Nasty Arguments and the Sacred Heart
How do I overcome the pain and bitterness of serious disagreements about matters of profound importance?
To evangelize we must make peace with people who are wrong.
I’m Catholic because I believe the faith is true and good, and therefore regardless of whatever suffering I might endure in this life, the Catholic faith is The Way to eternal happiness. By definition someone who is not practicing the Catholic faith either doesn’t believe that, or else for some reason is not acting on that belief. There’s a gap to be bridged. A gap of belief and a gap of action.
Sometimes it feels like the gaps are even greater within the Church. It seems like practicing Catholics are more divided against each other than we are at odds with our nearest friends beyond the borders of the faith. Why?
Because we’re human. We have rational minds that are meant to be used to discern what is true and to act on that reality. We are meant to puzzle out the great questions of life. We are meant to care deeply about right and wrong and about what is the best way to care for the world around us.
Because of my limited knowledge, sometimes I’ll be innocently wrong when I attempt to answer these questions. Because of concupiscence, that dogged tendency to sin, sometimes my efforts to answer these questions are distorted by my own imperfect self-will. Between the two, it’s a wonder we’re not more divided rather than less.
Meanwhile, though some few Catholics do have specific vocations that involve renouncing the right to assert a personal opinion, most of us have not just a right but an obligation to ardently seek the truth even in areas of tension and great doubt. We can’t walk away from the great questions of our day.
Where does that leave us as evangelists?
It leaves us to be people who must both reckon with the stark and at times wounding differences of opinion that will crop up in our parishes, in our families, and in our wider social circles, and who must be wholeheartedly committed to peace.
It’s a tension, for certain. It requires humility and patience and forbearance. Sometimes the pain of our divisions hurts so badly we’re not sure we can go on.
But, good news, we are all human. What does that mean? It means we are made for love.
If disagreements are the raging water in the canyon below us, a water we cannot dam and frankly shouldn’t want to, love is the bridge that makes it possible to span those treacherous gaps.
Whether it’s rescuing relationships within the Church or beyond it, when we’re reeling and disoriented by the shock of divided hearts, we beg God to fill us with His Love. And He will.