“If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: “The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,” I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.” – Antonin Scalia’s Dissent from Obegerfell v. Hodges, pg. 76, Footnote 22
I have been playing blissfully little attention to American politics lately, as consumed as I have been with the machinations of the Church-wreckers. So I was somewhat surprised today to see the SCOTUS decision on “gay marriage,” which I will forever put in quotes, because no legislative decision can ever make it a real thing.
I am not, however, surprised that it took place, though I did have a sliver of hope that it might not.
But in terms of the handwriting having been quite clearly on the wall (in neon!), I will call the reader’s attention to something I wrote two years ago today:
News just broke that the Supreme Court has struck down the federal definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. This is an extremely disappointing development, but not a surprising one. This trajectory has been set in stone for quite some time.
I’ve become increasingly convinced in recent years that the only way to keep government from re-defining marriage is to keep them out of it altogether. That position has been rejected by a lot of Catholics, and I can understand why, but I respectfully think this is proof of why they’ve been wrong.
It’s also proof of why whenever we centralize power over moral and social issues at the federal government level, there is an inevitable moment when that moral imperative is turned against us. We give them an inch, and they take a mile. The American people don’t want this, just like they don’t want unfettered abortion or Obamacare. But that has ceased to matter. He who has the power makes the rules, and we’ve handed them the power through our activism to have Washington involved in legislating every social issue we care about.
It’s time to stop the madness. George Washington said it best: “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” If we want to stop the government from continuing to destroy our sacred rights, our civil liberties, we must starve it. We must deprive it of power. We must remind those in Washington that they have forgotten their place, that they serve us, not the other way around.
So what’s next? What does today’s ruling mean?
First, it means that we’ve lost the war for the definition of marriage. A tiny minority of the population has changed thousands of years of social tradition. I can’t fault those who will fight this decision and organize around it, but in my view, their fight will never rise above a valiant, but ultimately futile, effort.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, this paves the way for the Catholic Church to become a hate group. When Father Joseph tells the homosexual couple that he can’t celebrate their “wedding” ceremony, he’ll be on trial for hate crimes and discrimination before he knows it. The First Amendment, like the Second, the Fourth, the Fifth, and the Tenth is being thrown under the bus.
This also means that religious groups, if they want to retain any semblance of autonomy, are going to have to give up their tax-exempt status. It’s done.
Again, this was published on June 26, 2013. And here we are, June 26, 2015, and the curtain just closed. Now in a sane world, in a Catholic society, we could have laws that support and uphold the family as God intended it to exist.
In case you haven’t noticed, we do not live in such a world. It might be a good time to come to terms with that.
I’m not prepared at this moment to offer an in-depth analysis of this hate crime against nature, reason, and the moral law. In fact, I’m planning to go spend the day doing something with my rather large, traditional family. But I will offer a few initial thoughts:
- If you’re rooting around trying to find a reason for what happened today, why similar things just happened in Ireland and in Rome and in other places around the world, the answer is simple: this is the direct fruit of the widespread acceptance of contraception.
- The Church’s role in societal acquiescence to the sin of contraception (and its devastating effects on a proper understanding of human sexuality and ethics) should not be understated. The Pontifical Commission on Birth Control had a full year to disseminate their position — that Catholics should be able to licitly use birth control — before Humanae Vitae was issued. It was a public relations coup, with the message spread far and wide that change was coming to the Church. The practical effect was that many Catholics, both clergy and laity alike, concluded that the change was real, and acted accordingly, never looking back even when the Church reiterated her perennial teaching on the goods of marriage and the moral boundaries of marital sexuality. Now, some 90% of Catholics surveyed admit that they contracept. Which leads me to…
- The Synod is seeking to address the fallout of fifty years of Catholic deviation from moral teaching, but not by the affirmation of Church teaching. Instead, the general tone is one of picking up where the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control left off. Secret meetings, scandalous suggestions, heterodox working documents, and everything unfolding in the press. A filial appeal to Pope Francis to state unequivocally that he will ensure the Synod upholds Catholic teaching remains unaddressed, despite having nearly 300,000 signatures. The Instrumentum Laboris retains troubling language about communion for the divorced and remarried, despite assurances from the CDF that this was a dead issue. Continued assaults on Christ’s unequivocal teaching on the Sixth Commandment threaten our praxis on both the indissolubility of marriage AND our understanding of the sinful nature of homosexual relationships. The effect of all this dirty laundry being aired in public is having a similar effect to the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control’s media blitz: namely, Catholics are beginning to change their practice, regardless of whatever re-affirmation of doctrine may occur. Parish priests are already reporting that individuals living in adulterous remarriages are presenting themselves for communion under the impression that the pope has approved of this behavior.
- Another Humanae Vitae moment has arrived for the Church, and as with Paul VI, there is as yet no indication that Pope Francis will exercise his authority with such determined clarity. Even if he does, however, we must remain vigilant about a legislative document that is issued with little force, and with no applicable consequences for those who disregard it.
- On a practical level, Catholics in the US need to begin gearing up for an even more intense form of legal persecution. The Church will be tested by litigation-happy homosexuals desirous of making a point at the expense of Christianity. There will be cases where homosexuals ask to be married by a Catholic priest, who will say no, and then the lawsuits will begin. There will also be Catholic priests who acquiesce, and who, more than likely, will not be disciplined for it.
- Religious organizations, churches, and publications like this one will most likely lose their tax-exempt status in the not-too-distant future, or be forced to give it up rather than make unacceptable compromises.
- The Benedict Option now becomes an even more worthy object of consideration for families who wish to minimize their children’s exposure to a growing public display of sodomitical behaviors and indoctrination. There is no truly effective way to escape what is coming, but there are ways to reduce its impact, and this will in large part entail relocation away from larger cities and politically-progressive geographic areas into more rural, conservative, and agriculturally-feasible environments that provide for some opportunity for at least partial self-sustenance. Homeschool will grow increasingly important, as private Catholic schools that actually teach the faith become more rare and increasingly targeted. It is likely that to some degree, truancy laws will be enforced more stringently and homeschool curricula will be placed under increased scrutiny to make it more and more difficult to opt-out of a public education system that is (literally) hell-bent on indoctrinating our children to accept and embrace sexual immorality.
- More threatening forms of persecution for those who refuse to accept, embrace, and promote the sodomite agenda are probable.
- With certain notable exceptions, we cannot count on the Catholic bishops for support.
- It would behoove us, I think, to begin studying our most ancient ancestors in the faith, those who lived through (or were martyred during) the Roman Persecutions, and those who weathered the Arian Heresy. It will be from their example that we will draw inspiration and strength; it will be their lives which will serve as models for our own behavior.
These things won’t happen overnight, but they will come with discomforting speed. For now, we need to wrestle with what has happened today. Most of us are going to feel pretty beaten and abandoned. We need to support each other as best we can. A societal crisis met by a strong Church would be one thing. But we are met with disaster everywhere we look, and that’s disheartening, even terrifying. People you know, people you never expected, may well lose their faith. It goes without saying that we need to practice prayer and penance. We have to find a way, however difficult it may seem, to deepen our faith and our trust in Divine Providence. We need to stay close to the sacraments, the rosary, and the state of grace.
And please pray for us. This work that we’re doing grows more dangerous and difficult by the day.
Steve Skojec is the Founding Publisher of OnePeterFive.com. He received his BA in Communications and Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2001. His commentary has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, Crisis Magazine, EWTN, Huffington Post Live, The Fox News Channel, Foreign Policy, and the BBC. Steve and his wife Jamie have eight children. You can find more of his writing at his Substack, The Skojec File.
Your best piece yet.
“We need to stay close to the sacraments, the rosary, and the state of grace.”
Well said and I agree.
““Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” Therefore, according to the Gospel, any citizen can be a good Catholic – that is, side with Jesus Christ and the Pope, and do good to his fellow men – and at the same time side with Caesar, namely, observe the laws of the land, except when the rulers persecute religion or tyrannize the consciences and minds of citizens.“- St. John Bosco
“Worry has never advanced the kingdom of heaven. Worry has never made anyone holy. Panic,
fretting, and anxiety are not fruits of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost produces
confidence in God, trust in His mercy, abandonment to His designs, surrender to
His will and, always, peace.”
Father-Prior
Just remember: while this war was being fought you and yours wrote an article on the moral evils of video games.
A a father of now two now adult males, I can tell you that the vast majority of video games are morally evil. Full of violent and sexual images. Same for what passes for music. I can further tell you that it was a battle to keep my teens off that crap. Anyone tell you that video games are not harmful to families, they are liars. Anyone who denigrates folks who call out the probs of video games is… well… in charity, I’ll assume you are merely ignorant.
I’m not even taking the bait. I’m going to actually write about the pressing issue at hand. Any other time I’ll happily go to bat for the medium that brought me to Catholicism.
Well then shut your pie hole or find something of value to add rather than this foolishly out place comment.
“…in charity, I’ll (say) shut your pie hole!”
Video games brought you to Catholicism? This I gotta hear.
To make a long story short it wasn’t just games but also fiction in general. This might sound shallow but I discovered a love for the “Catholic aesthetic.” Catholic themes in video games specifically – Medieval 2, World of Warcraft, Dawn of War, the Elder Scrolls, so forth – opened me up to a world of Catholicism without me realizing it. Eventually I met a friend in a role-playing guild on World of Warcraft who’s whole RP was centered around a Catholic Church-esque religion. I discovered he was a real Catholic and something prompted me to ask him questions. The rest is history.
That is very interesting. I remember Warcraft II had Churches. They even had lighted Christmas trees in the winter. Dawn of War just seemed like pagan cults, but I can see a connection. It’s funny to think that all those hours I spent in fantasy worlds might impress upon me the need to find something fantastic in the real world. Frankly, I was wasting so much time that I needed the HolySpirit to give me strength to resist the temptation to escape. God bless and good luck!
How do you quantify “vast majority”? I’d say no higher a percentage than TV, movies, or print.
Call out problems where they are: with culture that is obsessed with pornographic imagery of all forms in any media. Video games can no more be singled out than the web.
And yeah, I have to keep my kids from spending all day playing video games, or watching TV. They’d gladly do either all day if allowed. If you’re a parent, and you allow your kid to get sucked in for hours per day on end with any largely unproductive activity, that’s bad. When I was a kid, my parents had to pry video games, TV, and pulp sci-fi/fantasy novels away from me, because I’d do nothing but play, watch, and read all day if I was allowed.
“Call out problems where they are: with culture that is obsessed with pornographic imagery of all forms in any media. Video games can no more be singled out than the web.”
I agree. I didn’t mention everything in the media but they can all be just as bad.
When you have no men, but boys raised on video games, you have no men who marry and lead families. No families mean a general lowering of society. A society where sodomy is accepted because there is no strong families, no morality, and effeminate men forever dressing and acting like teenagers.
Singling out video games is stupid and pointless. They are no more or less vapid than many modern TV, movies, books, magazines, etc. They can be enjoyed in moderation by most adult gamers who, like myself, play such games maybe an hour or two per week, and manage to raise families and hold down jobs just fine, thank you. Video games are a medium, not a genre, class, or content category.
I don’t have a problem with alchohol, tobacco, or firearms, that doesn’t mean these things don’t cause serious problems for some people.
Ironicaly, the people that do have problems with them tend to get defensive when confronted with the potential evils and are more likely to call any attempt to point these evils out “stupid and pointless”.
It’s a children’s game that should be put away once a man enters adulthood. No man, once he reaches his 20’s, should still be playing video games. The things of a child should be left in childhood.
Yeah! Real men play poker!…oh wait…gambling is probably worse than video gaming.
What? There were lots of articles dealing with the issues at hand. You make it sound like that was the main article taking the energy of all contributors. The other articles dealt with what’s is happening with the Church and marriage. And they were really good. Oh. Wait. There was also one that was just asking for money! Oh, the horror. I guess you’re right! But you should have mentioned that one, how could you miss it?
And where were you? Answering the ‘Call of Duty’?
I was writing and making video blogs and attempting to spread the history of Catholicism.
So you were improving the civilization, answering the call of duty, and working on your halo. Good on ya.
It’s something.
Steve, this is much more than the sin of contraception as that was merely a symbol of the underlying reason why this truly is a culture of death and a culture willingly, and tragically,committing suicide along with the loss of their souls to everlasting damnation.
You know the underlying cause of this latest abomination is the people of the world are living in sin, unrepentant sin, because they deny it exists. They deny it exists because the ruler of this world, the prince of Darkness, has taken over their minds and hearts and their souls are dead. God has given them up to wile away their remaining days in sin because they have hardened their hearts against the Truth. Not wanting to believe Truth, they are given what they want. Free will allows them to make the choice between God and Satan. They have chosen Satan.
This is the worst month for the USA in my 70 years. The scary thing is what is coming next? The governments of the USA should take notice that NY passed a law that semiautomatic guns must be registered. As of now about 4% have been registered. This should tell governments that they can only push people so far before they say …No. We in the USA are headed for trouble big time. We could be close to losing our civil freedom.
Congratulations Steve you are now “an enemy of the people” a title to be worn with honor. To me the main over-riding issue is the loss of faith among our Church leadership and the consequent failure to proclaim the truth. The sheep have lost their shepherds. We are headed for the catacombs. Our age may be the one Christ spoke of when He said “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”
Gentlemen, let’s stay on topic, please. The video game comment was absurd, and should have been treated as such. I’ve been writing on what was coming for years, and anyone who has followed my work here or elsewhere knows it.
I also have never said or published anything that argues video games are a moral evil. The two pieces we’ve published here have more to do with how they have a tendency to take men away from activities that form them to be men, largely due to their addictive nature. I was a long-time avid gamer, and I’ve seen those tendencies in myself, and now in my boys. If people can play video games in moderation — no more time spent than on other non-physical recreational activities like the occasional movie or board game — I don’t see the problem. But video games, more than any other form of entertainment media, have a tendency to be habit-forming. That’s the problem. They begin to replace the desire for anything else, and it is men in particular who suffer from this, because gaming replaces the sense of honor, nobility, structure, rules, accomplishment, adventure etc., that are so often missing from our humdrum lives in a feminized world.
But again, this is a digression. The topic at hand is much larger. Let’s put the video game tangent to rest, shall we?
Sorry. The reality of situation in the Church today is so depressing that diversions become temptations to take a break from the gloom.
It’s all happening too quickly. I was still busy trying to reconcile the disturbing implications of ‘Laudato Si’ in my mind. I should have seen the court case on the horizon, but with so much other stuff going on, like the Synod on the Family, it came like a sucker punch. This morning a priest that I had always admired gave a homily that was nothing less than thinly veiled jubilation at the courts decision. He likened the joy that Abaraham and Sarah had after their long wait for children to the joy of the activists in front of the supreme court. The only silver-lining I can see in any of this stuff is that I am more acutely aware of our need for a saviour. Or perhaps that should be ‘the Saviour’.
I’m sorry to hear about that priest. That’s…disheartening, to say the least.
The subject matter of this article is the passing into the law of the U.S. a “right” for “same-sex marriage”. While most people have concentrated on the assent to this “right” by Justice Kennedy, I would like to point out what two of the other “Catholic” justices-Roberts and Scalia-wrote in their dissent against the ruling.
Chief Justice John Roberts: “Understand well what this dissent is about. It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples. It is instead about whether, in our democratic republic, that decision should rest with the people acting through their elected representatives, or with five lawyers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes according to law. The Constitution leaves no doubt about the answer.”
Justice Antonin Scalia: “I join THE CHIEF JUSTICE’s opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to this Court’s threat to American democracy. The substance of today’s decree is not of immense personal importance to me. The law can recognize marriage whatever sexual attachments and living arrangement it wishes, and can accord them favorable civil consequences, from tax treatment to rights of inheritance. Those civil consequences-and the public approval that conferring the name of marriage evidences-can perhaps have adverse social effects, but no more adverse than the effects of many other controversial laws. So it is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the further extension in fact-and the furthest extension one can even imagine-of the Court’s claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776; the freedom to govern themselves.”
These statements are shocking to the Catholic mind-or should be. Both Roberts and Scalia, like John F. Kennedy, decided they would not serve the one, true God in their quest for political and judicial power in a country born out of a naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, anti-Catholic ideology, but prefer to serve the one who has absolute control of the minds and hearts of millions of people, including and in particular, Catholics, in this country.
Note how neither Roberts or Scalia found the matter of “same-sex marriage” a concern to them. Scalia says “it is of no special importance to me what the law says about marriage.” What a blasphemy against God! God created the institution of marriage and it doesn’t concern him at all! It doesn’t matter to either of them that “same-sex marriage” is a perverse absurdity in the eyes of God; in the very Natural Law that God inscribed on the very heart of humans.
While Kennedy used sentimentality and pseudo-social science to justify finding a “right” to “same-sex marriage”, Roberts and Scalia appealed to “democracy” and the need for the “people” to decide a matter that mere creature have absolutely no authority or right to do.
Just as the true religion of Catholicism was a matter of complete indifference to the framers of the Constitution, the matter of “same-sex marriage” is a matter of complete indifference to these two “Catholic” legal positivists.
Note even how Scalia capitalizes the word “Ruler”. Who is the Ruler? It is God. Is he concerned at all that God, the Ruler, instituted marriage? No, he is incensed that the Court, which he is a part of and therefore, responsible to God, has overstepped the false right of the people to decide a matter that God has settled and that man has no right to question.
Can the “people” decide to change the physical laws of the universe? With the thinking of the naturalist’s and supported by these “Catholic” jurist’s, if they tried to, how could either of them object?
This is why legal argumentation on purely naturalistic grounds will result-HAS resulted-in the triumph of evil. It will eventually lead to the ultimate triumph of evil.
My next statement is going to get the hairs up of some. I believe this ruling has application to the upcoming Synod on the Family as the Kasperite’s seek to “find the beauty of lifelong commitments.” Like “the people” in our democracy who believe they have a right to decide that Divine and Natural Law are myths to be rejected with impunity, Pope Francis is always open to “opinions” and likes to appeal to the people’s “experience of life” as a guiding principle in his “pastoral” approach to leading the people, with the Kasperite’s clearly changing the teaching of the Church to allow unrepentant sinners the reception of Holy Communion and in finding a way to subvert God’s absolute revelation that sodomy is an abomination.
Live by the will of the people (or of the Court) and you will die by the will of the people.
This website has a lot of good material. One topic I haven’t noticed is the subject of the Jews. The morally devastating impact of Jewish social engineering for the last 40+ years includes radical feminism, abortion, divorce, racial discord, the gay agenda, white guilt, proliferation of pornography, Hollywood sleaze, undermining of the Catholic and Universal Christian churches, etc.