Yesterday, I sat through the second-worst homily* I have ever heard. Father James Martin, Jesuit idiot extraordinaire, encapsulates it here.
Gospel: Jesus tells a woman that he refuses to heal her daughter. She challenges; he listens. If Jesus can listen and learn, so can you.
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) February 13, 2014
The Gospel reading is Matthew 15:21-28. A Canaanite woman asks Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus tells her He is only sent to help the Jews. She keeps at it until He relents and heals her, saying, "Woman, you have great faith. Let your desire be granted."
Our deacon, we'll call him Deacon Smith, turned it into a speech about systemic racism. He said Jesus was a product of His time and place and had the racism natural to Jews of his era.
Well. There's a lot to unpack, isn't there? Let's just leave it with one observation.
If we had a time machine, Deacon Smith could have gone back and met Jesus the day before he met the Canaanite chick. He could have explained to Jesus why racism was bad. When Jesus finally understood, he would have said, "Why, thank you, Deacon Smith! I didn't know that. I will change my ways to be less sinful now that you have explained the finer points of racial morality to the Lord God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth and Author of All Morality Ever Everywhere."
No, that's not ridiculous. Not at all.
Bad things happen to your brain when you dive into Nazi Race Theory.
* - The worst sermon I've ever heard was another one where a deacon wanted to preach on social justice. In that case, he took the Parable of the Talents and twisted its meaning around a full 180 degrees so he could give Obama's You Didn't Build That speech. I listened to that one with my jaw on the floor, thinking, "I cannot believe I'm hearing this right now."
The worst I sat through was a Black bishop who pulled rank and invited himself to say Mass one Saturday night and proceeded to tell us what a miserable bunch of white-privileged racists we were. By the time he finished, half the congregation had left, including all the Black members (of which there are many, including a few mixed-race couples). The pastor received so many complaints that he apologized the following week and said he had called the Archdiocese to let them know that bishop was persona non grata...
ReplyDelete"now that you have explained the finer points of racial morality to the Lord God Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth and Author of All Morality Ever Everywhere."
ReplyDeleteAnd I think you have just hit an important point: I am pretty sure that a lot of priests do not actually believe that Jesus is in fact those things. If they did believe it, they wouldn't give homilies like that.
While I never had a priest admit it in so many words, I think that a lot of them (particularly the ones who have been priests for quite a while)[1] do not in fact believe that Jesus was divine, and may not even believe in God. About the best I can say for a lot of them, is that they have decided that religion is a "useful lie" that they tell to keep their parishioners from giving in to existential despair.
[1] It would not surprise me at all if the bishops try to weed out older priests that they suspect have gone deistic, agnostic or atheist, and send them to rural communities to get them out of sight. Which might be why I met so many of them when I was an altar boy in the 70s.
*facepalm*
ReplyDeleteWow. The only two really bad ones that come to mind are the Sunday before Christmas, where the priest handed the homily over to his dad to do a fund raiser for the illegal alien parishes, and the usual "miracle of the fishes and loaves was that sharing is caring" thing.
That...really takes the cake.
**********
Tim-
rural/small parishes are still the place for Trouble, although by the 80s and 90s it was either obnoxious, dying or new. We got one *really* great Irish priest because he was, ah, in the mode of Saint Catherine scolding the pope.
Why on earth they feel the need to place the guys who are dying in parishes where you are running at full sprint just to make it to all the masses, I can't figure out.
The one my aunt's parish got stuck with is from Nigeria, and is not adapting to the American culture much. He's still scandalized that when the parish "shops" at the business of members, it is charged.
ReplyDeleteSee, if you own a business, you're supposed to both donate more on Sunday, AND provide all the services for free....
In a very Irish parish... oh gads, no.
Wow, Tim. I thought I had a cynical streak. You got me beat on this one. I can't recall meeting a priest who I thought was just going through the motions like that.
ReplyDeleteI know both of these deacons very well. They're family friends. These horrific homilies are the result of their infatuation with their politics. They've confused their political leanings with morality. One thought we needed a lecture on greed and pride and the other thought we were part of the systemic racism system. They both believe deeply, they just didn't think through their homilies very well.
When my son was in 8th grade, his team was in a basketball tournament outside of the cities at a Catholic school, and we stayed overnight in a hotel.
ReplyDeleteSaturday was awful. The AD of the school was one of the refs, when the home team was playing. The calls were horrible. One of our players was given a warning to keep his mouth shut. So he took a deep breath and turn to go back to play. HE WAS TOSSED IMMEDIATELY.
It didn't get better, and we were really mad. The team went to Mass at the church. The homily spoke of forgiveness. I felt great, I released all my anger, the team felt loose. We had turned a corner.
That didn't even last 4 minutes into the game. They doubled down on bad calls. My son fouled out when he was ga
Urging the star of the home team. The star missed his shot, and there was at least a foot gap between he and the star. The whistle blue after the ball didn't go in.
That only stretched the surface of what they pulled that weekend.
Things were similar in traveling baseball out there. But that wasn't church.
A little off topic, but it was a good homily. I remember the good ones not the bad ones I guess.
Pathetic. I've got a pretty bad desire to win in me when I coach, but I'd never have been OK with a ref bending the game.
ReplyDeleteNah, if we lost, we'd have just slashed your tires.
;-)
Like I said, I just scratched the surface.
ReplyDeleteIt was the last time our school went to that tournement. We'd been going for years (10+ maybe). In fact, the year before, we recruited another team to come to it, so there would be a full bracket.