In the recent debates surrounding the confirmation hearings of Judge Kavanagh, there has been a great deal of acrimony!  The kind of anger we have seen expressed (on both sides) is not just unseemly, it is dangerous.  Emotional, angry outbursts tend to evoke the same kind of response.  The free will we are given and which God wants us to follow consists of emotion/passion (the heart, if you will) together with reason (application of the mind).

Wherever our national debate may end up, WE are called to be voices of compassionate reason.  Failure on our part leads to the denigration of women in our society—or tragedies such as the death of Matt Shepard 20 years ago, tortured to death simply because he was gay—or the lynching of blacks based on unreasoning prejudice – or the transformation of the term immigrant into a pejorative word (though, unless we are Native Americans, do we not all spring from immigrant stock?)—the hatred being experienced by so many fine American citizens today simply because they are Muslim.

However much we may love our country, we can never assume it can’t happen here.  Indeed, if we love our nation and the best of what it stands for, we must be vigilant so that, “Every sign of unjust discrimination…should be avoided” (CCC Catechism of the Catholic Church ¶2358).  In the end, ALL OF US who believe in Christ face the same challenge: “By the virtues of self-mastery that teach [us] inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, [we] can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection” (CCC ¶ 2359).

I prayerfully ask that we all seek to be instruments of God’s peace.