Saturday, August 18, 2018

This is the homily I gave this evening at the Belles Beginning Mass at Saint Mary's College.  It relates to the readings for the 20th Sunday in ordinary time: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081918.cfm

Saint Mary’s College is both a repository of and a laboratory for Wisdom.  You are here at Saint Mary’s to increase your understanding and to add to the repository of your wisdom so that the wisdom of the world might increase.  At the Avenue, Wisdom has invited you: “Turn in here.  Come!  Eat of our bread.  Forsake foolishness that you might live; advance the way of understanding so the world might live.
You have joined the Saint Mary’s community because of the excellence of the holistic Holy Cross education we offer and because of our emphasis on empowering women to assume their proper place in leading the world and the Church with service.  You have joined us because, to some at least intuitive extent, you share our core values of Learning, Community, Faith/Spirituality and Justice.
This year our focus is on Faith and Spirituality. Now is a critical and imperative time to explore faith and spirituality in a Catholic climate. Paul tells us in the second reading to make the most of the opportunity because the days are evil. Catholic social teaching and the policies of nations, including our own, are, too often, in conflict if not opposition.  Our own Church leadership –Cardinals, bishops and priests - continues to scandalize and nauseate us as more and more disgusting details of their sexual abuse and cover-ups are revealed.  Too too many given positions of leadership and trust belong not where they are but, at best, in jail.
What is the resolution? How do we get out of this evil mess? It sounds glib and simplistic to say that what is needed is faith in God, unless one adds that many who profess faith and spirituality have little or no faith in or knowledge of God, be they politicians, Cardinals, bishops, priests or ministers –maybe even ourselves. Many Christians, including some appointed to be our servant leaders, seem to not believe in God.   Instead, they believe in themselves, their power, their position. How could anyone who believes in the God of Jesus be so debauched as to sin so grievously without acting on their desperate need for conversion, repentance and forgiveness and instead remain in a state of continuous denial?
Who is the God of Jesus?  Words fail.  So Jesus uses parables of relationship that tell us of a loving parent who is completely intimate with us and calls us to a related intimacy. Jesus tells us that he lives in this intimacy and so can we.  He tells us how to achieve it—by becoming exactly who he is—which is our true identity.  If Jesus is the bread of life for us, and we are to become exactly who he is, then we are to receive his bread and become His bread of life for others.  Not stale bread; not moldy bread but true bread that gives real, full, holy and eternal life: not for itself or its own power or pleasure but for others. 
We have not always been fed that bread by those who serve us from this table.  Nor is other bread that we sometimes eat the true bread of life. It is sometimes the bread of self.  As a result, many of us do not know real, eternal life. Our faith, our spirituality is at risk of death.
Who will feed us the true bread?  Who will nourish us with the bread of life?  Who will teach us how?  We men, on our own, have failed.  We need full partnership with you—with women—to renew the face of the earth.  It is not about power.  It is not about position.  It’s about the intimacy of communion.  That’s all!  In full and true communion with each other we cannot use and abuse.
You know that for too long men have clung to power exclusively.  Please, we beg of you: teach us to switch from power to communion, from death to eternal life.  Like Mary, our name sake, bring to new life in you the bread that gives eternal life, and share it. Use the gift of Saint Mary’s to take your shot and do not throw it away.  Pope Francis has told you:  “Young people, you have it in you to shout.  It is up to you not to keep quiet, even if others keep quiet, if we older people and leaders keep quiet, if the whole world keeps quiet and loses its joy.  I ask you,: says the Pope, “Will you cry out?”
And in the Pope’s spirit I ask you: Will you cry out with me these words from Hamilton: I will not throw away my shot!  I will not throw away my shot!...
Welcome to Saint Mary’s.  Welcome to the Bread of Life!


Monday, April 23, 2018

Politics and Homilies

Politics and Homilies

I have received second-hand feedback that sometimes my homilies are too political when it is not the right time or place to bring up certain issues.  Therefore, I decided to explain my thinking and open myself to critique on its faults, weaknesses and/or strengths.

As in any discussion or debate, I find it very helpful to begin by defining terms.  Let’s start with the big one: politics.  My critics might have other definitions, but those I find best are quite broad: 
the assumptions or principles relating to power and status in a society; achieving and exercising organized control over a human community (often a country or municipality).  Most generally, politics is the process of making decisions that affect members of a group. By these definitions, it is hard to imagine much that is not political.

Too broad?  I don’t think it is for this context, because I think anything more specific can be inappropriate for a homily.  A homily should be scripture, tradition, and church teaching based.  While it can present guiding principles based on those elements, it should never take sides in endorsing a specific candidate or ballot proposal.  While one may infer for oneself what vote or advocacy might flow from basic principles or teachings, the Church has no business instructing members on how to vote.

The principles of Catholic Social Teaching (Life and dignity of the human person; rights and responsibilities; option for the poor and vulnerable; the dignity of work and the rights of workers; solidarity; care for God’s creation) are often seen as too political, even among Catholics themselves. Yet they are as much a part of essential Church belief as are any other established teachings.  It is hard to imagine any of them outside of a political context.

For example, the Church is adamantly pro-life.  However, when homilies include but speak beyond the single issue of abortion, Catholics who consider themselves pro-life might find themselves getting uncomfortable. They should! Life includes many more issues!  Calling for action to eliminate school shootings, lessen the income gap, effect prison reform, care for the planet, feed the hungry… - all have political implications and are not to be avoided in proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel.


When public policy ignores Christian core values such as humility and empathy and care for the poor, it is irresponsible not to say so and to call the congregation to action, in my opinion.  This is not to say that politics must be consistent with Catholic values but when it is not, preachers and teachers must point that out and those who profess the faith must consider those factors when making their political decisions.

Of course, I need to know what critics consider too political and cannot know what modifications I need in my preaching unless they tell me.  But I do hope these reflections might begin such conversation.

Steve Newton, CSC