"When They Accuse Us"

The Anchoress, as usual, is cool.  Excerpts:

...When someone spits the word “homophobe” at us, we must offer them the USCCB’s pastoral letter, “Always Our Children” and—acknowledging that the document may not be precisely what they like—ask whether, having read it, they can make a credible argument that the church is “anti-gay.”

Then, when they accuse us of misogyny and a lack of compassion, give them the brief but powerful and prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae and then ask: can you credibly call the church anti-feminist or anti-humanist?

Can they read Pope John Paul II’s exhaustive teachings on The Theology of the Body and credibly declare the church to be sexually repressed or disinterested in the full expression of ourselves as sexual beings?

Can they read Gaudium et Spes and credibly argue that the church is out of touch with the Human Person or Society.

Can they read Fides et ratio and credibly argue that the church does not hold human reason in esteem.

Can they learn of the Vatican supporting and funding stem cell research, or read even the briefest list of religiously-inclined scientists and researchers and credibly argue that Christianity is “anti-science?”

The secularist society does not want to hear alternative thought; they want a simple “yes,” to whatever is on the agenda of the worldly world and suits its values. People seem not to realize that far from being an Institution of No, the church is a giant and eternal urging toward “Yes”—a self-actualized “yes” formed through an engagement with what is true, over what is reported; what is real, over what is caricature. A “yes” that is greater than the self, and lives beyond the moment...