On the Eve of the HHS Ruling: Fighting For Souls

Our freedom is a gift but it can never be taken for granted as those who have gone before us were certainly aware.  In our own day our government expects us to violate our conscience and our Catholic beliefs.  They believe the mandate that requires us to offer free contraception to be just a small matter—“no big deal”.  In fact, some politicians have called the Church “childish” concerning this issue.

But this is not the first time Christians were forced to violate their conscience in a supposed “small matter”.  Centuries ago, when early Christians refused to violate their conscience by honoring Caesar as a god, the Roman Emperor Nero himself took those Christian men and women, covered them with tar and straw and lit them on fire, making them into human torches to burn before him and his guests.  Or during the 16th century the “small matter” required by King Henry VIII was to force his subjects, which included men like Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More, to simply acknowledge him as Supreme Head of the Church of England—a title he gave himself after he broke with Rome over his divorce and remarriage. Their failure to violate their conscience also led them to lose their heads.  And we even saw it again during the early part of the last century when the Mexican government, under President Calles, forbid priests to celebrate the Mass, ensuring many of those who violated this unjust law a place among the martyrs.  All of these and many other examples throughout history were also considered by their governments to be “no big deal.”

Men and women have always faced difficult choices: to do a right or a wrong; to follow God’s law or man’s; to be with the Church or against Her. St. John the Baptist made that choice; the early Christian martyrs did, too; so did the Mexican Catholics of the last century (which is retold in the recent movie, For Greater Glory). All of these brave men and women made the choice to stand true to their conscience; to uphold the laws of God; to defend religious liberty.  And we, too, must do the same.

Luckily for us we have heroes like St. John the Baptist who upheld the law of God in the face of political pressure.  Today we need to be just as brave.  We, too, must give good witness to Jesus Christ, live our faith, and stand up for the truth of the Church whether convenient or not.  And we must do it even to the point of shedding our blood, if necessary.

Let us take advantage of these special days of prayer and penance for religious freedom in this decisive moment in our nation’s history.  Let us join our Bishops, pray our rosaries, offer our Communions, and submit to penance and sacrifice of all kinds.  Let us do all that we can to defend the freedoms our ancestors fought for—and like St. John the Baptist and many that came after him let us be willing to lose our heads rather than to lose our souls!

Fr. Don Siciliano is the pastor of St. Bernard of Clairvaux Catholic Church in Cincinnati, OH

 

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