(Thirtieth Sunday of the Year
(B): This homily was given on October 28, 2012 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly,
R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Mark
10: 46-52.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Thirtieth Sunday 2012]
Let me begin today by
recommending a book. It’s called, “The
Right to be Wrong: Ending the Culture War over Religion in America.” The author is a man named Kevin Seamus Hasson. He’s the lawyer who founded The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty,
which is a law firm that defends religious freedom both in and out of the
courtroom.
And they do it at The Becket Fund for people of all faiths!
In his book, Hasson traces the
history of religious liberty here in the New World from the time of the
Pilgrims until our own day. And what he
makes crystal clear from the very beginning is that the struggle for true,
religious freedom and the rights of conscience is not peculiar to our generation.
It’s been going on since the time of the Pilgrims—a group that he uses
to symbolize one of the tow extremes that we should want to avoid in our
country right now.
He starts off in chapter one by
addressing what he calls “America’s most enduring myth,” namely that “the
Pilgrims came here looking for religious freedom, found it, and we all lived
happily ever after.”
Hasson says that the myth is
wrong on all counts: The Pilgrims weren’t looking for religious freedom; they
were just looking for a place where they could live “in their own world
according to their own vision of the truth.”
Nor did they find this freedom and bequeath it, happily, to succeeding
generations.
Hasson says that when others
joined the Pilgrims in Plymouth Colony—others who did not share their beliefs—the Pilgrims often persecuted the
dissenters, using their legal system to accomplish the goal. As he put it, “The Pilgrims did not respond
well to this unplanned pluralism. In
fact, they attempted to outlaw it. They
set up tax-supported churches and banned competing religious services or
cultural displays. They kept dissidents
from proselytizing. They had religious
tests for public office. And they
refused to exempt conscientious objectors, like Quakers, from obeying their
laws.”
So in the history of our nation
we have had some groups and individuals like the Pilgrims, who wanted to outlaw
every religion but their own; and then, at the opposite end of the spectrum,
we’ve had groups and individuals to which Hasson gives the title “Park
Rangers.” These are men and women who
basically want to outlaw everybody’s
religion—or at least remove all religious expression from public life.
Pilgrims and Park Rangers—the two
extremes to be avoided. (By the way, I
won’t explain in this homily why he refers to that second group as “Park
Rangers.” You’ll have to read the book
to find that out!)
For Hasson—and for people like
James Madison, the 4th President of the United States—what’s needed
in a religiously diverse culture like ours is a recognition of the natural right to religious liberty, and a respect
for the conscience of every citizen.
Hasson defines conscience in this way: “[It’s] the interior,
quintessentially human voice that speaks to us of goodness and duty, the voice
we must obey if we are to keep our integrity.
It counsels doing good and avoiding evil, and serves as a referee to
rule on which is which. What is more,
conscience requires action, not just conviction. It demands that we live according to the
truth as we know it.”
So if you’re a medical doctor,
and your conscience, shaped by your religious faith, tells you that you should
not prescribe contraception or refer for abortions, the federal government
should not coerce you to do so!
At least that’s what President
Madison would say (Madison, who was the chief architect of the First Amendment,
which guarantees the free exercise of religion.)
Other, more contemporary
presidents might say something different, of course.
But they’re wrong.
Now why do I mention all this in
my homily today? How is what I’ve said about
Kevin Seamus Hasson’s book connected to this gospel reading we just heard?
Simple.
Although it might not be
immediately obvious to us, Bartimaeus in this story was exercising his right to
religious freedom and following the dictates of his conscience—and a group of 1st
century “Pilgrims and Park Rangers” was trying to stop him!
The text tells us that when
Bartimaeus was told that Jesus was passing by he began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.”
“Son of David” was a messianic
title. That means that when Bartimaeus used
it he was making a declaration of faith.
He was exercising his right to religious freedom by declaring that he
believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah: the Messiah that he and his Hebrew
brothers and sisters had been waiting for for centuries.
And, at the very same time, Bartimaeus
was acting on a judgment made by his conscience. Because he believed that Jesus was the
Messiah, he became convinced that our Lord could help him by restoring his
eyesight, and so he made the decision—which was the judgment of his
conscience—to reach out to our Lord for a healing.
But a number of people who were
present that day didn’t like it! And
so—just like the Pilgrims and Park Rangers of our world today—they tried to
stop Bartimaeus! They told him to be
quiet!
Most of these naysayers were
probably “Pilgrims,” in the sense that they thought that their Jewish religion
should be the only one allowed to exist; but there may have been a few “Park
Rangers” there as well.
To his great credit, Bartimaeus
ignored them all and continued to exercise his religious freedom and assert his
conscience rights by calling out to the Lord.
In fact, the Bible says he began to shout even louder, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!”
As Catholic Americans in 2012, we
find ourselves in the same position that Bartimaeus was in on that day when he
encountered Jesus on road near Jericho.
Our ability to practice our faith fully—and to apply the teachings of
our faith to the circumstances of our daily lives—is being threatened on many
fronts, most notably by the federal government’s HHS mandate, which requires
Catholic institutions and business owners to pay for services that are clearly
immoral.
In other words, the Pilgrims—and especially the Park Rangers—are at
it again.
May the courageous example of
Bartimaeus inspire us (and all people of good will) to speak up, loudly and
clearly, for religious freedom and the rights of conscience at the ballot box
this November—and everywhere else.
