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| Dr. Alveda King, one my heroines, is the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. |
(audio clip from 8am Mass)
Racism& Abortion: On Protecting Human Dignity
Oct. 22, 2017, 8am & 5pm Masses
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
This month of October is both Respect Life Month and the month of the rosary. It is most fitting, then, to reflect on today’s Gospel about giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar & giving to God what belongs to God.
Caesar here represents the state or federal government or human laws. We give the State what is legitimately and justly owed to the State.
But more importantly, Jesus teaches us to give God what belongs to God. We must respect God and God’s laws over human beings and human laws. Unjust human laws need not be obeyed, and we are bound as Christians to disobey human laws whenever they contradict God’s laws. God laws protects the dignity of the human person.
The dignity of the human person means that each individual human being has a worth in and of themselves. Each of us is in the image and likeness of God. We are in God’s image and likeness because we have the ability, like God, to reason and choose.
In today’s First Reading, it is written in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, “I am the Lord, and there is no other. There is no god but me.” Here, we see the dominion and Lordship of God over all aspects of human life.
Two emotionally-charged, controversial issues needing the light of today’s Gospel today are racism and abortion. Human life and the dignity of the human person ultimately belong to God, not to Caesar or the State or to elected officials. The Second Vatican Council explicitly condemn three actions in Gaudium et Spes: (1) indiscriminate bombing esp. non-combatant civilians (which I’m not going to focus on today), (2) direct abortion, and (3) racism. I’m going to focus on two issues, abortion& racism, as they relate to Caesar and God.
Some brief points about direct abortion: I say this with as much love and gentleness that could be pastorally said from the ambo: Innocent human life should be protected absolutely from the moment of conception. (repeat) Whatever we do to the least of our brothers and sisters in the womb, we do to Jesus Himself.
Modern science (a type of Caesar) and the natural order would agree with God. With the invention of the microscope in the 19th Century, science shows that at the moment of conception, the new entity inside the womb possesses the same human genes as me and you outside the womb. I also say with as much love as possible that if have been involved with a direct abortion, let today’s Gospel be an invitation to come to conversion to giving God what belongs to God.
Respect for human dignity from womb to tomb also means respecting the dignity of the human person, regardless of their background. It means that each human person has worth and value in and of themselves, not because of what usefulness or utility or benefit they can give me, but each person is deserving of respect for who they are. And human dignity does not depend on what someone else can do for me. We are human beings, not human doings.
[It should be said that there is an important distinction here between human person and the human act. While we do not need to agree with a person’s actions or their choices, we must always respect the person. It’s not the other way around where we respect and honor the person’s evil acts but we hate the person—no! – rather we love the person but not an evil action of that person.]
At present in the United States, racism and race relations have much media attention. Perhaps to some degree, there may be some of us here have experienced racism. If so, let this be a moment to purify our hearts of any hatred and hurt we have experienced.
Race relations should be built on godly principles such as the moral principle of solidarity, instead of some trendy human standard for how cultures can work together. For us Christians, it is the Eucharist that is the ultimate source of our communion in the Church. In society, however, when God or moral principles are removed from the foundation, mere human ways of Caesar take over.
Solidarity, a principle in Catholic social doctrine, means a social friendship or a type of brotherhood or sisterhood, or unity with others different from me. In other words, even though I am not have experienced the hardships of someone else, I can somehow relate and remain united with that person.
For example, I may not be of someone’s race, or be a woman, etc., but I can find ways to remain in solidarity with those experiencing injustice. One dangerous way that Caesar tries to address race relations is through a philosophy called Marxism or through class warfare, a total contradiction to Christianity. One might even call this the errors of Russia, the area from where this came. Whereas Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky use class warfare – pitting groups against each other (b v. w, woman v. man, poor v. rich, labor v. capital, etc.) – for social progress, Catholic social doctrine on the other hand speaks of solidarity, forgiveness, mutual cooperation, protecting the innocent, and human dignity. Human law can go so far. It is hearts that need conversion.
In my own life, I have been tempted many times since college to fall into the trap of Marxism to solve social ills. If it wasn’t for St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Paul the Great’s solidarity which addressed social problems without violent bloodshed (Poland’s Solidarity & the Philippines EDSA where the power of the rosary protected these countries), and Catholic social teaching on such as solidarity, I would have been a Marxist and even left the Church trying to solve the world’s problems as a Marxist. Poland in 1989 and the Philippines in 1986 here are models of nonviolent change for a violence-saturated United States. [If time permits, tell story of Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila about reports of beautiful Woman stopping soldiers from firing into crowd: “Do not fire! I am the Queen of this land.”] I would have given Caesar that which belongs only to God: respect of human life and dignity.
But we as followers of Jesus believe in the power of the human spirit to rise above the divisions of society where strangers help each other, to heal acts of racism that we see on TV or experiencing in our lives, and to promote racial harmony and cultural interdependence. (Note: right to self-defense? and principle of non-violence?) We can take what is good, true and beautiful from each culture, and reject what is bad and evil. These are some ways to respond to these evils. The enemy of souls wants us divided.
For us, at least the hurt need not be in our hearts, and we need not return evil for evil, but rather return goodness for the evils of racism. Caesar does not command our hearts, and our hearts to not belong to Caesar. Our hearts belong to God!
So let us purify our hearts of hatred and woundedness. Let us rather build a civilization of love, not a culture of death and violence, that respects the dignity of the human person and human life from womb to tomb! As we sang in the Responsorial Psalm, let us not give Caesar glory and honor, but let us “Give the Lord glory and honor.” Let us not give evil actions glory and honor, but let us give the Lord of the human person glory and honor.
Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Give to God what belongs to God.
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