God is Not Elected

Title: God is Not Elected

Date: Special - Unlisted 1987

Readings: Unlisted

Some of you may be familiar with the play which was later made into a movie, entitled "Mass Appeal". In it there were two main characters: one was the elderly well-liked pastor who told jokes but never really took stands or challenged his people; the other was a young deacon who took stands so fiercely that his preaching stung the people and they became angry. I suppose the ideal must be somewhere in the middle, for leaders and members of the Church to speak with tact and to live lives beyond hypocrisy or scandal. I mention this as I begin to speak to you today, because I am unsure what cords my words might touch in you. I am not always even sure what many of you think about me or about priests in general. Good things I hope.

On Tuesday night, NBC ran a special anchored by Maria Shriver entitled, "God Is Not Elected". It centered upon dissent in the Church of America, an issue made topical by recent events, racy headlines, and the Pope's up-in-coming trip to the United States. One priest-friend of mine said he liked the special and that he thought it realistically represented the majority situation among Catholics in our country today. That may be the case. But, I always ask crazy questions, "Ought it to be the case?" I will be honest with you. I did not like it. It is hard to tell you why. Some of my reasons may not be all that persuasive. The plight it presented in the Church might be partially our fault. If we had been better teachers, maybe people would not be so stupid, I don't know? Maybe, many of us only know or believe what we want, no matter how persuasive the argument? It is not clear to me, what, if any place exists for dissent in the Church. Certainly, it would not be the kind highlighted on television. So often all those issues of controversy are grouped together. Further, the secular mind is sometimes housed in Christian bodies. We become so much a product of our times that we begin to loose our grasp upon Christ's Kingdom which is timeless. Homosexuality -- Abortion -- Contraception -- Test-Tube Babies -- Married Priests -- Women Priests -- Extra-Marital Intercourse -- Divorce and Remarriage -- and the list, I guess, goes on, although I would bet you most of the issues would have sex or sexuality in there somewhere. I would further bet you that most of the people in that show who disagreed on one or more of these issues have never even read what the Scriptures have to say about these matters, not to mention the documents from Rome to which they love to refer.

One of my former teachers, Father Curran, with whom I have many differences, is at least learned upon the issues and knows first-hand what the Church Magisterium and his critics have to say. My fear is that most of us might be content to allow Catholics, no better informed or less so than ourselves, like Mrs. Shriver, to do our thinking for us. Worst yet, we Catholic Christians might allow non-Catholics or even a non-Christian dominated media to spoon feed us their false presuppositions or biases. It is easy for us to be gullible when we forget the homilies before we get out of the Church door. It is easy to be misinformed when we fail to read any Catholic publications. It is easy when we allow the old ethic of independent individualism to dominate our thinking. Of course the Pope is wrong! Why, because they answer, "I" disagree with him, or better yet, because "I" agree with Dan Rather or with Phil Donahue! Poor reasons. People do their faith a disservice when they make their most crucial life and faith decisions simply from television news or magazines which seek by their nature the controversial. Even in this city, one of the nation's greatest newspapers has an editorialist in religion who mocks our leadership and therefore our faith. And they don't play fair. I don't think it is really vice, probably just a terrible blind spot for many of them. You notice that when you have a science report, you have a science expert; when you have sports, you have a person with sports expertise; goodness, even when you have the weather, you have a meteorologist -- but, who do we get for religion. Who do you occasionally get on television, Andrew Greeley? The man professes himself that he is no theologian but a sociologist -- ah, but that might be more in keeping with mass consumption. Nothing against the poor lady from the other night, but anyone who knows the littlest bit about our faith would know that her sad remarks never touched the depth where real faith and therefore, where real dissent might occasionally be found. I have trouble about dissent and or putting our dirty laundry in public to begin with, but so often it cannot even be done intelligently or honestly. The media assumes that you can put anybody in charge of religion! You know how many religions there are in the world? The Catholic Church alone encompasses more than the 55-65 million in America that the show the other night wanted to make the boss for the rest of the world -- there are now over 800 million Catholics on this planet. The Church has a history which goes all the way back to Christ, some 2000 years. Put Joe Smoe in charge of religion -- sure, anybody can do it. The news reporting on religion is sometimes like a janitor speaking about the newest Shuttle prototype. See what I mean. And, what happens when these so-called experts don't know things -- I fear they make it up. They go by their feelings. Examples? We have heard it so much, many of us may even now believe it. Dr. Ruth coins one in her philosophy: "Anything goes as long as no one gets hurt." Or, if you like feelings, take these cases: (1) It is okay for gays to do their thing because conversion is impossible and life-long chastity is too much to ask of them; (2) It is okay for girls to have abortions because they are too young or because it would hurt their careers or because it would ruin their lifestyle -- poor girl; (3) It is alright for a couple to use the seed of another man to get a woman pregnant in artificial insemination even though it requires masturbation on the man's part and adultery between the donor and the wife; (4) It is too sad that a couple cannot have a child, so therefore they opt for conception in a test-tube where the marital act is by-passed, a third party (the doctor) intervenes, and possibly other embryos if unused would be frozen or disposed of (analogous to abortion); (5) Women see priesthood as a just fruit of the social movement which would open up the structures of true power to them which is long overdue -- avoiding the touchy issue of vocation or call as simply and totally a gift from God; (6) It is cruel to ask people not to remarry after divorce even if the previous bond was indeed real and lawful.

The show the other night exhibited that all too familiar mentality that classified all these teachings on the same level as the discipline of the Western Church to oblige her priests to celibacy. That is a policy or discipline -- the rest are not. Not even the Pope can change those things. He is not God. Neither are we. If a Pope tomorrow came out and said abortion was okay, he would fall into heresy. And, according to the ancient understanding of the Church, a Pope which falls into heresy, stops being Pope! The Holy Spirit has protected the Church on that score. Homosexual activity is condemned even in the Scriptures. So is Masturbation. Christ did not ordain women, we would have to be absolutely certain that he would allow it before we could do it -- otherwise, the sacraments and the orders founded by Christ himself would be jeopardized. As for divorce, the new covenant does not recommend it, and without an annulment, which simply means there was no previous bond to begin with, remarriage is impossible -- even if you were to go through the rite. The bond is self-reflective of Christ's bond with his bride the Church, he will never violate his covenant of love with us nor will he destroy the bond of matrimony as a sacrament -- for any cause. These are not all new issues. Henry XIII with his marital woes could tell you that. Christians in Alexandria who were forbidden in the first couple of centuries from using crocodile tongue as a contraceptive could tell you that. The Church's condemnation of homosexuality among the Roman soldiers could tell you that. The steadfast insistence among our missionaries in the early Hawaiian settlements against crushing the skulls of unwanted female infants or against potions inducing abortion in the Far East could tell you that. And the ancient Gnostic cults, which denied that Christ became a man -- they had women priests. Now they are gone. History has devoured them while the Church is still with us. What does that say to us? Read about it. Learn about it. Pray about it. And then if you dissent, be humble, if there is anything right in what you think, its day will come, and if not, and the Magisterium (the Pope and Bishops) is right, and our teaching does say that the Holy Spirit looks especially after them, then we have brought neither ourselves nor others to error. I don't know about you, but I am unwilling to risk my salvation, and especially that of others, on my own preferences and narrow scope of things. I look to the Church which pulls along with itself a treasury of faith and witness which would take eternity to penetrate.