Catch-22 Is A Two-Edged Sword Series

Homily for Monday of 5th Week in Course

Mk 6:53-56

Some time ago the local newspaper ran a story about a Catholic layman who has a healing ministry. The word “miracle” is something like a fighting word in our age of skepticism. We have been trained in science class from our earliest years to doubt miracles. But there is something schizophrenic about this attitude. On the one hand, as good empiricists, we are told to make observations and test them by experiment. On the other hand, we are taught a set of scientific facts, hypotheses and laws that cannot be challenged without bringing the wrath of the scientific establishment down on our heads.

Joseph Heller wrote a book about a system that worked like that, and its title has wriggled itself into our English vocabulary, Catch-22. Here’s how it worked as the new millennium developed. Two-edged swords, remember, cut both ways.

Back in 2003, Marquette University professor Dan Maguire snuck in here to give a sparsely-attended speech at Temple Beth-El, in which he said that all major religions have supported a right to contraception and abortion. He was shilling for his new book on that topic. As promised, I was outside the hall by myself, holding a sign that read “Shame–no right to kill,” as two burly policemen stood by to make certain I didn’t make the attendees too uncomfortable. But, despite the feeble quality of Maguire’s documentation on the Catholic Church, and the unanimous testimony of 2000 years of dogmatic teaching, the reporter in attendance reported only his opinion, not the facts. So the culture won again, and Truth loses.

Of course, there were letters of protest, offers of the Truth, that will be buried in the Letters of the paper. But you can be sure of three things: first, the Catholic Church has always taught that interfering with or preventing human life is an unspeakable wrong. Second, that any culture that stands against life will eventually contracept and abort itself into oblivion. Japan was the first test case, and now China, with its one-child policy for decades, is closing all its abortion clinics and trying to make vasectomies illegal. Western Europe is close behind; America is going in the same direction. And, best of all, that when all of us are dead and forgotten, the Church will continue to speak the truth, in season and out. Many, many mainstream Protestants and even unbelievers of good will are discovering the truth, and realizing there is only one Truth.

King Solomon, considered in his day to be the wisest of men, completed his father’s vow to build a temple to the One True God. He and his successors had a kind of on-again, off-again relationship with the Lord, but a remnant of the people always kept faith, even through exile, so that Jesus, Son of God and son of David, could build a permanent temple to the true God, built not of stones but of human hearts and minds. There is an attraction here in the Church that continues to draw together those who know their lives have been empty, and long to be one with Ultimate Goodness, Beauty, Justice and Truth. We proclaim that His name is Jesus, the Christ.

That is the only reason America is going to survive–we are seeing more and more people reject the culture of hedonism and death, and adhere to the Gospel of Life.