I used to joke that the reason I never took holy water to my office at the Oklahoma House of Representatives is because I was afraid it would boil dry in the elevator on the way up.
I have much the same whimsical opinion about the news that our president is going to be visiting Pope Francis in March. When our Catholic-Church-attacking President steps foot on Vatican soil, will the Holy Water in the founts boil dry?
I don’t know of an American president who has been as aggressively anti-Catholic as President Obama. From his HHS Mandate, to the government’s many moves to close down Catholic adoption agencies, ministries to trafficked women and on to closing the American Embassy at the Vatican, this president has been an all-in anti-Catholic politician.
The fact that he’s got a Catholic Vice President and a Catholic Secretary of State, cheering him on, only makes the plot sicken.
Catholics who appear to take their moral guidance from the Democratic Underground, Daily Kos and the Christian-baiting atheist blogosphere seem to occupy all the Catholic-faith-based podiums in this country. From the Governor of New York and his prejudicial anti-life rants, to mush-minded Vice President Joe Biden and his revolving moral understandings, the big public voice of big public Catholics is a veritable Greek Chorus for the Church-is-wrong-long-live-relativism viewpoint.
The question is, do they speak for more than themselves and their upper crust cronies? Do they speak for the priests in Catholic parishes, the presidents of Catholic universities, and, maybe even more to the point, do they speak for pew-sitting Catholic people?
Based, completely unscientifically, on the comments I see here on Public Catholic, I’m guessing that the answer to that question is mixed. For some, absolutely not. For others, sometimes yes; sometimes no. We have the occasional blip of a commenter who is all in for the secular culture, but they are, at least in the Public Catholic universe, pretty much standing alone.
Personally, I think President Obama’s visit to meet our Pope is a good time for us to pray for the man. Who knows? Maybe God will get through to him.
It is also a good time for us to take a look at ourselves, as Catholics.
The real question, and the only question that any of us can answer with authority, is: Who do you follow?
Do you follow the fallen Catholics in high places who appear to have a total and absolute contempt for the requirements of our faith? Or, do you follow the Church, which has, in spite of the many failings of its clergy and people, held true to the teachings of the Gospels for 2,000 years?
When you die, who will say to you, You belong to me?
Will it be Jesus?
Or,
Will it be someone else?
If you want it to be Jesus, you need to follow the Church.
It is really as simple as that.
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