I recently wrote a blog post on same sex marriage for a website called Restless Press, a Catholic Australian and New Zealand blog where journalists and editors from across the two countries write on issues relating to all aspects of our faith.
This article came, a few weeks after the US Supreme Court’s decision regarding same sex marriage. It was aimed to be a gentle, and hopefully thoughtful, response articulating the idea that Catholics do not oppose same sex marriage out of hate or homophobia, but rather out of love.
I logged in to the website again recently to upload this month’s piece and discovered that there were a couple of comments on this article. One was a short and complimentary comment and the other was a long response which took the opposite position.
Among the key elements of this comment was the idea that the vast majority of people were not Christian and were fed up with our meddling in issues based solely on our faith.
I have no doubt that this is accurate.
But the thing is, if there’s one thing Christians are good at, it’s meddling.
Christians, perhaps Catholics in particular, get a bad rap for being behind the times. We’ve all heard the expression that we need to become more modern, to alter our teachings and be more inclusive.
We meddle in the marriage debate with regards to same sex marriage as well as divorce and remarriage, the pro-life arena and many more besides. And the reality is, that our meddling often produces much fruit, just as it bears much suffering.
In fact, if it weren’t for Christians and their emphasis on practical charity we might not have hospitals, schools, charities, homeless shelters and orphanages.
We would not have constitutions based on Christian values and a moral code we can all agree with.
So, maybe we do meddle.
But we certainly do try to make this world a better place, despite having our eyes firmly fixed on the next.
Originally posted 2015-09-17 12:00:55.