Renew The Church! – website and Blog

In this age of creeping (or surging) practical atheism, a very beautiful witness to “true religion” was broadcast in the country last night – by a Mormon. One of the interesting twists in this presidential race is that a Catholic will definitely be elected Vice-President, no matter who wins. We can’t see into hearts, of course, but Mr. Ryan seems to take his Catholic faith seriously, praise God, whereas I grieve to say that Mr. Biden seems to consider it an option. I haven’t heard from him, or from the Democratic Party, a recognition of the inviolable right to life or the sanctity of marriage. To me, the right to life is crucial – essential. Without the right to life, all further discussion of any other rights is hypothetical. A dead child has no rights anymore, not in this world.

So a Catholic will be our Vice President. The question is, will he be to the shame of the Church or to her honor? Will he add to the illusion of “disposable religion” for public officials or will he counter this corruption with a contrary example of honoring the Catholic Faith? Practical atheism is a deadly lie, an insidious infection in the heart of the West now spreading throughout the American culture, a lethal moral virus that kills from within the very humanity of its victims. The Church continues mostly to sleep, but thank God some of her members are awake and alive and not ashamed to be different from the world around them.

The second interesting twist in this campaign is the head of the Republican ticket: a Mormon, Mitt Romney, who is not ashamed to take very seriously the biblical moral demands of his faith. The Bible teaches:

James 1:22  But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
James 1:23  For if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror;
James 1:24  for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.
James 1:25  But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing.
James 1:26  If any one thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is vain.
James 1:27  Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

Friends and co-workers of Mr. Romney testified at the Convention of his quiet and selfless heart-felt obedience to this religion that is “pure and undefiled before God.” What a refreshing and different political experience was that Republican Convention: their focus on goodness, the goodness of life, the goodness of freedom, the goodness of the human spirit, the goodness of courage, commitment, sacrifice and work, the goodness of honor, of family, of marriage, of children, of life! This country needs to be stirred again by goodness, to goodness! The deadening spirit of godlessness, of moral relativism, of emasculated entitlement and dependency – let these lies be cast aside as unworthy of human persons and cultures.

It is claimed that the Romney-Ryan ticket means there is no Protestant on the presidential ballot of a major party for first time. To me, the significant fact is that both of these candidates on the Republican ticket – both for president and for vice-president – are men who know, who hold, and who live by that Natural Moral Law set by God in the heart of every man. They live a practical theism – not the practical atheism that is killing Western culture, whatever religious label men might appropriate to themselves. They live a religion that honors God and every man, especially the very least among us.

How our country needs men and women of righteousness as our leaders.