ARCHBISHOP CHAPUT AND THE TRUTH

From Archbishop Chaput's Address to Houston Baptist University:

"I'm here as a Catholic Christian and an American citizen – in that order. Both of these identities are important. They don't need to conflict. They are not, however, the same thing. And they do not have the same weight. I love my country. I revere the genius of its founding documents and its public institutions. But no nation, not even the one I love, has a right to my allegiance, or my silence, in matters that belong to God or that undermine the dignity of the human persons He created."
Commentarius de Prognosticis

This is the most frightening thing a statist of either political stripe can hear. If a person gives his allegiance to the truth ahead of anyone or anything else they cannot be controlled. To the left this means that the person will resist the nanny state security blanket meant not to create security for the individual but to give power to the few. To the right this means that the person will resist the ultra nationalism used to justify endless war making designed to enslave and kill the many while creating massive profits for the few.

True freedom can only come from God. Everything else is a lie; a lie created by the father of lies, Satan. And to accept as truth that any country or ideology deserves your allegiance ahead of God himself makes you a child of the lie for: "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof." (John 8:44)

As I look at America today I see a country living a lie. We believe we can spend on every social program imaginable, regardless of whether we have the money or not, in search of "social justice". We believe we are justified in invading foreign countries, not because they have attacked us, but to bring democracy to the oppressed. We believe Sundays were made for shopping, not for church. We believe true happiness lies in technology and science, not in the truth itself.

We've lost our way because we've lost our goal; to know God, to love Him and to serve Him. Everything else descends from there. We've lost our way because we've lost our soul; we've replaced God with self.