(Twenty-fourth Sunday of the Year (B): This homily was given
on September 13, 2015 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond
Suriani. Read Mark 8: 27-35.)
A couple of weeks ago The
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights released the results of a
poll that the organization recently sponsored.
Dr. Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League who also has his doctorate in sociology, had the
study done because he knows that when Pope Francis visits the United States in
a few short days the news media will do their best to put their own “spin” on
the condition of the Church in our country.
That means, of course, that in all likelihood they will put almost their
entire focus on those Catholics who disagree with Church teaching and want it
to change. And the implication will be
that the vast majority of Catholic men and women—at least the vast majority of
“intelligent and enlightened” Catholic men and women—have this attitude.
Well, Dr. Donohue wanted a more accurate picture of where
Catholics are at in the United States right now, so he commissioned an
accredited polling company to survey 1,000 Catholics nationwide.
Some of the results, as reported by Donohue on his website,
are as follows:
- · Roughly 68% say their commitment towards their faith has not been altered in any significant way in the recent past. Those who are the most educated tended to feel the most excited about or committed to their Catholic faith; those who rarely attend Mass were the least excited.
- · 95% of Catholics say their faith plays a significant role in their everyday lives. When it comes to the impact that their faith has on their political decisions, 69% reported that their Catholicism matters. Nearly half of Catholics, 48%, believe that if more people practiced the teachings of the Catholic Church, our society would be better off. Those who attend Mass more than once a week, 72%, are the most likely to agree with this proposition.
- · When asked to identify themselves as either pro-life or pro-choice, 50% said they were pro-life and 38% said they were pro-choice. But it appears that even among those who say they are pro-choice, few are zealots. For example …only 5% said that abortion should be allowed for any reason and at any time.
- · When it comes to marriage, 58% believe it should be between a man and a woman; 38% do not agree. Those from the Northeast are the most liberal on this issue; frequent church-goers are the most conservative.
Toward the end of his analysis Dr. Donohue writes:
“[The] data indicate that 6-in-10 Catholics want the Church
to stay true to its principles; only 35% want it to conform to modern
culture. Again, this suggests that many
of those who might differ with the Church on women priests, or some other
issue, also prefer a Church that doesn’t change with the winds of the dominant
culture.”
An interesting survey.
There’s definitely some important information in it—especially for those
who are charged with the religious education of our young people: parents, priests,
CCD teachers, religious education directors, etc. The poll clearly shows that there are certain
issues on which all too many Catholics have received extremely poor instruction
and formation.
That needs to change.
But it would be a mistake for us—a mistake for any one of
us—to base our faith on the results of a poll (even a poll like this one by the
Catholic League, which yielded some
relatively positive results).
And that’s because polls are an expression of human opinion,
and the opinions of human beings are sometimes wrong! In fact in some cases the shared opinion of
the vast majority of human beings on
a particular issue is wrong!
Case in point: the issue of the identity of Jesus of
Nazareth.
In today’s gospel story from Mark 8, Jesus asks his
disciples for some “polling data”—about himself. Of course, he doesn’t frame the issue in
quite that way (George Gallup and others like him weren’t around in first
century Palestine). But the question Jesus
asks is definitely one that modern-day pollsters might ask about a popular but very
mysterious person: Who is he? Who, in
your estimation, is this mysterious individual?
What is his true identity?
The disciples give Jesus three answers.
1. John the
Baptist. This is what people like
Herod Antipas believed. Scripture tells
us that when he heard about some of the signs and wonders that Jesus was
performing after John had died, Herod exclaimed, “John, whose head I had cut
off, has been raised up!”
2. Elijah,
the prophet. Elijah, remember, did
not leave this life in the usual manner: he was taken up to heaven on a flaming
chariot! And the Jews always believed he
would return to earth when the Messiah was about to come. As God said in the Book of the prophet,
Malachi: “Now I am sending you Elijah the prophet, before the Day of the Lord
comes, the great and terrible day; he will turn the hearts of fathers to their
sons and the hearts of sons to their fathers.”
3. Another
prophet. Someone, in other words,
like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and the other great prophets of Israel’s
past.
Three answers—which were probably the top three that would
have surfaced if a modern-day scientific poll had been conducted in Palestine
in 32 or 33A.D.
And they were all WRONG!
Jesus was not a resurrected John the Baptist; he was not Elijah back here
on earth; and he was much, much more than a prophet like Isaiah, Jeremiah and
Ezekiel (as important as those guys were!).
And please notice that even Peter, who DOES get it right
when he correctly identifies Jesus as the Messiah (“the Christ”), only gets it half right! That’s because he didn’t understand that the
mission of the true Messiah—who was both God and man—was to reconcile the human
race to the heavenly Father by his passion and death. Peter, like most Jews of his day, expected
the Messiah to be a great military leader who would lead his people to victory
in battle and restore the nation of Israel to its former greatness. And so when Jesus began to speak to him and
to the other disciples about his upcoming suffering and death, Peter lost
it. He freaked out! He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
He probably also had difficulty believing what he was
hearing when Jesus called him “Satan”! But
at that moment, Peter was trying to dissuade Jesus from doing the Father’s will
and fulfilling his messianic mission—which is exactly what Satan wanted Peter
to do in that situation.
And that’s why Jesus gave him the name.
So if a poll had been taken in the first century concerning
the identity of Jesus of Nazareth, only 1 person that we know of would have
answered the key polling question correctly; and if a follow-up question had
been asked about the kind of Messiah that Jesus was, even Peter would have
gotten it wrong!
So much for the ability of polls to access the truth.
And yet how many people—how many Catholics—do shape their beliefs on various issues
these days based on the results of the latest national survey?! How many Catholics, for example, are now saying
that so-called “gay marriage” is okay simply because recent polls indicate that
the majority of Americans are now saying it’s okay?
If what the majority thinks on a particular subject automatically
becomes “the truth”—then there is no truth (at least no objective truth).
Building your life on polling data is like building your
house on shifting sand (which is not a good idea, as some of our friends in
Misquamicut found out during Superstorm Sandy a few years ago).
We are to build our lives—our viewpoints—our beliefs on the rock-solid
foundation of Jesus Christ and the Church he established.
Which is the Church that most of us (perhaps all of us) are BLESSED
to belong to.