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MLK sermon (abortion)
Jan. 14th, 2007 02:47 pmAt Mass today, we had the new head pastor running the service for the first time. He was a little over-the-top in his enunciations - we've decided to give him the nickname "Father Shatner", to go along with "Father Rabbi" and "the Irish guy" for our other two priests - but he gave a remarkable sermon today. I'll try to paraphrase and summarize it, as much as I can.
He started out by noting that today, there's a movement to try and get churches to stop involving themselves in societal issues, usually under the rubric of "separation of church and state." While he respects that a certain separation is a necessary and beneficial aspect of our system, a lot of folks seem to have amnesia about the role that churches played in the civil rights movement, for example that many of the leaders of that movement were reverends and church leaders...and that without the involvement of the churches, the advancements that MLK and the civil rights movement made possible may well not have happened as soon, if at all. He noted that locally, the archbishop of Washington at that time was one of the leaders in desegregation of the church school system, almost a decade before Brown vs. Board of Education.
He reminded everyone that fifty years ago, in the same church we were in, blacks and whites celebrated Mass together, but black parishioners were expected to sit in the back pews. It wasn't because the people back then were evil, it was just "how things were done." It was a reflection of the larger society, where such segregation was taken for granted, again, "just how things are today."
This led into the core statement of his sermon. Just as we had to fight against the prejudice back then that a certain kind of person was somehow subhuman and not worthy of full human rights because of their race, today we need to fight against the view that another segment of society is somehow subhuman and not worthy of the rights we now take for granted, because of their age; that segment is the unborn. If we are committed as followers of Christ to supporting human rights whatever the color, creed, nationality, or religion of the person, he went on, we cannot make an exception over the most fundamental of human rights: namely, the right to exist.
It was a very strong statement to make, and I expect many folks were uncomfortable with it. However, I did respect the guts it took to get up there and make an unapologetic defense of the Church's stance on an issue, having sat through far too many dial-it-in, lets-just-love-everybody-all-the-time-like-Jesus-did sermons.
He started out by noting that today, there's a movement to try and get churches to stop involving themselves in societal issues, usually under the rubric of "separation of church and state." While he respects that a certain separation is a necessary and beneficial aspect of our system, a lot of folks seem to have amnesia about the role that churches played in the civil rights movement, for example that many of the leaders of that movement were reverends and church leaders...and that without the involvement of the churches, the advancements that MLK and the civil rights movement made possible may well not have happened as soon, if at all. He noted that locally, the archbishop of Washington at that time was one of the leaders in desegregation of the church school system, almost a decade before Brown vs. Board of Education.
He reminded everyone that fifty years ago, in the same church we were in, blacks and whites celebrated Mass together, but black parishioners were expected to sit in the back pews. It wasn't because the people back then were evil, it was just "how things were done." It was a reflection of the larger society, where such segregation was taken for granted, again, "just how things are today."
This led into the core statement of his sermon. Just as we had to fight against the prejudice back then that a certain kind of person was somehow subhuman and not worthy of full human rights because of their race, today we need to fight against the view that another segment of society is somehow subhuman and not worthy of the rights we now take for granted, because of their age; that segment is the unborn. If we are committed as followers of Christ to supporting human rights whatever the color, creed, nationality, or religion of the person, he went on, we cannot make an exception over the most fundamental of human rights: namely, the right to exist.
It was a very strong statement to make, and I expect many folks were uncomfortable with it. However, I did respect the guts it took to get up there and make an unapologetic defense of the Church's stance on an issue, having sat through far too many dial-it-in, lets-just-love-everybody-all-the-time-like-Jesus-did sermons.
