Cardinal Francis George, one of the outstanding American churchmen of recent years, passed away last week. Many commentaries I have seen in the Catholic press and blogosphere have, understandably, highlighted the following quote:
I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.
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| Cardinal Francis George |
The first part of the quote has generated the most attention. Some people have dismissed it as overblown or sensationalistic, but I’m not so sure. George Washington and John Adams warned that a people not grounded in the practice of religion and morality would be unable to maintain a republic as free citizens; our current age seems determined to put that assertion to the test and, quite frankly, the preliminary results are not promising. And while we here in the U.S. are not facing the sort of violent persecution that our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world must endure, things have nonetheless reached a point that would have seemed unthinkable just a couple of decades ago, when anyone who suggested that American Christians might be forced to lose their jobs and businesses simply for living according to their faith would have been dismissed as a hopeless crank . . .
(Please read the entire post HERE at Principium et Finis)
(Please read the entire post HERE at Principium et Finis)
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