Jewish Advice: Be Proud You Are Catholic
Sam Miller is a prominent Jewish businessman. He is not Catholic. And yet he offers some sage advice to Catholics in a recent column.
Be proud, he tells us. Even in the face of injustice in the media, scandals in the Church, and a less than favorable popular public opinion of our priests and leaders: Be proud to be Catholic.
Miller gives us a much-needed reminder of the many good things going on in our Church. You’ll never hear it on MSNBC, but the Catholic Church gets a lot of things right.
“Do you know - the Catholic Church educates 2.6 million students everyday at the cost to your Church of 10 billion dollars, and a savings on the other hand tothe American taxpayer of 18 billion dollars.
Your graduates go on to graduate studies at the rate of 92%, all at a cost to you. To the rest of the Americans it’s free.
The Church has 230 colleges and universities in the U.S. With an enrollment of 700,000 students.
The Catholic Church has a non-profit hospital system of 637 hospitals, which account for hospital treatment of 1 out of every 5 people - not just Catholics - in the United States today.
But the press is vindictive and trying to totally denigrate in every way the Catholic Church in this country.”
Like most Catholic parents, I worry about what to tell my kids when negative news stories about our Church dominate the cable news channels and newspaper headlines. I worry about the kind of fortitude that will be required of them to remain faithful Catholics in coming generations.
But in his homily last weekend, my parish priest said it well when he reminded us all that the idea that “it’s not cool to Catholic” is not exactly a new one. The Church has been persecuted—even with death—for over 2,000 years.
To combat that, we need to focus on the positive, we need to be strong, and we do need to be proud. Thank you, Mr. Miller, our Jewish friend, for reminding us of that.
