One of my favorite Catholic talk show hosts talked about a recent Gallup poll yesterday that reported on recent trends in the acceptability of things that used to be considered immoral and now are accepted as moral. (see Gallup poll here) I did write a little about it in my other blog, the more political one, but I feel it needs to be talked about here as well. ( Patrick Madrid, Right Here, Right Now)

The last caller, or maybe the next to the last really hit the nail on the head, when she said if we hadn’t kicked God to the curb, we wouldn’t have such a problem. Okay she didn’t use quite those words, but haven’t we done that? Haven’t we allowed others to remove God “from the public square” as the current saying goes? Now I am no scientist, nor do I even play one on TV, but isn’t there some law of physics or one of the sciences which basically says if you create a vacuum by removing something, something else has to fill its space?

What is going to fill the space that removing God has created? Um, how about Satan? I was never much of a Paul Harvey fan, but he once made a recording, I don’t know if it was on his radio show or somewhere else, entitled “If I Were the Devil.” If you have never listened to it, you should. It was very prophetic in 1965, especially since so much of what he predicted has come true today. Now before someone out there gets all in a tither, I know there is some controversy as to who wrote this, when it was written, etc. etc. and I chalk that up to the same people who are kicking God to the curb.

The sad thing is, we have allowed this to happen, especially we Catholics. Yup, I said it, I am blaming my fellow Catholics and myself, in fact, I am putting  a good part of the blame on my fellow Catholics and I. The reason I believe we are to blame is two-fold.

First, we are too nice, we are too Christian. We tend to mostly keep to ourselves and not push our religion and our beliefs onto others, at least until recently and even on ourselves. I only need to look at myself and my own life. I honestly do not remember the church ever catechizing (teaching) me why contraception was wrong, why abortion was wrong, only that they were a sin and that was that. They never fully explained these things. (Now whether or not I would have listened is another thing) The point is we have kept quiet and sucked it up, letting others push their secularist agendas on us without fighting.

The second point, and this could very well be a result of why we haven’t pushed our beliefs, is we have been convinced, or at least our pastors have been, that we can’t preach politics from our pulpits. We have bought into the “separation of church and state” myth and how f we preach politics, our church would lose its tax exempt status. This isn’t true as you can read here. When is the last time we have heard a good homily about what the left is doing to the country and especially religious freedom? Our Protestant brothers have no problem with this. Why even Michelle Obama says it is a good thing, so why  don’t we Catholics do it?

Yes, I do think things are changing for the better. We Catholics are beginning to come around. After all this is partly what the “New Evangelization” is all about, re-evangelizing Catholics about what we as Catholics are supposed to believe, and why we are supposed to believe.

The focus of the New Evangelization calls all Catholics to be evangelized and then go forth to evangelize. In a special way, the New Evangelization is focused on ‘re-proposing’ the Gospel to those who have experienced a crisis of faith. – USCCB

We need to relearn our faith, understand it, follow it and then share it. We can no longer be silent. If we remain so, it won’t be long before we no longer have any religious freedom left. I’ll leave you with this, written by Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

Yes Virginia, it could happen here.