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Twelve Things to Remember if the SCOTUS Decision Upsets You

Twelve Things to Remember if the SCOTUS Decision Upsets You

Twelve Things to Remember if the SCOTUS Decision Upsets You

July 3, 2015 by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

The Supreme Court decision allowing gay “marriage” in the United States has upset all right minded Christians, and rightly so.
It is pretty clear that the Supreme Court has rubber stamped a widespread rejection of Christian morality by a large segment of the American people.
Not only has the Supreme Court ratified same sex “marriage” but they have overturned majority opinions of the people, set themselves up as arbiters of human morality, trampled on states’ rights, ignored not only historic Christian teaching, but the understanding of marriage held by all people at all times and in all cultures down through history.
We’re right to be upset. We have the right to protest the decision. Many would say we are obliged to engage in civil disobedience.
OK. But we should also take a deep breath, put things in perspective and keep the faith.
Here are twelve things to remember if you’re not happy with the SCOTUS decision:
1. In our society marriage is in transition - this is not only a question of same sex marriage. For the last fifty years, since the widespread acceptance of artificial contraception, sexuality and therefore marriage has been changing. No fault divorce, co habitation, promiscuity, prostitution, pornography plus increased mobility, feminism, the breakdown of the extended family–all these factors have contributed to the transition. We’re in a storm. Hold on tight. Buckle your seat belts. We’re in for more turbulence, but remember God is still in control. The church is built on a rock. Keep the faith.
2. The decision safeguards religious freedom - I’m inclined to be pessimistic about this and agree with George Weigel and many other commentators who believe that this will be tested before long and religious institutions that disapprove of same sex marriage will be targeted. But let’s hope they’re wrong and there is a strong backlash to strengthen the religious freedom protections. This could happen. Things change for the better as well as for the worse. Pray and hope and thank God that protections of religious freedom are still in place.
3. The battle may be lost, but the war is not over - Supreme Court decisions have been reversed. Constitutional amendments have been made. State legislators can devise new laws to cope with the changing understanding of marriage that grant people freedoms while protecting religious freedom and putting a fence around true marriage. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work dealing with the situation in positive and creative ways. This includes increased and better catechesis for our families and society and it means a new commitment to our marriages and families.
4. We’re supposed to treat all people with respect and compassion - Not everyone who experiences same sex attraction are radical homosexualists campaigning naked in the streets. People with same sex attraction are not all rabid atheists looking to destroy the church and persecute Christians. We have to put things in perspective and give ourselves a reality check. This doesn’t mean we approve of homosexual actions. It just means we should be thoughtful, aware and intelligent in our responses. We must welcome everyone to the joyful and difficult adventure of following Jesus Christ in the way of charity, chastity and holiness.
5. This is an ecumenical moment - This issue will show us who are true brothers and sisters are in Christ. Conservative evangelicals have stood up for Biblical morality. We can see now that they are our brothers and sisters. The liberal Protestants, on the other hand, have gone the way of the world. This is what usually happens when there is a crisis of persecution or possible persecution: true, Spirit filled disciples of the Lord Jesus suddenly see one another with clarity and charity and they embrace.
6. This will provide a sifting in the Catholic Church - The weeds and the wheat grow together in the Catholic Church. We need to face up to the fact that, according to some polls, a majority of Catholics approve of same sex marriage. These include prominent lay people, priests, deacons and probably some bishops. For a long time we have been papering over the cracks in our church. We’ve kept silent about the things that separate us. We’ve glossed over the differences for the sake of an outward show of unity. As this issue continues to impact the church we will see a sifting. Already I’ve had people leave my parish because I have preached against same sex marriage. Others will go. Many will leave the Catholic Church in disgust. They will have had enough. They may form their own schism or they may join Protestant churches, but the sifting will come and I, for one, think it is a cause for thanksgiving.

7. True Marriage will be strengthened - When something like this happens everything becomes clear for many people. Things were muddy. Things were lukewarm. Things were ambiguous and people were just drifting along. Then when the devil pushes just a bit too far and too fast people wake up. I can see a grass roots movement already emerging in which Christians of all traditions come together to strengthen marriage, strengthen masculinity, strengthen femininity and strengthen marriage. I can see parishes that focus on the family. I can see new communities growing up that focus on the family, and out of this will come a fresh understanding of God’s plan for the human race within the joyful gift of the family.
8. The Sacrament of Marriage Will Shine More Brightly - From this crisis will come a new wave of teaching about the beauty, depth and supernatural sanctity of marriage. This is always what has happened. Read church history. When a truth is challenged by persecution or heresy, by state oppression or moral depravity the truth bounces back ever stronger. When darkness encroaches the light shines ever more brightly. This will happen not because we make it happen, but because that is the very nature of truth and light. Truth and light prevail because they are positive. Darkness and death are negatives. They seem terrible, but they are the absence of life and light and therefore they cannot be sustained.
9. This is a Penitential Moment - The LGBT issue is not an isolated cultural phenomenon. It is part of a larger sexual revolution that has taken place over the last fifty years, and most of us, to a greater or lesser extent have been caught up in this whirlwind. This sexual revolution includes every sin against chastity. All of us should examine our consciences. Have we chosen the easy way of artificial contraception? Have we chosen to be sterilized because we “couldn’t afford more children”? Have we chosen the way of quickie divorce? Re-marriage? Have we turned a blind eye to our kids’ co habitation? Have we attended weddings we knew were illicit just to be nice? Have we used pornography or prostitutes? Have we solved a crisis pregnancy with abortion? Have we watched sex scenes in movies or TV with family members without comment? Most of us have been caught up in the moral maelstrom. It’s time we got our minds and hearts clear and committed ourselves to the fight for chastity.
10. Chastity Will Triumph - Remember the virtue of chastity is not the same thing as celibacy. Celibacy means sacrificing sexual intimacy and marriage for the sake of the kingdom. All are called to chastity. Not all are called to celibacy. Chastity means being faithful in our sexuality to the church’s teaching on marriage. It’s simple: no sex outside marriage. This is not a prohibition to cause us sorrow and pain, but a discipline that leads us to the faithfulness of marriage through which we learn the difficult lessons of love. This is truth. This will triumph as the faithful catch the vision.
11. Remember Humility, Humor and Humanity - Stop and remember to put all things in perspective. The SCOTUS decision is alarming and upsetting. However, do five seriously stupid lawyers really think they can overturn God’s plan for humanity? Get real. When you see it like that it’s a case of the emperor’s new clothes. What they’ve done is dumb. Smile, laugh and rise above it. Even if they tax your business, lock up your priests, scream in your face, burn your churches and send you to jail, laugh and rise above it. Remember Christians sing in prison, joke on the scaffold, are courteous to their torturers, joke with their executioners and wave cheerfully to the crowd as they put their head on the block. Things have been worse. Be of good cheer.
12. Do Not Be Afraid! - I will never forget the first words of Pope St John Paul II as he stepped on to the balcony. “Do not Be Afraid!” This is the constant refrain throughout the gospel. “Do Not Fear!” says the angel to Mary and Joseph. “Do not be Afraid!” says Jesus to the disciples in the boat in the stormy night. “Fear Not!” says the angel of the resurrection. “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind!” says the magnificent St Paul to his young friend Timothy.

Pope John Paul II: 'A man of integrity and prayer'--CNNfyi.com - School Tools Profiles

CNNfyi.com - School Tools Profiles -- Pope John Paul II: 'A man of integrity and prayer'

Pope John Paul II: 'A man of integrity and prayer'

In this story:

Not a happy childhood
Poetry, religion and theater
The priesthood years: Rebel with a cause
A genial and charming companion
Learned and scholarly
An emotional man
The papal years: Charisma and restoration
Vibrations in the air
The world is his business
'A culture of death'
A mixed record
by John Christensen


(CNN) - He is known as the bishop of Rome, vicar of Christ, successor of St. Peter, prince of Apostles and the supreme pontiff of the Universal Church. Other titles include Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy and the Sovereign of Vatican City. But the man best known as Pope John Paul II was born Karol Jozef Wojtyla and is the only pope featured in a comic book -- Marvel did the honor in 1983.
Wojtyla became the first Slavic pope. He was also the first non-Italian pope in 455 years (the last was Adrian VI in 1523) and, at 58, the youngest pope in 132 years.
Friends in Wadowice, a town of 8,000 Catholics and 2,000 Jews 35 miles southwest of Krakow, called Wojtyla "Lolek." Lolek was born in 1920, the second son of Karol Wojtyla (voy TIH wah) Sr., a retired army officer and tailor, and Emilia Kaczorowska Wojtyla, a schoolteacher of Lithuanian descent.
The Wojtylas were strict Catholics, but did not share the anti-Semitic views of many Poles. One of Lolek's playmates was Jerzy Kluger, a Jew who many years later would play a key role as a go-between for John Paul II and Israeli officials when the Vatican extended long-overdue diplomatic recognition to Israel.
Kluger told The New York Times that he spent many afternoons sitting in the kitchen next to the Wojtylas' coal stove listening to Lolek's father tell stories about Greece, Rome and Poland.
Lolek, in turn, went to the Klugers' 10-room apartment overlooking the town square and listened to music performed by a string quartet of two Jews and two Catholics.
"The people in the Vatican do not know Jews, and previous popes did not know Jews," Kluger told the Times. "But this pope is a friend of the Jewish people because he knows Jewish people."
Indeed, Wojtyla became the first pope to visit a synagogue and the first to visit the memorial at Auschwitz to victims of the Holocaust. In ending the Catholic-Jewish estrangement, he called Jews "our elder brothers."

Not a happy childhood

As a schoolboy, Wojtyla was both an excellent student and an athlete who skied, hiked, kayaked and swam in the Skawa River. But death hovered over the family, making itself felt first when an infant sister died before Lolek was born.
It struck again in 1929 when his mother died of heart and kidney problems, just a month before Lolek's 9th birthday. And when he was 12, Lolek's 26-year-old brother Edmund, a physician in the town of Bielsko, died of scarlet fever.
Lolek had two near-misses with mortality in his youth. He was hit once by a streetcar and again by a truck in 1944 while a college student. The injuries left the otherwise robust pope -- 5-feet-10 1/2 inches, 175 pounds in his prime -- with a slight stoop to his shoulders that is particularly noticeable when he is tired.
"The pope's youth wasn't happy," Joseph Vandrisse, a former French missionary and now a journalist, told Time magazine. "He has meditated a lot on the meaning of suffering."
Even as an adult he has been beset by physical difficulties, including a dislocated shoulder, a broken thigh that led to femur-replacement surgery, the removal of a precancerous tumor from his colon and an attempt on his life by a gunman whose two bullets wounded him in the abdomen, right arm and left hand.
Lolek and his father lived in a Spartan, one-room apartment behind the church, and the father devoted himself to raising his son. He sewed Lolek's clothes and had the boy study in a chilly room to toughen him and develop his concentration.
"He tried to develop the same discipline in his son that he instilled in his soldiers," one of Lolek's childhood friends told People magazine.
But the father didn't forget about play. A friend remembers entering the Wojtylas' apartment and finding father and son playing soccer with a ball made of rags.

Poetry, religion and theater

Wojtyla's passions in those early years were poetry, religion and the theater. After graduating from secondary school in 1938, he and his father moved to Krakow where he enrolled at Jagiellonian University to study literature and philosophy.
He also joined an experimental theater group and participated in poetry readings and literary discussion groups. Friends say he was an intense and gifted actor, and a fine singer.
After the Germans invaded Poland, he escaped deportation and imprisonment in late 1940 by taking a job as a stone cutter in a quarry.
A few months later, in February 1941, Wojtyla's 61-year-old father died, leaving his dream of seeing his son commit to the priesthood unfulfilled. The pope has said that his father once told him, "I will not live long and would like to be certain before I die that you will commit yourself to God's service."
It was another 18 months, however, before Wojtyla began studying at an underground seminary in Krakow and registered for theology courses at the university.
He continued his studies, acted and worked in a chemical plant until August 1944. But when the Germans began rounding up Polish men, Wojtyla took refuge in the archbishop of Krakow's residence and remained there until the end of the war.
He was ordained in 1946 in Krakow, and spent much of the next few years studying -- he earned two master's degrees and a doctorate -- before taking up priestly duties as an assistant pastor in Krakow in 1949.

The priesthood years: Rebel with a cause

In the early years of his priesthood, Wojtyla served as a chaplain to university students at St. Florian's Church in Krakow. The church was conveniently located next to Jagiellonian University, where he was working on a second doctorate in philosophy.
When the university's theology department was abolished in 1954, presumably under pressure from the communist government, the entire faculty reconstituted itself at the seminary of Krakow and Wojtyla continued his studies there.
He was also hired that same year by the Catholic University of Lublin -- the only Catholic university in the communist world -- as a nontenured professor. The arrangement turned Wojtyla into a commuter, shuttling between Lublin and Krakow on the overnight train to teach and counsel in one city and study in the other.
He also founded and ran a service that dealt with marital problems. Time magazine called it "perhaps the most successful marriage institute in Christianity."
In 1956, Wojtyla was appointed to the chair of ethics at Catholic University, and his ascent through the church hierarchy got a boost in 1958 when he was named the auxiliary bishop of Krakow.
When the Vatican Council II began the deliberations in 1962 that would revolutionize the church, Wojtyla was one of its intellectual leaders and took special interest in religious freedom. The same year, he was named the acting archbishop of Krakow when the incumbent died.

A genial and charming companion

Wojtyla is, by all accounts, a genial and charming companion, a good listener and not above what Time calls "good-natured kidding."
"He's a very brilliant man, and very intelligent and very holy," says Margaret Steinfels, editor of Commonweal magazine in New York. "I'm told that he is extremely amiable and affable, and wonderful to talk and dine with."
He also was shrewd enough not to let his distaste for communism show. His appointment as cardinal in 1967 by Pope Paul VI was welcomed by the government. Wojtyla was considered "tough but flexible" and a moderate reformer, but an improvement on old-school hard-liners who were unalterably opposed to communism and communists.
Wojtyla bided his time, engaging in a strategy that honored Catholic beliefs and traditions while accommodating the communist government.
The Catholic Church in Poland served as an important outlet for the expression of national feeling. In his book "John Paul II," George Blazynski writes that Wojtyla encouraged this expression in a form that did not "provoke a brutal reaction by forces within and perhaps without the country."
But he also proved to be what Current Biography called "a resilient enemy of Communism and champion of human rights, a powerful preacher and sophisticated intellectual able to defeat Marxists in their own line of dialogue."
According to George Weigel, who has written extensively about the pope, Wojtyla demanded permits to build churches, defended youth groups and ordained priests to work underground in Czechoslovakia.
Wojtyla was once asked if he feared retribution from government officials.
"I'm not afraid of them," he replied. "They are afraid of me."

Learned and scholarly

In spite of all his activities, Wojtyla didn't slight his scholarly duties.
He wrote a treatise in 1960 called "Love and Responsibility."
His second doctoral thesis -- "Evaluation of the Possibility of Constructing a Christian Ethic Based on the System of Max Scheler" -- was published that same year.
In 1969, the Polish Theological Society published Wojtyla's "The Acting Person," a dense philosophical tract on phenomenology that Wojtyla discussed during a U.S. visit in 1978.
"All sorts of people turned up," recalls Jude Dougherty, chairman of the philosophy department at Catholic University in Washington, where the talk was held. "It was extremely well-received by people who were familiar with the subject. And those who weren't were awed to hear a cardinal who was very learned and very scholarly."
Weigel wrote that in 1976, when Wojtyla was invited to lead spiritual exercises before Pope Paul VI at a Lenten retreat, his first three references were to the Bible, St. Augustine and German philosopher Martin Heidegger.
In 1977, Wojtyla gave a talk at a university in Milan, Italy, called "The Problem of Creating Culture through Human Praxis."

An emotional man

Although he had established himself as a formidable intellectual presence -- as well as an able administrator and fund-raiser -- few suspected that the Sacred College of Cardinals would choose Wojtyla as the next pope after the death of John Paul I in September 1978.
But when the cardinals were unable to agree on a candidate after seven rounds of balloting, Wojtyla was chosen on the eighth round late in the afternoon of October 16.
He reportedly formally accepted his election before the cardinals with tears in his eyes. (Associates say the pope is an emotional man and is often moved to tears by children.)
"I was afraid to receive this nomination," he told the crowd from a balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square, "but I did it in the spirit of obedience to Our Lord and in the total confidence in His mother, the most holy Madonna."
Weigel says that when Wojtyla's election was announced, Yuri Andropov, leader of the Soviet Union's KGB intelligence agency, warned the Politburo that there could be trouble ahead. He was right.

The papal years: Charisma and restoration

Less than eight months after his inauguration, Wojtyla returned to Poland as Pope John Paul II for nine cathartic days.
Huge, adoring crowds met him wherever he went and were an acute source of embarrassment to the communist government. Officially, the country was atheistic; it was also suffering from food shortages. The pope added to the authorities' discomfort by reminding his fellow Poles of their human rights.
"His secretary told me that was the great moment," says Robert Moynihan, editor and publisher of the magazine Inside the Vatican. "There was a crowd of 1 million people, and he told them 'You are men. You have dignity.
Don't crawl on your bellies.' It was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union."
In the fall, the pope flew to Ireland and celebrated a Mass for 1.2 million people -- at the time, the largest Mass ever given. He continued on to the United States where his visits to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Des Moines, Iowa, Chicago and Washington took on the trappings of major holidays.
The cities threw open their arms in a welcome that Current Biography said was of "staggering, unprecedented magnitude."
"Private citizens, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, flocked by the millions to glimpse the Pope," it reported. "It was only a few short years ago that such mass forgetfulness of sectarian difference would have been unthinkable (and, politically, suicidal) in the United States."

Vibrations in the air

There was more to it than forgetfulness, for John Paul has displayed that charisma during 176 visits to 117 countries over the past 20 years. And as Time noted in naming him Man of the Year in 1994, he generates an electricity "unmatched by anyone else on earth."
In his book "The Making of Popes: 1978," Andrew M. Greeley offers a close-up of the pope working a crowd: "His moves, his presence, his smile, his friendliness, his gestures ...have pleased everyone... He is great with crowds -- shaking hands, smiling, talking, kissing babies."
The Los Angeles Times reported that Poles waited for hours to see the Pope when he returned in 1997. At his appearance, the crowds grew silent, "some falling to their knees and weeping as John Paul parts the crowd on a path to the altar."
"Such an incredible moment," Krzysztof Gonet, mayor of Nowej Soli, told the Times. "You can feel the vibrations in the air."
Not only is he the most traveled pope in history -- he speaks eight languages, learning Spanish after he became the pope -- he also has been quick to use the media and technology to his advantage.
In the early years of his papacy, he steered the Vatican into satellite transmissions and producing videocassettes.
While other popes stayed close to Rome, remote and seemingly unapproachable, John Paul's wide-ranging appearances -- enhanced by an actor's sense of theater -- became worldwide news events.
When the pope visited Cuba in January 1998, hard-line Cuban leader Fidel Castro set aside his drab olive fatigues and put on a business suit to welcome him. Castro also attended a number of functions for the pope and escorted the frail Holy Father with almost touching deference.

The world is his business

Not content with tending merely to church affairs, John Paul has made the world's business his business -- especially in regard to human rights.
"His great hope is to awaken the entire world to the dignity and responsibility of defending human rights," Cardinal Roger Etchegaray told The Washington Post.
His criticism of such dictators as Alfred Stroessner in Paraguay, Augusto Pinochet in Chile and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines encouraged opposition movements that eventually brought down those governments.
His support for the Solidarity movement in Poland -- priests concealed messages from John Paul to imprisoned union leaders in their robes -- was a key to the downfall of communism in Poland.
When a Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca shot the pope twice in an assassination attempt in 1981, Agca first told the authorities that he was acting for the Bulgarian intelligence service. The Bulgarians were known to do the bidding of the KGB, but Agca later recanted that part of his confession.
It didn't matter to the pope who was responsible, and later he visited Agca in his cell and forgave him. The astonished Agca said, "How is it that I could not kill you?"
But the pope hasn't played favorites, and the West has come in for its share of criticism, too. During that first triumphal visit to the United States, he warned his hosts about the dangers of materialism, selfishness and secularism, and suggested lowering the standard of living and sharing the wealth with the Third World.
The message didn't play well and still doesn't. But that hasn't stopped the pope from insisting that materialism -- he regards capitalism and communism as flip sides of the same coin -- is not the answer.
"This world," he says, "is not capable of making man happy."
Prayer and faith can make man happy, he believes, and he leads by example. Indeed, he is so often in prayer that he is said to make his decisions "on his knees."
He has been found kneeling on the ground in the middle of winter before a statue, and deep in prayer with his head resting on an altar. Even when not interacting with others, he has been seen moving his lips, apparently in prayer.

'A culture of death'

The Catholic Church John Paul II inherited in 1978 was in shambles. Reforms begun by the Vatican Council II shook the church to its foundation, and the tumult within the church could be compared to the turmoil in the outer world during the 1960s era of peace, love and protests over the war in Vietnam.
"The church went through a tremendous crisis," says Moynihan. "It knocked the church to its knees. It lost one-third of its priests and a tremendous number of nuns."
John Paul II embarked on nothing less than a restoration of the church, one grounded in its conservative tradition.
His rejection of contraception and abortion has been absolute and unbending, and his almost dictatorial manner has not always played well.
People magazine observed that the pope -- who has had no qualms about silencing those within the church family who disagree with him -- is "more given to self-discipline than self-doubt."
"It's a mistake to apply American democratic procedures to the faith and truth," the pope has said. "You cannot take a vote on the truth."
Hans Kung, a liberal Catholic theologian who has crossed swords with the pope, told Time, "This pope is a disaster or our church. There's charm there, but he's closed-minded."
The Economist magazine reported that another troublesome theologian, Bernard Haring, compared the questioning he underwent at the Vatican "to the treatment he once received under Hitler."
Margaret Steinfels, the editor of the Catholic magazine Commonweal and a more moderate critic of the pope, accuses him of polarizing issues. In his opposition to contraception, abortion and euthanasia, for example, he has accused the industrialized world of fostering "a culture of death."
"I don't deny that there are many problems in the U.S. and the West," she said, "but I don't think that calling it a 'culture of death' and the church the 'church of life' is a useful way of dealing with things. I disagree with his metaphors."
The pope also has confounded Steinfels and many others with his insistence that church doctrine prohibits the ordination of women. In affirming his position in a letter to bishops in 1994, he wrote in uncompromising fashion, "This judgment is to be definitively held by all the church's faithful."

A mixed record

The pope has often explained himself with dense, closely reasoned and deeply philosophical encyclicals. His writings fill more than 150 volumes.
"It's first-rate prose, and work that will last," says Dougherty of Catholic University.
"Trouble is, they're not all that easy to read. His book is a very good document, too."
In 1994, the pope wrote answers to written questions posed to him by Italian journalist Vittorio Messori. Messori then edited them into "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," a book that became a best-seller in many countries.
Many observers say John Paul's record is mixed. Although the church has expanded in Africa and Latin America -- the latter accounts for about half of the estimated 1 billion Catholics -- it has lost followers in the industrialized world, including Poland.
His inflexibility on issues with international ramifications -- birth control in Africa or using condoms to prevent the transmission of HIV -- has drawn strong criticism.
Nevertheless, said Father Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the Catholic magazine First Things, "This pope has the church in a stronger position than it's been in since the Protestant division in the 16th century. When has the Catholic Church had as much respect as it does today?"
It is doubtful there has ever been a pope who has so successfully translated his strength, determination and faith into such widespread respect and goodwill. In a world of shifting trends and leaders of questionable virtue, John Paul II has been a towering figure at the moral center of modern life.
"This is not a pope who looks at the public opinion polls," says Father Thomas Reese, editor of America magazine and author of the book "Inside the Vatican." "He says what he thinks is right and wrong from conviction. And that's why people admire him. He's a man of integrity and prayer, even if they don't agree with him."