Some people have told me that I'm nuts for
being a Catholic priest. After last week's news from Pennsylvania, they
may be right! I hadn't been ordained but a day when the first person came out
of nowhere to challenge me on this. I have told this story before, but it
immediately came to mind when I read this gospel. It happened at one of the
receptions, following my first Mass.
I was standing there in my new black suit
and Roman collar - a little proud of myself – when, all of a sudden, a stranger
approached me and stuck a pin in my balloon. "I can't imagine anyone as
intelligent as you appear to be would still be a Catholic, must less become a
priest! I got out of all that craziness a long time ago!"
I stood there, shocked, like I had been
shot at close range as she went down her well-rehearsed list of things wrong
with the Church. When she finished, she disappeared into the crowd,
never to be heard from again - at least that is what I thought.
Like me, St. Peter must have been
challenged many times about his decision to stay that day when so many others
walked away because of Jesus teaching on the "bread of life." He
writes many years later, in the first of his two letters, "Always be ready
to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope but do
it with gentleness and reverence." (I Peter 3:15,16) When I am challenged,
I try to follow his advice.
That first happened when I was 26. I am
now 74. At 74, I agree wholeheartedly with Peter's response to Jesus
when he asked him if he would leave too. "To whom would I go? Who has a
better offer?" I have been offered a lot of so-called alternatives, I
recognize more problems in our Church than most of you, but I can say this much
in all honesty. I haven't seen anything yet that I would trade all this for! In
the language of gospel music, "I wouldn't take nothin' for my journey now.
I've got to make it to heaven somehow, though the devil tempts me and tries to
turn me around. He's offered everything's that got a name, all the wealth I
want and worldly fame; if I could, still I wouldn't take nothin' for my journey
now!"
Friends! One of the most important
questions facing all of you these days is "Why do you stay in the
Church?" Why do you choose to remain Catholic, when so many others are
walking away? I am sure many of you have been challenged seriously, maybe even
in an angry way. Maybe you have thought about it. Maybe you have even tried it
for a while. Maybe you stay because you are scared not to. Maybe you do it to
please your parents.
Well, let me tell you something. I was not
"assigned" here by the bishop. I don't have to do this. I have plenty
of other jobs - too many jobs, in fact. But I want to be here
and I choose to do this because I want to help you be able to
give yourselves, and those who question you, reasons to stay in the Church so
that you do not "walk away,” or worse, just "drift away."
Yes, you heard me - help give you reasons
"to stay in the Church." There are many people today who claim they
want to be "spiritual, but not religious." Archbishop Dolan of New
York described them this way, "They want to believe without belonging.
They want to be sheep without a shepherd. They want to be part of a family, but
they want to be an only child." The fact of the matter is that
Jesus founded a church on Peter, one of those who did not walk away, and Jesus
promised that "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" and
that he would "be with it always, until the end of time." The
truth of the matter is, we are not individually children of God, we are God's
family with many children and, as a family we are called to be our brothers’
and sisters’ keepers.
At Bellarmine University, where I worked
for 17 years, I wanted to help young adults move from an inherited faith, to a
personal faith. I found them deeply spiritual, sometimes ravenously so, and I
wanted to help them in their process of knowing God, loving God and serving
God. I also wanted them to feel valued and appreciated by the Church - so that
they would hang in there with the rest of us who are on a serious spiritual
journey. Each week, as I preached, I tried to help them find answers when
"someone asked them for a reason for their hope." And,
yes, I did it "with gentleness and reverence." That is what I
have always tried to do here as well - both when I was your pastor from 1983-1997
and now as a fill-in for Father Wimsatt.
Friends! Let me put my cards on the table
in the bluntest way possible! I don't know about you, but I am not about to let
a minority bunch of sick priests and cowardly bishops take my church away from me!
Over my dead body, will they cause me to lose hope or drive me out of this
church! I'm not perfect and neither or they, but I am here to stay because
Jesus himself told us that even "the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it!"
By the way, the woman who challenged me
forty-eight years ago showed up at one of my Masses a couple of years back. She
apologized and told me that she had returned to the Church and was absolutely loving it
for the first time in her life. As the great "theologian," Yogi Berra
put it, "It ain't over till it's over."
