“Our once great western Christian civilization is dying. If this matters to followers of Jesus Christ, then we must set aside our denominational differences and work together to strengthen the things that remain and reclaim what has been lost. Evangelicals and Catholics must stand together to re-establish that former Christian culture and moral consensus. We have the numbers and the organization but the question is this: Do we have the will to win this present spiritual battle for Jesus Christ against secularism? Will we prayerfully and cooperatively work toward a new Christian spiritual revival ― or will we choose to hunker down in our churches and denominationalisms and watch everything sink into the spiritual and moral abyss of a New Dark Age?” - Mark Davis Pickup

Saturday, December 5, 2020

COVID19 AND THE HIERARCHY OF RIGHTS


 Anti-maskers are howling that their rights are being violated. I presume they are referring to their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Which constitutional rights do they have in mind? The right to peaceful assembly and association (S2: c & d)? Their mobility rights (S-6)? 

 How could any Charter right possibly supersede Section 7 of the Charter?: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

Let me assert that the legal rights of Section 7 must always supersede the right to association, assembly and mobility. There must be a hierarchy of rights.  Why? Without the right to life guaranteed, liberty and security of the person cannot be guaranteed. If public health measures are required to minimize serious threat of COVID 19 then the right to peaceful assembly, association and mobility must respect primary rights. In times of crisis primary rights must take precedent. A minority of Canadians who refuse to follow basic public health principles of physical distancing, wearing masks and staying home must not be allowed to threaten the majority of citizens! The majority of the population’s right to security of their person (and quite possibly their right to life) is more important than the right to gather at the local bar or have a party or not wear a mask—until the pandemic is over. I came across an appropriate comment: “Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.” 

Canada is in a health emergency that has infected 396,270 Canadians and killed 12,407 (as I write these words). Granted, the minority’s rights must be respected, but not at the cost or threat to the majority. Like another old saying goes: ‘Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.’ There have been other desperate times when citizens’ rights have been temporarily suspended or curtailed. 


Conscription during the 1st and 2nd World War is an example. In 1970, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s imposed of the War Measures Act[1] after the radical French separatist group Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped Quebec Deputy Premier Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross. They murdered M. Laporte. The War Measures Act suspended Canadians civil liberties until the crisis was over. 

 

What’s my point? There are times when the citizens of a country are called upon to obey urgent policies on matters that threaten their fellow citizens. They may not like it, but they follow government direction—in this case, public health measures for the general good. We are being asked to temporarily give up a few of our guaranteed rights to overcome a grave and dire pandemic. 

 

Throughout the ages, an ancient question is continually posed. Each generation must answer it with a Yes or No: Am I my brother’s keeper?[2] The answer determines what kind of people we chose/choose to be. Are we an interdependent nation that looks out for each other or a jungle of self-centered individuals demanding what’s theirs no matter who it hurts or kills?

 

Related post http://www.humanlifematters.org/2020/11/covid19-desperate-times-call-for.html

[1] The War Measures Act was repealed in 1988 in favour of the Emergencies Act.

[2] Genesis 4.9.

Thursday, November 26, 2020

COVID CAN NOT KILL OUR MEMORIES

This is a Christmas like no other. COVID is keeping us apart from loved-ones. Let us keep in mind those families that lost someone in 2020. There will be an the empty chair at their tables is Christmas. 

COVID may kill the body but not the soul. Sweet memories live on. So many people are grieving. Memories are all they have. 

If you know of someone who has lost a loved-one, please reach out to them by Skype, FaceTime, or other means, and include them in your Christmas Season. (Click the image below.)



Tuesday, November 17, 2020

COVID19: DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES!


 COVID19 infections are growing more severe each day. What were hundreds of new infections have become thousands, what were thousands of people infected are becoming tens of thousands. Voluntary measures to curb the virus from spreading are not being heeded. Draconian mandatory measures have become necessary. Government leaders have been trying to avoid this, and I get it, but too many people are ignoring necessary public health practices put in place. Some people are construing important public health measures as violations of their rights. Bizarre I know, but it’s  happening. Restrictions on the right of assembly and mobility are prompting some people to fear we are becoming a police state—conjuring up images of the gestapo or the stasi. Those prone to imagining conspiracies think it’s all a globalist plot. Wingnuts!

 

We’ve moved in to a second wave of COVID19 and the daily infection rate is worse than the first wave.  Desperate times call for desperate measures! It's time to institute severe fines for those people who refuse or neglect required health measures that are intended to stop the spread of COVID. If mandatory lockdown is required, declare it and enforce it. Mandatory compliance of public health care policy to combat coronavirus are only temporary. They will be lifted when an effective vaccine is available. (Then we’ll have a problem with the anti-vaxxers!) But if tough enforcement of public health measures is required I call on government to do it. Let the opponents, conspiracy theorists and anti vaxxers howl. Protection of the population takes priority.

 

This is not the first time in history the world has faced a pandemic. For example, the bubonic plague of 1663-1665. The city of London faced many of the same things we have experienced since March 2020: normal bustling city streets were empty. Businesses shut their doors, people defied municipal directive of quarantine.  


By June of 1665, the mayor and council issued orders under the title: ORDERS CONCEIVED AND PUBLISHED BY THE LORD MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF THE CITY OF LONDON CONCERNING THE INFECTION OF THE PLAGUE, 1665.[1]

 

They were not playing around. The orders were compulsory. People who did not obey them were jailed or faced heavy fines, or both! The ordinance gave sweeping powers to justices of the peace, bailiffs, examiners, searchers and others to enforce the order. In its preamble the order stated, “It is now, upon special consideration, thought very expedient for preventing and avoiding infection of sickness (if it shall so please Almighty God) that these officers following be appointed and these orders hereafter duly observed.” Examiners and other appointed authorities for local areas were appointed by aldermen.  Those who refused were jailed. Examiners and “searchers” were required to find and identify infected houses which were then padlocked and guards placed at the doors twenty-four hours a day. People who refused to serve as guards faced severe punishments. And to make matters worse for the folks appointed to positions where they might inadvertently come into contact with the plague could not enter or keep public places of business or take any other employment. Violators were imprisoned. Anyone who entered an infected house, such as a nurse, had to isolate themselves for twenty-eight days. Occupants of an infected house had to sequester themselves for a month after the last infection, under threat of imprisonment. The City of London had to take tough measures, but desperate times sometimes call for desperate measures.

 

Canada finds itself in a desperate time with rapidly rising COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths. Enough people are defying or neglecting voluntary public health measures that mandatory public health requirements need to be instituted. Violators must face severe  consequences—be it heavy fines or jail. Further, I think provincial premiers must use emergency measures within their power to enforce consistent public health measures across the country so there’s no confusion. Too many vulnerable people are a risk and too many have died. Lockdown fatigue be hanged! We need to get infection rates under control. Things may get much worse before they get better. That is the bad news. The good news is that a vaccine is within sight; we are being told that one will be available in early 2021, if not earlier.

 

Let the tiny cadrés of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy wingnuts howl foul. The human rights they believe are being taken from them will be returned as soon as this pandemic is over.  The good of the majority must be protected.


MDP

[1] Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague, (Bolton, Ontario: Amazon Books), p. 31.

Sunday, November 1, 2020

ON NOVEMBER 3RD, YOU MUST STAND FOR AMERICA!


 “Tonight, we pledge ourselves to each other and to the cause of human freedom—a cause that has given light to this land and hope to the world.”—Ronald Reagan  1986, on the occasion of relighting the Statue of Liberty. 

 _____________


Dear American friends of this blog: When you go to the polls on November 3rd, remember what made America great. It was your nation’s birth-right of optimism, patriotic values for family and community, one nation under God, that made America great. And those same values can make America great again. Historically, your nation believed in the American Dream where every citizen could rise to their aspirations with determination and hard work.  


Remember when communities were built not destroyed? Dare to believe that America build can again and be a beacon of freedom and liberty, just as Ronald Reagan believed. He saw the United States as a special place, “a shining city of a hill”—set by God between two oceans heralding a sacred call of human freedom and liberty for all the world to see and follow. It can be that way again.

 

America is at a pivotal crossroad.  Will it descend into a socialist/communist state under Biden and Harris? Don’t let that happen! Give Donald Trump a second term to usher America into new sunlit uplands of opportunity and potential. He’s setting the stage for America’s innate optimism and prosperity to blossom and flourish anew. Remember when that was a part of America’s culture and tradition of encouraging people to rise to their fullest potential? It can be again!  Just like Ronald Reagan before him, Donald Trump wants to rekindle a simple ideal: Free America from the shackles of big government. Restore American values and virtues of patriotism, family and community.

 

Donald Trump’s vision for America stands in stark contrast to how the leftists’ are replacing order and stability with disorder. They are spreading physical violence and bloodshed, destruction of property and communities. We have seen their vision for months playing out in street of cities across America. It is tolerated and even supported by the Democrats. But you must not! For the sake of all that is decent and good about America, return Donald J. Trump to the presidency to complete his task of truly making America Great Again.


I began this blog post with words of Ronald Regan 34 years ago, at the relighting if the Statue of Liberty. I believe that God has called President Trump to rekindle liberty itself across the nation. On November 3rd, vote Donald Trump and let him complete his task.

 

May God bless America and President Trump. —Mark Davis Pickup



Friday, October 16, 2020

FROM PHYSICAL BROKENNESS CAN COME SPIRITUAL HEALING

God can use us in any circumstance in which we may find ourselves, even dire circumstances. Dire circumstances and pain are teachers, if we listen for God's voice. I have been chronically ill and physically disabled with severe multiple sclerosis for over 36 years—more than half of my life. Strangely, I have been more use to God disabled than I ever was able-bodied. It was at a certain point of disability and sorrow that I asked God what He wanted me to do? He led me to speak out across North America about disability inclusion and against an emerging cultural acceptance of euthanasia.

And so from 1994-2018 I spoke to anyone who would listen to what I had to say. I spoke to community groups, colleges and universities, politicians at provincial, state and federal levels, evangelical and Catholic groups, churches, medical professionals, disability organizations, legal organizations—literally anyone and any place that invited me. Unless speaking about public policy in government settings, I used every opportunity to witness for Christ. Today, I was sent a link to a 2016 presentation I gave in Ottawa, Canada, to the annual conference of the Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF). They asked me to speak on the subject of "I AM MORE THAN MY DISABILITY." Click on image below. 

[NB: Notice the first inklings of my useless right hand awakening from MS paralysis.) I did not know then that a prayer not yet prayed was being answered ever so slowly. By 2019 I was walking after decades of paralysis in my legs, and regained full function of my right arm and hand.)





 

Thursday, September 17, 2020

ALL CHRISTIANS ARE INDISPENSABLE TO THE BODY OF CHRIST

 

My devotion last night was 1 Corinthians 12.12-27. 

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one bodywhether Jews or Gentiles, slave or freeand we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

Now if the foot should say, Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, I dont need you! And the head cannot say to the feet, I dont need you! On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

Every believer has an indispensable role to play in God’s plan. You may not think so, but you do. Everyone has something, a role, a ministry, a talent, to offer in building the Church and spreading the Gospel. It may not be a front-line ministry, or in leadership but God has something He wants you to do. Perhaps your ministry does not win the applause of singers or musicians on stage each Sunday. Your contribution to the Kingdom of God might not receive resounding “Hallelujahs” of the congregation approval at the profundity of a speaker’s words. Your contribution may in fact be behind the scenes and out of the public eye. Perhaps a believer is a janitor and thinks he’s never even noticed.  But his supportive contribution is crucial to the operation of the church. 

I am reminded of the mayor of a major city who was being interviewed for a news story. The reporter referred to him as having the most important job in the city. The mayor stopped the reporter and said something to this effect: “Do you know who’s really important to the operations of this city? Garbage collectors. If I don’t come to work for a month it will scarcely be noticed. But if the garbage collectors don’t go to work, it will be noticed by everybody within a week.” Wow. He put things into perspective. 

Saint Andre Bessette (1845-1937) was a lay brother of Holy Cross in Montreal. He was plagued with poor health throughout his life. All he ever became was a porter at College Notre Dame in Côte des Neiges, Quebec. His lofty superiors did not see the holiness of the little brother in their midst. He was barely five feet tall, yet he was a spiritual giant. Despite being a porter for 40 years, his powerful prayers healed thousands of sick people. Word of his spiritual gift of healing became well known and crowds came to his door. Jealous superiors at in the Congregation of Holy Cross were sceptical and local doctors called him a “quack.” In the end, the humble little brother was receiving 80,000 letters a year and needed four secretaries to handle them. God puts us right where He wants us to serve the Kingdom of God.

It does not matter that your contribution to your church may seem inconsequential to you. It is not to God. It does not matter if others notice your offerings to God. He notices.

 

Don’t wish you were more talented or gifted in different areas than where you have been given a calling. That’s like a frog wishing he wasn’t green. God made you just as you are, and He has a purpose In His design for you. 

  

 



Tuesday, September 1, 2020

A GRANDFATHER'S LOVE IS FOREVER AND EVER



 One day, when my grandson was four years old, we were exploring nooks and crannies, playgrounds and trails, in our little town. Some dark clouds appeared so he climbed on my lap and we hurried home on my wheelchair just as it started to rain. He and I watched the Disney movie "Pooh's Grand Adventure." My little guy sat in a big comfy chair eating popcorn. He did not know his family was going to move away from Grandma and Papa’s little town. My heart was heavy. The song 'Forever and Ever' began to play and I got a lump in my throat. It made me sadder. I did not want him to move away but it had to be. The day he moved away was the same day my mother (his great-grandmother) died. I don’t think the world ever felt so lonesome as it did that day. I wanted to always call his name and hear his voice answer. It was not to be.

Now he has grown to be a man. But no matter where he goes in the world, he knows his Grandmother and I are still in our little house. A candle is always burning in the window for him and his younger siblings.


I am old now. Everything is simple again. Rhythms of life are becoming gentle, seasons pass and a nearby church bell still rings each day, just as it has for over a hundred years. Each night when I get into my bed and turn out the lamp, I still dream he, and my other grandchildren will come back to stay. And though it is unlikely, love for my family is forever and ever. -- MDP




Friday, August 28, 2020

HOW DID AMERICA GET IN THIS STATE WHERE SOCIALISM AND BIG GOVERNMENT IS PREFERRED TO DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM?

This post was written before the U.S. election. I have changed it to reflect what I believe America faces under the Biden/Harris administration.

_________________________________ 

“He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent til after Easter. When he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish and delirious. He dreamt the whole world was condemned to a terrible strange new plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. So new microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became mad and furious. … Whole villages, whole towns went mad with the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at others, beat himself on the breast, wept and wrung his hands. They did not know how to judge and did not agree what to consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed each other with a sort of senseless pite.”—Fydor Dostoevky, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT.[1]

__________________________ 


A storm has been gathering on the horizon of America for quite some time. I’ve watched it slowly approaching. Dark clouds of rage and destruction have finally arrived. The threat it poses is more real and dangerous than any external enemy with bayonets storming the shores or intercontinental missiles pointed at America. The threat to American society is from within. This pernicious and malicious home-grown enemy is attacking the foundations of the nation from within, like a cancer. Young malcontents of anarchy— goaded by well-planned Marxists— vow to bring down the United States of America and replace freedom with a tyranny of the left. They are traitors! They are guilty of nothing less that treason, and they should receive a traitor’s punishment. 

 

Do not downplay or ignore the internal danger facing the United States of America. 

 

James Madison (1751-1836) was America’s fourth President and is often called the Father of the Constitution. He said, “If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within.” His prophetic words speak across two hundred years to twenty-first century Americans. They are watching their cities burn, violence and bloodshed in streets, law and order collapse. Ugly images of streets littered with the shells of burnt out cars, smashed windows of looted gutted stores and businesses are becoming common, America’s flag burning and trampled underfoot.

 

This should prompt every American patriot into action to take back their country. Marxists and their dullard thugs-of-anarchy make their hundreds seem like thousands. They are wielding power far beyond their numbers, thanks to support and sympathies of Democratic politicians at federal, state and municipal levels. Patriotic citizens are frightened, and they should be. People of goodness feel impotent to stop the carnage, the threats to their safety, property and nation. 

 

Simply put, civilized society is disintegrating before your very eyes! But you must not let this happen! You must act from now until November 3rd to keep the Democrats under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from taking the Presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate. It does not matter whether you have always voted for the Democrats, these Democrats are not the Democrats of John Kennedy. They are an aberration. You must not support them. 

 

It so frustrating to helplessly watch what occurring to my neighbours to the south. I am a foreigner, a nobody, witnessing the unravelling of a nation that I’m not a part of but have come to know and love. Since childhood, I’ve looked admiringly from the distant western Canadian hinterland to a glimmer of the great “shining city on a hill” lighting up sky for all to see.[2]  It is the light of freedom, optimism, and trust in God (as your coins so beautifully proclaim). The City has shimmered with patriotic loyalty, family values and interdependent communities. One nation under God made up of independent individuals within an interdependent whole: A people who historically looked to God for guidance. And for 244 years, God blessed America. 

 

Founded on a Judeo-Christian moral ethos, it has been a sacred nation set between two oceans, a beacon to the world for human potential and freedom. But now that shining light appears to be dimming, its flame no longer dancing—it is flickering unsteadily in winds of discontent. What happened? Will the light of liberty be extinguished in the months and years after November? I think I know what happened. 

 

After the Second World War people began to slowly turn away from God. They began to put their trust in themselves and things, treasures of earth rather than that which is treasured in heaven. It didn’t happen suddenly. It happened in small increments. Little bit by little bit, one small shift after another, the great nation under God began to lose its way. Gradually the dividends of a Judeo-Christian moral and spiritual consensus faded. Where were Christians? They made a fatal mistake of seeing things in bits and pieces rather than part of a whole. Yes, Christians were concerned about the breakdown of the family, rising rates of divorce, pushing God out of schools, increasing moral permissiveness and pornography, abortion and more recently, legalized euthanasia. Each shift took people further away from a Judeo-Christian moral mindset that viewed humanity as intrinsically valuable because every human being was endowed with the indelible image of God. As such, they possessed a natural dignity and sacredness. Things or actions or behavior that did not square with those virtues were discouraged or prohibited. Not everyone was Christian but at least they vaguely ascribed to that national ethos because it was embraced goodness and reflected an objective truth about human dignity and sanctity. A belief in the sanctity of essential things like human life and marriage and family were generally accepted by all but a few kooks and provocateur philosophers trying to gain notoriety.  That is no longer the case. We have three generations inculcated with the false idea there is no such thing as absolute truth, only personal relative truth, thanks, in large part, the twentieth century educational reformer to John Dewey.[3]

 

In Nancey R. Pearcey’s pivitol book TOTAL TRUTH: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Roots (Crossway Books), she spoke about John Dewey’s disastrous effect on education: 

 

“John Dewey did more to shape educational methodology than anyone else in the twentieth century.Dewey is the source of much of today’s moral education, where all values are treated as equally valid and students clarify what they value most. … Any value that students choose is deemed acceptable, whether or not it comports with accepted moral standards, as long as they have gone through the prescribed series of steps. Why? Because, as one textbook puts it, “None of us can be certain that our values are right for other people.” Each individual has become an autonomous decision maker, determining his values strictly on his own.”

 

What we have/are witnessing in the streets with BLM, antifa anarchists (blessed by the Democratic Party) is relativistic morality gone amuck! Today’s young hooligans tearing up America is the reductio ad absurdum of having trampling Judeo-Christian morality underfoot three generations ago. There is no transcendent universal truth. The only absolute truth is that there is no absolute truth. Might makes right. What’s right is whatever is deemed to be right by the most powerful and whatever is fashionably in season at any given time. Right now, the mantra is America bad, communism good. Everybody is being encouraged to “reimagine” America with no police. Imagine the world with no American way, established ideals, capitalism, no private property. In short, “reimagine America as a Marxist state”—the first step of which was the election of the left’s useful idiot Joe Biden.  

 

We must not overlook that seventy-five years ago, almost everyone knew the what the Ten Commandments were. They may not have been Christian, but they knew what they were. Granted, people did not always behave accordingly but they knew in their hearts-of-hearts it was the basis for proper moral behaviour. Most people desired and tried—however uncertain and haltingly—to live by that ancient moral code. They understood there is something called truth and that it simply existed. Their hearts and their consciences verified it.[4]

 

The Judeo-Christian moral ethos was brought from Northern European Christian culture. The Common Law of western civilization (so despised by the radical left) raised human rights, education, law, culture and mores to heights previously unknown in human history. Anglo-American Common law has Christianity at its foundations. In 1829, in his inaugural address as Dane professor of law of Harvard University, Joseph Story[5] said, “There has never been a period in which Common Law did not recognize Christianity as laying at its foundation.”[6] Until the post-world war generations leading up to today, Western Civilization was viewed as worth defending to the point of death. And it was defended. Hundreds of thousands of mostly men did just that.[7]


On the Eve of the Battle of Britain, Winston Churchill rose in Parliament and stated, 

 

“I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury of the enemy must very soon be turned on us.” He went on urge the British people that they must defeat Hitler. If they succeeded, all Europe would be free. Then the great man warned: “But if we fail, the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a New Dark Age, … .”[8]

 

I believe there are similarities between that fateful time and what America faces now. Under the Democrats, America’s great institutions and Empire will be weakened or dismantled. Creeping socialism will overshadow democracy. A terrible disfigurement has begun under Biden/Harris  The greatest nation on earth will be twisted into a socialist state based upon Marxism. Strangely, just as Founding Father James Madison stated, America will be taken over from within. It's being done by leftists, Marxists, and anarchists who have formed an unholy alliance with the Democratic Party. 

 

It’s coming into focus: The undoing of the United States of America will not be by some external enemy storming America’s shores with guns and bayonets, or missiles pointed at the heart of the nation. This enemy is within by treacherous citizens! 


MDP  



[1] Fyodor Dostoevsky, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (New York: Random House, 1956) pp. 489-490. 

[2] Ronald Reagan often called America a shining city on a hill.

[3] … Dewey is the source of much of today’s moral education, where all values are treated as equally valid and students clarify what they value most. … Any value that students choose is deemed acceptable, whether or not it comports with accepted moral standards, as long as they have gone through the prescribed series of steps. Why? Because, as one textbook puts it, “None of us can be certain that our values are right for other people.” Each individual has become an autonomous decision maker, determining his values strictly on his own.”

 

[4] Psalm 40.8, Jeremiah 31.33, Ezekiel 11.19-20, 36.26, Hebrews 8.10.

[5] Joseph Story (1779-1845) American lawyer and jurist who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1812-1845.

[6] Quoted in Perry Miller, editor, The Legal Mind in America (New York: Doubleday, 1962), p. 178.

[7] According to the National WW2 War Museum in New Orleans: In the Second World War, Allied Soldiers who died by country: U.S.- 416,800, British- 386,600, Canada- 45,000, Australia- 39,800. These numbers for only World War. See https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/institute-study-war-and-democracy

 

[8] Winston S. Churchill, MEMOIRS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR: An Abridgement of the six volumes of The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987) p. 326.

Sunday, August 23, 2020

I LET THE HUMBLE SWEET PEA SPEAK




August is a gift. My wife's sweet peas (and other flowers) in our backyard are in full bloom. LaRee knows they are my favourite flower (they are her's too.) She picks them and puts them in vases and jars throughout our house. Their beautiful pastel colours and sweet scent fill the rooms just as they do to the warm fresh air in the yard.

The humble sweet pea has much to teach me about life (if I allow them to speak to me). God can, if I let Him, use a flower to teach me about His nature through nature. He is, after all, the Creator of it all. Case in point: A bouquet of simple sweet peas shows me that simple beauty is the best beauty. That is a truth about most of life. Simple love is the best love.  Sadly, people rush about their busy lives oblivious to God's wisdom to be found in a lowly sweet pea or countless wild flowers growing along roads and walking trails. People quickly drive or walk by them without a thought about the wisdom and beauty to be found in a flower's simpleness. (The same is true of quietude.) 

Twenty-first century people do not tend to value simpleness. They pervert simple beauty into gaudy, vulgar counterfeits of beauty. They take simple pure love and twist it into something ugly by unfaithfulness, betrayal, lust and all sorts of deviations from pure simple love. They change pure love into something unworthy of the word pure or love—and a thousand miles from the Creator of love.

And yet, when all the deviations and complications of life are stripped away — as coronavirus may yet do to you and me — it becomes clear that it was only simple beauty and simple love that mattered all along! 

Isn't that part of the charm of babies? Their simple innocent beauty and openness to love calls you and me to remember our own early beautiful innocence and openness to love that was source of our joy. Joy is so natural to babies and tiny children but later is driven away when their hearts become broken, jaded, or cynical. Hearts hardened by betrayal, jealousy, selfishness or disappointment with life can only remember and experience faint momentary inklings of real Joy. Otherworldly Joy of God is a distant memory of earliest childhood.

That's why I think that sweet peas and tiny babies still call you and me back to the purity of simple beauty and simple love. That is where authentic Joy is to be found, It can be a constant state of being for hearts at peace with God though His Son Jesus Christ. 

Let the COVID lockdown be a time to quiet your heart and search for God. He is near and He cares for you and me.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life or what you will eat, or about your your body and what you will wear. For your life is more than food and the body more than clothing. ... Notice how the flowers grow. They do not toil or spin. But I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of them. If God clothes the grass that grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not provide much more for you, O you of little faith." —Jesus Christ, (Luke 12.22-23, 27-28.)

MDP

Monday, August 3, 2020

AMERICA AT THE ABYSS

The following video was sent to me by Facebook.  It speaks to America about the horribly high stakes of the November election. It calls the nation to a national day prayer 40 days before election day. I urge you to watch it. What is at state this election is nothing less that the heart and soul of America. 

You know which party stands against biblical values and against a Christian world view. Christianity lies at the foundations of America. Please see the video here: "The Return." (There are forces at work to silence any call to repentance, including blocking this video. You may find that it's censored and unavailable when you try the link.) 

It is a critically important message to the nation for a spiritual and moral about-face, in what people of previous times called revival. And it is something that has weighed heavy on my heart. Thirteen years ago I wrote these words for the cover for this blog:

“Our once great western Christian civilization is dying. If this matters to followers of Jesus Christ, then we must set aside our denominational differences and work together to strengthen the things that remain and reclaim what has been lost. Evangelicals and Catholics must stand together to re-establish that former Christian culture and moral consensus. We have the numbers and the organization but the question is this: Do we have the will to win this present spiritual battle for Jesus Christ against secularism? Will we prayerfully and cooperatively work toward a new Christian spiritual revival ― or will we choose to hunker down in our churches and denominationalisms and watch everything sink into the spiritual and moral abyss of a New Dark Age?” 

America now stands at the edge of that abyss of that New Dark Age; Joe Biden and the Democrats will bring it to America. But there is still hope: National Christian revival. God's people must witness to their neighbours and other fellow-citizens about God's love for them and encourage them to give their lives to Jesus Christ. Spiritual awakening!

Look at a coin. What does it say? "In God We Trust." In your hand lies the answer to America's future prosperity and happiness.

MDP


Tuesday, July 28, 2020

NOTHING CAN SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF GOD

Being one of the vulnerable populations at particular risk of COVID19 (multiple sclerosis & hypertension) I haven't attended church in months! I've been sequestered in my little house, watching weekly Catholic Masses on Youtube. The readings for 26 July 2020 were 1Kings 3:5-10, Romans 8:28-30 and the Gospel reading was Matthew 13:44-52.  In the homily, Father Michael Coutts, S.J., of Toronto, said that "all glory and riches and everything we have is transitory, it's fleeting, it's not going to last forever." Indeed, we know that, and yet so many people behave as though riches and glory will last. They place too much value and emphasis on them.

The first reading tells us that God appeared in a dream to the young King Solomon at the beginning of his reign after the death of his father King David. God asked him what he wanted. Solomon said:

"Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong."

God was pleased King Solomon did not request a long life or riches or revenge on enemies, rather he asked for wisdom. Not only did God make Solomon the wisest and most discerning man in history, He gave Solomon what he did not ask for: wealth and honour.  And then God said: "And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.” That brings me to a point about people who govern now.

Beware of politicians who govern solely based upon their own understanding. Someone seeking public office, must understand that their own understanding is insufficient, limited and weak. Figuratively speaking, they must govern on their knees and seek God's leading to make the right decisions. Many secular and unbelieving politicians may assume a pious air when it suits them to gain support of religious voters. But their lives or voting records belie the facade. They are unworthy leaders who will not be led. They call good evil and evil good, such as the Democrats' persistent and consistent support for abortion and the expansion of it. Leaders without moral rectitude. They sway with prevailing winds of fashionable, avant-garde thinking. They want to appear progressive regardless of how regressive the fashionable thinking may actually be.  They adhere to political correctness more than actual correctness in matters of morality, policy or law. We need lawmakers and politicians who pray for, ... well, to use an old saying, the wisdom of Solomon. 

The second reading in the Mass was Romans 8:28-30. It begins with these words: "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." I love this chapter of Romans. Earlier it says, "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

I've been chronically ill for most of my adult life. So often I have clung to these verses. I needed to know there will be a glory of God that will dwarf any suffering I experience in this life, that all things, even my pain, will ultimately work for my good.

Father Cootts said we may have infirmities, but we have a great treasure, and that treasure is hope.  The hope Father Coutts referred to is not based on emotions and he said that.  The hope he spoke of is the hope that every Christian believer has experienced. This is true. I have personally witnessed that hope of God's daily care for me in my earthly pilgrimage toward His eternal love. This daily care is not merely a series of coincidences. They are not coincidences because God's care is evident each day. Coincidences happen by chance. They are rare. The Divine care to which I am beneficiary of is constant. Coincidences are not constant or they would not be coincidences.

Father Coutts noted that the truth of the Gospel reading is brought to us from the past and we should put it into practice in our present circumstances. Even with my disease ridden body, I experience the daily effects of God's care and the pledge of eternal life. It is a pledge to all who believe in Jesus Christ and the sacrifice He paid on the cross for our sins: Belief, repentance, confession and penance of my sins (which are many).

The Evil One accuses. God forgives. The Evil One tempts. God calls us to purity and holiness. Satan lures. God woos. Satan asks humanity to sin, then condemns us when we do. God wants to forgive our sins and bring us to Himself.  There is no sin God will not forgive.  Remember that King David was guilty of adultery and being an accessory to murder, and yet God forgave his repentant heart.

Sin may be initially feel light, fun, and taste sweet while we are committing it. But when our hearts convict us, that sin becomes bitter, and weighs heavily on a guilty conscience. It becomes a burden. 


Jesus calls to you and me: "Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will rest for your selves." Jesus gives release and rest from the burden and guilt of sin. At Calvary, He took on the weight of our sins. He gave his body and blood for you and me. He may have been betrayed by Judas, but I have betrayed him too, by my sins. Still He continues to give his body and blood in the bread and wine of the Blessed Sacrament, always calling me back to His rest and peace.

Father Coutts and priests all over the world consecrate the bread and wine at every Mass. They raise the bread and cup to become the Body and Blood of Christ.

"At the time Christ was betrayed and entered willingly into his Passion, He took bread and giving thanks, He broke it and gave to his disciples saying 'Take this all of you and eat of it for this is my body which will be given up for you.' In a similar way, when supper was ended, He took the chalice and once more giving thanks He gave it to his disciples saying 'Take this all of you and drink from it. For this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal Covenant which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.'"

Christ gave us the bread of life and the chalice of salvation.  We partake of them each time we receive his Body and Blood at Mass. But I cannot attend Mass! I'm in lockdown along with millions of other people. I can only look at the image on my computer screen and unite myself with Christ in spiritual communion: "As I cannot receive thee, my Jesus in Holy Communion, come spiritually into my heart and make it Thine forever."

To the unbeliever it is all foolishness. To those who know it to be true, it is the mystery of faith. It is through faith that my sins are forgiven. It is through hope that my crippled body draws nearer to Christ's body that was once broken and is now perfected. Mine will be too. It is through the salvation message of the Gospel—that comes from across the centuries—that we can rest in Christ's love, knowing we are forgiven. He takes away the burden of my sins, just as He can for you.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God!

"For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love God in Christ Jesus our Lord." — Saint Paul (Romans 8:38-39)

MDP 

Thursday, July 16, 2020

A TERRIBLE AND MALIGNANT FORCE AT WORK IN AMERICA

There is a terrible and malignant force at work in the nation. It is intent on tearing America apart then remaking it as a Marxist state. They may soften the terminology with the word ‘socialist’ but don’t be fooled. It’s Marxism under another name. This malevolent force is particularly dangerous because it is attacking America from within, like a cancer. The terrible and malignant force I refer is the radical left, supported by the Democratic Party and many Democratic politicians.

They are enemies of the freedoms, liberty and the way of life America enjoys. These freedoms and liberties are what your grandfathers, fathers—and in more recent times, your sons and daughters—fought to protect and perpetuate.  All that is being threatened. 

It is now time for very American patriot to take a steadfast and strong stand against the menacing mobs setting American cities ablaze and calling for the dismantling of police ... and a dismantling of America itself! 

America is a nation of law and order not lawlessness and anarchy, where communities are built not destroyed. 

You have a pledge of allegiance to your sacred Republic that your children were taught in grade school:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

That is not the way of the radical left and their mobs. They burn the U.S. flag and trample it under foot. They burn cities. They stoke fires of division amongst citizens and fan flames of violence. They deny liberty and replace it with unrestrained licence. They reject God who has blessed America so richly. They howl about injustice, all the while creating more. They want to destroy America—the greatest nation to ever exist in human history. The United States of America has created unparalleled human freedom, liberty and prosperity. What communist country can the radical left point to that is comparable. Russia? China? North Korea? Cuba?

Good people of America! NOW is the time you must rise up and protect your cities and communities and restore law and order. Get in the faces of your politicians and demand (in no uncertain terms) that they stop the mobs’ thuggery and destruction now. Demand that they use as much force as is required to end the carnage. Demand budgets be re-instated for municipal, state and federal police forces, if they have been reduced. Not only that, expand them where they feel it is necessary. DO NOT LISTEN TO THE RADICAL LEFT or the mainline liberal media acting as their voices (they are like America’s Pravda). 

Threaten to work to defeat any cowardly politician at the next election if they cave to ludicrous demands of the radical left (and public shame them before the election). Turn up en masse at city council meetings and forcefully, loudly, demand police forces’ budgets be restored if they have been cut. Demand forcefully and loudly that destruction of private property and public buildings be stopped immediately, the looting and arson cease now, the beatings and murders be stopped, and the perpetrators prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

When liberal politicians use the new buzz-phrase “re-imagine community safety” or “re-imagine policing” understand they are wanting to embark upon an untested and dangerous social engineering experiment that will only hurt the people they swore to serve and protect. Tell them to re-imagine their own unemployment. November is coming soon.

Also see "Were the Minneapolis Riots Planned?" 

Mark Davis Pickup
Canada

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

WERE THE MINNEAPOLIS RIOTS PRE-PLANNED?

At the time George Floyd was killed, I noticed peaceful protests rooted in righteous and rightful outrage moved quickly—too quickly—to rioting, like accelerant put on a flame. Outrage became outrageous with the burning of buildings, looting, and mindless violence. But the mindless violence seemed a little too orchestrated and planned. 

As I watched the images unfold on nightly newscasts, I mentioned this to my wife and even tweeted my suspicion. Well, others must have been suspicious too and began digging into what seemed to be bubbling under the surface, and the causes. 

The following video may give a bit of insight into what was and is happening and the instigation of violence that grew to cities across America. 


Sunday, July 5, 2020

AMERICANS—STAND UP FOR AMERICA

America just celebrated 244 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. In 1787, after grappling about how the new nation would govern itself, a constitutional convention assembled in Philadelphia to draw up a Constitution. Uncertainty pervaded the convention about whether all members would accept its provisions. The oldest member of the convention was Benjamin Franklin. He was instrumental in gaining its acceptance. While the last of the members were signing the Document, Franklin looked toward the President’s chair, behind which was painted the image of a rising sun. The great old man commented to a few members near him:

Benjamin Franklin
“I have often and often, in the course of the sessions, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President, without being able to tell whether it is rising or setting; but now at length, I have the happiness to know, that it is a rising, and not a setting sun.”[1]

Throughout nearly two and a half centuries, the sun has shone on America. The nation’s sunlit uplands gave birth to liberty, human rights and opportunities the likes of which has never been Known in human history.  Eleven years earlier, when America’s Founding Fathers penned those eternal words, what began was the nation’s morality, mores. Its national ethos grew, continues to grow and mature with ever increasing revelation of the Founding ideals that unfold with each new phase of human insight: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Such sacred words may have been penned by men, but their quilled pen was surely guided by the invisible hand of the Almighty.  God smiled on America. By 1817 America was flourishing so much so that the nation’s 5th President, James Monroe stated: “If we look to the history of other nations, ancient or modern, we find no other example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy.” All within within forty years of the founding of the new nation. That rapid growth, prosperity and happiness has continued to expand exponentially.

Although haltingly at times—sometimes two steps forward
and one back— America has moved ever closer to those divinely inspired ideals of the Declaration of Independence. She became the standard bearer for the rights of man. That standard has given a shining example for the world to emulate and create climates for human liberty to take root. Even autocratic countries that suppress human rights pay lip-service to the acceptance and respect for principles of human rights. These are rights based upon absolute truths we find as the foundation of the Declaration of Independence. Now granted, America still has distance to go in matters such as racial equality, but the journey continues constantly—perhaps not fast enough for many people, but America leads the world in its quest of human liberty, prosperity and happiness. 

Communist China’s best-known dissident, Wei Jingsheng,
Wei Jingsheng
was held prisoner for 18 years in communist China’s prisons. Despite enduring physical and mental torture, Wei made a statement to Amnesty International in 1998 that “Under the principles of democratic systems, human rights have been established in more and more countries.” Although basic human rights were kept from him, and millions of other Chinese people by the communists, Wei issued a statement on January 8th, 1998, in which he said: “This is the power of truth. I have no qualms about sacrificing myself for democracy or human rights, … Truth is truth.”

Truth is truth. But now dark clouds of sinister internal unrest are gathering to threaten America and blot out the sun. American cities are being set ablaze by anarchists, and the far-left—many motivated by communism—and served by useful idiots and anti-social malcontents. Hoodlums and thugs call for the dismantling of police forces everywhere so they can have their way unimpeded. They are enemies of freedom, enemies of liberty. They mindlessly shout slogans about white privilege, systemic racism, colonialism. They tear down statues of America’s past and want to erase any good connection with history involving white Americans. They are what they call others: racists. 

On July 2nd, I received an email from Terry Schilling, Executive Director of the American Principles Project in which he said:

The Democratic National Committee sent out a tweet last night that said Mount Rushmore — and President Trump’s Fourth of July celebration there — are “glorifying white supremacy.”

"It wasn’t a fringe left-wing group: it was the official Twitter account of the national party committee, and it wasn’t a mistake, even though they deleted the tweet within the hour."

"And, during the week of America’s Independence Day, they made this outrageous contention while linking to a British newspaper story. I doubt they caught the irony."

"Bottom line: last night, the Democratic National Committee showed the American people what they really believe … and then, like cowards, tried to backtrack and hide their extreme views.”

Golda Meir
(1898-1978)
The Democratic Party is falling in step with the far-left’s narrative and agenda. The intent of that narrative and agenda will be, in part, to try and erase America’s history or rewrite it. What would that achieve? What does history tell us? There was a time in Europe, when other dark forces tried to eliminate the Jewish race, wipe them from the face of the earth, and erase Jewish history from human memory. After the Second World War, Golda Meir helped found the State of Israel (1948) and served as its 4th Prime Minister. She said, “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” 

The far left (and the Democratic Party that’s beholding to them) will replace sweet liberty with uncontrolled license. They are tearing down America under the guise of racial inequality. They will try to eradicate the past that does not portray anything but America’s mistakes and faults. Yes, there is racial inequality in America. America is people and all people are flawed and fall short of that great vision articulated so eloquently in its blazing foundational Declaration.  But its words beckon across the centuries for America to rise to its noble calling. America is changing because the spirit of those towering words demand it, not because of the violence and disorder of malefactors and chanting malcontents.  

Those eternal words whisper in your ear and mine: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

With what will the far left replace those sacred ideals that governed America’s unprecedented journey toward enlightened human rights and equality?
We do not know and dare not imagine if “autonamous” zones of Minneapolis and Seattle are any indication of what awaits America if the likes of antifa and others of their ilk get their way. 

The far left represents a small minority of Americans. I do not understand why Democratic politicians and the Democratic Party have bowed to them and their demands. America’s majority are law abiding citizens, they want law and order, safe streets, opportunities for their children that free enterprise can bring, and the freedom to seek the American dream, as it applies to them. I believe most Americans want leaders who will stand against fashionable but shallow anger against America and Her institutions and Her Judeo-Christian roots. They have (and want from their leaders) an abiding commitment to the ideals that make America the best country that has ever existed. 

Americans must refuse to let antifa and the far left tear down the America you and I hold dear! Stand against the mobs, and for those ideals that made America the best country in the world.

If America never existed, do you think the disabled and chronically ill (like me) would be as well treated as we are? No, I don’t think so. It’s that standard bearer thing again. America’s influence has made the world a better place. 

I believe that the best person to lead the United States of through this tumultuous and dangerous time is President Trump's
firm and decisive leadership. Over the next four years, he can set the course that leads America into another period of unparalleled prosperity and happiness for everyone, not just some. He will protect and care for the nation’s most vulnerable (as we’ve seen him do in appointing conservative pro-Life judges and defunding the despicable abortion business of Planned Parenthood.) 

Good people of America! Do something to save the greatest nation ever to exist. Please, get involved to re-elect President Trump. The election in November will decide the fate of America. Don't set the sun set on America.

MDP

[1] FRANKLIN ON THE CONSTITUTION in READINGS IN WORLD HISTORY, ed. Leften S. Stavrianos, Loretta Kreider Andrews, George I. Blanksten, Roger F. Hackett, Paul L. Murphy and Lacey Baldwin Smith (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1962) p. 258.