Thought for the Day - October 1

Praying for the future involves interpreting the conflicts and confusions of today. Seeing and interpreting are often at war with each other.

The Catholic Church’s real struggle of the future will begin with questions of general morality, how society perceives itself and how permissive is too permissive for the individual. The struggle of religious freedom is now frequently reduced to a conflict between sexual morality and a neutral individual state of equality. Morality is viewed as a remnant of dying generation. Desire rules. Instant gratification rules. The struggle of religious freedom is the search to renew the conversation about responsibility, consequence, sin. Many Christian object to be called sinners even as they ignore all of the commandments. At the center of this struggle, sexual freedom has been allowed and encouraged to attach itself to personal freedom, the freedom of the individual in such a way that in the eyes of each younger generation there is no difference, no separation between the idea of sexual freedom and the idea of personal freedom.

The struggle between the Catholic Church and the secular world is more than a war of words, more than a call to maintain a posture out of step with what is promoted to society each and every day. The real struggle now centers on what is sacred, what is divine, who is capable of creating, interpreting, and maintaining the desires of a devout public. This struggle shuffles all the cards around, shuffles definitions. This struggle aims to place the Church in the spotlight of ridicule and misinformation. This struggle wants to destabilize the Church’s role in the lives of all its believers and in the various communities where it provides needed services.

Find Yourself, Find Time for Prayer, Find Time to Serve God