It was with these words that, at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, of the Knights of Columbus, got a rousing round of appluase in the middle of his speech.  Carl Anderson, rewording that famous line from Winston Churchill’s famous speech to a Joint Session of Congress, “What kind of people do they think we are?”, posed that question to the government trying to take away our religious libertyl; trying to take away our first ammendment right, which clearly states that we have a Freedom of Religion, and not a Freedom of Worship.  It is with these short words that I hope to answer this question that the Supreme Knight posed.

What kind of Catholic am I?  Well, I am pretty sure the government thinks that I am the kind of Catholic willing to violate my conscience, willing to violate the solemn truths that I profess willingly and loudly. 

However, they are wrong.

I am not this kind of Catholic.  I am the kind of Catholic willing to stand up to the Government in all of her misleadings.  I am the kind of Catholic who will not violate my conscience in order for “healthcare” for all.  I am the kind of Catholic who will not tolerate these attacks on the family.  This very family that is the future of our once great country, which can be great again.  I am the kind of Catholic willing to stand up and profess my beliefs every chance I get!  I believe in One God.  I believe in Jesus Christ.  I believe in, and will adamently defend the sanctity of all human life from the unborn baby in it’s mother’s womb, to the elderly man who is dying in bed and deemed to “have no life.” 

But most of all, I am the kind of Catholic who will not stand idly by watching Catholic instutions make plans for closure.  Why must they close, you ask?  They must close because they are Catholic.  They will close, rather than violate their own consciences, contributing to this unfortunate culture of death.  This was relayed to those in attendance at the end of the breakfast by Mother Agnes Mary Donovan, S.V., Superior General of the Sisters of Life.

In their 151-year history, this congregation has, with the help of God, survived a Civil War on their doorstep, deadly epidemics, devastating floods, economic depression and tumultuous social upheaval. Today, however, they face a new, more insidious threat — their own government. Should HHS persist in implementing the [Interim Rule and its contraceptive] mandate without major modifications, the Congregation will be forced to curtail its mission. What war and disease could not do to the Congregation, the government of the United States will do. It will shut them down.

We cannot.  Nay, we MUST not stand around and watch this happen.  Wars, floods. and disease, just to name a few things, did not close down the Dominican Sisters of the Congregation of St. Cecilia.  But the government will.  For following their first ammendment right of freedom of religion.  For being Catholic.  For fighting for families and the unborn child.  For refusing to acknowledge the so-called “validity” of homosexual unions.  For refusing to accept and embrace the unfortunate state of our society in which sexuality rules all, and, God-forbid one wasn’t having sex 24/7.

And so, in following the words of the Supreme Knight, this is the kind of Catholic that I am.  The kind of Catholic that they think I am might be different, but it does not matter.  I am going to stand up and profess the truths of the Catholic faith wherever I am, even if it means dying the death of a martyr, or in prison.  We must all take these words to heart.  We must all listen to them, and, once more, as Mother Agnes Mary, in quoting Tolkein,

Hold your ground! … A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. … This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you, stand!