A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. As our lord was casting out a devil, somebody in the crowd said, it is by Beelzebub, the prince of devils, that he cast out devils. Others in the crowd to test Jesus said to were demanding of him a sign from heaven. Because Jesus knew their thoughts, he said to the crowd, every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste. Any house torn by dissension falls, crumbles, is destroyed.
Now if Satan is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? Since you say it is by that I cast out devils. If I cast out devils by Beelzebub, by who do your people cast them out? In such a case, let them act as your judges. But if it is by the finger of god that I cast out devils, then the reign of god is upon you.
That's a conclusion of a real good solid Aristotelian syllogism. And then our lord continued, when a strong man fully armed guards his con his courtyard, his home, his possessions go undisturbed. But when somebody stronger than he comes along and overpowers him, such a one carries off the arms on which he was relying and divides up the spoils. The man, our lord continues, the man who is not with me is against me, and the man who does not gather with me scatters. When an unclean spirit has gone out of a man, it wanders to arid wastes searching for a resting place.
Failing to find one, it says to itself, I will go back where I came from. It then returns to find the house all swept and tidied up. Next, it goes out and returns with seven other spirits far worse than itself. Now it's a total of eight. And they all enter into the house, and all of them dwell there.
The result is, our lord concludes, that the last state of that man is worse than his first. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. The word dissension comes up in today's gospel reading, and many people equate that with differences. They ain't the same at all.
I never will forget in my misspent youth having a professor. We spent a year on well, we spent two years studying Newman. And he had spent a little bit of time over in in a Benedictine Abbey. He when he thought he was gonna be an English Benedictine monk. And in the course of his stay there, this is my English professor talking, It it be it fell to the lot of one of the monks in the course of his reading at the meals, as in every decent self respecting monastery you have reading at meals.
It's one way of keeping fraternal charity, had the occasion to criticize publicly in the in the abbot's own monastery a book that the abbot had just published. And dear old father Rhine, doctor doctor Rhine, dead, held that up as an example of how you can have an honest scholar publicly criticizing his own abbot in the abbot's own monastery and yet not in the least have broken the bonds of charity. And doctor Ryan's point was you have to be civilized to do that. Civilized. Not enormously holy or a Catholic or just civilized.
And that's where we today are so uncivilized. Let me give you I could give you millions of instances. I mean millions. And let's go to the United States government budget and say billions. You know, it's just as easy to say billions as millions.
You're spending somebody else's money. You take this issue of abortion. I never say this, but plenty of people do, and they're correct. I don't say it because it's it it irritates people, because they somehow or other, people don't like to be called murderers. There's a certain, bias against the term, you understand.
It's like saying you're ignorant. Mustn't use that word. Inevitably, if anybody gets up and and speaks speaks to an audience, I don't care what religion they are, none religion, and speaks of abortion as murder, immediately, somebody stands up and says, then you're accusing all women who have had abortions as murderers? Notice how they use the the feminine pronoun there, which I think is not I mean, noun, which I think is nice. And that's not the issue at all.
You see, people today have lost their intellectual perception of being able to distinguish something from a person or the subject of the thing. They have lost because today we've lost our power of distinction, because we've lost our power of intellect. Are living in a very irrational era where all you count is feeling, feeling. People by and large, I'm speaking from unhappy experience. They confuse themselves.
It's not my fault if they confuse themselves, but they confuse themselves because they can't they don't take the time or whatever be the reason of distinguishing between the thing you're talking about and the person or the subject of the thing you're talking about. They can't see the difference or they don't wanna see the difference or they do not see the difference between saying that action is murder and saying the agent is a murderer. It's the same see, I don't know where I can't justify this, but years and years and years ago, more than I like to count, I picked this up. That small minds talk about things, mediocre minds talk about persons, superior minds talk about ideas. And after eighty nearly eighty six years in this veil of tears, which has had a lot of sunlight, I can only say amen to that, brethren.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Just to this day, just listen to the conversation of people around you. See how little they talk about ideas.
They don't talk about abortion. They talk about women's rights. Right to privacy, for example, when that is not the issue. Now what I wanna lay before you people today, civilized people can differ without lack of charity. Saint Thomas Aquinas says this.
They're they're almost his exact words. Although the poor ignoramus didn't speak English, I've I've always forgiven you for that. This is a terribly important point. I'm talking about families. I'm talking about our own personal lives.
There is nothing uncharitable in having a difference of opinion. Look how people right now can differ on this issue of Haiti. It all depends on the authorities you read. I had this experience yesterday. And, of course, emotions come into it, but civilized people try to keep an issue separate from personalities.
They try to talk about ideas, not about personalities. Whether a woman who has an abortion is a murderer, don't know. I don't have to know. I have no responsibility of having any ideas on it at all. That's between her and god, and also between all of those who cooperated in that abortion.
Keep that in mind. I'm talking about an idea. Is abortion right or wrong, moral or immoral or whatever? But today, you can't keep an argument on that basis. It always comes back to personalities.
And this is what happens in households. People start with an issue, and they wind up by talking about their grandparents or their in laws or something. It's a mark of civilization to be able to differ, as Saint Thomas says, without he didn't say mark of civilization. I'm saying that. Ryan said that.
The point is it is a mark of being being civilized, being a gentleman or a gentlewoman, to be able to differ without having any kind of a break in one's relationship with the other person. Now I know what I'm saying. I remember people who knew who fought in the civil war. When you were in the when you were up in Gettysburg and it was possible your brother was on the other side, it's very difficult to see how you could be shooting at him at the same time loving him. It is possible if you're civilized.
But war, of course, is not civilized. And so this our lord today talking about dissension. Don't equate that with differences of opinion. You see, today, we are in a world where everything is love and beauty, tranquility, and all of that nonsense, and it doesn't correspond with the front page of your of your newspaper even. It's that unreal, and it's gotta be very unreal to differ with your newspaper.
Someone said the only thing you can can accept as true in the newspaper is the sports page and the comics, and that's pretty close to the truth. But it besides being a mark of civilization, being civilized, that we can have differences of opinion and yet not have hate for one of each other. It's also a mark of Christian charity and of truth. And remember, god is truth. In the name of the father, and of the son, and of holy spirit.
Amen.