Update, October 31, 2020: I want to emphasize this important related post from the past. And if you do a search on the web, you’ll also find that there is a renewed effort to curse the President this Halloween, right before the election on November 3, 2020. Please pray. Pray like never before for each other, for our President and for our country. Amen!

+JMJ+ I’ve written about this before. We are in a war. We have been for thousands and thousands of years, but we are in a particularly intense war right now and it is primarily spiritual. So when people tell us that we should keep religion and spiritual things out of the public, political conversation, they either don’t know any better or they do know exactly what they’re doing: trying to keep us from doing the one thing necessary to win this war: identifying exactly who our enemy is and doing what we need to do to defeat him. 

Because our enemy is not some politician, though we do have to recognize who the politicians are, too, and whom they serve. But our enemy, ultimately, is not flesh and blood. Our enemy is not a political party, though there is a political party who has aligned itself with our enemy. No, ultimately, he has always been our enemy and he was a murderer and a liar from the beginning. And those who have aligned themselves with him are on the way to giving him more and more power over themselves and trying to give him power over the rest of us, too. 

But fallen angels have no power over our souls unless we give it to them. Remember, fallen angels are demons, they are preternatural beings. They have preternatural powers, not supernatural if we remember that the supernatural refers properly to God. The fallen angels, demons—and if you don’t think they exist, you’re not only denying a truth of the faith, but you have not been paying attention to what’s happening in the world—have cut themselves off from the flow of God’s supernatural life and gifts. They are not progressing in the spiritual life, they cannot, they cannot repent, and they do not want us to repent and grow in the spiritual life, either. They want nothing for us except our deaths. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and the fallen angels, and the one they serve, hate us for it. Yes, they HATE us.

But they don’t necessarily want to kill us. They would much rather trick us into doing that ourselves. They would rather fool us into thinking that killing someone serves some higher purpose, that we would relieve someone of their suffering by killing them, that we would be freeing their souls from a life of pain and suffering. Or that we would be freeing the world of some nefarious evil by killing those with whom we disagree. And many people seem to be falling for it. 

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a pacifist. I know there are times when we may need to defend ourselves or others. I accept “just war theory” and recognize that we may have to fight a war to defend ourselves or others, and that we have had to do so in the past. I fully accept that while agreeing that “war is hell.” But it’s clear to me that there are those who think that it’s open season on Catholics, any kind of Christian, any kind of religious person, any conservative, even, and that is a twisted perversion of the just war theory, and has no justice about it whatsoever.

Our ancient enemy always twists and perverts things. It’s all he can do. He can’t create, he can’t love, he can’t want the best for anyone, not even himself. He is a liar. A murderer. He seethes with hate. That’s all he’s got. And too many people have opened the doors of their souls to him and invited him in. 

This is the world we live in now. I never thought I’d live to see the things happening here that are happening now. And I know I’m not imagining it.

“For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and power, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places.”

Ephesians 6:12, Douay-Rheims Bible.

If you want to read about what’s happening now and understand more about it from a spiritual point-of-view, Paul Kengor’s book, The Devil and Karl Marx, aims at doing just that. Read it along with his book, Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, to see what has happened and is happening to the family in the modern world. (Yes, it matters and it affects each and every one of us.) And read Archbishop Sheen’s Communism and the Conscience of the West. Watch A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing II, and the video below on conscience. So good! (Links are below in the notes.)

Video: Natural Law and the Revenge of Conscience, a talk by J. Budziszewski at the Acton Institute. 

So put your armor on and get ready for battle. We are in a spiritual war and the stakes are only getting higher. 

And do yourself and all of us a favor by voting your conscience AFTER you know what that means and AFTER you have formed and calibrated your conscience according to the teachings of Christ and His Church, and have undergone formation as a disciple of Christ. Pray that prayer that Jesus gave us and MEAN IT.

Our Father, Who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy Will be done,
on earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.

(See Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.)

Thank you for visiting and reading. Until next time, whoever and wherever you are, please stay safe, well, virtuous and holy. May the Lord bless and keep you and yours, and may His peace be always with you. +JMJ+

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Notes and Links

• Form Your Conscience: Forming a Catholic Conscience, by Dr. Mark S. Latkovic; Dissenting Catholics and the Conscience‏, by Leila Miller; More Than a Feeling: What it Means to Follow Your Conscience, by Leon J. Suprenant, Jr.; Doing as I Please or Pleasing as I Do, by Bishop Thomas John Paprocki; Is It a Sin to Disobey Your Conscience?, by Joe Heschmeyer.
• Video: Natural Law and the Revenge of Conscience, a talk by J. Budziszewski at the Acton Institute. (Anything by J. Bud is good, really good.)
• The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration, by Paul Kengor: Paperback, Kindle. (Amazon affiliate links, see Full Disclosure below.)
• Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, by Paul Kengor: Hardcover, Kindle. (Amazon affiliate links, see Full Disclosure below.)
• Communism and the Conscience of the West, by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: Paperback. (Amazon affiliate link, see Full Disclosure below.)
• Paul Kengor discussing Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage: from thedove.us, very brief interview on WorldNetDaily, a talk of over an hour from the Heritage Foundation, an interview from C-SPAN’s Book-TV on YouTube (covers some of his other books, too).
• “The Devil and Karl Marx”: a Review, by Robert Orlando on The Catholic Thing.
• A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing II – The Gender Agenda (2020): DVD at EWTN’s Religious Catalogue (due to ship around October 23). Purchase streaming and download at Vimeo (available now).
• A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing I: Saul Alinsky (2016): DVD at EWTN’s Religious Catalogue. Purchase streaming and download at Vimeo.

Images used: The Temptation of Christ, by Ary Scheffer, Wikimedia, public domain. God the Father, detail from The Assumption, by Titian, WikiArt, public domain.

Copyright: All original material on Catholic Heart and Mind is Copyright © 2009-2023 Lee Lancaster. All rights reserved. Read more.

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