NCR: Jesus Christ is God, and He Alone Can Bring Peace to Our Nation

POSTED BY REBECCA HAMILTON 07/08/2016 FOR NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER

Fernando Gallego, “Cristo Bendiciendo” (c. 1495)

Evangelical atheists and moral nihilists of all stripes would lead us to believe that when we remove God from a society, what we get is reason and rationality.

Despite their own irrational hate talk and irrationality, they posit that the only evil is God—that faith, and faith alone, is responsible for every evil human beings have ever committed or will commit.

Reality puts this fantastical delusion to the lie at the first and every test.

What do we get when we remove God from a society? We get evil. Pure, unadulterated and unapologetic evil. We get an implosion of the civic order and a societal return to the beast.

The steady pounding of politically correct censorship of speech and thought is nothing more than an attempt to coerce silence about reality by imposing Orwellian double speak on the populace. The use of slander, vitriol and personal vendettas to silence public debate on important issues has all but stopped our ability as a nation to deal with the problems facing us.

Simply put, if we can’t talk honestly about it, we can’t deal with it, and “it” will roll right over us and ultimately destroy us. We become like a person with a compromised immune system who dies from a relatively minor infection because their normal defenses against it are blunted.

If you want to see what happens to a society that turns its back on Christ, look around you. Watch the news. Listen to the self-serving double-speak and lying, the manipulations and prevarications from our leaders in government, education and commerce. See the implosion of peace and sanity.

Look, listen and think for yourself. Think. What you get when you remove God from a society is evil unchained and without apology.

Original sin infects all societies, including Christian societies. The evil that people do to themselves and one another is ubiquitous. But Western society’s development of the rights and value of the individual is a direct result of following the Gospels of Christ to their logical conclusion.

Western society has also committed evil. We are never free in this life from our fallen natures. But the ideal that human beings have certain unalienable rights that are inherent in the fact that they are human beings, is the flowering of the Gospel teaching that every hair on our heads is numbered, that we are, each and every one of us, made in the Likeness and Image of God.

Fined for praying the Rosary

By Matthew Biddle
Source: Catholic Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn

EIGHT Canberra Catholics, including a priest of the Archdiocese, received an official police warning on April 15 for allegedly breaching the exclusion zone around the ACT Health Centre in Civic.

The group, which has held weekly pro-life prayer vigils outside the facility for more than 17 years, was gathered outside PJ O’Reilly’s Irish Pub on West Row when police asked them to move elsewhere.

Seventy-five-year-old Kerry Mellor decided not to move from the location, and was consequently fined $750.

The Health (Patient Privacy) Amendment Act 2015 Bill, introduced in the ACT Legislative Assembly by Greens Minister Shane Rattenbury and passed on October 29, established the exclusion zones, which came into effect on March 22.

The Bill prohibits behaviour that attempts to stop a person from entering the building, as well as “a protest, by any means… in relation to the provision of abortions” in the facility.

Mr Mellor, who has been attending the prayer vigils for the past 12 years, told Catholic Voice he was convinced the police had made a mistake.

“We do not believe that we are protesting,” he said.

Participants in the weekly prayer vigils outside the ACT Health Centre in Civic were given a police warning on April 15. PHOTO: MATTHEW BIDDLE

“We are praying, which is directed exclusively to almighty God and his Blessed Mother. It’s not a protest, it’s a petition that God will act to change the hearts and minds of people.

“It’s also an ancient tradition to pray for the dead, including the innocents killed here – we pray for their souls, and we make a small act of reparation for this horror committed in our midst, in our community.”

Contrary to media reports, the pro-life group does not hand out anti-abortion material, nor do they engage in conversation with individuals entering or leaving the health centre.

Rather, the group recites 15 decades of the Rosary, a litany for life, and several concluding prayers each Friday morning.

Mr Mellor said he had taken legal advice, and would not be paying the $750 fine, which could lead to a trial in the ACT Magistrates Court.

“I have made a formal request that the charge be withdrawn, on the basis that our quiet prayer cannot possibly be interpreted as any of the types of ‘prohibited behaviour’ in the legislation. I’m awaiting the outcome,” he said.

Mr Mellor also said it was important that the official interpretation of the rules in relation to the exclusion zone be clarified to all parties.

“We’ve had conflicting advice, which makes it hard for everyone,” he said. “It’s in the interests of police, as much as in our own, to have clear definitions of what the law says we can do, and what it says we can’t do.”

Last year Archbishop Christopher Prowse took part in a prayer vigil outside the facility during the annual ’40 Days for Life’ campaign.

Later, after the Bill establishing the exclusion zones was passed, he described the legislation as “cold and clinical”.

“It completely ignores the complexity of the abortion issue itself,” he said at the time.

“The real issue is trying to assist fragile women with unwanted pregnancies to consider deeply options other than abortion.”