St. Thomas More Chicago

Father Robert Behnke

The Nineteenth Sunday of the Year, August 8, 2010
One of the more unusual courses I took in the major seminary was a seminar course titled “Pastoral Music.”  At the time, 40 years ago, we had to take a certain number of courses in each of the theological disciplines – Scripture, moral theology, dogmatic theology – but our choices within those disciplines were all electives.  “Pastoral music” was a course in what, after the Council, was called “pastoral theology.”  The priest who taught the class was the seminary’s director of music (in retirement now, I believe he still resides at the seminary in Mundelein), and the purpose of the class, as well as I can recall it 40 years later, was to train future priests in the importance of music in worship, especially in the Mass.  The professor Father Wojcik wanted especially to encourage future priests to sing at Mass – or more properly, to sing the Mass.  The distinction between “high” and “low” Mass was effectively done away with in the so-called “new” Mass of the 70s, and many priests no longer were praying the Mass by singing.  Anyway, the most challenging part of the seminar was that each seminarian had to compose an original musical piece that could – theoretically, at least – be sung at Mass.  None of the pieces composed in that seminar ever made it out of the classroom and into the chapel!  But there was one composition that I remember well (not mine), because of the text the composer chose to utilize; it is a line from this evening’s Gospel.  We heard it tonight as “…Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”  In the composition, that came out to be sung as “To whom much has been given, much will be expected.”  That seminarian, a seminary classmate, a good friend, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago for 37 plus years, did me a great favor with his original composition.  Both the words and the simple sing-song melody became embedded in my memory bank; they have come to the surface of my memory very often in my 37 plus years of priesthood as events in the Church and in the world have developed and warranted.
“To whom much has been given, much will be expected…” was mentally playing in my mind and heart and soul this past week, after the news broke that a certain Vaughn Walker, a federal judge in California, overturned California Proposition 8, the voter-approved measure that barred legal recognition of same-sex marriages in the state of California.  The voters of California had, two years ago, approved Proposition 8 by a 52% majority in response to a court ruling that required state recognition of same-sex unions.  Judge Walker essentially told 7 million California voters: “You can’t do that.”  Without a doubt, this issue will land before the United States Supreme Court.  And, lest anyone believe that this is an issue only in California, back in 2003, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia saw the handwriting on the wall. In his vigorous dissent from the Court’s majority decision in the Lawrence case—a case which struck down a Texas law against sodomy-- Justice Scalia wrote
If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is (as the Supreme Court ruled in this case) "no legitimate state interest" for purposes of proscribing that conduct, and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), "[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring," what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising "[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution" (again, as claimed by the Supreme Court)? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. This case (the Supreme Court holds) "does not involve" the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court.
Justice Scalia’s accurate prophecy is all the more unsettling because Justice Anthony Kennedy- a Catholic - and —by general consensus, the key “swing vote” when the Proposition 8 case makes it inevitable appearance before the Supreme Court—voted with the majority in Lawrence.  We need to brace ourselves.
The restriction of marriage licenses to male-female couples, Judge Vaughn Walker tells us, reflects “an irrational classification on the basis of sexual orientation.”  The 7 million California citizens who voted for Proposition 8 presumably thought there was a rational reason to define marriage as a male-female union. But in what has become an increasingly common display of judicial arrogance, Judge Walker substituted his own opinion for the judgment of the people.
How have we gotten to this point, in a nation in which the overwhelming majority of the population claim to be Christian, and in a nation in which 25% of the population call themselves Catholic?  How could the accumulated wisdom of countless generations – what G. K. Chesterton once called “the democracy of the dead” – generations of Americans who understood the nature of marriage in a way that the judge, and more and more Americans today, find to be untrue - how could this “accumulated wisdom” now be in danger of extinction?
“Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage,” Judge Walker asserts, and by his decision he seeks to make it so. But he offers no logical support for that bald assertion. The words “no longer” in the judge’s sentence are critical. Was there a time when gender had been an essential part of marriage, but now that time has passed? If so, what now has changed? Has there been some fundamental change in human nature? Or some fundamental change in our understanding of marriage?
There is, unfortunately, a gaping hole in the arguments that have been advanced by many supporters of traditional marriage. There has been a fundamental change in the popular understanding of marriage: the widespread acceptance of contraception.  With the routine use of contraception having severed the link between marital love and procreation—and virtually every institution but the Catholic Church mistakes the perversion of contraceptive behavior for a good—marriage has come to be seen in a very different light.  A couple entering into marriage may or may not plan to have children.  The presumption of a growing family has been lost.  Marriage is widely seen as simply a union between two loving partners.  Healthy young couples, to all appearances happy in their marriages, speak openly about “someday” beginning a family—thereby implying that the family did not begin when they exchanged vows.  A marriage is seen as a union of two people; the age-old recognition that “baby makes three” is now missing. Child-bearing has become an afterthought: something added on, something inessential.
But if marriage is no more than a loving partnership- if marriage does not involve the acceptance of children according to the will and the mind of God because of the availability and the wide acceptance of artificial contraception-why should marriage be restricted to partners of opposite sex?  Because of the wide acceptance of the morality of artificial contraception, defenders of traditional marriage are now forced to rely on weaker arguments.  Can they invoke the authority of tradition?  Progressives are anxious to dismiss especially authority based on tradition.  Or can they worry over the welfare of children?  Social scientists are eager to provide some studies suggesting that same-sex couples might be equally good parents.  Or can they cite the command of the Almighty?  Obviously, secularists insist that God and so religious beliefs have no place in public debate.  Can they note that acceptance of same-sex marriage could lead to acceptance of other heretofore illicit relationships: three-way unions, incest, even bestiality?  Homosexuals denounce these as “scare tactics,” and sympathetic voices in the media laugh off such concerns as absurd.  It is noteworthy that the current governor, as well as a former governor of California who now serves as state attorney general (both Catholics) declined to offer any sort of a vigorous defense of their state’s law; they recognized the weakness of the rhetorical positions they would be forced to advance.
            The catechism speaks about children being “granted” to parents by God.  Modern society speaks about parents “planning” a family, as one would “plan” a meal or “plan” a vacation trip.  God has given to us – we who more and more numerically resemble the “little flock” of which Our Lord speaks in tonight’s Gospel – God has given us His kingdom.  That kingdom of God here on earth includes the irreplaceable gift of holy Matrimony – including children, children granted by God, family life informed by God’s grace, parents living “…to see their children’s children…,” the gift of dancing at the wedding of one’s grandchildren.  But also “…Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more….”  What is the response of faithful Catholics to the homosexual agenda in which the goal of same-sex “marriage” is only a step toward the abolition of marriage altogether as a natural and governmentally protected reality?  Children have already become completely optional in marriage because of the legality of abortion.  Is the response of most Catholics a mere passive response – “Oh, well, what can I do about it?”  Is it a practical silence?  Do you accept without hesitation the Church’s teaching that contraception is an intrinsic evil?  Have you ever written, have you ever emailed, have you ever called, the president, the governor, your Congressional representative, your senators, your state legislators, city officials, making your beliefs about the homosexual agenda known?  Do you vote for those who support the homosexual agenda because it seems only one issue of many, just as abortion is falsely portrayed as only one issue of many?  Admittedly, at this point, constantly telephoning, emailing, writing, may very well seem like preaching to the chronically hard-of-hearing.  But if even half of the 68 million American Catholics did this – if even half of the 25% of Catholics who regularly attend Mass did this - even the hardest-of-hearing and the hardest of heart in Washington, Springfield, city hall – and maybe even in the federal courts in California – would be forced to hear and listen to something vitally important, and something that might very well save their immortal souls.  And you and I also will someday hear that simple little ditty followed by a question asked by Our Lord Himself – “You to whom much has been given, you from whom much will be expected; what did you do with the treasure of faith and grace and truth given to you…by Me?”
            +In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

By Father Behnke