"The time grows short. Will you speak and act in these coming days, for the sake of souls and for the common good? Or will you slide into an even deeper irrelevance, abdicating the awesome responsibility given you by the Lord Jesus to whom you must, at last, make an account of your stewardship?"
Loyalty to one's political party can be strong. Our Church asks that our loyalty to Christ and His Church be infinitely stronger. While our votes in New Jersey will likely change nothing, we have an ongoing imperative to transform hearts and souls, and to be the salt and light that shapes the moral character of society. This mission does not begin or end on Election Day. It begins EVERY day and NEVER ends.
In fairness to the Pharisees, we could use a little reminder of the law – about our human nature, about our design for love, and about the Lawgiver who both commands and enables us to love God and neighbor.
“This,” Chuck concluded, “is the way the abortion war will ultimately be won: through Jesus Christ changing hearts, one by one. No amount of political force, no government, no laws, no army of Planned Parenthood workers, can ever stop that. It is the one thing absolutely invincible. “That simple baptism, held without fanfare in the basement of a great cathedral, is a reminder that a holy Baby, born in a stable 20 centuries ago, defies the wisdom of man. He cannot be defeated.”
If being Catholic isn’t a sign of contradiction to the worldly orthodoxies of our time, then surely, we are doing something wrong. If we see the Church as a compassionate NGO, as Pope Francis has warned, then we are proclaiming, not Christ, but a “demonic worldliness.” If our Catholic faith is indistinguishable from the spirit of the age, we are like salt that has lost its flavor.
"Those who think or say otherwise remind me of the people who used to insist that the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery. Almost nobody makes that argument anymore. The South didn’t secede because of tax policy or industrialization. They seceded because Lincoln was elected, and they feared what he would do to their beloved “right to own slaves.” If you think there are other “issues” that would outweigh allowing this injustice, then you simply don’t take seriously the possibility that unborn children are actual human lives. If they are, then we are systematically putting to death around a million human beings per year, over 61 million since Roe v. Wade, a crime so heinous that all talk about other policy differences simply fades into utter insignificance."
October is the month where we pause to reflect on the sanctity of human life, from the moment of conception, in the image and likeness of God. Make it special!