Once Upon an Election

Over the past several days I have been giving a lot of thought to our recent elections and the voting process in general and I have come to a few conclusions that I wanted to throw out so that others could roll them around in their minds and discuss them on cool fall evenings over a cup of steaming hot cocoa.  The first is that presidential elections are in many ways very anti-Catholic.  Let me be clear that I do not mean this in a policy or legal way (though some have already stopped reading), but rather in a practical and spiritual way.  For example, over the last 2 months how many conversations have most of us had with friends and family members about something political, either a ballot measure or a candidate or the evils of of one political party vs. the other? Now compare it with how many conversations you have had and the amount of time you have spent talking to people, friends, and family members about your faith or about how God is working in your life?  How many billions of dollars and thousands of hours were spent on political campaigns that could have been spent spreading the Gospel?  How many of us were absolutely glued to our television/radio/computer for all three presidential debates, but have never bothered to tune in and watch a general audience from the Holy Father or even listen to Catholic radio?  How many Catholics put a sign in their yard or a sticker on their car proudly proclaiming their political allegiance, yet would never consider proclaiming their faith in any such way because someone might find it "offensive"?  My point is not that the political process is bad and that we shouldn't care, my point is simply one of priorities. When the first Commandment says that we should have no other gods before God, where do we really stand?  The amount of time, energy, and resources that we spend on politics reveals that many people in our world are still desperately hungry for a savior.  The problem is that they are looking to the wrong man.  The President of the United States is not our savior, and it doesn't matter if he is a Republican or a Democrat. Christ is our savior.  He transcends political, social, and racial boundaries.  Christ doesn't care if you are part of the 1% or the 99%, He cares if you are following Him. It may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, but how many people even know what these words of Christ even really mean? We have been commanded by our savior to go out and make disciples of ALL the nations.  The work of spreading the Gospel is not something reserved for the priests, youth ministers, and professional evangelists; it is the work of all of us, the faithful in the trenches of the world.  Now this isn’t to say that elections are not important.  After all, our president and elected leaders can either make it much easier to follow the will of God, or they can pass laws that directly attack Gods people and His Church.  In the end, however, God will triumph. Cardinal George remarked upon the election of Pope Benedict about where was the successor to the Roman emperors? 

Where was the successor to Julius Caesar or Marcus Aurelius?  They were long gone and no one really cares about them anymore, but the successor of Peter was standing right next to him.  Long after this election and all the others are over, the Church and Peter will endure.  Let’s keep our eyes and our hearts in that direction.

All Saints Day

Within the 2000 year history of the Catholic Church we have been privileged to have some absolutely amazing Saints.  There have been many who have gone to great lengths to lay down their lives and their bodies for their God and their Church.  With the exception of St. John, all of the other Apostles were martyred for their faith.  Their love for God and their fellow man was so great that no persecution was too great and no price was to high that they would not willingly and gladly pay it.  St. Peter was crucified upside down and St. Agatha was forced into a brothel and then had her breasts cut off.  St. Lucy gauged out her own eyes because men found them so attractive and she wanted to live her life for God alone and Saint Lawrence was grilled to death because Emperor Valerian demanded all the riches of the Church and Lawrence brought him the poor and the sick.  Saints Thomas More and John Fisher were accused of treason and killed for refusing to betray their Catholic faith and recognize the authority of the King of England as the head of the new English Church.  These are just some of the great men and women and women that we celebrate this week On All Saints Day.  One of the things that all of these Saints have in common is the way they put their faith in God above absolutely everything also in their lives.  While some of them had taken religious vows or were single when Thomas More went to the headsman he did so knowing that he was leaving behind his family to fend for  themselves. His wife would no longer have her husband and his daughter no longer her father, but he went anyway because of his love for God and his faith in the Catholic Church. I am inspired by the faith of these and so many other Saints who chose to live out their faith in the face of adversity.  One of the things that helped these Saints and all the other saints fight the good fight and make it to heaven was how they formed their conscience.  We hear a lot in the media these days about people who do whatever they want and justify it by saying that they were taught in Catholic school and the Catechism to always follow their conscience and do what they believe is right.  While this is true, it doesn’t tell the full story.  While we are supposed to follow our conscience, we are also obligated to make sure that our conscience is correctly formed to the will of God.  So if our conscience starts telling us to do something that God has asked us not to do, then we know there is a problem with our conscience and we need to work on it.  During the Year of Faith, which began this month, the Pope has asked all of us to please read and study the Catechism.  If we do this we will come to know God in a deeper way and it will help us to form our will to His, rather than asking him to form His will to ours. If we don’t form our Conscience to the will of God, then we will never have the strength to walk to the headsman’s block with Thomas More, be crucified with Peter, or gauge our eyes out like Lucy. We will be doomed to lives of quiet desperation, forever blown about by popular opinion and unjust laws.  Only with God and His Church can we stand strong and run the race to the finish.