Genuine courage: Not as the world gives

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Mar 28, 2025

When Cardinal McElroy denounced President Donald Trump’s immigration policies at a conference on “Catholic Teaching and Work with Migrants”, he made a particularly awkward statement. He said that we have a choice between treating those at the borders with dignity and launching “a crusade which comes from the darkest parts of our American psyche and soul and history.” Perhaps Cardinal McElroy has forgotten that the word “crusade” refers literally to an endeavor that is “marked by the cross”.

Of course, in an era in which businesses can speak of marketing in terms of “evangelization”, one has to admit that many important Christian terms no longer mean quite what they should to great numbers of people. But to a cardinal archbishop? I am saddened whenever I find a precious Christian word cheapened, and particularly so when that cheapening is done by Catholic leaders. The word “crusade” ought to describe the life of every Catholic individually and every Catholic movement collectively. Everything we are and do ought to be “marked by the cross.”

A genuine crusade, of course, requires courage. Being marked by the cross includes a willingness to witness to Christ when that witness is not welcome. Since this is not easy, too many Catholic leaders try to embrace primarily those causes that will be well-received, in effect returning from the fray with their heads bowed but unbloody.

Unreal courage

The phrase “bowed but unbloody” may be representative far too often of modern ecclesiastical courage. It is an inverted reference to William Ernest Henley’s early twentieth-century poem “Invictus”, in which the poetic voice insists upon being bloody but unbowed. This has a far more admirable ring to it, but in its original context it too is all wrong. See for yourself:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Perhaps, especially for Christians, context is everything.

Courage among knaves and fools?

A lack of context may be the result of ignorance, of course. But there are other cases in which that lack may be less forgivable. Earlier this week, Bishop Markus Büchel of St. Gallen in Switzerland called for the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood to resolve the shortage of priestly vocations. Here if we assume the context of the bishop’s knowledge of Catholic teaching, he must be a knave; yet if we assume the lack of that context, then we have the option of thinking him merely a fool.

It is not a happy choice, but it is forced upon us by Pope St. John Paul II’s magisterial apostolic letter in 1994 to all the bishops of the Catholic Church, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis “on reserving priestly ordination to men alone”, which concluded:

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.

Bishop Büchel was born in August of 1949, so he was already middle-aged and well into his priestly ministry when this apostolic letter was issued. The question of “fool” arises if he was unaware of this magisterial decision (sadly, the other option is far more likely). The scandal given by those among the Church’s ministers who either ignore or deny the teachings of Christ, as these teachings can be known definitively only through the Church He founded, has repeatedly gone uncorrected under the current pontificate, a situation which breeds confusion precisely among those Catholics who are most at risk—those who are eager for any opportunity to pretend that Christ has not established what He has established, and has not taught what He has taught.

Christ’s response

Pope St. Paul VI, Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI (whom I hope will also be canonized one day) all spent a good deal of their time attempting to clarify Catholic teaching, especially so that bishops, priests, religious and even theologians could have no excuse for placing their own heretical or immoral ideas on an equal footing with the natural law and Divine Revelation. After so much progress had been made since the 1960s, it is a cause for tears to find the same old errors arising so frequently and without correction under the current pontificate.

Or, to state the matter more pointedly, it is an ongoing cause for prayer and fasting on the part of all the Faithful. It is just this that enables the Catholic to offer a far better response to adversity than we find in Henley’s misguided poem. To take but one example, Psalm 27 is absolutely right when it identifies courage with trust in God:

Hear, O LORD, when I cry aloud,
be gracious to me and answer me!
Thou hast said, “Seek ye my face.”
My heart says to thee,
“Thy face, LORD, do I seek.”
Hide not thy face from me.
Turn not thy servant away in anger,
thou who hast been my help.
Cast me not off, forsake me not,
O God of my salvation!
For my father and my mother have forsaken me,
but the LORD will take me up.
Teach me thy way, O LORD;
and lead me on a level path
because of my enemies.
Give me not up to the will of my adversaries;
for false witnesses have risen against me,
and they breathe out violence.
I believe that I shall see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living!
Wait for the LORD;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
yea, wait for the LORD! [vv. 7-14]

Sadly, it is very difficult to be an effective witness to the Truth of Christ when so many in ecclesiastical positions continue to contradict what the Church teaches, both doctrinally and morally, on many of the most sensitive issues of our time. But just as the word crusade denotes an endeavor marked by the cross, so too is the word courage dervied from the Latin word (cor) for heart: Thus when Our Lord appeared out of the stormy gloom He exclaimed “Take heart, it is I; have no fear” (Mt 14:27, Mk 6:50), and in another place He demanded: “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts” (Lk 24:38)?

As Psalm 27 insists, the root of courage is found neither in Henley’s hopeless raging against the night nor in the hasty efforts of Catholics who join in the clamor of the dominant culture. We do not curse the darkness as if it is definitive, but neither do we accommodate the darkness as if nothing is something. The bravery of Christians is neither mythical nor unattainable: “I am the resurrection and the life,” says Jesus Christ. “He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” [Jn 11:25]

Or try John 14:27: “Not as the world gives do I give to you.” The greatest courage is simply the peace of Christ.