The Battle of LepantoThere is no more need to wait. We lost the culture war. It's been over for years, now is the time when the hostility begins to arise against us. The West is slip-sliding away from the Church. For too long we have been comfortable with our arrangement with the powers that be, and now that this is being taken from us, we find ourselves lost.

Catholics, we need to return to the way we once lived. We need to realize that the American Dream is not the Gospel. In fact, it has neutered the Gospel. We need to live like they did in the Acts of the Apostles, but for our modern times. The world will reject us because we claim to have God, but live as if we didn't. We live like everyone else.

This is false. This is inauthentic. Let us rid ourselves of half-hearted promises to Jesus. Today, not tomorrow, we need to embrace the love of the poor, the forgotten, and the marginalized. Today, not tomorrow, we need to create small communities that aren't driven by a "party spirit" and political divisions. Today, not tomorrow, we need to reach out to the lapse, to the ex-catholic, to the nominal. Today, not tomorrow, we need personal and corporate conversions that turn our own hearts, as well as our Christian institutions' focus around.

If you're not angry, you're not awake. If you're not excited, you need to pray for more hope. Let us together abandon all of the external trappings of what it meant to be a Christian in the world, and let us return to bedrock. Let us return to the essentials, to those deepest realities that make us children of our Father.

The time has come for each one of us, and our parishes, to make a firm decision for radical conversion of heart. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock..."