To my Catholic pals conflicted about the recent Supreme Court ruling–feeling the pride but also worrying about betraying their faith–I respectfully ask you to consider:

1. It wasn’t long ago that hellfire awaited those who ate meat on Friday. The Catholic Church changed.

2. For a long time, the church mandated Latin for services. The Catholic Church changed.

3. The whole mandatory celibacy thing for priests is drifting into the history books. The Catholic Church will have changed and survived.

4. Paul and Peter had a knock down/drag out over whether or not circumcision was the way to go (Still waiting for the movie version of “Incident at Antioch” Come on Hollywood, get on it.). Okay, the Catholic Church may not have actually changed on this one, but it indicated that its leaders could disagree fiercely about something and still survive.

I could go on, but you get the idea. I’m no theologian, but I do know that no religion that has survived hundreds of years practices its faith–and holds to the exact same beliefs–as it did when it was founded.

Peace.