A New Year's Resolution: Speak Honestly and Freely

A New Year's Resolution: Speak Honestly and Freely.

We’ve Been Silent Too Long!

FATHER JERRY POKORSKY | DECEMBER 30, 2022 |

https://cnsnews.com/commentary/father-jerry-pokorsky/new-years-resolution-speak-honestly-and-freely-weve-been-silent

Those who investigate crimes gather crime-scene evidence. They hope to identify a suspect with the compilation of sufficient evidence to prove guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.” We also must support our judgments with adequate evidence. It takes considerable effort in political matters because a complete compilation of facts is almost impossible. It may take weeks and years for all the facts to emerge. Yet we all need to make political decisions in real time.

Government and media elites throttled reasoned dissent based on evidence during the pandemic. We were not allowed to question these assertions: Bats transmitted the COVID virus. The US never funded the gain of function research in the Wuhan lab. The COVID virus never escaped from the Wuhan lab. Lockdowns were necessary and should remain in the government arsenal. Masks and rigorous social distancing prevent the spread of COVID. COVID vaccines are safe for everyone and prevent the spread of COVID. Vaccination is a moral obligation.

Conventional wisdom deemed unassailable by corporate media, politicians, and government agencies include:

· Obamacare: If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.

· Lois Lerner’s IRS did not target tea party conservatives.

· Medical facilities do not traffic in aborted baby parts and do not use them to develop pharmaceuticals.

· Trump colluded with the Russians to get elected in 2016.

· BLM riots were largely peaceful.

· The Hunter Biden laptop was likely Russian disinformation.

· The January 6 disturbance was an insurrection.

· There is no significant voter fraud in US elections.

· The border with Mexico is secure.

· The leadership of the FBI is apolitical and represents no threat to law-abiding Americans.

· The pro-life movement poses a serious domestic terror threat.

· The Woke Movement is a matter of social justice.

· Abortion, gay marriage, and transgender surgery are rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

· School administrators have a right to facilitate the gender transitioning of children without advising the parents.

· There are no transvestites, only healthy transgendered.

· Homophobes and Catholic teaching threaten the mental health of the LGBTQ community.

· With surgery or hormone treatment, a person can change his or her sex.

· Monkeypox (like AIDS) threatens the entire population.

· Diversity, equity, and inclusion are inviolable moral precepts that transcend and replace the Ten Commandments.

Taken individually and in isolation, these assertions may represent aberrations from the cultural norm. Taken together and in historical context, we have sufficient evidence to conclude that immoral authoritarianism threatens the culture. The verdict is in. The facts are good enough for conclusions that require our testimony and action. Most of our elites – government, corporate, the media, and even some in the Church -- are liars. They depend upon our silence to accomplish their evil purposes.

The parallel stories of Traudl Junge and Sophie Scholl provide a compelling historical precedent.

In the 2004 movie, the producers of Downfall manage to rescue the chilling humanity of Hitler and the Nazis. The depiction of Hitler and his cohorts is based on historical evidence and the testimony of his young secretary during the war, Traudl Junge. Junge was the naïve personal secretary of Hitler, unaware of his crimes. She provides valuable historical details that help us understand that it is a disservice to disguise the evil of the Nazis with crazed fanaticism.

Hitler was avuncular and often sloppy-sentimental. Some say he was a military genius -- and prone to outbursts of anger, not unlike many of us. His girlfriend, Eva Braun, was attractive (the actress who played Braun worried that the portrayal of her pleasantly accurate personality would ruin her acting career). The authentic depictions of the humanity of the Nazi figures were more of a horror than the characterizations of the madman Hitler documentaries.

In contrast, the courageous story of Sophie Scholl parallels the young life of Traudl Junge. Influenced by a devout Lutheran mother and the writings of John Henry Newman, Scholl joined the activities of the White Rose, an underground organization writing and publishing leaflets that called for the toppling of National Socialism. The Gestapo arrested Scholl and her brother in 1943 and placed them on trial. During the trial, she testified: “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare express themselves as we did.” The Nazis executed her by guillotine. She was 23 years old.

An elderly Traudl Junge, Hitler's young secretary, concludes the Downfall movie with remarkable candor:

“Of course, the horrors, of which I heard in connection of the Nuremberg trials; the fate of the 6 million Jews, their killing and those of many others who represented different races and creeds, shocked me greatly, but, at that time, I could not see any connection between these things and my own past. I was only happy that I had not personally been guilty of these things and that I had not been aware of the scale of these things. However, one day, I walked past a plaque on the Franz-Joseph Straße (in Munich), on the wall in memory of Sophie Scholl. I could see that she had been born the same year as I, and that she had been executed the same year I entered into Hitler's service. And, at that moment, I really realised that it was no excuse that I had been so young. I could perhaps have tried to find out about things.”

Every cultural crime scene needs careful analysis to compile sufficient and persuasive evidence for the pathology report. Speak honestly and freely. We’ve been silent too long. “The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.” (Romans 13:12)

A resolution for a happy new year!