Rehabilitation vs Persecution

The many obstacles and barriers to faith in this age are obvious to most professing Christians. However of this present age there is, I believe, a change in the worlds approach to addressing our beliefs and our way of life. There have been many times in the past where the worlds answer to our creed was simply to try to destroy it and stamp it out as one would a fire. This approach however has proved futile time and time again, the persistence of faith into this time and the legacy of the holy martyrs is proof of this. Persecution is often taken as a sign of contradiction, a painful but encouraging sign of following the Lord. This age however has chosen a different approach to dealing with the Faith. Instead of outright condemnation in most cases especially in interactions between two individuals the approach is to correct us. Someone with poor knowledge of Church teachings could easily be lead astray by the secular worlds countless excuses for birth control, abortion, gay marriage, women ordination and a host of other beliefs they feel need to take issue with. However Fr. Thomas Merton puts it best when he says of the secular world "but what do THEY know about it". This rehabilitative approach has proved quite devastating. It has the nasty habit of turning peoples natural inclination towards good too an evil end. This combined with the "American" spirit of hyper-individualism makes for a deadly synthesis that has infected many of the Faithful in America.

Today's events provide for many examples. In nursing, a field that is still 95 percent women, I have struggled to find my place and hold my own at times. I became drawn into a conversation between my clinical instructor and another student concerning a variety of topics including abortion, women ordination, and birth control. Both of these persons were raised catholic and at least remain so nominally. Of course they both would "never" have abortions themselves but fully support others freedom to procure them. We went round and round with the same old tired arguments until they suggested if abortion were made illegal what about all the women who would die trying to perform illegal, unsafe abortions? I simply said what is the lesser evil, truly it would be sad that women would die from the results of illegal abortions, but how many unborn children die each day now from abortion? They said with that, they understood my position although still did not agree with it. Birth control is another matter, I told them the sexual act divorced from in procreative aspect, is against the natural law and contrary to the dignity to the human person. I know sounds like a line out of the catechism, but I always take time to explain what I mean. My fellow student continued to return to one point. "So you are saying sex is only for procreation?". I explain again, I never said that "I said the love and life giving aspects are inseparable, just as the soul is from the body, to separate the two reduces the act to something selfish and directed towards pleasure rather than true love. The issue of womens ordination went over much better, thanks to an excellent article I found written by an Antiochean Orthodox Christian in which he explains that if the Holy Spirit did not call women to ordination in the age of the earliest Christians what has changed now? I also told them that Christ chose only men to be his apostles and the apostles followed his example on down the line. But what about the social norms at the time? Christ must have know he could only choose men? I respond "Right so the Son of God, who upset the order of so many things and said things that made so many leave so many times decided not to buck the social order on this one. All of Christs actions have a purpose, surely this action was for a reason". They let it go.

Of course not all of my explanations were to their satisfaction. Some didn't take. Then I begin to hear from my clinical instructor how her priest has "encouraged the use of birth control" and that he "understands". She often would make the point of how the Church doesn't understand "real life" and that what could a bunch of old men in the Vatican know about how I should live my life. Ohhhh right those old men (and women) who have devoted their entire lives to God and his Church and live to study and instruct us on the Faith. What could they possibly know about life? Just what is this real life anyway? I have found that when people are talking about real life they are talking about the world. The same world we are suppose to have died too; the same world we are suppose to be in, but not apart of. Is not a tenant of our faith the belief that obedience to Christ is what leads to true freedom? All to often what I hear at the heart of these conversations is me, me, me, me, me. I want; I want, but not what God wants. At one point my fellow student made the statement "I have a bit of a problem with authority". I said "wait; listen to what you have said, you know that Christ was a bit of an authority figure". She said well maybe that's part of it.

Part of it? How about a very large part of it. The link between obedience to Christ and to the Church he founded is something many Catholics today have forgotten. We give our souls away to some many people and things; to our passions, our lovers, our sins, our selfish desires, to this world and not to the Lord, the only one we ought to give it too. I expect to hear this from pagans and from non-Catholics, but to hear it from fellow "Catholics" reminds me of how wounded our Church has become. As the Church bleeds so does our Lord, there is a choice before us of who to be. Will we be like the jeering crowds along the way; will we be like the Centurions goading him on, or will we be Simon and help him carry the cross, or Veronica and wipe the blood from his face.

Zeal for your house devours me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me
-psalms 69:9