"I've made a decision to recommit the rest of my life, and the rest of my presidency, to God."
-- From "Ronald Reagan at 100: The President, the Pope and the Medicine of Forgiveness" by Michael Reagan, FoxNews.com 2/6/11
On my father's 100th birthday, I think back to the assassination attempt on his life in March 1981.
[We] were escorted into Dad's [hospital] room. I remember it being dark and hot—the drapes were closed for security reasons. Dad was awake and alert—and he was clearly glad to see us.
It was good to hear him joking—but later he told me seriously, "Michael, I believe God spared me for a purpose. I want you to know that I've made a decision to recommit the rest of my life, and the rest of my presidency, to God."
In June 1982, my father visited Pope John Paul II. As they met in the Papal Library, Dad reminded the Holy Father of a bond they shared: On March 30, 1981, a bullet missed my father's heart by a fraction of an inch. Six weeks later, on May 13, a Turkish gunman shot the Pope multiple times. Both men narrowly survived the attacks—and both men freely forgave their attackers.
My father told the pope that he believed God had called him to help bring down the godless Communist system—and the Holy Father agreed. At that moment, they forged a partnership that ultimately toppled Soviet Communism.
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From "What Reagan Meant to America" by Bruce Walker, American Thinker 2/1/11
Reagan . . . did not bring religiosity into the White House. Jimmy Carter was more ostentatiously Christian than Reagan, and FDR talked much more about God than the Gipper did. What Reagan brought instead was a sunny cheerfulness about God, a quiet certainty that this land -- which welcomed oppressed sects of Christians, which elected the first Jews to public office in human history, and which found in the flourishing of private charities (hospitals and colleges, for a long time, were all nearly all religious), a verity in the Great Faith, that collection of believing Christians and Jews who have always, when left to their own devices and consciences, enriched life through quiet compassion.
[Reagan] won a global war without bloodshed -- a stunning accomplishment unrivaled in human history. . . . The nightmare of the Baby Boomers, the threat of nuclear war with Comminism, was ended by Ronald Reagan with no Cuban Missile Crisis, no Manhattan Project, and no D-Day.
. . . The young man who as a lifeguard saved so many lives kept doing just that all his life, and that mission -- not glory or power -- gave his life purpose and worth.
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