Some
Thoughts on the Liturgy
PREJUDICE AND THE CHRISTIAN
+ Perhaps some of your Protestant
friends have told you this story or one like it:
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the Methodist man had lived a good life and had gone to heaven
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greeted by a holy man who was evidently in charge
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and he was received very well
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the holy man showed him around the heavenly chambers
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everywhere there was joy, people quite happy with one another
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evidently a place where he wanted to be
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and he was glad that he had tried to live a good life
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he and the holy man came to a large room with locked door
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holy man said: “we have to be careful here as we walk in front of this
door”
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and so they were, tiptoed past the door
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on the other side, the Methodist man asked the holy man why they had to be
so careful around that room
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holy man replied: “Oh, that room contains all the Catholics
and they think that they are the only ones up here.”
+ One of the virtues of the Catholic
Church of the past has not been “being open to other religions”
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all you have to do is study a little history to
see it
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and it is not the way it should be, as we generalize from our first reading
and Gospel today
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Moses and Jesus were both leading those who were learning from them away
from closed-mindedness and a closed-in type of thinking
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both saying that the Lord’s spirit is at work in others as well as
themselves
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and the Lord’s spirit is saying that everyone is important, and that if you
are a Christian, a real Christian, you will realize that
+ The Second Vatican Council in the
middle 60’s released a document called the “Pastoral Constitution of the
Church in the Modern World”
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chapter 2 is entitled “The Community of People” and part of it is this:
“This
council lays stress on reverence for all; everyone must consider his/her
every neighbor without exception as another self. … Respect and love ought
to be extended … to those who think or act
differently than we do in social, political and religious matters,
too. In fact, the more deeply we
come to understand their ways of thinking through … courtesy and love, the
more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue
with them.” (# 2, nos. 27, 28)
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if we ever had a tendency to be closed-minded to
others, the Council clearly states what our doctrine should be
+ In essence, the Council was talking
about prejudice
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we really should study our possible closed-mindedness and our in-born
prejudices
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there are a couple of things that make prejudice a fault, but the one we
should be aware of more than any other perhaps is this:
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prejudice implies a kind of permanence, an unwillingness or inability to
change our attitudes – that is real closed-mindedness
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as long as people are not willing or able to
listen to raw evidence and change their minds when properly challenged to
do so, they are closed-minded
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one easily sees this type of attitude when conversation turns to certain
subjects – like religion, politics, family, or why other people do what
they do
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what happens is that we have made up our minds before we have studied the
facts
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sometimes this is ridiculous and harmless: the people who believe that
Elvis Presley is really alive or that the end of
the world will happen in a couple weeks because they think the Bible says
so
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but sometimes it is downright sinful in terms of a Christian perspective
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prejudice is sinful because we are not extending love and understanding to
those who think or act differently than we do in social, political and
religious matters, as the Council directs us to do
+ Jesus goes into exaggeration to hammer
this point home in the Gospel:
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he is talking about causing others to sin
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and says cut your hand or foot off, gouge your eye out before you mislead
another, before you hurt another by your prejudices
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in essence, consider what you do and say—your prejudices—and be courageous
in getting rid of them if they are sinful
+ Snoopy of Peanuts fame once said quite
proudly: “I’m open as long as you agree with me”
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Jesus calls us to open-mindedness today
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to study our attitudes toward life and especially toward others
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to see whether or not we may be prejudiced and not
even be aware of it.
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