St. William the Confessor Catholic Church
Greenville, Texas
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 4, 2007
Before I begin the homily I want you to notice that in your bulletin near the second reading there are two versions of it. I have put it there to show you there are more that just one version of the Bible. When Pope John Paul II died and then Pope Benedict was installed the news coverage was done primarily by Father Richard John Neuhaus. He has a magazine called “First Things”. He calls the translation we use at Mass, the only translation we are allowed to use at Mass, "clunky." Just look at the end of the gospel.
Simon, do not be afraid from now on you will be catching men."
What? Are they going to be policemen? Remember how we all used to here it.
From now on you will be fishers of men!
The new one is just a "clunky translation."
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Homily begins here
Then Jesus said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a catch!
+In the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
If you look in the bulletin please on page two and you will see these five documents from the pope are the reason why we do some things here at Saint William's and also the reason why we leave other things out. These are the fundamental documents. Number one is Novo Millennium Ineunte, which in English is On the Beginning of the New Millennium. Pope John Paul II published it on January 6, 2001. A millennium is a thousand years and Pope John Paul II gave you and me a thousand years of homework. That does not leave much time for recess, does it? He uses the verse from this gospel, Put out into the deep...Duc in Altum in Latin and he repeats this phrase time and time again like the waves coming in on Lake Genessaret. They come in and then they go out again and again. Another phrase that the pope uses in that document is contemplate the face of Christ. It is kind of like breathing in put out in the deep for a catch and then breathing out
contemplate the face of Christ.
The holy father will write Duc in Altum...put out into the deep then he will write some more and then he will once again write Duc in Altum...put out into the deep or he will say contemplate the face of Christ and then he will write some more and then like the verses in a song he will return to the refrain. So these two phrases must guide my life and yours. We have a lot of homework before we draw our last breath. It is work, real work. Those fish did not jump into the boat. It was not like those boats you find in Bass Pro Shop. There is just something wrong with buying a boat in an air-conditioned store. Can you drive it around in there? I didn't know it was going to be like this out here. There is no air-conditioning.
It took everyone straining to get those fish to shore. So we have work to do. We also must have Jesus seated right there with us watching everything we are doing. Just as he is seated there watching everything that Peter, James and John were doing. Put out into the deep for a catch.... contemplate the face of Christ, kind of like a heartbeat, the life blood of a Christian includes work guided by Christian principles.
About 100 years ago there was a big fish, G.K. Chesterton. He was a big fish for a couple of reasons. He was a big guy and he came into the Catholic Church in England. Also, he is a giant among writers. He towers head and shoulders over so many. About 100 years ago he was about the lords and dukes and aristocracy of England. He did this so well because he was a British citizen. Many people think that the British aristocracy is conservative. Chesterton puts is right. He says,
No the common man, the peasant, is conservative. They like things to stay just as they are. The lord and the duke like changing things. They are always quoting progress. Over the centuries in England, lords and dukes have always been progressive. When a lord or a duke go to a part of his own land and where his land met the land of the common man the lord or the duke would take down the fence and grab the land of the common man. When the common man came and complained the lord or the duke would say, "Look to the future." Pointing off to somewhere in the future. The common man would then be distracted and the lord or the duke grabbed his land.
By the time the common man figured out what was going on the land was gone. So every time someone points you to the future remember that the future is not ours, only the present. What we have right now is what we have sway or dominion over.
People talking about the future can scare to the point that your hair turns white and falls out. That is how many people talk about the future today. We have hard work and progress without Christian principles becomes tyranny and oppressive. People begin to be hurt and killed. For example, with no Christian principles in place Mao Tse Tung managed to kill 70 million Chinese. Lenin and Stalin killed tens of millions. All of this in the name of progress. Mao had his great leap forward. It is not such a great leap when you leap from where you are off the cliff without a parachute. Progress was invoked but death and destruction came as a result. 70 million people perished.
In this country there have be people with different ideas on how to make progress such as those in the medical and science fields. You should know that February is Black History Month. Black History Month recalls many of the proud accomplishments that black Americans have made. But I would like to bring back to memory two events that happened while I was alive. I was born in 1959 and both of these events are aspects of shame on our country that happened in the last 47 years. For example, in Cincinnati, Ohio, black cancer patients of below average intelligence and who were charity cases, from 1960 to 1972, were exposed to large doses of whole body radiation as part of an experiment sponsored by our country's military. I love the men and women of our military and pray for them every day. But what our military did to these below intelligence black Americans is despicable. None of them gave permission or informed consent. They thought they were receiving medical treatment for cancer. They experienced nausea, vomiting from acute radiation sickness, pain and burns on their bodies, some died prematurely as a result of radiation exposure. All of this ended in 1972. I was in 7th grade. Finally they made financial settlements with these people in May 1999. Boy, they got on the stick didn't they? They really hurried. That is just terrible!
Down in Alabama, in Macon County, near Tuskegee, the deliberate failure to medically treat a group of black males in Macon Country who had syphilis took place. This experiment started in 1932 and ended in 1972, the year that I was in 7th grade. Doctors knew about these experiments and held them in disdain but it took forty years. You can experiment on a lot of people in 40 years. To die of the effects of syphilis untreated is to die a terrible death. So human experimentation going on in this the greatest nation on the face of the earth has happened. This is our history.
Oh but the progressives tell us look to the future. Look what we can do with that knowledge. Oh yea? What can we do with it? Do you think that any one of those two instances, either the radiation poisoning or the syphilis experiment would be compatible with Christian principles? It was work that was performed, progressive was intoned but Christ was not.
Now I am going to point to the future. It is tomorrow. Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Agatha. Now, St. Agatha could be considered part of the aristocracy of her day, she was very conservative. If you know where Italy is then you know that the bottom of the boot comes to a point. At the front of the point of the boot is an island. This island is Sicily. This is where St. Agatha lived and died. She was martyred in 251. The Roman Empire, very anti-Christian, who executed our Lord Jesus Christ, brought about the death of St. Agatha. She was young, she was beautiful and was rich. St. Agatha from her childhood lived consecrated totally to God. Well obviously she needed to be stopped, right? Well she can't carry on like that, right? There was a shameless and greedy magistrate, who lusted after her and her money. Things changed, but WOW how they stay the same, right? He used his power to abuse St. Agatha and to steal her money. First he handed her over to a woman who was going to pervert her and turn her into a prostitute. Guess what? It didn't happen! Then after that the judge made her appear before him on three occasions. The first time, she was slapped in the face for having repelled the judge’s solicitation and she affirmed her faith. The second time the evil judge had her stretched out on a wooden horse, and he had the executioner rip her flesh with iron hooks and then was ordered to CUT OFF her breasts. She said to this cruel man,
Have you forgotten your own mother and the breasts that nourished you and you dare to mutilate me in such a way?
If that is not enough, they stripped her and rolled her naked on burning coals. At that point there was an earthquake. There are a lot of those in Sicily. At that moment in the courtroom, there was a friend of the judge. A piece of the wall collapsed and killed that friend. The evil judge ran away and St. Agatha thanked God for His Help, let out a cry and expired. Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Agatha; she died in the year 251. She died living Christian principles. She could have become a woman of ill fame of ill repute and could have lived longer, but she would never think of living without Christ.
Today in Austin there was a memorial service for someone I have never cared for in my life. I am like St. Therese who wrote about a nun in the Carmelite convent, Sister Teresa of St. Augustine. St. Therese was ordered to write exactly what she thought about the other sisters. St. Therese wrote
Sister Teresa of St. Augustine, there is nothing about her, which pleases me.
That is, in my opinion, a kind way of saying that I don’t like her. Now she didn't hate her she just said that there was nothing that pleased her.
Molly Ivans died last week. I can say the same thing about Molly Ivans. She was a radical feminist who passed away. She said so many things that were progressive but didn't possess a single reference to Christ. She was a progressive for the sake of progress, which means she didn't promote life, but death. She was 110% pro Abortion. Interesting enough, just awhile back a radical feminist who converted and who became a very good Catholic woman also remained a feminist, but she was guided by Christian principles. I quoted this woman a couple of weeks ago on January 21st. Her name is Elizabeth Fox Genovese. She converted and was still a feminist who was inspired by Christian principles. You see that it is possible to be a feminist, for feminist causes, as long as you are guided by Christian principles. This is the only kind of work a feminist should do. This is the kind of work that has Christ sitting there at your side.
Molly Ivans passed away she died at the age of 62 of breast cancer. Invoking the name of St. Agatha, what if someone had approached Molly Ivans' parents and told them that they were going to surgically remove her breasts so that she would never ever die from breast cancer? You know that, that man or woman who had suggested such a thing would probably have been horse whipped by her parents. Molly Ivans died of breast cancer and if she had known way back then that this could have been avoided had they been removed when she was a young lady she would never had done it. But then again human experimentation has been along ever since human beings have been around and women, sadly, seem to be the object of so much experimentation. All this in the name of progress!
We heard that before World War II that the Japanese had been experimenting for generations on their women. Most women when they are talking with their friends, sooner or later, the subjects that they like most are going to come up; shoes and hair. If you women get together you are going to talk about hair and shoes if it is a good day. Right? No woman wants to look down at her foot and see a SWIM FIN. Look how big that thing is! It looks like a water ski. Women love to look at their foot and see a teeny tiny little foot. They love to see this.
In Japan they had a solution. We just take the women's foot as it is developing and we bend in back and bind it. We tie it up so that is can't develop. It is really hard to walk but boy can she fit into those small shoes. That is human experimentation. Chesterton 100 years ago reacted violently against the desire to experiment on little girls in England. You see there were people who said all little girls should have short hair; kind of like convicts. They should have short hair because the girls wouldn't take care of their hair. One girl out of forty in a classroom would have head lice, so now all little girls should have short hair. What was really meant was that all of the poor girls should have short hair. Chesterton pointed out that these were people who were living in terrible conditions in the slums, working in London, and being charged high rent. Father and mother had to go to work and proper hygiene was neglected. So now if one in forty girls had head lice they all had head lice and so they wanted to just cut off all of their hair.
Chesterton stood up for the little girls. Chesterton remarked that if a child had a toothache would it be wise to pull all of the teeth out of the other children to insure that toothaches didn’t disturb the class. If it works for hair, why not for teeth? It is human experimentation without any Christian principles.
Yesterday in the Dallas Morning News, on the front page there is a picture of an iceberg. It is no relation to me. I am a Weinberger. There is an iceberg here and on top of it are two polar bears surrounded by lots of water. Now if you took your kids to see this you would have to shell out money, and if you went there and didn't see it you would want your money back. Why is that, when we see two polar bears in their natural environment we should feel sorry for them? They are polar bears! They are wearing fur coats and they have lots of blubber and they can swim better than hogs. How did they get there? They swam over there. It is as if there is a cat in a tree and somehow it can't get down. The polar are bears are probably looking for salmon. The headline says that,
"We are creating a different planet!"
We are creating a brave new world like the book we had to read where some people are more equal than others. No, that is Animal Farm. This also brings to mind global warming. Do you know that today in Chicago the wind chill is -30 degrees? I bet they would like some of that global warming. Somehow -30 in Chicago and still people can think of global warming. Their brains must be frozen!
Right next to that story it says,
Governor Perry is ordering a vaccine that will cure cancer. Well who wouldn't want to cure cancer? My dear father just passed away a few years ago from cancer. I hate cancer, but I am going to use Christian principles to fight cancer. I am not going to ask people to be used unwillingly in experiments to cure cancer. What Governor Perry wants to do is give every young girl in Texas around 11 or 12 years old three injections. The three injections cost about $400.Perry orders HPV Vaccine!
First of all, who is going to pay for that? Will taxes have to go up to pay for this brave new vision of Governor Perry? I say it to my shame but I voted for him. Governor Perry has a vision that is all about progress but he has never said that he will donate all that he owns or will ever own to pay for this. He is going to get us to pay for it. He is going to make an Executive Order, and it is not going to go through the regular process of voting. Just stamp it! Done; you see, Governor Perry cares for little girls. No he doesn't! You know that when I was a kid all the vaccinations that I received were derived from live human beings. Do you know that politicians in the last 15 years have done away with those vaccines and now every child in the United States has been vaccinated with vaccines that derived from aborted children? Why? Because they wanted it that way! You could still do it the other way with live people. That means every girl 15 years or younger or boy 15 years or younger...you can do the rest. That is progress we have been told. That is despicable!
You cannot fly to Europe or South America and get another vaccine. They have cornered the market. This is progress. Governor Perry is talking about how this is progress. Now HPV is one kind of illness that causes a specific kind of cancer. Christian mothers and fathers teach their sons and daughters that the first time they are intimate with their spouse is on their wedding night and that they are faithful to that spouse the rest of their life. Girls raised this way will never get the kind of cancer this vaccine is talking about. But if a woman goes from man to man to man to man to man.... her chances of contracting this disease and getting this cancer go up. If a woman is raised on Christian principles and stays faithful to her husband there is no need for this vaccine.
I am not letting the young men off the hook but I am not going to get distracted. Those same parents should be raising sons that will respect a woman and follow Christ as well. I want to stay doggedly on the trail of this vaccine that is coming to Texas. This is the Governor of Texas not the governor of Argentina or Tierra del Fuego and he is bringing it here.
"Oh father, there are not side effects."
When I was a little boy I played with the kids down the street. The mother when pregnant had headaches and was given Thalidomide. I can't spell it but I have seen the effects. There were children born with no limbs or very small limbs. How sad! Immediately Thalidomide was pulled. They are saying that here there are no side effects. How could they know that! Did you know that if you drink too much water you can have side effects and they are telling me to trust them for the sake of progress? 11 and 12 year old girls should just be handed over? Do you know that people buy free-range chicken? It doesn't eat commercial feed with chemicals. You pay extra for free range chicken but some how we are going to put strong chemicals into the bodies of our little girls. This is progress? What if later on they come back and say that this kind of cancer is such a drag on the economy that all women over the age of 18 must now have this vaccine? All of a sudden there is a great gasp.....But everyone of has daughters, granddaughters, nieces, neighbors who are little girls and we have to do what we can to stop this human experimentation. This is progress without Christian principles! We are so afraid to try to do what we can.
If every Catholic would just write on an envelope Governor Perry, Austin, Texas, put a stamp on it and wrote "No to HPV Vaccine", and sign your name he would just say never mind.
The bishop here and every bishop in Texas, I believe, have okayed that every parish that has a Catholic school, on a certain day, can take off 1/2 day and send a bus to Austin; not about HPV, but to convince the legislature that Catholic schools should receive vouchers. If kids go to public school why not get a voucher and go to a private school? This is great. I am all for vouchers but I have never heard of this happening in protest of abortion and I bet it doesn't happen to protest HPV Vaccinations. Young girls are going to die.
Did you know that in China that there is a common sign written in Chinese around the lakes? The sign says,
Please do not drown your daughters in the lake.
What is that about? Are they worried that people are going to drown their daughters? No, they are worried that you are going to pollute the lake. It was recently announced that China still has a one-child policy. That is progress? Thank you Mao Tse Tung! That means if they happen to get married and are starting their family, what do you do if your first child is a girl? You take them to the lake! Do you see where this is going?
As Catholics we have to do something. Write a letter. As Cardinal O'Malley, the Cardinal of Boston, said on January 21, 2007 in Washington, D.C.,
Americans are addicted to entertainment.
Now for a pop quiz. Do you think that the normal amount of Catholics went to church this Sunday; more Catholics this Sunday or fewer Catholics this Sunday? I do not need to even pass out the paper and pencils because we know the answer. Entertainment. Can you say "SUPERBOWL?" We are addicted to entertainment. That is why so many Catholics don't go to daily Mass when daily Mass is provided. Do you know of all the graces that come from daily Mass?
In 1999, in Lourdes, there were three Cardinals celebrating Mass. We just started the Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes leading up to the Feast Day on February 11th. These three cardinals were there and they were offering Mass. They have been priests for a long time and they have been offering Mass a long time like mothers who can make breakfast in their sleep. In front of them was a large "Frisbee" sized unconsecrated host. During the Liturgy of the Eucharist, but before the Consecration it appears that the host actually levitated for many seconds.
Father motions with a piece of paper and shows about how high the host levitated. About 1 inch or so.
It elevated for a good 30 seconds and it was filmed because Cardinals were celebrating the Mass. You wouldn't want to waste your film on just priests. However the biggest miracle at the Mass was not that, but it was when Jesus changes the bread and the wine into His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. You and I can offer that Holy Communion during the week for human experiments like the ones we spoke of, but we don't.
Let us admit it, we are addicted to entertainment and it is Not just TV. It includes a whole variety of things like the SUPERBOWL. You and I not only need to write to Governor Perry but we need to pray!
Then Jesus said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a catch!
+In the Name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Transcribed by LH