The Roman ruler Julian, who reigned for a brief period in the mid-fourth century A.D. and who despised Christianity, had this very specific complaint about the early Christians: “As children are coaxed with cake, so have these Christians enticed the poor to join them by kindness. Strangers they have secured by hospitality. By affecting brotherly love, great moral purity, and honoring their dead, they have won the multitude!”
Today, our “rulers” don’t complain much about Christians. Indeed, we’ve become pawns and supporters of a divisive state that has substituted cruelty for kindness; xenophobia for hospitality; racism for brotherly love; hypocrisy for moral purity; and hedonism for honor.
As children coaxed with cake, today’s Christians have been enticed to worship the demagogues of America.
Keith G. Kondrich
Swisshelm Park
The writer is a deacon in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh.