Wednesday, November 4, 2009 I'm still working on my next post, but this morning a friend sent me the following quote in an email that I think is well worth pondering. Fulton Sheen succinctly summarizes the connection between moral understanding and politics that is pretty much the basis for everything I do in public life. He is also right about the consequences of neglecting it, as we are proving all too clearly these days.
"What men do not see is that the fracturing of the spiritual community means the loss of inclusive and unifying moral sanctions over the whole of man's activities...The modern world has no cement to bind together personal morals and the morals of political and economic life. If a time ever comes when the religious Jews, Protestants and Catholics have to suffer under a totalitarian state denying them the right to worship God according to the light of their conscience, it will be because for years they thought it made no difference what kind of people represented them in Congress, and because they never opposed the spiritual truth to the materialist lie."
-- Fulton Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West
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Do we recall Whitaker Chambers (ex-Soviet spy) who gave up his privacy and peace to finger Alger Hiss and the other hacks in the U.S. State Dept. on Stalin's payroll?
The man's life became a living hell, and he became suicidal. The death threats and personal smears he faced were unconscionable.
He wrote in his book Witness that the West already has the answer to communism, but only if our faith in God equals the Marxists' faith in their own utopian delusions. You can find it online if you keyword search "Whitaker Chambers" and "Letter to My Children." It's deeply poignant, and increasingly relevant, especially for parents.
Are we up for this? Something tells me that if we aren't prepared to walk in Chambers' shoes now, we will, all too soon, have the opportunity to walk in the steps of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The saddest part of that is, so will our kids.
Edited by Roundhead 2009-11-04 10:31 PM
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Oh heck! Here is some of Whitaker Chambers' message to us today, and a link so you can read the rest. However, you'll need some time of silence after going through it, like a walk or something. I did.
In the Hiss trials, where Communism was a haunting specter, but which did little or nothing to explain Communism, Communists were assumed to be criminals, pariahs, clandestine men who lead double lives under false names, travel on false passports, deny traditional religion, morality, the sanctity of oaths, preach violence and practice treason. These things are true about Communists, but they are not what Communism is about. . .
. . . The tie that binds them across the frontiers of nations, across barriers of language and differences of class and education, in defiance of religion, morality, truth, law, honor, the weaknesses of the body and the irresolutions of the mind, even unto death, is a simple conviction: It is necessary to change the world. . .
It is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be as gods." It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man's relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God. . .
Economics is not the central problem of this century. It is a relative problem which can be solved in relative ways. Faith is the central problem of this age. The Western world does not know it, but it already possesses the answer to this problem-but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as Communism's faith in Man. Now this is deep and foundational, but nothing moved me more than the part of this mere Foreward to a book in which Chambers recounts the sense of panic in the voice of his son as he lost track of him one night on their farm. The Hiss trials had started, but the spiritual assault on Whitaker Chambers and his family had only begun at that point.
"Papa," he cried and threw his arms around me, "don't ever go away." "No," I said, "no, I won't ever go away." Both of us knew that the words "go away" stood for something else, and that I had given him my promise not to kill myself. Later on, as you will see, I was tempted, in my wretchedness, to break that promise. Whoa. I'm moved to ask this again of myself and anybody else out there involved in this historic time and its apocalyptic, prophetic events: "Am I up for this?" The full text of Chambers' Letter to My Children is below: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hiss/chambersletter.html
Edited by Roundhead 2009-11-04 11:01 PM
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