Archbishop Chaput gave a keynote lecture for a student Right to Life organization at the University of Notre Dame earlier this year, which is now published online by the Witherspoon Institute. Here's a taste:
Jacques Maritain and Leszek Kolakowski came from very different backgrounds. Maritain was deeply Catholic. Kolakowski was in no sense an orthodox religious thinker. But they would have agreed that good and evil, God and the devil, are very real — and that history is the stage where that struggle is played out, both in our personal choices and in our public actions; where human souls choose their sides and create their futures. In Kolakowski’s own words, “we are not passive observers or victims of this contest, but participants as well, and therefore our destiny is decided on the field on which we run.”
Politics is the exercise of power; and power — as Jesus himself saw when Satan tempted him in the desert — can very easily pervert itself by doing evil in the name of pursuing good ends. But this fact is never an excuse for cowardice or paralysis. Christ never absolved us from defending the weak, or resisting evil in the world, or from solidarity with people who suffer. Our fidelity as Christians is finally to God, but it implies a faithfulness to the needs of God’s creation. That means we’re involved — intimately — in the life of the world, and that we need to act on what we believe: always with humility, always with charity, and always with prudence — but also always with courage. We need to fight for what we believe. As Kolakowski wrote, “Our destiny is decided on the field on which we run.”
The whole essay is worth reading.
Maniple wave to Dcn. Rick R. for passing the link my way.
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