I am the Lord thy God: thou shall not have strange Gods before me, Part Two

In today’s post, we will continue discussing the 1^st Commandment,

I am the Lord your God; you shall not have strange Gods before me.

As we stated last post, our discussion of this Commandment will cover three posts:

Part 1 I am the Lord your God (from an individual perspective)

Part 2 I am the Lord your God (from a social perspective)

Part 3 you shall not have strange Gods before me

Tonight is Part 2, in which we will discuss how to accept and worship God socially.

All men and women are called as individuals to accept and worship the one true God, and worship him in the one Church he founded.  If one does not know the truth, they are bound to look for it, and embrace it once it is found.

There is a social responsibility that comes with this.   If what we stated is true for each man, and for each woman, than as a society, we have a responsibility to build a culture that guarantees this right to pursue truth.   Man must have religious freedom.  The Catechism defines the crux of what religious freedom is in #2106:   Nobody may be forced to act against his convictions, nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience in religious matters in private or in public, alone or in association with others, within due limits." This right is based on the very nature of the human person, whose dignity enables him freely to assent to the divine truth which transcends the temporal order. For this reason it "continues to exist even in those who do not live up to their obligation of seeking the truth and adhering to it."  In other words, man must be free to practice his religion, and at the same time, he cannot force his religion on another. 

Because of the culture of a nation, it may be permissible to give one or more religious communities special recognition (such as we see in Catholic rich Poland), but it is never permissible to deny any citizen authentic religious freedom.

It is indeed true that we cannot impose our religion on anyone.  However, we can evangelize (sharing the person of Jesus Christ with our fellow man).    We must be allowed that freedom.   This is part of what religious freedom is about.  Those whom we evangelize are free to either accept or reject what we proclaim.

It is a social responsibility of Christians to evangelize.  Society benefits when they do.  The Catechism (#2105) explains: By constantly evangelizing men, the Church works toward enabling them "to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and mores, laws and structures of the communities in which [they] live." The social duty of Christians is to respect and awaken in each man the love of the true and the good. It requires them to make known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church. Christians are called to be the light of the world. Thus, the Church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation and in particular over human societies.   We must awaken our fellow men and women to the pursuit of love and truth that is the duty of all of us.  We will all be judged by how well we made that journey.

God freely gives himself to us, so we in turn must freely give ourselves to him.   True religion is never forced; it is a free assent of man to God.   We must, however, indeed use our freedom to pursue and live truth.   This right to religious liberty does not give us the right to error.   In fact, it demands that error be confronted and corrected.   That is why when serious errors occur either in the Church (for example, when priests teach heresy) or outside the Church (for example, unjust laws are considered or passed), then it is right and just to stand up against them, and try to stop them from occurring.

In our nation, and indeed throughout the world, we see cases where religious freedom is not respected, where men and women are forced to act against their religious convictions.   Men and women are not allowed to speak up about their faith, and they are sometimes forced to accept another faith tradition.  And there are cases where this refusal has led to their death.  We cannot allow this to continue.  We must pray, work, and yes, demand, the day to come when all men and women will be free to pursue the path to God as their conscience dictates, conscience that Christians can help form, with the light of the Gospel and the Magisterium of the Church as their guide.

So now we have covered the acceptance of worship of the one true God from an individual and a social perspective.  In the final post in this series, we will discuss “competition” so-to-speak for the attention and worship of the one true God from other “gods”.

Joseph most faithful, pray for us.