Sort of political Monday

Bad reasons to be Catholic
There is one, and only one, good reason to be Catholic. That good reason is because you believe that it, more than any other church, is the church that Jesus Christ founded to carry on the remembrance of him decreed at the last supper.

There are many bad reasons. Too many to cover here.

You can be certain, however, that if your motive for being Catholic is political it is a mistake.

Most people could figure that out for themselves if the reasons for being Catholic were overtly political. Unfortunately, it is ridiculously easy to disguise a political motive as a moral one. It is easy to convince yourself that you are really concerned about "the poor" or about young women (or even young men) being pressured into doing what they don't want by a society obsessed with sex when what you really want to do is run other people's lives for them.

Vindication?
A good friend of mine used to collect what she called vindications. These were cases where history or recent science seemed to justify some bit of Catholic sexual teaching. One problem, of course, was that she only noticed the stuff that appeared to vindicate the things she wanted to believe. You would find contraindications for Catholic sexual teachings just as easily if that was all you were looking for.

The deeper problem, however, is in the word "vindication". I saw this recently in a Catholic writer I otherwise admire. She'd seen some bit of social science that appeared to vindicate some bit of Catholic teaching about sex and marriage and had written an impossibly smug column sneering at feminists that they may as well face it, "the Catholic Church is right about everything". If there was ever a clause that ought to set off alarm bells in the person who wrote it ....

Catholic social teachings
As I've said before, I think most of the hullabaloo about Catholic sexual teaching is just that. The debate, in so far as there ever was one, is really over. The real damage is being done with Catholic social teaching.

It's surprising the number of Catholics who think that anything and everything the church has ever said about the mass is either optional or open to endless interpretation there are who will turn around and quote Catholic social teaching as infallible TRUTH whispered into the ears of popes and church doctors by doves that have flown directly from God's shoulder.

There are, of course, things embedded in Catholic social teachings that do have such status. The absolute necessity to respect the dignity of persons for example. Just how this is done is, however, open for considerable discussion.

Perhaps the most dangerous Catholic idea out there is the notion that the problem is just that people won't get along. This perspective is not unique to Catholics by any stretch of the imagination but it is deeply ingrained among us. I think it is a misapplication of the concept of natural law whereby people arrive at the the conclusion that the default position is harmony and any time there is human dissonance it must be because someone or everyone is doing something wrong.

Conflict is part of human life. It will always be with us. The greatest danger is not that a conflict be allowed to take place but that it will be smothered in good will.

The flip side of this is the conflict that is maintained forever because we won't let one side win. I once heard a devout Catholic defend terrorism by saying, 'They have no choice because they keep losing at conventional war.' Therefore, this holy person had convinced herself, it was okay for someone to blow themselves up at a pizzeria literally tearing arms and legs off of the innocent teenagers  sitting there.