Wednesday, September 28, 2011

We Are Always on the Side of Man

As Christians, we share moral beliefs not because of some partisan agenda, but because we share a real adherence of mind and heart to Christ living in the Church. I trust the Church because Christ speaks through her, and I trust Christ because He is God, and He is the meaning of my life. So I find that what the Church teaches really corresponds to my humanity; it is the truth about what it means to be a human being.

We are "counter-cultural" insofar as our culture has become a culture of death, a culture that--at it's root--hates the human, hates the destiny of the human person, hates the transcendence of the human person. We are counter-cultural because we are Christian, and being Christian means (to paraphrase Blessed John Paul II) that we are always on the side of man. Ultimately, what we are "for" is what is deepest and most true in every human person.

Every human person is loved by Christ, and has been created for God in Christ. We have to believe this, even if it does not appear to be true or "relevant" in the world. We have to believe and witness to this love in front of every person, and that can mean speaking out strongly against actions that prevent persons from knowing their true destiny, or that attack human dignity and the value of every human life. But we speak out not to be contentious, but to affirm what is essential: God’s love for the person, and the design of His love that human persons live in union with Him and with one another.

We are always on the side of man.