The Democrat Party dislikes traditional Christians. Watch them try to split Evangelicals from their Roman Catholic and Orthodox allies. Evangelicals are the frequent punch line to mainstream cultural jokes, so that some people feel uncomfortable associating with them. This soft bigotry is the one hope of the Democrat Party. Can they get Roman Catholic and Orthodox leaders to break with their allies from Evangelical churches by sneering at Evangelicals? Look for more stories trying to show how some traditionally religious people are not like “those narrow minded Evangelicals.”

It will not work, but should lead to a great deal of folly from Howard Dean who is a never ending source of amusement. Here is a news story from the weekend.

As usual my comments are in italics.

Dean Says Democrats Will Make Schiavo Case An Election Issue: “Dean Says Democrats Will Make Schiavo Case An Election Issue
The Los Angeles Times ^ | April 16, 2005 | Michael Finnegan

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Friday that his party would wield the Terri Schiavo case against Republicans in the 2006 and 2008 elections, but for now needed to stay focused battling President Bush on Social Security.

Having done everything he could to make sure she was dead, DNC Chairman Dean plans to go on “using” Terri Schiavo. However, she can be kept in reserve while Dean makes sure that Social Security funds are kept out of the hands of the people who earned them and kept in his hands.

‘We’re going to use Terri Schiavo later on,’ Dean said of the brain-damaged Floridian who died last month after her feeding tube was removed amid a swarm of political controversy.

I am so glad they have stopped for now. Perhaps that will allow her grieving parents time to look forward to and prepare for ads exploiting their daughter’s death. Note that the Times desbribes the moral outrage around the Schaivo death as “political.” In the world of LA Times, all controversy is about politics.

Dean, who has called congressional intervention in the Schiavo case ‘political grandstanding,’ singled out House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) for his leading role in the matter.

Trying to save Terri’s life against all pollster’s advice is grandstanding. Exploiting her death years later is what Howard Dean offers as an alternative. Oh and did he forget to mention Tom DeLay? Last presidential race no Democrat could speak for long without the word “Vietnam” creeping into their sentences. Democrats evidently believe repeating a word or term is a substitute for argument. . . a sort of Leftist form of Buddhism. Tom DeLay is the new Vietnam.

‘This is going to be an issue in 2006, and it’s going to be an issue in 2008,’ Dean told about 200 people at a gay rights group’s breakfast in West Hollywood, ‘because we’re going to have an ad with a picture of Tom DeLay saying, ‘Do you want this guy to decide whether you die or not? Or is that going to be up to your loved ones?’ ‘

Reaching out to Red State America, Dean told a gay rights breakfast in West Hollywood, a group it takes courage to speak in front of for a Democrat, that parents should have no rights. Tom Delay (Did I mention Tom Delay?) is what the Democrats think a parent is.

Dean, a practicing physician until he became governor of Vermont in 1991, added: ‘The issue is: Are we going to live in a theocracy where the highest powers tell us what to do? Or are we going to be allowed to consult our own high powers when we make very difficult decisions?’

Dean believes any religious motivation in passing a law or in trying to help a person is a theocracy. He evidently believes religious people should never pass laws with religious motivations. It is no wonder Dean and the Democrats do not support traditional marriage. It is a wonder that any of our laws, most passed by people with religious motives, pass muster. Actually, Dean could explain this. He would just refer to his higher power, himself, and find those he agrees with. Unlike those theocrats who wrote that some rights come from our Creator and cannot be taken away by government or individuals, men such as Jefferson and Washington, Howard Dean thinks such ideas “difficult” and wants time to consult his inner Howard about them.

Before Schiavo’s death, the Republican-controlled Congress passed legislation giving her parents the right to take action in federal court to have her feeding tube reinserted, but no judge intervened. Schiavo’s husband had fought for years to withdraw the tube, arguing that she would not have wanted her life extended.”

Democrats are out there fighting hard to call you a theocrat, remove religion from public view, and to exploit the tragic death of a young woman. . . in fact view her death as a major accomplishment on the part of the Party. If youa are a traditional Catholic, Evangelical, or Orthodox Christian can you vote for the Party of Howard Dean?

Let me speculate outside the “normal box” for a moment.

My assumptions:

Russia is in deep trouble. The War on Terror has justly caused us to turn our attention away from the giant bear in the North. However, an aging population combined with a large Islamic population is going to lead to problems in the near future. Communism and secularism are failed gods. Western democracy has too often been linked to corruption and mob rule. There is a building anger and frustration in the country.

Putin is not the answer. He is more a Kerensky figure holding together a government for which no Russian would be eager to die. Economic progress is there, but it is not widespread enough. If the Western economies catch a bad cold, the Russian economy will die. Eventually, we will catch such a cold.

Problem:

The frightening thing is that in circumstances not unlike the ones now present Russia has suffered through periodic horrid rebellions and blood lettings. The rule of the socialists in the twentieth century was just the worst of these terrors.

Something must be done to avoid this. The dangerous, ugly right is rising and only the power of genuine Russian religion can help avoid it taking power in a reign of blood. This anti-Semite and dangerous group has little appeal now, but I believe in the economic crisis that is bound to come that its appeal will grow. This is the worst possible outcome.

Outside the Box Speculation on a Solution:

Spain showed the way to avoid this problem. The monarchy was restored in a constitutional system. A king was appointed with liberal values. King Juan Carlos helped save a sane Spanish state during a time of crisis. What far-right party could attack their Catholic King?

In the same way, Putin should do as Franco did and work to restore the monarchy. A liberal, Western European Romanov, or near relative, could be found and offered the throne. (Would any of the Windsors become Orthodox? Oh the fun!)

A British style constitution (1910 Britain?) could be adopted. The Orthodox Church could be given a special status (again like modern Britain) while other religions are given full freedom of worship. (This might be better than the present situation on the ground where too often non-Orthodox groups face discrimination from Russians afraid of losing their culture.) The monarch chosen must be carefully chosen to be “progressive” (good in this context) and not an anti-Semite. Again Juan Carlos (not Charles of Britain) must be the model.

This would allow for a strong center in Russia, but also allow for the Duma to continue to develop. Most important, it would reduce the power of the dangerous right in Russia. Would anyone on the far right revolt against an Orthodox tsar in Petersburg? Islam had good relations with the monarchy historically. The Romanovs were a disaster for Jewish persons, but one can trust they have learned something in exile. Indeed, one can hope that Putin would demand it.

If the situation in Russia could continue to develop democratically, then such extreme steps would not be necessary. However, Russia is already in danger of stepping back. I think the likely governments that will result from the next crisis will be far worse than anything I have just described. A constitutional monarchy and a strong Orthodox church with a vibrant Duma(allowing for a diversity of religions and ideas) would have the cultural clout to survive the thunder rising on the right.

Of course, this is an extreme solution. One can hope that the present Russian state can muddle through and the worse case will not happen. However, there is not much democracy in present Russia and diminishing hope of freedom.

The Spanish situation points to the fact what a strong figure could do to save a nation from a civil war by restoring the organic history of a nation broken by the “last time of troubles.” Putin must act to save Russia before the non-organic, incoherent Russian situation leads to a civil war or blood letting on a massive scale which will bring a far worse government. Does he have the power? Putin cannot save Russia except by using his moment of power to create a stronger, more democratic, and more Russian government model.

What was best reason as a member of a traditional faith to vote for George W. Bush in 2004?

There many good reasons for all Americans, including non-religious persons, to support the President. However, the best reason for the majority of the population that is religious was the power of the President to appoint judges.

Too often in our culture judges have legislated from the bench for the secular views of the “intellectual” minority. In the last fifty years, these judges have caused major social upheaval, turning issues like abortion and school prayers into open sores, by backing causes popular only in Harvard Yard. They condescend and they ignore the traditions of this nation and the philosophy of the Founders.

The President ran, in part, as a candidate who wanted to get rid of the those judges following normal Constitutional means. He won in large part with the backing of religious conservatives sick of being marginalized and tired of having their election victories stolen by judges who legislate from the bench.

The largest group of religious people in America are Christians. Most Christians believe in what the late John Paul the Great called a “culture of life.” We may disagree about the means to achieve it, but we all agree that justice for the poor and the handicapped are essential. We know that there is a right to life, liberty, and the ownership of private property that cannot be given by government nor can it be taken away by government.

We argued for our claims in the last election. Questions regarding these claims played an important role in the candidates debates. Traditional religious persons won the last election.

Religious claims to provide knowledge about the world. The Christian tradition claims to know that each human being has a soul, that this soul has been given rights by a Creator God that cannot be taken away by the state, and that no state can demand the ultimate allegiance of any man. This claim to knowledge has been tested philosophically and in practical experience and has been found reasonable.

This knowledge helped inform the Founding Fathers of the United States. It also informs the voting patterns of millions of Americans. While no person should be forced to be religious, it is equally true that no man should be forced to deny something he knows to be true to work in government. If there is a God and He has spoken, then Christians should be able to apply this information to the practical problems of our culture. This can be done in a way that respects the rights of minority religions and of secularists. However, secularists do not win by default in a republic. They must compete in the open market of ideas and win elections.

Secularism and the idea that open religious expression is bad lost the last election. Secularists, who want to strip the marketplace of any mention of religion or God, voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry. They lost. Religious traditionalists won.

Now Republicans in the Senate seem to have lost their nerve. They refuse to vote to stop a minority of Senators from blocking the will of the people. They are unnerved by irrational charges that voting to change a process is “undemocratic.” Nobody is asking that Bobby Byrd be arrested. We are asking that he be put to the test to see if he has the votes to maintain a procedure that Senators created for themselves. If he lacks the votes, then the rules will democratically change. This is not tyranny for Mr. Byrd can take his case to the people and throw the rascals out, if the people agree.

I suspect that Mr. Byrd knows the people would do no such thing and that most folk in West Virginia would love to see abortion returned to the states, school prayer (or no) returned to the school districts, and the nativity not the constant point of litigation by the Grinch Brigade.

Mr Byrd is no secularist, but is in danger of becoming, in his old age, a sort of prop for the secularists. Personally pious, but clueless about the direction of the culture, Byrd is allowed to twang away as a red state cover for his godless blue state masters.

Let’s have a vote in the Senate over whether Bobby Byrd and his pals should have veto power over the selection of judges.

Otherwise: why should I bother to work so hard for Republicans in the Senate?

If the Republican Senate lacks the spine to vote on the President’s judges or to change the rules of the Senate by a majority vote, then what good are they? Why did religious traditionalists labor so hard for them? My calmer side remembers that they are better than their foes, but being “against” is not enough to motivate giving and the hard labor of supporting

Tonight almost a century ago the RMS Titanic sank. Thousands of people lost their lives in a disaster that came to symbolize the death of the false optimism that had marked the start of the century.

Liberalism in 1900 felt it had at last escaped the chains of fundamentalism. Christianity would be purged of the Cross and the blood and become a social gospel. Socialism seemed like the economic system of the future and would form the practical content of this creedless Christianity . A group of liberals started a magazine they dared call the Christian Century. It still exists, nearly forgotten, so fusty and old fashioned in its loves and hates that it seems almost reactionary now.

Man felt like he could be God. Science would solve all our problems. A single iceberg on a cold April night destroyed the largest object moved by man up to that time.

What was it like to stand there as the captain of that ship and know that you were doomed to die? You could order the finest meal, the best wine, and command the most powerful engines on the planet, but you could not save the ship. It was a “mathematical certainty” the ship would die and you with it. For as certain as the death of the liner was the mathematics of the lifeboats: not even half the passengers and crew could be saved.

What was it like to stand holding your wife and know that you would never see her again? What was it like to tell the white lie that “you were a strong swimmer” and that “help was surely on the way”? What was it like to be the woman in the lifeboat and know that it was lie and see your husband light a last cigarette and stand by the rail watching your lifeboat lowered to the water? What was it like to be a millionaire with money to spare in your pockets and a young, pregnant wife in a lifeboat, and know you too must die? What was it like to hear the band play on and on as a soundtrack to the ship going up into the air to plunge to the very depths of the sea?

I should know. You should know. For it is our condition tonight. Tonight it is a mathematical certainty that we shall die and soon. Hamlet’s Undiscovered Country is before us. We can die well, like John Paul the Great and like the gentlemen of the first class, or we can die badly like some Hollywood star trying to botox his way to immortality and like the cads of first class who let women die to save their own skins. In any case, we shall die.

Atheism can posture bravely about the end. A good man can be brave in the face of sudden death perhaps, but what if death is not the end? The most frightful thing is that the last plunge into the sea may not be all. What dreams may come? What reality? What if selfishness cannot be washed away in one unselfish act at the moment of death? What if someone has come score and kept a record?

It is a fact, as certain as death, that one divine Man has been ahead of us and returned. He has gone down to go up. He has seen what dreams may come. Jesus Christ has conquered death. The strong, the most manly of all men, died for us that we may live. He could have saved Himself, but He died so that we the weak, the unworthy, stow aways not even steerage, could be saved. His salvation is not short term and it does not pretend to be salvation from suffering. No. Instead, it embraces suffering and the coldness of the wine-dark sea. It plunges down past the very bottom to Hades itself and it sets the willing captives free.

Thank God for Him. Thank God for His Church. Thank God that I stand in myself, captain of a doomed body, and need not issue the order: “Every man for himself.” One has come who has given the order: “The Divine Man for everyone else.” We are saved. How I love my savior! How I long to pass through death into life and be much nearer to Him!

There in my Father’s home, safe and at rest,
There in my Savior’s love, perfectly blest;
Age after age to be, nearer my God to Thee.

Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee.

A memo I happened to receive from an unknown source.

Make of it what you will.

The Department of External Affairs
The Divinity School of Saint Chad

FROM: The Canon Rev Dale Owen
(www.revdaleowen.org)
RE: The Next Pope

I was distressed to see that the so-called massive crowds attending the services for the reactionary religious leader in Rome are causing some of our firmest supporters pause. I have heard some of them saying, “Perhaps his policies were not so bad after all. He seemed to have been loved.”

This is the kind of thinking that ended the Howard Dean run for office and cost us a Kennedy presidency in 1980.

How many of those crowds would normally be in Rome for the food and fun? Has anyone noticed that it is near Spring Break in the United States? How many of these folk are unwary Ivy League students trapped in the media glare and forced to act as if they are there for the liturgy? Has anyone else noticed that this event is drawing attention away from the latest Bush problems? Could these people be flown in by Karl Rove to help the President?

It is possible you know.

We know those people cannot be there for the Pope.

How do we know? Our own churches are empty. How could his be full? We are in tune with the Spirit of Youth. He was not. Could young people reject our views so groovy and full of life for his? One always anticipated his Church bursting out in Latin! They have the Gregorian Chant. We have Kumbaya. I ask you: Which is more in touch with the Spirit of our Age?

Most irritating is the media campaign to refer to the late Pope as “John Paul the Great.” I recommend that we point out the factual truth that he is in fact merely “the late.” Our opponents leave in a dream world of their own making. It is up to us to remind them of reality.

We must continue to press for a Pope that will hear the voice of the people. Not the people that go to Mass every week. They are the thoughtless boobs, the Tolkien-loving, home-schooling, Creed chanting folk. They voted for Bush in high numbers. No. The real voice of the Church are those people driven from it. Those who never attend. Those are the people to whom we must attend and the next Pope must hear.

We need a Pope for Ted Kennedy. We need a Pope for the man who loves marriage so much he does it many times. We need a Pope who will let Saint Andrew go for the approval of Andrew Sullivan.

Let’s face it: it will make University wine and cheeses so much easier if we are not always apologizing for the Pope.

It is true that our people, the real Catholics of the heart, do not go to Mass. What of it? Must we be so narrow? I have often found God on the golf course! It is true that they do not believe in the Creeds. What of it? Neither do I or any other right thinking priests.

Let’s face it: the fetish with attendance is destroying us. We must become like the American Episcopal Church which has proven that getting smaller means getting better.

We need women priests! This will solve the shortage of priests, if the Episcopal Church is any guide, by closing a record number of parishes! We will also no longer have to have as many “religious chores” performed as we can dispense with mundane and medieval practices such as confession for direct action with the Democrat Party. In this way even the political protester can become a priest of the New Church.

These proposals are long over due. We must not be soft in this time of media madness. We must press on for a Church that no longer looks like a Church, because it has become just like Harvard Yard.

Rev Dale

The death of John Paul the Great is a good time to review the history of the 1980’s. Some decades count more than other decades. Can anyone remember anything about the 1990’s? Does anyone wish to do so? On the other hand, the “eighties” marked an end to Communism and almost all of the Victorian utopian ideologies, Darwinism only excepted. Giants seemed to walk the earth. Ronald Wilson Reagan. Lady Thatcher. John Paul the Great.

Each one of these remarkable individuals almost did not reach the summit of power. It is not worth thinking about what would have happened to the planet if any one of them had been stopped. The Nazis nearly did in John Paul. Tory stupidity almost blocked the rise of Thatcher. The same is true for the rise of Reagan.

In his splendid book, Reagan’s Revolution, Craig Shirley reminds us that Republicans rejected Reagan (narrowly!) in his first serious bid for President in 1976. I don’t remember those primaries well (being all of thirteen), but Shirley brought it all back. And it is important to remember how far Reagan and that campaign brought conservatives.

It gave us control of the party. It gave conservatives a voice that was not negative. It made an entire generation of political workers turned off by Watergate hopeful again. It nearly defeated a sitting President in the royal party and broke the back of the geriatric North-East leadership which was content to lose to Democrats as long as their genteel hands kept some power.

It gave religious conservatives a voice that was free from the sin of racism (Wallace) or the stupidity of populist economics (Bryanism).

My own family backed President Ford in the New York primaries. We were seventh generation Republicans and took our politics seriously. We knew that Jimmy Carter was a disaster in the making. My father sensibly reasoned (given what we knew at the time) that Reagan could not win. Goldwater had taught that lesson hadn’t he?

The 1976 campaign changed all of that. Reagan might have won. He would have done at least as well against Carter as Ford. However, it is not clear that my father was not right in 1976. Didn’t it take four years of liberal ineptitude on the part of Carter to get the conservative Democrats to consider becoming Reagan Democrats? Would Reagan have inherited the troubles of the late 1970s without the Republican Senate that passed his tax cuts and defense build up?

Carter made Reagan possible, just as Gerald R. Ford and the primaries of 1976 made Reagan plausible.

In 1980 my father and entire family (though I could still not vote!) were solidly in Reagan’s camp. We were Reagan Republicans who decided that this time their heads and their hearts could settle on the same candidate. This process was repeated all over America.

Buy the book and learn that once upon a time, Nelson Rockefeller was a serious player in the Republican Party. Remember that small victories and even big defeats can lead to positive changes. The modern Republican Party was born out of the narrow loss of 1976. The book is pithy, moving, and fun for political junkies and Reagan fans alike. Most of all, in this Dark Age, it is a reminder that God knows. He brings His men to the right place at the right time.

At just the right time, almost at the same moment, John Paul the Great, the Iron Lady, and the Great Communicator shared the world stage for almost a decade.

Divine providence indeed.

I appreciate being sent a review copy by the publisher.

Just as free market economics stems from a Christian world view, so socialism is fundamentally at war with Christianity. Recently, socialism has become a fad for some Christian college professors. It is not surprising that this would be so since socialism has always flourished amongst the intellectuals and been rejected by the working man. Great union leaders like Gompers and Meaney had no time for the nonsense of socialism as an ideology. Their practical attempts to elevate the conditions of workers through trade unions were opposed by socialists at almost every turn. Healthy unions are the sign of a free society, but to be healthy they must be composed of workers and not be “intellectuals” pretending to be workers.

A free market system allows for unions and for the rights of owners. It finds a balance between the two in a Christian commonwealth. Ronald Reagan was right when he proclaimed the goal of “maximum freedom consistent with law and order.” In this sense, Christians are neither socialists (government control of economy) nor libertarians (total freedom) since both notions are utopian. Both assume that the Kingdom of Heaven is now.

Free market economics recognizes four Christian ideas. First, it accepts the Biblical commands not to steal and not to covet. These commands acknowledge the right to private property and the common human sin of each one of us to want what we do not have. Free market economics allows private property, but does not force us to covet. Socialism by contrast assumes all men will covet and takes away their property. It keeps individuals from stealing by forcing the group to steal!

Second free market economics recognizes the human fall. This side of paradise no human being or agency, not even the Church, can be trusted with all power. Free market economics defuses the power of the purse as widely as possible to prevent abuse of citizens. When other Christian goods are recognized, like the right to free assembly (unions, corporations), men are allowed to express their best sides while minimizes their worst. Economic freedom is not the whole story or the most important good for a Christian, but it frequently provides the material tools (freedom from want) to achieve other more important goods.

Third, free market economics is not based on greed, but on the keen insight that man is (as Tolkien put it) a sub-creator. The free market does not assume (as too much of socialism does) that your wealth is my loss. Economics is not “a zero sum game.” (It does not just divide the pie into ever smaller slices. It allows people to make new pies and even cake!) Instead, men and women can create wealth through their creative capacities under God. This recognizes the image of God in each human being.

Finally, the free market does not set wealth as an idol around which all of society must be organized. Socialism
sees money making as so important that it must place it in the power of the state. It proclaims to want to end the greed of the rich while being obsessed with them. Free market economics assumes that many other things motivate men (love of God, family, and country for example). The state need not control economics totally, because economics while important is not everything. Men with sound ideas about economics (not full of greed, moderate in desires) can be very bad men in other areas. Hitler and Stalin were both men of moderate desires in terms of money, but both were horrid men.

Socialism has never worked where it has been tried. Even small religious communities that try it, like the kibbutz of Israel, tend to die out by the third generation. Socialist nations are often abusive in terms of power even when they start off with so-called noble intentions. Socialist states have killed more people than any other system in human history. States like Sweden that are more peaceful find they soon face an aging population where the brightest and best have fled to other places. They end up dependent on benevolent free market states (like the US) for their protection. If it were not for the US such socialist havens (which have backed away from socialism in recent years) could not exist even in the forms they do. They are not able to maintain their economically foolish system and a good defense.

In short, in the test of the real world free markets allow for maximum liberty under law. They do not force sin on us. Certainly there is nothing good about greed or materialism. Such sins are possible in free market states, though one can see them also in socialist states. The greedy fat cat is still evil even if he is called “comrade.” The starving widow feels no better because the Tanzanian government has brought on economic disaster in the name of her ownership of the means of production. Starving widows is wrong, but no change in economic systems will eliminate this problem, which is part of the problem of the human heart.

In fact, most socialist states have more starving widows than most free market ones.

A Christian in a free market should be a producer who consumes what is appropriate to virtue. He need not be reduced to a mere consumer, though some wicked men might wish to do this to him. This desire to reduce men to material beings is not part of free markets or of human freedom. It is the old error of being full of greed (covetousness) which in the end spoils liberty. The man who is most free is the man with moderate needs appropriate to his God given calling who lives in a free market system. He is free to produce and profit for his own good and for the Kingdom from that production. Sin makes him a slave again. Of course, socialism merely makes him a slave without any choice to avoid the danger that he will fall into sin!

Free market economics can allow for some government interference for the good of the population and for “law and order.” People are not free to produce and market items harmful to children directly to children, for example. Often critics of the free market assume that there must be “total freedom” or everything else is just socialism in half-measure. This is incorrect. If the means of production by and large remain in private hands as does most wealth, then the economy is free. Total freedom will not exist this side of Paradise. If men were angels, then they could be given the power of socialists. However, if men were all angels then they would not need that power since freedom would never be reduced to greed.

Last summer our dog, Aristotle, died. It had been my fourteen year old son’s boyhood companion. I can close my eyes and see L.D. being dragged around the block by a young Aristotle. The dog was bigger than the boy! One day, and it happened all at once, he was much bigger than Aristotle and was dragging the dog around the block. He was very ill and one day he simply died. We were all very sad and it has taken a long time to want to fill that empty place.

Now we are looking for a new dog (hoping for a Corgi) and visited the local kill shelter to check out the dogs there. My son was eager to adopt and I was happy to let him take an animal home. However, as we passed dog after dog they began to act up and growl. Some would launch themselves against the cage. None of them went home. They could not overcome past hurts and bad training to go home to a lad who would love them.

God did not have to shout to get my attention. He reminded me, as I stood there in the pound getting ready to go, that I face the same kind of choice as the dogs of the pound. There is a loving God ready to take me Home. It will be good. However, past training and hurts, and my own foul nature, often cause me to growl at the good things he brings to me. I reject what is best for me and so stay facing death.

The odd thing is that the dogs seem gratified as we left. They had proved their superiority. They had forced the stupid bipeds (and aren’t all bipeds out to harm dogs?) to flee. Wise, wise dogs. You can imagine the cynical older street dog advising a young puppy, “See! We can make them run! Nobody is going to tie cans to my tail again. Look, we get meals here and the cage is clean. Take no risks.”

And so it is in our culture. The wise guys in the academy tell us to be cynical and keep others at a distance. We can do that. We will even appear to be wise, but at night we will still be behind the steel mesh in our lonely cages. God’s good messengers will turn sadly away.

John Paul the Great frequently told us, “Don’t be afraid!” That is good advice. Most of the reactions we have to God’s good gifts are from fear. We have been hurt. We have received a bad secular education that makes us think the Universe one big Kill Center. In our fear, we make the situation worse. My goal for this week is to relax, stop being afraid, and to allow my heavenly Father to be good to me.

Top three irritating things now being said about the Church and John Paul the Great:

1. The next pope “will have to come to grips with the modern world.” Perhaps, the modern world (forever changing) should come to grips with the Church. Mayhaps the modern world is a strange mix of good and bad and the Bishop of Rome recognizes this.

2. The church is “not democratic.” Most Catholics (by which is meant Christmas/Easter Catholics in dying Western nations or the liberals in our newsroom) want to see some change in this or that doctrine.

Newsflash: the Kingdom of God has no elections. God is not going to do late night with Larry King. He loves Larry King as a person, but He is quite indifferent to Larry King as celebrity. Second newsflash: the system used to elect the Pope has produced three very, very accomplished leaders in the last half a century. In the same time, Americans have elected Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, William J. Clinton, and George W. Bush. Not to be cynical, but it seems that the cardinals are at least doing as well as we are.

3. The next pope has “all power.” The view that the pope could simply stride over to the Vatican and announce that the Virgin Birth never happened is so naive as to merit ridicule. The Church is a large place. Tradition and Scripture act as a great weight to papal power. . . Big moves to the left are not possible, even for the Pope. He would undermine the source of his own authority if he tried.

BONUS MEDIA POINTS:

When the new Pope is elected hopeful media types will see signs of “liberalism” in his record. Recall that when John Paul the Great was elected media types saw it as a sign of reaching out to communism! Ignore media types. The next pope will continue the traditional views of John Paul, because they are the Catholic views.

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace.

John Paul the Great continues to show the world how a good man dies. Men die every day and most die badly. A few brave men die each week and we mourn their loss. Courage is too rare in a culture where we think it noteworthy to survive standing in line at the DMV.

Most precious of all is the chance to watch a good man die, because good men are so rare. Courage is a virtue, but it is least of all the virtues. It can exist in a wicked man as well as a good man. To be good, to contain within yourself an imperfect expression of the very nature of God, is much for rare. My grandfathers’ generation had more examples, because they lived in a culture that lived to die well. Virtue of this complete sort requires a lifetime of sanctification, growth towards holiness. Of course, there are a few who receive the special grace to be holy at a very young age, but this is even more rare.

John Paul the Great is an example of the most common sort of saintly life. He is a good man, because he has lived well. He started out as all of us do with problems. His external problems, growing up a Polish nation controlled first by Hitler and then by Stalin, were far worse than most of us face. He used those circumstances to deny himself and so found himself. The greatest lie of our particular therapeutic age is that we can find happiness by looking for it. We can only find happiness by denying the wicked side of our selves and allowing God’s free grace to do what we cannot do ourselves and transform us on the inside.

If we do this, then dying is no longer a curse. Of course dying first came to man, because his rebellion against his Creator made it necessary. Dying is not a punishment for an angry God, but the necessary last step in a transformation that can lead to our redemption and eternal joy. Men cannot be happy as we are. We are estranged from the world and from our Father in Heaven.

We are all given a certain measure of time in this life to change. We can receive the divine grace of God which he brought to us in the Incarnation and Passion of Himself. He came and took on human flesh, suffered our pains though He did not need to do so, and showed us the way. After this, because we are still too stupid and weak to follow, our Father provides the necessary energy, grace, within each person to make change possible. This new nature which religious people call holiness is possible to all men if they will have it. We can enjoy the start of a divine life now and simply wallow in it for all eternity, but to get to eternity we will have to die.

John Paul the Great did not begin his life with greatness. He was transformed by piety (how moderns hate that word!) and the Holy Spirit. He now dies in peace and dignity. He was a knight who was used of God to slay dragons. The first dragon such a knight must slay, and is a lifetime battle for this beast has many heads, is the evil in his own heart. John Paul has nearly finished that battle. Only a man engaged in such a war can turn to the external foe. Communism could only be defeated by such goodness.

To such men death becomes more of a reward than a curse. At least the great knight, the shining Knight of Christendom, the Bishop of Rome, can lay down his sword. He can enter into Divine rest. He has become fit for Paradise. Viewed this way all the sufferings of this time and all the evils a man can experience are worthwhile.

Joy is coming John Paul the Great and then reward and a well done from your God.

What will we do? Shall we cling to our life here and so lose both it and the life of the world to come? Will we allow the Holy Spirit to change us? Will we deny ourselves and take up a cross and follow Christ? Will we do as you have done John Paul the Great?

Or shall we cling to our foul and petty rebellion and our trendiness and be fools?

As you fade into Eternity pray for us John Paul the Great. Pray that we give ourselves to divine Grace through faith which alone can save us through the eternal work of Jesus Christ, the Dying God who Lives.

News reports indicate that John Paul the Great is slowly headed for his eternal reward.

I think we can now recognize that John Paul was the greatest pope any of us are likely to see.

Three reasons that John Paul will be considered the greatest Pope of the last few centuries:

1. He defied conventional wisdom at every turn. The owners of the microphones in the West love death. They have no children themselves and view abortion as one of the chief human liberties. They have embraced sexual immorality and sterility. They think women and men should be interchangeable and that being a priest is a “job.”

John Paul the Great said “No.” to this.

As a result, wait to hear people talk about his “mixed” record and how the next pope must be more “flexible.” They will blame John Paul the Great for not being what they wish him to be. They will act as if a great flood of contraceptive using, abortion loving leftists are waiting to flood the Catholic Church with vocations in such thriving places as Sweden or Holland. The will pretend that Rome should replay the sad history of the American Episcopal Church.

The next pope will build on John Paul’s legacy. Why? The “third world” is now the “first world” in the new Church. The next pope will work to please full and thriving conservative churches in Kenya and China, not empty German churches full of semi-pagans.

John Paul the Great made the Church international.

2. With Reagan and Thatcher, John Paul the Great was the key to freedom in Eastern Europe. No Orthodox Christian can fail to be thankful for his bold leadership.

3. John Paul the Great was, in the words of my theologian friend Fred Sanders, the master of the iconic moment. He knew the power of the image. His entire life and ministry will serve forever as an image of what it is to be pope. This will prevent the leaders of the Church from returning to musty and middle of the road functionaries for a long time.

Most of us have no real memory of any pope other than John Paul the Great. His strong “image” will be more real to many of us than that of the next pope for some time.