Children of the Light
Sept. 23, 2007, 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Amos 8:4-7 I Timothy 2:1-8 Luke 16:1-8
To the church in the diaspora[1]
& to the church of the unchurched[2]
Alleluia, alleluia.
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke.
Glory to you, Lord.
(Lk 16:1-8)
Jesus said to his disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.’ The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes.’ He called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He replied, ‘One hundred barrels of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write fifty.’ Then to another the steward said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A thousand bushels of wheat.’ The steward said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and eight hundred.’ And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently. “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
A bishop with profound reservations
For nearly a decade, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson headed the Australian bishops’ committee that developed guidelines and procedures for dealing with clergy sex abuse. He retired in 2004 at the young age of 66 because, he said, he had “profound reservations” about the church he loved, and that was too heavy a burden to bear. He emerged from retirement last month to promote a new book and to demand `a better church.’ The book is entitled Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus.
Demanding `a better church’
In the book, the bishop says the church has not confronted the sexual abuse crisis; it is simply managing it. He reveals that he was sexually abused (although not by church personnel or a family member). He says it was not a repressed memory but was “in the attic of my mind.” It was not until he started speaking with other victims of clergy sexual abuse that he “was able to take it down [from the attic] and look at it.” He acknowledges that he cannot talk about sexual abuse dispassionately.
He also criticizes the church’s teaching on sex and sexuality ( which are based on offences against God) as outmoded and inadequate. He says that obligatory celibacy (not celibacy itself) is a problem. He sees the traditional seminaries and novitiates as unhealthy places for growth in maturity, especially if candidates are accepted at a young age.
In describing `a better church’ he calls for a redistribution of authority in the church so that collegiality (the authority of national bodies of bishops) and the sensus fidelium be more respected and heeded. In Catholic theology the sensus fidelium is the idea that the beliefs, consciences and experience of good and honest Catholics (who, let’s say, are practicing birth control) are a valid source of religious truth.
Proclaimers of certainties vs. searchers for truth
Robinson says he sees a fractured church – a church divided by proclaimers of certainties, on the one hand, and searchers for truth on the other. That, he says, has left many people feeling a sense of alienation, of being marginalized, of no longer quite belonging to the church that had given them much of their sense of belonging, meaning and direction throughout their lives. At the beginning of the weekly homily we have characterized those people as The Church of the Diaspora or The Church of the Unchurch.
“In writing the book,” the bishop says, “I became aware that I was writing a book for these people, that I was trying to tell them that there is a church for them, and that it is fully in accord with the mind of Jesus. I was telling them there are [indeed] basic certainties, but there is [also] abundant room for search….
“I became aware that it was important for many people that there should be a bishop saying these things. At moments I felt that the needs of these many people were so great that it is perhaps true that I have never been more of a shepherd, I have never been more justified in carrying around a pastoral staff, than I have in this.”
Conclusion
The dismissal: disclaim and search
Robinson’s bottom line brings us to the bottom line of the gospel today which speaks of “the children of light.” Who are children of the Light? They are disclaimers of certainties and searchers for truth! What is a “church of light”? That’s a church which disclaims its certainties about sexuality, divorce and remarriage, birth control, celibacy, ordination of women, open-Communion, etc., and goes in search for the truth.
Every Mass has a dismissal. Ite, Missa est. Go, the Mass is ended. Go and be disclaimers of your certainties so that you might be searchers of the truth.
1] Diaspora is a Greek word meaning dispersion. Originally it referred to the settling of scattered colonies of Jews outside Palestine after the Babylonian exile. It’s now come to mean the migration or scattering of a people away from an established or ancestral homeland or parish!
[2]] By the “the unchurched” is especially meant not those who have left the church but those whom the church has left!
