Found this in a group where I am more observer than participant…

“This political season has created a deeply painful crisis of faith for me. I’ve seen so-called Christian after Christian support the hateful policies of men like Trump and Cruz. I’ve seen my Christian friends, especially (but not exclusively) the white ones, grow more and more bigoted and intolerant. I’ve seen pastors and other faith leaders endorse a man that openly preaches hatred.

The day Falwell endorsed Trump was the last straw for me. I renounced the faith that day and haven’t considered myself a Christian since. But it hurts me profoundly.

First, let us take this man in the best possible light.  This, to me, means that he was exaggerating when describing certain policies as “hateful,” that his notation of “white” Christians is ideological residue (after all, he also noted this wasn’t categorically true – so why mention it?), and that such word choices as “bigoted,” “hatred,” and “cult” are there for effect.

In other words, this is a rant, an emotive outburst.

 

Now, let us challenge some of his assumptions.

He refers to the “so-called Christian” who supports Cruz or Trump – but seems not to consider that both of those men are Christians, too.  I submit that this does not even enter his mind, but that he considers the Christianity of these men to be ploys to curry favor with voters.

Just what does it take to be a Christian?  And is this man the arbiter of Christianity?  Interesting that he would, ostensibly, be so much against discrimination, and yet discriminate as to what someone holds as his deep-seated belief.

(See – you never, ever escape the reality of discrimination.  It is a basic fact of the human condition.  You simply choose which forms of discrimination to participate in.)

The climax of his post, of course, is that he renounced Christianity after the political endorsement of a major Christian leader.  His assumption – I have to guess – is that Falwell’s endorsement made any difference at all to his own faith, or to Christianity in general, or to the Truth at all.

Would you renounce arithmetic if a mathematician endorsed Trump?  Would you renounce southern food if Paula Dean endorsed Trump?

Obviously not.  The connection is not tenuous; it is entirely imagined.  I am a Christian, and I could barely recall that Falwell endorsed Trump.  I have not renounced my Christian faith.

But it’s easy to get lost in the political rhetoric.  There’s a reason people can get jobs as pundits – the stuff is highly engrossing.  People watch on with great expectation, in astonishing numbers.

(Enough about Trump being a reality star, and that being disqualifying.  That fact is exactly why he’s so good at this.  He’s been training for it all of his public life.)

Our man does make one reasonably good assumption:  That Christianity is about the transformation of a person’s life by God’s grace.  (Though the ambiguity here confirms that he is not the best arbiter of a Christian’s sincerity).

Christianity is articulated in the Creed, and reduces to this:  The God of all creation came down to earth and was made flesh; He suffered and died for our sins; He rose again to new life, giving us the hope of an eternity in His presence.

Your life may be transformed by accepting this, and inviting God’s grace into your life.  It may also be that you continue to struggle, but your hope will empower you to endure the struggle.  You now believe that God will redeem even the worst of your suffering, and that does change things.

 

So where does that leave our guest?

He laments that Christianity has devolved into a kind of bludgeon, useful for the fearful, and that there is nothing left which resembles his expectation of the Church.  Indeed, his own act of renunciation, which accomplishes nothing relative to its catalysts, causes him pain, because he really did harbor the hope of Christ in his heart.  He thought that same light, the light of faith, might have had greater effect on the world around him, which he projects onto the world as a whole.

I would begin by telling him to turn off his television, unplug his computer.  But just before he does that, he should look into the persecution of Christians around the world.

American Christianity is not the entirety of Christianity.  It is only one sliver.  This is taken entirely for granted in the new Testament, as St. Paul addresses the Church in each location, and as the same happens in Revelation.  Christians in every time and place are going to have their particular virtues and vices, and the character of one is foolishly projected onto the character of the whole.

Then I would cut to the quick:  Where is your spine, man?

Do you follow the Truth as it is fashionable, as you have sufficient social approval for it?  Are your beliefs so deeply sincere when you are comfortable, then complicated and tenuous when you are distressed?  (This is about as good as we have for a Christian litmus test:  When circumstances become difficult, genuine Christian faith will grow stronger, not weaker).

Or is it only that you are being lumped in with the wrong kind of Christians, who support “hateful policies” and are ever fearful?

What a terrible reason to apostatize.  No, you find your courage and choose from two options.

One, you call yourself a different kind of Christian.  This is the Protestant option.

Two, you renew the Church, by the grace of God.  This is the Catholic option.

But to make an excuse for yourself, to relieve yourself of the burdens of faith because you can’t stomach the association with Christians of differing opinions, vices, and virtues – that is hateful.  That is bigoted, and as is the case with bigotry:  That is cowardly.

Lift yourself up, man.  Force yourself up off the ground, take stock of your surroundings.  God is abounding in mercy, so make a fresh start.

This time, return to Him with all your heart.

A great read by Cardinal Francis George.

Here’s the post.

I’d like to be brief with this one, but I don’t want to simply cast it off into blogland. It’s the kind of thing that comes off as the result of a drug-induced “clarity,” but I’ve restricted myself to caffeine and alcohol, and neither of these have advanced my spirit.

Ok, that’ll do.

One of the real landmarks of my faith came in an empty chapel, when I had plenty of time to think. I was tracing the grains of the wood floor with my eyes, when I moved to reach out and touch the ground. On contact, I realized that I was, albeit remotely, touching something which God had touched. In fact, there was nothing in the room, that I was aware of, which had not been touched by God, down to the subatomic level (or, you know, whatever is sub-subatomic).

This was surely an unoriginal thought, yet I found myself in awe. That very matter, however it may have been transformed since the beginning, came tumbling down from God’s hands to mine.

Evangelicals are doing (have been doing) something right about money.  That is, they’re talking about it to the point that it’s not taboo to ask for it.

It seems to me that every Catholic “ask” I’ve heard has been a high-wire act, with the asker hoping not to offend, hoping not to trip over the wire of anyone’s sensibilities.  That’s too bad.

So, with the encouragement of an Evangelical’s book on money management, Marcy and I have renewed our efforts to be good stewards of our finances.  Right after we buy a new car.  And a helicopter.

In seriousness, I’ve been praying earnestly about it, hoping for patience and self-control, for willingness to continue giving even if I can’t have everything I want.  All generally good practices.

Another good practice is that I can work overtime in order to cut down our debts or increase our savings, both giving us the concrete results that are so satisfying in an endeavor like this.  In roughly that context, I dared to pray that God would, if it is good, make something big happen.  I confessed that I did not know what that could be, and that I have no clear idea how to make it happen, so there should be no mistaking that He is doing it.  I just wanted to see it, to dare to ask for it.  Nevertheless, even if such a thing were not to happen, I would be content with His blessings on our own efforts.

I decided to let that slip somewhere to the middle of my mind:  not to be looking, but to be aware.

We had a carpet cleaner at work that was an absolute nuisance to use.  It had a 20′ hose, and we only used it for spot cleaning.  So, you either had to make two trips to get it to the scene of the grime, or else informally apply for the circus with a balancing act that would make any trained elephant blush.

Consequently, we bought a new one, better suited to our needs, and put the old one for sale on Craigslist for $450.  I had two buyers, and the first one agreed to come all the way from Indiana to check it out.  The other was in the city, but since he was second, I put him on hold.

When the first buyer arrived, he had his son with him – a young man who ended up doing most of the talking.  The older man checked out the machine – his son told me he was very familiar with such models, and said so in a very friendly way.  Satisfied, the older man stood up and said, “I know you’re asking $450-”

Naturally, I saw this coming.  I figured anyone who came to look at it would want to negotiate, and I don’t blame them.  But I did have a buyer on deck, with cash in hand.

“and you know the situation with my job and my family,” he continued.  I did know, because he told me on the phone – he was about to be let go from a cleaning company, where he was the manager.  His goal was to work on his own, and try to earn a living that way.  For that to be successful, he needed equipment.

“Would you take $350?  It would mean a lot for us.”

His voice cracked.  He wasn’t putting me on.

I was quiet for a long moment, and he didn’t try to say anything else.  First, though I expected the negotiation, I was a little disappointed.  This was already a pretty good price.  But I quickly let that go.  Second, this wasn’t my money, and it would be used for an unquestionably good cause.  What right did I have to discount that price?  Well, maybe a pretty good right, based on reasons which will be omitted because they could only be seen as boastful.  Finally, I simply understood that it was the right thing to do, and I had the privilege of being in a position to make it happen.  That’s uncommon, and it shouldn’t be squirreled away for petty reasons.

“Yeah.  Yes, let’s do that.”

They counted out the money for me to see, a nice gesture though I had no doubt it would all be there.  He expressed his thanks several times, holding back tears, and I tried to shed any notion that I was his benefactor.  It was just a good thing to do.  Let’s not have pride muddying the waters, least of all false pride.

It would be a couple hours before I realized what happened, or at least one interpretation of what had happened.  That is, God had answered my prayer, though my bank account did not grow because of it.

 

There came a time a few years ago when I began to reflect deeply on the reasons a person might have for being pro-choice. Reflexively – instinctively? – I had always believed it was a misunderstanding, maybe a case of callousness which simply needed a proper, heart-rending appeal in order to spark a conversion. If only I could find the right words, the definitive and undeniable perspective which would change everything, then the debate would disappear.

It’s tough to deal with perpetual failure like that. A few years ago, I began to wonder why such an approach was doomed to fail, even with people whom I believed were intelligent and compassionate.

The closest I’ve gotten, by the way, is something like this: Abortion must be the most terrible fate a person can face. In your most vulnerable state, with nerve endings as fresh as they’ll ever be, in the place which is supposed to be the safest in all the world, in come the brutally dispassionate instruments of death. You have committed no crime, been given no defense. You will endure, arguably, the most intense pain possible, and you can’t even scream. Does anyone deserve this? Of all the very serious reasons people give for not wanting a child, can any justify this action?

Plenty of people – some reading this, perhaps – could respond that there are reasons, that it’s not as bad as I’m making it, that I’ve conflated the suffering of the fetus. (Please, don’t come near me with that truly stupid argument that we are only talking about a bunch of cells clumped together).

My breakthrough came when I doubted a quality intrinsic to the question, “How can good people justify abortion?”

In other words, since abortion does not seem justifiable – in that it is tantamount to murder – it must be that good people don’t justify it.

There’s a lot to get angry about there, and before you do, let me pull the pressure valve on one point: There is no one good who opposes abortion, either, except for God. We all, on both sides of this and every debate, are fallen and sinful. That sinfulness is manifest, for some, in a pro-choice stance.

This will not solve the debate, I understand. I’m just trying to understand it. There is a whole other angle, a set of people who does not believe in God who may or may not acknowledge the personhood of the fetus, and yet they defer to the woman and her opportunity to abort. Such people might be as likely to say that we still, as part of the social contract, must protect life at all stages.

Perhaps – and I’m beginning to believe this more and more – a debate is not the proper field for this competition of values and fundamental beliefs.  At least not in an academic sense, which might ultimately produce a consensus among the enlightened which trickles down to common folk.  Rather, since we are talking about real persons who will live or die based on decisions made in a real human mind, according to quite specific circumstances, efforts ought to be focused on those minds, and on amending those circumstances.

If one life can be saved in this way, it must be better than perpetual failure in the grand debate.

Last week in an address to the Seminary community at Mundelein Cardinal George highlighted the pastoral importance of listening.  He stressed that listening to God’s people helps you to hear their fears, their needs, their desires, their shortcomings, and all of the things that can help you lead and pastor them.  This got me to thinking about the importance of conversation in the New Evangelization.

While it is extremely important to broadcast the true message of salvation in every way (print, web, social media, DURING THE HOMILY) people are just a bit more complicated than being just consumers of salvation data.  They need to gnaw on it, play with it, work it out in their own way.  They need to have conversations about it.

I was recently reading a post on Fr. Barron’s Word on Fire regarding the Japan tragedy and a young woman named Monica posted a question in the comments.  It was a thoughtful question and was written by someone who looks to be genuinely seeking truth.  Unfortunately, as of this writing, the question has gone unanswered.  I think this is real shame.  Now I’m not trying to pick on WOF, I think they’re doing great work but I think our view of the New Evangelization when it comes to new media needs to now embrace the social side of the web.  People are smart.  They’re thoughtful.  They have questions.  Who is going to answer them?

Unfortunately allowing comments on a faith based blog can be a Pandoras box.  The anonymity of the internet turns comments sections of websites into a historical record of some of the worse of our human nature.  But then there’s women like Monica, who see it as a way to connect with the author and pick their brain.  In this case, the author (or a chosen proxy) needs to be willing to answer Monica.  I think there’s something true about our need for conversation in the New Evangelization.  When evangelization is seen as a conversation you assent to the inherent dignity of the questioner, and in doing so we start to preach the gospel – without using words.