Archbishop: Catholics serve nation best by living faith authentically

Published: 2007-10-30

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Catholics serve their country best in the long run "by remembering that we're citizens of heaven first," Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver said Oct. 26 at the 15th annual meeting of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. "It's time for all of us who claim to be 'Catholic' to recover our Catholic identity as disciples of Jesus Christ and missionaries of his church," he said. The social scientists convened at St. John's University School of Law in Queens Oct. 26-27. "We're better Americans by being more truly Catholic (because) unless we live our Catholic faith authentically, with our whole heart and our whole strength," the archbishop said, "we have nothing worthwhile to bring to the public debates that will determine the course of our nation." Archbishop Chaput said that the so-called "post-Christian" time in which we live and where Western nations have abandoned or greatly downplayed their Christian heritage "actually looks a lot like the pre-Christian moment." "The signs of our times in the developed nations -- morally, intellectually, spiritually and even demographically -- are uncomfortably similar to the signs in the world at the time of the Incarnation," he said.

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