Three good articles about being Catholic in today's globalized, "modern" world:
The first article asks "Are you really Catholic?" Consider what it says, particularly when you frame your thinking in relation to pending law on contraception: "Either live as a Catholic Christian or don’t, but stop trying to remodel the Church to make it more appealing to the world. Learn your Catholic faith, understand it correctly and LIVE IT out in public without apologizing. Stop compromising the truth. Quit trying to rewrite Church teaching to bring it 'up to speed' with modern times. The Church is not out of step with society; society is out of step with the Church. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and thus His Church is timeless, ageless and always perfectly relevant. It is not the Church who needs to change her thinking; it is society that needs to CORRECT its thinking."
We're all sinners. We all do stupid things. But it doesn't mean one gives up trying. The problem with people today, particularly the youth, is that they're so eager to refer to human frailties as an excuse for self-indulgence.
The second article deals with this prevailing attitude today, of false "compassion":
". . . if you dare to call something wrong or immoral, or if you insist that some things are inherently good and others are inherently evil and therefore should not be allowed, then you are being exclusive and insensitive, judgmental and without compassion. If you have the temerity to actually call something a sin, well, that’s the new capital offense.
With regard to the most serious moral and social issues of our day, those with an anti-Christian agenda are trying to redefine compassion -- they equate compassion with tolerance and acceptance, and it just ain’t so. "
People should remember that while Jesus was truly compassionate and merciful, he really had zero tolerance for those who do wrong - as His reaction to the people who turned a temple into a marketplace showed.
The third article deals with good governance. Thus: "“God has not willed to reserve to himself all exercise of power. He entrusts to every creature the functions it is capable of performing, according to the capacities of its own nature. This mode of governance ought to be followed in social life."
