Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Print Friendly Version| The Peace Pulpit by Bishop Gumbleton | Sunday, June 15, 2008 |
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I thought that we could best understand and reflect on today's scriptures if I shared with you an article that I read just a day or so ago in the Michigan Catholic of this week. The headline of the article is "Professor Stunned by Refusal of Communion." The article goes on to speak about the "Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec, a constitutional lawyer who often writes on religion in the public square."
But this time when he had given a speech in which according to the article, he told how he supported one of the Presidential candidates, Obama, he said, because of his "remarkable 'love thy neighbor' style of campaigning, his expressed desire to transcend partisan divide, and specifically, his appreciation for faith."
This man, Professor Kmiec, was known as the architect of the Reagan administration stance against abortion. He had been a keynote speaker at the March for Life's Annual Rose Dinner. Yet because he admired Senator Obama because of his "remarkable 'love thy neighbor' style," and his attempt to "transcend partisan divide" and so on, in the Mass that took place, the priest from the pulpit condemned him, then at communion time, refused to give him Holy Communion.
Now this is a man who has pro-life credentials that exceed probably anything we have done. Yet because this priest thought that he was supporting someone who was not for abortion but for choice, he would condemn him, refuse to give him Holy Communion.
It's typical of what has been happening in our church, where church leaders, even priests, are choosing to be judges over others, judging their consciences and deciding 'you may or may not receive Holy Communion,' 'you are or you're not worthy-I will decide.' It's amazing that this would happen to a person like Professor Kmiec.
In this instance, Cardinal Mahony, the archbishop of the diocese where it happened, did challenge the priest and tell him it was wrong to do such a thing. Though Cardinal Mahony himself, only within the last two weeks had also decided "certain people aren't worthy to be in my diocese and speak." I'm referring to Bishop Jeffrey Robinson, who was refused the opportunity to speak in the diocese of Los Angeles, a bishop who was in fully good standing with the Catholic Church, but because he was speaking on an issue that Cardinal Mahony thought should be dealt with otherwise, he was refused.
All of this is something that's happening within our church that I think is totally contrary to what we hear about Jesus in today's scriptures.
Take the gospel lesson, first of all, how Matthew says, "Jesus was moved with compassion." He wasn't moved with a sense of judgment or condemnation but compassion. One of the scripture commentators that I consulted this week points out how the word "compassion," in both Greek and Hebrew, has the root meaning of "womb," so it calls forth the idea of nurturing, sustaining love, and that is so clear about Jesus, isn't it?
He was a person who was filled with compassion, nurturing, life-sustaining love. His attempt was to go out and bring back, as he said, "the lost sheep of Israel." Don't condemn them, don't push them away because they've fallen short. Draw them back.
In fact, in today's gospel, Matthew points out Jesus set up a group of 12 to be a foundation for his community of disciples. It wasn't, as we perhaps have come to think, a set of bishops who were to be over the others. That wasn't who the 12 were at all. He had designated the 12 because that would be symbolic of the 12 tribes of Israel. At the point in time when Jesus was alive, those 12 tribes had been split for hundreds of years -- 10 tribes in the north and they had been lost to history, two tribes in the south and even including the Samaritans, who were half Jewish and half Gentile. Jesus said, "Bring them all back."
So setting up a group of 12 was symbolic of trying to make the Jewish people whole again, the way they were when God spoke to Moses in the desert and called them to be his people, his chosen possession, what we heard about in the first lesson today. Jesus wanted that to happen again. "Bring back those lost sheep, bring everybody together in a spirit of love," so he sends the disciples out to heal, to proclaim the good news, "the reign of God is at hand, come, come back!" That was the approach of Jesus.
What St. Paul tells us today also is so clear: God is a God of love and that love of God is poured into our hearts, not when we are worthy of it -- we don't come to Holy Communion because we are worthy of it and that's a gift, a prize that we receive -- no, we come because God's love is drawing us. Jesus is a God of love and it's especially, as Paul points out, when we are sinners, that that love of God is extended to us.
So isn't it clear how wrong it is that within our church, we're getting to the point where we want to condemn this group or that group, this person or that person, instead of being welcoming, a loving community that draws people to us?
I think we have a long way to go. I can think of a number of areas where we would bar people from Holy Communion. We make judgments about them.
I think of how, within the last two weeks, there's a new decree from Rome condemning women who have in any way participated in ordination of women, Instead of listening to what's happening in the world around us, and instead of accepting the fact that there's nowhere in the gospels that says women can't be ordained; instead of listening to women and why they want to enter into roles of servant leadership in the church, we condemn them, excommunicate them. I think that's wrong, very wrong, if you take into consideration the way Jesus was. He could have condemned those from the chosen people who had left and gone away and had gotten mixed up in pagan religions. Instead, he said, "Go, bring them back. I love them."
That's the way our church should be.
So every one of us, I think, has a responsibility to look into his or her heart and ask, "How am I in relationship to others? Am I a person who welcomes people and helps this parish community to be an inclusive community, where we wouldn't turn anyone away, or would draw people because we love them and want them to share more deeply in the love of God?"
I hope that we would try to become like that and get rid of any kind of barriers -- and you can think of the ones, economic barriers, sexual orientation barriers, male/female barriers, racial barriers -- all of those barriers we've set up at times and some of us have that attitude, "exclude." Instead of that, if we listen carefully to the scriptures of today, we discover a God who eliminates barriers, and that's made especially clear in Jesus, God's son, who came to us to be the very visible image of the invisible God.
That love of God is poured into our hearts when we're sinners, so we ought to extend that love of God to every other person and try in our public life, our family life and our parish life, always to draw people to ourselves so we build up the reign of God which is a reign of love, bringing all people together as sons and daughters of God, sharing in the life of Jesus, God's son.
If we can become that kind of inclusive community and inclusive people, the reign of God will be very much closer than it's been before.
[Bishop Gumbleton gave this homily at St. Hilary Parish in Redford, Mi.]
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Joe Walker from East Grand
Joe Walker from East Grand Rapids, MI
As always, Bishop Gumbleton has his issue analyzed well! Historically, since our merger with Constantine, Theodosius, et al, many in the hierarchy have figured out ways to become Quislings with the rich and powerful "haves" of the world. The hierarchy's sub rosa love affair with the GOP hinges on its position on abortion. Sadly, an inference that can emanate from our hierarchy's anti-ProChoice teaching is that humankind can judge which individual's human life is more vulnerable than another's human life. A case in point might be that of a woman who is in a dangerous or unwanted pregnancy. Is the life of her fetus more vulnerable, and hence more valuable, than the fetal life in an Iraqi or Afgan woman who has been murdered, along with her husband and children, by an errant U.S. "smart" missile?
When Jesus reaffirmed Isaiah's prophecy, he fulfilled what the USCCB's John Carr has taught us to be the Scriptural Root of the Mission Statement for Christian religion. (See NAB Luke:4:18-21, and the NAB footnotes 8&9.) Our Mission is for agape, non-violent peace, and justice for everyone God created.
We Catholics must adopt the Consistent Ethic of Life, as explained in "Catholic Update" by Fr. Kenneth R. Overberg, S.J. at http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0798.asp.
In this essay, Fr. Overberg also quotes the late Cardinal Bernardin: "If one contends, as we do, that the right of every fetus to be born should be protected by civil law and supported by civil consensus, then our moral, political and economic responsibilities do not stop at the moment of birth. Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker."
Such a quality of life posture translates into specific political and economic positions on tax policy, employment generation, welfare policy, nutrition and feeding programs, and health care."
â€â€Cardinal Joseph Bernardin
in Consistent Ethic of Life (Sheed & Ward)
Bishop Gumbleton really
Bishop Gumbleton really "gets it" IMHO. No one says it better. He functions as a Prophet for the Church in this place and time. He has a true spirit of love and compassion, not just in a cold, impersonal, "numbers-counting" way, but in a way that shows he truly understands.
Given the flawed and corrupt history of the birth control decision-making process back in the 1960's, and the fact that these laws have been made by people who do not experience the birthing and child-rearing process, perhaps the Church itself is to blame for the present "Holocaust", since She does so little to prevent unplanned pregrancies or the scandalous spread of AIDs to innocent women and children.
It is wonderful that there still exist within the Church a few compassionate and understanding human beings who are focused on Jesus, and not on episcopal Power, while all this human tragedy unfolds...
I realize the Church's "world view" appears to be one of "manufacturing life" so that "all may enjoy Heaven together", and that Jesus said His Kingdom "was not of this World", but does that mean, also, that we are supposed to "create suffering" when we can prevent it?
I love that many Bishops, in their ivory towers of life (many not having been on the "front lines", and certainly not on the front lines of marriage, labor and delivery, and one questions these days, poverty---one no longer has that image, anyway) make decisions and judgments about their "sheep"--many of whom have more interest and education about the Church than they do! (I may not, but so many others do!)
It is difficult to maintain compassion and a lack of judgment during these trying times, but if I had been in Bishop Gumbleton's Diocese, I would have happily tried to follow his beautiful example.
Dear Orion, I share your
Dear Orion,
I share your anger with the current administration and its supporters, like candidate McCain, for the great evil unleashed on the world by this war, but my takeaway from the biship's homilny this week is that we must all remember that we are sinners and have our blind spots, and we must love and welcome others, even warmongers, hating their wars, not them.
Somehow we must find the grace to pray for the well-being of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and John McCain; while challenging them to see this war and many other of their policies as evil. In the same way, we must challenge candidate Obama to re-think his position on abortion. Most importantly, we must challenge all candidates to lead the US people where they'd rather not go, which is away from afluence for afluence sake and toward inclusive (though less extravagant) properity; responsible energy conservation, elimination of farm subsidies, using the skills of Haliburton (for example) and our vast wealth to feed the world instead of fear/fight the world.
I'd vote for a candidate of any party willing to take such risks and articulate such policies.
Sincerely,
Marc Trudeau
Several times in the past
Several times in the past year (Is it a growing trend?) I hear people who, by their words and manner of speaking, can't wait to either directly refuse Holy Communion or be part of a Mass where Communion was denied to someone. Always, the reason for the denial is the person's stance on abortion -- more often than not, the person's statements regarding the woman's right to choose, and not the more extreme advocacy of abortion regardless of reason. Whenever I hear those wanting to use the institution of the Church and the denial of the Sacrament in that manner I always get angry -- even more so when I find that it's actually been done, as in the case that Bishop Gumbleton describes in his homily. Those denials or "can't wait to" wishes brings to my mind Jesus' actions as presented in John's Gospel, when an adulterous woman was stopped (by the righteous religious, not the Romans)from being stoned to death. Twice, Jesus wrote something in the dirt before the would-be executioners, the Pharisees, something so profound that, when combined with Jesus' warning that only those who were without sin could cast the first stone, caused all of them to melt away. They all left, beginning with the eldest, those who probably had sinned the most (or the longest), or who had issue with whatever Jesus had written on the ground, which can easily be inferred as a list of sins, some of which were just as bad or would have resulted in a horrible punishment, if they had been publicly exposed -- as was the woman's adultery. It is that silent message of Jesus that I pray the modern day Pharisees would heed. If their sins were made public, especially the sins that they continue to practice privately, I doubt that they would they be act as uppity, as Pharisaical, to the extent of using our Lord's Body and Blood as a means of denouncing, of publicly humiliating those they feel are morally and/or religiously unworthy to fully participate in our faith. I am not advocating exposing the sins of any clergy or Eucharistic minister, but I feel we should pray for them, and if we should know them, to do as our Lord did in discreetly showing to them the hypocrisy of their ways.
And I am wondering when the
And I am wondering when the episcopal pharisees of the R.C. [Republican Committee?] Church will begin denying Communion to the Catholics among those who lied (or enabled, or defended or voted for the liars) in order to launch an unjust and unjustifable war of aggression against Iraq which has claimed the lives of, perhaps, as many as 100,000 human beings, including, I am sure, pregnant women carrying unborn babies. Oh, but I forgot: the architects of the Iraq Atrocity are, for the most part, "pro-life", which is to say, anti-abortion and that, in the eyes of the episcopal pharisees, apparently absolves them of all sin.
When will this Church begin to teach, not just with words but by its actions, the truth that it is just as evil to murder the born as it is to murder the unborn?
Joe Walker from East Grand
Joe Walker from East Grand Rapids, MI
Why do so many in the hierarchy ignore Jesus' teachings on agape, non-violent peace, and justice for all those people who have been created by God, while Bishop Gumbleton and but a few of his fellow Bishops and priests honor this Consistent Ethic of Life?
â€â€Cardinal Joseph Bernardin
in Consistent Ethic of Life (Sheed & Ward)
"If one contends, as we do, that the right of every fetus to be born should be protected by civil law and supported by civil consensus, then our moral, political and economic responsibilities do not stop at the moment of birth. Those who defend the right to life of the weakest among us must be equally visible in support of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, the undocumented immigrant and the unemployed worker."
"Such a quality of life posture translates into specific political and economic positions on tax policy, employment generation, welfare policy, nutrition and feeding programs, and health care."