Sunday Homily - October 4, 2009

I have been thinking a lot about marriage lately
There are a number of couples I am helping to prepare for marriage
I had a wedding yesterday here at Newman
60th Wedding anniversary with Kay and Ken (told them they had it harder than me)
Preparing for the Student Retreat that is coming up at the end of this month…

So when I saw the readings today demanded some discussion of the meaning of marriage and our religious understanding of human relationships, I was delighted. I have much to say on the subject. (Many of you know that I was married when I was younger and am divorces –this gives me a unique perspective from most priests and means that I might not know what I am talking about – I tried it and failed;)

In the last couple of years there has been a lot of discussion in the political and social sphere about marriage being under attack. There are those who are trying to pass legislation to leagalize marriage between people of the same sex, or to legalize polygamy. These are seen as serious attacks. I was asked a number of times during the last election cycle when I was going to preach about it..

Frankly, I find it hard to get excited about the question of whether or not the state is going to recognize or perform marriage between people of the same sex or polygamous marriages. Certainly we should encourage our lawmakers to pass laws that are consistent with natural law – but still I find it hard to get all up in arms within the Church about questions of state-recognized alternative marriages. The fact is the state has been performing marriages that the Church does not recognize as marriage for years. If the state passes laws allowing a man to marry a man, a woman to marry a woman, a man to marry more than one man, or a farmer to marry his goat – it’s not going to affect the Church’s teachings about marriage one bit. The church will never recognize such alternative marriages and they represent no real threat to Marriage as we understand it.

That’s not to say that I do not believe that Marriage is under attack. I just think the attack is not external – What the state does cannot affect what we believe or practice about marriage (that’s the glory of the separation of Church and State as we understand it in the US. The threat to marriage is an internal threat – One from within our own ranks.

The real threat to marriage is Catholics who reject the sexual morality teachings of the Church.
Parents who do not have the courage of their own convictions to counter the harmful messages their children encounter in the world or the force of their own convictions to raise sexually healthy children
The threat comes from religious teachers and leaders who are unwilling to call evil evil, to call evil actions sin.
The threat comes from young people who are given neither the equipment nor the road map to chart a course to chastity and purity.
The threat comes from 3 generations who have seen themselves as “sexually liberated” because they have thrown off the “tired old sexual ethics” of the past and become enlightened by the freedoms of the current age.

I am often amused by people who attempt to put me or one of our young people on the spot to defend our contentions that sex is holy, that sex is given by God for specific reasons, and that we are called to use our sexual faculties within a plan given to us by the God who created us. I have been told by young people who make it known to their friends that they are trying to live holy and pure lives are met with expressions of pity or “oh – too bad for you.”
As I said I find this amusing and there is an appropriate response to such lunacy – “Hey, Johnny-come-lately: I’ve got 4000 years of consistent Judeo-Christian teaching backing up my position – teaching that leads to union with God and real human happiness – what have you got – 40 years of the worst outside-marriage pregnancy rates in history, sky-rocketing infidelity and divorce rates, out-of-control pornography industry, wholesale objectification of women and abuse and trafficking of both women and children, unbelievable numbers of infections with virulent sexually-transmitted diseases. The burden of proof is on you, sucker! My system works and transcending history and culture – yours is a formula for human disaster.” This should be our response.


Today’s readings give us insight into that 4000 year old moral system – The Ancient Jewish and subsequently Christian understanding of sex and marriage is that they are rooted in creation itself. That God created us to be sexual beings. That sexuality is rooted in the reality that “it is not good for man to be alone…” That from our very origins God’s plan was that one man and one woman would leave the confines of their families of origin and find their way to each other in a life-long, exclusive, union blessed by God for the purpose of their mutual love and support and for the care and rearing of children in a loving environment – embraced for the whole of their maturing years by a loving mother and father.

Those Pharisees who came to ask Jesus about Divorce are like those clowns that ask us to defend the Christian understanding of sex and marriage. They aren’t interest in any serious exploration of real issues – they are interested in justifying themselves and their actions.

And Jesus calls them back to their origins – Yes, Moses made an accommodation for the hardness of your hearts - to our inability to live the holiness to which we are called – But, Jesus reminded them that God had something else in mind – he recalls Genesis – God created them male and female and willed that they would be joined together. He reminds them that marital sexuality is about oneness – becoming one flesh - and that the union between husband and wife is intended by God to be a permanent union for the lifetime of the couple. “What God has joined together…” Jesus reminds us that in the age that he has issued in – the last age – the age of God’s grace – God will assist us to go back to the beginning – to His plan formed in primeval man and woman before the advent of Sin.

From this combination of Ancient Hebrew Text and (Jesus’ commentary on the text) a number of very important Church teachings arise. It is important that we understand these things over and against the culture in which we live. As Christians we are called to stand as witnesses to the power of God’s grace in human life. Based on Jesus’ description of marriage, the Church teaches the permanence of marriage. Lawful marriage, freely entered into between a baptized man and a baptized woman is foreseen to be a sacramental lifelong exclusive commitment – and yet today the scandal of divorce, abandonment, adultery and infidelity is as present among Catholics as it is among the general population in Western, traditionally Christian countries. This used to not be true, but it is true today.

Based on these and many other texts, the Church teaches that our sexual faculties are intimately connected to marriage. Virginity and purity are of high value; and sex is ordered for the expression of love in the context of a lifelong, exclusive commitment. Sex is sacramental and blessed by God. (first command of God to His human creation: “be fruitful and multiply.”) Within marriage, sex is a legitimate good given for sake of the begetting and rearing of children in an atmosphere where they stand the best chance of happiness and success as they grow up in the world. At its core, sex is about self-giving and self-sacrifice. But it is quite clear in the today’s atmosphere that sex has primarily become about self-satisfaction, self-centeredness and not what I can give, but what I can take from others.

The problem with that is that the God who created humanity and sex created us as whole beings – body, sou,l and spirit - and made it so that what happens in our bodies has direct impact on our souls. The reality of the selfishness of sex as we see it portrayed and practiced in the world around us is that it is having a devastating affect on people’s souls. Here I am not talking about the catalogue of social ills I mentioned earlier, I am talking about real human happiness and the ability to flourish in the world. Consistently, young people that I know who understand the Church’s teachings and strive to adhere to them are happier and generally more successful in the pursuit of their life’s goals than those who have given into the lies that surround sex and marriage that are being perpetrated in the world today.

I have spent the last 25 years ministering to young people in the Church and those 25 years have been devastating in this sphere. Young people who are engaged in sexual relationships add a level of anxiety to their lives that robs them of the freedom and vision that is supposed to typify our young adult lives. Anxiety about contraception (did it work or didn’t it), about disease, and above all about infidelity. I am blown away by the number of young people I have in my office each month or each year devastated by the break-up of a relationship of just a few months. “He cheated on me, Father!” “ How can she do that, I have put so much into the relationship!” In every one of these cases, I can tell without asking - they started sleeping together soon after the relationship started and it has been the primary definer of their relationship throughout. These are not supposed to be the concerns of adolescent and young adult life. And both short term and long-term effects are devastating in the lives of young people.

And to my young friends, I want to repeat something I have said many times before – You, my young friends, have been sold a bill of goods.
You have been sold it by your parents’ generation
By those charged with your care and well-being
By educators, medical personnel, by officials of your government, sometimes by religious leaders, and by the media.

The lie goes something like this – “There’s nothing we can do about it, young people are going to have sex so lets make sure that they can be as safe as possible when they do…”

Let me translate that where for you – You, young people, are so feeble minded, so lacking in self-control, too weak, too stupid or too evil to do what is right. You must be protected from yourself – so lets make sure you have condoms available 24/7 (because condoms are the be all and end all of sexual safety). In the name of “women’s health” lets make sure that not even their parents can interfere with your access to “reproductive health” It is so laughable as to not even deserve mention in this sacred place – but it is so pervasive that I dare not leave it out.

Those who have sold you this bill of lies have neglected to tell you the effects of your behavior on your soul – on your relationships with each other, on your relationship with God.

They have neglected to tell you that YES, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR EACH OTHERS’ MORALITY and God has given you the equipment and the grace to build up each other and help each other grow in that grace. The message is “Be Careful” – when it should be “Be Holy!”

To parents in our community I would say –
Many of us have forgotten that God is going to hold us responsible for the lives of our children – important distinction – God will not hold us responsible for our children’s behavior (they are free), but he will hold us responsible if we neglect to teach our children the truth and if we are so wrapped up in our own guilt and failure in this milieu that we abdicate our teaching roles their public schools, their friends, and the media. This is deadly serious stuff – regardless of your children go to school- YOU KNOW THAT THE SCHOOL DOES NOT TEACH VALUES (if they are in public schools, it would be against the law for the school to teach them your values) and you have to decide now that you are at war for the souls of your children and must undo the damage done in their so-called sex-education programs. Schools teachers are not going to be held responsible by God for your children’s souls but I assure you that you are.

You parents need to – in no uncertain terms – teach your children what sin is. You need to teach your children that what happens with their bodies has an effect on their souls. You need to teach them and demonstrate for them that union with God is to be prized above all other considerations in this life. You need to be honest with them about the mistakes of your past and the devastating effects of those mistakes. You need to tell your kids what constitutes sexual sins – not a catalogue of prohibitions – but real guidelines for seeking their ultimate good. In the same way that you would teach your children that killing or stealing is wrong – that injuring another person is wrong – you must in no uncertain terms teach them there is an ordered use of their sexual faculties and that sex outside of marriage is outside that order, that using another person for my own pleasure is outside that order, that homosexual sex is outside that order, that masturbation and the use of pornography are outside that order. That these things are sinful and have effects on our souls.

You need to teach your sons the proper respect for women and your daughters proper respect men – you need to teach both proper respect for themselves. You need to teach your children modesty and make sure they practice it in their dress and behavior. You need to monitor their internet use, their movie and television watching, the games that they play and who they are spending time with. Yes this stuff is hard and incredibly time-consuming – but you are at war for their souls and God is going to hold you responsible.

You also need to teach them the value of forgiveness and mercy. That none of these sins are outside the pale of God’s ability and willingness to forgive. That “starting over” is of huge value in our faith system and that when we have fallen, we can get up; that when we have started down the wrong path, we can turn around. That forgiveness is there for the asking. Your children need to see that played out in your lives as you forgive them and forgive one another, as you ask them for their forgiveness. You need to encourage them to use the confessional, but the only way they will get that message from you is if they see that the confessional is of high value in your own life.

I want to read you a section of a Papal Encyclical called Humanae Vitae that was written in 1968:

“Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards… Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.”

This was written in 1968 and it was incredibly prescient – This is the world we live in today. The last 40 years have brought much destruction and confusion in this area.

Yes, marriage is being assailed in our society and as Catholics we must defend it. But all too often in recent years, our defenses have been turned toward the wrong enemy. The enemy is our own lack of belief – our abandoning 4000 years of consistent moral teaching that will lead to our flourishing and true happiness in favor of this moment’s pleasure. The enemy is our own selfishness and self-centeredness. The enemy is our 20th and 21st century unwillingness to be guided by any “institution” and my friends, the enemy is winning.

As always, when I preach, I know I am preaching first to myself. And I will also readily admit that this is not an area where I have it all together (it’s a struggle for everyone.) I hope it inspires discussion, further reading and action. As a parish we are especially committed to helping our young people chart these choppy waters. We will be addressing these issues in a systematic way on our student retreat that is coming up at the end of this month. We are doing so out of a real concern for the happiness and well-being of our students. It is not going to be a retreat about “sex” per se. The program is shaping up to be an examination of what it means to be authentically and fully human and how that calls us to live in with each other and in the world.

We are also happy to suggest resources and to spend time in discussion. Over the years, I have never wanted to make this the center-piece of my teaching or to blow it out of proportion with regards to all we need to teach in the Church, but this is deadly serious stuff and God is calling us in this age to be a city on a hill and light on a lampstand to give light in the darkness – to counter the message of the evil one that says “if it feels good nobody should tell you not to do it” and "any iteration of family is as good as any other…” This is contrary to the message of the Gospel and contrary to the God who created us as sexual beings and ordered the use of our sexual faculties. The Lord calls us to holiness and we are supposed to be trying to become saints. We are responsible to help each other along the way.