A thought and a prayer for my fellow Catholics and other Christians (and myself)

I suppose we ought not to be surprised by the fact that many Catholics and other Christians are swept along by cultural trends, no matter how antithetical they are to Biblical principles and the firm and constant teaching of the Church. 'Twas ever thus. (Indeed, 'twas thus for the ancient Hebrews, too, as scripture makes more than abundantly clear.) And Christians who fall in line with a trend always find ways to say that the trend, whatever it is, is compatible with Christian faith--even dictated by it! It's hard for human beings to actually be countercultural, and Christians are human beings just like everybody else.

So when Marxism is in vogue, there will be self-proclaimed Christian Marxists. When Fascism is fashionable, there will be self-identified Christian fascists. When racial subordination and segregation is the cultural norm, we'll baptize it. When eugenics is popular among the cognoscenti, there will be Christians claiming that eugenic practices and policies constitute Christian love in practice. If polyamory becomes the next cause embraced by the beautiful people and the cultural elite, we will start hearing about the Christian case for group marriage---"love cannot be arbitrarily confined to pairs." And on and on.

Being human, we crave approval and we like to fit in. Moreover, we human beings are naturally influenced by the ways of thinking favored by those who are regarded in a culture as the sophisticated and important people. When push comes to shove, it's really hard to be true to Christian faith; the social and personal costs are too high. We Christians praise the martyrs and honor their memories, but we are loath to place in jeopardy so much as an opportunity for career advancement, or the good opinion of a friend, much less our lives. So we tend to fall in line, or at least fall silent. We deceive ourselves with rationalizations for what amounts to either conformism or cowardice. We place the emphasis on whatever happens in the cultural circumstances to be the acceptable parts of Christian teaching, and soft-pedal or even abandon the parts that the enforcers of cultural norms deem to be unacceptable. We make a million excuses for going along with what's wrong, and pretty soon we find ourselves going along with calling it right.

Jesus says, "if you want to be my disciple, you must take up our cross and follow me." We say, "um, well, we'll get around to that at some point."

May God have mercy on us.