Happy New Year?

Is anyone else as overwhelmed by the bad news in this world as I am?  Here in the United States our government is playing with our financial future, fighting and squabbling with each other while the US economy hangs in the balance.  We have been warned for months about the "fiscal cliff", but here it is only a few hours before it happens, and Washington is still fighting about it.

And that is actually some of the least of the bad news.  There is the ongoing persecution of Christian beliefs by our government in which we are being told that we must abide by the law no matter how it goes against our religious doctrines.  Hobby Lobby, which is valiantly standing up to the federal government and refusing to pay for birth control for its employees, will now be fined over $1 million a day for choosing to obey God rather than man.  Same sex marriage and homosexual rights are making vast inroad into our culture, and now even catholic politicians like Newt Gingrich are telling us we have to get with the program.  From gingpac.org:

According to Gingrich, the GOP and conservatives are just going to have to accept same-sex marriage as a political reality in America.

Gingrich, who is currently on his third wife, after having committed adultery against the previous two, says that we must accept gay marriage because it “is in every family, it is in every community.”

He continues: “The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to… accommodate and deal with reality. And the reality is going to be that in a number of American states — and it will be more after 2014 — gay relationships will be legal, period.”

And speaking of catholic politicians caving, Bobby Jindal, catholic governor of Louisiana, recently wrote an Op Ed for the Wall Street Journal saying that, for the good of the party, the GOP needs to get on the birth control bandwagon as well.  From the New York Daily News:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is recommending that the GOP endorse over-the-counter birth control as a prescription for the Republican Party’s political health.

In an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, the Republican governor argued that allowing birth control pills to be sold without a prescription — as recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists — “would take contraception out of the political arena.”

“As a conservative Republican, I believe that we have been stupid to let the Democrats demagogue the contraceptives issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control,” Jindal said. “It's a disingenuous political argument they make.”  [So what else are Republicans "pretending" to be against??] 

He said requiring a prescription for birth control only drives up health care costs and boosts pharmaceutical company profits.  [Gov. Jindal, the fact that you're Catholic and your church teaches that birth control is intrinsically evil has no bearing on anything?  "Cost" is the only thing that matters?] 

Things are much worse in other parts of the world.  A judge in England just ruled that "Christians have no right to decline working on Sunday as it is not a 'core component' of their beliefs."  From The Telegraph:

A new ruling by a High Court judge - the first on the issue in nearly a decade - says that Christians have no right to decline working on Sunday as it is not a “core component” of their beliefs.

The judgment - which upholds an earlier decision - means that individual Christians do not have any protection from being fired for not working on Sundays.

Campaigners said the decision puts Christians at a disadvantage to other religions and means the judiciary are deciding what the core beliefs of Christians can be, which they say is an interference in the right to practise religion.

The really sad part about this is that most Christians really aren't even going to notice because Sunday is just another day to them anyway.  Only about 2% of Anglicans go to Church on Sunday, and about 25% of Catholics attend.  Nonetheless, this ruling definitely represents an attack against Christianity and as stated in the article, the UK government is now deciding the validity of Christian beliefs, just as they are doing here in the United States.

Persecution of Christians has gone much further in other parts of the world.  From cnn.com:

At least 22 people have been killed in three separate attacks in northeastern Nigeria since Friday, including 15 Christians shot Sunday inside a church, according to officials.

In Sunday's attack, gunmen entered a church in Chibok, also in Borno state, and killed at least 15 worshipers, said Mohammed Kana, a regional official for the National Emergency Management Agency.

"Some of the people had their throats slit," Kana said, citing NEMA staff who responded to the scene.

Sunday's violence comes six days after attackers raided two churches during Christmas Eve services, killing 12 people.

And of course, the legal, systematic killing of our children continues unabated in abortion clinics throughout the United States and the entire world.  Here in New York City, 41% of all pregnancies end in abortion, with some parts of the city having a 60% abortion rate.

A dark, dark veil has descended upon this world, and it grows darker with each day.  I don't know specifically what our immediate future holds, but it sure don't look good.

Happy New Year?  I don't think so.