Novena to Our Lady of Victory

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Before I go on...Please PRAY the Novena to Our Lady of Victory. This begins today, and is 9 days of prayer leading up to the Election on November 4. Click here to access the Novena prayers, which Fr. Corapi is promoting.

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We are 9 days away from perhaps the most grave moment in American history. Over the past 150 years or so, the moral fabric that made America "great", the "land of the free and home of the brave" has become torn apart, leaving the remnants of a weak rag to tie together the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

How did it all begin? I surmise that the involvement in Freemasonry by many of our founding fathers laid some bad bricks in our Nation's foundation. But, I am not versed enough to address that theme.

However, fast forward to the end of the 19th Century. The Industrial Revolution redefined what it meant to work, the structure of the family, and the rhythm of the day. Now men (and in many cases women and young children) left the home to work at factories and mass-produce, vs. having home-based industry (such as farming, carpentry, millinery, etc.). As America became more successful, there was less need, effectively for God. Of course, people still attended Sunday Service or Mass...but slowly, God's presence as the center of family life began to fade away over the 20th Century.

With the Women's Movement of the late 18th Century came another element that would later erode society. While the early American Feminists were active in the abolitionist movement as well as equal rights for women, there were impure motives. Particularly, there was an overarching theme of the oppression caused to women by the traditional family model and Christianity. Founding members of American Feminism were against abortion...but with a disrespect for the roles in Christian marriage and the Ordained Ministry of Priests, is it any wonder that future feminists would abandon the rights of the unborn child?

"The greatest block today in the way of woman's emancipation," [Elizabeth Cady] Stanton [a founder of American Feminism] asserted, "is the church, the canon law, the Bible and the priesthood." For more on this topic, see Dawn Eden's excellent piece, "The Eve of Deconstruction."

Now, we know that around 1920, after WWI, themes of Eugenics began to pollute the more affluent minds of our nation. What amounted was the American Eugenics Society. Eugenics, as Akua Furlow explains in her book, The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: What Really Happened, "was a pseudo-science that supported racism and taught population control as a core part of its doctrine. It also taught "scientific racism" or "Social Darwinism." Eugenics was 'imported' from Great Britain and adopted, as I said, by social elites in the U.S., among whom Margaret Sanger. The wicked fruit of Eugenics in the U.S.: The American Birth Control League and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

Many are familiar with the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-1972), one of the most dark 'secrets' in 20th Century American History, and funded by the government, nonetheless. Essentially, Tuskegee, Alabama, was singled out to perform experiments on how to treat Syphilis. Strangely enough, the study targeted the African American Community in Tuskegee, and even after the cure for syphilis was discovered, the 'study' continued...for 40 years, as a project of the United States Public Health Service. The lives of 399 men and their families were affected and destroyed by this 'scientific study' which was nothing less than eugenics in action. I highly reccomend Furlow's book for further (extremely well document) information on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and its eugenic nature.

Out of the American Eugenics Society (which recieved funding from such institutes as the Milbank Memorial Foundation, the Carnegie Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation), was birthed the American Birth Control League...known today as Planned Parenthood. To shine a little light on the philosphy of Ms. Margaret Sanger, who founded both the American Birth Control League, let's look at her very own words:

"Eugenics is … the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”
"The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."
"Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race."
"The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind."
"Our most pressing problem is to increase the birth rate from the superior and decrease that from the inferior."
"… in the interest of social progress or the permanence even of civilization, the intellectual classes should have more children."
"[Mandatory] sterilization for [the insane and feeble-minded] is the answer."
"The Aryan stock today is the most given to birth control and it must see that it does not suffer internationally by the relative ignorance of inferior stocks."
"Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization."

One could (as some have) write a dissertation and/or books on the 'legacy of Sanger. I recommend, again, Furlow's book for further sound research on Sanger. But let's move on...

During the Great Depression, we saw the resilience of the American Spirit step forward. Men and women worked hard for better times, and were successful. WWII united the country in a common effort. Yet, at the same time family life was disjointed, and for the first time women entered the work force in a significant manner. Once men returned from the War, there was much challenge in the adjustment. Perhaps the strange themes of Betty Friedan's The Feminist Mystique (1963) exposed the lack of fulfillment for woman, but it only succeed in sowing seeds of discontent.

The 1960s and 1970s saw rise to social movements: The Civil Rights Movement, the Sexual Revolution an the Feminist Revolution. All of these had a profound impact on the fabric of the nation. While the Civil Rights Movement fought eugenic mentality and advocated for true equality, the Sexual Revolution and Feminist Revolution did much to deconstruct the moral fabric of society at large.

In 1962, the Griswold vs. Connecticut decision was issued by the Supreme Court, effectively upholding the right to privacy within marriage, legalizing the use of artificial contraception. At the very same time in the U.S. the contraceptive mentality was being promoted by the sexual revolution, which promoted 'free love' that amounted to nothing less than sexual slavery and immorality. What is the bedrock of free love? Sex without responsibility. Artificial contraception and abortion 'cured' the problem of unwanted pregnancy...though it was not as effective in preventing Sexually Transmitted Infections.

A very dark year, 1973 gave us Roe vs. Wade, which essentially legalized abortion during all nine months of pregnancy in the United States. This has greatly contributed to our moral decay.

What else, might you ask, has been ripping at the fabric of this once great nation? Welfare, definitely. Read any of Star Parker's books and you'll quickly learn how the Welfare state has kept minority communities, particularly the African American community, in poverty. It is shameful. Not only does Welfare keep people in poverty, but it destroys the family unit.

Then there is the issue of Homosexuality. Did you know that any society which institutionalized Homosexuality ceased to exist as a society within three generations? It was not until activist psychologists got their way 1973 that Homosexuality was removed from the Diagnistic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This was due largely to the work of gay rights activists within and without the mental health profession.

Funny how that happened the same year that an unborn child was denied the right to life.

The moral fabric continues to be torn apart. Now we live in a nation where roughly 4,000 children are murdered each day due to legal abortion (about 50 Million abortions in the U.S. since 1973). It is reported that 87% of Catholic married couples use artificial contraception, and among the 42 million fertile sexually active women, 89% are using contraception. Over 50% of marriages end in divorce. Record numbers of people, especially young males, are incarcerated. Pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry. Cyber Sex addiction is on the rise, and the 'hook-up culture' has replaced dating on college campuses. More and more, people have to fight to protect their first amenedment rights. Gay 'marriage' is being pushed on a national level, and already it is legal in some states. The numbers of people who attend Chruch Service or Mass on Sunday continue to decline, and infertility rates escalate.

I really can't even begin to expand on the themes raised here as I'd like to. I could write several books based on what I've presented. What I do want to point out is that we are living in very dark times. The culture of death is mocking what it means to be a human person on every front. No longer do we understand as a nation the dignity of the human person, nor the gift of masculinity and femininity. We don't teach our children how to think in school...only how to quote sources and perpetuate liberal agenda...

BUT there is Hope, if Christ is our Hope. We know that dark periods in the history of the world have come before. And as Pope Benedict pointed out, there is one common denominator that during every dark period of history has brought about renewal in society: the rediscovery of the Eucharistic Presence of Jesus Christ and the Mass.

As Roman Catholics, we have a profound responsibility, because we have the fullness of Faith. We beleive that Jesus Christ is fully present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in the Eucharist. As such, why wouldn't we spend time in Adoration as freqently as possible? Why wouldn't we pray and fast for our country, and for the outcome of this most important presidential election? Why wouldn't we ask God to speak in the silence of our hearts, and tell us what it is He desires us to do? Let us ask Him what is the role He wants us to take on for the renewal of America.

The task is set before us. It has so much to do with each of us committing to conversion and renewal in our own lives, and an additional commitment to doing all within our means to spread the message of the Gospel, which is a message of authentic love. Together, if we are Faithful, we can bring about a Civilization of Love that can displace the Culture of Death that is so deeply rooted in America (and the world), and weave together those scattered pieces of fabric, so that we may truly be, once again, One Nation Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.