I was ordained in 2009 and had Mass regularly for President Obama
I've spent the last 4 years having a regular Mass for President Trump
Whoever ultimately wins this year I will regularly have Mass and pray for them
This isn't saying that we don't fight it out with every thing that we have in the political realm, but it is saying that when the dust settles and a winner is determined, we will regularly pray for him and all our elected representatives!
12 Years ago at St. Meinrad Archabbey, on September 25th, 2008, Archbishop Daniel Buechlein ordained me to the diaconate.
He said, from the Rite of Ordination:
"Believe what you read. Teach what you believe. Practise what you teach." and later "May God, who has begun this good work in you, bring it to fulfillment!"
One of my
top 5 favorite Scripture passages is today’s first reading.
God not in
the wind, not in the Earthquake, not in the fire…
After the
fire there was a tiny whispering sound. When
he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak.
Do we want
God to be loud?Do we want God to be
earthquakes and fire and wind?
Certainly
that is how his appearance is described throughout the Old Testament, most
notably on Sinai.Thunder, wind, earthquakes
and fire.What is going on there?I have no doubt that there was fire, thunder,
terror, fear, earthquakes, smoke etc.
So how is it
that God is a whisper?
I think we
can safely say that what is happening is perfection coming into contact with
sin.
God is perfect,
unchanging…. He never left us in the sense that He is always sustaining everything
that exists, always in every moment willing the existence, but also He can be
said to have left in the sense that He’s not present in the world of the Old
Testament in the way that He was in the Garden.
and so when He
comes back into the story of humanity…that is an epic clash that produces
thunder, smoke, earthquakes, lightning, etc.
one analogy:
An asteroid travels silently through space, but when it hits the Earth’s atmosphere,
there is fire, smoke, thunder and potentially earthquakes and explosions if it
makes it to the Earth’s surface.So is
God when he appears in our world.
Or, to use
another analogy, just as two opposites air masses colliding can create a thunderstorm
so it is when the perfect God encounters the brokenness and sin of humanity.
So although
there is smoke and fire and lightning, that is a result of perfection coming
back into our atmosphere.Those things
are effects of God drawing near, but God is not in those fireworks.
We know that
God ultimately has the plan of being able to be in our presence without
the accompanying pyrotechnics.He
ultimately takes on human flesh, thus he’s able to walk about and be in our
midst in a way that doesn’t produce the accompanying effects that we see in the
Old Testament.God “hides” his glory in
human flesh.
In conclusion,
Christ is stillness.He is peace.He is rest for the weary.Let us seek refuge in Him away from the pyrotechnics
of our world on a daily basis.
Saint Paul: “We know that all
creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and we also groan within
ourselves as we wait for the redemption of our bodies.”
Translation:
We are waiting on Christ’s return, and the world is in turmoil until what we
are waiting for happens, when Christ returns at the end of time.
In this
homily, I hope to establish 3 things.
1) The Catholic Church could not speak
more strongly against racism
2) I want to talk about a racist antiimmigrant
who has miraculously escaped mainstream scrutiny for 100 years.
3) And then in conclusion I want to note
that a saint has noted that as long as abortion is legal, we can’t expect anything
other than violence and turmoil
1) In our
own day, lots of people are rightly upset about racism.The Catholic Church has ALWAYS been against
racism, and can’t say it more strongly.We’ve been against it since the first chapter of Genesis, since God said
we are all made in God’s image and likeness
A sampling
of teachings through the centuries: since all people have the same dignity
as creatures made in his image and likeness…Since something of the glory of God
shines on the face of every person, the dignity of every person before God is
the basis of the dignity of persons before other persons. Moreover, this is
the ultimate foundation of the radical equality and brotherhood among all
people, regardless of their race, nation, sex, origin, culture, or class.
Elsewhere (just
2 of thousands of places) “For those who live a new life in Christ, racial and
cultural differences are no longer causes of division”
Has every
Catholic lived that belief perfectly – absolutely not.Some today are pointing to the sins of the
past, of the Church, Christianity, etc. and we own all of that.But Catholicism should not be judged by the
people who don’t live the faith out.Hitler, and Mussolini were baptized Catholics.Yet no one judges Catholicism by those two.
2) So, as we
have riots going on around the country about racism, I’d like to talk about the
racism of seemingly the one person who has not been targeted: Margaret Sanger
who would eventually become the founder of Planned Parenthood.I’d like to give you a few quotes than because
this is probably the most under-reported story of the last 100 years, and I
want you to ask “why are we not hearing about these things”
You don’t
have to go back through decades of obscure tweets, rereading with a fine tooth
comb old social media posts.These are
all in her short, accessible, writings.
In a letter
to Dr. C.J. Gamble “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate
the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that
idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
In a letter
concerning the Negro Project she founded in 1939 we read: “The project would
hire three or four ‘colored Ministers, preferably with social-service
backgrounds, and with engaging personalities’ to travel throughout the
South and propagandize for birth control, since ‘the most successful
educational approach to the Negro is through religious appeal.’ .
Sanger spoke
at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1926 in Silver Lake, New Jersey. Following the invitation,
Sanger describes her elation after receiving multiple speaking requests from
white supremacy groups. She writes of the experience on page 366 of her book,
An Autobiography:
“I accepted an invitation to talk to the women’s branch of
the Ku Klux Klan … I saw through the door dim figures parading with banners and
illuminated crosses … I was escorted to the platform, was introduced, and began
to speak … In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had
accomplished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups were
proffered.”
Do we have a documented case of
someone proud to have spoken at a Klan rally who still has streets and awards
named after her, and statues still standing?We have statues being pulled down of Frederick Douglas and Abraham
Lincoln, but Sanger’s legacy has remained unquestioned for the past 100
years?How is that possible?
A sampling
of her statements on immigrants:
“There were
1.6 million illiterate foreigners in the United States when the 1910 Census was
taken.Do these elements give promise of
a better race?Are we doing anything
genuinely constructive to overcome the situation?”Women and the New Race
“These
foreigners who have come in hordes have brought with them their ignorance of
hygiene and modern ways of living and that they are handicapped by religious
superstitions is only too true”Women
and the New Race
“Civilized
nations are penalizing talent and genius, to coddle and perpetuate the choking
human undergrowth, which, as all authorities tell us, is escaping control and
threatens to overrun the whole garden of humanity.”Pivot of Civilization
“We are
paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing,
unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at
all.”
She uses “feeble
minded” seemingly 2,000 times.It is
chilling.She means, one can assume, all
those not as smart as her, those suffering mental illness and she makes the
case, over and over again, that “the feeble minded are notoriously prolific in
reproduction.”
She also was
supportive of, get this, the FORCED STERILIZATION of these human persons:
“The
emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced
immediately.Every feeble minded girl or
woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be
segregated during the reproductive period.Otherwise, she is almost certain to bear imbecile children, who in turn
are just as certain to breed other defectives.The male defectives are no less dangerous….we prefer the policy of
immediate sterilization, of making sure that parenthood is absolutely
prohibited to the feeble minded…”
She wrote
into the charter of the American Birth Control League “Sterilization of the
insane and feebleminded and the encouragement of this operation upon those
afflicted with inherited or transmissible diseases”
“The
grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feeble minded should, indeed, not
only be discouraged BUT PREVENTED from propagating their kind.”Pivot of Civilization
And she was
for purifying the white race:
“Birth
control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more
or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of
preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives”Women and the New Race
“Every
detail of this sordid situation means a problem must be solved before we can
ever clear the way for a greater race in America”
“The mating
of a moron with a person of sound stock may gradually disseminate this trait far
and wide until it undermines the vigor and efficacy of an entire nation and an
entire race.”Pivot of Civilization
All this
just to establish that for one hundred years, the work of Margaret Sanger has
avoided scrutiny by people otherwise (and thankfully) looking to uproot any one
who has said anything hinting at racism.A person who spoke at a Klan Rally, was completely focused on rooting
out immigrants, and was for a purification of the white race and forced
sterilization of people with mental illness…how has she survived scrutiny?
And even SHE
HATED ABORTION.In fact, it seems, from
a Catholic perspective, to be the one thing Margaret Sanger got right.
She said: “I
assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each
year is a disgrace to civilization” Women and the New Race
Planned
Parenthood, founded by Margaret Sanger to AVOID abortions, is now the largest
abortion provider in our country
Dr. Alveda
King, niece of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., remarked on the error of Planned
Parenthood’s abortion-on-demand corporate ideology:
“The most
obvious practitioner of racism in the United States today is Planned
Parenthood, an organization founded by the eugenicist Margaret Sanger.”
Saint Mother
Teresa knew that if a mother could kill her child in the womb, then anyone
could do anything imaginable to any other person.
As long as
abortion is allowed, this violence and upheaval that we see is the culmination
of 50 years of legalized abortion
Contraception
championed by Margaret Sanger has undeniably resulted in an absolute implosion
of the family.And abortion, following
in contraception’s wake, has resulted in an absolutely hardened, cold, and cruel
world wherever it is practiced.
At the
beginning of the Book of Deuteronomy, God tells Moses the Israelites will be
given the authority to wipe out the people living in the Promised Land because
the occupants of the land at the time did two things:
1) Worship false gods
2) Sacrifice their children to these
false gods
In a moment,
toward the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, I will say “May this Sacrifice
of our reconciliation, we pray, O Lord, advance the peace and salvation
of ALL the world.”
Sacrificing
children to other gods has never worked, but has only brought destruction on
people.This is the only sacrifice, the
Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, that can ever bring peace to our broken
world.Thanks be to God for the
opportunity to join ourselves to this Sacrifice while we groan in labor pains
for the redemption of our bodies and the return of Christ.
