Fundamental Things
The Catholic Church does not change the Truth handed down from the apostles. Yet things in the Church do change.
As we see even in the New Testament, the practices of the Church do change. In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter announces that it will no longer be required for people to become Jews before then can become Christians. This establishes not only the authority of the Catholic Church to change things, but it also establishes the Catholic Church as an independent Church, not a sect of any other religion.
Its independent authority frees the Church to elucidate it’s teachings and to adapt them to the challenges the Church is facing at any particular time, while retaining its divine authority. Jesus established a Church which would bring God’s Truth and Love to all people at all times.
Yet even trough centuries of change, there are fundamental things that always apply to the Church, and therefore we can figure out how they apply to us.
Deacon Michael was a history major. His home was filled with many history books. This is one of the sermons where his love of history shows in his analysis.
IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:
The Feast of St. Augustine
You know I was mentioning earlier, there are second rate minds in the Church. I'm one of them. I've tried to understand this stuff. I don't understand it. It is just so far beyond my comprehension. I read people who are great minds, and they write about it and I just kinda go, "Whoa!" It just passed me by.
But, a current that is in St. Augustine, a current that is in many of the doctors of the Church, when you look at them, it is basically simple. You can come back and look at the fundamental parts of the Church, the teachings of the Church. You look at the Catechism: you can see what the position of the Church is. And you see Jesus talking about, "You have one master; you have one rabbi": you have reliance on God.
And then in the first reading we see that St. John is talking about his theme: love. And it is from the perspective of these very fundamental things. And they pick these things deliberately for the teachings of St. Augustine. "Lord, teach me your statutes." What are the statutes of the Lord teaching us? Love God and love neighbor. What are the ramifications, from a theological perspective, of these statutes?
The first one: we don't have a teacher, we have Jesus, He taught us. What did He teach us? Love God and love neighbor. Don't be your [own] master. You are not the master. You are the servant.
So what you do, is when you look at the teachings of the Church, which St. Augustine did, is you look a the very fundamental things: Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior, wholly human and wholly divine and died on the cross for us. Love God; love neighbor. And what flows from these things, even to second rate minds [like mine], is the Truth. And you have a tendency, humans have a tendency, to want to make it something more. To change the focus from God to man. This is where we had St. Pius X a while ago in his Decree on Modernism. The problems that he faced. All of these arise from the problem that we see of focusing on man as opposed to focusing on God.
So you look at it from a very fundamental aspect of how do we approach the world? One of the examples that St. Augustine gives, and it is still something that is used, is the concept of just war. War by itself, in itself, in a vacuum, is morally repugnant. It is premised on [the fact that] people are going to go out and kill other people. Therefore it's wrong. Unless there is, by reason of the two great commandments of loving God and loving neighbor, a reason that justifies going out and deliberately killing people. One of which is: we have an existence here, and we are being threatened. Our children are being threatened. Our families are being threatened. We're protecting each other. It is a matter of self-protection.
Then, you go beyond that particular one it becomes more difficult. You analyze, from the perspective of love, what is justified war. Where is there a justification for going out and deliberately killing people?
Similarly, we have had it recently on the death penalty…John Paul II was very strong on this position; Francis has been unequivocal: society has a right to protect itself against certain people. Certain people by their conduct do certain things that are horrible. By their choice of free will given to them by God, they do something terrible. Not by nature of what they are, because that is the "us" and "them" where you end up creating a situation where you justify doing [bad] things, but the person does something terrible and society has the right to protect itself and the members of society from that person. Throw him in jail. That is one of the fundamental concepts of throwing people in jail. You correct them. You punish them. But you protect society against them. The death penalty is the ultimate one. And it really come down to: under what circumstances do you have the right to kill someone? In what circumstances does the society have the right to kill somebody? Well, if you do the analysis similar to St. Augustine, premised on love of God and love of neighbor, obviously the most ultimate thing that you can do to somebody is kill them. So you have to have very strong justifications for being able to do it. If those justifications cease to exist the practice should cease to exist.
And that is a very simplistic way, but I keep on telling myself, and I have said it to you many times, that ultimately any time we are in a situation where we don't know what to do, from a perspective of a moral issue, the ultimate analysis is love.
If someone is doing something wrong, is it through love that we yell, "You are a horrible person! You are just absolutely horrible" and we yell at them and "We are not going to do anything with you and we are just going to kick you out,"? Or is it from the perspective of love to look at what that person is doing and look at the probable or at the actual consequences of what his actions are doing and what is the effect it is going to be on him, those around him and society itself, and to take the actions to bring that person, through love, back to Christ. To Christ, the missionary.
What is it then we are called to do? That is what we are looked to do. I use this example constantly, it's from the perspective of children. The hardest thing in the world is to have children grow up. But we look and we know from the consequences of doing wrong, conduct has a consequence. We can say we really love Robert, therefore I can't condemn what Robert does because if I do, one, he won't like me any more, and two, it's mean! But if I also see that the conduct of Robert is such that [in] five years, ten years, today, his conduct is damaging upon him and others around him, from the perspective of love of him alone, to protect him from the consequences of his acts, and to protect others from the consequences of his acts, does not love require us to do certain things?
And this is the kind of analysis that the Church does. This the kind of analysis that St. Augustine presented to the Church and it is the kind of, really in a really very basic level, it is a very simplistic analysis. But it is going back to the core teachings of Christ, of loving God and loving neighbor and examining in our lives, what does that mean? What love means and what are we called to do? And this precisely is what the Catholic Church calls us to do through the example of St. Augustine. When we are looking to try to figure [something] out, ask for his intercession. He's been there. He's done that. He's thought about it. He can guide us. Go to the Blessed Mother, she can do the same thing. So always keep in mind the fundamental things, this wonderful core of the Catholic Church.
It can get extremely complicated. Sit down and read Thomas Aquinas or some of the things that Pope Benedict has written, Ratzinger has written, and try to understand them on the first reading. But ultimately it comes down to the very simple things of loving God and loving neighbor.
August 28, 2018 2