A Lost Sheep Comes Home

Many times, as a Catholic pastor, I will get approached by parents who are upset about or grieving a son who has abandoned the faith.  It seems a weekly occurrence. Some wonder where things went wrong, seeing their son’s rejection of the faith as a failure on their part to raise the child correctly.  Some believe they did everything they could but that their son still rejected the faith.  For some parents, this is a deeply painful rejection not just of faith, but of themselves as well.

I suppose I get approached with this as much as I do because of my own story.  I was an agnostic.  I was one for a long time.  Officially I was about 4 or 5 years, but for much of my life before that, I was as well.  This might seem strange for those who know me and know I was in a High School seminary. 

I am reticent to write much about how I became agnostic as it would seem to be a condemnation of family, friends, and others of influence in my life.  I do not wish to do this as, with very few exceptions, no one tried to drive me into a lack of faith.  I will write, though, because it might be instructive to parents, teachers, my brother clergy, and even to the young man who has abandoned faith.

I will readily admit that no two stories are the same.  What contributed to my path is unique to me.  However, there are more things that unite us in the human experience than separate us.  Take from this what you want.   

A Tale of Two Gods

In my youth, I was presented with two very different gods. 

God A was an angry guy.  If He loved us, it was begrudgingly so.  He didn’t like us.  Sure, He sent His Son and all, but even that seemed like just another reason for angry God to be angry with us.  This God has a long list of the hell bound.  This God loved entrapment.  He allows us to be tempted and then slams us when we fall.  Love to this God, was a fearful submission.  He was an all-powerful bully.  Worship was appeasement; worship was stroking the eternal ego of angry god.  Angry god was like a cat…three strokes on the belly to make me happy, four strokes and I will gnaw your hand off!

God B was fluffy guy.  He was a peace, love, and crunchy granola type.  He was the smiling hippie who just oozed positive emotions.  Honestly, he was kind of really effeminate and hard to take seriously.  He was little more than a numbing agent when life got hard.  He was as effective at guiding me in life as a untrained golden retriever puppy.  I love Goldens.  Don’t get me wrong. There was, however, very little about this god that a young man, such as myself, saw as worthy of my time.

I wanted nothing to do with either version.  It seemed all wrong.  I couldn’t tell you why it was all wrong, but my gut told me it was.  That was problematic.  I was looking for an identity, especially in what it meant to be a man.  Either god’s definition of manhood, so much based in their own definition, left me cold.  I didn’t want to be the angry guy.  I didn’t want to be the wuss either.

Wandering

               My 7^th and 8^th grade years were brutal.  In sixth grade, when my family lived in Kentucky, my dad, siblings, and I converted to Catholicism from being kind of Protestants.   I got my first real good look at angry god.  My classmates started bullying me, friends abandoned me, and I felt isolated quickly.  I was told I was going to hell.  We moved to Missouri and I was put into a Catholic School.  I fared no better there.  Being excessively short and scrawny for my age, I was a prime target for bullying. It was the first time I was exposed to a religion class as a part of the regular curriculum, and it was there I got exposed to fluffy god.  It was also where I first had the first real doubts.  You see, we talked about fluffy happy Jesus who just loved, loved, loved. Problem was, that was far from my experience with those Catholics around me.

               Home life was little respite. The breakdown of family was starting in earnest and would drag out for the next 8 years.  Fluffy god wasn’t terribly effective at stopping the breakdown.  No matter how much religion we jammed into our lives, the breakdown didn’t stop.

               I ended up in high school seminary for one reason and one reason only: it got me out of my home and away from my home town.  Things were better at the high school seminary than at home.  Even there, though, it was still fluffy god.  I paid lip service to thinking about priesthood.  I had to.  The alternative was going back to what I was trying to escape.  I did love my family, even with all the dysfunction.  However, if I never saw my old schoolmates and the parish again, I would be okay.  I did like the pastor of my parish.  He was a good guy who did try hard.  He was the one thing that kept me attached to faith of any kind; at least a willingness to stay nominally Catholic.

               I had no relationship with God though.  I went to Mass every day.  I had to.  I prayed morning and evening prayer every day.  I had to.  I went to religion class 5 times a week.  I had to.  Honestly, there wasn’t too much loopy going on; but it left me cold.  I felt nothing.  I had some friends.  That was enough…that and it wasn’t my home town.  There was some comfort in going through the motions.

               When I graduated, I went to college seminary.  I went because it was expected.  I was on my way into drifting into the priesthood.  It was there that a new ugly beast arose.  In High School Seminary, we were taught to believe generally what the Church teaches.  But, in my first three years of college… not so much.  Whatever faith was there died.  Everything was an argument, even what we could call the persons of the Trinity.   Church moral teaching was at best a buffet in which each was presented in the worst possible light. I hated going to Mass and prayer.  I skipped quite a bit.  Everything seemed empty.  I struggled. I started dating girls in secret.  I was disconnecting from something I was barely connected to at all.

               Even with all this, I still thought I was going to be a priest.  Heaven knows why, I didn’t believe.  I ended up transferring seminaries my senior year.  A part of me knew that if I were going to make the next step, then a change of venue was going to be necessary.  I wish I had gone to that seminary all along.  This story might have taken a different turn.  There, I got the closest I had gotten to an encounter with the actual God.  But, right on cue, the second semester of my senior year, my parents separated for the last time.  God once again seemed impotent.  I was furious.  My fury was picked up by the review board for the theologate and they recommended I wait till the dust settled before I went on.  In my mind’s eye, the impotent god’s failure was complete.  I went back to my practical agnosticism.

               Going home, now in New York, religion became something I couldn’t abandon altogether. I still went to Mass so as not to scandalize my family.  The pastor, though, was an idiot who loved angry god.  Our fights were many.  Even with that, once he found out I had been a seminarian, a full court press was started to get me back in the seminary.  I went.  It was a huge mistake.  The place I went for less than one year was such a troubling place where faith was drained and in its place an uberliberal anti-faith rose, that I finally was convinced to quit going through the motions.  I left the seminary and the faith.

Give Me Something to Believe In

               During my time in the desert, the one place I found any solace was in music.  I listened to the radio quite a lot.  In 1990, a song by Poison, called “Give Me Something to Believe In” was released and became a hit.  It nailed where I was in my life.  The song,  a heart wrenching ballad written by the lead singer after the death of a close friend, is the pleading of a man who sees so much pain and strife, so much hypocrisy, and wants something to make sense of it all.

               I wanted to believe in something.  I wanted all of this to make sense.  I had tried the whole religion thing and found it wanting.  I wasn’t angry so much as I was despondent and confused.  If God was who I was told He was, why did my family break up?  Why was I bullied by those who said they believed? Why was there pain?  This led to my owning agnosticism.  I could never make the jump that creation spontaneously happened, so atheism was out.  However, I figured there might well be a god, but who He is is inaccessible to us.   We were all just grasping at straws trying to make a god who fit our own predilections.

               Like my other approaches, this didn’t fulfill me either.  There was still some longing there and I had no idea where to go with it.  Like so many others, I tried to fill that longing.  I became the master of keeping up appearances.  Deep inside I was restless and getting more and more resentful.  That resentment found its way in my attitude to ‘organized religion’ as a farce that preyed upon those honestly seeking for truth and towards the ‘true believers’ who sneered at those who didn’t believe as they believed.  When I was seeking a deeper bond somewhere, religion drove me further and further away.

Toy Soldiers

               Nature abhors a vacuum. So does the human heart.  I found solace in many things as well.  I worked.  I worked a lot.  I dated.  I had a knack for picking poorly.  That might have had something to do with looking in bars for something.  If I couldn’t walk out with a girl, at least I could walk out with a buzz. I found that with alcohol (beer specifically, hard liquor and I just didn’t agree) took the edge off from the emptiness.  I went from wanting it to needing it.  I was good at keeping up respectable appearances, though. I may be many things, but I am not stupid.  I knew where this was going.  I was just having a hard time hitting the brakes.

               Without God, it is said, all things are permissible. Maybe all things aren’t legal, but laws can be changed.  My attempt to find something I could believe in was heading south.  I knew it.  I remember one night lying in bed with the radio on.  The bed felt like it was spinning.  I hated that feeling.  I remember an  old song coming on, ‘Toy Soldiers’ by Martika coming on.  It is sad song about someone struggling with an addiction.  When the line, “How could I be so blind to this addiction?  If I don’t stop, the next one is going to be me.” was sung, it was like a dagger to my heart.  It was probably one of the hardest cries I have ever had.  I was on the wrong road.  I had this emptiness and I believed I had nothing to fill it.  That night marked the last time I went out to a bar to get drunk.

               I cleaned up my act.  But I was restless.  I thought I needed a change of venue.  I had the girl I loved, the job I loved, but it wasn’t enough. I took the first promotion from my company that got me out of New York.  Maybe a new beginning would help things.  So off to Missouri again I went.

Hole Hearted

               I have to admit I was a bit of a hair band kind of guy.  Of all the albums I had, it was Extreme’s ‘Pornograffiti’ that I liked the most.  I was especially fond of the harder rock songs on the album.  The two acoustic songs I didn’t really care for.  My neighbors in the condo heard it more than once.

               How is this relevant?  Well, you see, I put my heart and soul into the new position.  Once again, though, it was unfulfilling.  I ran into a few friends from my years prior in Missouri.  They were people of great faith.  In just a few discussions, being very careful to stay off of the topic of religion, in started to occur to me that maybe the hole and emptiness I had could only be filled with one thing: God.  Honestly, I bristled at the idea.  I tried religion, heck, I was going to be a priest.  It didn’t work.   But it would not leave me alone.

               One night, while playing the above mentioned album, the song ‘Hole Hearted’, came on.  I had been distracted by trying to figure out my life and I heard in the background, “If I’m not blind, why can’t I see that circle can’t fit where a square should be.”  Right words at the right time.  It occurred to me that what I had spent the last 4 years doing was trying to fill a hole with something that wouldn’t fill it.  It was time to give this god thing another chance.

               It was timid business though.  I knew that I still wanted nothing to do with either angry god or fluffy god.  I went out and tried to find God on my own.  This, too, was unfulfilling, because I caught on rather quickly that all I was doing was creating a God I could be comfortable with.  It seemed to me that that was already done by others.  If I was going to do this whole God thing, I wanted to find the real one.

The Road Home

               For me, I started out with a basic question, “If I were a God who created, why would I do it and what would I desire?”  That led me to find the God of Judeo-Christianity.  Unlike other religions, where creation was bad and man especially evil, in Judeo-Christianity, God created on purpose and with a purpose out of love.  This made sense to me.  How then all the turmoil?  It made sense to me that if that creation turned on Him by not loving Him back, that the obvious result would be turmoil.  That He doesn’t destroy that creation and start again however much it deserves it, spoke to that love.  The whole Jesus event then made incredible sense.  If a God who loves His fallen creation really loves them, He will do what is necessary to draw them back in without destroying them; He would destroy what separated them.

               What then was I to do with a lifetime of seeing His followers not getting that?  What was I going to do with those followers who presented Him as angry god or as fluffy god.  If I were going to re-engage in faith, I had to search for what was authentic, even if what was authentic challenged me to my core.  In fact, I was hoping that an encounter with God would shake me to my very core.  I wanted to get as close to that creator who loved as I could.

               Why, then, do I need a Church?  Can’t I just find this God on my own?  Why? Because I knew there were other people looking as well.  There were other people who wanted something to fill that emptiness just like I did.  I started looking at what various churches taught about God.  I saw a lot of the angry god and fluffy god.  It was St. John Paul II that captured me.  I would read what he would write and listen to his words and it became clear that what he believed…that’s what I was looking for.  His god was neither angry nor fluffy.  Then as I looked at what the Church actually taught, I realized that I had found what I was looking for in the last place I wanted to find it.  I had written off Catholicism as hijacked by crazies. 

               I was content to be a layman who would engage in this.  I could be a teacher.  I could volunteer.  The problem was that the more I engaged in faith, the more empty the rest of my life seemed.  I had found my love.  I wasn’t ready to commit though.

The Steep and Winding Trail

               I remember the first time the thought crossed my mind about maybe I was actually called to priesthood all along.  For a split second, I felt sucker-punched. No.  I came back in a way I never had before.  I was willing to engage in an eternal relationship with God.  I would be a proper spokesman for Him, but on my terms.  I was okay with there being a fire as long as I could direct its path.  I would soon find out that fires purge and it would be painful.

               I was drawing closer to the God that had so evaded me in my younger years.  I suppose a better way of putting it, wasn’t so much God evaded me, but I hid from Him.  Either way, the closer I got, the more I became aware of what needed to change.  Changing was not going to come easy.

               When I finally consented in my head to at least looking at seminary again, I found it was going to be a steep uphill battle.  I, who had wanted things on my own terms, was going to be put in a crucible.  I hated it then.  I see the absolute necessity for it now.  All that I had accrued while working in the private sector eventually dissipated. The vocational director of the diocese remembered me from years past and hated me.  He had no interest in my being a seminarian and actively fought it even after I was accepted in the seminary.

               My old girlfriend was not one to give up either.  Having that safety net under me made letting go all the easier when things became hard.  One of the hardest purgings in my life was letting go of that safety net.  God wanted my full attention.  This time I couldn’t run away from the current reality.  This time I was going to have to stand my ground.

Epilogue

               Decades have passed since those days.  It is a lifetime ago.  My relationship with God and His Church grows.  However, I have not forgotten what those days in the wilderness felt like.  I have not forgotten how I got there, what I did when I was there, and how I got out of there.

               I know that not all stories, not even the majority of stories, end as mine did.  I know there are still many young people, both men and women, who wander.  They may not call it that.  They might angrily deny they are; I would have.  But we should never lose hope. 

               We are told that the Good Shepherd looks for his lost sheep.  I was one of those lost sheep.  He found me.  That’s why I dedicate the rest of my days looking for the lost sheep…even if they don’t think they’re lost.     

               God used what he could to get my attention.  A few well-placed songs, my searching and restlessness, even my pain, to get me back where I needed to be.

               I end with this.  I imagine that many wander for the same reason I did. They were presented a god, angry, fluffy, or otherwise that bore little resemblance to God and balked at it.  We have to do a much better job in our catechesis in presenting the fullness and truth of God.   We want something we can believe in.  We crave it.  St. Augustine, another famous wanderer, put it best, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” 

The Biggest Non-Shocker Of Them All

Talk about something hiding in plain sight.  Show me a person's body of work and I will see something of person who they are.  To give an example:  every homily I give tells the listener not just about what we believe, but what I believe as well.  The kind of person I am and the spirituality I espouse are exposed with every word that trickles from my mouth.  Who I am is seen through what I as  a pastor am willing to allow in my parish and what I see as priorities.

Any artist will tell you that they expose a bit of themselves in their art. Be it writing, painting, sculpting,  acting, and so forth, the artist reveals something of who he or she is to the world.  Their values and beliefs seep through what they put out there or what the green light or even finance.

This can be a good thing or a curse.  There are many in the artistic fields that are good people and their work shows this.  There are those in the artistic fields, as well, who are vile, and their work shows forth that as well.

When we look at the scandals in Hollywood and the entertainment industry, how can anyone be really shocked.  Other fields have had similar scandals, including my own of Catholic priesthood, but what gave scandal is that the work put out there and the life lived were at odds.  You can't preach peace, love, and crunchy granola on the one hand and molest children on the other.  The indignation and betrayal was real.  It was understandable that people didn't see this coming.

I'm not feeling that with Hollywood though.  In fact, I don't feel that with the entertainment industry as a whole.  They have been telegraphing who they are for decades.  How many movers and shakers in the entertainment industry coveted those invitations to the Playboy Mansion, to cozy up with Hugh Hefner?  Hefner built an empire on the exploitation of women!  Shocker that many of these guys were exploiting women, huh?  Look at their movies.  The mountain range full of violence and sexual exploitation of women is mammoth.  Being excessively exploitative of women and children is considered daring and  award worthy.  Most musical genres have a dim view of women as little more than party accessories.  How can we be surprised when the people that make this stuff and finance this stuff are engaged in this stuff?!

The scandal with the treatment of women is going to pale once the sexual exploitation of children comes out.  Remember, this is the industry that wanted to give Roman Polanski and R. Kelly passes.  This is the industry that has made money with the sexualization of our children.  This is the industry that has endlessly marketed smut to our children and finances so much of the continued sexualization of our children.  Several stars have talked about how they were passed around like party favors as children.  Looking at the body of work of this industry, it will be galling that anyone feign shock.  It has been hiding in plain site, jumping up and down with glee, for many years.

Maybe the indignation that people have comes from the fact they should have seen this all along, but were so conditioned to admire these people, that it was simply excused away until it could not be excused any more.  Let's be honest.  Look at what is on TV.  Look at the movies.  Listen to what is actually being sung.  Take away the violence and the sex/sexual innuendo..and what is left?  How can we be truly shocked?

Garbage in, garbage out.  We feed ourselves at a dumpster and we get the nutritional value of a dumpster.  I cut out the diet of sex and violence given by the industry a long time ago.  I found that without my emotions continually being manipulated towards anger, lust, greed, and gluttony, that getting my life in order was much easier.  I am not saying I am a finished product by any means. However without a steady diet of violence, filth, and sex, I find it easier to be who I want to be.

I am not saying all songs are bad.  Nor am I saying all TV and movies are bad.  I am saying that the filth being exposed in Hollywood and the entertainment industry has been there all along, unhidden.  Will its exposure change anything, or will it die down as the cornucopia of filth still spews on?  That is up to us. 

Of God and Caesar

"Render unto Caesar that which are Caesar's, and unto God that which are God's"


 This saying from the Gospels is perhaps one of the more misunderstood of the sayings of Jesus.  It is answer to a question about whether to pay the census tax or not.  The enemies of Jesus think they have Him trapped.  The tax was levied by the hated Roman Empire which occupied the land of Israel.  The Pharisees send their disciples with a group they hated, the Herodians to try to pose an unanswerable question.  Should the Jews pay the loathsome tax or not?  If Jesus says 'yes', the Pharisees can turn the people on Jesus, dismissing Him as a Roman puppet.  If He says 'no', then the Herodians can run to the Romans and have Jesus executed as a rebel.

Jesus asks for the coin used to pay the tax.  It is a Roman coin with the Emperor's image on it.  He then says the famous quote of rendering unto Caesar that which are his and unto God what is His.  So what is Jesus saying?  What is He not saying?

Render unto Caesar...


 We live as citizens of the countries in which we inhabit.  The general upkeep of that country is to our advantage.  Infrastructure,  public safety, defense, are among the things that fellow citizens pool their monies together through taxes to build and maintain such things.  Living in a country such as the United Sates, we have a duty to vote for those who govern.  Our common bonds as citizens does mean we should work to the common good.

That said, we need to remember every form of government and every nation are man made entities.  History shows us countries and governments rise and fall.  The mighty Roman Empire that existed in the time of Jesus and the early Church has faded into the annuls of history.  Caesar and his ilk are temporary beings at best.

Because they are mere beings and not gods, Caesar is not all powerful nor can he rule without boundaries. Whether it be in the form of a monarchy, a republic, or even a dictatorship; any authority Caesar has, he is answerable to God for how he exercised that authority.  The founders of this country recognized that rights were bestowed on us by our Creator.  A government may help in the protection of those rights, but is cannot give rights and withdraw rights that are not theirs to give or take.  Caesar is not a god, however much he might think himself one.

Bigger Than Government

I see the Caesers of this world as more than just mere governments.  Governments are constructs of societies from which they rose.   Caesar, by extension, is the societies we live in at large.  They are the cultures to which we belong.  Being social beings, we humans form bonds of family, friendship, and community to sustain the common good.  It is good thing to have mutual support.  We can band together for common purposes as education, food, defense, and so on.  We build economic systems to help enrich the lives of each other.

These socioeconomic systems, like our governmental systems, work better when we contribute to the common good.  It is a Christian principle that we are vested in the good of not merely myself, but of those around me as well.  Like the governmental systems, these socioeconomic systems are also man made entities that rise and fall.  Like governmental systems, they are also not free to rule without constraint.  Those who run these enterprises are just as answerable to God for the use of their authority as much as kings and presidents are.

Little Caesars

Any enterprise can serve to common good.  Schools, sports leagues, fraternal orders, and other social constructs can be good.  Certainly if we commit to their growth, we have a duty to help in such things.   We can form these entities for such things as entertainment, health, or education.  It must be understood that these too are mere human creations that come and go.  Even those that run these little Caesars are answerable to God for what little authority has been delegated them.

Frankencaesar

Left unchecked or left with slavish devotion, any of these Caesar can morph into insatiable monsters.  Whether it a government who taxes its citizens heavily, to businesses that demand inordinate amounts from their employees times, to schools and athletics that forget they are not a first priority but demand to be treated as such, the Caesars can gobble up as much as we allow them to have.

First come promises to cajole us into the surrender of more time, energy, and resources.  Every inch given is answered with more cajoling for more and more and more.  The promise is made that is we surrender this time, resources,  and energy that Caesar will grant us whatever it is we desire.

Left uncheck, Caesar will not only want what is proper to his realm, but will want what isn't proper to his realm as well.  He will want what is God's as well.  He will do so without apology.

There was a time, when I was child, that with few exceptions, everything was closed on Sundays.  Sundays were a time for God, rest, and family.  But Caesar wanted Sunday too.  First, not the mornings.  But the mornings were taken as well. We complained, but Caesar got what he wanted.  If the stress of a 7 day week got to us, not his problem.  If that time for God was reallocated and our relationship with God was limited to an hour at best, not his problem.  If time with our families was limited to car time, again, not his problem.  God's creation, Caesar put his heel to God's nose and we suffer for it.

The Real Challenge

The real challenge with humanity is not rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar, but it has always been rendering unto God what is God's.

Why?

This is my theory:  Caesar takes from you and gives you some of it back in the form of goods and services.  He determines what an hour of your life is worth.  The state takes and redistributes as it sees fit.

God, however, gives freely from Himself.  He ask for a little of it in return.  He doesn't have a IRS to come and seize it.  Because God gives in love, He expects us to give in love as well.  Caesar is motivated by what he can be given, God is motivated by what He can give.  This makes it easier to take God for granted, to ignore God, and to take what is His and give it to Caesar.

Caesar needs to be told no.  For his good and ours...he needs to be told no.

Why?

Because all things of Caesar pass away.  Every government, country, economic enterprise, every form of entertainment and sport will in its turn pass into the dustbin of history.  All we give to Caesar turns to ash...every single molecule.  The Caesar, especially the Frankencaesars, are not gods; they are not eternal.   What we invest, sometimes as a right necessity, will one day be no more.  When we take from God what is His, we lose our investment and what goes with it.

We must render unto God what is His because it is to our benefit as well.  rendering unto God what is His gives us the ability to know Him more.  That relationship strengthens all others.  In giving to Him what is His, He in return gives us far greater.  He doesn't make us dine on ashes, but promises eternal life for those who will love as He does.  To give Him thanksgiving is to our vested interest. The portion we give to Him is returned many times over.

Be aware though, that we cannot take what is His and either hoard it to ourselves or give it to a Caesar and still expect to reap the benefits of  what we render to Him.  God isn't a dupe.  God gets the final word.  All Caesars great and small will stand before Him.  They will be judged.  their kingdoms, great and small will disappear into nothingness and rot.

A Necessary Pushback

We need to push back on what we give to Caesar, especially if to give to him required our taking from God what is His and our taking from our family what is theirs.  We should not need laws to tell us to give holy the Sabbath.  We should know better and act accordingly. We should be pushing back at what demands our time on the day of the Lord that is not worship of God nor the rest that He commanded us to do.

If I am shorting God on my tithe because that money is going elsewhere , but I still want God to bless me, we set ourselves up.  Those resources were to go to worship, religious formation, and to the poor.  When my time to care for a love one is supplanted by Caesar's demands, we have to push back.  We do this because it is in our own best interest to do so.

The Caesars in life are not always bad things.  Kept in their proper priority, they can do wonderful and helpful things.  The frankencaesars, though, must die.

We human beings are not made to be perpetually drained like livestock, but were made to be loved.  So what will it be?  Do we ally ourselves with God who first sees us as someone to love or do we ally ourselves with a Caesar who sees us as something to take from?  The choice is ours.  I will render what is needed in the form of taxes, votes, and looking to the common good.  But Caesar does not get what is God's.  That includes the Caesar I see looking back at me in the mirror every morning.   

 

Raising Leaders for Our Church: Moving Beyond Excuses

There are several things I have a deep passion for doing.  Outside of hiking, all of the rest are related to my life as a priest.  I am sure you all have caught on that I have a passion for evangelization, education, preaching, the formation of our youth, and sacraments.  Over the years, these passions have grown.  I do not see them subsiding any time soon.  In fact, I see them growing.

               There is one passion that I also spend a great deal of time on: the finding, encouraging, and nurturing of priestly vocations.  This is not to the detriment of marriage and religious life (also considered to be vocations by the Church), but is a response to a dire need that continues to grow and become more acute.  The bottom line is that we do not have the number of priests we need to serve the people we must serve.  

Better to Light a Candle than to Curse the Darkness

               There is a need, by many, to find blame.  I am not sure how effective this is.  Heaven knows I have engaged in plenty of it myself.  Some blame the culture while others blame who the Church will and will not ordain.  Some blame the scandals of recent years while others blame the changes of Vatican II or its implementation.  Some blame smaller families with which to draw from while others blame the waning importance of faith at all in our youth.  All might have merit to some extent, but I am not sure how this helps.  Blaming the fall of something on someone hardly fixes the problem.

               Identifying a problem and its causes can only go so far.  We can curse the darkness all we want.  It does not bring light.   It does not solve the problem.  It is a waste of time if left to itself. 

               I am all about fixing the problem.

               How is that done?

What do We Need?

               First, let’s identify what is actually needed.  What is the role of a priest?  If we get a handle on that, perhaps we can identify what to do.

               A Catholic priest, at least as envisioned by the Church, is one who selflessly serves in imitation of Christ is a very specific way.  His life is totally dedicated to the service of the People of God by bringing God in concrete form to them through the Sacraments and his ability to rightly shepherd.  He is to be a leader.  The nature of his calling necessitates a man who will be bold, strong, forthright, and courageous.  He possesses the same marks that make for a good husband and dad.  Like a good husband, he is totally faithful to his spouse.  A priest’s spouse is the Church.  He watches over her, protects, provides, and places himself between whatever would seek to harm his spouse and his spouse.  Like a good dad, he is meticulous about the formation of his children; he watches over them, provides the best he can, and shows his children how much he loves his wife.    That a young man would feel a draw to marriage and family life is not a sign that he is not called to priesthood, in fact, if he had no draw to this ,  that should be of some concern!

               One of the reasons the Church mandates her clergy be celibate is so that each priest may model that marital relationship Christ has with His Church.  His selflessness is to be a model of the selflessness of Jesus Christ.  Married men exhibit that same nobility in how they are faithful and selfless within the context of their relationship with their wife; priests are to show that on a bigger scale.  This isn’t to say it cannot be done by married men, for there are a few married Roman Catholic priests and the Eastern Rites have some married clergy, though bishops must be celibate in those rites.  However, the Roman Church asks for her clergy to show an absolute devotion to the Church and to treat those whom he serves as his family.  This is not some hallmark cliché, but a deep reality so very needed. Just like children need to see their dad love their mom with a selfless love, so parishioners need to see a pastor who loves the Church with that same selfless love.

Lighting Candles

 

               Over the years, I have tried to come up with ways to address this.  Part of this has been how I try to be a pastor.  Part of it is found in the development of leaders.  I spend time in the school, especially with the upper grades to encourage leadership potential.  It is not that I think every one of them is called to priesthood or religious life (most are called to marriage), but to build that necessary foundation needed to execute any vocation in a Godly way.  I founded Camp Maccabee as a way of encouraging the life of selfless leadership and virtue to strengthen the foundation for future husbands, dads, and priests. I encourage our students to service.  The key to strong and courageous leaders will be found in a willingness to be selfless when it comes to God and others and to be obedient to the will of God.

               We need to do this.  Time has run out for us to kick this can any further down the road.  For example, my diocese of Jefferson City has some very hard choices to make in the coming months because we are in trouble when it comes to the number of priests.  Keeping the current trajectory, we will lose 1/3 of the active priests in this diocese (already insufficient to the task) due to aging and retirement.  We currently have 8 seminarians spread throughout 8 years of seminary. As seminary is not preordination to the priesthood (50% of seminarians do not get ordained), we would need a pool of 35 to 40 seminarians each year over the next 8 years just to keep the inadequate status quo.   If we were to keep that level, it would take well over a decade to get ahead. 

               What will we need?  I can tell you this isn’t a matter of getting warm bodies in the seminary.  There is a specific type we are looking for.  We need young men who will aspire to the heroic.  We need strong and courageous young men who will be heroic in their will to serve God’s people.  We aren’t looking for social misfits and young men that can’t get a date.  Because the necessities of the priesthood are what they are, we need young men who will selflessly engage, who can effectively relate the truth  of the Gospel in its fullness, and who are willing to have the constitution of a soldier in their willingness to forego luxury in this lifetime for the sake of the Kingdom of God!  If I were a bishop, these would be the young men I would want. 

Making Candles to be Lit

               I believe that leaders are not born.  I believe they are made.  I believe that any person can be molded to find their strengths, can be taught to rise above their limitations and weaknesses, and can be given the tools necessary to be successful in whatever vocation God calls them.  I recognize that most of these young men and women are called to live this life boldly and selflessly as married people.  This is not a lesser vocation by any means.  However, some these young men are called to priesthood.  Our not supporting this has had and will continue to have dire consequences for many parishes.

               If we want these leaders, we must invest ourselves in it.  Do our parishes and their families invest?  On the parishes' part, they must develop their education and formation to promote the kind of leaders that are needed.  Too often, we  rely on the trite and the fun to draw our youth in but leave them hanging with little substance.  We focus too much on the emotional many times.  Leaders are not created by being perpetually entertained!  We can't come across as lightweights.

              Why?

              Because their coaches do not if they want successful teams.  Their bosses don't if they want successful businesses.  Their teachers don't if they want successful students.  If we are going to convince parents that investing their children's time with us is worthwhile, we have to be solid and produce results!  

             Parents, by the same token, you must demand what is solid, lead what is solid, invest in what is solid, and model for your kids the kind of selfless service that is needed.  You are responsible before God for what you taught just as I am.  You are responsible before God whether your child found His will or was dissuaded from it.  Having the leaders we need, lay and cleric, are as much in your best interest as they are mine.

No More Merely Cursing the darkness

               Laying blame for how we got here serves no useful purpose.  It only serves to wash our hands of responsibility.  Complaining about where we are also serves no useful purpose.  Complaining only serves to keep us in a woeful status quo.  Waiting for pristine conditions to come about before we act also serves no useful purpose; no institution has ever been reformed or improved from the outside.  Waiting for pristine conditions is little more than excusing ourselves from the hard and necessary work at hand.  What is needed is none of these things, but a willingness to change the trajectory by changing our actions to be in focus with the plan of Christ and His Church. 

               The time for excuses is long past.  the time for forthright action and brave selflessness is at hand!

  

Okay, That's Just Messed Up! Men, Women, Sex, and Image

The news had been riddled with a lot of messed up things.  A Hollywood movie mogul has been discovered to have the morals of a tapeworm and had a, shall we say, highly questionable view towards women.  I mean, it isn't like we couldn't have picked that up from his body of work.  Off with his head! Not long before that, society acknowledged the death of man who made pornography mainstream.  Lauded by many as a trailblazer and genius, he did little more than turn women into something for pimply faced boys and sad men to ogle over as pieces of meat. Interesting, no?  Not that men are exempt from such ogling themselves anymore.  Sadly, even now, there are groups who don't want age limits placed on who we may ogle and objectify.

Be Fruitful and multipl...on second thought!

There is an underlying philosophy here.  The philosophy is that you are an animal.  Worse yet, you are an animal whose herd needs to be culled.  I am guessing if you want to cull a herd and start picking off members, then you must create confusion and panic.  I have seen enough nature shows to know that when a predator attacks, they stealthily get into position, identify the weaklings, and pounce, causing panic and confusion lest the herd unite and attack the predator.  If anything identifies this culture now, it is the message of confusion and panic that comes out in our society and its media. 

Pick up a women's magazine sometime.  Interspersed in the pages, are multiple ads featuring women who look like size 0 heroine addicts wearing strategically placed dental floss and handkerchiefs and articles telling you to empower yourself and accept yourself as you are...unless, of course, you aren't a size 0 waif.  Motherhood and marriage are seen as a detriments to a lifestyle dominated by consequence free sex,  money grubbing, power grabbing, and hedonism that would make a Bacchanalian feast look tame.  We will give you bucket-loads of contraceptions, tell you how empowering they are (even if they do long term damage), and teach you to use sex as a way of manipulation to get what you want. If you do happen to get 'in the family way', we have a nice trauma inducing  event we will euphemistically call 'choice' and let you continue on as we cull the herd of people like you.  We must cull that herd, after all.

Guys, pick up a men's magazine or sports magazine.  It's really not that different.   You better have that ripped physique.  You, too, better claw for all the money, pleasure, and power you can get.  But, there is that whole culling the herd bit.  Hence, we will get a supertanker boat load of porn, get you addicted as young as humanly possible, make it as easy to get as possible, and tell you that relationships are a drag...a crimp on your playboy lifestyle.  Invest yourself in the porn...porn doesn't say no. However, if one must have physical contact and mingling with your own gender doesn't do it for you, we will also give you bucket-loads of contraceptions  and have you turn the lady in your life to a means of self-satisfaction (call it love if you must) and press you to push 'choice' as a way of getting rid of any mistakes. If either of you end up with a disease that maims or kills you, well we got to keep culling that herd!

Truth be Damned!

If that doesn't create enough pandemonium, we will simply blur the truth.  We will tell you on the one hand that homosexuality is a matter of being born that way as we tell you it is a legitimate lifestyle choice.  All the sex, none of the danger of pregnancy.   We will go one step further and tell you that even though sexual orientation is a matter of being born that way, your gender is not.  Heck no, that's fluid.  Genetics be damned. Feelings, however irrational they might be, are wonderful ways to confuse the herd.  Want to surgically alter  yourself, heck we'll press for John Q Public to pay for it.  Change, change back, change again. It is that natural next step in the blurring of anything that makes genders specific.  Good luck reproducing in that atmosphere, huh?

After all the confusion and double messaging is done, then those who disagree must be isolated and destroyed.  Nothing annoys the predator like the members of the herd that fight back and alert the herd they are under attack.  The predators will find a wall of -isms to hide behind.  They will hurl labels like well thrown javelins at those who alert the herd.  All the better if the herd will see those alerting them as the enemy.  It is easier to get picked off once the protectors are done away with.

Feel regret yet about this?  Don't worry.  We got you covered.   Don't worry about that stuffy good and bad thing.  Don't worry about life after this.  But, if you must, then ...golly...ummm...yeah...everyone goes to heaven!! That's it.  No consequences.  Just consider it artificial contraception for the soul....all of the fun with none of the consequences.  Slather a good layer of universalism on top of the feces laden sandwich and call it Beef Wellington!  All the better if clerics will imbibe in this filth and encourage others to do the same.  All the better if the wolf can wear shepherd's clothing!

The Invisible Predator in Plain Sight

Who is at the center of all this pandemonium?  An enemy more and more people don't even believe is there.  In a recent study done of Catholics, 84% do not believe in the devil as a person.  I would suppose that a major victory for the Universalist! The herd is thoroughly confused and ripe for destruction.  The devil is our adversary.  His fear and rebellion know no boundaries.  Like any motivated by fear, rational thought is thrown away and replaced by the tyranny of emotions.  He hates us because he hates God.  His hate is complete.  He prowls like a predator, looking for who to pick off next.  The  herd must be in disarray.  He can't cull off what isn't panicked or weak.

He has a problem, though.  The shepherd.  He will isolate us from the shepherd if he can. He will tell us the shepherd is the real enemy. That nasty shepherd won't let you roam free and unprotected.  He doesn't trust you after all.  If you are to be truly free, you must break away from the shepherd.  Why do you suppose the purveyors of smut and porn have such an antipathy towards the teachings of Jesus Christ?  That He came means that God loves us so much.  I can't reduce you to a piece of flesh while a God is willing to die for love of you!

The devil has managed to convince us he doesn't exist.  He can't.  Universalism doesn't work with a devil.  A devil means there just might be consequences.  If there is a devil and consequences, then maybe there is a right and wrong way to look at ourselves and our dignity.   If there is a dignity to the human person, then culling the herd is not a good thing.  You might not...gasp...be just an animal.  If you are not just another animal, I cannot do to you what I want.

Truth is...

Truth is, a part of us knows this.  Why are we reviled by a movie mogul who gropes and sexually assaults?  We know, on some level, it's wrong.  It's wrong not just because he groped a movie star, it is an assault to the dignity of any person. We can relate to that. Now, take it one step further.  Why is bad to grope with our hands but not our eyes?  Does not groping with our eyes also assault the basic human dignity of the person?  Whether it is in the form of porn or the numerous skimpy costumes women are encouraged to wear for Halloween, when we reduce a person to a piece of flesh and call it 'empowerment' all we do is cheapen what should be truly treasured.

The Catholic Church officially teaches that each human person has a dignity that must be respected and protected.  This is why when a cleric in particular, reduces a member of his flock to prey, it gives great scandal.  It should.  Covering up the behavior should as well!   That said, it is not okay for anyone to prey on others in any circumstance. Whether that predatory action comes in the act of groping as did the mogul, or the act of porn as the magazine publisher...either teaches us that preying on the herd is fine and that the herd must be culled.

Christ came because we are worthy of love.  We are worthy of dignity.  He came because there are consequences for actions.  The teachings on human sexuality within Catholicism don't come from some puritanical 'flesh is bad' place.  They come from a place where we understand that sexuality, like any other component of the human person, made in the image and likeness of God, is due respect and dignity.  How we treat each other matters.How we protect our fellow members of the herd matters.


   

      

Homily for 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time: A Vintage Worthy of our Calling

As a child, I was taught the importance of the words 'please' and 'thank you.'  Both were to be used liberally.  It more than just a matter of good manners.  It was to help me understand that what was given to me was out of the hard work and love of others.  No matter how little the gift, a thank you was to be forthcoming.   It was an understanding that it was not by my hand that I had the roof over my head, the clothes on my back, the food in front of me, and the comforts provided.  It was not me who paid the rent, utilities, groceries, and various things that were just a part of day to day life.  This thankfulness would hopefully provoke me to take care of these gifts.

That's important.  A thankful heart fends off much sin.  If we do not cultivate thanksgiving, then something else will take its place.  The sins of envy, jealousy, greed, and gluttony will try and fill that hole where thanksgiving should be.  We see this in the readings today.

In the first reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, God warns the people of Judah and Jerusalem that they are on the wrong path.  He reminds them that all that they are is a direct gift from Himself.  It was He who set them free from slavery, He who led them into the land, and He who made them strong and wealthy.  But the thanksgiving due Him was being rerouted. The people of Judah would go to them Temple and make their prayers and sacrifices to God. Had they stopped there, all would have gone well.  However, they would go into the Valley of Hinnom and worship the idols in the temples built there; built as a result of seeing what the pagans were worshiping and wanting to be like them.  The thanksgiving due God was stolen to be deposited at the feet of pagan idols.  The trust the people of Judah were to show in God alone was rerouted to lifeless stone and metal.  The vineyard God has planted bore an evil fruit unworthy of the builder of that vineyard.  If idols were what they wanted, then idols would be what they have.  They would soon find out that these idols would not save them from the coming destruction at the hands of the Babylonians.

In the Gospel,  Jesus is speaking to those who have long ago put aside these pagan idols, but still found a way to deny God the thanksgiving due. This time, that honor was hoarded by those who led the people.  The parable of the Vineyard, we are told, is specifically aimed at the Chief Priests and Elders of the people.  We are told the religious authorities liked being honored and praised.  The vintage that properly belonged to God was being kept and misused.  As with the people to whom Isaiah is speaking, this sin will also merit the taking away of the kingdom; this time to be given to those who will produce the vintage at its proper time.  We are that people.

Christ bids we bear fruit for eternal life.  What is this fruit of vintage?  It starts with thanksgiving. What we do when we come here to Mass is a microcosm of what that the macrocosm is supposed to look like when we are not at Mass.  One of the words we use to name what we do here is Eucharist.  The word Eucharist comes from the Greek for thanksgiving.  We give thanks here so that we may live as thankful people out there.  You'll notice that musicians, cantors, lectors, and servers volunteer here to help with right worship.  That again is reflected by what we volunteer to do out of here.  We take up a collection as a gathering of the thanksgiving sacrifice. This to points to a life of selflessness to be lived outside of here.  All of this is answered by the grace of God in the worthy reception of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ made truly present in the Blessed Sacrament so that we might rise to the high standard of the Gospel.

It is important to ask ourselves what have we given thanks for today?  When we came into this church and knelt in preparation for Mass, for what did we give thanks to God?  If we are honest, there is much.  What you may ask?

It's like this:  one of the things that pushed me over the edge to follow God's will into the priesthood was an epiphany I had.  It was an understanding that I did not create myself.  I did not make my body.  I did not breath life into that body.  I might have nurtured that body, but it was given to me.  I did not place within myself my talents and abilities.  They also were there for me to develop.  All was given to me: I did not will to be born in this time, in this country, in this place, or to the family I was born into.  That all was given to me.  It was given out of the love that God and my parents had for me.  Understanding this and using wisely what has been given is an act of thanksgiving.  Using wisely what has been given, also known as stewardship,  is a needed part of our relationship with God.  Anything I do for God is a mere fraction of the what has been given to me.  Without that thankfulness, a dissatisfaction with those gifts and an annoying sense of entitlement grow and consume anything that brings true joy.

As with all things that God asks of us, thanksgiving is to our own good.  Furthermore, it is to the good of those around us.  Our thankfulness shows we have something unique and special that the world cannot give; something worth abandoning worldly allurements for something greater.

Thank you cannot be merely be confined to words alone.  Our life and actions must follow suit lest we fall into the traps that entrapped Judah and later, the chief priests and elders.  It's like this: say, as a teenager, when I had a bottomless pit for a stomach, that I thanked mom and dad for the food they had prepared and then gobbled it all for myself.   my thanks might well be suspect.  Part of thankfulness is mimicking the goodness shown us.   That goes back to the thanksgiving offering.  That offering, a small portion of the abundance of gifts God has given us, is used to ensure the mission of the parish and church and to help those in need.  Today is a perfect example:  the first collection goes to the ensuring the continuance of the mission of the church and the second collection will be given to those who suffered as a result of recent natural disasters.

The thanksgiving offering is your thank you to God.  This is why I do not look at, nor will I look at, giving records.  That is between you and God and the IRS if you claim it for taxes.  As I am not God, you are not answerable to me for what you give in thanksgiving; you are answerable to Him, as the readings remind us today.  My job is to give myself and to be a good steward of what is given, making sure it is given to ends for which it was given.  I stand responsible before God for that.  How well I can steer the activity and mission of the Church is enabled or constrained by what is given in thanksgiving.  However, thanksgiving is not limited to money.  It is the time and effort we give in executing the work of the parish and its ministries.  Sometimes that is a fundraiser, but more often than not it is a hands on help with ministry and education.  It is taking time for prayer every day.

By the same token, you have gotten an envelope from the diocese for the Catholic Stewardship Appeal.  The same applies to the diocese as applies to us.  What the diocese can or cannot do is enabled or constrained by what is or is not given.  If we believe that we can punish the diocese or parish by withholding funds, just remember, it is not a bishop of priest you end up hurting...but those who served by the diocese.

The upshot is this:  Our relationship with God and each other is built up by this vintage of thanksgiving.  We are stronger for it.  Let us use wisely what we are given, being good stewards.  This is especially true for those who present themselves this day for Communion.  Let us use this Body and Blood of Christ for the ends for which it is given: to make us stronger, better witnesses, and eternally grateful for God's goodness.  Let us reap an abundant harvest for the Lord; a harvest that draws otehrs to God.