What is a Good Catholic?

Please take a few moments to read a very fine article by Leon J. Suprenant, Jr. He speaks about what makes a good Catholic and what we are required to do.

He writes:

"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."

This quote, attributed to the 18th-century British philosopher Edmund Burke, is often used as a rallying cry when it comes to attacks against the Catholic Church. Perhaps we can fine-tune the quote this way for our purposes: "All that is necessary for anti-Catholicism to succeed is that good Catholics do nothing."

This quote appropriately exhorts all of us to fight against the vices of laziness and cowardice and do our part in standing up for the Church. However, there is another implied exhortation embedded in this quote: We can't take for granted that any of us, let alone the majority of Catholics, are "good." While we might disagree as to what precisely constitutes a "good" Catholic, we can say that ordinarily a "good" Catholic would not sit by idly while the Church is attacked. And even if he or she did so temporarily, that person should easily be stirred to action when confronted with the reality of anti-Catholicism. But, given the inroads anti-Catholicism has made in our culture with relatively little resistance, it's fair to ask, are the "good" Catholics doing nothing, or are many Catholics not as "good" as we're called to be? At the end of the day, what is a "good" Catholic?

More of the article here.

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