21st Sunday in ordinary time, August 22, 2010
Fr. Anthony Brankin
Gospel: Luke 13:22-30 Enter through the narrow door.
MP3 Audio 13 min.
Summary: One thousand years ago a belief called Albigensianism taught that there was a god of good and a god of evil. Followers of this heresy believed that anything that was made of matter was evil and only the spiritual was good. They believed in ritual suicide and condemned marriage as a sin. It took a military crusade to put it down. Today we have the same beliefs, although without the rituals. People do not get married, but when they have children there is no father, and thus we have young violent males who murder others.
We must recapture the beliefs and morals of our grandparents, that of a commitment to love, marriage, and families. One idea is to have chaperones on dates. Overall, we must 1) believe in marriage, 2) end contraception in marriage, and 3) raise our children carefully.
This homily is brought to you by the Georgetown Visitation Sisters, in Washington, D.C. Saint Francis de Sales’ “little virtues” of gentleness, kindness, humility, and cheerful optimism shape monastic life for these sisters.
Full homily text: They say that history is prologue. I guess this means that everything that happened in the past, sets the stage for the present. It sure seems that way.
I was thinking of this because this past week we celebrated the feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux who—almost a thousand years ago—fought tooth and nail with Saints like Dominic to stop the spread of an incredibly evil cult that was growing like a moral cancer in the very heart of France—a cult whose beliefs and attitudes we are still fighting today. Now this cult or religion—which today we call “Albigensianism” against which Bernard fought—taught that there were two gods—the god of good who created all the spiritual things in the universe, and the god of evil who created everything that was matter. For these people anything that was physical or material—anything you could touch, feel or hear—anything made of matter—including human bodies and human life and children and pro-creation was evil—because it came from the evil god.
This meant that things like marriage and relations and the begetting of children was evil because it was involved with bodies and matter. In fact they believed that even to have children was evil, because having children created more matter—and therefore created more evil—just by having all these bodies of children around. You can tell that this was one weird cult.
But worse yet—their highest sacrament was what they called the “Sacrament of Consolation”. It was ritual suicide. Their most fervent members would reach some personal spiritual level and they would decide that the next step take to reach perfection would be to take their own life—escape from this material world.
Now they taught that we were actually helpless in the struggle between the good god of spiritual things and the evil god of material things; So, ironically, even though marriage was forbidden—they didn’t care about promiscuous behavior. You could take any pleasure you wanted with anyone you pleased since it didn’t really make any difference.
In other words, you didn’t commit a sin by having reckless relations with everyone and anyone—because you couldn’t help it anyway. The only thing that was wrong was actual marriage— the exclusive and faithful covenant between one man and woman under God.
Matrimony was the sin—not promiscuity.
You could imagine how destructive this cult was for Christian families. You no longer had concepts like husband and wife—faithful and permanent. Just people coupling. And if they did end up with children— which they really didn’t want—well, they could keep them or kill them In fact, these Albigensians used to offer up many of their babies in holocausts—just to get rid of excess matter in their villages.
No wonder the Church of Christ looked on this cult with such horror. It was as if Satan himself had finally triumphed and found the most successful way to beat Jesus. All he had to do was to convince everyone that he, the devil, was equal to God and it was useless to resist him. Then he could convince the people that they would be saved if they all killed their babies and then killed themselves. What a victory of Satan against the Lord of Life—to convince God’s creatures to take their own lives as an act of worship!
The only thing that put this cult down before it could consume the whole land was a military crusade. Even St. Dominic and the rosary and Bernard of Clairvaux—with their writings and preaching and prayer could hardly make a dent in it—so tenacious were the tenets and tentacles of this belief system.
Now this is where history is prologue. Because we are witnessing in our own world the resurrection of this cult—only this time—it is not formulated as a religion with priests and sacraments and rituals—it is presented to us as the ‘Modern Way of Life” This is how we live in the modern day and age. And if you want proof, look at television and the movies to see how people are expected in our modern day and age to relate to one another. All the characters on all the shows are coupling—and none of them are married and none of them beget children.
The media is both a mirror and a teacher and what it reflects and what it teaches are that marriage is wrong, promiscuity is fine and none of it has anything to do with human life and babies. Is it not ironic that the only people these days clamoring to get married are the gays—who are simply aping what used to be considered normal.
Fifty-million abortions in this country alone tells the story that we don’t believe in the things we used to believe in anymore. And the forty-percent of our children who actually do get born—are born to unmarried people.
Does that not tell us that we have—in the last thirty or forty years—experienced an incredible change of heart—an incomprehensible change of mind and life—where people not only don’t get married—but they try not to have children, and that the children that accidentally get through can be killed.
In this way, that we have actually institutionalized promiscuity. No marriage? No vows? No promises? No families? No problem! And because of this, we have millions of children in this country who have been conceived by accident in some furtive coupling and are being raised in incredibly difficult circumstances— with an exhausted mother and no father at home.
These are the fatherless children who terrorize our neighborhoods and streets and cities. These are the boys who have shot and killed all those Chicago policemen in the last few months—4 of them. These are the young violent males who just one month ago shot 9 people on one street corner in my old parish.
And they are coming here—because this phenomenon is growing. These are the boys who have no fathers to look up to—who have no fathers to discipline them and teach them what real men must do—which is not to be gang—banging and waving their little pistols around—but to commit to one woman for life before God and to raise up for her a family—in God.
That’s what real men do—but there are so few left to teach them that. We are modern—we don’t believe in marriage anymore—we don’t believe in children anymore—we don’t believe in the Church anymore—only in our own pleasure.
How like the cult of the Albigensians we have become. And how right the Church was to be horrified and fearful of what would become of a sexually promiscuous society that rejected the sacrament of marriage and killed its own children. It was on a path to suicide. And we are on the same path.
Now—what can we do? How can we save our families? our children? Our selves and our souls? It is simple— but it is difficult. Because if we implement the old-fashioned Catholic beliefs and traditions about love and family and marriage, we will be going up against a whole culture—and against almost everyone we know.
And our very families and friends will tell us that we are crazy and negative and hopelessly out-of-date. And they will shun us—and look askance at us and avoid us at family parties—if they cannot avoid inviting us.
They will snicker at us and call us odd and think we have gone over the edge. We will be the cousins and in-laws that everyone else in our family thinks are strange.
And all of this only because we are trying to recapture the beliefs and morals of our grandparents! Can we do it? Of course we can—We have no choice.
First of all—if we are not married—or married in Church—we must resolve—right now to get married before a priest and witnesses—to swear before God and the Church that we will take care of our spouses and children for the rest of our lives—and that we will forsake everyone and everything else except our duty and our family.
Secondly we must end the use of contraceptives in our marriages. This is the one central invention of the Twentieth Century that has so successfully destroyed our understanding of marriage and family. It has totally turned upside down our traditional notions of how we should live and how we should love.
Contraception has provided an entrée to Satan into our modern lives as nothing else has since the time of Adam and Eve and the apple.
With the invention of one little pill we have totally smashed the God-given link between love and life. It is contraception that has relentlessly destroyed marriages and families. It is Contraception that has given us permission for abortion as well as promoted the ideal of childless marriages—parentless children and has made perverted love our new standard.
If pleasure is only about itself—and not about children which is what contraception teaches—then there are no rules, and there is no morality. This is modern life par excellence.
Thirdly we must be very careful of the children of our families. We must be wary of their friends and the company they keep—because surely there are many other families who do not watch or care what their boys and girls do. And wouldn’t you know it, these are the ones our children have to sit next to in school.
It is right—and more than right—for parents to tell their children with whom they may or may not associate. It is perfectly acceptable for parents to approve those who come courting their girls when those girls reach a marriageable age. That is one reason why it is so crucial for a father to be home—to send the wrong young man packing when he comes to court a daughter.
Am I putting too fine point on it all when I say that I think it is time that we brought back the tradition of chaperones?
Someone from the family to accompany our young people as they court each other? And why not chaperones? Why is it so unthinkable to think that young people might need help in keeping their virtue?
Why did people a hundred years ago understand the passions of youth better than we do? Why did they understand that it is healthier and safer for those who are courting to have family present during these dates than to leave them alone with only their youth and hormones to guide them?
I sincerely believe that the presence of chaperones would teach everyone how important family is; and how life and love are inextricably linked—and not to be trifled with—as this modern society trifles.
It took a crusade to bring southern France and its families back to Christ and sanity regarding life and love. I am not sure what it will take to bring us and our world back to Christ and sanity—but at some point it is going to take us realizing that we are Catholic—and as Catholics we do not do believe what our Albigensian world believes—either about God or about life and love.
This world believes in empty pleasure, sterility and death. Catholics believe in marriage and children and family. We are different. And once we realize we are different, we will be on the right path—the one that will help us remain Catholic so that we can save our families—and save our souls