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| Holly Madison and Hugh Hefner |
(Fourth Sunday of the Year (C): This homily was given on January 30, 2022 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Jeremiah 1:4-19; Psalm 71:1-17; 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 4:21-30.)
Who defines “love” for you?
Is it St. Paul, or is it Hugh Hefner?
(That’s a serious question, by the way!)
St. Paul shares his understanding of love in the text we
heard today from 1 Corinthians 13. It’s
a passage of Scripture that you often hear at weddings. And that’s understandable,
because it’s a beautiful text with a beautiful message. But it’s also a tough message—an extremely
tough message! It’s not easy to love
others in the way Paul describes here.
Listen again to his words:
Love is patient, love is
kind.
It is not jealous, it is
not pompous,
It is not inflated, it
is not rude,
it does not seek its own
interests,
it is not
quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over
wrongdoing
but rejoices with the
truth.
It bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
Obviously for St. Paul, love was not first and foremost an
emotion. For Paul real love was a
decision! It was a decision to desire
what’s good for another person. It was a
decision to sacrifice your own wants and to treat someone else as God would
have you treat them. In fact, you could
insert the word “decision” into the text and the meaning of it would not
change:
Love is [a decision to
be] patient, [a decision to be] kind.
[a decision not to be]
jealous, or pompous,
[or] inflated, [or]
rude, [or to seek your] own interests,
[or to be]
quick-tempered, [or to brood] over injury,
[or to] rejoice over
wrongdoing.
[Love is a decision to
rejoice] with the truth.
[It’s a decision to bear
all things, believe all things,
hope all things, [and] endure
all things.
This is love according
to St. Paul, and believe it or not it’s the only kind of love that works in
this life. In other words, it’s the only
kind of love that truly sustains relationships.
That’s why St. Paul says in the next line of the text that this kind of
love “never fails.”
And this is one of the
most important reasons why we need a personal relationship with Jesus
Christ. You see, what St. Paul is
describing here is really the love of Jesus.
This is the kind of love that he showed to others when he walked the
face of this earth 2,000 years ago. This
is the kind of love which led him to sacrifice his life for us on the
cross. Jesus is the ultimate source of this
love—real love. Consequently, if we want
this kind of love to be present in our lives we need to go to the source to get
it. Then we will be ready and able to
show it to other people.
Contrast this, now, with
Hugh Hefner’s version of love—which is basically selfish, manipulative,
objectifying and hedonistic. This
thought about Hefner (who died in 2017) came to me last Monday night. I was at my sister’s house on my night off
trying to find something to watch on TV, since for the first time in about 5
months, there was no football game on Monday (either college or pro).
Well during the course
of my “channel surfing” I came across a program on the Arts and Entertainment
Network on Hugh Hefner and his Playboy empire.
I later found out this was one show in a series. As it said in a CNN
article that I read: “The Playboy mystique and Hugh Hefner's
legacy receive a serious debunking in ‘Secrets of Playboy,’ a 10-part A&E
network docuseries that explores the dark side of the lifestyle Hefner sought
to embody.”
Now please don’t worry,
there was nothing graphic in the program.
It was TV-14, not TV-MA! (I just
wanted to clarify that before I went any further!)
This information about
Hefner is important, my brothers and sisters, because like it or not this man
continues to be a role model (even posthumously) for many people in our world
today when it comes to relationships—especially relationships with members of
the opposite sex. He’s their guru of
love! Now from the way the secular media
has always portrayed him, Hefner was kind and caring and “just a nice guy who
was having a good time for himself in life.”
And all his many “girlfriends” (as he called them) loved him and were
very happy living in his mansion.
Not so, many of his
former girlfriends now say. They
describe a man whose love was, as I said a few moments ago, selfish,
manipulative, and hedonistic—and who basically treated women as disposable
objects.
He created an illusion
of happiness and peace and love—but in reality it was just the opposite.
Listen to a few of the
things Holly Madison and another ex-girlfriend named Sondra Theodore said when
they were interviewed on the program. I wrote
down a dozen or so of their statements …
“The fantasy of Playboy that he created did not allow for the
consent of the women.”
“Hef controlled every aspect of our lives.”
“Looking back at my time at Playboy, it reminds me of a
cult.”
“With Hef, I don’t
really know what’s true and what’s not….”
“I want to be the voice of the women who suffered the most at
his hands.”
“You had no idea you were being brainwashed.”
“He would pit us [girlfriends] against each other.”
“It was all a lie. I watched girl after girl after girl show
up fresh-faced, adorable, and then their beauty just washed away. … I saw
clearly that we were nothing to him.”
“He was like a vampire.
He sucked the life out of all these young girls for decades. I know some
really deep, dark secrets. And now we’re
speaking out. It’s all gonna come out.”
“People think I
should have known exactly what I was getting into, that you're stepping into a
cult there, but I absolutely did not. In my early twenties I didn't realize
that getting into the Playboy world was a dangerous choice.”
“I felt that I was …
in this cycle of gross things and I didn’t know what to do.”
“I believe that Hef
pulled one over on the whole world.”
And sadly, from the
grave he’s still pulling one over on a lot of people who are still trying to
build their lives and relationships on his sordid and self-centered philosophy
of love.
So who does define
“love” for you—really? Is it St. Paul,
or is it Hugh Hefner?
The answer for each and every one of us should be easy; it
should be very easy.
And, hopefully, it is.
