"Fredo, you're my older brother and I love you, but don't ever take sides with anyone against the family with anyone, ever, again." Michael Corleone to brother Fredo in Godfather.
I confess: I do not much pray for my enemies.
Well, I don't have many enemies. Will Rogers famously said "I never met a man I didn't like." I don't go quite that far, but pretty close. My wife says I like people more than they like me and I think they like me more than they do. She may be right. But this is a good problem to have. I have no intention to correct it.
My enemies are intellectual: Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud. They are dead. I would do well to pray for their souls.
In this diverse American society, I have always been keenly aware of my cultural-religious tribe: Catholic. We are in competition with other tribes: mainline WASP Protestants, Evangelicals-Fundamentalists, Jews both secular and orthodox, Black Evangelicals and so forth. But raised in the harmonious, ecumenical post-war period, I see these more as competitors or benign adversaries, not enemies, like in a wholesome recreational athletic league.
And so, I do not have a personal animus against those from other tribes: Clintons, Trumps, Obamas, Bushes, and so forth. They are what they are; they don't know better.
Rather, the enemy I despise is the Catholic who betrays our family and our values: politicians like the Bidens, Kennedys, Pelosis, Cuomos, and such who crusade for abortion, force Catholic agencies to place adoptee children with gay couples, force the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraception, force our daughters to compete with biological boys.
Worse still are the Church leaders...theologians, priests, bishops...who betray us in the Culture War by blessing gay unions, tolerating abortion, abandoning our deposit of faith to accommodate fashion: Cardinals like Fernandez, Cupich, McElroy, Parolin and others.
These are to me what Fredo was to Michael Corleone.
It is important that I pray for them...for a number of reasons.
First of all, for my own soul. That I grow in charity; and not surrender to contempt, resentment, hatred.
Secondly, to enhance my own witness to Truth since I will be far more effective when I speak from a heart of serenity, love and openness.
Lastly, for the good of the Church. By speaking the truth always in love, out of prayer, humbly and open-mindedly, I contribute to the unity of the Church.
Yes...praying for my political-theological enemies within the Church is a salutary exercise: for my own heart, soul and intellect...and for the good of the Church.
