Shrine of the Sacred Heart, Washington, D.C.

There is a modern tendency to believe that the single greatest obstacle to the Church’s mission is her teaching. How much simpler would it be, we might ask, if the Church conformed her beliefs on (say) sexual morality, to that of contemporary culture? Would it not be easier to bring people to the Church, we might be tempted to think, if she was more approving of things that are now accepted, even encouraged, in the twenty-first century west? Hasn’t the Church freed herself from all the rules and regulations of the past? Why should we be bound by doctrines and dogmas that are no longer ‘relevant’? We may have heard such views from the media and those in the public square, even from fellow Catholics; we may have thought to hold such views ourselves. Either way, it is necessary to recognize why such a position is, at best, faulty, and to remedy it with an authentic Christian view, one that leads us closer to Christ.

First, we must acknowledge that the Church is, as Saint Paul puts it, to ‘proclaim Christ crucified’ (1 Cor. 1: 23). As we heard last Sunday, the Lord told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’ (Mt. 16: 24). This means that the Church is mandated by the Lord to proclaim something which, in the Lord’s own words, is ‘a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles’ (1 Cor: 23). The message of the cross has always stood in stark contrast to the way of the world; that message is the reason that Christ himself was rejected. That cross is imprinted in our lives through baptism, and so we must expect to be misunderstood, even reviled, for proclaiming it as the way to happiness, the way to salvation.

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