At this year’s National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, keynote speaker Robert P. George, a Princeton law professor and respected Catholic intellectual, asked a sobering question: “Are we ashamed of the Gospel?”
“The days of socially acceptable Christianity are over” he said. “The days of comfortable Catholicism are past. It is no longer easy to be a faithful Christian, a good Catholic, an authentic witness to the truths of the Gospel. A price is demanded and must be paid.
“Of course, one can still safely identify oneself as a ‘Catholic’ and even be seen going to Mass.
“If one in fact does not believe what the Church teaches, or…is prepared to be completely silent about them, one is safe—one can still be a comfortable Catholic. In other words, a tame Catholic, a Catholic who is ashamed of the Gospel—or who is willing to act publicly as if he or she were ashamed—is still socially acceptable.
“But a Catholic who makes it clear that he or she is not ashamed is in for a rough go—he or she must be prepared to take risks and make sacrifices. ‘If,’ Jesus said, ‘anyone wants to be my disciple, let him take up his cross and follow me.’ We American Catholics, having become comfortable, had forgotten, or ignored, that timeless Gospel truth. There will be no ignoring it now.”
So Professor George asks us to ponder these jarring questions: “Am I ashamed of the Gospel?” “Am I prepared to pay the price that will be demanded if I refuse to be ashamed…?” “[A]m I willing… or unwilling, to take up my cross and follow Christ?”
I can just hear some people responding to Professor George’s admonitions by saying “Oh come on, it’s not really that bad is it?” Yes, it really is that bad.
Later this month, the United States Supreme Court will rule (in the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood cases) whether the federal government can force business owners to violate their faith (by including coverage for contraceptives, sterilization and abortifacients in their health plans) or face ruinous fines. The Court will likely decide, soon thereafter, if the federal government can force the same choice on religious entities such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, Catholic Charities, Catholic schools and Catholic hospitals.
Furthermore, there are increasing threats to the religious freedom of those who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. Here are a few of the many examples:
Bed-and-breakfast owners who declined to host a reception for a same-sex “wedding” had to pay $30,000 and agree never to host wedding receptions again; a Catholic hospital was sued by an employee for not providing health insurance for the employee’s same-sex “spouse”; a high school student was threatened with suspension for writing a school newspaper op-ed opposing adoption by same-sex couples.
“So for us,” Professor George asserts, “there is no avoiding the question: Am I ashamed of the Gospel? Am I unwilling to stand with Christ by proclaiming His truths? Oh, things were easy on Palm Sunday. Standing with Jesus and His truths was the ‘in’ thing to do… But now it’s Friday and the days of acceptable Christianity are over. The days of comfortable Catholicism are past… The Lord is being led to Calvary. Jesus is being nailed to the cross.”
“And where are we?” George asks. “Will we muster the strength, the courage, the faith to be like Mary… and John… and stand faithfully at the foot of the cross? Or will we, like all the other disciples, flee in terror? Fearing to place in jeopardy the wealth we have piled up, the businesses we have built, the professional and social standing we have earned, the security and tranquility we enjoy… will we silently acquiesce to the destruction of innocent human lives or the demolition of marriage?
“Will we seek to ‘fit in,’ to be accepted, to live comfortably in the new Babylon? If so, our silence will speak. Its words will be the words of Peter, warming himself by the fire: ‘Jesus the Nazorean? I tell you, I do not know the man.’”
