Easter Sunday
April 4, 2010
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
Luke 24:1-12
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen
If we go back fifty years and we look at the Catholic Church in America in 1960, our first impression would be that it was in pretty good shape. Vocations to the priesthood and the religious life were at an all time high, millions more children attended parochial schools than do today, and, on average, American Catholic women had more children than American women in general, and this in a country where the birthrate was four children per woman during her lifetime. In addition, with fresh memories of Al Smith’s defeat in 1928 at the hands of populist anti-Catholic bigots, America was poised to elect its first and only Catholic president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The Church appeared to be waxing, but first appearances are deceiving.
The first Catholic president would shortly foreswear his faith before a meeting of Baptist preachers in Houston, telling them explicitly that his Catholicism would not influence the way he governed, as Archbishop Chaput in Denver recently reminded us. The sixties would see America’s Catholics flee the cities for the suburbs, leading to the closure of many schools and parishes, the effect of which we are just now grappling with in Scranton, as Scranton has about half the population it did sixty years ago. Convents, monasteries, and seminaries would shortly empty, the result of which is the current vocations crisis and priest shortage in many dioceses across the country. And perhaps, most significantly, the sixties would see an explosion in the number of Catholic women who contracepted, made possible largely by the invention of the birth control pill by a Catholic scientist, John Rock. In short order, the size of the average Catholic family plummeted, so that today Catholic women in America on average bear the same number of children as do their secular and Protestant counterparts.
I point these things out only to demonstrate that the present can look good while not indicating a bright future. In the same way, a somewhat distressing present is not necessarily a harbinger of a bad future. In fact, bad circumstances could indicate that things are about to turn around.
The attacks on the Church of the past few weeks must be seen in this context, one made explicit for us in our lesson from the Acts of the Apostles. In it, St. Peter recounts a brief history in which there are three principle stages.
The first stage is the good work done by Jesus, and Peter talks about “how [Jesus] went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” All the miracles that Jesus performed, from making the blind see to raising the dead to life, drew attention to Him and indicated to His followers and enemies alike that He possesses the power to transform the world. Jesus’ good works put the devil on notice that his days were numbered, that people were about to be freed from their slavery to sin and death.
This stage corresponds to the growth of the Catholic Church in America. From representing a brutally oppressed minority in the 1850’s, the Catholic Church grew rapidly in the next hundred years during which it became the second largest charitable institution in the U.S., behind only the federal government. The Catholic Church’s good works, from its hospitals to its orphanages, to its adoption agencies, caught the attention of the enemies of the Church who saw an institution capable of transforming American culture.
Here we must move to the second stage, which we recognize as the enemy’s counterattack. Peter says, “They put him to death by hanging him on a tree.” The second stage does not seem to correspond with the first, unless we understand that the forces of evil do not appreciate the great good that Jesus accomplishes wherever He ministers to those oppressed by sin and death. Why would Jesus be killed for the good works He did? He would only be killed if the killers imagined that Jesus’ death would mean an end to the transformation of the culture that Jesus’ good works were effecting. If your objective is to keep people enslaved, then killing the man who is freeing all your slaves looks like a solution to your problem.
This second stage corresponds to the attacks that the Catholic Church began to endure in earnest beginning in the early sixties, of which we saw manifestations during this year’s Holy Week. The same Church that stands most strongly as a defender of the unborn is portrayed as a victimizer of children. The Church who insists that the widespread use of contraceptives will issue in the societal-wide degradation of women is caricatured as an agent of sexism. The Church that defends unceasingly the inviolable dignity and rights of the human person is misrepresented as a threat to man’s freedom and the enemy of democracy. Those who slaughter unborn children by the millions, making billions of dollars a year objectifying women, and passing laws that do not respect the rights of every individual’s conscience, have done much over the past fifty years to weaken the Church’s outreach and lessen the devotion of the faithful.
But then there is the third stage articulated by St. Peter: “But God raised [Jesus] on the third day and made him manifest.” The effort to destroy Jesus’ good works by killing Him proved futile because Jesus could not be held down by death. In rising from the dead, Jesus conquered death itself and, thus, we are liberated from slavery. This is because, as Peter tells us, “every one who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the power to transform the world through the forgiveness of sins is unleashed in a way the disciples could not imagine while Jesus yet walked the earth. But with the establishment of Christ’s Church, this is precisely what happened: hope in eternal life has led people from every race and countless nations to foreswear their sins and, by their charitable works, share the good news that God loves them and wants to take them to Himself. People wearied by sin and the death that accompanies it have for centuries flocked to the Church that lays down its life for them, and in the process, cultures have been transformed.
This third stage corresponds to what is happening today. By God’s grace, the leadership of men like Pope John Paul II, our late Holy Father, and our Pope today, Benedict XVI, the tide has turned against the culture of death. For the first time in more than a generation, more Americans describe themselves as pro-life than pro-choice, and the sexual revolution is on its last legs as more and more young couples discover that Popes Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI were right when they said John Rock and contraception are wrong. Even more stunningly, we are seeing in our lifetime a reversal of the Protestant Reformation as thousands of Protestants from across the globe seek to be reconciled to Holy Mother Church—and the Holy Father, in Anglicanorum Coetibus, has given them the means while respecting their 500 year old traditions.
The enemies of Jesus thought that by killing Him, they would destroy His works. Jesus’ Resurrection, which we celebrate today, made His works more powerful and far-reaching, for they became the basis upon which Western civilization is built. The attacks we are experiencing today, and which the Church has endured in this country for the past fifty years, will have the same effect. Rather than ultimately weakening the Catholic Church, the sound and fury of our enemies is drawing attention to the pearl of great price, and thousands upon thousands are signing on so that they don’t miss the boat!