“Maintain support” for traditional marriage? Catholic support requires more episcopal muscle than the release of a mild statement. Because the Church is "the universal sacrament of salvation" (Lumen Gentium), our shepherds should be mobilizing Catholics to fight back. Every Catholic priest, religious, businessman, teacher, doctor, banker, grocer, landlord, professor, and college student should be sent out with a mandate to fight for marriage.
Others did send public and sober warnings. Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Diocese of Orlando wrote,
In redefining the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex unions, the proponents of "gay marriage" are in effect imposing their views and lifestyle on the larger populace, and once legal the state's coercive power will punish those who refuse to embrace gay marriages. For example, public officials, regardless of their views on the rightness or wrongness of homosexual acts, will be obliged to officiate at same-sex "weddings." Public schools will be required to teach their acceptability to children whether parents concur or not. Even First Amendment freedoms will not be protected from assault.
We have become a flaccid people. Catholics hesitate to speak out forcefully for the basics of societal morality. We do not wish to be labeled bigots or dismissed as intolerant. We fear social and professional opprobrium. Our goal is to preserve our comfortable lives rather than take on the challenge of gospel fidelity. We have forgotten that piety is not a feeling, but the determination to serve God despite the hardships that service might encounter.
In short, we are guilty of sins of omission.
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Few shepherds teach us that we have been called to this nation at this moment in history for a reason. "A new state of affairs today both in the Church and in social, economic, political and cultural life, calls with a particular urgency for the action of the lay faithful. If lack of commitment is always unacceptable, the present time renders it even more so. It is not permissible for anyone to remain idle" (Christifideles Laici).
Thousands of Catholics will rally when visible leaders send them forth. When I speak at Catholic conferences, well-meaning people assure me that because the culture is debauched, "God will surely understand why so many have gone astray." Perhaps. These Catholics are devoted enough to come to conferences, but have stopped short of venturing out of their comfort zones and into the culture as agents of God's grace.
Some protest that “we aren't responsible for what these politicians and judges do." But Deuteronomy 16 paints a different picture: In an outline of how the Children of God are to possess the land, they are told to appoint good judges and civil leaders and not to “pervert justice.” Because we live in liberty, where we can freely choose our leadership, we have an identical responsibility to select moral leadership. We are a representative democracy -- that is, our leaders are ours by choice. Thus, for Catholic Americans to choose leaders who bow to perversion is a grievous sin. Those who fail to work against evil leadership are also guilty by omission.