Render unto Cesar...

What am I do make of the fact that the canidate that I did not support won the election? As Saint Paul writes: Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God, Romans 13:1.

Saint Paul writing the Epistles

I am a citizen of America. I am a citizen of a democracy. This means that when it comes to elections I will sometimes be disappointed. This disappointment does not allow me to withdraw from the democratic process, nor does it even allow me to be a faithful Catholic while at the same time not respecting the prospective regime.

This does not mean that I submit myself totaly to it. A democracy supports my freedom, the most important of these is a freedom of a well-formed conscience. So while I will pray for B. Hussein Obama everyday, like I did for George W. Bush, I cannot endorse his policies that oppose the moral values of the Catholic Church which I uphold. So my prayers are also for the change of his heart, that he may come to see the value and dignity of every person, whether they are in the womb or fully grown, and that he may than protect this dignity. I pray that comes to see that the many different calls for new "rights" are false, since as our own declaration of independance states: We hold these rights to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Rights cannot be created, but slowly discerned. So there is not right to gay "marriage," there is not right to abortion, there is not right to expect that government to provide a safety-net of public assistance.

At a personal level I look at the Catholic preaches during the upcoming regime of B. Hussein. He does not seem to be a champion of the free exercise of religion where it seems to conflict with these newly created false-rights. This will provide a challenge in Catholic schools, in Catholic hospitals, to my parishioners who will be health-care workers and teachers. So while I submit to his proper authority, I also look at the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.,* and acknowledge that any law that is unjust is not really a law, and hence does not bind me.

If he supports laws that limit the rights of doctors refuse to provide services on the grounds of the objection of their conscience, if he supports laws that limit the rights of parents to determine the best education for their children and limits the rights of teachers to refuse to teach what they morally object to, if he supports laws that would but Catholic hospitals and other direct social outreaches in direct conflict with the moral principles of the Catholic Church, I will still give him that honor that is due to him, but I also recognize that my king is not Mr. Hussein Obama, but Christ who is the way, the life, and the Truth. As far as all these laws are unjust, they are not laws, so they do not need to be obeyed.

The ruins of Trajan's markets, where very likely Apostle Paul preached.

Saint Paul saw this conflict, and was willing to die for the Truth of the Gospel. I am reminded of this every day as I walk to school and look down into the markets of Trajan. Most likely Paul walked through these markets while he was in Rome. Trajan was the emperor that Paul was executed under.

Prayer for all the preachers of Truth, that they and I may persevere in defending this Truth.

God bless.

*Dr. King in fact gets this doctrine from Thomas Aquinas