Lately I have had several baptism "classes" (really, conversations, since there are usually only one or two couples there at a time) at St. Richard's Church.  One of the things I always do as we get started is ask the parents: "why do you want to have your baby baptized?"  That seems like a good way to open up the discussion, and it does cut to the chase about why we're meeting in the first place.

Often the answer I get goes something like this:  "Well, I was baptized and I want to continue that tradition and raise my child in the Church.  Of course, when the baby gets older he (or she) will make their own choices, but this is how I want to get them started."

That's a perfectly honest and good answer, of course, and I am totally delighted that parents want their babies baptized.  So don't get me wrong on that point.  And it is probably the kind of thing most of us would say when asked this question out of  the blue.  It is what we're conditioned to do.

But as I have reflected on hearing this sort of answer time and again, I have gotten to wonder if I shouldn't hope for more, and if I am seeing the reflection of the stress we all feel as believing Catholic Christians in the modern world.  

Shouldn't I hope that we will say that we want our babies baptized because we truly believe in what we say when we recite the Creed at Mass and we believe living as a committed Christian is truly the best way to live, the way God wants us to live?

But it seems so hard for us to say that these days, whether in the context of baptism or in the context of explaining to someone why we go to Mass or pray or receive the sacraments.  We shy away from expressing our beliefs, and seek refuge in the safe assertion of something that sounds like we're "cultural Catholics" because we think that people are less likely to take offense if we really claim that our beliefs are true.

And I think we do that, in part at least, because we've spent the last twenty years hearing that all beliefs are relative, that truth is in the eye of the beholder, and that it isn't our place to judge what someone else says they believe. So when we get a chance to say that we truly believe in Christianity, we are reluctant to do so because we've violating what has now become a social taboo by putting a claim out there that necessarily calls into question the beliefs and world-views of those who aren't Christian.

But if there is anything that the horrific events from the Middle East in the last six months have done it must be that ISIS et al. have established convincingly the lie that all value systems are equally valid.  They're not.  At the extremes, at least, the whole idea of moral relativism is just unsustainable in light of what we see and read all too often these days.

Does that mean I am suggesting that we all begin hounding others with our views?  Not at all, in part at least because that behavior is terribly counterproductive.

But I do think we should get in the habit of asserting proudly the truth of what we believe when someone asks us why we do what we do.

 Countercultural?  Yes, probably.

 Hard to do?  Certainly.

But if we do that we might actually get other folks thinking that beliefs and moral values actually matter.  And if we do that, we're doing a good thing.