The Internet is buzzing with news from Catholic University of America, where Cardinal James Stafford today called President-elect Barack Obama “aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic,“ and said he campaigned on an “extremist anti-life platform.”

“Because man is a sacred element of secular life,” Stafford remarked, “man should not be held to a supreme power of state, and a person’s life cannot ultimately be controlled by government.”

“For the next few years, Gethsemane will not be marginal. We will know that garden,” Stafford said, comparing America’s future with Obama as president to Jesus’ agony in the garden. “On November 4, 2008, America suffered a cultural earthquake.”

Cardinal Stafford said Catholics must deal with the “hot, angry tears of betrayal” by beginning a new sentiment where one is “with Jesus, sick because of love.”

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Stafford also spoke about the decline of a respect for human life and the need for Catholics to return to the original values of marriage and human dignity.

“If 1968 was the year of America’s ‘suicide attempt,’ 2008 is the year of America’s exhaustion,” said Stafford, an American Cardinal and Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary for the Tribunal of the Holy See. “In the intervening 40 years since Humanae Vitae, the United States has been thrown upon ruins.”

This destruction and America’s decline is largely in part due to the Supreme Court’s decisions in the life-issue cases of 1973, specifically Roe v. Wade. Stafford asserted these cases undermined respect for human life in the United States.

“Its scrupulous meanness has had catastrophic effects upon the unity and integrity of the American republic,” said Stafford.

Humanae Vitae (“On Human Life”) reaffirms traditional Catholic teachings regarding abortion, contraception and other human life issues. Pope Benedict XVI said in May it is “so controversial, yet so crucial for humanity’s future…What was true yesterday is true also today.”

For all of the above article (in green) hit this hyperlink.

The good Cardinal sounds much like this great dissident (hit this link for the transfer to our series on a great Russian dissident) Here is another installment from that series. Click on great dissidents at the right and scroll down to read all fourteen installments on Alexander Solzhenitsyn — a truly prophetic voice. Like Cardinal Stafford!

Thank you, Jesus!

When the State assumes military powers inside its own borders it is called martial law.

When that State is apostate that martial law can quickly become a persecution of the Christian church.

Click here for a possible foreshadowing. (parental warning: links to profane language in comment section)

Click here for a more nuanced explanation of this seeming call for an internal military force. (It could be that Senator Obama did not intend to sound like a German Chancellor from the 1930′s.)

Even if the above example is not a good one, it remains true that when the Church refuses to obey its Lord, and instead chooses to obey Mammon, then the goose stepping soldiers are at the door.

Some have said, “Its the Economy, Stupid.”

Wrong!

Its the Culture, Pilgrims.

And if the culture goes bad, well then ….

Matthew 5:13

13 “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

Wise words from one of the Founders of our Republic seem most appropriate in this dire hour …

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Thomas Jefferson

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
Thomas Jefferson

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Thomas Jefferson

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
Thomas Jefferson

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Thomas Jefferson
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson