Imagine you and a friend are at an art museum. You stop in front of a particularly beautiful painting of a sunset. But you don’t see just see sunset, you see the light of God illuminating His creation. This leads you to meditate upon the nature of the created world, our place in it, and God’s plan to save us from ourselves. So you are standing there letting this painting draw your heart and mind to reflect upon God and suddenly your friend nudges you and says, “that’s a nice frame, isn’t it?”
Saint Paul pretty much divides people into two camps, those who live in the flesh, and those who live in the spirit. Those who live in the flesh are people of the moment. They are of the world and can only see things in terms of what they can physically see, or touch, or feel. The transcendent is lost on them. They are people of the age. That’s what secularist means, “of the age.”
People of the spirit on the other hand see a bigger picture than the one framed by the secularists. The spiritists know that there is more to our existence than what is immediately in front of us. They know, we know, that there is a life after this one, and that what we do in this world will matter in the world to come, it will matter a lot.
I’ll give you another example. I have a cousin who is a few years older than I. When we were both children she applied to be a foreign exchange student. As part of the application process she had to take an exam on basic American History. After all if we are going to send students oversees to represent America we should make sure they understand the basics of our history. One of the questions was, “in one word, describe the cause of the Civil War.” Well my cousin had what we politely call a “brain-freeze” and couldn’t answer the question. When she told us about it later, after I thought about it for a moment, I said slavery, because that’s what I was taught in school. Now “slavery” was indeed the answer they were looking for but it was not the correct answer. The Civil War did not start over the issue of slavery. That came later. Slavery is the frame the secularists have put around the issue. The War Between the States was caused by a disagreement over state’s rights. Where does the authority of the individual state end, and the authority of the federal government begin? That is a very important question. It is a question so important that the answer affects how we are governed today. And we had to go to war with each other to sort it out.
This is what the secularists do, those who live in the flesh, or as Saint Paul also describes them, those who work in darkness, afraid of the light. They cannot or will not see the bigger picture. They prefer to focus on the frame. And if that isn’t pitiable enough, they insist that we focus on the frame as well, ignoring the real issues.
This has been going on for a long time. Almost six hundred years ago Saint Thomas More stood up to his king, Henry VIII. The popular notion is that the point of their contention, over which Saint Thomas lost his life, was divorce. Henry wanted a divorce, the Church would not dissolve a valid sacramental marriage, and so Henry, in a massive pout, broke with the Catholic Church and set up his own. But it wasn’t about divorce, that’s just the frame. Saint Thomas opposed Henry over the issue of the moral authority of the Church. Where does the authority of the state end and the transcendent authority of the Church begin?
What is the authority of the Church? As Catholics what do we believe about the teachings of the Church when it comes to faith and morals? It is one of our most basic tenets. God came to earth and assumed our human nature in order to teach us. He established His Church so that He could continue to teach us even though He no longer walked among us. When the Church speaks on matters of faith and morals it is not the bishops speaking to us, it is God speaking to us through His Church.
Saint Thomas More saw this was the real issue. He recognized this as the great battle of his age, just as Saint Thomas a Becket recognized it four hundred years before that, and lost his life defending the authority of God in His Church.
It is a battle that will always be with us. And today, in our age, and in our time, it has flared up again. This is not about politics. This is not about republicans vs. democrats or liberals vs. conservatives. The current debate in this country is not about birth control, women’s health, or the fictitious “war on women.” It is about the moral authority of the Church and the free expression of religion. It is about a right guaranteed to us by the founding documents of this country, which clearly state that congress shall pass no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
I have been challenged in the past over my assertion that the world hates us. I think it is very clear now that it does. The world, that is the people of the world, the secularists, hate us, not because of who we are but because of what we represent. We represent an authority greater than any secular power. Ultimately we do not answer to our governments, we answer to God. We are the servants of God. Jesus makes it very clear in the Gospel that His fate and the fate of His servants are intertwined. “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am there also will my servant be.” He speaks of dying, of losing one’s life, in order to bear much fruit. Sometimes losing one’s life means a physical loss of life such as our martyrs, Saint Thomas More and Saint Thomas a Becket. Sometimes losing one’s life means to turn away from the flesh and follow the Spirit. And when you do that, in a very real sense you then became dead to the secular world. And such devotion and courage and faith in a power that cannot be regulated, has been a threat to totalitarian regimes all the way back to the Roman Empire and the first days of the Church.
In our country, in our own time, the Church has been driven out of facilitating adoptions over the “frame” of fairness and tolerance. Has this resulted in more adoptions? No, fewer, because no one, not even the social services centered government, has stepped in to fill the void left by the Church.
Now, the Church is in danger of being driven from health care. Many people think this issue has been settled, but it has not. Current legislation still mandates that Catholic hospitals must provide free contraception to their employees if they serve even one patient who is not Catholic. Current legislation also mandates that every individual subsidize abortion services by paying a one-dollar surcharge included in their health coverage.
What will happen if the Catholic Church is driven from the health care business? In 2010 more than 600 Catholic facilities treated over 100 million patients, and much of that treatment was given at a financial loss to the institutions. If the Catholic Church in America is forced out of health care, who will step in to fill that gap?
In the movie “A Man for All Seasons,” a movie about Thomas More’s struggle with Henry VIII, Saint Thomas tries to show the real issue by posing the question “what if Parliament were to pass a law saying that God should not be God?” That is the point we are at today. Our own government is trying to tell us that our beliefs must give way to a secularist point of view. Some more quotes from the movie, “this is not reform, this war upon the Church.” And one more, “an attack upon the Church is an attack upon God, the devil’s work, done by the devil’s minister.”<
Do not let our enemies distract us from the real issue by framing the argument their way. It is time for us to decide who we are. Are we followers of Christ? Are we where He is? Are we truly Catholic, as we say we are? If so, then it is time for us to take a stand and defend His Church.
The Catholic author JRR Tolkien put it this way, “the board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last… The great battle of our time.”
Pax Vobiscum
5th Sunday of Lent
Lord, Hear Our Prayer