Catholics Should”Be Silent”?

Father John Hollowell

Homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 23rd and 24th of 2021

And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he kept calling out all the more, "Son of David, have pity on me!”

Our world is telling Catholics to be silent. In the United States, for now, Catholics are pressured through a mostly silent campaign to encourage self-censoring, and to discourage speaking the Truth in Love.

In other areas of the world, people are being martyred and tortured for their Catholic Faith and that is a much more literal instance of the world telling Catholics to be silent.

But we know that in some ways, the softer encouragement to self-censor is MORE effective than killing and torturing Catholics because when it gets down to martyrdom and torture, Catholics wake up and start to take their faith seriously. Those who see fellow Catholics being killed for their Catholic Faith never forget that.

But when it is a soft, subtle campaign to make every Catholic self-censor, it is much easier to just cut little corners, to rationalize our decisions telling ourselves “after all, it is just a pinch of incense to Caesar, what harm can that do?”

But then one day, hopefully, we wake up after cutting corners and keeping silent and giving our tacit approval to lies, and we hopefully have the experience of recognizing we are far from the path, and we are able to cry out with a full-throated “Son of David, have pity on me!”

But the hour is late, and none of us is guaranteed the next minute.

Before we see fellow Catholics being jailed, tortured and martyred for their Catholic Faith, may we stand up now and say “I will not give my tacit approval to lies anymore. I am a Catholic first and foremost, and I march under the banner of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is Truth. No matter what else you throw at me, I will never waver.”