Building a Culture of Life - Part 8

8. "Replace Them"

Early last year I accompanied a group of teens from our catechism discussion group to a local talk by Archbishop Chaput on "Catholics in the Public Square". Because the audience was composed mostly of people older than myself, our big row of teens were pretty prominent. It was an interesting talk with lots of food for thought and one that we still bring up in our discussions on occasion.

One particularly memorable comment by the Archbishop was in a response to one of the audience questions after the talk. The questioner wanted to know what the Archbishop thought we should do about "Catholic" politicians who support abortion. The answer was perhaps a bit surprising, given our activist inclinations, but it made a lot of sense for me in the end, and was definitely a concept that inspired this blog series on Building a Culture of Life (which I've been pretty negligent of for many months).

Anyway, this is what he answered in a nutshell. He said that it was his duty as Archbishop to engage in dialogue with politicians who claimed to be Catholic, but supported abortions. He indicated that it was perhaps a bit of a "lost cause" (Though I like to keep in mind, of course, that lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.), but that it was necessary, nevertheless. Then he exhorted the audience to remember that they had a different job - their job was to replace those politicians. When he said this, he pointed to the young people in the audience and indicated that it was our job to prepare our young people to go out and change the world and be prepared to play their important roles in changing the culture.