There is So Much My Head Might Explode

Curt Schilling got fired for sharing a Facebook post and adding his own two cents. That is ESPN's right, they are in the perception business.  Target has made a decision to declare all bathrooms unisex. That is their right as a business.   Some will boycott ESPN and Target, others will cheer.  I don't know how we will survive the ever shifting sands of language and perception in these days.   We have protests and counter protests for everything, and never is there any peace.

However the question becomes, what is the cut off point? Can one discuss an idea not popular or discuss a moral stance not popular without being tarred, feathered and burned off the internet?   When, where and how can the public allow for diversity of thought?   Can one hold a moral position not popular, even dare to utter it or live by it, and hold a job in this century?

The internet does not care about anything but appearing righteous, and it's so easy to bandwagon pile on if you think your side is just, and the other side, either willfully malicious or intolerably ignorant. Such thinking is a lie, a lie we're facilitating every time we start to feel more cowed, more afraid of speaking because you might wind up the equivalent of North Carolina, or Curt Schilling or anyone else who dares to get out of line.  We keep finding reasons to cast stones...and feel justified in casting stones. It's great if you've got the rock in hand...but this is a bad way for society to operate.  We have to know, eventually, we will be the ones on the receiving end.

Or are we at the point where our media capacity and personal, private, religious and political positions are so threatening by their mere existence, that holding one not deemed fashionable is tantamount to a scarlet letter?  

I submit we are becoming Puritanical relativists, who aren't actually relativists.  We profess as a country to be tolerant, to not judge, but never in the history of our country, have the words "bigot," "homophobic," "racists," "misogynist" and "hater" been thrown around with more zeal and conviction.  We read silence, we see into people's motivations, we declare the souls unclean, and they are then convicted by the public, unclean.

I am old enough to remember when liberals scoffed at the simplistic moral thinking of President George W. Bush for stating, "You're either with us or against us."  Imagine!  Someone of intellect thinking everyone must agree or they're an enemy.  What a lack of nuance! What a lack of critical thinking!  We are a diverse people, with naturally diverse thoughts.  We can disagree.  We can even disagree on fundamental points, and still be neighbors, still be friends, still sit at the dinner table and enjoy each other's company.

In 2016 people are destroyed online for a tweet, for passing on a Facebook post, for holding a position 4 years ago, for donating to the wrong cause, for one wrong word, for holding something as true which overnight, someone decided they shouldn't. At some point, having litmus tests for everyone to pass that constantly change means we need to stop pretending we are a tolerant or free people.

If we're governing from a point of relativism, i.e. all religions are equal, there is no knowable truth, except that which is experiential and singular, ergo my truth and your truth are always equal even if they are different, then I would like for those who agree with this to explain how other than through force, any one moral position is superior to any other?

If we live in a world where the only truth is all truth is relative,* then the rule of law becomes the tyranny of the sand people.  We never know their numbers.  We never know what is the foundation, because it can always, always shift away.  Based on past history of all civilizations where the fundamental values are fungible, it will shift from the rule of law to the rule of majority to the rule of the powerful to the rule of one to no rule.

My issue is a process one. If we believe in Universal truths, we must have one discussion as a nation. That discussion is a question of what is good, how do we know it, and what does it look like in a society? I don't think we're having that discussion in this country at this point.   I'm not sure any leader or aspiring leader is asking any of these questions.

I ask these things knowing full well, it's a touchy subject.  It's a hard subject.  It's a real question.  I am Catholic. I can't cease to be that or I would cease to be me.  Yes. I hold to all of it.  Even when it hurts and I know it's going to, I know I must hold.  I'm also a coward.  I hate being disliked. Even the threat of it makes me afraid to write, afraid to speak, really wanting to cower in that upper room and stay there where it's safe, where I'm surrounded by people who think the same way.

However, going back to the sentence, I am a Catholic means I don't get to be safe.  

I believe we are made in God's image, all of us.  I also believe we have to do everything to heal everyone around us, and healing is never hurting one to boost the other.  God's way always raises all, while the fallen human's way frequently views all improvement of one class at the expense of another.  

I know and love, and have been taught great lessons by people with same sex attraction, people of diverse faith, no faith, and with alternative lifestyles I do not share.   I also know how hard it is to feel isolated, alone, and cut off from the rest of the world.  I may not know the experience of being a particular type of other, but I know, no one wants that pain of otherness, of isolation, of feeling cut off from the community.  Everyone (I believe this as a Universal truth), longs to be not merely tolerated but embraced and welcomed.  

Back to the little issue, of ESPN and Target and such things.

The demand for accommodation seems to be something business could manage by creating a singular unisex bathroom for use for whosoever needed to use the facilities, while still allowing for separate bathrooms to secure and protect the innocence of all children and provide privacy for all people.  

Such a solution would eliminate the pushing of any agenda on anyone at the expense of making companies actively illustrate compassion and understanding for all their customers through a physical service of shelling out the dollars (what they value most).  They wouldn't be able to pander or score cheap posturing points, they'd earn the right to say they were tolerant of diversity of people, by their works, not mere words.   That is a micro discussion of the consequences of living in a diverse society of people.

The macro discussion, of how we safeguard diversity of thought if the primary goal is diversity itself, or how we sustain freedom of speech, thought and religion if such liberties are punished by law and society itself, that conversation still needs to be held.

*(I know, it's self defeating but go with me that this is the premise we've embraced as a nation).

If We Really Want to Keep Calm and Carry On...

Turn off the internet.

Honestly.  

I know.  Irony alert, you're reading this in an article online. What prompted this?  The verbal exchange between Trump, the Pope and the explosion of despair, rage and dark glee at the idea the Church no longer teaches that using contraception is morally wrong all over the internet.

The plethora of social media has rendered all of us twitchy and itchy to take offense, and equally outraged at our team when the one representing our team doesn't do what we think they should have.   I liken it to when I watch Notre Dame Football.  I don't just want them to win.  I want them not to make stupid mistakes.  I yell at the coach when I think he's called a bad play.  I stomp around when we get a penalty that was so so so easily avoidable.  I snarl at the refs if I think they're giving too much credit to the other side.   Watching this Pope and those who struggle with him, and this President, and both those who fight, and those who defend, no one ever presumes good faith, no one has any forbearance for those of the opposite side. Yep.  It's exactly like when I watch Notre Dame Football.

The tyranny of relativism is when each of us declares ourselves the arbiter of truth, and that no one else has a claim on truth, then the only way you can assert your truth is truthier than anyone else's truth, is majority.   You have to have your truth trend.  We no longer try as  a society to keep up with the Jones, but rather to assert, we are the Jones. The rest of you...get with the program.

This pope, like this president, is the first to have everything he ever says and does, doesn't say and doesn't do, recorded, parsed and proclaimed and interpreted instantly.  

We're still talking about people, not yet saints. People, no matter how educated, no matter how cultured, no matter how powerful, no matter how well known, remain first and foremost, people. Pick any name, of any candidate, leader, celebrity, sports figure, teacher, talk show host, anyone, all of them, flesh and blood humans, no matter how powerful, rich, or influential.

Ergo, expect, presume, they will speak badly, they will stumble, they will fail, they will fall, they will err, they will disappoint. They will sin.  They will sin.  They will sin.

The only question is how?  The social media at our fingertips allows us to know or at least, think we know.

Now.  Imagine putting our own selves into that fishbowl.  Just take your yesterday, and imagine everything you did, said, wrote, didn't say, didn't do, and didn't write, went viral.

It's enough to make one crawl into the fetal position.

We no longer allow anyone who has garnered more than ten seconds of fame, to make an error, make a choice we disagree with, or speak over broadly.

An instant chorus on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere else begins to shout "They should know better..."  "They should have been handled...."

In this media age, we cannot afford to have anyone on OUR SIDE, ever make a mistake.   We've all become armchair quarterbacks for everyone else's game, it allows us not to have to really play.

No.

No.  No.  No.  No.  No.

This is the Jubilee Year of Mercy.  We need to have Merciful Hearts.

Some tips for how to cultivate one. 

First, some digging in the soul.

If your politics and your religion match up perfectly, politics is your religion.

If your religion precludes allowing even the Pope from irritating, sinning, failing as a person, then your religion is not one of mercy.

If you cannot see any of God in the face of someone with whom you hold a disagreement, this is the one for whom you pray.

If you cannot think that someone who disagrees can possibly be good, educated or a worth while person, this is the one for whom you pray.

To be Catholic, is to hold to it all, to hold both to all the catechism and all of its detail, and to throw out your arms around all of the world, to be both and.

To be Catholic in this mess of life, is to be obedient to the Church in all things, even in that which I do not fully understand because I trust the One who created it.

To remember that each of us, is a sinner, seeking to become a saint.

Next, the seed: 

What to do:  The Rosary, adoration, scripture. Any or all, for that person on the internet, or in real life, that drives you to rage.

Take a trip:  The Church has opened Holy Doors of Mercy all over the world.  Here's the Vatican list. Find one near you.  Go.  Make a pilgrimage, for your family, for your country, for the Pope, and for all those who hurt your heart or drive you nuts.  Catholic Pilgrimage.

Make this your Lenten gift:
We must practice the virtue of forbearance, and when people drive us crazy, be it a politician or the Pope or the news or a teacher, our neighbor's kids, the person on the radio, whoever it is, learn that this is a form of fasting, to not feed your soul on your own irritation.   You might not be eating meat, but feeding one's irritation (and the news and social media thrive on stroking this in the soul), you are consuming, you are tearing into yourself.

Seek and practice forgiveness.

Results?
Will vary based on the degree to which practiced, and are an ongoing process toward perfection. Repeat tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow after that until death.

However, there is one thing I can promise from implementation of these practices:  You'll be able to keep calm and Catholic on.

Peace.

Cassandra Question for All of Us

Cassandra tells the truth and no one believes her.  By the time they know it to be truth, it doesn't matter.  I'm wondering, are we Troy?

Brendan Eich was forced to quit.

His crime?

Donating $1,000 to support a marriage amendment in California -- eight years ago.

 The firing of the Mozilla CEO for daring to have a non popular opinion is telling, and chilling.  How long before anyone who wishes to hold office must give a loyalty oath to prove they aren't out of touch with whatever the powers think important?  We now live in a world  where retroactive vindictiveness is harnessed to create a Social Media Hulk Smash Flash mob that uses prior actions and opinions to destroy the designated target in the present.  Lovely!  What could go wrong?

All of this is done to create a new society, one which tolerates, but not you...and not you....and not you.  Mobs that win through mob actions or at least silence opposition, don't dissipate, they rage on, they look for new victims, emboldened by the successes.  Others will see, Mozilla caved, and new attempts to purge corporations and other organizations of anyone who once or currently holds a position of power who espoused wrong thinking or contributed to the wrong political party will emerge.  Why?  Because it theoretically worked in this circumstance.  

But this sort of behavior on a societal level, it doesn't bring good, it doesn't create understanding and it certainly doesn't evangelize tolerance.  It promotes the equivalent of thumbs up thumbs down.  All we're doing now, is determining who the next meal is for the lions. 

The problem with this social media driven resignation/socially demanded firing is it wasn't based on anything but disagreement with a position.  Judgment and verdict in one swoop, for expressing an opinion once upon a time that people disagree with now. 

No reason, no mercy, no discussion, no grey areas, no belief that anyone can ever think differently, was involved.  Just the rage that the present selected opinion wasn't always the opinion, and fear on the part of those surrounding the man, of what would happen if they did not capitulate.  

But the message sent by sending him packing, was no one should have ever thought differently.

And that sort of non thinking disguised as ideological righteousness is dangerous.  If you agree with the prevailing wind, you have nothing to worry about...unless you used to disagree with the prevailing wind, or until that day when you might.  Diversity of opinion is no longer tolerated.  

The standard reaction to this sort of a post by those who approve of the virtual dismissal of this person is to say, pshaw, that's just hyperbole, we're still a reasonable people.

We aren't ...insert unreasonable action here.  It's just HE shouldn't be thinking this way because he's in a position of power.

No one believes Cassandra, but our freedom of speech, our freedom of expression, our freedom of religion is being eroded in favor of everyone being "tolerant" by in no way differing.  

The purpose of our country is to allow people to think as they will, believe as they will, even if we disagree.  People are supposed to be legally able to create businesses and do the work and not have to pass a political, ideological litmus test to do so.   Politicizing everything in order to mold it to our own satisfaction is a lousy crazy way to live. I have friends with whom I disagree on multiple things, even important things, but they are still my friends because we see each other as human beings first, and that what is valuable in the other, is beyond where we differ.

People are still free to do so, but incidents like this erode the moral diversity of our society.   The cases against those who wish to operate their business under certain moral parameters like Hobby Lobby or the baker in Colorado, or the photographer in Arizona, are examples.  Our country no longer allows for live and let live. No, not agreeing, past or present, is designated as some sort of irreparable psychological harm, that must be censured. It's speak, speak perfectly, donate perfectly, align yourself politically correctly,  or die.  (business wise). 

The public nature of the consequence of a perceived act by those who perceived it to be hateful and declared it as such, should chill anyone who has ever entered or ever might enter into the public square.  Personal Political expression has just become a permanent threat to livelihood, no matter your acts. Your past is present, all sins equally fatal if judged guilty.  Every business is affected by what happened to Mozilla.  All it takes is one real or imagined grievance, and a committed individual to whip up a storm.   We have been to a person, doused with moral kerosene.  All that is needed, is for life to provide the match.

True tolerance, does not involve demanding the head of the other in capitulation.  True tolerance reveals the error of the other side through something other than sacking, vilifying or destroying livelihoods and mocking people for daring to disagree.  Look at Martin Luther King Jr., or Ghandi, or Pope John Paul the II, all three of these people faced evils they knew to be evil, and they managed to bring about a change in the hearts of peoples, whole peoples, not by firing people or declaring the other side evil, but by simply standing out against what they knew to be wrong.  

If the goal is to change hearts, threatening people's livelihood if they voted or donated a certain way may create a climate of complicit silence, but it isn't tolerance.  It's tyranny, it's mob rule, it's simply switching who is the bully and who is the bullied. 

If one wants a world where bullying is acceptable, carry on, and understand, one day, each of us will be on the losing side of whosoever has the greatest force and momentum. 

If you are really against bullying, if you really want tolerance, if you really want a world where COEXIST means something, you can't demand everyone act, think, speak, vote and work all the same way.  It's like demanding that all restaurants be five star, but serve McDonald's.  You have to allow for more than right and left, Republican and Democrat, secular and religious, you have to allow for diversity of thinking and the manifestation of that thinking in real life, as applied in work, play, association, business policies, family life, everything, all things. past and present.  

There is a great spectrum of diversity of being in this world.  We are all beautiful souls, and we are called to love all souls, to hope we will have the distinct pleasure of knowing each other, all each others for all of eternity.  That isn't tolerance, that's love, that's fellowship, that's a deeper community than can be generated via hunting down anyone and eventually everyone who fails to meet the ever moving standards of acceptability within the culture.   The prevailing thinking that all is relative means that limited parameters of tolerance are forever moving, excluding more and more always in favor of the new, which must necessarily dismiss the old.  

Do I feel sorry for a CEO?  No, it's not a case of pity for the rich man, it's a question of what type of society will we be.  Will we now have a free society, which does not declare whatever is not popular is immoral and illegal, or will we be slaves to fashion and politics and the forces that demand ideological fealty retroactively for all of time as proof of the purity of their own positions and vindication?  Will our society tolerate anyone being out of touch with whatever is not yet decided?  Can any of us endure such a scrutiny?  I would say, if the eyes of the world are turned on us, there is not one of us that would not be withered by the experience.  Such a world will not end well.

So here's my Cassandra question: How will we love if we will only tolerate perfection? Will we be able to bear the realness of being if we keep deciding that we can bear less and less of what it means to be real?

I know where I'd rather live.  I'm just not sure how we hold onto it.  

 

Training for the Test

Our society has grown steadily more blind and deaf to the notion of something as old as sin, namely sin itself.  It persists in singing that if everyone agreed to get along, the aches and motivations of the human heart that tend toward the darker elements of life would somehow be snuffed out.  It is an earthly rendition of the Heavenly promise absent the one focus (God) that would bring about that perfection.  COEXIST! It commands.  It never says how.

The fallen earthly tune sings that somehow without the Greatest Good, the Only Good, we will be good, all gazing out at the heavens in our Federation land of tolerance and harmony where no one thinks outside of how one should think no matter what.   In the land of tolerance and diversity, we will become Borgs without the implants, serving the quality of life for the state, and thinking only what the state deems agreeable.  Resistance is futile.  

But don’t worry, you can still call yourself whatever you like.    You can even practice your faith if no one else is affected by it ever, not in the workplace, not at school, not in politics, not in your homes or on your lawns or in your children’s hearts.  It can only be you communing with whatever it is you commune with, and it should only feel good.  No one’s God should be in the business of challenging His creations. He should have made us better.  So we are free to worship a god of one’s own imagining, the inverse of who we are, beings made in the image and likeness of God. One need only look at the daily barrage of the news, entertainment and politics to know that we are losing this battle against the world. 

We need allies.  As such, we need to know how to win hearts and minds to the reality that 1) there are objective truths and 2) they are knowable.  Even within the Catholic Church, relativism has watered down the purpose of Christ’s teachings and the person of Jesus to a cool progressive ancient teacher who hugs and encourages you to share, sort of a Barney for adults who need that sort of thing. Modern thinking is Love should require no sacrifice, Love makes no demands, Love makes no judgments, Love should only always feel right.  Ergo, Modern God doesn’t demand anything of our souls either.  God doesn’t care if you take birth control and He gets that you need to have an abortion or Jesus never said anything about homosexual sex.  God doesn't care about what you do in the bedroom.  That's just silly.   He only cares about other sins, real sins.

The only sin in the modern age is judging others or naming sins as such.  If you do either of those two things, you’re a hater.  Because Jesus said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”  It is the only quote that still gets raised.   But if one argues, judging me a hater is rendering judgment, that’s just being sophomoric or clever.  You declared a limit on behavior, ergo, you’re still a hater.

Christ is more than a man who said, “Be Excellent to each other.”   He said, “I am the way, the truth and the light.”   He told us we were to love our neighbors as ourselves and “Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.”  He told us he did not come to unite but to divide, and that He was the fulfillment of the law.  After giving us the Beatitudes and exhorting us to be salt and light to the world, He cautioned us not to water down His words or our faith or our thinking.  ^* “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.  Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven. I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” 

Do I think this battle can be won in politics or law?  No.  And it was never meant to be won there either.  As we know with so many other past battles, we cannot legislate or politically bully hearts to be other than as they are.  We can only live out lives steeped in service to others and love of God, obedience to God's teaching.  We must do good because we love, we must love because God created us to love.  We must recognize that however much we give, pray, love or serve, it is insufficent.  It is baseline.  The God who is Love, always wants us to love more. So ours is an infinitely Demanding all just all merciful God.

How many of us would consider ourselves more righteous in our lives or thinking, obedient in thought and words and deeds than those who had the opportunity to sit at the feet of Jesus at that Sermon on the Mount?  How many of us if we look hard in our hearts, seek to mold Christ to fit our hearts, rather than grow our hearts outward toward God’s vision for them?  How many of us pay attention to the existence of sin in our own hearts and thoughts and words and what we do and don’t do?  Do we even know what is sinful anymore?  Can we name the sins of our lives, not in the generic “Naughty and Nice” categories, but the real ways in which at some point, we scream at God, “No! I Will Not Serve!”

Do we understand that all sin is an echo of the first sin; Lucifer’s breaking with Heaven, and of the second sin, Adam and Eve refusing God?  “No, I will not obey.”  They are the opposite of “You shall love your God with all your Heart, Soul, Body and Mind.” (Serve God first).  And “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Obey the commandments in mind, word, thought and deed toward everyone around you, everyone in the world.

How poorly do we see ourselves?  More importantly, how do we learn to see more clearly, the planks in our own eyes that we may pluck the splinters from others? 

We will have to put on the armor of Saint Joan and ask for the fiery tongue of Saint Paul, the steel reasoning of Saint Thomas Moore, the understanding of our faith parallel to Saint Thomas Aquinas and the simplicity of Saint Teresa of Lisieux. We need the hands of Blessed Mother Teresa, the charity of Saint Francis, the clarity of Saint Augustine, and the wit of Saint Catherine of Siena.  In short, we will need to train under the communion of the Saints. They lived through difficult times, they spoke truth. They prayed hard. They struggled before God and surrendered. They gave everything to God. Their spiritual battles should be studied in preparation for our own. We will need their bones of thought to stiffen and strengthen ours.  We will have to lean on the 2000 years of thinking and prayers and tradition and beauty and riches of our Church until we can add our bit to the walls.   As laity, ever reaching upward, we should be seeking to be part of the walls, the blood and the brick and the mortar of Christ’s Church. 

The end goal can overwhelm given the immediate fears that might darken the heart.  Family won’t like what I say. Friends won’t like what I say.  It will hurt. Have courage.  Take heart.  We do not yet know the roles we have been given by God. This is training.  Start reading. Start learning in this year of faith. Stay close to the sacraments and ask the Holy Spirit to direct your feet.  You will find your Calcutta; your place where God’s will is being presented.  All you need do is obey.  There are an infinite number of graces God hopes to flood in our souls if we would only submit.  It is a luminous promise, to be transformed such that we will only see Jesus in our lives.   So trust that all that is, is an opportunity for grace.  Trust that if we seek, we will find.  If we trust, the words will be given to us to speak and more besides, and if we pray and submit, God will grant us the infinite amount of grace needed to get us through the test of this world soul intact and bring a whole bunch more with us in the process.  We want to make sure everyone is at the feast. 

Sherry's Catholic Rant

We just got cable and high speed internet and I feel harrassed. There are now 400+ channels on two televisions that I have to watchdog, and three computers that need supervision. Ack.

So I'm tired, and after reading about how the Boston Catholic hospitals are going via a collaboration, allow for abortions and sterilizations, I'm feeling testy. http://www.americanpapist.com/2009/06/boston-archdiocese-affiliate-health.html

Fair warning.

How did we get to this point?

Because of Catholics like Kmiec and Sebelius and Kerry and Pelosi and Biden. Their error is compounded by their prominent status in public life. Their misstatements and willing complicitness in furthering the forces that favor abortion and its ugly relatives of birth control, sterilization and contraception that divorce the great power and beauty of sex from its purpose and nature bring whole families to nothingness and all without apparent culpability.

So I like the new Shepherd of Saint Louis. And he understands that denying communion is making whoever is denied face the reality of their own faulty moral living/moral reasoning to believe that they are in communion when they are not. It happens. We do fall into error, and correction is how we find our way back. Love requires that sometimes we be firm, especially when the matters are of moral significance. If you wish to experience the Eucharist, be in communion with your whole heart and not just the part that wants what it wants, the comfort of the bread of Jesus' words, without the requirement that they be applied to one's actual life, the body. It is correction, not bullying.

Intimidation is the tactic of the enemy, who wants us at each other, who wants us denying Christ in each other in all things. We may create a society that feeds the hungry, cures the sick, cares for the orphans and shepherds the Earth. But all of these acts shall be dust if they are not the reflection of love, of Christ. If you've ever met a bitter teacher or a burnt out nurse, you understand how what once was a joy and a beauty and a gift, has become a distorted awful shadow of its former self. This is what we head towards when we think that the service trumps the motive, or the motive trumps the service.

The former leads to jaded cynics who perform the acts without heart, and the later to fanatics who despair and either forfiet their values or dwell steeped in perpetual self righteous anger. We are Catholics, it is not random that our most Blessed Sacrament is the Eucharist, and that all our sacraments focus on furthering the Communion of the soul to its Creator.

Given the recent events, the media has suggested that pro-lifers tone down the rhetoric. That we should use fair minded words.

So tell me, if we go out to the desert and whisper into a muffled room that has no outside access, "Abortion is wrong." would that be okay or is that too inflamatory? Because we wouldn't want to be intimidating. What about that "Silence=Death" slogan that was real popular a few years back, didn't you guys mean that? Isn't that still true? And so pro-life causes are linked to the awfulness of the murder of a man who committed awful acts, and we are equally censured for praying outside of places where these acts occurr, or for daring to speak our opinion in the political arena. You can be Catholic, just don't act like one or talk like one. How then do we witness?

Do we witness by imitating our esteemed academia? Like Notre Dame? or Georgetown?

Catholic Universities and politicians never asks the less faithful to understand the other side, arguably, what should be, their own side. No other faith as practiced by it's argued intelligencia seems determined to give all manner of deference to everyone else except, those in their own church who follow the Church's prescribed teachings. We too, are not in communion as we ought to be. There is a broken quality to our fellowship in the Church. I guess these broken elements, these must be where the nail prints are in the Body of Christ. We see the holes. We cannot help but wince.

The fact is we all need our Savior, and He is Christ, and none other.

I don't remember Jesus saying, "Blessed are the open minded or Blessed are the reasonable. Rationality above all, is key."

Catholics are not Vulcans.

We're supposed to love beyond reason. We're supposed to surrender all to Christ. We're supposed to use our minds and our bodies and our hearts to reflect God's love to others, by our modesty, by our humility, by our passion, by our charity, by our kindness, by our clarity, by our truthfulness, by our good counsel, by our good actions and by our whole way of relating to others in all things.

That's not reasonable. That's Radical.

And it was so frightening that the Romans threw those who believed it to the lions for entertainment. It is so frightening, it was persecuted in Russia and is outlawed in China. The radical concept that God wants communion with us, goes in the face of a State that seeks to define all members within it by their contributions, status and fidelity and seeks to be all things in God's stead. We all know, relationships require something of us, and the ultimate relationship requires all from us. Communion.

Pray for all of us in this damnable mess, only the healing power of Christ via the Eucharist, only His Mercy can make us whole and holy.

We now return you to your more reasonable and funnier blog. This has been a Sherry Catholic Rant.

A Roman Scene We Might Consider

All consciences may not be formed the same, but Truth is inviolate.

Let us imagine.

It is the height of Roman power, when Ceasars are at their zenith, and thus all manner of "entertainment" is allowed at the Colosseum. Some citizens within the Empire, object to the feeding lions with renegade Christians as a form of entertainment, claiming to be "pro-life."

The centurions and aristocracy and government that are in power find these claims laughable, as these rebels bring it upon themselves by not being willing to be reasonable and see the nuances of the real world. If they would have open hearts and open minds and be willing to accept the equal nature of Zeus and Hera and the Ceasar himself to Christ, there would be no quarrel. If they would just give a bit of "respect" to those who disagree, they wouldn't find themselves in this situation.

Some of those arguably on the Christian side, have counseled that their fellow members ought to be more fair minded. They have said, "Debate about this issue is not about to close. Differing consciences on such a matter should be met with love no matter how vexing they may be." and that to argue by refusing to show deference or by shouting or getting upset, to "satisfy that furstration by shunning or denouncing your unseeing companion will accomplish little beyond expressing your exasperation."

Maybe, but when the lions are being sent routinely to rip apart the innocent, it might be time to satisfy some of that frustration.