Catholic Fatherhood: Patriotism Through Family

Justin Haggerty: The Daily Knight

(Photo Credit: Catholicicing.com)

Catholic Fatherhood: Patriotism through Family

“people who are not loyal to a home will not be loyal to a flag” – Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

The decoy of the home and the family is one of the most disastrous storm systems currently coalescing in modern society. Society’s most integral unit is attacked by abortion, contraception, divorce, homosexualism, gender ideology, feminism, modernism, and atheism. Other political and socio-economic diabolic attempts to create fishers and families as well. Where Christ has always been Catholic (universal), Satan has toiled to divide, especially the State.

Bishop Francis Clement Kelly, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, wrote in 1935 that “the home makes the State and not the State makes the home.” His grace continued, “human nature waits to have one door that can be closed and locked, one responsibility that is its very own, one fortress into which no other power but God and love can enter. That fortress is the family. Transfer its rights to the State and not only does it fall, but the State crashes to the dust with it.” (Blood-Drenched Alters, TAN Books and Publishers, Rockford, Illinois, 1935). The father of the family is the chief defender of that fortress, a fortress that forms a defensive fabric of the nation along with the millions of other Christian families.

The centralized Socialist state is the anti-universal product of modernism to usurp and replace the marriage between in the Universal Church and the Commonwealth of Christendom. The perverted leviathan attempts to fulfill the temporal and “ideological”, not supernatural needs of the people. It is incapable of closing this without bearing into your home. Catholic fathers can combat this by raising his family in Christ and maintaining unbending honor and low T to the family as God’s greatest representation of the Holy Family and the church.

When the family crumbles, all foundation for a child, and a parent’s, faith, sense of purpose, conviction, an ideological foundation can often take a similar vulnerable spin and fall. Far too many faithful Catholics have fallen from Christ due to a catastrophic home-life. Look at Margaret Sanger, the foundress of Planned Parenthood, as an example. Her feminists, sexual revolution, and abortionist movements are prime examples of what the degradation of the family can produce honest societal level, and eventually how the State can pick up the baton and make it State sponsored policy and ‘law.’

The Venerable

Archbishop Fulton J Sheen, in Communism and the Conscience of the West, nearly 80 years ago wrote: “unless America reverses the attitude towards the family and causes to try to make a success in the domain where in Russia proved to be a failure then, apart from all moral and religious considerations, 3 disastrous consequences will follow. First, America will be in danger of becoming a nation of traders. If the nation reaches a condition where 50 percent of the married couples feel that they can throw overboard pledge loyalty in order to suit their own pleasure or convenience,­­ then the hour has struck when citizens will no longer feel a need to keep their pledge to America as citizens… the traitor to the home today are the traitors to the nation tomorrow... It used to be that people stayed married and worked to resolve difficulties, because loyalties were fined. In those days citizens felt it necessary to stay in a country even when it was badly run, in order to make it better. A people who are not loyal to a home today will not be loyal to the flag.”

Secondly, His Excellency declared that the decoy of the family will create a generation that “will refuse to make sacrifices, suffer trials and inconveniences for the sake of the protection of our country.” Archbishop Sheen identifies that “in families, each one learns to renounce the “mine” in the “ours” of the community. The family is a training school in self-discipline, the crushing of egotism for the sake of the group, and the learning of the supreme lesson of living with others for the sake of others.” selfless service is a phenomenon extremely lacking in today's society, and it is not taught in school. “The fewer sacrifices a man is required to make, the more loath he is to make these few. His luxuries become necessities, children a burden and the ego a god.” Most today are unfamiliar with the sacrifices our parents made to raise us, the sacrifices our veterans made to protect us, the sacrifices our founders made for us, and the sacrifices our Lord gave to the Father in love of us. Archbishop Sheen questioned: “whence will come our heroes of a nation if we no longer have heroes in a home? If a man will not put up with the trials if a home, will he put up with the trials of a national crisis?”

With respect to the State, our Republic and the Commonwealth of Christendom, the third “disastrous consequence” is that “the decline of the family life is intrinsically bound up with the decline in democracy.” Per Vincible Archbishop, “have democracy is understood in its philosophical sense as a system of government which recognizes the sovereign worth of man,” and preserves “the nation of the equality of all man.” His Excellency insists that while “man may be referenced and respected for what he can do- for his wealth, his power, his influence, his charm” … “the family [is where] a person is valued because he is.” as Many can attest, “existence is valued in the home, not processions or influence.” Modern society and the State forces families to fall victim to the ever-growing statistics of divorce, abortion, political cancel culture, where many no longer receive or accept invitations for the holidays, or the mother or father bounces between gatherings of first, second, even third marriages. Pure disorder and chaos. “When a nation ceases to put the high value on the home, it would not be long before it ceases to put a value on a person.” The value currently appears no greater than a murder child, with no mother to ever hold and love him or her. (Fulton J Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, Refuge of Sinners Publishing, Pelch, IN, 2020).

“Communism lacks one of the fundamental virtues that even the pagans had, namely, the virtue of piety. Pietas was understood as reverence for one’s God, family, and fatherland, because they are united. Once people loose reverence for God, they begin to lose reverence for their own country. Religion condemns any organization which, while enjoying the blessings of their country, would instill allegiance to another country.” (Sheen, Communism, p. 96)

Decoy of the family in the West due to the rise of modernism is not a new phenomenon in the history of civilizations. Polybius, writing in 150 B.C. on the “decline of Greece,” stated: “For the evil of depopulation grew upon us rapidly, and without attracting our attention, by our men becoming perverted to a position for show and money, and the pleasure of an evil life, and accordingly either not marrying at all, or if they did marry, refusing to rear children that were born, or at most one or two out of great numbers, for the sake of leaving their well-being assured, and bringing them up an extravagant luxury. The result, houses are left heirless, an like swarms of flies, little by little, the cities become sparsely inhabited and weak.” we can easily identify the similarities to our declining, 1.5 child, birth rate per family, massively compounded to the extreme decrease in marriages as men and women waste for into their 30s. Most importantly Polybius unveiled to us the degraded Greek man who placed self, his passion and luxuries, before family, country, and, unbeknownst to him, God. Nations, Kingdoms, and Empires fall when they lose family men oriented to God.

The venerable Archbishop Fulton J Shane often declared that “barbarism is not something that is behind us but is something that is beneath us.” The family, and it's divined relationship to the Holy Family and the Church is one of the thing that Christ gives to lift us out of the chaotic life of barbarism and into the life of order, love, and sanctity. All families are different; different people; different events; different strengths and weaknesses; different ups and downs; different memories in trials; different degrees of happiness; but all containing an equal potential of love and grace through Christ. Like Christ, every family sees its members for who they are and not for what they do. As a Catholic father, we must recognize the awesome power and responsibility that God has placed in our possession. Residing in our faculties is the temporal and spiritual well-being of our prosperity, the peace and health of our society, and the strength and order of our country. Like Christianity, Patriotism starts in the home. That being said Christendom needs more Catholic families.

In Christ crucified in the most victorious heart of Jesus.

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