Domine non sum dignus

Today Holy Mother Church gives us the Gospel passage that we repeat three times at every Mass: “Domine, non sum dignus, sed tantum dic verbo….” Lord, I am not worthy, but only say the word…” The pagan centurion believes that Christ can heal his son, and Jesus declares that nowhere in Israel, even among his own chosen people, has he found such faith. Let us pray that prayer, just before receiving Him in Holy Communion, with at least as much faith as the “pagans.”

If possible, live at peace with all men

Speaking of which, some of you may have seen our sleepy parish in the evening news on Friday. The breaking news story is that Star of the Sea is returning to the Catholic practice of only boys serving at the altar. As one parishioner observed, “girl altar boys never made much sense to me.” I was leaving Mass on Friday afternoon when a reporter from KPIX ran up with his cameraman. He had heard that our parish was no longer training “altar girls” and rushed right over to make an issue of it. He was very nice during the interview, but the news story that night was just a little short of vicious. CBS mostly showed angry parishioners, and both anchor woman and reporter bore grim expressions condemning the Catholic Church for being so hateful to women. I tried to explain that service at the altar is intrinsically tied to the priesthood, which is a male vocation, but CBS didn’t air most of what I said.

St. Paul urges us in the epistle: “do not repay anyone evil for evil…if possible, live at peace with all men.” It is not always possible to live at peace with all, not even with our own spouses and family members, and certainly not with non-believers such as CBS. But we must believe in God’s grace and try our best. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him.” Those of us who hold fast to a more traditional way of life, who adhere to the authentic teachings of the Catholic Church, are sorely tempted to repay the evil this evil generation dishes out to us with evil thoughts, complaints, and even bitterness. We must not give in to that temptation. I think of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who suffered unimaginable torments from “the pagans,” and yet who said to his fellow inmates at Auschwitz: “do no hate the guards…. Do not hate the guards.” St. Paul commands us: “do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil by good.”

The Real Story

CBS invented and aired a story on how the Church hates women the night before the massive Walk for Life yesterday. Satan is behind all this, for he wants to destroy human life, and destroy it in its most precious sanctuary, the wombs of our mothers. Consider the real news story: In 1968 Martin Luther King had been assassinated, which led America to guarantee civil rights for all Americans. Just five years later, though, America’s Supreme Court reversed itself not only by denying civil rights to another class of citizens but by legalizing killing them. This new discrimination was not based on race but on age. As of January 22, 1973 in the United States, if you were under a certain age you had no civil rights even to the right to live.

January 22, 1973 was the end of the rule of law in this country, even though its consequences have only gradually become apparent. As we began to accept abortion in the late 1960s, family life began to disintegrate, the use of drugs escalated, violence came to our schools, and our streets became unsafe. The civil rights issues we thought had been resolved in the 1960s have erupted again this year in Ferguson, New York, and everywhere, because a nation that sanctions abortion will never be a nation that respects all its citizens. Yesterday, 60,000 walked down Market Street in an effort to overcome evil with good. We are tempted, certainly, to give up on America when the media, the government, and the education system are all under the sway of the evil one. But we cannot give up, and we cannot stay home. We need to pray, we need to speak, we need to walk. God bless all of you who do so. Let us continue to pray, especially through the Immaculate Heart of our Blessed Mother. This nation is consecrated to the Immaculate Conception, and in the end, her Immaculate Heart will triumph.

I live in the city with the fewest children in America. San Francisco has the lowest child to adult ratio of any American city, but one of the highest canine to human ratios. There are 110,000 children (and only 70,000 under 13) compared to 120,000 dogs in my city (the doggies “fill the streets and parks, the outdoor cafés and shops … keep appointments with their masseurs and acupuncturists … sit for portraits and for readings with their astrologers….” according to Michael Mason in a 2006 National Geographic article). Gee whiz….more dogs than children.

Running a city parish can be mighty discouraging. The Masses are mostly empty, and those that actually make it to Mass struggle with the burdens of advanced age, some in wheelchairs and many with canes. Anyone looking at the average city parish from the outside would say the Church is dying because very few are having children. A family came to the 11:00 Mass this morning with six children, and they radiated throughout the huge empty church like the sun. I met them after Mass: “Oh, we don’t live in San Francisco—could never afford it. We’re on vacation.”

Fifty years ago the Church said that if we accept a contraceptive mentality, we will have fewer children. If we have fewer children, we will become more selfish. If we become more selfish, we will become more desperately sad. I live in a city of unparalleled natural and historical beauty that is desperately sad.

There is a reason they call it “birth control.” It is an attempt to control human generation, to control our species at its very core, to control nature at its essential genesis. Mother Nature, and Nature’s God, however, will not be controlled, and we priests need to reassure our people that we can trust nature and nature’s God even with our sexual lives.

[To be continued next week….]

Tax money does go a long way towards providing a stable, just, and free social order, as long as the government can be trusted to spend it effectively. But there is a more personal cost to maintaining this freedom, a cost only the individual human heart can render. That cost is to extend respect, reverence, and love towards every other fellow citizen of one’s beloved country. This is the virtue of “patriotism,” from patria, or fatherland. We are all children our beloved fatherland, the United States of America.

Patriotism has been on the wane as we’ve become more “sophisticated.” Flag burnings in the 60s are an obvious problem, but in our day I think of the salacious “news” shows and talk radio (not only the more outrageous examples but even our respected NPR is often ridiculously biased). We can’t indulge that kind of disrespect for fellow citizens if we wish to maintain our freedom. Other obvious examples of disunity among Americans are the cultural battles over abortion, sexual behavior, marriage and family definition, and other life issues. We have lost our common beliefs in God and the Judeo-Christian tradition, but we don’t have to disrespect others who disagree with us. Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address, insisted that we could bind up our national wounds only “with malice toward none, with charity for all, and with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right.” He was assassinated shortly thereafter, but his words serve as a model for American democracy. 

Of course, as your priest, I must point out his reference to God, “who gives us to see the right.” He had also written in his Gettysburg Address, in the midst of the Civil War that almost ended America, that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom…” Lincoln, not a Christian in the strict sense, knew that only reference to a Higher Power can assure freedom among men. If there is no God, it’s hard to imagine a compelling reason to deny our personal wants when others require seemingly impossible personal sacrifices. 

The final cost of freedom, for each of us, is to express at least a minimal reverence toward every member of our nation—not only “tolerance” but reverence. I can’t imagine, without God as our Father, being able to do more than barely “tolerate” those with whom I have fundamental differences. As God has ceased to be a “father” in America, we have less and less love for each other, and less “tolerance.”

I’m probably not going to watch the fireworks tonight, and I’m a little short on Ash Cans and M-80s this year. But I do plan to attend the local Fourth of July parade, at which I will see many others of different persuasion than myself. God grant me the grace to respect and reverence every other citizen of this, our beautiful country, which we share together for the brief time we have on earth.

I’d like to give a brief report on the Walk for Life West Coast, from Thomas Aquinas College. Three of us chaplains went up with three busloads of students plus many cars. We got the least expensive buses in Southern California, and one of them broke down on the way back, but the students devised ways to occupy their time profitably (everyone had lots of philosophy and natural science books with them).

The Walk itself was beautiful: lots of spirit, joy, and youthful energy. A small knot of protestors greeted us with vulgarities at one cross street, and after the Walk some folks on the street were hurling negativities at us (especially Fr. Hildebrand and I, dressed as we were in our habits).

That night, we two priests were making our way back to Ignatius Press from the parish where our students were camped out in the gym. We had beds awaiting us at the Press, and felt only mild guilt at abandoning the students to the rigors of two nights on a gym floor. We climbed aboard a city bus, but the driver would not take our money. “Priests don’t pay on our buses,” he smiled. Everyone on the bus (mostly ethnic folks) seemed friendly to us. I asked a little African American lady where to get the N tram at Market Street, but she didn’t know, so a Chinese lady volunteered to take us there. “I’m going to the BART Station myself—follow me!” We followed, and again, as we tried to pay, the lady said “priests don’t pay.” Our Chinese guide—Shirley was her name—was most amicable, so I ventured to ask her what she thought of the Walk for Life. “Oh, we like it,” she said with gusto. “Only a few extremists cause problems. They are extremists.” She saw us to our train, and blew both of us old priests kisses as we boarded.

I am aware that a significant part of San Francisco takes virulent exception to the Catholic Church and the Walk for Life, but I’m quite sure it is a minority. It is a powerful minority, but still not, I dare to say, the attitude of the general population. It’s a beautiful city, and we should be bold in offering it the gift of Jesus Christ and his Gospel.

Yesterday I was watching coverage of the March for Life in Washington, and tomorrow three packed buses from my College will embark for the Walk for Life in San Francisco. Forty-one years since Roe v. Wade, and the pro-life movement is stronger than ever. Did those who pushed legal abortion on our country think they could get away with it? Did they think the opposition would blow over in a few years? Did the abortion industry think we would lose interest in opposing what is so obviously unnatural?

The pro-life movement will never fade away, because it is as natural as breathing. Everyone knows what it is that a mother carries in her womb, and the perfectly natural act is to bring that person to birth. Do any species other than human beings abort their unborn offspring? No society can deny nature indefinitely; Mother Nature, and “Nature’s God” in the words of Thomas Jefferson, will eventually assert themselves. You can hold your breath for a minute or two, but eventually you have to breathe. The pro-life impulse in this country is natural; it is the abortion mentality that is forced and unnatural.

I am always struck by the joy and charity of these pro-life marches, filled with young people and their indefatigable optimism. They are like World Youth Days, where two million teens can spend a week in a big city without any crime or disorder. Promoting and living what is proper to our nature brings joy to all, even those gloomy newscasters. The counter-demonstrators, by contrast, are violent, vulgar, obscene, and brutal. We walk in witness to the humanity of the unborn child, but the counter-demonstrators hurl homosexual obscenities at us. Do you get the connection? We talk life, and they talk sex. The counter-demonstrators unwittingly prove the natural link between sex and procreation, the severance of which has led to the killing of 1.2 million lives a year in our country.

Yes, we are in a world of hurt in our country, but the answer is not disrespect or violence. Some pro-life folks have gone that route, and many pro-abortion folks have gone that route. The answer is the joyful charity, the patient but firm insistence on what is natural to our species that I see every year in these marches for life. To those who have had abortions, or who have worked in the abortion industry, or promoted the culture of death in politics or education, we say: It’s never too late to rethink what we have been taught, and what we have done. It’s never too late to return to that which is natural and good.