Ask Them, Do Catholic Lives Matter?

Ireland just voted to redefine marriage (I will comment on this calamity soon).

But we Americans have to respond first to what is happening and is about to happen in our own country.

Within 40 days the Supreme Court will issue a national decision on marriage (please pray with us).

All three of these Catholic lives –these Catholic spiritual lives– matter. Photo credit: SFCatholics.org

In San Francisco and other places, activists are already re-drawing the lines of what it is “acceptable” for Catholics to believe in public.

Our new overlords are making it very clear what the terms of our surrender will be.

Quickly it is becoming “illegitimate” for Catholics even to defend our beliefs and rights in the public square.

When pew-sitting Catholics in San Fransisco, who have had their shepherd, their church and their reputations slimed for months by professional hired goons like Sam Singer, came together to host a picnic – a picnic! – for their bishop, the local intelligentsia sneered that they should “back off” and “give it a rest”.

Excuse me?

Now websites like GoFundMe are blocking Christians from asking for funds to support themselves when their livelihoods are threatened or lost due to their support of marriage.

There are myriads of powerful individuals in America, such as the 100 “prominent Catholics” who took the ad out against Abp. Cordileone, who believe it is illegitimate for Catholics to adhere to Catholic teaching on marriage, family and life.

But Catholics who wish to remain faithful to their baptismal vows and continue to remain Catholic must support marriage as God created it, Christ proclaimed it, and the Church has always defined it. Belief in marriage as the union of one man and one woman is not optional for Catholics.

That means, for Catholics, our spiritual lives are in jeopardy if we deny marriage publicly.

Which in turn means when powerful individuals, government officials and agents of the law force us to deny marriage “or else”, they are saying our Catholic lives don’t matter.

In Roman times, Christians knew they could not offer incense at the altar of false gods. In Reformation England, Saints Thomas More and John Fisher knew they could not say Henry VIII was validly married to Anne Boleyn. In both of these historical examples, elected officials cared more about enforcing the orthodoxy of the state than the lives of the Catholics under their thumb.

So I think we need to start asking those in power who now claim it is illegitimate for Catholics to adhere to our beliefs about marriage, do they think Catholic lives matter?

Or do they simply deny our right to live in accordance with our beliefs?

I think asking them “Do Catholic lives matter?” is a simple and straightforward way to make what is at stake abundantly clear.

Catholic. Lives. Matter.