In the town of my youth, a theater began to show movies featuring immoral content. Some godly men and women, including my father, staged regular public picketing of the theater in an attempt to persuade the crowds to reject these movies and thus force the owners to stop showing them. Dad's group was small but faithful. Sadly, the crowds kept coming, encouraging the ownership to increase, not decrease, their showing of objectionable movies. The owners and crowds made an alliance "and sold themselves to wrongdoing" (see 1 Mc 1:15).

This was over thirty years ago. Dad saw the culture wars coming and fought the good fight (2 Tm 4:7). Most adults of his generation were blind to its significance and sold out. Since then, the American culture has deteriorated to the extent that prayer is not allowed in schools, abortion is legal and on demand, Sunday is no different than other days of the week, Christmas is now called "the holidays," network TV is raw sewage, etc.

Jesus wants to open our eyes to see the raging war between the kingdom of darkness and God's kingdom. He wants us to recognize our spiritual blindness and cry out to Him, "Lord...I want to see" (Lk 18:41). If we choose to stay comfortable and blind, selling out to the culture of death, our children and grandchildren may suffer horrors unthinkable to us now (see e.g. 1 Mc 1:60-61). The clock is ticking. What's your decision?

Rescript:  †Most Reverend Daniel E. Pilarczyk, Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, April 21, 2005

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