Into Exile?

Thus says the Lord: Do what is right and just. Rescue the victims from the hand of their oppressors. Do not wrong or oppress the resident alien, the orphan, or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. If you carry out these commands, kings who succeed to the throne of David will continue to enter the gates of this house, riding in chariots or mounted on horses, with their ministers, and their people. But if you do not obey these commands, I swear by myself—oracle of the Lord: this house shall become rubble. (Jeremiah 22:3–5)

When I do my morning readings and study, sometimes the different books line up and discuss one theme in different ways. When that happens, it gives an interesting perspective on that theme. Lately, the theme coming up has been the times of Jeremiah and his warnings of coming disaster for the Jews. The Jews of the time thought of their problems as an external threat arbitrarily imposed on them for the wrongdoing of others. One of the kings even asked Jeremiah to intervene with God to prevent disaster… an attitude that showed that he did not even grasp the cause.

Jeremiah made clear that the disaster was unavoidable and the fault of the Jews themselves, not others, or other segments of the population. Everyone had fallen into corruption and had earned the coming wrath. Superficially keeping the law would not save them when their attitude was what kept them far from God.

I think of this as I watch Catholics in this country respond to the disasters afflicting us. Regardless of what side one falls under on the political divide, we sense that dark times are imminent, but we think that it is the fault of others. Whether the “others” are from a different political faction, a different country, a different religion, or whatever you prefer, we assume that our current woes are on account if them, and if they would only act as we see best, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

The prophets were clear that this was not the case. Ezekiel 18:1-4, for example, had this prophecy about that assumption:

The word of the LORD came to me: Son of man, what is the meaning of this proverb you recite in the land of Israel: 

“Parents eat sour grapes, 
but the children’s teeth are set on edge”? 

As I live—oracle of the Lord GOD: I swear that none of you will ever repeat this proverb in Israel. For all life is mine: the life of the parent is like the life of the child, both are mine. Only the one who sins shall die! 

In other words, if we are undergoing a national crisis, the wrong attitude to take is “It’s somebody else’s fault.”

We need to flash forward to the year 2020. We are a nation laid low by a plague, and we are facing an election that feels like it was described in Isaiah 3:4-5. All of us—Catholics included—are acting as if we are immaculate and whatever fault exists for our trials belong elsewhere, even as we act unjustly in our own way.

We have excuses of course. We say that “Yes, the Church teaching on X is important but, in these times, we must focus on Y instead.” The problem is, we all too often have no intention of doing anything to correct the injustice of X, even if we feel perturbed by it. We decide we do not want to risk what we have by doing anything that might cause harm to it. So, we hypocritically condemn others for their failures to follow Catholic teaching and explain away our own failures. Both factions are quite proud of the fact that they follow the rules better than the other side. But let us remember the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1867 The catechetical tradition also recalls that there are “sins that cry to heaven”: the blood of Abel, the sin of the Sodomites, the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt, the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan, injustice to the wage earner.

If we turn a blind eye to the sins our faction is guilty of committing or tolerating, while condemning the other side for violating God’s law, we are hypocrites and earn condemnation ourselves. So, before we point fingers at the other side for their evils and congratulate ourselves for our “virtues,” let us ask ourselves if we too are guilty in the eyes of God. I say that because, the Catechism of the Catholic Church also warns us:

1860 Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest. (Emphasis added).

We who are Catholics should also remember the teaching of Vatican II. Because we belong to the Church established by Christ and possessing the fullness of His teachings; because we can avail ourselves of the graces He provides through it, we are without excuses if we live against or turn our back on these teachings.

All the Church’s children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.

We should keep that in mind. While our fellow Catholics might be sinning differently than us, that does not negate our own sins against God and our fellow man. I think this is where Our Lord’s teaching on judgment really applies:

Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye. (Matthew 7:3–5)

If, in 2020, we condemn the other side while “being comfortable” with our own vote^* or political platform, then we have a log in our eye. The failure of the major factions to fix the evils they are complicit in means we should not call our preferred faction “good.” At best we can call it “less evil,” and need to reform it even as we oppose the evils of the other side.

Otherwise, we share in the evil and will answer for it… quite possibly facing the equivalent of the exile that the prophets warned the ancient Israelites about.

 

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(*) as one “personally opposed but…” voter told me when trying to justify her opposition to ending legalized abortion..