Page:O'Donnell - Hail Holy Queen 01 - Our Country's Queen.djvu/6

 the consecration of the Church in the United States to Mary, the Mother of God, the Queen of the Immaculate Conception. The dedication has a direct bearing on the natural growth and development of the country; spiritually, in souls saved; and, materially, as a strong civilizing agency.

Today our country yearns for peace, peace, and there is no peace. The world cries for peace, peace, and there is no peace, because God and the moral law have been forgotten. Is it any wonder that the world is weary, confused, heart-sick? It is like a ship without a rudder on a storm-tossed sea. It is in the throes of revolution as two forces, those of God and those of anti-God, struggle for supremacy in a battle in which there can be neither compromise nor armistice, because truth, whence all basic principles flow, cannot be compromised.

The impact of the struggle is being felt here in the United States. From the cradle to the grave millions of our people are trying to get along without God. They profess no religion, or actually belittle and even deny God's existence. As a result, morality, for them, is not fixed and objective, but relative and subject to change with time and circumstance—it is a kind of cafeteria morality. A national examination of conscience shows that the family unit is breaking down because so many fathers and mothers neglect their parental responsibilities. They are, in fact, more delinquent than the juveniles whose delinquency they deplore. Yet the nation can be strong only as the family is strong. And there are other causes for grave concern: Much of our Christian heritage of education has been discarded in favor of a system of secularism that does not educate man in the light of the hereafter, but only trains him for the here and now. Planned parenthood and race suicide flout God's holy will. Divorce is made easy by statute. There is a disregard for authority bordering on contempt as the virtues of obedience, honesty, and integrity are consigned to the limbo of neglect.

Still there is no reason to despair, to think that all is lost. Personally, I have great confidence in the large number of Catholics and non-Catholics who still believe in God and the moral law. They constitute the leaven of the masses, and it is this leaven which can readily form a "new paste," to use the scriptural