And if you are confronted with an array of items you really do not have a choice but choose. Rows upon rows of different kinds of onions, mushroom and all the produce you want for your dinner table, different cuts of meats or meat substitute, if you are so inclined, shelves of coffee, soups. Name it and for a price you can have it.

One thing I know is that if I walk in to a grocery hungry, I tend to pick up stuff from the shelves that I really don’t need. If you have kids with you, good luck! It’s almost impossible to remember what you came in for. It takes great planning to come up with a shopping list. But most importantly, resolve to stick to it.

Supermarkets offer selections. You can have this today and that one tomorrow. Every choice you make depends on how you feel and how hungry you are at the moment.

Not so within the Catholic faith. If we choose to enter into communion with the Catholic Church, we are bound by her Catechism – The Christian truths centered on the Apostle’s Creed, the seven sacraments, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. We cannot pick and choose which ones we will believe or which ones we will not - especially beliefs centered on the magisterium or the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. These are the teachings that as Catholic Faithful we must believe.

Currently there are social issues and questions that are ripping our culture. But the choices are actually quite clear albeit painful to make. In fact, I suspect the reason we do not wish our positions known are the perceived, or otherwise, very real, accusations of being "insensitive," "cruel" and regretfully, "politically incorrect." Forgetting all those, we either believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church or we do not.

In probably the most important struggle in our culture, the Church’s teaching is quite clear: Life begins at conception. But there seems to be an open non-support to this very basic Church teaching – probably more as a result of the distrust by the Faithful of the Catholic Church due to the child sexual abuse scandal, than current practicalities, the feeling that the Church’s teachings and beliefs belong in the past. These have caused some of us to leave the Church, or select to believe only those teachings that we feel comfortable with.

Supporting anyone who believes and acts otherwise is contrary to the Catholic, and for that matter, Christian, belief. Believing a Catholic or Christian can take an abortion rights position is just as unthinkable as a liberal believing an absolute right to life starting from conception.

There really is no middle ground.

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