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Business-related work oftentimes requires me to fly to Chicago, my
hometown. If I have time, I take a drive back to “Westgate,” the
neighborhood where I grew up as a youngster. Although the
trees are much more mature, not much has changed in the old
neighborhood where a gaggle of youngsters once ran around the
neighborhood every day after school and every summer day (that is,
until the first streetlight came on at sunset). In the summer, we
played baseball, climbed the jungle gym, and went swimming in the
only above-the-ground backyard pool. In the winter, we built igloos
and had great snowball fights. We also enjoyed constructing rocket
ships out of refrigerator and furniture boxes. We actually believed
those rocket ships would take us to the moon!
For me, that was a great time of life, about which the Roman poet
Ovid wrote in the first line of his classic Metamorphoses,
“The golden age came first.” Yes, those were the days spent in an
ideal time and place, populated with tons of pals, and where the
“neighbor ladies”—like Mrs. Baschlaben, Mrs. Twigg, Mrs. McCall,
Mrs. Mrozinski, and Mrs. Freitag—watched out for us, just in case we
got ourselves into trouble. Like the day my brother was cutting out
windows for the spaceship we were constructing and impaled 3 inches
of a 9-inch meat carving knife into my cranium.
It was great to be able to grow up in and, now, to return to such a
neighborhood—to have experienced Ovid’s “the golden age came
first.” It’s a time called “kid-dom” and I believe it’s something
every kid deserves. It’s an experience that provides a young person
a solid foundation for life—giving that young person hope—so that,
when life’s realities come crashing down (as they inevitably will),
there’s always that ideal place to recall which re-kindles those
feelings of hope and spurs human beings onward to better days and
places. Without hope, it’s so very easy for people to see nothing
but darkness, to give in to feelings of dejection, and to believe
that life is some kind of cruel joke.
Sadly, that’s what is happening to too many of our young people.
Last spring, I was shocked to discover that only 2 of my 30 freshmen
students even knew what “kid-dom” was. The other 28 had no
experience of it. Instead, they spent their youthful days in day
care, at pre-school, in school, and attending after-school care.
Even when they were home, everything was planned and scheduled for
them, things like soccer practice, music lessons, tutoring, etc.
“Day planners” and
“PDA’s” ruled their lives.
They didn’t have a clue about what constitutes kid-dom. Furthermore
instead of learning what love and forgiveness means from their
parents, 40% of those students have concluded that divorce is just
another fact of life because “I do…” means “If…” Perhaps even worse
yet, many young people can’t trust even a priest because, well, you
just can never be sure today as a result of the scandal caused by
those priests who have preyed on young people. (None of my students
indicated that they had been abused by a priest.)
When “the golden age that came first” goes up in smoke, how does a
young person learn to have hope if it can’t be learned from one’s
parents or priests?
It’s probably impossible. But, the answer is not for young people
to decry not having an idealized past but to strive toward an
idealized future, the place Jesus spoke about in today’s gospel when
he said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled….In my Father’s house
there are many dwelling places….so that where I am you also may be.
Where I am going you know the way.”
That idealized place is not like Westgate—that “place from which we
come”—but the fulfillment of our deepest hope—the “place toward
which” our hearts yearn. As Christians, we will arrive at that
place—the “golden age that comes last” not first—by following Jesus,
who called himself “the way, the truth, and the life.”
Today, I would like to focus upon the second of those three items,
“the truth.” The reason is because Pope Benedict XVI—since before
his elevation to the papacy—has spoken eloquently about and has
challenged Catholics worldwide, and especially in the United States,
to be aware of what he has called a “dictatorship of relativism”
whose sole purpose is to destroy hope in young people so they will
see nothing but darkness, give in to feelings of dejection, and
believe that their lives are nothing more than a cruel joke.
What is “relativism” and this “dictatorship of relativism” which the
Holy Father believes is menacing our young people?
Relativism is the belief that there is no such thing as “truth.” By
reducing “truth” to “opinion,” relativists seek to advance the notion
that all opinions—because, after all, that’s all they are—are of equal and
legitimate value.
For example, there is no truth about the sanctity of human life from
conception to natural death. Relativists—many Catholics among
them—assert there are many
equally valid opinions about human life as well as when it begins
and ends. To be pro-life or pro-choice is merely to express one’s
opinion, nothing more. The success of the dictatorship of
relativism is amply evident in the number of people today who are of
the opinion that it is absolutely wrong for pro-lifers to assert
their opinions about the sanctity of life in public places.
They ask: “Why won’t Catholics just keep their opinions to
themselves?”
Likewise, there is no such thing as religious truth. Relativists
assert that there only are those who firmly hold religious
opinions—calling these people “rigid fundamentalists”—and those who
reject religious opinions—calling these people “enlightened.” The
dictatorship of relativism evidences itself in the number of people
who fear criticizing another person’s religious opinions because
they will be told that they are foisting narrow and bigoted opinion
upon others. “Why can’t we just all get along by agreeing to
disagree?” relativists ask.
See how relativism seeks to dictate how people are to live their
lives? See how relativism seeks to squelch dissent? See how the
truth suffers as a result of ideologues projecting their
closed-mindedness upon others?
Following the death of Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
was selected to preside over the interregnum until the election of a
new Holy Father. In that role, Cardinal Ratzinger addressed the
College of Cardinals and said:
Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is
often labeled as “fundamentalism.” Whereas relativism, that is,
letting oneself be “tossed here and there, carried about by every
wind of doctrine,” seems the only attitude that can cope with modern
times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not
recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists
solely of one’s own ego and desires.
This “dictatorship of relativism” is blatantly anti-Christian in
that it denies Jesus is the “truth.” “We…have a different goal: the
Son of God, the true man,” Cardinal Ratzinger said. Then he added:
[Jesus Christ] is the measure of true humanism. An “adult” faith is
not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest
novelty; [no,] a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship
with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is
good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from
the false, and deceit from truth.
What the dictatorship of relativism would have us all do is to make
ourselves the measure of what it means to be human, especially what
this means in terms of how we
“feel” about moral issues. But, by so
doing, we would have no criterion by which to criticize anything as
true or false or anyone as right or wrong.
That simply is false. Divorce is wrong just as is abusing young
people. Both deny truth. Husbands and wives have promised to love,
honor, and obey each other all the days of their lives. Priests
have promised to practice celibacy for the sake of God’s kingdom.
When spouses or priests give in to the “dictatorship of relativism”
and make themselves and their desires the measure of truth, other
people—their children and their parishioners lose hope. Only by
living the truth—who is Jesus Christ—are we set free by God’s grace
to experience the theological virtue called
“hope.”
As you all are well aware, the Holy Father has undertaken a pastoral
visit to our nation the past four days. On Thursday afternoon at
the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, Pope Benedict
spoke again about “truth.” He said: “Truth….means more than
knowledge: knowing the truth leads us to discover the good. Truth
speaks to the individual in his or her entirety, inviting us to
respond with our whole being.” As the truth, Jesus speaks not just
to our minds or our hearts but to our entire being, the Holy Father
said. That’s our body, our mind, and our soul, not as “parts of
whole” but as a “whole and entire being.”
Hope springs from the abiding belief in something much better, the
place for which we yearn—mind, body, and soul—with great
expectation. Hope isn’t about yesterday or today nor is hope about
how I feel. No, hope is about tomorrow and what Christians believe
is the way, the truth, and the life to that tomorrow. It’s the
experience of the family gathering at the 50th anniversary party of
the one-time newlyweds now called “Grandma and Grandpa” or
parishioners and former-parishioners celebrating mass with the now
elderly, white-haired priest who baptized their children, forgave
their sins, gave them First Holy Communion, married them, and buried
their friends and relatives. Experiences like these quicken hope in
young people and lead them to conclude that there is a “better way”
and, grasping that truth, long to experience that kind of
fulfillment in life.
Today we confront a “crisis of truth,” Pope Benedict XVI said at
Catholic University of America, one rooted in a “crisis of faith”
which is distorting the notion of freedom. There are things we may
not do because there is a right and a wrong. Just because we may
not like something—like being virtuous—that doesn’t mean we are free
to opt out of being virtuous. “Freedom is not an opting out,” the
Pope said. “It is an opting in—a participation in Being itself.
Hence authentic freedom can never be attained by turning away from
God. Such a choice would ultimately disregard the very truth we
need in order to understand ourselves.” None of us can understand
ourselves or our lives if we do not, first, understand ourselves as
having been created in the image and likeness of God. “Account for
the hope that characterizes your lives (cf. 1 Pet 3:15) by living
the truth….,” the Pope concluded.
For Christians, Ovid’s
golden age doesn’t
come first.
No, the golden age comes last in that place where Jesus has gone to
prepare a place for each of his disciples.
To live the truth each day engenders in us hope in that place and in
that future. As we devote ourselves to the truth and respond to it
by growing spiritually—what I call “the kid-dom of God’s
kingdom”—what we will become is what we hope for. Yes, the
dictatorship of relativism would like us to believe that life is
nothing more than a “cruel joke.” But, for people of hope,
life a wonderful miracle of God’s grace whose fulfillment is found
in Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled….,”
Jesus said to his disciples, “you
know the way.”
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HOMILY
