The Cost of Silence

[ 3 ] February 26, 2013 AD |

“Evil draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think.”
―Pope Benedict XVI

The fear of peoples’ opinions can be deadly. It can lead to willing ignorance of the Gospel, and unwillingness to spread it.

Let me tell you the truth: Ignorance is not bliss. Closing your eyes won’t free you from responsibilities regarding the state of our world. People are happy to see you shut your mouth and cover your ears, so they can keep laughing and pushing you around. It’s convenient to them: A soldier who won’t fight. A speaker who won’t speak.  A Christian who would prefer to wait on the sidelines, while other people speak for him.

Now is not the age to keep silent about love, truth, and morality.

“No one can claim, as Cain did, that he is not responsible for the fate of his brother.”
―Pope John Paul II

There has never been an age of conformity. Think of all the evil you unleash in this world by hiding away Truth. Don’t put it away for the sake of your own comfort–like a lion, the Truth will eventually get out and have his moment of glory. That moment will hurt! You may think keeping silent about certain matters will make life easier, but eventually Truth will catch up to you. It’s temporary peace, like that “peace” that comes after an abortion. Sooner or later it’ll end and bring on regrets. The difference here is that with Truth, you can repent and take up your sword again. You have a second chance.

Pope Benedict XVI has encouraged young people to speak up—stating it quite explicitly in the back of the YOUCAT: “You need to be more deeply rooted in the faith than the generation of your parents…”  It’s not a light thing to be ignorant about. Someday the atheists will run out of silly excuses to dodge God, and every bone in their body will be broken; they’ll need faith to stand up again. It’s our duty to help them back up by witnessing to them. How can we, if we don’t know what we believe?

The future of our whole entire world rests on us. You may not see how your voice can change a thing. One candle is enough to shatter the darkness in a room with no light, and that one candle is what all the lost sheep will flock to. Today, as our beloved Pope says farewell—leaving behind a legacy of devoted servitude, several books, and the YOUCAT—I pray that more young Catholics will realize how powerful their light is. When life is hard we feel lost, so how could we possibly light the way for another person? Turn to Jesus. If you look Him in the eye and ask for help, admit you’re not worthy and ask for His aid, the light from His own glory will reflect on you.

It’s not an easy burden to bear, and it never will be. The Christian life was never easy; people who make it appear so are lying for their own convenience. Many true Christians will cry more in their lifetime—whether inside or out—than most atheists. We each have a Cross much like the one of Christ, and in accepting Him into our hearts, we’ve agreed to carry that Cross till we’re called home. Even if in weak moments we claim to no longer believe, something in our hearts will itch to pick it back up. Once we are consumed by that divine light, there is no easy escape.

Let us pray for Pope Benedict XVI, the Conclave, and the next Pope. Whoever that man is, he’s going to take up a very heavy Cross of his own. We have more long battles ahead of us and will probably walk away wounded many a time—but we’re one Body, and will always heal. They haven’t been able to kill the Church in 2,000 years.

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Category: Spirituality

About the Author ()

Mariella Hunt is an aspiring author and avid blogger. When she was baptized at age eleven, her life became rich with adventure and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is her Prince Charming and the Catholic Church her home. She can often be found sipping coffee, or with her nose in a book. Other fond pastimes are daydreaming and blogging at her website. She hopes for publication soon.

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  • Douglas Kraeger

    Maybe you might know someone who would be interested in the following:

    I have some thoughts on a couple of basics for the next generation of evangelical Catholics. If we can find a way to get people of other faiths (and apparently most ‘Catholics’ as well) to “accept the (true) love of the (whole) truth so that they may be saved” (2Thessalonians 2:10) OR AT LEAST GET THEM TO BEHAVE AS IF THEY HAVE ACCEPTED IT BECAUSE THEY DO NOT WANT TO BE SEEN AS SOMEONE WHO IS EXPLICITLY HATING THE TRUTH, (please see the proposal starting on page three, I) then we will have a much better chance of helping the Holy Spirit to bring them to the fullness of the Catholic Faith. If people do not accept the true love of the whole truth, we are fighting a losing battle as many parents of teenagers will attest.
    Once someone comes to believe there is a Creator God, whether they are Jewish, Christian or Muslim, they can then also know that all parents should demonstrate that they are eager to pray as perfectly as possible and that they are working to know and believe everything God wants everyone to know and believe (whatever that is). How can anyone claim to be a good Jew, Christian, or Muslim if they say explicitly, or implicitly by their actions, that they do not want to pray as perfectly as possible or to know all that God wants everyone to know and believe?
    I am not sure where Thomas Aquinas wrote in his summa that “we can believe with certitude of faith all that must follow from what the Church teaches in its solemn magisterium”, but starting with that and Romans 8:26, “In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings”, and CCC 2606, “All the troubles, for all time, of humanity enslaved by sin and death, all petitions of salvation history are summed up in this cry of the incarnate Word”: and CCC 2741 “Jesus also prays for us-in our place and on our behalf. All our petitions were gathered up, once for all, in His cry on the Cross, and, in His resurrection, heard by the Father. This is why He never ceases to intercede for us with the Father. If our prayer is resolutely united with that of Jesus, in trust and in boldness as children, we obtain all that we ask in His Name, even more than any particular thing: the Holy Spirit himself, Who contains all gifts.”
    What does “If our prayer is resolutely united with that of Jesus” mean in specific detail? Should parents consider how to help their children ever more perfectly, in the whole and in specific details, unite their prayers to the one prayer of Jesus on the cross? What details can we be absolutely certain are true because if we assume them to be false, that assumption would absolutely require some infallible teaching of the Church to be false also, (which cannot be, so therefore the original detail cannot be false)? (In math this is called ‘proof by induction’)
    The question I ask is; Do you know any reason why the following could not help parents help their children to pray as perfectly as possible without them having to reinvent the wheel on their own? Obviously I believe each of the following must be true because if any of them is assumed to be false, that assumption would absolutely require a Truth taught by the Church to be untrue. If you do not see this also, please point out which ones might be false without absolutely requiring a Truth taught by the Church to also be false.
    A. A mystery, in matters of faith, is a Truth revealed by God, acknowledged by the Church, that the faithful are called to accept and believe even if they cannot completely understand it, and we should always be looking for greater understanding of all that God reveals.
    B. God is all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful and Jesus Christ, being God and man, this person with one consciousness, the human animated by truly infinite grace, sees all time at once in the present tense (CCC 600) and prays His one prayer on the cross with and for each and every sinner throughout time and space at every point in their lives and we should constantly try to ever more perfectly join our prayer to His and the Holy Spirit’s prayer for each which is identically the same prayer as the Cry of the Incarnate Word on the Cross.
    C. Each and every prayer of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph when they prayed as the Holy family form a unique subset of all prayers said throughout time and space in that in these prayers, the Son of God partook of them in time, as their Son, as well as their God in eternity, and therefore we can, and should, resolutely unite our prayers to each and every prayer of the Holy Family when we unite (CCC 2741) it ever more fully and perfectly to the prayer of Jesus on the Cross especially when we are made present to His crucifixion at Holy Mass by the re-presentation of His death, when we are made present to that point in space and time almost 2000 years ago.
    D. It is a mystery, a truth revealed by God, acknowledged by the Church that the faithful should accept and believe, that Jesus Christ, in his human will, perfectly conforms to and reveals the eternal, changeless, always and everywhere in the present tense, Divine will of God and therefore by Jesus Christ willing to love, honor and be subject to Joseph and Mary, God reveals that it is His Divine Will eternally to be so subject to St. Joseph as the Head of the family and those refusing to accept this are in danger of imitating Satan who said in his pride, “I will not serve”.
    E. Therefore, all the prayers of Mary and Jesus Christ as a child acknowledging St. Joseph as the Head of the family, with the authority and obligations of the Head of the family, all these prayers are eternally part of the one prayer of Jesus Christ on the cross.
    F. The prayers of Mary at the foot of the Cross, most perfectly giving thanks to God, Her Son, for His infinite goodness in allowing her to suffer with Him, and for Him, and rejoicing that Her suffering, in some way filled up what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ on the cross (Colossians 1:24) are also present to us at each Mass and we would be good to join our prayers to hers through her Son’s one prayer.
    G. We can be certain that Joseph and Mary, after their espousal, knowing the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, where praying for God to send The Messiah through a virgin and were therefore praying for an act of God, a miracle, praying that by their sacrifices (fasting and promises to be celibate as husband and wife as the Essenes did) and prayers, God in His infinite goodness and mercy, would bless The Virgin of Isaiah 7 who must be the Woman of Genesis 3:15 and they would also have been praying for the husband of this Virgin for the awesome responsibility his would be to be the “father” of the Messiah, praying all this not knowing that God was eternally subject to them, but especially subject to the father as the head of the family, as a perfect son.
    H. When we receive communion and we are blessed to have Our God (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, each doing everything that God does eternally in the present tense and sharing everything they are with the other because anything else would require that one was infinite and the others were not infinite) on our tongues in His completeness, body, blood, soul and Divinity it is good to remember CCC 1085 where the Church teaches that “all that Christ IS-all that he did and suffered for all men (sinners) participates in the Divine Eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all” and therefore every prayer of Jesus in which the Child Jesus and Mary honored St. Joseph as the Head of the family are present to us in the Holy Eucharist and therefore we should unite our prayer to theirs especially when we are praying for a miracle, an act of God, as Joseph and Mary did before the Incarnation; someone’s conversion, the end of abortion being ‘legal’, a return to the Constitution of the United States as the founders intended it to be understood as the Supreme Law of the Land, etc.

    I. This proposal has two purposes: First it is intended to help all ministers of all faiths to publicly unite on one core belief they all should hold and for them to work together in calling for and emphasizing this common core belief; The absolute basic necessity and importance of parents, and especially fathers, doing all they can to show their children that all good parents truly want to pray as perfectly as possible and work to know and believe everything God wants everyone to know and believe (whatever that is) and thereby show how to truly love the whole truth and thereby truly love the author of all truth, God.
    Each minister simply placing their trust in God in the sure faith that all who honestly seek the whole truth will be led by God’s grace, through the verifiable evidence and related questions (that each minister is eager to share with anyone) to the one faith God wants everyone to have, their faith. Can you imagine any religious minister publicly saying, after a group of other ministers have publicly united in the above statement, “Yes, God wants everyone to pray as perfectly as possible and to work to know and believe certain things, but we are not part of that group because we do not encourage people to pray ever more perfectly or to work to know and believe everything God wants everyone to believe”, or for that minister to say implicitly that, “We do not believe there is enough verifiable evidence and related questions for God to bring people to our faith”?
    Second: “T-shirts in the home” that state self-evident truths or ask questions concerning what we can know with absolute certitude concerning God.
    All people, who know it is absolutely, objectively right to care about others, know it is a self-evident truth that we all are obligated by God’s Law in our hearts to try to do everything we can to help others and we should want to do so and we should always be looking for ways to truly help everyone. God wants everyone to believe certain things and has revealed them to us if we only honestly seek them. Good Parents and grandparents with real faith (whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim) desire to help their children to pray ever more perfectly and to want to know and believe everything God wants everyone to believe and these good parents want their children to want to help everyone else do the same. I remember Dr. James Dobson saying once that if parents could once succeed in helping their children to truly love the whole truth, the parent’s job was done pretty much done with that child.
    Many good religious ministers of all faiths explicitly mention self-evident truths from time to time and this is good. What is needed is a way for everyone to be reminded of them more often in a non-threatening, passive way, so as to reinforce the messages and to show how essential they are to believing everything God wants everyone to believe and living as the infinitely good God wants everyone to live to be happy. If parents and children each had many of these shirts with different messages, and it was expected of each to wear a different one every day, it would be a good reminder for the person wearing the shirt and any family members without any implied accusations of a failure on anyone’s part. This is just a quiet way of cooperating with, and a reminder of, what good religious ministers tell their followers.
    I acknowledge that the proposed messages on these t-shirts are very wordy and other people will come up with many more and better statements, but, I contend that the length is not that bad because these t-shirts must be seen as an aid in helping ourselves, helping families, the people closest to us, the people we stand and talk to, first. The most important place to start in evangelizing the world is in each home where parents need to be seen eager to pray more perfectly and working to know and believe everything God wants everyone to believe. Whether it is parents or grandparents or church’s getting these messages out, the shirts into homes, the messages are only a reminder and something to prick the consciences concerning self-evident truths that we already know but many times do not remember and apply. How many people will deny that it is a self-evident, absolute, objective, moral truth that we should want to help others and then expect anyone to give much weight to their arguments?
    If grandparents, or churches, or wealthy individuals, with real faith give them as gifts to children and grandchildren, there will be discussion and since they are self-evident truths, no one will be able to take the opposite position, everyone will know what they SHOULD DO and what they are expected to do if they really want to do all they can to help everybody.
    If everyone who should support this does so with enthusiasm there will be a snowballing effect and churches or wealthy individuals get behind the idea and shirts are given away free or at reduced cost to those in financial need, the general result that people of all faiths will agree in advance to will be that many more people will be led by the verifiable evidence and correct questions and God’s grace to the one faith that God wants everyone to believe. I admit that people of every faith will differ on what specific faith this proposal will eventually lead to, but let us all show our sure confidence and trust in God that it will be the faith that God wants everyone to have and leave it at that until the answer is made clear by God.
    The question is: If this idea does get rolling, and people, especially religious ministers, decided they had to support it because they did not want to be seen not supporting it; would GOD BE PLEASED????????
    Why should anyone place any trust in any religious minister who does not enthusiastically support this proposal that will, (if people support it) clearly help all ministers of all faiths to publicly witness that all faiths expect parents, and especially fathers, to show that good parents truly want to work to believe everything God wants everyone to believe and therefore show how to truly love the whole truth so that they may be saved, each minister in the sure faith that all will be led by God’s grace through the verifiable evidence and related questions to the faith each minister truly has?
    I am convinced that this proposal is part of God’s plan to turn the whole Blessed world back to God, right side up, by peaceful means because I cannot see any person publicly giving any verifiable evidence as to why it should be opposed. Those who fear that it will lead all to the Catholic faith can do no more than delay it by half-truths and misdirection. Can you find anyone who says it should be opposed?
    There are many self-evident truths that could be put on t-shirts that would help many people. These are a few for starters. Please be convinced that truth will win out in the end and if I or someone else suggests an idea that is not an objective truth, it will be seen as such through this proposal by God’s grace. And please remember that it is a good thing if each person has many different statements, many t-shirts, to choose from so that they can reaffirm many statements of self-evident objective truths. Please think of the good that will eventually come, if families are given these t-shirts and children start young and are expected to wear them always as a way for them to remember to always will and work to believe everything God wants everyone to believe.
    0. People who truly love the whole truth so that they may be saved
    ask “What is the verifiable evidence that proves this is something
    God does want everyone to believe?” when someone else offers
    them a “truth” they believe concerning God (see 2thessalonians 2:10)
    1 What words describe someone who says, “I am a good (Jew, Christian, or Muslim)
    but I do not will to pray as perfectly as possible or to work to believe everything God wants everyone to know and believe, whatever that is”?
    ridiculous? self-deceiving? insane? not-thinking?
    2 All good ministers of all faiths and all good parents show that they
    truly want everyone to believe all that God wants everyone to believe and
    and show that they truly want everyone to pray as perfectly as possible.
    3 All competent Jews, Christians and Muslims believe
    that God has only one, single, infinite, always in the present tense,
    eternal, thought that is exactly the same always and everywhere,
    and is therefore exactly the same as when the infant/child Jesus honored
    Joseph and Mary with love, obedience, and dependence
    because that time is (as is all time) eternally present to God
    and if Jesus Christ is true God and True man then God eternally honors them thus
    4 All competent Jews, Christians and Muslims believe
    that God is All-knowing, All-Loving, and All-Powerful,
    the infinite perfection of every good virtue we can know and
    has only one, single, infinite, always in the present tense,
    eternal, thought that is exactly the same always and everywhere
    5 Please share the “truths” you believe concerning
    Jesus Christ and the infinitely good God
    6 Please ask me why I (do/do not)
    believe the Catholic faith
    7 People need to focus on “black and white” moral questions
    (not the grey areas) to help them believe in a God who is the only
    possible source of absolute moral good and absolute moral evil.
    8 Every mature adult should have sure reasons why they believe
    what they believe and they should show that they want to share
    these reasons and they hope others will share their reasons for their faith also.
    9 It is a self-evident truth that no one can imagine a greater good than the infinitely good
    plan God has for turning the whole blessed world back to Him, right side up; and therefore,
    since we can imagine a God who is so infinitely good, merciful and powerful that he wills
    to turn the world right side up by peaceful means; this proves that this is what God is doing.
    10. Because men are weak sinners we cannot truly merit on our own God’s mercy and help
    and therefore for any good to be done we should acknowledge that it would take an act
    of God, out of his infinite goodness and mercy, for us to join with Him in doing good things
    11 What should everyone do to demonstrate that they truly want
    to believe everything that God wants everyone to believe?
    12 TO LOVE AS God loves everyone is to will the good of all, to will and
    work to help them be as holy as possible as quickly as possible
    and to voluntarily sacrifice our wants for the true good of the other
    13 If anyone does not truly love all truth, they do not truly love God,
    themselves or anyone else and therefore are not ready for marriage

    Douglas kraeger 4866 Indian Town Road, Vernon, New York 13476

    315 534 4103

  • Ben in SoCal

    Speaking of the dreadful “Cost of Silence,” I fervantly pray that the hierarchy gathering in Rome will elect a man who forcefully and openly contends with the horrors of the sex abuse crisis.

    Hierarchical silence and cover-ups have inflicted horrifying damage on the Church in the world. For goodness sake, the Catholic Faith in Ireland is collapsing. Eire! Perhaps a major gathering or council should be held in Dublin to adequately deal with the sex abuse crisis.

    Simple apologies are not valid; they expired long ago.

    As a twenty-something Catholic, I want to see practical changes to church polity. Laity should have a partnership in what bishops and priests are placed in charge of their dioceses and parishes. No more imperial imposition of clergy from Rome- that was decisively ruined by the sex abuse crisis.

    Why not married men? It was not until Pope Gregory VII in 1139 that mandatory celibacy was enforced as a universal discipline. The Eastern Churches have always permitted married clergy, though the bishops had to be celibate. Rome has approved married clergy, first with the Pastoral Provision of 1980, and reaffirmed with Anglicanorum Coetibus and the Personal Ordinariates.

    There are some rational “Olive branches” the hierarchy can offer to a wounded laity that does not involve immutable doctrines.

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