Catholic Moment of Truth
Mark S. Roberti, Director of Stewardship & Development
Heartland Parishes of Ellis County.
I’m thinking the Catholic community faces a real moment of truth, “a showdown at the O.K. Corral.” This showdown is of cataclysmic proportions. It all happens on April 5, 2005. That’s when we vote (or don’t vote) on the Marriage Amendment in Kansas.
God, marriage, and family are everything we believe in as Catholics. Bishop Coakley has asked us to vote “Yes” for the marriage amendment. I wonder how many Catholics will show up at the polls? I wonder how many will vote against it?
In a recent article, I quoted Archbishop Chares Chaput, OFMCap, of Denver where he stated that, “For religious believers not to advance their convictions about public morality in public debate is not an act of tolerance, it is a lack of courage.” In a democracy/republic, the polling station is the ultimate public debate forum.
Let’s make one thing very clear from the start. We Catholics are called to love our homosexual brothers and sisters with agape love. That’s the kind of love Jesus demonstrated where we love the other person for the other person’s sake.
But we are not called to tolerate that behavior. In fact, the opposite is true. If we do a word search in the Bible and look up tolerate, tolerance, etc, you will note that it is always used in the negative sense, “do not tolerate,” or, “I will not tolerate.” Likewise, no place in the Bible does God condone sodomy of any sort. In places, He refers to those actions as abhorrent, an abomination, etc. Homosexual actions are always presented as a grave depravity.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls homosexual acts “intrinsically disordered.” It says, “They are contrary to the natural law”’ (CCC 2357).
In the USA, homosexual activists have seized the moment and have taken the fight to the Christian community. How have they done this? We have been asleep at the wheel. Now, we are very near the point – or at the point -- that the majority is being ruled by the minority. The homosexual community and its supporters have vigorously pressed their agenda with an amazingly impressive display of strategy, propaganda, legal wherewithal, and passion. That we even have to vote on this issue shows just how successful they have been.
That two percent of the population could control the other 98 percent is utterly amazing. And make no mistake about it, the true percentages are small. A multitude of studies and surveys that have been done, but the vast majority have been are smoke screens. When you do a study with the objective of trying to prove that a high percentage of the population is homosexual, that’s exactly the conclusion at which you are going to arrive. But, I defy anyone to show me a statistically valid survey based on solid, objective, research that proves it. There are none.
Many homosexuals call themselves “Gay.” The medical term is “hypersexual.” Whatever the nomenclature they now controlled the press, they’ve manipulated the legal system, and they have intimidated even the strongest and most powerful. At this point, the three strongest institutions of society as we know it are at risk: Church, marriage, and family.
In his new book, Pope John Paul II declared that homosexual marriages are a part of “a new ideology of evil” that is insidiously threatening society. Reports I’ve read on the Internet state that the pope is “facing down evil.” He, the Vicar of Christ, is looking evil straight in the eye. He did the same thing with Communism. Evil blinked there. The Berlin Wall fell. Evil is going to blink again. We need to help that happen here in Kansas. We need to vote “Yes” to the marriage amendment.
Let me explain one very important thing about evil. It is a parasite. Evil cannot live without good. Without good it ultimately must turn on itself and destroy itself. Good, on the other hand, has absolutely no need of evil. That’s why it will ultimately win.
The question each of us needs to ask ourselves is, “How much damage are we going to allow evil to inflict on us, our children, our Church, and our culture before we do something about it? When are each of us, individually, going to muster the courage to take a stand?
It’s the moment of truth. Are you going to vote?