Courage

I have been out of action for some time because of personal health issues.  Today I am back, but not entirely well just yet.  I have been watching the whole saga around the HHS mandate in the USA with great interest over the last year or so.  Thanks of course to the Internet, which gives me access to important Catholic news from around the world.

Newspapers like the National Catholic Register give one a pretty good insight into what is happening and thankfully don’t leave you with that feeling that you have to launch out to defend your Faith because of its content.  That’s the feeling I get when I read the National Catholic Reporter or even sometimes when I read our local South African Catholic newspaper.

By the way, if I had to rely on our local Catholic newspaper, I would probably still not be aware of the issues around the HHS mandate and its impact on Catholics in the USA.  That’s because our South African Catholic newspaper didn’t think that the attack on religious liberty was important enough to warrant space in their pages!

Anyway, let me get off that depressing topic and onto something more enlightening and encouraging.  One of the National Catholic Register’s bloggers, Matthew Archbold, posted a wonderful story yesterday about the actions of what is clearly a very brave Catholic woman.  It tells of how she is prepared to allow her health to suffer before acting against her conscience.  You can find the post on the website of the National Catholic Register by following this link: http://bit.ly/P2HHll.

I love reading positive stories like this of how Catholics around the world are courageously living out their Faith, regardless of the difficulties and challenges that doing so brings to them.  It's a wonderful example for us all to follow.