by Heather King
"You seem to avoid some of the tense battles among Catholics on left and right. Issues like the Latin Mass, abortion in the health care bill, what the Church did, should have done in regards to sex abuse scandal, etc. Do you think the hot button issues of the day are important for the average Catholic to engage in and fret about? I have and it's making me so upset, angry, stressed, etc. I wonder if I am losing my focus on the real spiritual battle?
Should I be e-mailing, discussing, lobbying, debating people, friends, family on the wrongness say of abortion or gay marriage or the culture of death, etc. or should I be inside a church praying, doing small acts of penance, works of mercy that don't seem to amount to much while the whole world keeps moving in the wrong direction...?"
In particular, this guy had spoken of his frustration with Facebook, in which he apparently gets involved in doctrinal discussions, sees it as his duty to take a stand, and tries to set people straight, at which point they more or less turn on him.
My response had basically been: If the discussions frustrate you, DON’T ENGAGE IN THEM. Figure out what you’re for, not what you’re against. The road to Christ is lonely, long, and almost unbelievably rocky, and though it takes place in community, we have to also walk it alone, often in great anguish and distress, often for decades if not our whole lives.
But obviously a whole movement is afoot among young people in the Church—which they unfortunately learn from us older people—that is based on vitriol, grandstanding, contempt, finger-pointing, and the drive to “win," because this earnest young seeker wrote me several more times expressing his frustration. So by way of a kind of open letter, I thought I would try to make it a little clearer why I “avoid some of the tense battles among Catholics on left and right.”
Continue to read Heather's open letter here...
About Heather: I'm an ex-lawyer, ex-drunk Catholic convert with three memoirs: Parched (the dark years); Redeemed (crawling toward the light); and Shirt of Flame (forthcoming) (my year of wandering around Koreatown, L.A. "with" St. Therese of Lisieux, a cloistered 19th-c. French nun).
When the unstoppable bullet hits the impenetrable wall, we find the religious experience. It is precisely here that one will grow...Heroism could be redefined for our time as the ability to stand paradox.
--Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow
“The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for.”
--Flannery O’Connor
You see cinnamon teal, which are marsh ducks, in the L.A. River because there are no more marshes, and I feel like, it’s like the same [as] with people: Only the tough survive in Los Angeles. --Lewis McAdams, writer, poet, co-founder of FoLAR, Friends of the Los Angeles River
When the unstoppable bullet hits the impenetrable wall, we find the religious experience. It is precisely here that one will grow...Heroism could be redefined for our time as the ability to stand paradox.
--Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow
“The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for.”
--Flannery O’Connor
You see cinnamon teal, which are marsh ducks, in the L.A. River because there are no more marshes, and I feel like, it’s like the same [as] with people: Only the tough survive in Los Angeles. --Lewis McAdams, writer, poet, co-founder of FoLAR, Friends of the Los Angeles River
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