Hidden Treasure

Several years back I was invited to spend a couple of days at the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace in Santa Clara, California – right in the heart of the Silicon Valley. The invitation came from Fr. Joseph LoJacono of the Fathers of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, then the director of the Shrine. They have four Masses each day. I went to the eight a.m. Mass. Fr. Joseph told me afterwards that I needed to stop by the Noon Mass. I did – and was astounded. There were 750 people there, in the middle of the day, right there in the heart of the Silicon Valley. Fr. Joseph told me that they have that almost every day…that a crowd of 500 worshippers is a very off day.

While I was at Mass that morning, when the Priest was returning the Hosts to the Sanctuary, I was startled at a beautiful full-color image of Our Lady of Tepeyac (commonly called Guadalupe) painted at the inner back of the Sanctuary. After Mass, I asked the Priest if I could get a closer look at it. He asked me what I meant, then opened the sanctuary. There was nothing painted at the back. Yeah, even with my experiences, I am struck by some of the unexpected little graces.

While I was there, Fr. Michael Pintacura was introduced to me. He took me on a tour of a huge warehouse full of artifacts of the faith he has collected over the decades. Fr. Pintacura is a delightful, charming Priest bubbling over with enthusiasm and wonder. He wears the biretta almost all the time – which I think is glorious – and he explained the striking theology the biretta represents. He has opened the warehouse to the public and hopes to get all these things into a larger, more formal showroom. Well, he should, for the items are more striking than those in many museums. Fr. Pintacura is the USA Vice-Postulant for the Cause of Canonization of Blessed Anna Maria Taigi.

The invitation came in the midst of a west coast tour I was doing, so I found a hole of a couple of days and accepted it. Boy, was I glad I did. To see so many taking time to worship regularly in the middle of the day in the heart of the Silicon Valley was a revelation: we have far more allies behind the secular lines than we know. When I was invited to see Fr. Pintacura’s collection I expected to see a roomful of stuff, some interesting, some mundane. I did NOT expect to see a warehouse full of bona fide, fascinating treasures, but that is what I got.

I love and admire all the great, faithful people I meet in the most anti-Christian, deepest blue states who are determined to make their stand where they are, resolved that they will not allow the insane class that has taken transient rule to drive them from their homes. They are great treasures, dramatically sharpened and hardened by the constant challenge they face.

Traveling across the country and visiting with the faithful so much, in so many nooks, I realize we have a vast trove of God’s hidden treasure in this country, just beneath the surface. The anti-God mob cannot see it at all, but it will soon be dispositive.

Over the last year I have wrestled with the hardest project I have ever taken on. What started as a CORAC handbook has evolved (if you will pardon the word) into a manual on how to effectively and peacefully take back society from the millions of petty little tyrants who think it is their job to tell us all what to do rather than to act as our faithful agents and ministers before God.

I have approached it much like I did the first statewide political campaign I ever ran. I evaluated the unique problem we faced, and developed an original, unconventional approach specifically to address those challenges. It was, to use another much-abused word, holistic. Each of its parts was designed to magnify each of its other parts. At the time, most of the experts, including many from our own side, thought it all a pipe dream because it involved so many things that had never been successfully accomplished. In Illinois, no solid conservative had ever gotten more than 30% of the vote in a statewide Republican primary in my lifetime. All my critics were criticizing me because I did NOT adopt the conventional strategy that had never gotten more than 30%. We won – and after that, most state politicians tried to adopt and imitate the strategy they had previously scorned. None understood more than a few pieces of it. (Ironically, the guy who did the best job of imitation was a Democrat, Rod Blagojevich, who used it to win his nomination for governor.)

The great challenge is not some cleverly designed marketing tool or slogan (though one should not discount the power of using those things well). The great challenge is to unlock, deploy, and unleash the creative power of all the ordinary folks who make up a great movement. Leftist activists have long had a chant that I rather like: “The people, united, shall never be defeated.” I think it very true – but am baffled at why the people who say this always seem to think the way to unite “the people” is to dictate exactly what they must do and how they must do it. Treating people like cogs in a machine has never seemed a particularly unifying principle to me. How to truly unite and ignite their imaginations and then fill them with a determined resolve is the key to everything. Start from the premise that this IS the hour of the ordinary man.

I am in the final stage now, mainly tweaking, refining, and focusing the manual. I expect to hear from many how impossible or contrary to standard practice this is. Standard practice has got us into this situation. I don’t care, any more than I did nearly 30 years ago when I set out to WIN, not to place or show well, according to conventional rules. When you face unprecedented challenges, you had better come up with an unprecedented response – or be defeated by your devotion to the conventional. I don’t need everybody, or even 50% – or even 20%. A fully determined, committed, and engaged, tiny cohort can move the world and quickly become self-replicating when they are owners of a grand, unifying cause, rather than cogs in a machine of someone else’s dictate. What they need are some details on how to do what will bring and breed success.

CORAC will not be the master of this drive. Rather, it will be the vital arsenal of the ordinary man as he rises from hearthstones throughout the country to take his home territory back from the bureaucrats who treat him as an afterthought. Much is already there to provide that ammunition in the over 500 videos and PDF’s on the CORAC website. We will do this and sweep all before us – because we have access to treasure carefully hidden for us by God. The hidden treasure is you – and I know how to unleash it.