Homily

The Contra Costa Times newspaper of northern California recently ran an article with the headline, "San Ramon Woman to Be Ordained Priest, Angering Catholic Church." She must be, I thought, one powerful woman if she can make the Catholic Church angry. She is quoted as saying, "We feel the call by God, and God for us is a higher authority." There was another article recently about a woman in Louisville, KY who claimed she, too, was ordained as a Catholic priest. The article stated she would be excommunicated if she was ordained "outside of Vatican law." I don't know what Vatican law is, but I suspect if you're in Vatican City State and you break it, you'll be arrested. No, she, like the other woman, would be excommunicated for pretending to celebrate a sacrament. What does this woman say about excommunication? "It has no sting for me. It is a medieval bullying stick the bishops used to use to keep control over people and keep the voices of woman silent. I am way beyond letting 80 year old men tell us how to live our lives." She is 70 years old. She only has 10 more years of reliable preaching left.

If anyone is unclear about so-called women's ordinations, please know that Pope John Paul II declared that, because of the example set by Christ, and His apostles, and the constant understanding of the Church on this subject for 2,000 years, the Church is not able to ordain women. And, of course, it is not just the Catholic Church that holds to this understanding. All the ancient Christian Churches that have a valid priesthood believe the same thing. It is only in Protestantism that you find a different opinion, but there is no valid priesthood in Protestantism.

Now I ask you how crazy is this idea, when a woman says, "I am ordained a Catholic priest. The only problem is that the Catholic Church says I am not a Catholic priest." Why can't I say that I too am a Dalai Lama? And then I would have charged you all $20.00 for tickets to hear me speak today. But, alas, I don't look good in orange.

I bring up these women because of the question of authority. Who has the authority to decide who may, or who shall become deacons, priests, and bishops in the Catholic Church? Is it the Church itself, or is it the individual members, or even a group of them, or even a very large group of them?

The Arian heresy in the early 4th Century taught that Jesus was not truly God, equal to the Father, but that he was created by the Father. Although He was not just a normal man, He certainly was not fully divine. So the Emperor Constantine called a council at Nicea, not far from Constantinople, for all the bishops to come together in 325 A. D., to settle this question. After much discussion and prayer the Council declared that the Arian teaching was not the faith of the Church and that Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son, became man without change for our salvation and was equal in divinity to His Father. Naturally most of the Arian believers refused to accept the authority of the Council and continued to disrupt the life of the Church for a long time. In his farewell address to the leaders of the Church in Ephesus we heard St. Paul today warn them that there would be wolves that would come in to attack their flock. This has been proven true for the Church in every century, and of course in our own, and even in San Ramon and Louisville there are those who reject the authority of the Church and live and act under their own "superior" understanding of the Gospel of Christ and His Church. So I would ask the one woman, "If a male bishop, who was 45 years old, let you talk as much as you wanted, and did not excommunicate you, would you still obey him if he told you that you were not truly ordained? What would be your guess?

So the council of Nicea, the sad case of these two women, they all point to the question of authority and truth. It is only if one is speaking the truth that one has the authority to call others to believe in it.

So then where do we look for truth? Where do we think that it can be found? It's not a question you have probably asked yourself lately, but these are important questions if we want our lives to be guided, directed and enlightened by knowing what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. How do we come to know these things? When was the last time you considered the source of your knowledge and how well you were listening to it and living according to it?

We heard in Jesus' prayer in today's Gospel, that He taught the apostles all the truth about Him, and His Father, and the Holy Spirit, and as we will celebrate next Sunday on Pentecost, these apostles, the foundation stones of Christ's Church, taught and preached this truth and so has the Church from the very beginning through the Council of Nicea, down to today. The authority of the Church does not come from me giving it authority. It comes from Christ Himself. It comes from the fact that it teaches, preaches and preserves the truth of Christ. I can accept it, or reject it, but I cannot change it.

This understanding does not sit well with many people in modern Western societies. It's thought to be foolish to give yourself over to any one authority and accept that teaching as true. Not only is it foolish but it is extremely inconvenient when you want to do something different from what that authority says is good, proper and moral. So better you decide for yourself, all the time, and everywhere what you want to do, and what you thinks is right or wrong. Who can be smarter than you? Who can be wiser than you? Who can know the mind of Christ better than you? How is it that those who raise their children with the philosophy that somebody knows better than they do, become adults who think nobody knows better than I do?

To hear the voice of the Church is to hear the voice of Christ. To belong to the Church is to be members of the Body of Christ. To be sanctified through the life of the Church is to be prepared to be with Christ for eternity. The Church is not, as you will often see or hear from the media, some kind of political organization that operates in strange and mysterious ways as it tries to keep oppressed and shackled people from claiming their rightful rights and their equal equalities. To hear the Church, love the Church, obey the Church, learn from the Church and be fed by the Church is to hear, love, obey, learn and be fed by Christ. Dear friends, how shall we now, where shall we now, find the truth that will guide our lives in every way? It's a vitally important decision. Let us not make it by default, but by our clear and direct choosing.