www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Scripture and Patristic Writings My Sunday Homily

Yesterday was Meatfare Sunday for us in the Ruthenian church. The readings were from 1st Corinthians in which Paul describes whether a Christian can eat the meat sacrificed to a pagan god, and the gospel was Matthew's story of separating the sheep from the goats.

I am posting this homily because I took some heat for it. Debate is healthy as is criticism. I only ask that you refrain from name calling.

I would like to state my underlying considerations before proceeding with the homily itself.

1) all homilies have to be grounded in the Word and in traditional Catholic teaching,

2) Deacons, because we straddle the sacred and secular worlds, have a special responsibility in preaching on issues of social justice

3) I have heard no Church leaders in this country preach on the impending war. Yet, we Catholics (OK all Christians) require some direction on these issues.

I welcome all critiques. I will attempt to avoid posting on this thread again as my thoughts are contained within the homily itself. I apologize for any grammatical errors, etc. I find that I have to write homilies with a different style that is predicated on the fact that it is heard and not read.
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ABOUT THE WAR...

Tell me, what is a Catholic to think?

What is a Catholic to do?

What do you think about this war situation?

What do you think that the Church thinks about the war situation?

You may have heard that the Pope has announced that he is against the war. But why? What does this mean?

Maybe you�ve heard that the Church teaches something called the Just War theory. What does this mean?

That is actually where I would like to start. Just war doctrine is the teaching, that despite its tragic and destructive consequences, war is morally justified when certain conditions and circumstances are met.

The Church has never taught pacifism; pacifism is the belief that war is never morally justifiable. But the Church has also denounced holy war; war that is divinely authorized. The Church has also denounced the war based on something called REALPOLITIK in which war is primarily a means to advance a national interest.

Now some people in the press have been described as hawks. They apparently feel that these criteria have been met. Others have been described as doves. It seems to me that these dove people can be separated into two camps, the pacifists for whom war is never morally justified, (the John Lennons of the world), and the REALPOLITIK people, who feel that the consideration of war has to do with pure national interest.

I consider myself to by a goose. I am willing to fly in formation but I am desperately looking for the right leader to follow. I haven�t taken flight yet, I am still treading water.

But I have looked at Rome�s response, and I am not compelled by it. The official document raises the following issues:

1) Iraq has violated 91 UN resolutions, but Israel and Turkey have violated 59. The point is that the US is good to their friends. However, the reason I don�t find this satisfying is that, even if we exclude the numerical difference between 91 and 59, there is no mention of the quality of these breeches. I understand Israel�s breeches even if I don�t necessarily agree with it. Palestinians are bombing them on a daily basis. Their security concerns are much more palpable. Are Iraq�s breeches less serious? No such contention is made.

2) Iraq�s President is a dictator who has committed crimes against his people. However, other dictatorial regimes just as ferocious as Hussein�s are considered friends of the US. This rebuttal point really bothers me. It seems to say that even though there is this evil in the world, because there are other evils in the world, it should just be ignored.

3) While Iraq has weapons of mass destruction including biologic, chemical, and nuclear, so do many other countries including the United States. This point bothers me too. I do think the more stable regimes are vastly less likely to use such weapons if only because of their vast technical superiority. The weapons, in and of themselves, are not the dangerous part. The person who lights their fuses is. The more desperate the despot, the greater the likelihood of their misuse.

And 4) While there are accusations that Iraq is colluding with Al Quaeda or other international terrorists, this has not yet been proven. While I tend to agree with this contention, I do not find this argument satisfying either. Iraq has the means and the intention, others, such as Al Quaeda, have the will and the intention. It is not a complicated mathematical equation that results in getting the means and the will together.

But do you know what really bothers me? It is trying to place this conundrum within the context of today�s gospel. In today�s reading, we hear the famous story of the Son of Man separating the sheep from the goats.

I think we can all agree that one goat is definitely Saddam Hussein. But are you willing to say that another is George Bush? Or Tony Blair? Or Colin Powell?

Are the Iraqi people goats? I don�t think very many Americans think so. But one question is: are they sheep? If they are sheep then are they hungry, are they thirsty, are they naked, are they repressed? And if they are and we don�t do anything because we don�t see them, then doesn�t that make us the goats?

We have already said that some argue that Bush is acting only in the name of our national interest and for the benefit of our economy. Cheap oil is necessary so as to keep Americans busy, to keep Americans buying. And they ask you, can�t you just do without? Do you really need to buy another shirt? Do you really need another pair of shoes? My answer to these questions is the same as yours. No, I don�t need them. Yes I can do without. But what about that woman in Honduras who made my shirt, the man in Korea who made the shoes. Do you think they will understand? Perhaps they are the goats? Or do you think they are the sheep that we just don�t see, you know the ones that Jesus was talking about?

Another thing that bothers me is that this seems to be a very different kind of war. It is not really about winning and losing. It seems to be about freedom and liberty, two very Christian ideals, versus fear and anxiety.

Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein do have one ideal in common. They agree that they do not have to eradicate us to defeat us, they merely need to fill us with a tremendous sense of fear and anxiety. They want us to constantly have to look over our shoulder, to question our safety every time we get on a bus or a plane. If they are able to do that, then our very way of life will disappear.

Fear and anxiety make us question our friends, our co-workers, our families. We would ask ourselves, are they all goats? Am I the only sheep? We would be paralyzed by our own fear.

And so, for these reasons and other similar ones, I find myself leaning toward the side of the President.

But what has me leaning in that direction most strongly is today�s epistle. Today�s epistle comes from Paul�s letter to the Corinthians. In it he is discussing a rather obtuse topic. The question arose as to whether a Christian could, in clear conscience, eat the meat of an animal that was sacrificed to a pagan god. The argument goes that since the sacrifice meant nothing to the Christian, the animal�s meat is just meat.

Paul�s response however is very illuminating. He says that while I, the consumer of the meat, may not be harmed by it, it may very well scandalize my brother. It could cause my brother to stumble. He may eat the same meat in imitation of me and then be drawn into the pagan ritual. My actions could, in effect, cause harm to my brother.

It seems to me that all of these anti-war protests could cause my brother to stumble. Perhaps an avoidance of war that leaves Hussein in power also leaves the Iraqi people in constant fear and anxiety of him. Perhaps an avoidance of war allows for the transfer of that fear and anxiety to Turkey, to Israel, to Kuwait, to Qadir and perhaps even to the United States and to our own children.

It has been said that Christ was the utmost pacifist. But unfortunately, we are not Christ. We cannot defeat evil by offering our own lives. This is what makes war so tragic. The military fights wars not in their own names but in the names of others. They truly are the sheep who see us in a sense as the hungry, the thirsty, and the naked. They protect us.

So the military see us as sheep, and so, they must be sheep as well! Maybe this is why Jesus treated centurions with honor and respect.

While I am uncomfortable with this whole war thing, I am very much against the anti-war demonstrations. They allow the goats to continue being, well, goats!

And now I think I understand John F. Kennedy when he said, �the absence of war is not peace.� What, then, is peace?

To me, peace, real peace, is this: everyone recognizes that everyone else is a sheep, the goats will have all gone away.

Let us pray that end in the end, we get the goat and that a lasting peace will reign supreme, that all of us will be free under the protection of our shepherd Jesus Christ!

Glory be to Jesus Christ!

Fr. Dcn. John

My concerns:

Can you preach the same homily without saying "I think" or "it bothers me" or the like?

The bishops have enough "battles" to fight in their own backyard, from outside and from within. People will point out that they cannot "point the prophetic finger" at what is wrong elsewhere (like the economy, the family, labor, philosophical attitudes, etc) when they only have to look at the scandals they let happen in their own communities.

What will happen to the Christians in Iraq, including Saddam Husein's general, if Catholic and Orthodox take a stand against him? I do realize that a common statement was made by Middle Eastern bishops for a Palestinian state awhile back.

Your "homily" made a case for war. Many parents and spouses who naturally support the welfare and well-being of their sons and daughters and husbands and wives in uniform, would naturally not like the idea of A war being promoted from the comfort of a pulpit. A co-worker's son is in a boat over their right now and she doesn't want to talk about it for it gets her upset even though she supports what they are doing.

Jesus also instructs us to give unto Ceasar's what is his and to God what is His. The Roman soldiers are always having more faith than the typical Jew that Jesus bumps into, in fact, more faith than all of Israel. This is typical of Luke, the social-justice-oriented Evangelist (just read his four Beatitudes and four Woes and compare them word for word with Matthew's, and you'll see why the Church prefers the more spiritualized Beatitudes in Matthew). The Centurion doesn't need Jesus to visit his home to cure his servant. Another soldier proclaims that Jesus was truly the Messiah (as if he really knew what a Messiah was! - for Roman soldiers were typically very Semitic in their theological thinking) while the Apostles were hiding.

You mention the story of the Son of Man separating the sheep from the goats. When will this happen?

I do applaud you for taking on a relevant issue. The oil argument is interesting, especially since France gets a higher percentage of their oil from Iraq. Hmmmmmm. Who has more to lose if war cuts off supplies? Hmmmmmm.

Joe

Dear Petrus:

I haven't seen the comments from Rome and would appreciate a link. But your selections seem to be less about why this war is wrong than about why the reasons given in support of it ring hollow. The burden of proof is totally on those proposing war; there is no need to justify not going to war.

I posted this on another thread:
We can no doubt work our will against a vastly weaker foe. We certainly would like to assume that our intentions are honorable. It is likely that the effects of our action will be overwhelmingly positive for us in North America. (The situation is less clear for Europeans - a fact which accounts for their reluctance.)

The question is:
are the effects of the reign of Hussein "lasting grave and certain". I am unconvinced, and therefore agree with the bishops that we are embarking on uncharted waters in a dramatic expansion of "just war" theory to include pre-emption, on the basis of "math" that remains worked out.

I can't seem to get back in to edit the last post. The last above sentence should read:

I am unconvinced, and therefore agree with the bishops that we are embarking on uncharted waters in a dramatic expansion of "just war" theory to include pre-emption, on the basis of "math" that remains to be worked out.

Fr. Deacon,

You have weighed in on the war in a very public way. You are a very brave individual. I think it is important make it clear that these are your views.I understand you have applied what the Church teaches and came to that conclusion.I want to support our President but it doesn't pass the smell test with me just yet. If there is a war the folks who will be fighting will have my support and prayers.

Nicky's Baba