✣ Highlights from the week online
Homelessness and the question of sacrifice “With growing numbers of people suffering homelessness in the expensive megalopolis of Los Angeles, Catholics and people of other religions are working together to provide a serious response,” wrote Kevin Jones at Catholic News Agency. He quoted Kathleen Domingo from the Los Angeles archdiocese: “The faith community is really a giant part of the services provided to the folks in need.” Why do Catholics help the homeless? “We’ve been told that our salvation depends on how we treat those in need,” said Domingo. “Our faith isn’t just in praying and personal spirituality, it’s actually in what we put into action.” She said the homeless are “the face of Christ, especially in Los Angeles”. Many residents live in such prosperity that “to turn our backs on the homeless is really to turn our backs on Christ”. “We really need to ask ourselves: are we willing to sacrifice our salvation, literally, for our own convenience or our own comfort at not getting involved?” Domingo said. Two cardinals shaped by their conversions The major differences between Cardinals Newman and Manning can be glimpsed in their early lives, and the reasons they converted, wrote Rick Yoder at amishcatholic.com. “Cardinal Newman converted as the result of long study of the history of doctrine,” Yoder wrote. “His conversion was thus the result of a deep meditation of a chiefly historical and doctrinal nature, coupled with an affliction from church authorities.” Cardinal Manning converted when, in 1850, the Privy Council forced the Church of England to ordain an Evangelical who denied the salvific efficacy of baptism. “This move so shocked Manning that he immediately saw that the Church of England was essentially a political construct without any share of the Apostolic inheritance. It could not resist the demands of the state. And thus, he betook himself to Rome.” Newman became a great theologian; Manning became a great ecclesiastical politician, Yoder concluded. Speaking out on sexual morality In the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, National Review’s David French called for Christians to be more outspoken about “biblical sexual ethics” – an area, he said, where believers have generally retreated or been overly defensive. “Time and again the message to the culture is ‘join us anyway’. Or, worse, the message to members of the church has been ‘You don’t really have to obey.’ The church retreats, and the sexual revolution advances.” But the alternative sexual morality is oppressive, and is destroying lives, French wrote. “Now is the time for Christians to leave their defensive crouch, to approach the public square with confidence. A wounded and broken sexual culture searches for answers. Who are we to withhold the truth?”
