Do We Need a Ghetto?

I've been thinking a great deal about how our Catholic culture in the U.S. will change if we are not allowed to continue to freely practice our faith.  Just as a quick recap, here are the freedoms we stand to lose and why:

1. Freedom from providing marriage and adoptions services to same-sex couples because of anti-bullying and hate crimes laws.
2. Freedom from paying for contraceptive and abortion services because of the HHS mandate.
3.  Freedom to choose a doctor and/or hospital if Catholic hospitals close because of the HHS mandate.
4. Freedom to adopt from Catholic social services provider, or to provide foster care to children because Catholic social services close for the above reasons.
5. Freedom to not provide specific services if you are a healthcare professional, including doctors, nurses, pharmacies, and even receptionists.
6. Freedom to teach children, particularly special needs children, at home because of common core requirements from the Department of Education.
7. Freedom to teach or learn at a Catholic school if the HHS mandate is not abolished, or if you live in a city or state with 'hate-crime' laws that make it almost impossible for a religious institution to deny employment to any LGBTQ person, even if their status was not disclosed during hiring.

That seems like enough to go on with.

In our Sunday bulletin, our Nebraska Bishops stated the following:  ""Forty years of Roe v. Wade necessarily calls to mind that in both the Old and New Testaments the number forty denotes a time of preparation and testing, followed by some special action of the Lord."  (Most Reverend George J. Lucas, Most Reverend James D. Conley, Most Reverend William J. Dendinger.)

The Biblical examples they give end well;  the flood ends,  Israelites find their home, Jesus overcomes temptation and begins His ministry.  Perhaps that is what we can hope for here as well.  But I'm a Ranting Catholic Mom, so that's not where I am going.

In these forty years of Roe, Catholics have left their traditional neighborhoods, become increasingly like the protestants around us, abandoned the beautiful parishes built as the center pieces of Catholic ethnic ghettos for the Irish, Italian, German, Polish, or any other immigrant group, and moved to suburbs with churches that can easily double for the lobby of a movie theater if the movie theater had pews.

Likewise, we don't as a whole support Catholic businesses.  Maybe you go to a local pizza shop because they are in your parish, or Dominoes because it's fast, but what about groceries?  Do you have a choice?  Hobby Lobby or Michael's?  Walmart or Target?  What real choices exist without buying something knowing that at least a portion of what you have spent will go to fund a cause that is anathama to the teachings of the church?

I'm lazy and I don't want to move, or search the morality of every company I do business with.  But I am nostalgic for Catholic neighborhoods, ghettos if you will, where you knew that at least superficially, there were common beliefs and assumptions.  If dissenters existed, they kept it to themselves, or were shunned for bad behavior. 

I know that sounds harsh, but we have been letting the dissenters win for far too long.  Dissenters are glorified, become leaders of thriving parishes, and preside over them as the numbers in the pews on Sunday diminish, until the parish is closed. 

After 40 years in the abortionists desert that has spread in the harsh warmth of dissenting Catholics, I am looking for a ghetto.

I Told You So.

Hospitals will stop providing services.  Women and children first!

Civilian army recruits to take away your rights.  Doctors and counselors first.

Congress is no longer relevant. 

We are being made dependent on government by design.

This president must not be sworn in for a second term.  He should be in prison for being a traitor to his country, by virtue of abandoning Americans to torture and death by an organized militia in Benghazi.  While they or their corpses were being sodomized in the street, President Obama went to bed early and then flew to Las Vegas.

His party operatives should be in prison for voter fraud across the country in urban areas where he received 100% of the vote.  

His Attorney General, Eric Holder, should be in prison for selling guns to drug lords in Mexico, so that they could use them to kill our border agents. 

His Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, should be on trial for lying to the parents of fallen heroes.

His Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner,  should be in prison for graft using stimulus funds and tax evasion.


I have paid work to do so I can do no more today. 

Poll Results I Pray For

Over at The Blaze, they did a very interesting poll on gun ownership.  Here's a bit:

• 100% believe in the right to bear arms
• 85% are at least 35-years
• 80% are homeowners
• 78% have children
• 76% are married
• 73% served in the U.S. military or have an immediate family member serving
• 71% of the respondents are male
• 66% own dogs  (36% have cats)
• 63% have more than one gun
• 54% read more than 12 books a year
• 52% have taken a firearms safety class

I'm glad they have so many people fighting for their Second Amendment Rights, but I'm stuck on something else.

 I wish they had done a poll to show how many Catholics were concerned about the First Amendment, and that the results would look like this:

• 100% believe life is a gift from God that begins at conception.
• 85% are at least 21 years of age.
• 80% are married to a member of the opposite sex.  The rest are priests, members of a religious order, or praying about their vocation to matrimony or religious life.
• 78% have children, and hope to have more.  The rest aren't married, or are recently married.
• 76% attend Mass every day. The rest live in urban faith deserts, and attend Mass as often as possible.
• 73% served in some church service organization, or have an immediate family member serving.
• 71% of the married couples use natural family planning.  The rest are pregnant now.
• 66% say the rosary every day. The rest never learned how, but are asking a friend or a priest to teach them.
• 63% have more than one rosary.
• 54% read more than 12 books of the Bible every year.
• 52% have taken a religious retreat in the last year.

Wouldn't it be better world?