Lex Cordis Caritas - The law of the heart is Love

It is not uncommon today to hear people criticize organized religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular as being too preoccupied with rules rather than love. What such critics fail to realize, however, is that rules help to specify how a loving person is supposed to behave. Without rules, love is empty sentimentality. Without love, rules are simply cold and arbitrary regulations.

A little-known fact of Illinois trivia is that the southern tip of the State of Illinois is closer to the State of Louisiana than to Chicago. This may be true in terms of shared values as well as in geography. While politicians from Chicago are trying to make Illinois the most abortion-friendly state in the Union, government officials in Louisiana are actively seeking to bring the murderous practice of killing unborn babies to an end in their state.

So why should you come to Mass every week? First and foremost, being a Christian is about a relationship, namely, our relationship with Jesus as Our Lord and Savior. That means that Jesus loves us and cares deeply about us. In return, he asks us to love him and care deeply about him as well. Most of us have no problem with that.

After putting in many miles of training to prepare for the Route 66 Marathon in Tulsa on Nov. 24, it was disappointing to settle for only 13.1 miles instead of the usual 26.2. This was the first time in 25 attempts that I was not able to finish the full marathon. I was running strong for six miles when I suddenly felt sapped of energy, apparently due to the lingering fatigue of a cold that I had been fighting for several days. Little did I know going into the race that this would officially be my first half-marathon! Apparently my plans were not God’s plans that day! In several ways, it was a challenging weekend in Tulsa as I took part in activities of the LIFE Runners, a pro-life running group with almost 14,000 members world-wide. As is our usual practice, the LIFE Runners had a booth at the Marathon Expo, where we display a large “Remember the Unborn” banner, sign up new members, and distribute LIFE Runners gear. Unfortunately, the Tulsa Expo director was not very welcoming to us despite our having paid a fee to host a booth, just as other Expo sponsors had. One woman, who appeared to be a grandmother, removed the LIFE Runners’ “Remember the Unborn” sticker from her grandson’s clothes, telling him we were “anti-choice.” It is sad that an adult would abuse the power of language to communicate a hateful message to a child about those who are sincerely trying to protect the lives of unborn babies.

Recently, I administered the sacrament of confirmation at a small parish church in our diocese that is very beautiful, except that the windows were covered with contact paper decorated with various patterns in pastel colors. I was told that the pastor in the 1970s had removed the stained-glass windows and smashed them to pieces. Thankfully, the current pastor hopes to raise funds to restore stained-glass windows to the church. Unfortunately, it appears that the iconoclasts made their way into the Amazonian Synod in Rome, which concluded on Oct. 27, seeking to shatter some long-standing Catholic practices, such as priestly celibacy and the doctrine understood and accepted since the time of Christ about whom the church is authorized to admit to the sacrament of holy orders. Reports from the synod also indicate that the commitment to the evangelical goal of missionary activity as bringing people to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior is being diminished or abandoned by some.