by Larry Peterson
It was a brutally cold winter night in 1839 when Jeanne Jugan brought the sick, blind, homeless woman into her home. All she wanted to do was help the poor woman. She had no agenda. She wanted nothing. She simply wanted to do what God’s graces had asked her to do, “Love her neighbor”. Jeanne never planned to have people begin to follow her example. She never dreamed that she would become the founder of an organization called the Little Sisters of the Poor. Jeanne Jugan could not in her wildest dreams foresee the order she had founded serving the elderly poor in 31 countries around the world. She must have had tears of joy streaming down her saintly face when Pope Benedict XVI canonized her in 2009.
Today she, and many others with her in the heavenly realm, must be so ashamed and saddened by the members of the secular world who, disguised in a mask of counterfeit virtue, are determined to lay waste to Christianity. Make no mistake, we Catholic/Christians are at war; and the Worldly, including many who claim to be with us, are waging this war against us. Their primary weapon is the Affordable Care Act aka “Obamacare”. Where does this weapon of mass secularity have its sights trained? Where else but on St. Jeanne Jugan’s order, The Little Sisters of the Poor. Are you kidding me? The government of the United States of America, under the control of the Worldly, is after The Little Sisters. The order must be considered an easy target because, after granting exemptions to other groups, the Worldly refused to grant an exemption to The Little Sisters of the Poor. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an appointee of the Worldly in power, granted the Little Sisters a temporary injunction against the mandate. Undeterred in their mission of spreading their all-knowing secularity, the Worldy immediately responded and asked the court to drop the appeal. Now we wait. We wait to see if the First Amendment of the Constitution is to be upheld.
As a writer and a Catholic I have unexpectedly found myself blogging more and more about subjects that pertain to things “Catholic”. I never began writing with that in mind. My novel, “The Priest and the Peaches”, deals with a Catholic family and a priest but it is not considered religious. Rather, it is classified as ‘historical fiction’. My children’s book is not religious either. I had been working on the sequel to TP & TP but I have had that on hold for almost six months as I blog about things and people that pertain to my faith. I do this because my faith is under attack. I never thought I would live to see the day when the power of our government would be used by those we have empowered to demand we violate our religious principles? Our faith does not just take place INSIDE a church. It takes place within our very hearts and minds. We are supposed to LIVE our faith and, though many of us often fail, it is our CHOICE to fail. It is no one’s business. The government of the United States of America does not have the right to enter into our “hearts and minds” and tell us what to believe the same as it does not belong inside our churches.
We, as a church, a faith community, and as individuals who are part of it and believe in it are being abused and are under attack. The Little Sisters of the Poor and communities like them need our voices to ring out. So do the almost 10 million folks who are able to turn to almost 1400 charitable organizations run by the Catholic church every year. So do the people, mostly volunteers, who staff the 600,000 plus soup kitchens feeding folks everyday and distribute food from the two million food banks and pantries. If you factor in all the other religious and charitable organizations in the United States there is a veritable population of “goodness and kindness and giving” spread across this entire nation. Most are folks who ask nothing in return for sharing their time, their hearts and their love with those less fortunate. It seems to me that the Worldly need to start minding their own damn business.
copyright © 2014 Larry Peterson
Cradling Catholic 