Prophetic courage in the public square, and everywhere

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 07, 2025

When Fr. Jerry Pokorsky wrote that “It is far more costly for the laity to live Gospel truths” than for priests, he made a reasonable if not always accurate point (see the second-last paragraph in his most recent homiletic essay, Bonds of Blood). He pointed out that “espousing the universal truths of Jesus and natural law may damage salaries and reputations in hostile work environments.” In contrast, most priests don’t face that particular sort of risk.

I have to admit that the same is true of those among the laity (like myself) who are insulated within recognizably Catholic institutions or, as in my own case, in smaller apostolates which interact with people mostly at a distance. That can change rapidly for both priests and laity if and when a hostile government proceeds to close churches and outlaw the proclamation of the Catholic faith. But at this moment in the West (for example) it is easier to speak positively about Catholic faith and morals from a safe distance—and to speak negatively about their opposites—than it is from within the vast majority of secular workplaces. And this is probably even more true in what we call the “public square”, where courageous, counter-cultural Catholics can quickly run into painful and debilitating resistance.

Fr. Pokorsky asks, “Should we not expect priests, bishops, and popes to support the embattled laity with clearly enunciated Catholic moral principles?” We should, of course, but in many cases now we don’t, which was the intended point. To take a stellar example, the notoriously culture-bound Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego has just been appointed as the new Archbishop of Washington, DC. When Catholic leadership is weak at the very top, or just at the next highest level up from oneself, things become even more difficult not only for the laity but for our priests.

In any case, while bearing witness to the truth in the world always seems to be somewhat challenging, bearing witness to the truth can frequently be very difficult even within the Church herself. Indeed, bearing witness is impossible without grace for those who care how they are viewed by the dominant culture—whether the dominant culture in the world or the dominant culture in the Church. Moreover, consider this: If you ever wondered whether human beings typically operate according to their natural instincts, you may want to consider how it is that we always know beyond any shadow of doubt what the “right” thing to say happens to be with regard to “those who matter”.

As a general rule, it is who we think matters that has to change. And it is precisely from this proper and ultimate “Who” that prophets are born.

Prophetic danger

Most of my readers, like myself, have already been baptized as “priests, prophets and kings” (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1241). Unfortunately, most of us do not work very hard at developing the prophetic aspect of our baptismal identities. In fact, just as there were huge numbers of false prophets in Israel who told the high and mighty exactly what they wanted to hear, so too is the Catholic Church riddled with false prophets (among not only priests and religious but laity as well)—that is, with all those who bear the Catholic name but who constantly seek either to conceal the Catholic spirit or to betray it by repeatedly emphasizing what the dominant culture wants to hear.

Now, in Scripture, the dominant culture is often referred to simply as “the world”. But sometimes it is even referred to, believe it or not, as “the public square”. I suppose everyone knows by now that I am currently in the midst of the Book of Isaiah in my repeated reading of the Bible (I made that fairly obvious last week in Is it always wrong to speak plainly? A Christmas answer). But at the risk of going back to the well once too often, I don’t think there is any way of escaping the relevance of the fifty-ninth chapter of Isaiah, especially verses 14-15:

Justice is turned back,
and righteousness stands afar off;
for truth has fallen in the public squares,
and uprightness cannot enter.

Truth is lacking,
and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.
The LORD saw it, and it displeased him
that there was no justice.

This condition ought to be obvious by now throughout our own society and culture, but we may not realize how often it has been true even in what we call the Catholic centuries in the West (say the fourth through the fifteenth centuries), and in the partially Christian centuries that followed (say the sixteenth through the nineteenth, before the West realized and proclaimed its wholesale emancipation from the Kingship of Christ in the twentieth). Indeed, at no time in the past 2,000 years has there been any shortage of issues on which the dominant culture was largely opposed to the teachings of Christ, if not always in its public positions, at least certainly in its habitual behavior.

To take but one example, we may think it a scandal—and we would not be wrong—that the overwhelming majority of “Catholic” married couples practice contraception today; but other habitual sins have been just as widespread in every century since Christ’s death and Resurrection. And certainly some “acceptable” form of sexual sin has always been near the top of the list. One recalls St. Peter Damian’s efforts to curtail homosexuality among the clergy in the eleventh century. But the larger scandal is almost certainly that so many Catholic leaders, no matter their state in life, say and do so very little to change whatever faulty beliefs and bad habits are at or near the top of a given culture’s list.

Simple bravery

By a whisker, magisterial Church teaching always remains intact. But the dominant Catholic practice is very generally off by far more than a whisker. The denial of, or lack of support for, one good or another during nearly every period of history has always made the “public square” a very difficult place for frank and open witness on the part of good Catholics. Moreover, there can be no question that the weaknesses of the Church in each and every era mirror the particular weaknesses of the surrounding culture (from which, after all, she draws her members)—and that all cultures in turn mirror to a very great extent the attitudes and values of their elites. And, bringing things down to brass tacks, these elites are the primary shapers of what we call the dominant culture, which in turn creates the very atmosphere of what we call the public square.

Certainly the open hostility to Catholicism in the dominant culture today makes things far more difficult than in at least some previous periods (though not as difficult as in others). My point here is that this is not a distinction between white and black, but between gray and black. It has always been a challenge in the world to bear witness to Christ on those matters on which the “world” (the dominant culture, the public square) has no doubt that it knows better even than God Himself.

Indeed, the main problem is not only humanly universal but humanly simple: Nobody likes to stick out like a sore thumb. This takes courage. And, yes, some priests might have it easy in some parishes, where sometimes (but only sometimes) parishioners will not complain about the deplorable strictness of their pastors and their bishops will not rebuke them for such strictness. And certainly I may have it easy when I am writing from afar. But there is no complete, across-the-board, authentic Catholicism anywhere at all without the moral courage of the true prophet—and there never has been.