Fr Corpai on Catholics and Memorial Day

As I write this I am in between two events: the first I just returned from; the controversial commencement exercises at the University of Notre Dame. The other one is Memorial Day. I have no trouble whatever immediately linking the two.
The University of Notre Dame and many other Catholic institutions in the United States contributed very significantly to making the United States of America the great nation that it once was, and could be again. These Catholic colleges, universities, high schools, and grammar schools formed generations of good Americans. They had a lot to do with the formation of the moral character of this nation, and through this nation much of the civilized world.
When freedom, truth, and goodness had to be defended against the Godless likes of Hitler and Stalin the United States, like other solid Christian countries, did more than their part. The reason they could do it had much to do with the moral and religious backbone of the individuals who were called upon to serve. We had learned from our priests and bishops, our good parents and grandparents, that principle was more important than prestige and morality far more essential than popularity.
Think back to what the moral fiber of this country was like in the 1950s, if you are old enough to remember. Recall that this was a free country then, but atrocities and outrages like pornography and abortion would have gotten you a stiff prison sentence rather than applause and general acceptance. The problem is that we've confused freedom and license, called promiscuity love, and frequently exchanged the truth of God for a lie.
In my hometown of Hudson, New York St. Mary's Catholic Church has a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Victory. It was, I believe, put in sometime around or after World War II. The wall that faces you when you enter the chapel is covered with small brass plates. On each plate is the name of a person that served his or her country during World War II. Some of the names, not a small number, have a star next to them indicating that the person was killed in action.
The Catholic Church has had a lot to do with the making of great nations by forming the great people that make for great nations. In more recent times I'm afraid we have frequently contributed to the weakening of great nations by the impoverished nature of the witness we have given. The Church herself is not confused, nor is her teaching ambiguous or weak. However, many leaders in the Church are confused and terribly weak in failing to give bold and uncompromising witness to authentic Catholic teaching. This has done incalculable damage to the Church, diluting Catholic identity, confusing the faithful, and compromising our ability to teach truth.
I'm afraid this Memorial Day I'm going to have to mourn more than the faithful ones who gave the supreme witness of their lives for our country. I won't be able to help mourning the very substantial loss of Catholic witness and strength in our country and the world, and the terrible danger to freedom that this entails.
Then again, we know the last chapter of the Book: We win!
Better days are coming.
God bless you,
Fr. John Corapi

Fr Corapi on Holy Week

As I write this it is safe to say that there is more fear, insecurity, uncertainty, and distrust of authority than at any other time in my lifetime of over sixty years. This can be said for the United States and for most other countries in the Western world, probably the entire world.

Why? The secular and worldly thinker will come up with a veritable flock of cackling, screeching, barking, whining and screaming excuses. They will all be wrong.To understand our tenuous position, one must go to the order of causes rather than mere effects. The serious illness we see manifest socially, economically, and politically has its origin in the moral and spiritual realm. To be blunt and to the point, it concerns that "dour combat with the forces of evil" that haunts the entire history of humanity. We have divorced God in the public sphere. We have evicted the Owner of the house, forgetting that nature abhors a vacuum.

If we reject the One that is Goodness and Truth, then it is guaranteed that He will be replaced by the one who is the "father of lies and murderer from the beginning," as Jesus referred to the ancient adversary of man, Satan or the devil. If you don't believe that you don't believe in the existence of either the enemy or the war...You will have little chance to survive.The newest spectator sport in America is watching the disintegration of the great nations of the world on the cable news networks.
Each day there is more drama and adventure in the news than the wildest of fiction. Every day you have to worry "What's next?" Mass murders multiply, in the workplace, in schools, public places, private homes. It is a frightening and sobering spectacle.
The pundits marvel: How could it happen? Who could do that? The unthinkable becomes commonplace. The largest corporations vaporized in the twinkling of an eye. The net worth of millions of people cut in half in a matter of months. The politicians bluster and threaten. CEOs of major corporations fired by politicians, one wonders if the banking industry, the auto industry, the energy industries, etc. will soon be nationalized. Will the United States end up like some insolvent Third-World country. Will we bring wheelbarrows full of dollars to the checkout counter at Walmart soon for a few household items?
Why wonder?We’ve divorced God... Countries call abortion the 'law of the land.' Can such societies that espouse what is tantamount to genocide be pleasing to God? Can they survive for long?Please recall that this:During Holy Week we celebrate the victory of Jesus Christ over all of this avalanche of sin, Satan, and death. He nailed it to the Cross. "Dying He destroyed our death. Rising He restored our life."
It is necessary that we enter into the Paschal mystery one person at a time, fully and seriously. Live in a state of grace. Do not persist in sin, for your life and mine is shorter than we think. The only way a family, a school, a parish, a city, a country, or a world can be healed is one person at a time.
All of the suffering and darkness of Good Friday finds its meaning in the burst of Light that is Easter morning. All of the fear, the insecurity, and the uncertainty; all of the betrayal, the mockery, and the suffering are vanquished by the glory of the Cross. No pain, no gain! No cross, no crown! No battle, no glory.
So stop worrying! Trust the Lord Jesus...After all, He is the Savior, and only He is the Savior. Place your trust in Him. All of this is really small potatoes. It simply provides a proving ground for saints. That's all. We have no lasting dwelling in this valley of tears. It is the crucible wherein imperfect human beings are transformed by the fire of trial and the power of grace into the pure gold of God's holy ones.
In the twinkling of an eye this will be over and we'll stand before Jesus, Who will wipe away every tear, and having been faithful to our Faith we'll hear those beautiful words:"Well done my good and faithful servant! Now at last enter into the joy of your Master's house."

A blessed Holy Week to you, and may the Light and glory of Easter comfort you in your struggles and confirm you in your faith.

Fr. John Corapi

Holy priests terrify me with their predictions about the Obama administration

It began with Fr Corapis' dire warning, "Death Wish; the Impending Suicide of a Once Great Nation". Then, Fr Benedict Groeschel, in an address to a pro-life Conference predicted the decline of America in the same way Rome was conquered; from it's own sinful sloth. Then my own former pastor, Fr McCartney, who should have his own EWTN show, gave a homily last Sunday at his parish on Long Island, which left me hugging Christina, my daughter with Down syndrome and weeping for her future. (I will be linking to this earth-shaking homily next week when it is available online).
Now Fr Angelo Geiger from the Friary of Our Lady of Guadalupe here in Connecticut, quotes Fr Rutler's near comparison of Obama to the Anti-Christ.
This convergence of opinion from the priests I respect most is the most serious warning I have ever heard about the future of this nation.
If this does not inspire prayer and fasting on our part, then we are beyond hope. We who take the time to write and read Catholic blogs must be the messengers of the urgency of what is coming under President Barack Obama. This is what Rep Chris Smith called "A tsunami of the Culture of Death" in Congress, as he discussed Obama on "The World Over". Soon Congress will be reviving the dangerous "Fairness Doctrine" which is nothing less to shut down websites like these which proclaim the truth. There is discussion of a civilian police force which may someday be rounding up pro-life Catholics. I know this sounds incredible but Fr Groeschel told us how it happened to Rome, the most powerful empire of the world. It happened in Germany, and the entire world went to war to stop it. If the USA is under the totalitarian regime of the Culture of Death, who will go to war to save us, the most powerful nation on earth?

Conservative pundits are lulling us to sleep saying that the economy will keep President elect Obama so busy he won't have time to cause trouble on social issues, but this Washington Post article says differently. While the March for Life was outside the White House, President Clinton enacted three executive orders expanding abortion to military hospitals, halting the Mexico City Policy, and approving fetal tissue research. President Bush immediately issued orders in 2000, re-instating the Mexico City policy , and we can expect President Obama to use executive orders immediately to remove the ban on Federal Funding for embryonic stem cell research, and reverse the Mexico City Policy . Our limited monies will immediately be put to evil use in his first days in office. AND I haven't even mentioned the Freedom of Choice Act which will erase 35 years of painsaking progress on the state level to limit abortions.
Do you see the violent gay rights activists targeting Christians, Mormons and Catholics? Expect them to avoid prosecution, and gain special protection, while pro-life protesters are jailed as they were in the Clinton Administration. AND the media will keep up a wall of silence.

Then the darkness will close in. Get the word out before we no longer can!

DEATH WISH. The impending suicide of a once great nation.

If I could only have one last post, to sum up what I mean to say on this blog, THIS would be it.
No one speaks the truth with greater force and clarity than Fr. Corapi.
©2008 REV. JOHN A. CORAPI, SOLT, STD

A large number of endangered, unwanted, and unborn children held a town hall meeting on the 4th of July--alarmed at the brutal and untimely killing of millions of their brothers and sisters in recent years. That the murderous war waged on them had the full force and
respectability of the law made their plight all the more terrifying.
Their complaint was humble and it was simple. They were not distressed by rising gas prices, or the deteriorating economy in general. They were not even frightened by the exponential increase of natural disasters. The threat of global warming or global terrorism did not greatly disturb them.
They had become an endangered species, and little had been done to answer their
terrified and silent screams from the womb. They decided that the barbaric treatment that
they and their fellow unwanted unborn human beings have had to endure for perilous
decades was unconscionable and unbearable. They cried out to their Creator for
inspiration and protection, and then unanimously they put forth a declaration. It began as
follows:
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the
powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT, THAT ALL MEN ARE
CREATED EQUAL, THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR WITH
CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS, THAT AMONG THESE ARE LIFE, LIBERTY
AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS….”
THAT AMONG THESE IS LIFE; THAT AMONG THESE IS LIFE; THAT AMONG
THESE IS LIFE!
The first and pre-eminent right is the right to life. This truth the Founding Fathers were
sure of, and anyone with any common sense at all is equally sure of it. 232 years after the
Declaration of Independence was signed the amount of common sense that seems to be
operative in many spheres of influence—most notably the courts and the political arena--
can easily be poured into a very small thimble.
The United States of America seems to have a death wish, and we have traveled far down
the road to having that wish realized.
When law divorces itself from common sense and spawns the illegitimate offspring of
distortions of law, resulting in illegal laws—based neither on the natural law nor divine
law--this undermines law itself, generating disdain for the law. Erosion of trust in the
courts, or the system in general, is inevitable.
The genesis of the death wish is rooted in the fall of man that we see in the Book of
Genesis. The substance of the fall is wrapped up in Lucifer’s pride, transferred to Adam
and Eve—“You can be like gods, knowing good and evil.” The unholy, yet inevitable,
consequence of that pride is disobedience—eating the forbidden fruit. The ultimate end is
death, as God said it would be. That’s the way it was in the beginning. That’s the way it
is now. That’s the way it will be until time breathes forth it’s last moment.
The prototypical sin is pride, the pride that seeks to exalt the creature above the Creator:
“I can be like God.” Then, subjectively and arbitrarily, man tries to assert himself,
imagining that he knows what’s good and evil for himself without reference to God and
God’s law. This was the fall of the angels and the fall of man. The attempt by creatures to
usurp what is only the province of God. Only God knows what is good for His creation.
In recent years it took the form of a self-inflicted heart wound when some dissident
Catholics rejected the teaching of the Church, a teaching that clearly held that artificial
contraception is intrinsically evil. Then, as Pope Paul VI had warned, it metastasized into
abortion. From abortion it degenerated even further into partial-birth abortion. It was then
a short and easy step to infanticide.
The exclamation point at the end of the death wish is that now there is yet anothercandidate for the office of president of the United States who has in an extraordinary waydone everything possible to breathe life into all of the barbaric elements of the deathwish. He and his party make no apologies for their support of abortion, partial-birthabortion, and even infanticide. It’s hard to believe that we have degenerated to the pointthat we’ll murder a helpless baby should it escape the violence of an abortion and be born alive. Can a Catholic vote for such persons? We are told, “yes” for a “proportionate reason.” What, I might ask, is the proportionate reason so weighty as to excuse
supporting those responsible for what is tantamount to genocide?
The judges and politicians that support such barbaric practices are truly guilty of
genocide: genocide—the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, racial,
religious, national, or social group. “What is the group so targeted?” you might ask. The
group is unwanted, unborn children--tens of millions of them.
The Supreme Court justices that gave us Roe v. Wade will have to plead temporary
insanity in the court of history. There will be no defense in the highest Court that is the
judgment seat of almighty God if they do not repent of the incalculable evil they have
wrought.
Yet, despite the life and death importance of this travesty of authentic law, there will be
no serious discussion among political candidates, or anyone else. It is as if society has
been bewitched, blind to the splendor of truth, deaf to the cries of the most innocent, most
vulnerable, and most utterly helpless.
From artificial contraception to abortion to partial-birth abortion, then on to infanticidewe march toward the abyss of oblivion, a society marked for death. Is it any wonder we can rationalize the killing of the elderly or the sick through euthanasia? The tragic murderof Terri Schiavo is a logical extension of a morally numb society’s mad march toward itsown suicidal death. She wasn’t sick. She wasn’t dying. They murdered her, starved her to death--one of the cruelest forms of death. She was innocent, yet subjected to a most cruel and unusual punishment. Why? Because she was helpless? Because she was too much trouble, too hard to look at?
As Abraham Lincoln asserted, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author
and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
We are dying by suicide, moral and spiritual suicide, and the moral demise of a nation almost always precedes the ultimate demise of a nation.
Many of our leaders, political and legal, are reminiscent of the horrid witches in Act 1
Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” chanting shrilly to a morally sick public all too
eager to be confirmed in their sins,
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
Good is evil, and evil is good. The truth is a lie and lies are the truth, hover through the
fog of moral relativism and the filthy air of a world gone mad with the madness of sin.
The words of the prophet thunder through the ages, “ Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20).
We have inverted the poles of the moral power grid. We have begun to call the negative
pole the positive, and the positive the negative. This inversion of reality begets disaster:
The power fails, the lights go out, darkness falls—and indeed, if your light is darkness,
how deep, how very deep will the darkness be! (cf. Mt 6:23).
This death wish has marched toward its logical and inexorable conclusion
with little opposition from leaders--political, legal, or religious. The world knows the
Catholic Church and any self-respecting and faithful Christian roundly reject abortion and all of the other nails in the coffin of contemporary society, but the defense of life has been weak. Weak leadership, whether in society in general, or in the Church in particular,is punishment for sin. The Old Covenant has examples enough of the Chosen People being turned over to exile and their enemies because of infidelity. They lamented, “Wehave no priest, prophet, or king.” These were taken away because of infidelity.
In recent times large numbers of Catholics and other Christians rejected Pope Paul VI’s landmark and prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae, on Human Life. A majority of the bishops of
Canada did so publicly, formally, and in writing with their infamous Winnipeg Statement.

The great Archbishop Fulton Sheen lamented bitterly in the 1970s that the prophetic spirit of Christ had all but been extinguished in the contemporary Church. Today there are many CEOs, all too few Apostles. Are we afraid of a fight? Do we fear rejection, misunderstanding, or derision? Are we cowed and intimidated by fallacious notions of the separation of Church and state? Could we be afraid of persecution? Could we be afraid of losing our tax-exempt status? Have we declared détente with evil?
The clock is ticking. Midnight is approaching. Time is running out for our nation, anation that once was great, and could be great again if enough of us wake up and
renounce this curse of a death wish. Will God turn his friends over to His enemies as Hehas done multiple times in the past? Will radical Islam overrun us? Will the planet cook?Will one too many natural disasters grind us into dust? Will we collapse economically?
All of the above? Perhaps these are all merely effects of the underlying cause—a death
wish that chokes the life out of us.
In the end it is likely that President Abraham Lincoln had it right: “Intoxicated with
unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.” Thus forgetting that we are one nation under God, we become a nation gone under (President Ronald Reagan).
And, indeed, “If destruction be our lot we ourselves will be its author and finisher. As a
nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
May God grant us the grace to awake from this deadly moral slumber, renounce the death wish, and live like truly free men and women—in the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Rev John Corapi, SOLT-2008
www.fathercorapi.com

Some thoughts from Fr. Corapi

As most of you know, the Holy Father is now visiting the United States. This has been a great blessing in many ways. First of all, the very presence of the Successor of St. Peter and Christ's Vicar on earth is pleasing to God, and we certainly can do with some pleasing of God for a change in this poor nation. The Holy Father brings the presence of Jesus in a very real and powerful way wherever he goes. He is indeed a sign of God's love and mercy, manifesting the hope we have in Christ.
On the other end of the equation, the most gracious and grand manner that President Bush and the country welcomed the Pope is most edifying, for a change. This is a beautiful witness, and a sign of great hope, when a secular leader of the President's stature welcomes our Holy Father so wholeheartedly. This president has frequently shown such respect and Christian goodness in the course of his tenure.
In recent years Catholic leaders weren't always so universally welcome. The image of Mother Teresa of Calcutta receiving the highest honor this nation bestows upon a civilian, the Medal of Freedom, still sticks in my mind. She was given this prestigious award before a joint session of Congress. I was in Washington D.C. at this time, preaching at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. The entire Senate and House rose to their feet and gave her a rousing ovation. The only two people I could see in the room who didn't were the former president and vice-president. There were others of their persuasion and political party who no doubt felt the same. This is unquestionably because Mother Teresa constantly and courageously gave witness for life, from the moment of conception to the last moment of natural life. She was a 'gadfly' and a reproach to their conscience. She was the enemy of abortion, euthanasia, and other such crimes against humanity. Some powerful politicians promoted such things. Some of them called themselves "Catholic."
The Holy Father and those faithful to him and to the Church Jesus built upon the Rock, which is Christ, with Peter (Rock) grafted into Himself, represent a sure and solid sign of the constancy and solidity of what we love and believe; the Truth! Often this world is like a desert with a sandstorm howling. Everything is blown about by the winds of mere personal opinions and false philosophies and ideologies.
The Pope, as the visible Head of the Church, is indeed a rock grafted into the Rock who is Christ himself. This is solid. This is constant and unchanging. Humanity craves the certitude of faith, not a torrent of doubts and fears. This is what the Holy Father brings wherever he goes. Let the storms blow and rage. Our house is built on solid Rock, and will stand fast throughout the changing times until Jesus our Hope comes again in glory.
God bless you,
Fr. John Corapi