Dear Parishioners,

In last week’s bulletin, I wrote about how people can think ill of the Church for teaching the truth. This week, I would like to compliment that article by giving reasons for defending the truth and why truth matters.

The truth is worth defending because without truth, all debates just become a matter of someone forcing their own will on another person. After all, truth is objective and should be something that all people can appeal to. While people may disagree with what the truth is on many topics, the idea that there is truth will lead to dialoging over differences rather than fighting over them.

I believe in truth because truth is life giving. If we know the truth of ourselves as human beings, we will know what makes us most fulfilled. We are made for a purpose and so many people are lead into bad lives when they do not know their purpose. It is easy to make the pursuit of money, or pleasure or self-promoting as the center of one’s life. But ultimately these are false idols and not the truth of the human person.

I believe in truth because ultimately all truth leads us to Christ. As he said. “I am the way, the truth and the life.” As Catholics, we have nothing to fear from truth. No matter where any philosophy or science leads, we have no fear that it will contradict the faith. Even with seeming contradictions like the discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe or that the universe began in a big bang just expanded our idea of what the universe is and therefore who God is. Therefore we love the truth because it will always help us to know God better.

The Pope’s ministry is to guard the truth of who God is and who Jesus is because these are the highest truths we have. Through the passage we read last week, we see that Jesus gave Peter and his successors a special role to support his brethren in this truth. Every heresy the Church has ever faced in her long history has been an assault on one or both of these truths. If we get these truths wrong, we can get nothing else right.

So, let us continue to pray for the Holy Father that he may be strong in the truth and preach it well.

God bless!

Fr. Carter