Today Is Not That Day
You’ve probably heard it too: “This country is not worth fighting for – let alone dying for – anymore. It’s too corrupt and broken. It’s finished.” You even hear it from disheartened people who served in the armed forces or lost loved ones in war. On this Memorial Day, as we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for us, we need to sort out what’s true about that feeling – the part that makes it partly true – from what’s false – the temptation to surrender to things we should never surrender to.
Let’s approach this subject as Catholics, in the steadying light of the Church’s long experience, not in the ways that the hysterics in the media and our public life use these days to exploit us. There may always come a day when a beloved nation is no longer worth defending. It can cross a line from troubled legitimacy (which is what all governments always are) into outright illegitimacy.
But today is not that day.
Some thought America crossed that line in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. How can a government that legally permits the killing of innocents remain legitimate?
And it didn’t stop there.
