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On this feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord – a transfiguration to which Christ’s disciples are all called – we need to make as honest an assessment of the Christianity of our day as Newman did the Christianity of his. We need to confess the lie embodied in our deeds: the infidelity of priests and people to their vows and promises, the scant transparency and accountability of leaders, the apostasy from or sacrilegious reception of the Holy Eucharist. The debasement of the language of faith.

Envy is hurting our Church, and envy is poisoning our politics. Gone are the days we extolled and pursued virtue and all that is good. Instead, we try to destroy those who still choose those ways and do not comply with the modern way.

The Catholic liberal arts intellectual tradition provides resources unsurpassed in the world. And at a time when the public schools are destroying themselves, running after every educational and cultural fad, the Catholic Church has an unmatched opportunity to introduce more and more young people to the life-altering wonders of that tradition. It is an opportunity we are repeatedly squandering, and for which our children and grandchildren will not judge us well.

Our current crisis is not due to a lack of human ingenuity or worldly resources. The Church in Germany is wealthy – and moribund. It is a crisis of faith and the lack of a supernatural outlook, a failure of confidence in His grace and truth. This scene indicates that such has always been the temptation of the shepherds, and that only by way of such confidence can shepherds feed the flock.

A robust Church is one whose members are active in the public square, proclaiming the truths of the Faith and working to influence the direction of the culture. No more apologizing or being embarrassed when the culture disagrees with us. We have been given the words of eternal life by our Lord, and we are obligated to share them with the world.

More precisely: If there is a Mass that is proving to bring young people back to the faith, it should be embraced and replicated, not banished.

“It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers for every question, but to progressively make us aware of mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as He is the cause of our awe,” as Albert Rossi says. Rossi also makes the point, which I’ve come to rely on, that we need to learn to live with unclarity, uncertainty, ambiguity. One could even say it’s a sign of mental health: the ability to go forward without seeing fully; the ability to let things be as they are, without despairing or hyperventilating; the ability to rest content with knowing what is essential. Rossi puts it in three statements: “I know that I don’t know. I know that Christ knows. I trust Him.”

If we go out and be adults, real adults, the ones who answer the tough questions and make the hard sacrifices, the young people will take note. Young people hunger for our boundaries and our time. We can give them both. We will have to let go of insecurity, the need for acceptance by the cultural bullies, and our own media-saturated tablet time. It is not someone else’s job. It is our job. This is the time into which we have been born. And the Lord is counting upon us.

More than a list of policies, these principles shape society by helping us understand who we are and how we are to be in relationship with others. Even — or perhaps especially — during challenging times, Catholic social teaching provides the framework to help us make good choices that lead us closer to God rather than making bad ones that separate us from him. When Catholics approach society through a proper understanding of Catholic social teaching, any ideological call to “stay woke” pales in comparison.

"Note that Rev. King spoke of this land as a “great republic” and of our founding documents as “magnificent words” of “promise.” He called the Lincoln Memorial a “hallowed spot.” There were none of the current notions of America as existentially racist and fundamentally and irredeemably flawed. The very Declaration of Independence, so maligned now by so many, was not wrong in its words, but in its deployment. The Declaration is glorious and a point of (civil) hope. Its words were a catalyst for America to be what she had always (and will always) aspire to be: a land of equal justice, freedom and opportunity under the law. Today, I fear, we are dangerously far from the colorblind, character-based meritocracy King dreamed of. Increasingly, color is all that matters. If you are person of color, you are oppressed. If you are white, you are privileged. And this means war. The class struggle of the Marxists becomes the race struggle of America. "

It has been my opinion that we are in the early stages of another Great Awakening of our Church. Romans 13:11 “And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.”

From Pietro Molla, I have learned that the first step in learning how to love your neighbor is taking the time to grow in respect for your neighbor. Pietro did not resort to seeing people as “types”; instead, he spent time with different people whom he came to know as real, complex and unique persons. This is what saved Pietro from the propaganda of his age. I think about Pietro when I think about the kind of world you and I live in today. We can sit alone in our rooms and, through a handheld device, encounter news and messages from people all across the world. It seems like we are encountering people, but we are not. We are encountering appearances and summaries. We are encountering algorithms that treat each of us as a certain “kind” of information-consumer and then feed us presorted versions of the world. We hear the tidy phrases and labels for people or groups that have been forged through a social milieu that demands “us” vs. “them” binaries.

Along the way, the dissent succeeded in promoting a false, individualistic theory of conscience, which made morality and – by extension – the reception of Holy Communion matters of subjective opinion and discernment rather than of communal formation and discipline in the life of Christ. Consequently, episcopal oversight of Christian life has effectively vanished.

God honors humans by honoring their freedom. God is the antithesis of the earthly destroyers of freedom — men like the totalitarians in Moscow and other communist capitals. As Fulton Sheen wrote in Peace of Soul, “God refuses to be a totalitarian dictator in order to abolish evil by destroying human freedom.” However, cautioned Cardinal Wojtyla, man should never abuse his freedom (here he cited Galatians 4 and 5). Humans should not become slaves to the flesh. Indeed, said the future Holy Father, we know perfectly well that humanity abuses liberty. Man can do wrong precisely because man is free. That is the risk of freedom, a risk that the Creator was apparently willing to accept. At the same time, that is the beauty of freedom. As Cardinal Wojtyla noted, freedom has been given to man by the Creator not to commit what is evil (Galatians 5:13), but to do good: “Freedom has been given to man in order to love, to love true good.”

We are on a pilgrimage toward eternal life, but while we are on earth we are called to engage in society and sanctify the world. Doing so means we have to be knowledgeable concerning what goes on in politics and government. True wisdom highlights the fact that “religion moderates democracy because it appeals to an authority higher than democracy itself,” as Alexis de Tocqueville said. The ship of the United States must always be steered by faith or it will either lose its way or sink entirely. This is the case for any government, but it is specifically true for a democratic republic. Even Thomas Jefferson exclaimed: “No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can it be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man and I, as chief magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.”

The lens of faith reveals a world soaked with truth, beauty and goodness.

It’s curious fact that modern science, including both research and clinical interventions, is revealing more and more about the importance of spirituality — which is not going away because some earlier thinkers like Freud disapproved of it or disbelieved in it.

By Christ’s mandate, it is not only the Church’s right, but her duty to see that her teachings and laws are heeded. That includes the teachings people do not want to hear – moral teachings concerning human sexuality included – and the sacramental laws that abortion-enabling politicians such as Speaker Pelosi think they can disregard. The Church’s primary method of teaching is through Sunday homilies and formal instruction of the young, of catechumens, and of those seeking sacraments. For very grave matters, the Church can enforce her law through excommunication. The intention in doing so is to help the guilty realize the gravity of their sins and the need for repentance.

As Catholic fathers, we are similarly entrusted by God to be the humble, obedient and self-sacrificing spiritual leaders of our families. St. Joseph’s example inspires us to practice heroic generosity and love in caring for our wives and children. We protect our families through countless acts that will often go unnoticed and unrecognized. These small, selfless acts allow the Holy Spirit to work and can influence our families in ways we don’t often recognize.

Kelly proclaimed that the Knights must also serve Jesus as the truth. Noting the difficulty of serving the truth in the modern era, Kelly called the present a “time of bigotry and intolerance.” “Key truths — truths about marriage, about life in the womb, about the nature of the family and the meaning of freedom — are often denied and even vilified,” he said. “Yet, this makes our commitment to truth all the more important.”