The Plague Cross in Cologne

I got this from the Deacons Bench. Deacon Greg referenced it from an article by Mark Shea at the National Catholic Register on the Death Penalty. I liked his summary, where he says:

Sorry, but the Church does not exist to affirm us in our ideological preferences. It exists to teach us (among other things) and challenge us with the truth of the gospel. Our posture is to be one of docility to the voice of the Magisterium, not to be blogospheric popinjays who glance at the teaching, declare it nonsense, and return to our comfy ideological holes. We are not, as Catholics, to play the game of Simon Peter Says, in which the Faith is reduced to nothing but a few dogmas, while all the rest of the Church’s wisdom is to be reflexively spat out if it does not comport with our cramped tribal pieties. Only thus and not otherwise will our Catholic faith fulfill the truth Chesterton spoke when he said, “The Catholic Church is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”

You can read the entire article here.