Clearly contemporary man needs heroes. But why not choose a genuine one?

Some excerpts from a letter that a friend gave me, one that he received from another friend:

Bishop John Dewane from Venice, Wisconsin hometown hereo

Clearly contemporary man needs heroes. But why not choose a genuine one, why not look a little deeper and work a little harder to find a man of courage and principle, and if it helps in the historical healing process, why not a very different kind of black man, say a person like Alan Keyes, a scholar, former ambassador, experienced in different levels of government, and (it might be added) an African American married to a woman from India. Moreover, he is a devout Catholic who believes in moral absolutes and has amply proved that he will stand firm to defend them regardless of the cost to his own career. He knows that kings and presidents cannot usurp the natural law, the moral order of the universe, without bringing down judgment upon their nations. But it need not be Keyes. It might be any number of other men and women of clear thought and clear principle. Surely there are "Ten Just Men" [my note, an allusion to Abram's appeal to God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah] still out there some where in America. So why Obama? And why doe he rise and rise as his mouth smiles and smiles exuding sincerity as he speaks lies and death?

And why, most horribly, most shamefully, are so many Christian of malformed or unformed conscience supporting him?

Archbishop Charles Chaput from Denver, National hereo

Lies compounding on lies, and it all floats on an ocean of spilled innocent blood [obviously a reference to the Holocaust genocide of legalized abortion]. Who can gaze upon that ocean without coming to a radical choice: One either turns away into a deeper state of denial, or one turns heart and mind toward the Splendor of Truth, and changes one's life accordingly [basic choice placed before the first Christians in the Didache, written in 80 A.D.]. Alan Keyes, prospective hereo?

B. Hussein Obama, false hereo, false prophet.

...
There is an erosion of truth in the education systems, combined with the gradual confusion and weakening of conscience through our addiction to the "soma" drugs supplied by the entertainment industry. Other factors may be the war in Iraq, or Republican economics, or the Bush administration, or the structure of capitalism itself, or any number of prudential question in the sociopolitical order, all of which are presently tangled nests of moral dilemma. But why do they [us Catholics] not see that these question are secondary to the fundamental issue of life itself? Why would they replace one reigning oligarchy with another oligarchy moreover one that would kill vast numbers of its own citizens?

I call on heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, so that you and your descendents may live... Deuteronomy 30:19

Copyright: Michael O'Brien, 2008, given for public use.