A few politics
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Fifth Week of Lent
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/032013.cfm
John 8:37
Jesus said to the Jews who claimed to believe in him, “You are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word.”
From Sunday’s AP report from the Vatican: “Francesco! Francesco!” children shouted his name in Italian. As he patted one little boy on the head, he asked, “Are you a good boy?” and the child nodded.
“Are you sure?” the pope quipped.
On Tuesday’s national newscast he was filmed kissing the Argentinian prime minister on the forehead. He vehemently disagrees with some of her social reforms.
Il papa loves the people one by one, and he is showing his colors. They are bold and beautiful. They bypass the demands of some that the church fit itself into the manners and morals of the twenty-first century world, but they do not ignore the people making those demands.
King Nebuchadnezzar, about 575 years before the birth of Jesus, had similar demands: “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you will not serve my god, or worship the golden statue that I set up?”
Their response seems fearless: “There is no need for us to defend ourselves before you in this matter. Even if our God does not save us, know, O king, that we will not serve your god or worship the golden statue.” This response has inspired martyrs for centuries.
Perhaps it also inspired Kathleen Parker in her March 13 column (http://www.arcamax.com/politics/kathleenparker/s-1292754), where she writes:
The church faces enormous challenges, obviously, but none so daunting as communicating the Good News, which translates to helping millions around the world. Whatever one’s personal opinion of Catholicism (I am not Catholic), the church remains a bulwark against Western secularization and the growing culture of choice. Is it really desirable, just for starters, that the leader of the Christian church embrace the destruction of human life in the womb?
One may make painful, personal choices as the law permits, but even non-Catholics can find solace in the barricade that men and women of conscience erect between human beings and the abyss of relativity. If the church means nothing to some, it is at least a welcome noisemaker in the public square, fearless in making the argument that life does matter.
Roger Ebert affectionately remembered his own Catholic education at St. Mary’s in Champaign, Illinois last month (http://www.suntimes.com/opinions/18588478-474/ebert-how-i-am-a-roman-catholic.html):
I consider myself Catholic, lock, stock and barrel, with this technical loophole: I cannot believe in God. I refuse to call myself an atheist, however, because that indicates too great a certainty about the unknowable. My beliefs were formed long ago from good-hearted Dominican sisters, and many better-qualified RCs might disagree.
There is nothing new about the rough-and-tumble in either politics or religion. Neither is always bathed in love or charity. Jesus not only insists that is where it must always return, but by his life insures that it will.
We can still be confident of this, O Lord, that we will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Therefore we can wait for you, Lord. Be strong, take heart, and wait always for you.
http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1173
