Cardinal Reinhard Marx is now fulminating against the Bavarian government’s move to place crosses on public buildings. He complains that such a display would create “division” and make some Germans uncomfortable.
I’ve got news for the Cardinal. The Gospel is about division—the division between those who accept Jesus Christ and those who do not. Between those who choose Life and those who choose… something else. This division can’t be made to go away by any amount of "accompaniment" or "discernment."
It is about making people uncomfortable. In a way, nothing should make us more uncomfortable than the sight of a cross. The cross is a reminder of the way we treated God when He came in His Second Person, Jesus Christ, to save us. We took His love and threw it in His face. We beat Him. We killed Him. And after He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven, we scorned His memory and disbelieved His disciples. What a sorry lot we are, says the Cross.
And not just first-century Jews and Romans, or later European Christians, or any other subset of humanity. Every person who ever lived or will live. All have fallen short of the glory of God, all have sinned, even those who have never heard the Gospel and have only the natural law to guide them.
So, Cardinal Marx: as the hymn says, "Lift high the cross." Or admit you just don't believe the whole thing and that you need to retire.
In 1867, Matthew Arnold wrote "Dover Beach", a haunting poem evoking the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith. As a boomer who finished Catholic elementary school in 1964 and then watched my Church falter, I've found the roar all too audible. So here I wait, listening for the whispers of that Sea's invincible return.
