The Help We Need

Last night, I read the bulletin column of a priest who wrote as if Christianity is ultimately about ensuring that religious people will always have the right to express their beliefs publicly.

Perhaps we should have that right. But what if a young woman, for example, were to yell at us for praying outside of a Planned Parenthood? Would we be more intent on defending our civil right to be there than on helping the woman who is still screaming in pain all these years later?

What if we were to see the Catholic Church as God’s way of helping us to remain faithful to Him - as the brothers and sisters He gives us to help one another to love all people, especially our enemies.

Priests need this kind of fraternity most of all. I don’t condemn the priest who reduces Christianity to politics. I too sometimes feel institutionally abandoned to the news cycle. But I try to remember that the early Church was not ultimately about the business of saving the Roman Empire.

The early Church, rather, was about constructing new forms of community where the moral and civil life could be sustained. Pope Benedict said it this way: Perhaps the time has come to say farewell to the idea of traditionally Catholic cultures. Perhaps Christianity will again be characterized by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intensive struggle against evil and bring the good into the world - that let God in.

So we don’t need the State’s permission to live as Christians. And, of course, the gates of hellish empires will not prevail against the Church. But I do fear for Catholics who reduce the Faith to politics. They die by the sword they draw in the public square. +