A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Our lord entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house, her home. Martha had a sister named Mary, and Mary seated herself at the Lord's feet to listen to his every word. On the other hand, Martha, who was busy with all the details of hospitality, came to Jesus and said to him, Lord, are you not concerned that my sister has left me all alone to do all the household tasks? Tell her to help me.
In reply, Jesus said to her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and upset about many things. Only one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part, and she shall not be deprived of it. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord. Praise be to lord of hosts.
But first of all, I want to urge you to read with greater attention than ever the our Martini Gato's letter to the for his parishioners in the bulletin for today. Please read it very seriously. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit. Amen. In every mass, well, not every mass, but every Sunday mass, we say a creed.
There are a number of creeds. I'm referring to the creed that we normally say at mass. And in that creed, we have this statement. It's not exciting. It doesn't make you sit on the end of the pew or get or your blood pressure rise.
All it says is this, we believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church. And the only unimportant word there is the word and. Let's begin it with the last one, church. Now let's get that straight.
Saint Matthew, when he refers to our lord speaking to Peter, thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church. The Greek word is ecclesia from which we get the word ecclesiastic, ecclesiastical, and all the rest. And there's no doubt what that meant in in New Testament Greek. I noticed. I'm saying New Testament Greek.
That is the Greek which Matthew used. It meant an assembly, a political assembly, a religious assembly, a congregation. And I take this from a Protestant scripture scholar, But you can verify this in any Greek lexicon. That's the word of ecclesia. Not not some kind of an idea or conception or some kind of a mythological or moral unity.
It means a congregation of human beings, physical, touchable, smellable. You can hear them hollering, shouting. That's a klesia, a physical unity. And that's the words that Saint Matthew puts in the mouth of Christ. The word one gives you problems.
What does the word one mean? Well, it it means a unity, but there can be all kinds of unity. All kinds, moral, physical, metaphysical, ontological, all the rest. But it means a unity, a oneness. Catholic simply means a Greek word for universal.
There no question about that. No question about ecclesia. No question about the word Catholic. It means universal. Ecclesia means a congregation or an assembly of people.
And the word apostolic simply means from the apostles. You can't escape that. The only word here that has any ambiguity is the word one. So we say that we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. I'm skipping the word holy this morning, not because I think it's unimportant, but it's not important for my well chosen remarks.
Now, having said that, I must confess with a great deal of regret. Re regret that that word won by many good Catholics has a very narrow application. I have met I I'm saying I'm not pulling any punches. I have met good, fervent, loyal, generous Catholics for whom the word one meant their parish. You don't meet them much anymore, but these are, say, when about forty or fifty years ago.
They identified the church with their parish. And in some instances, the church meant the pastor or the associate priest speaking from the pulpit. I'm not exaggerating. I'm sure many of you can verify this. All they had to say was father said that last week in the sermon.
That was the church. We were told I can remember this time and again. I was told as a kid that you could go any parts of the world and go to mass and be at home and recognize the Latin. That was false. It was false then and it's false now because all they were talking about was the Roman right as if the Catholic church was identified with the Roman rite, which was never true.
The Roman rite is not one of the oldest, but leave that go. Other people identify their church with the diocese. And of course, many people identify the church with their nation because we have very many of these eastern rites came up through a certain kind of nationalism. Now any of those views is wrong. The church is not a parish.
The church is not a diocese. The church is not a nation. The Catholic church is Catholic universal. Going therefore, our lord said, teach ye all nations. Baptize them.
Baptize them. And I am with you until the end of the world. And Saint John records our Lord at the last supper where our our it's a very touching scene. These are this is our our Lord's last will and and testament where Christ is saying, pray not for the world, but I pray for you that you may be one. Now the problem is what does this word one mean?
What's this unity of the Catholic church? Is it homogeneous? Is it monolithic? Is it identical in every way at all times in all places? Is it as a dear lady from Darewood wrote Friday in the Washington Post?
Is it a church that has no room at all for difference of opinion, of intellectual freedom, that it is the iron grip as she says of the church? Of course, she was speaking as a first rate feminist, but that she was applying it in other ways as you can guess. Is that the church? Absolutely monolithic without any difference of opinion? Well, I can say anyone who thinks that or or attend the meeting of the bishops of any diocese.
Look what happened in the second Vatican Council, all the discussion and differences of opinion there. Anybody who study theology, look at the differences of opinion you get there, and of all sorts, except one or two or maybe three. That the church of Christ is Christ's, that it comes to us from Christ through the apostles, and that it teaches the truth of Jesus Christ. And in that regard, the church is monolithic. The church is not free when it comes to accepting the authority of Jesus Christ.
And we are not free if we recognize Jesus Christ and turn our backs on him. That's not freedom. That's the kite whose string you cut, and the kite is destroyed. It no longer soars beautifully and magnificently. Now, that's the first point.
Christ established a visible church with an organization, some kind. Thou art Peter, he said. He didn't say that to all the 12, and he sure didn't say it to the 72, and he didn't say it to all his followers. He he said, thou, you Peter, are the rock, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell. Teach what I have told you to teach, what I have commanded you.
Notice our Peter had no freedom about that. If Christ is God and he tells you to teach what he has taught you and commanded you, you have no choice but to be like a kite attached to the string which is Jesus Christ, and then it soars magnificently and freely. The only freedom of the kite is to be tied to the string, and are the only freedom of a Christian is to be tied to Jesus Christ and not no other string. Now, our lord spoke to his 12 who who were immediately diminished by one, Judas. And we have right in the earliest days of the church.
We have differences of opinion, radical differences of opinion. Saint Paul is wandering around. There's a very great difference about whether a person coming to be a Christian has to go through Judaism. Paul said, you don't have to do it. The issue was circumcision.
What does Paul do? Remember, Paul says, I got my truth from Jesus Christ and from no man. But when this this when this conflict of opinion arose, what did Paul do? He went up to Jerusalem to consult the apostles and Peter and Peter. And who spoke for the apostles?
Peter. Now I wanna bring in another name. I'm not dropping names, but this name is important. Saint Irenaeus, which means peace, and notice where Saint Irenaeus comes from. He comes from the Southern part of France from a city named Lyon.
He dies possibly as early as a hundred and twenty, and at the latest a hundred and forty. Now notice this. It's way over here in Southern France. And he left writings that we have today without any without any controversy. And he is the bishop of lines with an organization.
And let me tell you this about Irenaeus. Remember, he's dead at the earliest a 120, at the latest a 140. He knew another gentleman named Polycarp who died in a hundred and fifty five. Polycarp knew and listened to the apostles. So that Saint Irenaeus over here in Gaul, southern part of France today, a Greek speaking, knew and listened to Polycarp who knew and listened to the apostles themselves, who knew and listened to Jesus Christ.
And here as early as the first part of the second century, we have a church of Jesus Christ organized and functioning in a southern city of France, Gaul. Think of that. Whose will was being carried out? Was the church merely a unity of thinkers, of people who agree on a common cause like a like a democratic party or a republican party or a football team? Or was it a or was it an ecclesia, a church, a a congregation organized somewhat with some kind of administration somewhat by the will of Jesus Christ?
And I appeal then to lie to the to Irenaeus there in Gaul who knew Polycarp, who knew the apostles, who knew and listened, ate, and drank, and slept with Jesus Christ, the son of God. Because if none of those statements is true, let's go out and go bowling or go do something sensible, not waste our time here in church dedicated to Jesus Christ. Now, Saint Paul comes along. Notice he he he roams all around the Mediterranean bases. He goes, first of all, to the Jews.
He goes to the Greek speaking Jews. He goes to the Gentiles. He addresses Romans. He addresses Ephesians. He addresses the Corinthians and the Galatians and the Colossians.
These are different peoples, different cultures, different languages. They had different languages. There was a universal language, but they they had their own vulgar language. And it so there were major differences even in the earliest church, the most primitive church. And yet there was a unity which looked to the apostles, which looked to Jesus Christ.
Now let's take a step into our own times. I remember very distinctly 1934 being in Paris, I and had a very dear friend there, non catholic, who what who thought they wanted to be a catholic of a sort. To be a catholic but not a roman catholic. She made it her business to discover in Paris various Catholic churches fully united with Rome where she went daily to mass, whatever word they used for. They used different words, of course, different languages.
In one week, five days, I went to a different Catholic church every morning where I tell you I would not recognize anything practically. They were so different. So different. The language, the rituals, the liturgy, everything totally different. See what I mean?
When they told me that you could reckon be at home in any Catholic church in any parts of world, I challenge anybody to do this and and believe it. In other words, in our own day, in our own and that hasn't changed since 1934. We have rights in the Catholic church which are extremely different, one from another, and yet are all truly, authentically Catholic, apostolic. Now that's not just my opinion. Listen to what Vatican two said about what we call the Eastern rites.
And that's one of the decrees of Vatican two on the eastern rites. Here we're talking about the churches such as the Armenian, the Byzantine, the Balabar, Maronite, just to mention a few. It's a very, very complex, confused picture, believe me. But this in the very first, this is the opening sentence of Vatican two speaking about these eastern rites whose diversity I cannot exaggerate, but whose unity I cannot exaggerate of being from Christ through the apostles, through their bishops. And no bishop is a saint until he's in heaven.
The church of Christ is made up of sinners aiming to be sinners. Interesting. What's that? Now, Vatican two said this about the Eastern rites. The Catholic church holds in high esteem the Eastern churches, their liturgical rites, their ecclesiastical traditions, their Christian way of life, and their traditions handed down from the apostles through the church fathers, they form part of the divinely revealed and undivided heritage of the universal, the Greek word Catholic church.
That's the opening sentence. So they're Catholic, but very different and yet very much the same. You see, I wanna bring to your attention a magazine. It's the only one that I know of all the publications, at least in the languages I can handle, that has any pretension to be Catholic. And that's called thirty days.
Thirty days. It originates in Italy. It's published in two Spanish versions. It's published in French, Portuguese, and in The United States Of America, American English. It has a universal aspect.
I think it's on our stand. It's called thirty days. That that gives you some idea of of the vision of what it is to be a Catholic, the diversity and the unity in the Catholic church. Now very recently, an article from a Canadian magazine called Challenge came to my attention, published in June 1989. And it the article was about the the church in Africa.
How strong, how diverse, how alive and vital it is. And it, as I could gather, leans heavily upon an article which appeared in the London Economist around May or June in which the London Economist, that's a very prestigious magazine and is not attached to any church, believe me, says that the hope of the world lies in the third world. I said third world. That's the view of the London economist. Anyway, I this article from Winnipeg, Canada was extremely informing And I wanna draw just one little point from it.
And that is what it says about Zaire, which as you know was the Belgian Congo, which then became the Democratic Republic Of The Congo. But then in 1971, because they wanted to be, as they say, culturally authentic, they changed it to Zaire. Now the word I wanna strike there is culturally authentic because the Catholic church is very strong in Zaire. The London economist, rather the a man named Barrett, David Barrett, who who wrote a book published recently by the Oxford University Press on churches. He says that in 1900 in all of Africa, all of Africa, the Christians who were mostly Roman Catholics and Coptics, they're in schism, but that's one of the eastern rites, numbered about 10,000,000.
In 1985, they numbered 285,000,000. And Barrett says that by the year 2000, the Christians in Africa will be about 400,000,000. 400,000,000. Now he said this he the Canadian article, Challenge, says about Zaire. He says a lot about it, but I I wanted to understand.
They have more priests than they can use, and they have a waiting they have a waiting list for women to get into the convent. A waiting list. In one instance, takes six oh, nearly six years. I said years. You see what's happening in USA.
Now the one single little point I want to make is this. I rest my case upon this article. It's all I know about it. I'm no authority on Zaire. I'm not sure that pronunciation is correct.
In this inculturalization campaign which meant changing the name to Zaire to be more authentically African. Some of these great church leaders just as we have them here, and I'm talking about so called Catholics, wanted instead of using wine which is Mediterranean and is European and is white and not African, they wanted to use their own type of beer, b double e r. Instead of using the white unleavened bread for the wafer, they wanted to use some kind of very native bread. Now what was the reaction of these good hard hitting people of Zaire? They said, Nicks.
Nicks. Now my that's a tiny little point. I don't wanna exaggerate it. But what I do wanna say is this, that the Catholic church is universal. Meaning it it can adapt to all peoples.
It can work with any culture, but it is still the church of Christ through the apostles, through the bishops. And if it's not bound to Christ, who wants it? That becomes simply a tool, an instrument of the state, which it has become in many instances. Now, it's one it's an easy thing and it's being said, as I said, is are in the letter columns in in the in the Friday paper. This dear lady from Darewood says that the church, the iron grip of the church I have an opponent someplace.
Refers to this iron grip of the church, refers to the church lacking all freedom, no opinion, that is utterly contradicted by facts. But when the the bottom line is this, that the church didn't begin by a with a consensus. It didn't begin by counting heads. It didn't begin by taking a gallop poll. It did not begin on a democratic basis.
The word wasn't even known in in Israel. It didn't begin with any of that. It began with Jesus Christ, the son of God. And he speaks today not in any book alone or exclusively. Christ didn't leave us a book.
He left us his command to go and teach all nations. Teaching them too what I have commanded you. And as that living voice that counts, it may be expressed in all kinds of languages. It may adapt itself to all kinds of cultures, to all kinds, and it has done it. It's a fact.
It's history. But it cannot change its relationship to the son of God without being a Judas, and that the church will never be. In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.