Imagine you and a friend are at an art museum. You stop in
front of a particularly beautiful painting of a sunset. But you don’t see just
see sunset, you see the light of God illuminating His creation. This leads you
to meditate upon the nature of the created world, our place in it, and God’s
plan to save us from ourselves. So you are standing there letting this painting
draw your heart and mind to reflect upon God and suddenly your friend nudges
you and says, “that’s a nice frame, isn’t it?”
Saint Paul pretty much divides people into two camps, those who
live in the flesh, and those who live in the spirit. Those who live in the
flesh are people of the moment. They are of the world and can only see things
in terms of what they can physically see, or touch, or feel. The transcendent
is lost on them. They are people of the age. That’s what secularist means, “of
the age.”
People of the spirit on the other hand see a bigger picture
than the one framed by the secularists. The spiritists know that there is more
to our existence than what is immediately in front of us. They know, we know,
that there is a life after this one, and that what we do in this world will
matter in the world to come, it will matter a lot.
I’ll give you another example. I have a cousin who is a few
years older than I. When we were both children she applied to be a foreign
exchange student. As part of the application process she had to take an exam on
basic American History. After all if we are going to send students oversees to
represent America we should make sure they understand the basics of our
history. One of the questions was, “in one word, describe the cause of the
Civil War.” Well my cousin had what we politely call a “brain-freeze” and
couldn’t answer the question. When she told us about it later, after I thought
about it for a moment, I said slavery, because that’s what I was taught in
school. Now “slavery” was indeed the answer they were looking for but it was
not the correct answer. The Civil War did not start over the issue of slavery.
That came later. Slavery is the frame the secularists have put around the
issue. The War Between the States was caused by a disagreement over state’s
rights. Where does the authority of the individual state end, and the authority
of the federal government begin? That is a very important question. It is a
question so important that the answer affects how we are governed today. And we
had to go to war with each other to sort it out.
This is what the secularists do, those who live in the flesh,
or as Saint Paul also describes them, those who work in darkness, afraid of the
light. They cannot or will not see the bigger picture. They prefer to focus on
the frame. And if that isn’t pitiable enough, they insist that we focus on the
frame as well, ignoring the real issues.
This has been going on for a long time. Almost six hundred
years ago Saint Thomas More stood up to his king, Henry VIII. The popular
notion is that the point of their contention, over which Saint Thomas lost his
life, was divorce. Henry wanted a divorce, the Church would not dissolve a
valid sacramental marriage, and so Henry, in a massive pout, broke with the
Catholic Church and set up his own. But it wasn’t about divorce, that’s just
the frame. Saint Thomas opposed Henry over the issue of the moral authority of
the Church. Where does the authority of the state end and the transcendent
authority of the Church begin?
What is the authority of the Church? As Catholics what do we
believe about the teachings of the Church when it comes to faith and morals? It
is one of our most basic tenets. God came to earth and assumed our human nature
in order to teach us. He established His Church so that He could continue to
teach us even though He no longer walked among us. When the Church speaks on
matters of faith and morals it is not the bishops speaking to us, it is God
speaking to us through His Church.
Saint Thomas More saw this was the real issue. He recognized
this as the great battle of his age, just as Saint Thomas a Becket recognized
it four hundred years before that, and lost his life defending the authority of
God in His Church.
It is a battle that will always be with us. And today, in our
age, and in our time, it has flared up again. This is not about politics. This
is not about republicans vs. democrats or liberals vs. conservatives. The
current debate in this country is not about birth control, women’s health, or
the fictitious “war on women.” It is about the moral authority of the Church
and the free expression of religion. It is about a right guaranteed to us by
the founding documents of this country, which clearly state that congress shall
pass no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
I have been challenged in the past over my assertion that the
world hates us. I think it is very clear now that it does. The world, that is
the people of the world, the secularists, hate us, not because of who we are
but because of what we represent. We represent an authority greater than any
secular power. Ultimately we do not answer to our governments, we answer to
God. We are the servants of God. Jesus makes it very clear in the Gospel that
His fate and the fate of His servants are intertwined. “Whoever serves me must
follow me, and where I am there also will my servant be.” He speaks of dying,
of losing one’s life, in order to bear much fruit. Sometimes losing one’s life
means a physical loss of life such as our martyrs, Saint Thomas More and Saint
Thomas a Becket. Sometimes losing one’s life means to turn away from the flesh
and follow the Spirit. And when you do that, in a very real sense you then
became dead to the secular world. And such devotion and courage and faith in a
power that cannot be regulated, has been a threat to totalitarian regimes all
the way back to the Roman Empire and the first days of the Church.
In our country, in our own time, the Church has been driven out
of facilitating adoptions over the “frame” of fairness and tolerance. Has this
resulted in more adoptions? No, fewer, because no one, not even the social
services centered government, has stepped in to fill the void left by the
Church.
Now, the Church is in danger of being driven from health care.
Many people think this issue has been settled, but it has not. Current
legislation still mandates that Catholic hospitals must provide free
contraception to their employees if they serve even one patient who is not
Catholic. Current legislation also mandates that every individual subsidize
abortion services by paying a one-dollar surcharge included in their health
coverage.
What will happen if the Catholic Church is driven from the
health care business? In 2010 more than 600 Catholic facilities treated over
100 million patients, and much of that treatment was given at a financial loss
to the institutions. If the Catholic Church in America is forced out of health
care, who will step in to fill that gap?
In the movie “A Man for All Seasons,” a movie about Thomas
More’s struggle with Henry VIII, Saint Thomas tries to show the real issue by
posing the question “what if Parliament were to pass a law saying that God
should not be God?” That is the point we are at today. Our own government is
trying to tell us that our beliefs must give way to a secularist point of view.
Some more quotes from the movie, “this is not reform, this war upon the Church.”
And one more, “an attack upon the Church is an attack upon God, the devil’s
work, done by the devil’s minister.”<
Do not let our enemies distract us from the real issue by
framing the argument their way. It is time for us to decide who we are. Are we
followers of Christ? Are we where He is?
Are we truly Catholic, as we say we are? If so, then it is time for us
to take a stand and defend His Church.
The Catholic author JRR Tolkien put it this way, “the board is
set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last… The great battle of our
time.”
Pax Vobiscum
5th Sunday of Lent
Lord, Hear Our Prayer
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