Ambivalence and Irony among Weeds and Wheat

This is a week of deep ironies and ambivalence.

I read that Bishop Gemma, well-known exorcist of Rome, declared that the Blessed Mother never appeared in Medjugorje and referred to it as the “work of the devil:” “I am referring to the devil’s shit, money.” I personally know so many people from Catholic and charismatic circles who were positively touched at this alleged apparition site: is it possible both heaven and hell are active there? I consider it probable.

On Monday, ours was the only school I know of to hold classes on Martin Luther King Day. As I started each class, honoring his legacy and its culmination in our first president of color, I quietly recalled the marital infidelities of his personal life and the ongoing, catastrophic effect of sexual license and male abandonment upon hard core poverty and the abortion culture.

Tuesday, of course, the entire nation was mesmerized by the inauguration of a time of “change and hope.” Washington was aglow with energy, glamour and vitality. Today, however, 35 of us from my high school will join hundreds in the cold of January D.C. to announce our reverence for unborn life: implicitly in opposition to the new regime.

The irony is great: Obama is heralded as our new messiah, even as he is unreservedly committed to the rights of his daughters to massacre his grandchildren “in case of a mistake.” Bush retires to a chorus of relentless ridicule and contempt, even though he did more than any president in our history for the very most innocent and powerless.

Our country faces a spiritual and moral crisis that is far more severe than those involving energy, military or the “devil’s shit.” President Obama hopefully will bring advances on the secondary levels of war and economy, but he is hardly our savior in the truer dimensions of the spirit. His policy agenda here is a symptom of, and may well become an aggravation of, the crisis of the soul of our country.

Today we do need to pray and fast for our country.