From His Mouth to God’s Ear

Yesterday I was at Mass, and the Homily was about racism. Father Robert talked about how when Kennedy was running for president, the prevailing meme was that he’d doom the nation to Papacy, and once elected would follow the Pope’s edict and make America a Catholic nation. Sounds ludicrous now, nearly 50 years later, to think people actually thought that.

His next point was that defining people by skin color or faith was not what Jesus demonstrated and asks us to do in our daily lives. His point that he himself struggles with this was not lost on anyone listening. No matter how hard you try or how evolved you are, we each battle the demons of our upbringing, neighborhoods, schooling, work environments, and so on. We lock our car doors superstitiously, grip our gear tighter, or cover with a poker face and not meet any eyes. We are all works in progress.

Then he dropped the bomb, telling us that buying into the Obama is Muslim meme was not only foolish, it was against the teachings of Christ, (whose embrace of the Canaanite (non-Jewish) woman’s request made in faith defied the logic of the era, yet showed that reaching out to all was the way) and validated the treatment Catholics received during JFK’s run.

Oops, Golden Rule Alert!

Heh. I have to say, I haven’t had so much fun in church in a long time. The congregation was equal parts of nodding and grinning or squirming uncomfortably. I bet the view from the pulpit was a hoot. Right there, in one statement, he deconstructed the insidiousness of the right wing smear machine. When you strip off the faith veneer, it’s not a pretty sight.

50 years after the fact, we have a party who has not changed and a party who embraces change, and that my friends, is our baseline. What’s interesting is that in my parish, the single issue thinking is waning, and we are back to the more reasoned approach of what our faith is asking of us across the spectrum of need and truth. It’s good to be back.

Crossposted at Bring It On!