I have something I want to run past you if you don\u2019t mind. If you don\u2019t have time for this just hit the old delete button, I won\u2019t mind.
\n Since the 2012 elections I have felt like a man without a country and very disappointed, disappointed at my fellow countrymen for pretty much telling me, \u201cHey, we don\u2019t give a rip about your conscience rights nor your religious freedom. Heck, we don\u2019t even care about religious freedom at all.\u201d My logic here as that people knew O\u2019Bama was forcing the HHS mandate on us without any concern for our consciences yet people still voted him in. I felt and continue to feel so betrayed and set adrift.
\n Before all of this I was very much a \u201cBuy American\u201d kind of guy and tried not to shop at places like Wal Mart, etc. Since the 2012 elections I don\u2019t give a rip anymore. We now shop at our local Wal Mart and I no longer care when I see someone in Flint, MI driving a Honda or a Toyota. In fact I kind of laugh with a \u201cTake that, Union!\u201d type of attitude.
\n Anyway, I don\u2019t feel right about this kind of attitude but I just can\u2019t get past it. I always appreciate your level headed view on things. I think I\u2019ve shared with you in the past that you\u2019ve righted my ship more than once and I will always be grateful for this.
\n Well, there it is. I hope it made sense. \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe secret of the Catholic is that he is *always* a man without a country. \u201cTherefore let us go forth to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come.\u201d (Heb 13:13\u201314). <\/p>\n
Caesar has never been friends with Christ. He merely finds him a useful tool at times. And Christ, who has no interest in worldly power, allows Caesar to think he is using him as he pursues his sovereign path from Calvary to the empty tomb and the Heavenly Zion.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve fallen, of late, into thinking that maybe we could<\/em> create the earthly Zion. America has been (and, by the way, remains for the moment) reasonably friendly to the Church. Our lot as Catholics is fantastically better than, say, Chaldean Catholics under ISIS or even Palestinian Catholics under Israeli rule. Sure, Obama holds Catholics in contempt and our culture is souring on the Church. But we still have a lot going for us in terms of civil freedom and lack of harassment from the culture and the state. So we should count our blessings. But we should also allow this time to wake us up to the fact that the world is not and never has been our friend. That\u2019s not cause for despair. It\u2019s a splash of cold water in the face. It\u2019s the same thing the apostles saw, only they felt no disappointment over it since they knew from the outset that the world was the enemy, not the potential ally, of the Church and they had no illusions otherwise. American Catholics are facing the dis<\/em>illusioning process of having their worldly hopes stripped from them as the world turns its perpetually hostile face to the Church.<\/p>\n
Our task is not to hate the world but, like Jesus, to love the world\u2013quite possibly to the laying down of our lives.<\/p>\n
The gravest danger we face as Catholics is not the hostility of the world. It is the deceiving friendship of the world. St. John, who tells us that \u201cGod so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son\u201d (Jn 3:16) also paradoxically says, \u201cDo not love the world or the things in the world. If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passes away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides for ever\u201d (1 Jn 2:15\u201317). He does not contradict himself here. His point is that we have to love the world with the gift-love of Christ, not the hungry need-love of fallen man. The need of fallen man, the worldly love that so animates our political life, is for power, honor, money and pleasure. The world promises us, as Satan promised Christ, \u201call these things\u201d if only we will worship it (and therefore the prince of this world).<\/p>\n
And the prince of this world always disguises himself as an angel of light. This is why Jesus warns, not against persecution, but temptation: \u201cAnd do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell\u201d (Mt 10:28). <\/p>\n
Think about it: how often are we lured into sins by our enemies and persecutors? Virtually never. Indeed, persecution often brings out the best in us so that \u201cthe blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians\u201d as Tertullian famously said. It is our friends and allies who almost always give us the moral permission to sin. They are the ones who offer you that first bite of the apple, the first hit of cocaine, the encouragement to go ahead and take vengeance on that jerk who wronged you, the assurance that you and they are better than those slobs over there. It is the propagandists for *our* side who say that, precisely because we are so much better than our enemies, it is okay\u2013just this once\u2013to commit mortal sin that good may come of it. Small wonder Jesus called his friend, not his enemy, \u201cSatan\u201d.<\/p>\n
Our task is to stick like limpets to what Christ said, including the bits about non-violence and refusing to take vengeance. So, for instance, in your example, all patronizing Walmart or gloating over the destruction of American manufacturing does is punish the weak and enable the strong to go on grinding their faces. Or in my own case, I often let fly with a blast of frustration at people who are so wrapped up in their own fear they can\u2019t see past the end of their nose. The result is not that their eyes are opened, but that they clamp them shut against the blast of my anger at them for their blindness. It\u2019s like Peter chopping off some schmuck\u2019s ear. It achieves nothing.<\/p>\n
The Way is Christ. The Church virtually never approaches human political systems in terms of black and white. They are seldom as bad or as good as we say they are. This is why the bishops (who called for universal health care for a century before Obama attempted it) have been measured in their responses to the gigantic flaw that is the HHS mandate. They don\u2019t condemn Obamacare wholesale, because it is a step in the right direction. But they also don\u2019t see it as utopia and warn of the grave threat the Mandate represents.<\/p>\n
In the same way, while recognizing that the right has some merits in its opposition to abortion, euthanasia, human cloning, ESCR, and the fiction of gay \u201cmarriage\u201d, it also recognizes that much of this is motivated by cynical exploitation of prolife sentiment, and is often a fig leaf for profoundly anti-Christian and anti-life agendas. In short, the Church\u2019s habit is always to affirm what can be affirmed in human systems of order while refusing to ever mistake these systems for the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n