There has been much discussion these past weeks about how appropriate it is to give witness to our Lord Jesus before unbelievers. There has been much condemnation of youngsters who chose to witness to our Lord even at the risk of being humiliated and physically endangered, with the condemnation coming in the form of the scoffing of the consensus builders, who are, they claim themselves about themselves, to be the only reasonable people in the world. They do not witness themselves and defend the rights of those in error to live in a world where no witness to truth in charity will be given to them. Everyone religious is nice as long as they shut up and disappear, as long as they practically cease to exist. Nice “consensus”. Consensus building sounds like a virtue, but our Lord spoke not of being nice, but of bringing the sword of division, which is the truth, which is charity, which is godliness in an ungodly world.
THREE POINTS:
1. Error has no rights.
2. People in error have the right — because of the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus — to have the truth witnessed to them. They will not get any witness to truth and charity from the consensus builders, but only from faithful Catholics, who will be condemned by them, even to the point of death, of martyrdom, of witness to the truth and love of our Lord. Throughout this persecution, those giving witness will continue to be condemned as stupid, as those who lack the virtue of consensus building, as those who deserved whatever they got for being such fanatics about truth in charity. The persecuters will be praised as being nice, and among the nice will the co-religionists of those giving witness. These co-religionists will have the loudest voices condemning the un-niceness of those giving witness, for they know, deep down, that they should be giving witness as well.
3. Hopefully, after all is said and done, the witness will have an effect of conversion on even the most hard-hearted niceness-izers. Hopefully, like the centurion who shoved the sword into the side of Jesus, they will say, truly these were the children of God.
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
