Commissioned to change the world

Let’s start with the end of this article:

Nothing undermines the cause of justice and cultural reform and renewal more than the bad example of prominent Catholics who have made themselves instruments of what Pope John Paul II bluntly described as “the culture of death.”

It would be too trite to say ‘we have no shortage of them.’ In truth, we have a glut. Which is why Princeton Professor Robert George is stepping up here and proposing heroics….action that shouldn’t have to be called heroic action to counter a culture of death, but is in fact courageous and counter-cultural because of all the Catholics and other church-attending people who throw in with the moral relativists.

Divert a second here, for a reminder of how that mindset works.

A group of Catholic members of the US House of Representatives has issued a “Statement of Principles” in which they claim a “commitment to the basic principles at the heart of Catholic social teaching,” but refuse to accept the Church’s opposition to legal abortion.

Here’s another one:

On May 14, a group of 18 House Democrats issued the following statement stating restricting Communion from pro-abortion politicians “offend[s] the very nature of the Amercan experiment”.

This is a cultural Catholicism that seeks to remake the Church in the image of the changing world. Which gets back to George’s article in First Things.

The Church doesn’t need fundamental transformation; it needs to be about the business of transforming us. This is a task for the whole Church: bishops, priests, and other religious, and the laity. As the Second Vatican Council teaches, this work of transformation of minds and hearts necessarily includes work of cultural transformation.

That’s a massive undertaking, things being the way they are “in every sphere,” he says.

There are two issues, however, that are so central to our future and, indeed, to the future of mankind that they must, surely, be given a certain priority. Both are on the table now and will be resolved—for better or for worse—in the next decade or so. Critical (possibly irreversible) decisions will be made in the next year or two. I speak of the issue of marriage and the complex set of issues sometimes referred to compendiously as “bioethics.” In respect of both matters, things will go one way or the other depending on the posture and actions of Catholics.

That’s a huge point. Here’s another one…

If the Catholic community is engaged on these issues, working closely with evangelical Christians, observant Jews, and people of goodwill and sound moral judgment of other faiths and even of no particular religious faith, grave injustices and the erosion of central moral principles will be, to a significant extent, averted.

Make that alert and engaged Catholics who are aware of what lies in their hands.

We cannot do it by ourselves; but our allies cannot win without us, nor can they lose with us.

It’s vital to get that.

Our activity in the political sphere and in other dimensions of the culture will make the critical difference. I believe that Catholics need to be told so by the leaders of the Church in no uncertain terms. We faithful need to be challenged to make the difference we can make—by the example we set in our own lives and by carrying out our duties as citizens of a democratic republic. God, in his wonderful and mysterious providence, has set before us an opportunity for a special kind of greatness, the greatness that comes only in times of the most profound danger.