The Fourth Sunday in Lent

March 22, 2009

Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass

of the

St. Thomas More Society

celebrated at

St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church , 1013 Wood Street

Scranton, PA

John 3:14-21

            In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen

            My dad lately has undertaken some genealogical research about his side of our family.  He’s been able to trace our lineage back several hundred years, and what has come as a bit of a surprise is how many of our ancestors were born only a few months after their parents were married, and this is again going back a couple hundred years.  He has even found one woman who did not marry the father of her three children, all born before 1855.  But even she eventually got married.

            If my family is at all representative of families in general, what this shows is that relations outside marriage are nothing new.  They happened, they were found out, and the couple most often did the honorable thing and made right what had started out wrong.  To some degree, they tried to disguise the things they had done when these things were brought into the light.

            Where yesterday and yesteryear people tried to hide their wrong moral choices, they lived in conformity with what we heard in today’s Gospel:  “For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.”  There was an advantage to hiding one’s moral failings, for such failings were not condoned:  they were socially unacceptable.  People knew what was right and what was wrong, and there was a negative social stigma attached to doing what was wrong.  Today this is not the case. 

            What people used to attempt to conceal is today done out in the open.  Vices such as gambling were once conducted behind closed doors, and parents tried to protect their children from the neighborhood bookie.  Today gambling is advertised everywhere, from billboards to television to magazines.  People vacation to be close to casinos.  Fifty years ago, only five percent of children were born to unwed mothers.  Today, 38% are.  When my son Eric was born on a Saturday morning almost six years ago, the obstetrics nurses told us we were the first married couple they had seen in the unit all week.  Cohabitation is seen as normal, binge drinking is a standard aspect of nearly all college campus life, and almost half the population imagines that two people of the same sex can constitute a married couple.

            This change in how sin is no longer concealed in so many ways reflects poorly on us because it resembles the culture that was condemned in today’s Old Testament lesson.  Just before the destruction of Jerusalem six centuries before Jesus was born, the Jews were described as exceedingly unfaithful.  They openly sacrificed their own children and visited cult prostitutes, having adopted the practices of the pagans who they lived amidst.  Indeed, our culture today is largely pagan in its substance and its trajectory, as every passing decade sees something formerly proscribed become not only acceptable but also widespread in practice.

            What we are witnessing is the decline of our culture and perhaps the demise of Western civilization.  The arrogance of those who sin openly indicates the degree to which many people in our society can no longer distinguish between darkness and light.  Herein we see the difference between our culture today and the culture of yesterday.  The difference is not that people sin today and people did not sin yesterday.  The difference is that so many people today truly do not know that the choices they are making are sinful, whereas decades ago there was a general knowledge, even among those who sinned egregiously that what they were doing was wrong.

            What we see then is that the moral decline of our nation and culture is due as much to confusion as it is to evil choices.  I would argue that people today are more confused than they are wicked, insofar as many people who make these wicked decisions have never been taught right from wrong, and so many of the people they have looked up to have been poor examples.  This confusion has opened the door to widespread evils, but the core of the problem is confusion.  Evil requires full knowledge and consent, and I am certain that many of the wicked choices being made about serious matters are being made without full knowledge and consent.

            The fact that people are acting without knowledge of the difference between darkness and light, good and evil, helps us to be true to Jesus’ requirement that we be compassionate.  Our Gospel today reminds us that Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world but to save it.  Thus, as we confront the confused people in our midst who are living in darkness, we must not be condemnatory.

            Rather, we can be catechetical.  We must be teachers able to articulate the beauty of making the right choices, able to communicate not only what is wrong but also why it is wrong.  People cannot reject what they do not know; so we cannot assume that the confused masses have rejected the Gospel and the truth of the Catholic faith.  It is therefore our duty to bring this beautiful faith to them.

            I believe that in this reality is our hope for Western civilization.  I said before that perhaps we are witnessing the demise of the West.  We must qualify such pronouncements, for there is still a chance that in hearing the truth about the Gospel of Life, our countrymen will hear it and embrace it.  Indeed, we can see encouraging signs that our moral amnesia can be overcome with a bit of sound catechesis.  For example, 90% of women considering an abortion draw back from this moral wrong when they see an ultrasound of their baby.  Another example—pre-Cana teachers report that in hearing the truth about the Theology of the Body, many couples elect to receive instruction about Natural Family Planning.

            Therefore, the duty of every Catholic is to become well enough informed about the Faith that he may be able to share it with his confused neighbors.  Certainly, you should educate yourself, but you must also demand catechism from your priest and be receptive to the instruction of our bishop when he takes up his responsibility as chief teacher in the Diocese.  We can be sure that some will be educated and still choose evil.  But the history of the Church is such that we know this is not the normal pattern.  When people are given a choice because the choice has been presented well, the people choose life and truth.

            The upshot is that we do not have to be resigned to further moral decline.  We can talk to the young couple considering cohabitation about why they would do better to consider marriage.  We can tell the gambler with all compassion that a surer bet would be to use his gifts to aid the needy.  We can tell the baby boomers why killing grandma is not the best choice, why it is not at all compassionate or godly.

            If we have the courage to make these distinctions for people, to introduce them to the difference between darkness and light, that we do not have to look forward to more wickedness, we may instead be on the cusp of a new birth for our nation, and, indeed, the world.