Would Jesus be a Catholic?

Jesus was a radical who challenged the religious establishment of his culture. Would he be different now?  Would he acquiesce to the pressure to comply with the traditional teachings of the Church? Or, would Jesus call her to task for not acting like Him?

Christianity has been so successful that now it’s passé. People reject it because it is now the establishment rather than the radical.  Is it any wonder why so many of us are asking, ‘What happened to Christianity?”  We feel as if our founder has been kidnapped.

Western culture is rapidly become more secular, with the “nones” — the religiously non-affiliated, including atheists as well as those who feel spiritual but don’t identify with a particular religion — accounting for almost one-fourth of Americans today. And, they are rapidly rising: among millennials, more than one-third are nones.

Maybe it’s time to let go of the over regulated practice of our beliefs and rediscover Jesus’ radically generous way of life.  A life rooted in contemplation and expressed in compassion!  Maybe it’s time to re-establish Christianity as a compassionate, loving way of life rather than a legalistic religion. Is it time to focus on the moral vision of Jesus for the world rather than rules and rubrics?

Many who are falling away from Christianity do so because they struggle with science verse the miraculous.  To attract them to the message of Jesus maybe we need to worry less about whether biblical miracles are literal and begin to teach more about their meaning.  When it is said that Jesus healed a leper, let’s put aside the question of whether this happened for now and focus on his outreach to the most stigmatized of outcasts. How would Jesus treat the LGBTQ community were he here today?

It's time to begin tackling the human needs around us and make this a better world; surely Jesus would applaud us if we did. Those who run soup kitchens and homeless shelters should be our leaders, not the ones in fancy clothes in big diocesan offices. We should be looking to the Catholic missionary doctor in Sudan treating bomb victims for leadership. Then we would have leaders like Christ.