You personally can live however you wish. But think through the consequences. For yourself. For the world of your friends and families

On Being and Staying Catholic

 in the Modern World

by Michael Novak

Editor’s note: The following is an address delivered June 7, 2014 to the graduating class of St. Michael the Archangel High School in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

I love being here at this school. I love what you are trying to do.

I am moved by the faith of your parents, and the generosity of your families, and the self-sacrifices of your teachers, grade by grade, room by room….

Now a period of huge decisions hits you in the face. First, what to do after high school—work? a career? enlist in the Marines? go to college? But then, which college? You also face the choice of committing yourself to a spouse, your lifetime-best-friend, over the next few years. It is a wonderful time in life. But it sure hits hard, and fast.

And another big choice: You must make your adult commitment either to become a lifelong Catholic, on your own, or to leave that faith behind. That is a perfectly normal choice. Every human being must make it. More on that in a moment.

First, let me tell you a story. Once, I was given an honorary degree by a well-known Catholic university, and the class valedictorian said the most important thing his class had learned in its four years of university education is that everything is relative.

I could hear hundreds of parental hearts sink. Why did they spend scores of thousands of dollars on this smart lad’s Catholic education, when they could have had him come out a relativist at the much cheaper state university? One thing I assure you. They did not want him to break from his faith. They love their faith too much. May I tell you one secret? There is no fear greater in the hearts of the last two generations of Catholic parents than that the invisible gas of relativism, of unbelief, will seep into the minds of their children, and steal from them what we parents consider the most precious inheritance we can pass on.

May I pry into your personal affairs, dear graduates? Does each of you know for how many decades your own family has passed on the faith from generation to generation, even, for how many centuries? Are you going to be the one who breaks the link?

The iffy thing about the Catholic faith is this: that it must be chosen afresh in every generation. It cannot be inherited. It must be chosen. You yourself must choose it freely. Or you—you by yourself—may reject it. We parents may have broken hearts about your choice. But we know the rules of the game. Christian faith must be inalienably personal. It must be personally chosen. The root of all the world’s freedoms comes from that one. As the great historian of Liberty, Lord Acton of Cambridge University, concluded: “The history of liberty is coincident with the history of Christianity.”

St. Michael’s has respected that liberty. Acts of personal liberty are beautiful works, as radiant as the best days of June. It is a privilege to be with you, educated in this most personal of all liberties.

Still, I bet that most of you are not Christians, not yet. There are two immense dangers in becoming a Christian. First, they put people like us in prison, make fun of us, taunt us, and kill us. A young woman in Sudan has been sentenced to 100 lashes.Why? Because she has married a Christian, and had their child baptized Christian. She has been given a chance to renounce Christianity before the court and has refused. Therefore, after she has been whipped 100 times, she must be killed. She has blasphemed Allah, turned away from Allah.

The last eighty years have seen by far the bloodiest years for Christians, the most ruthless persecution, in the history of the Church. Nazism and Communism recently carried out the deaths of millions of Christians and Jews, often in most horrible ways. In Nigeria today, young Christian girls are being kidnapped by the hundreds for sale as slaves. Throughout Pakistan, bombs are set off in Christian churches, men with machine guns swing church doors open and mow down everyone in sight. Long, long lines of Christian refugees are being driven out of their homelands with nothing of their own but their strength of soul.

Don’t you dare think that the persecution of Christians will never come to America.

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