The Case Against Christianity

Living a counter-cultural Christian faith

06/01/2025

Acts 1:1-11 In the first book, Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught until the day he was taken up, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them by many proofs after he had suffered, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. While meeting with them, he enjoined them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for “the promise of the Father about which you have heard me speak; for John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

The annual feast of the Ascension of Jesus into heaven always causes confusion and not a little conflict in the Church. Have you seen the funny meme floating around on Facebook about it? It depicts a classical painting of Jesus’ Ascension and has these words from Jesus: “I am now going to my Father…unless you live in certain regions in which case I’ll be around until Sunday.”

In other words, Catholics cannot make up our minds when to celebrate the Ascension. Some diocese – like Little Rock – wait to celebrate the Ascension on Sunday. But other dioceses celebrate it on Thursday. Why the diff? Well, Thursday would be exactly 40 days after Easter, which is when our first reading from Acts 1 said Jesus ascended into heaven. It used to be called “Ascension Thursday.”

But some bishops feel Catholics will not come to another holy day of obligation in the middle of the week, so they move the feast to the following Sunday since we're already coming to Mass. How do you feel about that strategy toward holy days? Personally, I prefer to celebrate the Ascension back on Thursday, like it says in the Bible. Why? Well, I worry that we are slowly caving in to our culture and living our faith only when it is convenient or easy.

I will never forget Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s stern warning to be counter cultural. He thundered from the pulpit: “Dead fish float down-stream! It takes live fish to fight against the current.” In other words, are we willing to suffer even a little for our faith, or are we quick to wave the white flag of surrender, and go with the flow of everyone around us?

One of my favorite books by Henri de Lubac, called The Drama of Atheistic Humanism, renders a similar guilty verdict on modern Catholics. He asks rhetorically: “Do the unbelievers who jostle us at every turn observe on our brows the radiance of that gladness, which twenty centuries ago, captivated the fine flower of the pagan world?”

He continued: “Are our hearts the hearts of men risen with Christ? Do we, in our time, bear witness to the Beatitudes?” (122-23). Let me put the problem a little more personally: when our children go away to college, how many of them still practice the faith? Did we raise them to be live fish who fight the cultural current, or dead fish who go with the flow?

Here are a few strategies to be live fish and swim upstream. For instance, Fort Smith people are funny when a new restaurant opens. For one week everyone rushes to eat there, but a few weeks later we have all but forgotten about it. Instead of following the crowd, cook a meal at home, and eat together as a family. And leave the TV off, and don’t bring phones to the table. Swim against that current.

Many people will take a week or two of vacation this summer. Make it a point to make it to Mass on Sundays. Sometimes parishioners take a selfie at the church where they attended, and send it to me saying, “See, Fr. John, we made it to Mass!” Others bring me a bulletin from the church as a “proof of purchase” for going to Mass. Swim against the current to skip Mass during the summer.

When you move into a new house or apartment, invite the priest or deacon over to bless it (of course you feed him dinner). Hang a crucifix or Sacred Heart of Jesus painting in a prominent place in your home. Participate in our Corpus Christi procession on June 22 walking through the streets of Fort Smith. Be a live fish and show the world you’re not ashamed to be Catholic.

Hang a rosary from your rearview mirror, and pray the rosary while driving so you don’t yell at other crazy drivers. Like the old Christian self-examination: if you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Only a live fish could be convicted of being a Christian.

By the way, speaking of fish, did you know that the fish was a symbol of Christianity in the early Church? If you lived in the Roman Empire and met a stranger and you didn’t know they were Christian, you might draw an arc in the sand with the toe of your sandal. If the other person were a Christian, they would draw an opposite arc and complete the outline of a fish. That’s where Catholics got the name of “Fish-eaters.”

But the fish symbol meant more than a secret Christian code to identify one another. The letters for fish in Greek are actually an acronym for the whole Christian faith. Fish in Greek is ΙΧΘΥΣ. The letters stand for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” a perfect summary of the entire faith, all found in a fish. In the Roman Empire Christians were counter-cultural.

Indeed, so counter-cultural that they were put on trial, convicted for their Christianity, and fed to the lions, because there was plenty of proof against them. As we Christian fish swim around in our modern American culture, do we fight the current or just float downstream? Perhaps one place to start building a case against us is by coming to Mass on Ascension Thursday.

Praised be Jesus Christ!