I wanted to take a moment to offer a word of encouragement to all Catholics out there who support the Bishops in the fight over the HHS regulations and have spoken out about it. And be speaking out about it, you have perhaps said something to friends, family, maybe posted something on Facebook.
If you are like me, no matter how tight the circle you have voiced your views in, you have likely gotten pushback. I am a convert to my faith, and my family is split between Protestants and cradle Catholics. I have received encouragement from no one. My Protestant relatives are firmly entrenched in moral relativism and do not believe these issues belong in the public square. Apparently they do not realize that it was President Obama who put these issues in the public square and not the Catholic Church.
The response from my Catholic relatives has been no better. In supporting teachings of the Catholic Church on this and other issues I have been called a “bigot”, “close minded”, and asked, “Who died and made you Pope?” I find that last take particularly ironic because I am supporting the teachings of the Pope.
Obviously, these are incredibly difficult times personally for devout Catholics. Never has there been so much at stake, never has the issue been so immediate, and never have so many Americans been so indifferent to an attack on religious freedom. But we must not and cannot give up. Jesus, the Pope, the Bishops they do not want our faith to cause conflict with our friends and family. Our faith should unite us, not divide us. But we also must stand up for our faith, for our Lord, and for the teachings of the church.
The critical message I would impart to you is that do not think you are not doing any good. By raising these issues, by talking about what the church teaches, even to Catholics who may not agree with us, we are scattering seeds. Just as in the parables in the Bible around seed sowing, sometimes those seeds land on fertile ground, sometimes on rocky soil. Sometimes we may see them take root instantly, in other cases our seed may take time to germinate. But we must not give up.
It has been too easy for too long for many Catholics to live a double life. They claim the faith, perhaps even meeting the basic precepts of the faith, but have not supported the full teaching of the church. Our call is not to root them out, expose them, and drive them from the Church in some bid for ideological purity. Indeed, at various times in our lives, we may all struggle with some aspect of Church teaching or the Catholic faith.
But they key word is struggle, an active verb. We should not be content to be in conflict with Church teaching, because we all know what happens in that situation. We substitute our will for the will of the Magisterium. We should actively strive to reconcile our view of the issue with that of the Church. We should pray about it. We might be able to resolve these differences in days, some might take years, but the point is we are working on them.
I’ve been amazed how many times I have heard someone give a shout out to the idea that there should be women Priests. It happens not infrequently, yet I have not encountered anyone who supports this idea who has actually read Pope John Paul II’s letter on the subject and addressed his argument. That is not how we are called to live as Catholics.
We are in this situation as a faith, as a nation, in no small part because we have been silent for too long as faithful Catholics. The result is there is an incredible amount of ignorance about the Catholic faith in this country, despite the fact we are the largest religion and our institutions (educational, medical, and charitable) dot the landscape.
What we need is our own version of a national awareness campaign. If it were a TV campaign it might be called simply, “We are Catholic”. A montage of typical American Catholics talking about what they do, what they believe, showing the world that we are not just a big fancy Cathedral in Rome.
So far, the Catholic Church has not taken to overt marketing, so we must do it as individual Catholics through our outreach, our interactions, our daily life. We should never apologize for being Catholics who actually believe what the Church teaches. The irony is the more society goes astray, the more evidence we have that the Catholic Church is right.
So keep talking to your friends, your family, and your Facebook contacts about the HHS mandate. I know I will. It will be in a respectful manner, but I will not shirk from supporting Cardinal Dolan and the other Bishops in this fight. I hope you will join me. Oh, and if you should find yourself “unfriended” on Facebook as a result of any of this, I’ll be happy to friend you.
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