Prayer cards are nothing unfamiliar to most Catholics. We get them after burying family and friends, and sometimes to remind us of our devotion to a particular cause or saint. Chances are, you have one, lying forgotten, in a desk drawer, or maybe on a bulletin board near your desk. But, as the Washington Post reports, prayer cards just took on a strange new form (and no, this is not from The Onion). From the article:
Christian law firm issues Adopt a Liberal card to encourage targets of prayer: Attention, Californians: Your governor has just been adopted. Next up: your bleeding-heart senator, Barbara Boxer, and not far behind Boxer, her Senate colleague Dianne Feinstein. Not by a new set of parents, mind you, but rather an army of conservative prayer warriors committed to restoring "poor leaders to right thinking.”
That’s right, a “Christian” law firm has identified for divine intercession 51 of the nation’s most “ultraliberal” political leaders--one short of a complete deck of cards, so that users can pray for a person of their choice. Some of the sins that these individuals commit: excessive government spending, the closing of Guantanamo Bay, support for same-sex marriage, and advocacy for tougher gun-control laws.
Though perhaps not purposely, these cards are eerily similar to the deck of Iraq’s 52 most-wanted that were popular in the beginning years of the war. Many of the individuals on those cards ended up dead. Let’s hope there isn’t a similar motivation here.
There is nothing wrong, of course, with praying for our country’s leaders, but the hubris of the card’s creators is disconcerting. A little more humility seems in order. “My concern is not whether God is on our side," Abraham Lincoln once said. "My greatest concern is to be on God's side.” Always good advice for those who claim to know the mind of God--and for those seek to change the hearts and minds of others.
Michael O'Loughlin
It's buried under the one I use most often in my prayers today, the pray for Chaput card.
Mark Twain
Once a fixed idea of duty gets inside a narrow mind, it can never get out.
Instead of praying that someone change their mind, pray that they may recieve all the good things that you would want for yourself. Send them only good wishes and then there may be some benefit, especially if you pray like you mean it since one day you will and this is better for your own spirit.
I wonder if America Magazine or many of its liberal blog writer and posters made the list. Some of us will be offended if we did not. I want my MSW card!