On this day when we celebrate the Solemnity of Saint Joseph I cannot help but think of his wonderful patriarchal leadership in guiding the Holy Family and serving today as the Patron of the Universal Church. It is a comfort to reflect on that in these times where true leadership, true caring for families, especially caring for the family of the Mystical Body of Christ has been so abandoned.
In today's society the whole concept of family is askew for the rightful, God-given parental authority of parents has been usurped and demeaned. No longer are mothers cherished or appreciated for their devotion to raising a family, being loving wives, but they must be active and proactive. The kids can wait because the state has taken care of that. "It takes a village to raise a child" is the popular call of none other than Hillary Clinton, who surfaced this past Sunday at the Mall of Shame during the staged and overexaggerated protest against George W. Bush. It was supposed to be a march touting abortion, but a great bulk of the participants were lesbians. I'm sure mothers everywhere were impressed. They wanted to express themselves and indeed they did. Hopefully the heartland was watching in disgust and the young will learn from the woeful actions how not to behave or believe. Ms. Clinton is nothing if not a classic example of everything New Order, New Age, Secular, Modernist, Feminist and anathema to so much if not all that true Catholic Faith stands for. Yet she had no problem marching up to receive holy communion in South Africa several years ago. No respect for life, no respect for the Truth, the Way and the Life!
In Madame Hillary's simple yet pervasive and dangerous call we see The New Order's new orders on what a family is all about. It is not a father, mother, children and perhaps other relatives. That would be too old-fashioned, too narrow-minded to someone like Clinton and her like! No, The New Order's definition of family has three sides that are all destructive of the purpose and role of the traditional family.
It Takes Two Whatever to Raise a Child
The first destructive side of The New Order's view of family rests in its expansive, all-inclusive, all accepting, all twisting, and all wrong view of the family as including any combination of fathers, mothers, unmarried adulterers and children as one desires. People like Barbara Walters, Rosie O'Donnell and Oprah are cheered when they speak of homosexual couples raising children in a "loving and tolerant home". The current battle over the legality and validity of homosexual marriage is a central aspect of this first view of the family. The New Order's definition of marriage and family comes right from the Sodom Dictionary!
But is this first side of The New Order's view of the family simply a desire to encourage tolerant and inclusive family structures? Once again, we see The New Order's love of dynamite covered with roses! This all-expansive form of "family" is actually a mini-ecumenical unit! Just as The New Order seeks to destroy the traditional concept of religion by expanding that definition of religion to include all variations of religion through the insipid cancer of Ecumenism, so too The New Order seeks to destroy the traditional family unit designed by God Almighty by expanding the definition of "family" to include homosexual and unmarried couples, all in the name of "tolerance" and "inclusiveness."
It Takes a Social Programming Unit To Raise a Child
The traditional family has long been the basic unit of society. It is the seed from which society blossoms. It has been the respite, the oasis from a cold, calculating world where children could be raised according to the parents' moral and conduct principles.
The New Order family, however, is far from being an oasis from the world. It is quite the opposite! The New Order family is merely a more focused, centralized programming unit of the society around that family. Instead of providing an escape, a break from the world's trash and tripe, The New Order family is a more focused brainwashing system, which merely reflects and serves the government's purposes and views of the world.
While traditional families are about nurturing individuality and uniqueness, the New Order's family is all about programming uniformity and erasing individuality and uniqueness about everything. It is a throwback to the brainwashing of the youth by the Nazis in recruiting willing stormtroopers. Everyone march in order, goosestepping to the new uniformity that stomps on everything that is good and having any trait of moral virtue. Sieg hiel!
It Takes a Society To Raise a Child
People like Hillary Clinton along with paragons of platitudes like the divorced but supposedly-annulled and remarried pariahs Ted Kennedy and John Kerry tell us that parents cannot raise children on their own.
It is too hard, too complicated for parents to do it alone, says The New Order. So let government do it. No thanks!
The "village," as we can see, is merely our society, which is very happy to grab and indoctrinate our children to follow the script, to be anything but unique or individual. Again, by ignoring or downplaying the power and divine purpose of the traditional family, by stretching it until it tears and becomes a tattered shell, and by usurping the responsibility and prominence of parents in a child's life, The New Order slithers toward its goal of carving its future generations of robots devoid of humanity, of tradition and, above all, of God and the one True Faith in solely worshipping Him and giving the Holy Trinity all due reverence.
It is truly ironic and would be amusing if not for the tragic consequences of The New Order's strategy of perdition. That such a monolithic and powerful force as The New Order would fear the warm embrace of parents toward their children in a loving, moral, God-fearing home is really quite interesting and revealing. It is this destruction of the traditional family and likewise the traditional Catholic family that has resulted in fewer vocations, lower moral and ethical standards, and widespread lack of interest and falling away of so-called Catholics. It does not take a society to raise a child! It takes a loving, moral family with clear priorities and God at the center, based in the solid foundations of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
The Nicene Creed is our blueprint for the Faith, and the Act of Faith points out clearly that Christ cannot deceive nor be deceived. But man sure can! Oh, can he or she, no matter who we are. When we place our trust in man, we get what we deserve. Yet it is The New Order that is trying to dismiss God as irrelevant. That in itself is a red flag that should warn every parent, every soul to run the other way! Yet so many Catholics have been so mesmirized by the rhetoric and have bought into the lie that they continue to tolerate sin and even vote for pro-abortion initiatives and candidates. Conscience means little to them until they are confronted and their retort is well-rehearsed, "My conscience tells me it is okay to do what I like."
It Takes An Idiot To Buy This New Order Family Model
In actuality, it truly does take an idiot to buy into The New Order's concept of the Family Model. Only if we are truly grounded in the True Faith and follow God's path to salvation, will we be able to fend off the hypnotic lure of the trash of the New Order. Should we be weak in that Faith and have already begun to buy into the rubbish sold daily at the New Order's store and The New Order temples passed off as Catholic churches offering the Novus Ordo, we will surely fall to the delusions and illusions of The New Order's definition of family. Where then do we look?
The Perfect Model
The ideal atmosphere to raise a family is within the structured tenets of the True Church with its sacramental life which upholds the sacred statutes of the Holy Family and professes obedience to Father and Mother as a duty every parent must follow. Children must be obedient to their parents first and foremost and parents must seek the eternal salvation for their children more than any earthly comfort. We owe that to God and to our kids. We cannot depend on others to do what God expects of us. We cannot rationalize with our consciences to avoid our responsibilities.
What if, when the Joseph discovered that Mary was with child, he would have said, "I'll have nothing to do with her because I think she's been with another man. I've got my whole life ahead of me, I'll find a woman who is not pregnant. My conscience tells me to look elsewhere." ? What if, when the Angel awoke him to hurry the Holy Family out of harm's way during Herod's wrath, he had said, "My conscience tells me I must stay here and sleep in. After all, if our Son is really God, what can Herod do?" No, Joseph was obedient to the Will of God in all things, as was his immaculate chaste spouse Mary. Thus, in this atmosphere Christ grew in grace and maturity as the God-Man just as the Gospel of Luke attests: "And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them; and His mother kept all these things carefully in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace before God and men."
What a wonderful atmosphere. What better model than the Holy Family! Despite their obvious poverty and hardships, they lived a life of love, charity, service, respect, and adoration of God. Their every action reflected these virtues and that love for the Creator. They truly lived together and did not just live in the same home as so many families do today, mere strangers with the same last name.
Holy Joseph has many titles, Protector of Children, Safeguard of Families, Model of Single Men and Married Men, Patron of Priests and Seminarians, Model of Christian Workers, Hope of the Sick, Consolation of the Poor, Rescuer of Sinners, Solace of the Afflicted, Model of Righteousness, Patron of a Happy Death, and, most important Patron of the Universal Church. We can never go wrong if we place our trust in him and forget what the world advises. In the example of the Holy Family we have all the answers we need. I echo the phrase made famous by the Rosary Priest Father Patrick Payton:
Remember, the family that prays together stays together!
