Bishop Blair: "What God Joins Together"

From Bishop of Toledo, OH, Leonard Blair, writing in the May edition of the Toledo Catholic Chronicle:

I am told that in China the words “may you live in interesting times” are considered a curse. Imagine my surprise a few weeks ago at an Oriental restaurant in Toledo when, upon cracking open my fortune cookie, the little piece of paper said: “You will always live in interesting times.”

I suppose the cookie did not reveal anything I didn’t already know. Not just for me, but for any believing person, these are indeed interesting times. Whether this is a curse or not depends on how you respond. The challenges, and yes, the adversities of “interesting times” bring out the best and the worst in people. It is important to remember that in the Greek language of the New Testament, the word for “witness” is marturion, from which we get the English word “martyr.” Interesting times require that Christians stand up and be counted as witnesses to the truth.

However, as Pope Benedict has pointed out like Pope John Paul before him, believers bearing witness to the truth are adrift today on a vast ocean of relativism. Relativism is the belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth, at least no absolute truth we can know or apply to life in this world. This is accompanied by the exaltation of individual freedom to do whatever I please, provided I do not prevent you from doing whatever you please. This is a travesty of real freedom. The end result is that both truth and freedom are lost sight of.

With this in mind, let me give you a very concrete example of our interesting times. One of the most significant and alarming developments we are facing is the collapse of marriage and family life in the so-called developed Western world.

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Concretely, the Bishops of the United States are supporting, and I invite each of you to support, a federal marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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