St. Thomas More Chicago

          Stranger and stranger yet, life ever does seem to get.  As I reflected this past week on today’s Gospel and Our Lord’s parable of the unjust—but clever and wily and industrious—steward, it was difficult for me not to see certain parallels with the goings-on culminating last week in Congress and in the White House: the master, the steward, and the laborers.  It was hard f0r me to see much self-abandonment and altruism in the actions of our elected representatives relating to the raising of the government’s debt limitation; it, at least to me, appeared to be rather strategies in self-interest and politics—especially in election, or re-election politics—since one important action now is postponed until after the November 2012 election.  In the Gospel we have a master (whom we should not in this case confuse with God); a master who nobody much likes (he is portrayed as an absentee landlord).  The master’s steward has been caught with his hand in the till, and so his livelihood as steward is about to come to an end.  The steward, of course, is angry; judging from his performance as steward, he does not have his master’s best interests at heart.  Now he has found a way to get even.  Debts in Palestine—contrary to the Old Testament prohibition of usury—included interest prefigured into the debt.  If 40 barrels was borrowed, the debtor, as in the first instance in the parable, would automatically owe 100 barrels; it is somewhat like the value-added tax in many European countries; the price for an item may be 100 euros; the tax of 23 euros is hidden in that total of 100 euros owed for the purchase, rather than being added at the moment of the transaction.  So here the steward has found a way to ingratiate himself with the master’s debtors: ‘you borrowed 40 barrels of oil and so you now owe 100 in repayment; give the master 50 instead—so he’ll make less; I will get even with him, and you’ll owe me one.’  The master praises the steward for his ingenuity in his facing his personal crisis and so is not so annoyed even though he the master has lost some profit.  He still made a little profit, and in this case there seems to be honor among thieves.  No one has lost anything of what he originally had: the master has his money back; the steward has probably skimmed something for himself and now has a lot of his masters’ former debtors now in his debt—and those who were in debt to the master are now debt free.  Ingenuity combined with self-interest—and note, there seems neither any help nor concern for those in need.  Whether master, steward, or debtors, it is all about me, me, and me.  Would that—Our Lord almost laments—would that the children of light were as energetic as promoting the Kingdom of God as are the children of darkness in promoting their own self-interests.  Does it not resemble the way much political, social, economic life operates?  And is it not the direction in which promoters of abortion and same-sex marriage want the rules to head?  Years ago, the well-known columnist for the Chicago Daily News Mike Royko opined that the motto of the Chicago City Council should be Ubi est mihi?—Where’s mine?  Is that not what secular culture and the religion of self-success want the world to cry out: Where’s mine?

           

Beginning in August 2012, all private insurers in the US must provide women with coverage for FDA-approved contraception--including sterilization and contraceptives that have an abortifacient effect--under a mandate announced on last Monday by the US Department of Health and Human Services. According to the department, insurers must provide this coverage—a quote here—…without charging a copayment, deductible, or coinsurance….  The decision was announced in time to take effect for colleges and universities that offer health-care plans for their students.  HHS is led by Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic whose bishop has exhorted her not to receive Holy Communion.  There is in this regulation of the president’s administration an exemption for certain religious employers, but the exemption is extremely narrow.  The Church would have to cease either hiring or serving non-Catholics to qualify for the exemption.  Plus, the drugs that Americans would be forced to subsidize under the new rule include Ella, a drug approved by the FDA as an emergency contraceptive, but which can act like the abortion drug RU-486—it can abort an established pregnancy weeks after conception.  It is hard to see anything, moral or otherwise, that is not objectionable about this decision.  Most importantly, of course, the new mandate forces health insurers to pay for the immoral use of drugs, therefore violating God’s law, which ought to be no small consideration.  It even forces those insurers who may abhor contraception to participate.  And finally, it forces all Americans who pay for health insurance, whether privately or through taxes, to subsidize this immorality.  But there are also other objections that ought to be raised as well.  Pregnancy is not a disease, and the use of contraception to prevent it is purely elective.  It forces health insurance to subsidize inherently risky behavior—the link between contraception and promiscuity is simple and clear, as is the link between promiscuity and a wide variety of diseases.  Moreover, contraceptive ‘treatments’ carry a significant health risk of their own.  Encouraging women married to men (you see how specific we now have to be—women married to men) not to bear children runs completely contrary to our social interests.  Around the world, countries afflicted with this mentality face rapidly aging populations demanding support, a support which the smaller younger populations will not be willing to provide, and very likely will not be able to provide.  We reap what we sow, and when we sow nothing, there is nothing to reap.

           

So, the new Health and Human Services mandate is wrong on every level.  This is yet another example of the energetic ingenuity of the efforts of today’s parable’s children of darkness.  And so what about…the children of light?  Perhaps one purpose of Our Lord’s telling this story is to compare the enthusiastic response the children of darkness show in their dealings with other children of darkness to the lackluster response of the disciples—those who can rightly be called the children of light—to the Kingdom of God.  And the children of light now?  Today’s children of light?  Will they—we—roll over and play dead—we 56 million Catholics in America who, each at our baptism, were presented with a candle signifying our acceptance of the light of Christ, signifying that on that day each one became one of the children of light?  Roll over and pretend not to notice, as Catholics did when Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973; or when so called Gay Pride parades each year began to take over our streets and, more horribly, the attention of our children; or when Oregon first legalized assisted suicide; or when—not states made up of non-Catholics—but when Catholic states like Massachusetts, and Connecticut, and New York said any two humans could enter into marriage; or when our own state of Illinois, with its Catholic governor and Catholic senate president and Catholic house speaker, legalized unions between any two humans, making those civil unions “a marriage” in all but the name?  When will Catholics in America learn the lesson of this 2000-year-old parable?  Will this latest plot of the children of darkness—led I am certain by the Prince of Darkness—this clever ingenious plot to make each of us pay for contraception and abortion disguised as emergency contraception—will this be the final straw that awakens the Catholic sleeping giant in America?  Or will that giant look, yawn, and again—roll over?

           

Last Thursday the Church observed and celebrated the Feast of St. Jean Marie Vianney—the Cure of Ars—the patron of parish priests.  There is a lesson to be learned, I think, in the very small number of secular, diocesan, priests like the Cure of Ars, who have been canonized.  That small number of canonized secular, diocesan priests could very well be a big reason why the sleeping American Catholic giant continues to sleep in the face of continuous abomination after abomination.  In the Office of Matins last Thursday, we read these words written by the cure:…the Christian’s treasure is not on earth but in heaven.  Our thoughts, then, ought to be directed to where our treasure is…  But the cure is not telling us to ignore the evil goings-on here on earth.  He tells us:…this is the glorious duty of man: to pray and to love….  Is it love to ignore these continuing successive abominations?  Is it love to allow our culture to continue to descend into destructive death?  Is ignoring the death of American Christian culture how we will attain our treasure in heaven?  Can ignoring this possibly unite us to God forever?  Is this loving our neighbor as ourselves?  …And still worse, the cure continues,…there are some who seem to speak to the good God like this: ‘I will only say a couple of things to You, and then I will be rid of You.’  I often think that when we come to adore the Lord, we would receive everything we ask for, if we would ask with living faith and with a pure heart….  We, Catholics in America, must learn the lesson of this parable: we have the power, and the opportunity, and now again yet another chance, to end the abominations infecting our national life today, if we have the will to do so—having that will, having a living faith and having a pure heart, we would receive everything we ask for…because all along, God has been on our side.

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, August 7th, 2011