I contend that I have the smartest readers in the world and Dufekin's comment is proof.
Adrienne:
The Communist goal was a completely secular country. I'd say that they've done a pretty good job of it, wouldn't you?
Separation of church and state does not mean what most people think it means.
Dufekin:
Well, the Communists failed entirely on that point. The Venerable Fulton Sheen once noted that more people in the Soviet capital of Moscow illegally attended the Orthodox Church on Sunday than joined the Communist Party (a legal action, entitling one to "more equal" status and special privileges). Last year, the only country in the entire world (with the possible exception of the Holy See) in which a majority of the population went to a Catholic Mass or an analogous eastern Eucharistic celebration on a typical Sunday was Poland. In many Latin American countries, barely more than a third of the population goes to Mass on Sunday. They had a bishop a few decades ago, Karol Cardinal Wojtyła, a canonized saint, who fearlessly led a profound spiritual battle that undermined and ultimately completely vanquished the repressive Communist regime, all without his side even taking up armaments.
I'm old enough that I went to public schools that instilled a profound fear of all things Communist. Unfortunately and indeed shockingly, young adults today, even the most well educated young adults who achieved high grades at the best schools, even schools with a relatively conservative reputation, can barely recognize Communist ideology, lack even the most elementary historical background information on even a single Communist country, live in complete ignorance of the genocidal "successes" of Communist governance, and routinely fall sway to Communist propaganda, even if they live in relatively very conservative parts of these United States of America.
The university system routinely turns intelligent, God-fearing teenagers from productive, conservative, pious families into atheistic Communists too stupid, confused, and delusional to recognize the difference between boys and girls. Tragically, only a third of American teenagers even have parents to rear them; most of the rest live in unstable situations, typically without any ecclesial influence. Even worse, a large number of children live in highly dysfunctional households, riven with crime, gangs, drugs, and adults who usually neglect or often abuse them in various ways; these households every year in this city alone simply throw away hundreds, probably thousands, of children, mostly teenagers but some much younger, to live alone on the streets and scavenge for sustenance. And a quarter of all American babies suffer death before they even get a chance at birth. Any wonder why our youth reject God and His Church or never find Him in the first instance?
Incidentally, those public schools a quarter-century ago taught us that the "wall of separation of Church and state," to which Thomas Jefferson referred metaphorically in a private letter, not in the Constitution, forbade the State from regulating the Church, which nevertheless retains the right, even the duty, of influencing the State and particularly of instructing its officers in moral and ethical principles (like not killing innocent babies). Strangely, today, in newly Communist America, the State without restraint regulates the Church, which increasingly dares not speak on matters of political interest, even those clearly and explicitly in Sacred Scripture.
When the Communist government of Poland built a drab brutalist suburb of Kraków in the Communist style, without allowing the construction of a Church building, the sainted local archbishop Wojtyła held so many large, beautiful, and frequent outdoor religious celebrations in defiance of the Communist regime, which ultimately consented to the construction and the consecration of large, beautiful, traditional Church buildings that stood in stark contrast to their ugly drab surroundings. Those churches survived, full of people, even young Poles, until coronvirus hysteria disorder struck; the Communist regime vanished three decades ago, but is its return imminent? In any case, you can hold Mass and Eucharistic processions and adoration outdoors, and the weather in much of the country is getting nicer.
Perhaps it's time to take Christ to the streets and proclaim the Gospel to all people, even politicians, teaching them to observe all that He commands us.
(Sorry for the long-winded rant. I'm just livid at the Communists/Democrats and simply prefer to live in the America that is not fast becoming an advanced society like the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.)
But as that holy bishop, known to the world as Pope Saint John Paul II, tells us repeatedly, echoing the Scriptures, fear not!
Thank you, Dufekin. No apologies needed!
