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| Archbishop Timothy Dolan |
(Sixth Sunday of the Year (B): This homily was given on February 12, 2012 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Leviticus 13: 1-2, 44-46; Mark 1: 40-45.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Sixth Sunday 2012]
Let me begin my homily today by
asking you to join me in doing something.
Together let’s say the word,
“Unclean.”
Ready?—“Unclean.”
Say it again.
And one more time.
Very good.
Now you might say, “Fr. Ray, why
did we just do that?”
We did it because, according to
the reading we just heard from Leviticus 13, that’s what lepers are supposed to do.
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron,
“The one who bears the sore of leprosy . . . shall cry out, ‘Unclean,
unclean!’ As long as the sore is on him
he shall declare himself unclean, since he is in fact unclean. He shall dwell apart, making his abode
outside the camp.”
Perhaps you didn’t realize that
you were a leper, since your skin is perfectly healthy (leaving aside a few
wrinkles and blemishes here and there!).
Well, the fact is there’s more than
one way to be a leper in today’s world.
There are physical lepers who are afflicted with what’s called “Hansen’s
Disease”—like the man who was healed by Jesus in today’s gospel story. But there are also what might be called
“social and cultural lepers”: that is to say, people who are marginalized and
discriminated against and even sometimes actively persecuted in a particular
society.
Well, if you happen to be a
devout, sincere Catholic who wants to be free to express and fully practice
your Catholic faith in the United States in 2012, then you are, sad to say, one
of modern America’s “social and cultural lepers.”
And I would say it’s about time
we all faced this reality and started dealing with it.
The reason I’m speaking on this
subject today is because of the vicious attack on our religious freedom and
conscience rights that was made by the Obama administration last August, and
which was reaffirmed just a couple of weeks ago. Now I don’t care what side of the aisle
you’re on politically, if you care about your rights as an American
citizen—especially the precious right you have to practice the faith of your
choice—then this ought to have you upset.
Very upset.
This is a perfect example of how
Catholics and other religious people are being treated like lepers these days.
Maybe even worse than lepers.
The problem concerns the new
health care bill, known to most people as ObamaCare. According to the way the law was originally
written, Catholic institutions in the very near future will be required to violate
the moral teachings of the Church! There
will be no respect, as their always has been in the past, for religious freedom
and the rights of conscience. As
Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York said recently in a column he wrote for the
Wall Street Journal: “[The Obama administration] has refused to
exempt religious institutions that serve the common good—including Catholic
schools, charities and hospitals—from its sweeping new health-care mandate that
requires employers to purchase contraception, including abortion-producing
drugs, and sterilization coverage for their employees.”
When the administration first
proposed this mandate last August, many religious groups (Catholic and
non-Catholic alike) voiced their opposition.
Even some people without any faith protested. As Archbishop Dolan said, these men and women
rightly understood that their beliefs could be next “on the block.”
You see, once one freedom is
taken away, others usually follow.
The archbishop (and soon-to-be
cardinal) noted in his column that religious freedom is “the lifeblood of the American people, [and] the cornerstone of
American government.” He said, “When the Founding Fathers determined that
the innate rights of men and women should be enshrined in our Constitution,
they so esteemed religious liberty that they made it the first freedom in the
Bill of Rights.”
He went on to quote George
Washington and James Madison, both of whom fiercely defended the rights of
conscience. Almost every president has
in the past. As Madison, the author of
the First Amendment, said, “Conscience is
the most sacred of all property.”
Well apparently, according to the
current administration, Madison’s words no longer apply to people like us. But
I guess that’s what happens to you when you’re a social and cultural leper.
Our own bishop, Thomas Tobin, was
even more blunt about the situation in a statement he issued just over a week
ago. He wrote, “The ruthless decision of the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services to impose mandatory coverage for sterilizations and contraceptives
upon private insurance programs, including those offered by the Catholic
Church, is an unprecedented, outrageous and unacceptable attack on religious
freedom and the moral life and ministry of the Church. In practical terms, the imposition of this
mandate could mean that Catholic institutions will no longer be able to provide
health insurance for their own employees.”
We need to contact our
representatives in Washington to let them know how upset we are about this—and
that the president’s “compromise” this past Friday is totally unacceptable,
because all it does is mandate that the Church pay for these immoral services indirectly. In case you missed it, because of the uproar
this has caused, the president said on Friday that now the insurance companies,
and not the Church herself, will have to pay for abortions and for
contraception.
And how, Mr. President, will these
insurance companies get all the extra money they’ll to need to pay for these
services?
Answer: By charging higher
premiums to the Church.
So the Church will still pay,
only indirectly.
The contact information for our
representatives, along with Bishop Tobin’s statement on the matter, can be
found on an insert in today’s bulletin.
Please take this seriously, my brothers and sisters—and act! Because if we don’t take this seriously and
take appropriate action, you can be sure that our situation as lepers will only
get worse.
I’ll give the final word today to
Archbishop Dolan:
“The Catholic Church defends religious liberty, including freedom of
conscience, for everyone. The Amish do
not carry health insurance. The
government respects their principles.
Christian Scientists want to heal by prayer alone, and the new
health-care reform law respects that.
Quakers and others object to killing even in wartime, and the government
respects that principle for conscientious objectors. By its decision, the Obama administration has
failed to show the same respect for the consciences of Catholics and others who
object to treating pregnancy as a disease.
‘This latest erosion of our first freedom should make all Americans
pause. When the government tampers with
a freedom so fundamental to the life of our nation, one shudders to think what
lies ahead.”
Lord Jesus, we pray today for our
president and for all those involved with the formation of this unjust policy,
that you will touch their minds and hearts with your truth, so that they will
come to respect the religious freedom and the conscience rights of every American citizen, and stop
treating Catholics like unclean lepers.
Amen.