{"id":2647,"date":"2021-01-23T11:36:53","date_gmt":"2021-01-23T15:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=2647"},"modified":"2021-01-24T00:12:46","modified_gmt":"2021-01-24T04:12:46","slug":"there-are-no-silent-saints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=2647","title":{"rendered":"There are no silent saints"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This video was posted back in October, but I just came across it yesterday and thought it worth sharing. Former child actor Bug Hall (best known for playing Alfalfa in 1994&#8217;s <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0110366\/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_50\">The Little Rascals<\/a><\/em>) talks about living the Catholic faith with integrity vs working in Hollywood. He also discusses being a victim of abuse, so it is emotionally weighty:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bVA6H_pU6Qg\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Listening to the video, I could not help but think of our devoutly Catholic president<span id='easy-footnote-1-2647' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=2647#easy-footnote-bottom-1-2647' title='though I am not at all convinced he actually won the election'><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and his support for objectively anti-Catholic policies. It is hard not to wonder at what point the &#8220;Catholic&#8221; label ceases to be meaningful. Regardless of what&#8217;s in his heart, you know the press will take the opportunity to further propagandize the notion that Catholics need not adhere at all to fundamental Catholic teachings in word or deed.<span id='easy-footnote-2-2647' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=2647#easy-footnote-bottom-2-2647' title='Which is really an effort to erode \/ destroy the Church'><sup>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>(ETA: Oh look, right on schedule, about 4 hours after I posted this, some propaganda from NYT:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/01\/23\/us\/biden-catholic-christian.html\">In Biden\u2019s Catholic Faith, an Ascendant Liberal Christianity<\/a>. It&#8217;s so utterly blatant and predictable. Give me a break.)<\/p>\n<p>Some institutions have it worse than others (academia, Hollywood), but there is immense social (and financial) pressure to conform by keeping such controversial Catholic views to the self; sharing such controversial views is &#8220;divisive&#8221; and you will quickly be villified as prejudiced, sexist, racist, etc. Even other Catholics will encourage you to keep &#8220;confrontational&#8221; beliefs on the down low until more &#8220;unification&#8221; has occurred, as though an acceptance of the Church&#8217;s teaching on abortion (or some other controversial issue) will somehow slip in through a friendly backdoor. As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.americamagazine.org\/politics-society\/2021\/01\/20\/biden-cupich-gomez-bishops-239779\">Bishop Robert McElroy states<\/a>: &#8220;It is a pathway of reconciliation that places the healing of our society ahead of any specific policy issue, in the recognition that repairing the soul of our country is the pre-requisite for any sustainable effort to advance the common good.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s true that we don&#8217;t want to miss the forest for the trees; the Church&#8217;s teaching on abortion is not a stand-alone issue, but part of a broader logically and spiritually consistent understanding. But how can you do any &#8220;healing&#8221; or &#8220;soul repairing&#8221; when purposefully silent about such fundamental issues? Again, what&#8217;s the thought process? That someone will say, &#8220;You know, you&#8217;ve been really nice to me for a long time, I think I&#8217;ll go ahead and listen to your thoughts on contentious issues now.&#8221; Being up front and honest about such contentious foundational issues are <em>part of<\/em> healing.<span id='easy-footnote-3-2647' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/?p=2647#easy-footnote-bottom-3-2647' title='I&amp;#8217;m not talking about bringing up contentious issues randomly or all the time in everyday life. &amp;#8220;Hey, nice to meet you.&amp;#8221; &amp;#8220;Nice to meet you too and ABORTION IS EVIL!&amp;#8221; If you&amp;#8217;re talking about a president who claims to be a devout Catholic, on the other hand, it&amp;#8217;s more than appropriate.'><sup>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>As Hall says at the end of the video:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There are no silent saints. No one was canonized because they snuck around and were secretive about their beliefs. &#8230; I&#8217;m not talking about secretly going to Mass, I&#8217;m talking about speaking the truth when the opportunity presented itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a1Viva, Cristo Rey!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This video was posted back in October, but I just came across it yesterday and thought it worth sharing. Former child actor Bug Hall (best known for playing Alfalfa in 1994&#8217;s The Little Rascals) talks about living the Catholic faith with integrity vs working in Hollywood. He also discusses being [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[53],"tags":[59],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7gI4B-GH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2647"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2655,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2647\/revisions\/2655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wizardwalk.com\/newblather\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}