Name:   MartiniMan - Subject:   there are days Date:   2/23/2023 8:26:48 AM

My sense is we have had worse times and clearly better times but our current situation reminds me of the malaise days of Jimmy Carter.  But it was much worse leading up to and during the Civil War and of course WW 1 and 2 in terms of actual harm.  We are in a spiritual battle between good and evil....and I'm not talking about Democrats vs Republicans.  This isn't about party affiliation, it's about whether we completely turn away from God.  I read a fascinating article about the prophetic warnings of Cardinal Fulton Sheen.  Look at these quotes and ponder that he wrote them 80 years ago.  Our problems are not new but are manifesting themselves in new and more diabolical ways.

“secular college and university education teaches in one form or another that there is no such thing as evil or guilt, that there are no absolute standards of right and wrong, that right and wrong depend entirely upon one’s point of view.”

“Wherein lies the future of America?” Sheen questions. “The problem is concerned with a choice between two classes: The intelligentsia and the masses.” He goes on to say, “Our conclusion will be: The future of a better America is in the masses and not in the intelligentsia, for we are witnessing in our national life what might be called the Betrayal of the Intellectuals, or the Treason of the Educated.”  Who is the intelligentsia? For Sheen, they are “those who deny absolute standards of right and wrong, make truth and error relative to a point of view, and completely ignore the will and its discipline in the training of youth.”

“But when democracies lose the spirit of religion,” Sheen writes, “they have no fulcrum for self-sacrifice.” Sheen also notes, “The preservation of America is conditioned upon discipline and self-sacrifice, but since these are inseparable from religion and morality, the future of America depends on Americans’ attitude toward God.”