The Challenge Part 2

     Of course, the best defense to any sort of attack is a counterattack:

     Catholic: But tell me please: why don’t you believe?
     Secularist: Oh, come on! Why should I?
     Catholic: Well, there’s documentary evidence. We call it the New Testament.
     Secularist: You think that’s evidence?
     Catholic: On what basis do you believe in the destruction of Carthage? The Peloponnesian War? The great run of Philippides from Marathon to Sparta? Written historical records, right?
     Secularist: Well, yes, but that’s secular history.
     Catholic: My friend, until about the end of the seventeenth century, all history was the work of religious scholars and people we would today call “mythmakers.” You prefer to...how would you put it...to privilege these other bits of history on the grounds of your preferences.
     Secularist: Well no other histories speak of miracles, and resurrections, and the like.
     Catholic: Are you telling me that you expect those things to be commonplace?
     Secularist: No, not at all, but—
     Catholic: Now, now! The essence of the refusal to believe is the refusal to believe evidence that falls short of absolute proof. So it would seem that you don’t disbelieve; you refuse to believe.
     Secularist: (silence)
     Catholic: It’s easy to refuse to believe something that can’t be absolutely proved, especially if it cross-cuts your preferences. But bear in mind that among the men who knew Jesus personally, virtually all of them accepted martyrdom, often by torture, rather than renounce their faith – and those events are well documented both in the writings of pagan, polytheistic historians and in the New Testament. Do you really think those men would willingly have accepted death by torture for a lie, when all they would have had to do to save their lives – and perhaps to gain a high place at some ruler’s side – is to renounce it?

     Have fun with it. I do.

The Challenge

     How important it is to remember your options!

     Secularist: Prove that God exists.
     Catholic: I have no need to do that.
     Secularist: Hah! Then you admit that God doesn’t exist!
     Catholic: Nothing of the sort. Are you claiming that you can prove He doesn’t exist?
     Case 1:

     Secularist: Uh...
     Catholic: Because if you can, I’m ready to listen.

     Case2:

     Secularist: Why bother? There’s no evidence that He exists.
     Catholic: Aha! So you can’t prove it!
    Secularist: I don’t have to!
     Catholic: Yes you do, if you want me to accept it. Otherwise, your position is an article of faith...just like mine.

     The most important of all human characteristics is freedom of conscience. Never forget it – and never forget that your position doesn’t require proof, so long as you accept it as an article of faith.

That Awkward Moment

     It comes when relatives or friends who’ve been talking about their adulteries, or abortions, or self-absorbed, irresponsible fornications realize that you’re within earshot.

     Or when they joke about something else they’ve done that’s baldy immoral, like stealing from an employer, and catch your look of astonishment, and fall immediately silent.

     Or when one of them makes a remark that connotes contempt for someone because of his religion...maybe for your religion, or for you.

     And such is the tenor of our time that you know, with the degree of certainty that was once reserved for God is watching, that you can’t say anything, of any sort, about their exchange. What ever you might say would result in making you “the bad guy” for making them feel bad about themselves.

     So you pretend you didn’t hear them. Maybe you pretend that their conversation didn’t register because your mind was far away. Or maybe you say nothing and try to slip away.

     But no matter what you say or don’t say, do or don’t do, it doesn’t matter. In their eyes you’re already “the bad guy. They already resent you for making them feel bad about themselves, because you have higher standards than they do, and they know it.

     They have one recourse, and one only: to take offense at you. Sometimes it isn’t expressed where you can hear. Sometimes it takes the form of insinuations such as “He acts holier-than-thou, but give him a reason and I’ll bet he’d just as low as anyone.” And in an irony of ironies, the kinder and more courteous you try to be, the more they’ll resent you for it.

     This is the price of having "old-fashioned" morals and ethics in an age of widespread moral nihilism. Anyone who lets it be known that he’s a Catholic and serious about it will pay that price at some time in his life. These days, even others who identify as nominal Catholics can make you feel it. That’s how bad things have gotten.

     Yet in times past, your standards were effectively universal throughout the West. Those who were found to have transgressed those standards were expected to admit their fault and try to be better thereafter. Even those known to practice the most egregious vices were expected to maintain a veneer of propriety and to promulgate the Christian moral-ethical code to their children. Today this is called “hypocrisy,” and condemned as if it were a greater fault than open venality and debauchery.

     If there’s any comfort to be had, it must reside in this: You’re not alone. No matter how isolated you are religiously, you can remind yourself that there are others in your situation all over America and Europe: people who are resented for maintaining moral-ethical standards that everyone was once taught from childhood and expected to maintain lifelong.

     You have the right of it – and whether the others like it or not, God is watching. So stay strong.

Family Gatherings

     I’m the lone Catholic in a family otherwise composed of secularized Jews. My wife, her daughters, and all her other relatives have left faith entirely behind. That’s not all: a hefty fraction of those relatives – though not my wife, thanks be to God – hold all religions, including mine, in contempt, and take delight in showing it.

     I, too, was secular when we married, decades ago. Though I was raised Catholic, I fell away as a young adult. I returned to the Faith only after my wife and I had been together for a number of years.

     You can imagine the stresses that have accumulated since that momentous decision.

     I don’t know if it would be better or worse were my wife and in-laws Christians of some other denomination. I know tensions exist between Catholics and some of the Protestant sects. Somehow I doubt they’re quite as intense as these

     I bear some of the blame for it. At least, that’s what my in-laws would say. I reproved them for cracking anti-Catholic jokes at a Thanksgiving dinner under my roof. The resulting rift has never been bridged. I have no idea how to go about it...or whether I should try.

     The consequences include family gatherings: we don’t have any. As my family is entirely deceased, it makes holidays something of a strain.

     But faith, like everything else worth having, bears a price. That price varies from one person to the next. Like all good things, either you pay the price, or you do without.

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     The Sunday Mass I attend is populated mainly by older persons – don’t get the wrong idea; I’m an older person too – and they tend to come and go in twos: husband and wife. But there are always a few younger congregants who come and go alone. This morning I found myself thinking about those others, whether they’re isolated as am I, and if so, how they cope.

     Family can be a source of sustenance and comfort, but religious tensions can turn it into a battlefield. The wounds can be especially painful when one is among families not riven by such divisions. It’s a terrible irony that that should be the case at Mass.

     This morning I pray for the comfort of all such isolated Catholics, but especially for the younger ones: the young adults who have embraced the Faith and have found that part of the price is the astonishment, the cynicism, and perhaps the open derision of those who share their blood. Theirs is a hard road to travel, much harder than mine, for I am inured to it. I pray that He who spilled His blood for our sakes will grant them the grace they need to remain strong, especially in remaining staunch before the urgings of the secular world.