ARE YOU REASON--ABLE?

Should anyone ask you for the reason for this hope of yours, 
be ever ready to reply, but speak gently and respectfully.

I PETER 3:15

I have changed the details of this story several times to protect the identity of the person who sad it, but I can remember exactly what he said!  “Why in the hell are you wasting your time in that stupid church?  I finally wised up and got out of that silliness a long time ago!  I can’t believe that anyone as intelligent as you appear to be is still a Catholic, much less a priest!”  I can remember it word for word.  I stood there in freeze-frame as if I had been shot at close range waiting for the pain to register.  I was shocked and embarrassed!

         

This situation is not made up.  It actually happened to me several years ago at a friend’s party.  The young man was in his thirties.  He was a college graduate and very aware.  When he saw that I did not turn and run, he proceeded to go through his, obviously well-rehearsed, litany of all that was wrong with churches in general and mine in particular.  He went w-a-a-a-a-y back!  He covered the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, Galileo, infallibility of the Pope, sexual repression of the masses, grade school child abuse, the slavery of women, dull Masses, trivial sermons, money grubbing TV preachers and Vatican finances.  I think I even got blamed for Tammy Faye’s hairdo!  I stood there squeezing the life out of my ginger ale, cringing as if being whipped as he went down the list!  My face was beet red!  My knees started to buckle.  I wanted to melt into the floor.

  

After the initial shock, I realized one day – after several days of worrying about it – that that tongue-lashing was good for me!  I was forced to admit that I hadn’t taken the time to think in depth about why I still believe!  I realized that I really hadn’t thought much about the “hope that is within me!”  I had not taken the time to really answer that question “Why in the hell am I still in this old church?”

         

It was not the first time I have ever been seriously challenged.  When I worked in the missions of our diocese, down along the Tennessee border, I was challenged often.  I was the first Catholic priest to live in that County!  I was attacked by name by a preacher on the radio.  The ministerial association was asked to leave one church when I showed up.  The host said he could no longer, in conscience, be part of the group “now that it had a Catholic in it.”  I was verbally attacked at the Post Office.  I was snubbed in stores, ignored in restaurants and tolerated at meetings because of my religion.

Those experiences have helped me answer that question, “the reason for the hope” I have.  Besides that, many of my friends have been neither church members nor believers, and they ask tough questions.  It seems that I have been surrounded by people asking for an answer.  It’s about time, I thought, that I answered that question!

Should anyone ask you for this hope of yours,  be ever ready to reply, but speak gently and respectfully.  

Those words from our first reading tonight, The First Letter of Peter, are unbelievably appropriate today.  When they were first written, Christians were a despised minority.  They stood out like sore thumbs in a Pagan culture.  Neighbors, friends and even family members had serious questions to ask.  Often these questions were asked in hate and anger.

It took guts to be different then, just as it does today.  Peter writes to encourage them to stand their ground in the face of ridicule, rejection, persecution, and possible death!  “If you ARE questioned, give a decent answer,” he says “but give it gently and respectfully.”  “Even if you are defamed, libeled, abused or ignored, do not answer with hate.  If you have to suffer, at least they can say you suffered for being good.”

These words from the Letter of Peter are as fresh today as they were then.  The young man at the party may have picked the wrong place and the wrong time and asked in bitterness, but his questions are valid.  “Why do I stay in a church with so many problems?  Why do I believe when so many people my age do not?  Why am I a Catholic, instead of a member of some less complicated denomination?  Why am I a priest when so many have left and so few are coming in?  When I saw the second reading today, I said to myself, “OK, hotshot, here is your opportunity!  Tell the people why you believe, why you stay, and why you hope!”

After much serious thought, I would like to share with you my “five reasons for the hope that is within me.”

REASON #1               

GOD IS MADLY IN LOVE WITH THE HUMAN RACE

The only reason God broke into human history in the person of Jesus is that we were not getting the message – God is madly in love with us.  I cannot believe how many so-called religious people still wonder whether God loves them or not, people who worry about going to hell, people who cringe at the name of God.  I cannot believe how so many so-called religious people wring their hands in anxiety about how the world is going to turn out – as if it is still up for grabs!  When Jesus announced the Kingdom, he said that it started quietly and almost imperceptibly, it will grow until ALL evil is crowded out.  The battle between good and evil will continue.  Evil may win many more battles, but it will not win the war!  That has already been decided!  When all is said and done, good will win out over evil.  He told us that from now on nothing can harm us permanently, all loss and suffering are temporary.  The victory has already been won!  Everything will turn out for good ultimately!  We don’t have to make it happen and we couldn’t stop it if we tried!  As we face our set backs, disappointments and losses, we must keep this good news in the back of our minds and remember it when we are discouraged.  I did not promise this, Jesus did!  That is why the gospels are called “good news.”  With all that faces us as a world today, we had better remember this “Good News” lest we give way to discouragement and hopelessness!  I don’t care how many more priests resign, how many empty seminaries are sold, how many more Jim Bakers are arrested, how many more druglords set up shop, I know how it will finally turn out!  The victory over evil has already been decided!

REASON #2       

IF GOD HAD WANTED A PERFECT CHURCH, HE WOULDN’T 

HAVE GOTTEN INVOLVED WITH HUMAN BEINGS TO BEGIN WITH

The church is a gathering of people – real people.  It is a mixture of stupid and wise, silly and serious, the gutless and the heroic, vicious and the loving, the sinner and the saint.  There is no “them” and “us.”  There is some of all that in each one of us.  It’s just a matter of degrees.  So, how can you be so upset about the splinters in your brothers and sisters eyes, when there is a plank of some kind in yours?  And it has been that way from the beginning.  He knew when he got involved with human beings, he was bound to get in trouble.  He did it anyway.  He did it on purpose.  He did it with forethought and deliberation.  He chose the weak, the idiot, the prostitute, the reject and the sinner to build his church on.  He has been choosing the same type ever since.  The next time you call the parish council a bunch of imbeciles and the parish priests idiots, just remember it has been in the family since Peter, Judas and Thomas; a liar, a traitor and a non-believer!  If it is good enough for Jesus Christ himself, I am certainly not leaving it or losing hope, just because it is Human, with human weaknesses, and human problems. 

         

Yes, we have trivialized the gospel sometimes, Yes, we have strained out the gnat and swallowed the camel!  Yes, we are a strange field of wheat and a weed that looks so much like wheat that it is almost impossible to tell them apart!  To those who want to buy a lot down the street so they can have a problem free church, not like those other churches, a church that will only love, I say “Grow up!”  “Wake up and smell the coffee.”  “Remember the words of Jesus, ‘Healthy people do not need the doctor, sick people do!’”  Love is always easy until you get to know each other well!  I couldn’t leave it, just because it’s not perfect!

REASON #3       

I STILL TRUST THE TEACHERS OF OUR CHURCH MORE 

THAN I TRUST GRADUATES OF THE PHIL DONAHUE SCHOOL

OF THEOLOGY

I am happy the church is not controlled by what most people think.  It speaks to the modern world and listens to it, but it can also stand up to it and take some heat!  Even when I disagree with its conclusions sometimes, I am proud of the struggle it is making to renew itself and deal with a gamut of complicated problems that face the world today.  That renewal is messy, uneven and confusing, but at least it is not putting its head in the sand!

The church does not have answers for everything.  Some of its official conclusions, I may have real problems with, but I still would rather trust it than Geraldo Rivera’s panel!  I stay in the church and not because it has all the answers, but because it has some of the best answers.  As Peter said to Jesus, “To whom else shall we go?”

           REASON #4                

WE ARE NOT IN THIS BY OURSELVES

Before Jesus left this earth he said this to us, his church: “Do not be afraid.  I will not leave you orphaned!  I will give you the Holy Spirit, a Helper, to be with you always!  He remains with you and will be within you!”  We, you and I, received that Spirit when we became members of the church.  We have that Helper always.  With that assurance, there is no reason to lose hope!  We are invited to help the Kingdom, but we are not responsible alone for making it come!  God is!  Let God do his thing!  Be open to some surprises.  Let God work through you.  Concentrate on doing your very best, forgive yourself when you don’t and quit worrying as if it were your responsibility to control the world!  You are a temple of the Holy Spirit, God lives within you.  Pay attention to the God within you.  And the God who lives within you will lead you, if you will let God get a word in edgewise!  That might mean a new definition of prayer – a time to sit down, shut up and listen!  These words of Isaiah the Prophet come to mind: “A voice shall sound in your ears, this is the way, walk in it should it go to the left or the right!”  If you are not familiar with this Spirit, then it’s time to introduce yourself!  With the power of God within us, there is no reason to lose hope.  There is, on the contrary, every reason to hope!

REASON #5      

OUR ONLY OBSTACLES ARE LACK OF FAITH, LACK OF GUTS, 

AND LACK OF IMAGINATION

The world has many problems and I believe the only thing that stands in the way of solving them is our fear and failure to believe the “Good News,” that “blessed assurance” that everything ultimately is going to be okay.  If we really believe that God is on our side, is madly in love with us and has seen to it that the end will be wildly festive then the only thing that stands in the way of dealing with the world as it is, is lack of nerve and a shortage of guts to stay in the struggle.  “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for enough good people to do nothing!”  If we really believe the basic “Good News,” we will hang in there no matter what.  If we don’t believe what Jesus promised, there are a million good reasons to quit and any of them will do!

Much ranting and raving about the church is done by people who still equate the church with its leaders.  When we do that, every problem is the responsibility of somebody “up there” to fix!  We are the church and we will go on no matter how weak and rigid our leaders might be!  THE VALIDITY OF THIS GOSPEL DOES NOT DEPEND ON THE MORAL OR PERSONAL CHARACTER OF THOSE WHO HOLD OFFICES.  No matter how many priests leave or how many Jim Bakers bilk their followers, this message is still valid!

It was cynicism, pessimism, rigidity and despair that killed Jesus and still defeats him.  Too few of us go through life like we believe anything beyond what we see in front of us.  We are just as gloomy, just as hand-wringing, just as anxious about the future as any athiest!

I am reminded of a special little story from the gospels. It says that the apostles were “in a boat, on a lake, after dark, in a storm, with Jesus appearing to be asleep!”  That’s how our spiritual ancestors at the time of Jesus experienced the church in their day.  In a real way things today are just as scary and shaky as they were for them.  CHANGE FOR THEM WAS DRASTIC AND PAINFUL.  It was a lot like “being in a boat, on a lake, after dark, in a storm, with Jesus appearing to be asleep!”  They had to deal with the suicide of the traitor Judas.  They had to deal with being excommunicated from the synagogue of the ancient faith.  They had to deal with an explosion of Gentile members which changed everything.  They had to deal with the absence of Jesus without a planned strategy.  They didn’t even have a Bible as we know it, only stories and memories.  They had no Vatican, no religious orders, no catechisms, no schools, no church buildings, no clear lines of authority.  In other words, they groped in the dark to find solutions to the problems that faced them.  Like changes today, they had to muster great courage, faith and imagination.  Yes, they were forced to change and adapt to new realities as they went along.  “We’ve always done it this way” did not work for them either.  Jesus left them with the Good News, but little direction on how to deliver it!  That had to be created as they went along.  The “treasure” is still here, the “earthenware jar” has to be renewed.  What is essential will remain.  What is not essential, no matter how attached to them some people may be, will continue to change.  We need new ways of transmitting the old message.

We have two choices: deny that things have changed and denounce those changes OR adapt the essentials, as John XXIII pointed out, to a modern world.  We have our resistors and our adapters.  Those who resists might remember an incident at the French Academy.  The leaders refused to accept any further reports about meteorites, since it was clearly impossible for rocks to fall out of the sky.  However, shortly after that announcement a shower of meteorites came close to breaking the windows of the Academy.  Others, like Pope John XXIII and Pope Francis, will lead us to explore new ways to announce the Good news to a different world than our parents knew.  Unfortunately, both take the same amount of energy:  denial or creativity.

These are a few of the reasons I have hope.  The church is a lot like my grandma.  She could be a little rigid at times, but she was all the grandmother I had and I still loved her. I didn’t love her IN SPITE OF HER PROBLEMS, I loved her BECAUSE she had problems.  Grandma, the church, and I have one thing in common -  we’re not perfect, but we are good enough for God!

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of my First Mass. 

The celebrations have been

delayed till September 20th at the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville and September 27th at St. Theresa in Rhodelia.