Intolerance for Advocates of Christian Morality

 Discussion on The American Spectator · 171 comments

Phil Robertson Won't Shutup and the Media Hates It http://spectator.org/blog/57213/phil-robertson-wont-shut-and-media-hates-it

You commented · 7 days ago

In the 1980s I was shocked to see people interpret current events to announce that God sent AIDS to punish Gays. We've come a long way from there, and Phil Robertson is a welcome relief. Fornication is so common and so accepted today, but fornicators don't organize act up campaigns to discredit those who call the behavior a failing under Christian ideals -- neither do the adulterers or the swindlers. Yet gays and abortionists are so insecure about their behavior that they have to reinvent morality and turn it into a public relations contest. Why is it that intolerance is never about mistreatment of those who advocate Christian principles?

Knights La Salette Youtube

comment on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gL1RvQdj7Bc

Recently I was listening to Robert George, a Princeton philosopher who is staunchly Catholic.  He similarly has a grim view of the challenge from the left, but is uplifting and optimistic.  The download is here http://94b3a76e023813757a0f-ae89554633acf7b3ce455bd027c59041.r69.cf5.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/MiltGeorgep102513.mp3 -- it is the Dec. 12, 2013 episode at Miltrosenberg.com, an archive of excellent intellectual conversations on a broad range of topics.

The Knights La Salette youtube is not exactly inspirational. The theme is not a new tactic, "who we are is who we were" is close to the ploy used to rally struggling Germans in the early 30's as the new Arians.  The Fulton Sheen videos remembered so nostalgically are really not that endearing (see https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fulton+sheen&sm=1).  The Knights speaker remembers Luther as a "Judas-like figure" -- John Paul II was far more respectful (seehttp://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/06/world/pope-praises-luther-in-an-appeal-for-unity-on-protest-anniversary.html).  The speaker harkens back to the astonishing St. Edmund Campion who recited latin prayers as he was martyred by Anglican Christians.  Then the speaker laments a counter-revolutionary near victory in England thwarted by an agreement to lay down arms and negotiate in good faith (as though compelling Catholic faith by the force of arms was something to be admired).

The growing darkness in America is troubling and it may become a challenge as profound as the darkness of WW2 atrocities. Is God calling us to be faithful and tragic witnesses like Ann Frank? To be secret resistance like Dietrich von Bonhoeffer?  To be open but respectful dissidents in the pattern of MLK and Gandhi?  To be fierce militants honoring the memory of Fulton Sheen?

I wonder if the nostalgia for 1950s and 1960s Catholicism is really a psychological avoidance of the new challenge for our age; this nostalgia seems to be mostly about finding fault in believers who are not Catholic enough, and much less about compassion or about preparation for facing the prospects of risking our lives to follow Jesus.  If there are Christians claiming to embrace faith as militants, are they sending contingents to stand with Christian brethren in China, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and in other places where just attending Mass provokes reprisals?   I feel that my failure to stand up for faith on those frontiers -- and risk what they risk -- is nothing to be proud of.

When the life risking moment comes, some may be compelled to draw a sword and strike the opponent like the reprimanded Peter during the arrest of Jesus (who then humiliated himself by denying any association with our Lord). Isn't it striking that this most humiliated man was elevated to leader of the faith and then served that role admirably?  And isn't it striking that before he became the Risen Christ, the abandoned Jesus wasn't just tortured and killed, he was stripped naked and publicly humiliated?

My sense of the coming darkness is that prideful, ego-centered, self-important, self-assured performers like Fulton Sheen are of no use at all.  I think the movie OF GODS AND MEN Of Gods and Men #2 Movie CLIP - Nearest In Love (2010) HD embraces the challenge far more appropriately.  Can we continue to be servants to the needy in the face of great adversity?  Right now we are so spent from whining about the adversity, that there is precious little energy left for service to the needy.  Perhaps it's time to try the reverse of those allocations -- it might be miraculous.

What difference Christmas makes

from http://neveryetmelted.com/2013/12/24/wall-street-journal-christmas-eve-editorial-2/

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.
Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.
But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s….

And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

This editorial was written in 1949 by the late Vermont C. Royster and has been published annually since.