GOD WITHOUT RELIGION

 A SERMON FOR THE 12TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

It’s a common thing these days to come across people who claim to be spiritual but who have an abhorrence of “religion.”  “Yes, I believe in God,” they’ll tell you, “but I do not believe in organized religion.  I’m spiritual, I find Christ’s teachings very nice, sometimes helpful, but that doesn’t mean I have to go to church! I don’t feel like I need to be a member of one religion or another.”  If pressed, they’ll give you many different reasons: organized religion is corrupt, too political; there are too many rules, too many hypocritical holy-rollers who impose high standards on everyone but themselves.  And then there are so many different religions to choose from, each with its own beliefs, ways of worshipping, moral standards and interpretations of Scripture.  Ultimately though, the people who reject organized religion have a profound misunderstanding of what God not only wants from us, but actually demands from us.  They are blind to the logical conclusion that any spirituality, any belief in God they claim to possess, automatically imposes upon them the duty to worship and submit to this God.

Vague feelings of the existence of a higher being are not enough.  Mushy emotional experiences brought on by stories of miracles, beautiful organ music, incense and stained-glass windows might make them “feel good” for a few minutes.  But unless they follow up these brief and transitory sentiments with commitment and action, their “spirituality” is worthless.  Like a dream forgotten as soon as we wake up, the graces that God gave them with these happy thoughts quickly vanish.  They return to their “real life”, a sad and empty life filled with nothing more than material possessions and ambitions.

Such people see Religion as something unimportant, a take-it-or-leave-it feature of their own personal spirituality.  But Religion is a virtue, the highest of the moral virtues in fact, that inclines our will to give to God the supernatural honor and adoration due to him as Creator and Supreme Ruler.  We neglect this virtue at our peril.  “I can be a spiritual person and go to heaven without all those rules and rituals.  I’ll go to church, maybe, when I’m good and ready, when the Spirit moves me, and not till then.”  In other words, they are entirely oblivious that our first duty towards God must be submission to his will.  They fail to acknowledge that they must place God’s will above their own, submitting their own desires and behavior to the will of God, doing what he wants them to do at all times.  And most of all, by giving to God the honor and adoration due to him. 

So what is God’s will for us?  Exactly what is due to him?  God’s chief desire for us is that we save our souls.  For this purpose he established a Church on earth which would provide us with the opportunity to know the truths God has revealed, and to honor and worship God in the way he demands, the honor and adoration due to him.  Once this choice is before us, we can accept gratefully this wonderful gift from God, or defiantly reject it.  So as soon as we know who God is and which Church he established for us, our submission to God must necessarily include our membership in this Church. The Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, so many people confuse the word “religion” with something else entirely.  Instead of thinking of it as a virtue indispensable for our moral conversion and our salvation, they see religion, and the Catholic Church in particular, as an organization of flawed human beings whose belief in God has been the cause of division, persecution, wars and bloodshed.  Some of them, having never been taught the truths of the Catholic Church, hesitate to commit themselves to her, or to any other non-Catholic denomination for that matter, confused by the very different beliefs and practices of each one and unsure who is right.  All of this confused thinking is based on ignorance, usually not their fault, but brought about in these modern times by the lack of straight teaching by the Church of Vatican II.  Instead of stressing the importance of belonging to the true Church that Christ founded and outside of which there is no salvation, the new conciliar Church now preaches the modernist heresy of ecumenism, in which we are told that we can save our souls by just being good people, no matter what false teachings we believe, and no matter to which non-Catholic denomination we care to belong.   The practical result of this heretical ecumenism is that people no longer believe we need to be Catholic to save our souls, and that there is no objective truth to guide us.  We just need to be “good” people, whatever that means, and we’ll all go to heaven together.

For us Catholics, we must get a grip on the doctrine, the infallible teaching, that salvation comes uniquely from the Church Christ founded.  He didn’t establish the Rock of Faith to be one religion among many, all with different interpretations of what the truth is.  He established the Church to be the means by which we may know objective truth and pass it on from one generation to another, truths that he himself had revealed.  He sent his Holy Spirit to guide this Church in all matters of faith and morals, and just as the Holy Spirit is God and therefore infallible, so too is the Church he guides.  There is no room for the contradictory interpretations and whims of the individual.  And if the Church’s insistence that we hold the infallible truth and other churches do not, we should expect division to come from those who deny this.  If we have a thousand Protestant denominations, it is simply because there is only one truth and a thousand errors.  Two plus two equals four.  One truth.  Any other number is the wrong answer, and the Catholic Church must stand up and defend the only true answer.  In fact, for every truth, there is potentially an infinite number of errors and potential non-Catholic churches, each inventing new beliefs and practices that are not based on those revealed by God, and thus ultimately worthless. 

Throughout history, the Church has had to defend herself and the souls of her faithful many times from such wicked attacks on the truth, and so yes, there has inevitably been much bloodshed.  Many martyrs have died defending their Catholic faith, and to be fair, we must admit that the actions of a few over-zealous Catholics have led to the inexcusable treatment of our enemies.  However, one thing that we cannot do is blame the Church herself for the bad behavior of her members.  While we may acknowledge that cruelty and immorality have been a plague on human history that has scandalized many, our answer to such evils can never be to blame the divine institution of the Church that Christ founded.  Instead, we must ever concentrate on our own personal response to such evils, a response that must be founded on the teachings and example of Christ himself.

In today’s Gospel, our Lord describes exactly what he wants in such circumstances.  Our Blessed Lord soundly condemns the behavior of the priest and the Levite who ignored the plight of the injured man who had been attacked by thieves and left half dead in the roadway.  Despite the fact that these two men were members of God’s chosen people, they neglected their responsibilities of charity and ignored the poor man dying on the street.  In fact, it was up to a foreigner, a non-Jew, a Samaritan, to behave according to God’s will and take compassion on the injured man.  Our Lord’s purpose in telling this parable is revealed in his concluding words, when he tells the lawyer questioning him, “Go, and do thou likewise.”  How many times do we notice the apparent charity of non-Catholics and Novus Ordo Catholics and compare it to our own “Traddie” approach to loving our neighbor.  If we are put to shame by the good behavior of those outside the faith, Christ has the answer for us: “Go, and do thou likewise!”  The law of loving God first and then our neighbor as ourselves is the paramount commandment of our religion.  If we would only practice what we preach, we might find that we would attract more converts to our faith, drawn to it by the charity and good example of its members.

So when we hear the poor, ignorant and godless individuals spouting their nonsense about the Church and the evils of organized religion, let it give us pause to wonder how our own behavior could be contributing to their aversion to our faith and Church.  It is not enough to explain to them the reasons why evil exists among the individual members of the Church, we must show by our conversation and example that any such evil exists in spite of and not because of the Church’s teachings, which, if they are strictly believed and observed, can alone lead them to true charity and holiness by means of the true Religion given us by the Good Shepherd, in the sacred pasture of the Roman Catholic Faith.