This article has been imported from our web archive. As a result, it may contain formatting errors, broken links or images, or other inconsistencies from the original publication.
The silent scream is not about right of left, it's life
By Michael Coren
June 29, 2009
Michael Coren
When the editor was exploring my interest in contributing articles to The Catholic Register, he sought my views on the relationship between column writing and controversy. My response was that if I wasn’t controversial I would not be doing my job as a journalist and not fulfilling my vocation as a Roman Catholic. Because being the former demands that I hold up a mirror to reflect the absurdities and hypocrisies of the modern world and the latter calls and cries for me to be counter cultural in a society that confuses right with wrong and has largely abandoned its notion of what is important and essential.
So here as a greeting in my debut column is a rough guide to a rough person.
So here as a greeting in my debut column is a rough guide to a rough person.
I believe that life begins at conception and ends at natural death and that the womb, supposed to be a sanctuary for the unborn, has become a slaughterhouse for the vulnerable. We need a preferential option for the unborn. This is not a choice but a necessity for any serious and genuine Catholic. While believers may differ on any number of political and economic themes there is no theological or moral room for manoeuvre concerning the sanctity of innocent life. Whatever political fashions may proclaim, there is a hierarchy of issues and the right to life is the most fundamental value and virtue of the human condition and the Christian spirit.
While poverty, racism, exploitation and needless wars cannot be ignored, none of these rival the logical and religious significance of the status of unborn children. As followers of Christ we are commanded to care for the needy and there are none so needy as those whose scream is silent and whose deaths are denied. There is nothing right-wing or left-wing but everything Catholic about fighting for the most vulnerable in our society.
I believe that the only place for a sexual relationship is within marriage and that marriage can only be the union of one man and one woman. If there is hatred in our hearts on the issue of homosexuality we ought to shut up but if there is love we need to speak up. But speak up more in defence of marriage than in opposition to those with whom we disagree. This doesn’t mean we remain silent when attacked but it does mean that if we are married we must do all we can to show the jubilant glory of the sacrament and institution we defend and proclaim.
I believe that we in the west are greedy and selfish and should beg for forgiveness from a developing world that we have frequently used as a colonial plaything for our political games and financial abuse. Nothing epitomizes our hypocrisy and blindness more than enormously wealthy and decadent Hollywood actresses adopting African babies so as to “give them a better life.” Nonsense! The solution to children living in poverty in Africa is not to remove the children but to remove the poverty.
I believe that Christ Jesus left us not a Bible but a teaching office, the Magisterium, and that the direct descendant of St. Peter, given the keys and the church, is Pope Benedict XVI. While our views and opinions as Catholics are important, the authority and hierarchy of the church are pre-eminent. This is God’s church, not a man-made assembly where majority opinion or trendy belief shapes truth.
I believe that the notion that we change with the times is one of the most irresponsible and dangerous in human history. The times can be evil, just as an idea or a person can be evil. What do we think, for example, of those German Christians who changed with the times in 1935 and embraced Nazism? If there is one thing the church and Catholics must not do it is to change with the times simply because they are the times. We stand for first things, permanent things, immutable and Catholic things.
I believe that whatever its failings and fallings over the centuries, the church is the only guaranteed conduit of absolute truth and eternal life and that it extends through all time, infallibly guiding its people via the sacraments to God. Put simply, I believe.
While poverty, racism, exploitation and needless wars cannot be ignored, none of these rival the logical and religious significance of the status of unborn children. As followers of Christ we are commanded to care for the needy and there are none so needy as those whose scream is silent and whose deaths are denied. There is nothing right-wing or left-wing but everything Catholic about fighting for the most vulnerable in our society.
I believe that the only place for a sexual relationship is within marriage and that marriage can only be the union of one man and one woman. If there is hatred in our hearts on the issue of homosexuality we ought to shut up but if there is love we need to speak up. But speak up more in defence of marriage than in opposition to those with whom we disagree. This doesn’t mean we remain silent when attacked but it does mean that if we are married we must do all we can to show the jubilant glory of the sacrament and institution we defend and proclaim.
I believe that we in the west are greedy and selfish and should beg for forgiveness from a developing world that we have frequently used as a colonial plaything for our political games and financial abuse. Nothing epitomizes our hypocrisy and blindness more than enormously wealthy and decadent Hollywood actresses adopting African babies so as to “give them a better life.” Nonsense! The solution to children living in poverty in Africa is not to remove the children but to remove the poverty.
I believe that Christ Jesus left us not a Bible but a teaching office, the Magisterium, and that the direct descendant of St. Peter, given the keys and the church, is Pope Benedict XVI. While our views and opinions as Catholics are important, the authority and hierarchy of the church are pre-eminent. This is God’s church, not a man-made assembly where majority opinion or trendy belief shapes truth.
I believe that the notion that we change with the times is one of the most irresponsible and dangerous in human history. The times can be evil, just as an idea or a person can be evil. What do we think, for example, of those German Christians who changed with the times in 1935 and embraced Nazism? If there is one thing the church and Catholics must not do it is to change with the times simply because they are the times. We stand for first things, permanent things, immutable and Catholic things.
I believe that whatever its failings and fallings over the centuries, the church is the only guaranteed conduit of absolute truth and eternal life and that it extends through all time, infallibly guiding its people via the sacraments to God. Put simply, I believe.
Michael Coren