulation.

The this-or-that comparisons put forth here and in the other thread remind me of the old monkey-typewriter example of statistical reasoning (let's update it to a word processor keyboard): You put a monkey down in front of a keyboard; it will either type out the plays of Shakespeare or it will not. Therefore it has a 50% chance of typing out the plays of Shakespeare. Rather straightforward; just that simple, either or.

But the choice is not just simply one evil or another.

There’s a lot to be said and argued about just war theory and how it applies with the threats and technology of today. That is an issue. Consider first, however, the very basis: the purpose and motivation determining the morality of the actions being compared.

What is the correct comparison to the “war” against the unborn? Consider a war conducted for two specific purposes, and evaluate the equivalence of the morality of each relative to the issue of abortion.

Here are two limiting-cases, hypothetical scenarios. Let’s call the countries involved US and IT.

Scenario 1: The US demands of the IT that IT shows that it is not harboring the lethal weapons called WMDs. IT refuses and the US invades to achieve the objective of destroying the WMDs. Because of the massive weaponry of the US, it turns out that there is no resistance. IT essentially gives up. Not one shot is fired, no one on either side dies. The US finds that IT was bluffing; there are no WMDs. The US totally achieves its objective; there was no objective to kill.


Scenario 2: The US is aware that there are people who inhabit IT. They, the ITs, have no weapons and are totally defenseless and poor; so poor in fact that the only thing they have is that they are alive. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons the US decides that these people of IT must be terminated. They are an inconvenience and at the least may pose psychological problems for some in US. That the IT’s will be terminated is, of course, not also without specific reasons or cause: some are the wrong sex; they are an infringement on the US’s lifestyle, they present a financial burden; some are not considered normal or are deemed deficient mentally or physically; some are the result of rape; some are the result of incest; some will not live long anyway; some will be a burden on society; others are unplanned, etc. And since the primary objective is that they die, the US military is instructed that if any somehow survive the war, the military could be sued for negligence under US law on the basis of the IT’s continued wrongful-existence. Whatever the reason, according to US law the IT are not protected in any way; many citizens of US are very comfortable with this objective since it is, after all, sanctioned by law. I could go on, but here the objective is that the IT must die.

Are the two scenarios just examples of one evil or another? We can argue the just/unjust war. But when any country/entity conducts a war of genocide, we know that it is intrinsically unjust and evil. And abortion is the genocide of the transnational IT/entity we know, among other names, as humanity.

Amen Father. I will pray that this new president has a change of heart and will see that the protecting the unborn should be the first thing he does.

Will those who voted for him on this forum feel the same way when he starts in on his abortion agenda or will they bring up big bad Bush?

Could someone please tell me what type of education Rush Limbaugh has?

Off topic. My comment pertained to the topic of the "Fairness Doctrine", about which he would have some expertise as it pertains to his longstanding successful career in media.

Father Joseph

That was one of the most outrageous posts I've ever read on this forum. AND I agree completely.

I am a Federal Law Enforcement Officer and I can personally attest that the majority of my fellow officers detested Bush and his exploitation of the fears of the common person to pursue his own goals.
Coming from a rural area in Ohio, I understand why the Republican party is so popular in rural areas. Ignorance, Ignorance, Ignorance! No wonder why people there believed Bush and his speeches about "the enemy."

My mother was on a bio-terrorism task force supporting a major military installation here in the US. From what she shared with me, these threats were quite real.

I also am friends with a retired FBI guy who was very close to John O'Neill. From what he says (and he does not say much), the threats are all quite real. Hard to believe that so much false intelligence would be cascading down from President Bush.

Not sure that your claims of "ignorance" are entirely founded. There was, after all, this little event known as 9/11...

So rural people are republican because of ignorance? WOW! I didn't know city folk are the only smart people out there. Then again I live close to the rural folks so maybe their ignorance has rubbed off on me.

+Joseph, Abbot
Mt. Tabor Ukrainian Catholic Monastery

Father Joseph, bless!!

The link that you mention in your post is not there in my copy.

??

BOB

It is a shame that many (not all) who espouse liberalism act elitist towards those of us who are conservatives. It is a mental construct that they use to explain all behavior which does not align with their "enlightened" views:

"Obviously you must be ignorant farm hands if you do not agree with me!"

Unfortunately, sometimes elitism becomes the substitute for substantive and rational debate on the issues.