Living The Worthy Life: Where Are You When We Need You?

It has been barely over thirty years now since the passing of Bishop Fulton Sheen.  He did not make it to President Reagan’s Tear Down This Wall Speech in Berlin, see the falling of the Berlin Wall, or see the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.  Well, all of this took place after his death and for many years people were tricked into believing that the threat from Communism is no longer present in today’s society.  Communism had been fought and lost the battle.  It was done we never would have to worry about it again.  That was thirty years ago.  That was in the past century and more importantly, that is not how our young people of today view it.  

In October of 2019, a survey was revealed that 70 percent of U.S. millennials—those between the ages of 23 and 38 in 2019—would support a socialist candidate for president, a result which a number of progressives viewed as an outgrowth of the damage wrought in recent decades by neoliberal capitalism and the ruling corporate order. 

Among those slightly younger, voters between the ages of 16 and 22, the sentiment was almost as high with nearly two-thirds of Generation Z saying the same. 

The poll was taken by YouGov and paid for by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), which surveyed 2,100 people about their views of capitalism and the U.S. economic system, socialism, and inequality in the United States. 

Half of millennials and 51 percent of Generation Z respondents reported negative views of capitalism while the two groups had more favorable views of the term "socialism" than the Generation X, Baby Boomers, and Silent Generation members—people born roughly between 1925 and 1980—who answered the poll. 

The survey was released five months after a Gallup poll revealed that 43 percent of Americans embrace some form of socialism. 

With this background might wonder exactly how so many young people are getting this pro-socialist and pro- communists information.  The answer is simple- from the schools, social media and the media itself. It is as if communism had somehow reinvented itself and the general population had amnesia.  

Communism promised equality and it delivers it- everyone is equally poor except for the ruling class.  Communism promises heaven on earth and delivers hell.  In Communism the government is god and you must not worship God freely.  Why would you throw away God for that?  This is the problem we are facing in the Church today.   

Large numbers of young families have given up on the Church and taken up with worldly pleasures and pursuits.  This may appear to be a short term gain  

Members of the South African Communist Party (SACP), an alliance partner of the governing African National Congress (ANC), have gathered outside the United States (US) embassy, in Pretoria, to protest against US President Donald Trump’s treatment of Iran.   

Asked why they were picketing outside the US Embassy, the group claimed that this was a way of standing in solidarity with the Iranian people, following the assassination of the Middle East’s most revered military veteran, General Qasem Soleimani. 

Speaking with the media, deputy secretary-general of the SACP, Solly Mapaila, confirmed that this was the party’s way of sending a stern message to President Trump about his recent decisions regarding Iran.   In their protest they shouted outside of the US Embassy, “One American, One Bullet.” 

Is this the peace they are seeking?  Is this the world we would really want or like to live in?  Bishop Fulton Sheen explained it this way, “Wherever the carcass is, there shall come the vultures ... out of the mountain fastnesses, the rocky crags, the vultures of the sky come down to this glittering rottenness in order to devour it. These winged creatures are a kind of avenger and a punisher. They are a judgment upon death and corruption. Just as soon as corruption sets in, these winged monsters appear shrieking and croaking and winging their way to death itself... Whenever a civilization begins to die morally or spiritually, then there begin to appear vultures. That is the mission of Communism in the world. Communism is the scavenger of a decaying civilization.” 

Communism can and will not create a society it will only destroy a society.   

In the end, the youth should listen carefully to the words of Martin Luther King when he said, “The ultimate weakness of Communism is that it robs man of that quality which makes him man.” 

Our propose is not to have equality here on earth it is to have equality in the hereafter.  Our goal is not and should be of this world.  We should listen to the teachings of Christ, listen to the early Church Fathers, listen to our current leaders and go to Church every Sunday.  Go to Church like our life depended upon it- because it does.