I’m Catholic—And I Won’t Stay Silent

I am a not-so-well-educated Catholic in Warren County, so that may be why I have not found the passages in the Bible that allow for the weaponization of our Faith and the law against the citizens of our county. The actions of the members of the Catholic faction who have taken over the majority of the Board of Supervisors and many of the other leadership roles in the community are not representative of Catholics at large… educated or not. Unfortunately the rest of us Catholics are left cleaning up the mess of a faith poorly lived within our community.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the most well educated people during Jesus’ time, the Scribes and Pharisees, also received the harshest criticisms from Jesus himself. It wasn’t the education that was the problem, it was how the education inflated their egos and helped them achieve power and political gains. They could not accept the teachings of Jesus which involved serving the poor and lowly, loving their neighbors as well as their enemies, and associating with those who were certifiably “unclean.” They knew the scriptures inside and out yet could not recognize the Messiah right in front of them. Their education became a stumbling block in their ability to encounter Christ and in the end they used the law, and their political power to ultimately nail Him to the cross.

We obviously don’t have Pharisees and Scribes in our midst today, but I think that they were an example to a very specific danger that we are all susceptible to: allowing our intellect and purity standards to get in the way of the message of our salvation: to love one another.

When I read Tom McFadden Sr. and Mark Eggers’ letters to the editor, between the lines all I could see was hate layered beneath the false pretenses of “protecting our children” and “keeping us safe from EDA-level scandal”.  Their letters were dripping with scorn and pride, and covering a motive of hate much like a cup that looks clean on the outside, but inside where it matters, is filthy.

This is also true of many of the FOIA-ed book-removal-request forms that if had been submitted out of a place of love for our children, would not have been full of so much outright hate for human beings in the LGBTQ+ community.

Their hate trickled out from their forms, and into the lives of our librarians and their scorn became aimed at those who defended our library, including their fellow Catholics. There were threats, jobs lost, reputations marred, all in the name of “protecting our children”.  But who is protecting the children of the suffering librarians? Or the children who have LGBTQ+ identifying family members? Who is protecting the children who have parents whose livelihoods were lost or threatened? Or the children who benefit so greatly from the abundance that Samuels Library provides to our community?  Maybe I also missed the verse explaining how some children are more worthy of protection than others.

This is not our Faith. Our Faith produces good fruit, not the fruit of dissension, division, confusion, and anxiety. The very point of our Faith has been lost in the mess of hate-based rhetoric and half-truths. At what point do these individuals demand we remove the Gospel from the shelves of our library because Jesus’ radical call to love one another includes our entire community… regardless of their education, occupation, race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation?

“By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” John 13:35

Clare Marmalejo
Warren County, VA

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