Straight-up brilliance from Andrew Preslar:
"This is me chiming in on CFA and the American unclean, or at least not exactly urbane, bourgeois masses who have been making their way to that most excellent fast-food restaurant on this day:
As long as there have been what can properly be called human societies, people have been in the habit of congregating together and celebrating what they hold dear. In the case at hand, folks are gathering at...
As long as there have been what can properly be called human societies, people have been in the habit of congregating together and celebrating what they hold dear. In the case at hand, folks are gathering at...
CFA, primarily in the South where the majority of those restaurants are located, to celebrate the institution of marriage. It bears remembering that "those people" are not buying CFA sandwiches and then going to gay bars to shove the sandwiches in the faces of other people. They are going to CFA and eating there, together, as people who love and support the institution of marriage, and who love and support persons who are not afraid to publicly affirm marriage, in a positive way, without lapsing into hate speech or in any way attacking homosexual persons or other persons who mistakenly believe that the institution of marriage can be realized by homosexual unions.
(Click the following link to read what CFA president Dan Cathy actually said about marriage: http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=38271 .)
If some CFA supporters do in fact hate homosexuals, then shame on them. But shame also on those, like some would-be-trendy sniffers at the bourgeois patrons of CFA, who cannot tell the difference between supporting marriage and attacking the enemies of marriage. Shame on the silly and shallow thinkers who think that every celebration is no more than a fear-fueled reaction, an exercise in bigotry. Make no mistake about it: There is often an element of defensiveness mingled in cultural movements. The case at hand is a case in point. Those who would have the state redefine marriage are in fact enemies of marriage, and in that way enemies of God who instituted marriage, and enemies of Christ who hallowed marriage by his presence and wonder-working at the marriage celebration in Cana, who elevated this natural institution to become a sacrament of the New Covenant, by which baptized Christians receive the grace of God in their lives together--unto salvation. If you agree with this, and you care at all about humanity, and God, and Jesus, then you are bound to be a bit defensive over the current debate regarding marriage. And you should be.
But, no, we must not hate the enemies of marriage. It will never do to hate those who are made in the image of God, particularly when they are our fellow citizens. We must love them, and seek to counter their errors by means of testimony, including public testimony, to the truth. This is a form of love, even if the result is that you look a little silly, and your urbane neighbors despise you as some sort of relic, or worse, as a moral majority conservative (major loss of cool points). Sometimes, this testimony takes the form of soccer moms in suburbia toting their youngsters to a chicken restaurant. Sometimes it takes other forms. Every form involving a human being is a little bit absurd, and compromised, and not exactly to everyone's taste, and sometimes it has something to do with capitalistic ventures and maybe just wanting some food and decent service and being a little bit encouraged that not every big business in America publicly opposes marriage.
I did not go to CFA today, but this is not because I was remaining aloof. I just did not feel obliged to do so; after all, its not the Feast of the Immaculate Conception or anything like that. Plus, I don't like eating out on my day off, and I don't like crowds. (Going to Mass on Sunday is always a little bit of a challenge, for that very reason.) But I love the fact that so many people did turn out and turn into a crowd and a kind of community on this one day. Let the suave and the self-righteous and the postmodern proponents of smoothly ironic and culturally disengaged Christianity remain aloof from the CFA masses if they will. But the Gospel is for the masses. The Gospel has nothing to do with the self-righteously aloof despisers of popular piety. Otherwise, Jesus would have simply stayed in heaven, or else he would have been a lot cooler, a lot less moralistic, and a lot less, you know, populist, when he came to earth--holing up with Sanhedrin instead of receiving the kinderfolk, feeding the multitudes, and blessing marriage.
(Click the following link to read what CFA president Dan Cathy actually said about marriage: http://www.bpnews.net/
If some CFA supporters do in fact hate homosexuals, then shame on them. But shame also on those, like some would-be-trendy sniffers at the bourgeois patrons of CFA, who cannot tell the difference between supporting marriage and attacking the enemies of marriage. Shame on the silly and shallow thinkers who think that every celebration is no more than a fear-fueled reaction, an exercise in bigotry. Make no mistake about it: There is often an element of defensiveness mingled in cultural movements. The case at hand is a case in point. Those who would have the state redefine marriage are in fact enemies of marriage, and in that way enemies of God who instituted marriage, and enemies of Christ who hallowed marriage by his presence and wonder-working at the marriage celebration in Cana, who elevated this natural institution to become a sacrament of the New Covenant, by which baptized Christians receive the grace of God in their lives together--unto salvation. If you agree with this, and you care at all about humanity, and God, and Jesus, then you are bound to be a bit defensive over the current debate regarding marriage. And you should be.
But, no, we must not hate the enemies of marriage. It will never do to hate those who are made in the image of God, particularly when they are our fellow citizens. We must love them, and seek to counter their errors by means of testimony, including public testimony, to the truth. This is a form of love, even if the result is that you look a little silly, and your urbane neighbors despise you as some sort of relic, or worse, as a moral majority conservative (major loss of cool points). Sometimes, this testimony takes the form of soccer moms in suburbia toting their youngsters to a chicken restaurant. Sometimes it takes other forms. Every form involving a human being is a little bit absurd, and compromised, and not exactly to everyone's taste, and sometimes it has something to do with capitalistic ventures and maybe just wanting some food and decent service and being a little bit encouraged that not every big business in America publicly opposes marriage.
I did not go to CFA today, but this is not because I was remaining aloof. I just did not feel obliged to do so; after all, its not the Feast of the Immaculate Conception or anything like that. Plus, I don't like eating out on my day off, and I don't like crowds. (Going to Mass on Sunday is always a little bit of a challenge, for that very reason.) But I love the fact that so many people did turn out and turn into a crowd and a kind of community on this one day. Let the suave and the self-righteous and the postmodern proponents of smoothly ironic and culturally disengaged Christianity remain aloof from the CFA masses if they will. But the Gospel is for the masses. The Gospel has nothing to do with the self-righteously aloof despisers of popular piety. Otherwise, Jesus would have simply stayed in heaven, or else he would have been a lot cooler, a lot less moralistic, and a lot less, you know, populist, when he came to earth--holing up with Sanhedrin instead of receiving the kinderfolk, feeding the multitudes, and blessing marriage.
The cultural attack on marriage began long ago (as measured by the life-span of the USA), and this beginning had nothing to do with homosexual persons. Doubtless, many of those who support traditional marriage in the context of the current crises are themselves deeply implicated in the tragic demise of that institution. Let him who has no sin cast the first stone. Just don't mistake eating a chicken sandwich for throwing a rock."
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