Faithful Despite the Sinners: Homily for the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time

31^st Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                   November 5, 2023
Fr. Alexander Albert                                                               St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette

In the early 1500s, the pope was Julius II. He was known as the “warrior-pope” because he didn’t just have an army, he rode into battle with them, personally leading the charge. He also died of syphilis… which tells you something about his lack of integrity. Scandalous.

In the late 800s, the pope was Sergius III. Reports say that he got there by hiring someone to kill the previous two popes. Awful.

In the early 1000s, Benedict IX was pope 3 different times, starting at the age of 12. He resigned, forced his way back in, resigned again, tried one more time, and finally gave it up for good. He was able to do all this using family connections and bribery. Horrible.

Those are striking examples, but there are other murderers, liars, womanizers, and racists throughout history who became pope. I know this, yet I unashamedly remain Catholic and serve as a priest. I have no problem asserting that the Catholic Church is the one, true Church established by Jesus Christ and protected from ever losing the truth.

Now, those stories of terrible popes probably should shock. We ought to be appalled by such egregious failures in those called to represent Jesus Christ. But why bring them up? Because if I don’t you’ll probably hear stories like them from someone else with less helpful motives. That, and to give you perspective. If you think corruption in the Church is bad now, it helps to see when we’ve had it worse.

If you take to heart my call to evangelize from last week – I hope you do – you will find yourself confronted with objections like this. Our increasingly post-Christian world means you might face these objections even if you keep your faith to yourself. If, as we teach, the Catholic Church is the one true Church and is led and protected by God, then it is not surprising that people will want to point out ways in which the Church does not seem to live up to those claims.

To be clear, the Church does not say other Christians or even other religions have no truth at all – most get something right. Our belief is that Jesus Christ revealed himself to the world, chose his Apostles, established the Church, and then left a certain amount of truth with that Church as a kind of sacred “deposit,” like in a bank. Our teaching is that none of that deposit will be lost. The Truth will not change even if our comprehension of it does. Other faiths might have parts of the truth – sometimes they even see and live those parts out more clearly that we do, but the Church still has the fullness of that truth.

Still, unlike most other variations of Christianity, Catholicism also teaches that we should obey legitimate leaders even when they are terrible people. Why do we say that? Because of this Gospel. Jesus tells his followers that, because the Pharisees “have taken their seat on the chair of Moses,” they should “do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example.”

Jesus is God. He knew that when Christianity fulfilled Judaism, Christian leaders would make the same mistakes as the Jewish ones they replaced. Yet, he still gave his authority to human beings, told us that rejecting them means rejecting him, and promised to never let the gates of hell prevail against the Church led by these men and their successors.

Evangelize people long enough… live as a Catholic long enough, and someone will use the “terrible popes” argument on you. They’ll say things like, “if the Catholic Church is the one, true church, how come this pope did that terrible thing?” Or they’ll just default to the easy target of “what about those abuser priests? If your leaders are so wicked, then they must be wrong.” And you know what? That objection works pretty dang well. Probably half of all the ex-Catholics I’ve talked to use some version of this argument.

So, how can we respond? With compassion for those who have been hurt obviously. At some point, however, we need to attend to Jesus’ own words. The cliché that “God draws straight with crooked lines” isn’t wrong. St. Paul’s letter in the 2^nd reading tells us that in “receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God.” What matters most is not the messenger, but God working through and even despite them. This is also a consolation for when we find ourselves feeling unworthy to proclaim the gospel to others – he overcomes our sins too.

We Catholics don’t put our hope in human beings, but in the promises of God. It just so happens that God promises to work through human beings. Thankfully, many of them are decent enough and a fair number are outright saints. The horror stories really are in the minority. Still, I’m Catholic not because I think Church leaders are perfect, but because God is perfect and he promised to never let the His Church lose the truth. We want others to become Catholic for that reason.

As awful as those popes I described were, do you know what they didn’t do? Destroy the Catholic Church. The Church is still going. They also didn’t cause us to lose the truth. The deposit of faith is intact. But every church that broke away from the pope – even if their disgust was understandable – ended up losing pieces of the truth. There are Christians denominations that deny the Trinity or the Divinity of Jesus. The Sacraments, Books of the bible, the Ten Commandments, the very meaning of man, woman, and marriage – name an essential Christian teaching and you will find a denomination that rejects it.

This does excuse the sins of Church leaders or make them immune to justice. This does not mean that anyone can tell you to commit what you know is a sin. This does not mean that every word the pope utters is Church teaching or somehow guaranteed to be true.

It simply means that God’s promise is greater than human weakness. I don’t blame people for being disgusted or outraged or confused by the sins of Church leaders past or present. I join them in praying and, where possible, working for such wicked people to face appropriate justice. Indeed, most of the Gospel is actually a warning to them and to me about not becoming that kind of stumbling block.

Sometimes we can see how being obedient to a bad pope, bishop, or priest pays off in the end, sometimes we can’t. We shouldn’t pretend it’s always obvious. Sometimes it’s easy to see the difference between legitimate authority and the abuse of that authority – it’s obvious that protecting predators is an illegitimate use of authority and we should disobey any orders that do that. Sometimes, it’s not obvious where the line is and we shouldn’t pretend it is. Nonetheless, we do know that Jesus keeps his promises – “In you, Lord, I have found my peace.” So, do not to give more power to the sins of men than to the promises of God! And when faced with others who have objections like these, I pray you answer them likewise. After all, Catholicism is no clever formula devised by men. Our faith does make sense… but it also makes sense that it does not depend on our ideas and arguments. Because that’s just it, authentic Catholicism is a living, striving faith in “the word of God now at work within you who believe.” Thanks be to God, that Word is stronger than any sin.