The archbishop went on to discuss the love of honor, something often now held to be an anachronism, but which is really the love of personal integrity in the service of higher truths. Drawing a line from classical examples of honor in the Iliad, through to the life and work of St. Paul, to the fight to maintain personal dignity under the Soviet regime in the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Chaput said love of honor provides the essential inspiration for personal, sometimes total sacrifice for the true and the good.
"As St. Paul warns us, the principalities and powers of this world always seek to control our lives. Evil is real, even when it's masked in pleasant forms and excellent marketing. Therefore, it's always important to honor our deepest convictions. And doing so can be costly."
"We're living in a moment of vigilant, even vindictive, political correctness on matters ranging from sex to the meaning of our national history," said Chaput. "And our politics often seems gripped with amnesia about the price in human suffering extracted by the bitter social experiments of the last century-always in the name of progress and equality."
Love and honor and sacrifice in the face of attack, Chaput said, needs to be tempered with prudence, and are not a rationale for self-destruction. Drawing on the examples of the early saints, Chaput said that the martyrs, like Polycarp, did not seek confrontation or death, and avoided both when they could, but without compromise.
"Silence and avoiding situations that force us to state our convictions can sometimes be the prudent course of action," Chaput said. "The key word in that sentence is 'sometimes.' Cowardice is very good at hiding behind a number of virtues. Too often we censor or contort ourselves to fit into what we perceive as approved behavior or thought. We muffle our Christian beliefs to avoid being the targets of contempt. Over time, a legitimate exercise of prudence can very easily become a degrading habit; a habit that soils the soul."
"Jesus urges us to love our neighbor as ourselves. The self-love proper for a Christian includes the love of personal honor, the kind that comes from living with integrity in a world that would have us betray our convictions."
Chaput closed by warning that believers can expect "a rough road in the years ahead" in the coming years.
"There can be no concordat between the Christian understanding of human dignity and sexuality, and the contempt directed at our beliefs by important elements of our culture," he said.
"This is very likely my last talk as a serving archbishop. But the Church, her mission, and the Christian story go on. And the greatest blessing I can wish, for each of you, is that you take up your part in the tale with all the energy and passion in your heart. Because it's a life worth living."