The Elections

I vaguely recall that Teddy Roosevelt once said something about being in the ring, about not standing off to the side, and instead joining the fray. Such a statement would have been characteristic of the ball of energy that was Teddy Roosevelt. Here is the full quote from the Theodore Roosevelt Association website:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

"Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910.

I think we need more Teddy Roosevelts among Catholics and other Christians. The Church calls lay Catholics to be involved in politics. Such involvement means at least in part that we must pray about politics. It's time to start praying.

The media is now full of dire predictions about Republican losses in Congress in the upcoming Nov. 7th elections. I won't believe it until I see it. If indeed these great losses materialize--losses that the biased liberal media is panting for and actively campaigning for in its coverage and timing of its paid polls, then we know that God will draw a greater good out of them.

But in the meantime, I say again: start praying. Pray in your own words. I pray this: that the pro-life party, the Republican Party, may win and retain control of both the House and the Senate so that more pro-life judges can be appointed on the Supreme Court and on other courts and so that pro-death legislation relating to embryonic research can continue to be blocked. May they win so that the ambitious gay agenda can be blocked. May they win so that further restrictions can be placed on the hourly massacre on the unborn and partially born that is abortion. May they win so that we retain the will to fight the forces of evil out to destroy anyone who does not bow the knee to Islam. May they win so that those who want to spread the demonic contraception mentality of self-prostitution to more and more young people will not gain power.

As laity, we are obligated to be politically involved. Our greatest weapon is our prayer. But too often we have been deceived into thinking that, although many pray (sometimes even during the liturgy) for the victory of an athletic team, we cannot pray for the victory of a specific political party. Speaking for myself, I feel obligated in conscience to pray for the victory on November 7th of the Republican Party for all the reasons you already knew and that I have repeated above to remind us. As Teddy Roosevelt would have said, this is no time to adopt an Olympian indifference or air of distant, pious superiority.

The Democrats offer no sane alternative. They retain the pro-death, pro-promiscuity, pro-gay agenda they have embraced now for years. They are lying low and trying to win on the sly by not revealing their true agenda. Let's make sure they don't get the chance to start again the social engineeering that has gutted the national moral character of an entire nation since the late sixties.