For the challenge now is to give America a new birth of freedom rightly understood as built upon those four truths; a new birth of freedom re-cemented to a foundation of transcendent moral truths about the human person, to the principle of government-by-consent, to a recognition of the priority of civil society over the state, and to an existential affirmation of the linkage between personal and civic virtue and liberty lived nobly. The challenge can be met only by a robustly evangelical Catholicism that can boldly proclaim Jesus Christ as the answer to the question that is every human life, and can do so because conversion has been deepened by effective preaching, catechesis, and formation. That challenge can be met only by a demanding, full-time, and evangelically passionate Catholicism that models communities of compassion and nobility, communities whose lives pose a sharp contrast to the radical individualism and loneliness of postmodernity, so poignantly described in recent months by Pope Francis. That challenge can be met only by a public Catholicism that articulates in a compelling way the truths on which any civilized society rests, such as the truth of the inalienable right to life from conception until natural death, the truth about marriage, the truth that religious freedom is the first freedom, and the truth that each of us is bound to live our freedom in ways that serve the common good and the least of the Lord’s brethren.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 04:20:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015