A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Now this is a conference of our lord's last farewell practically. And please notice while he's talking about unity among his disciples, the unity is not among themselves. The unity isn't for its own sake. The unity is the unity of his apostles with him in god the father.
Keep that in mind. With all this talk we hear about community today, the first thing is to be united with god through his son, Jesus Christ. If we're united to him, we'll be united to our neighbor without a doubt. And so our blessed lord looked up to heaven and said to his disciples, I do not pray for my disciples alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their word.
Notice that pronoun. That all may be one as you, father, are in me and I in you. I pray that they may be one in us. Our unity as a community isn't like a KFC or the daughters of Isabella or the Masons. It's a union with god to We're company where I am all so that they might see do this glory of mine, which is your gift to me because of the love that you bore me before the world began.
Just father, the world has not known you, but I have known you. And these men too have known that you sent me. To them, I have revealed your name, and I will continue to reveal it so that your love for me may live in them and that I may likewise live in them. And this is the good news of the lord, and this is the unity and the community we're talking about. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
I wanna take a few words, just a very brief text out of today's reading of but it's extremely, extremely important. And I try to take a text that if you don't remember anything else of my precious remarks, you will remember at least the opening words, and they are these. Our blessed lord is speaking to his disciples, and this is a very solemn occasion. You you can't miss the awesomeness of this. And our lord is saying, just father, the world has not known you.
The world has not known you. And that's the really the sum total of what I have to say. Everything else is froth almost. The world has not known you. That's not the world that came from the from from the creator.
That's the world of man, one of the two cities of Saint Augustine's city of god. Now about ten days ago, I guess it is, maybe twelve, one of our leading politicians and so forth spoke very forthrightly, I must say, very forthrightly, and got clobbered for it, of course, by the liberals, demanding in the face of Los Angeles and that terrible catastrophe out there, in the face of what of this terrible plague and crisis that we're facing, notice what I'm going to say, in our schools with junior students. What we call, I think, today the middle school age, as young as 11 and 12 years old, and that's the plague, the disease of AIDS. That's it's amazing how that has woke up people, has stimulated to think even about what they call morals, but they don't use that word. Of course not.
We talk about values. We talk about a system of values. Anyway, this good man very forthrightly said, what we need in the face of the failing of our families, which have been broken are breaking up, in the face of of teenage pregnancies, in the in the face of this terrible threatening plague, this disease, which has already already infiltrated our our teenage boys and girls. We need to return, they said, to traditional values. That's the word the man used, traditional values.
But in the course of his remarks, at least what I heard of them, and some of them were repeated on the weekend, Memorial Day weekend, I did not hear the word god mentioned once. I did not hear the word moral mentioned once. It was just the traditional values. Well, you see, if there's anything what you can say about what they call the traditional values USA is, they were not values, they were morals, morals. And they had an intrinsic tie with god almighty.
That's the point. When you talk about traditional values USA, you cannot, whether you like it or not, divorce it from the fact, f a c t, fact that The United States Of America began with the in the declaration of independence which acknowledges God the creator, which affirms that we have certain unalienable rights, and that this world in some way is governed by the creator. That's in the declaration of independence 1776. I just read it this morning. Not for the first time.
You see, whether we like it or not, this is a simple matter of fact. What we call our value system in The USA today and refer to it as traditional, you are talking about a Judeo Christian basis. You can't escape it. Can't escape it. Even our money.
During the past week, I took the time to look at it all, and every bit of money I could get a hold of, silver of course, it's it's not silver. Copper, it's not copper. The paper, I guess, that's still paper. Anyway, it all has a pluribus unum, and in god, we trust. On every penny, nickel, dime, quarter, I didn't have a half dollar.
I didn't have a $2 bill either. And yet, the supreme court begins with an opening prayer. The congress begins with an opening prayer. We have chaplains in all our armed services paid for by the US government. Yet in The United States Of America, you cannot even have a moment of silence at the beginning of a class in a public school.
Not even a moment of silence because that's supposed to to bridge the separation of church and state. Can you imagine a country more upside down? And I could use another word for that, but it's vulgar than in that. What sense can you make out of that? That every single coin of the realm says, in god we trust, and we cannot even acknowledge well, I won't say acknowledge.
Oh, we can't even have a moment of silence. Now, Doctor. William Morrow, who's been 40 this is very significant if you know a little something about the academic world. Here's a man who has been for forty years as an associate professor at Fordham University. That's that so called Catholic University a little north of here.
Forty years and he still and he has all kinds of he has hundreds of publications. He's he's well known. He lectures. And yet he's still after forty years an associate professor. That tells you something.
What's wrong? Why isn't he a full professor? Well, I don't know. I can give you a good guess at a university where a very famous candidate to be vice president of The United States gave the commencement talk a few weeks ago. And, of course, she, like Monahan, of course, are in their own way pro abortion.
So doctor Mara gave the commencement talk down at the university the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio about ten, twelve days ago. I wanna quote from that speech. He says, what we are facing in the West, and then he quotes Sultan Sultanizen. What we are facing in a in the West is a world without god. You cannot say it more plainly.
We are in the West, we are facing a world without god. I mean, we deny his existence in in in practice as as the Western world. Many people are unhappy. This is a reference to that case of the commencement talk and still before the supreme court. Many people are unhappy that god is even mentioned.
They find it impolite that anyone should say that Christ is god and that god exists and that our life on earth is a pilgrimage to eternity. Today's society is without the light and the life of Jesus Christ. That is so true that it's it's a saddest thing you can imagine. The secularist agenda has largely prevailed in the media, in government, and in education, and believe me, it's in our Catholic schools. Let me give you just two concrete instances of this.
First, chancellor Joseph Fernandez, chancellor of the schools of New York City. In regard to the debate over whether they should distribute condoms to the schoolchildren notice, condoms to the schoolchildren. I'm mentioning that from the pulpit of the sanctuary. How many how many days ago, I wouldn't have dared to say it. And you wouldn't have thought of talking about condoms in connection with school children, would you?
You couldn't even find one visible in a drugstore. Anyway, doctor Fernandez, in regard to this said, I quote, withholding condoms from our schoolchildren is not an issue of morality. It's a matter of life and death. See, you get the point, don't you? What is the great principle?
What is your great criterion of what's moral? Pragmatism. What works? We have a problem. Kids are getting pregnant.
They're getting age. Therefore, sheath them in rubber. That that principle of here this life, that your so called morality at least at least he used the word morality. Notice the word Fernandez. At least he did that much.
But your morality is earthbound. It's of the earth. It is earthly. It begins with the earth. And believe me, you'll go down into the coffin and become part of the earth again.
Now just yesterday, this is only yesterday, as you know there's a bill before congress in regard to what they call induced abortions where the fetal tissue is to be used for research. Now, back of that is the idea that this fetal tissue can be of great use, of great use. And I'm not even disputing it, it may be true, it may but that's the idea. There's evidence for this, that the fetal tissue can be of use for certain diseases like Alzheimer's. Now you know what Alzheimer's disease is, and here's here's something that seems to give some promise of being able to deal with that horrible affliction.
We have some of it right in the parish. Bush says no. And he and if congress passes it, he's likely to veto it. But this tissue, you see, has to be from it has to be alive. And notice this word, induced abortion.
In other words, you put you bring out an abortion to in order to get the tissue, which means you destroy the fetus. And here's a woman who says how she was quoted on the news. How dare them deprive me of something that promises so much help? I understand I would say, no. I don't understand her position.
Nobody does unless you're in her shoes. But the point is, can you take here's a woman who says, because fetal tissue can help may possibly help me, therefore, induce an abortion. Or you can have a whole commerce based upon women getting abortion and selling the fetus. This is right. This is the world we're living in.
We are tied to the earth. What works? What's the bottom line? Don't talk about moral principles. Principles.
The deconstructor says you can't make a single proposition that has truth value. And even if even if you could know something that's according to, of course, you can't communicate it. That's the world we're living in. And to say that we're living in a world without god, if you only think of what the at least the Russians were clear about it. They were good god fearing atheists.
Our atheism is it is subsequeto. No one boasts about it. We just practice it. Just practice it. Now I wanna give you just a concrete instance of what what I've been trying to say that don't you cannot talk about traditional moral values.
I'm putting the word moral in there. You cannot talk about traditional moral values, USA, without bringing god into the picture, without bringing god in as the ruler of the universe, without bringing God in as in some way running the show, and without bringing God in in some way as being our goal, and that we are en route. We are pilgrims en route to eternity. And I'm not talking about orthodox catholicism. I'm talking about The USA traditional moral values.
They came from the pulpit. They came from the bible. And I want to bring up saint Maria Goretti, g o r e t t I, a little girl who is a martyr at the age of 12. Now it's not her martyrdom I wanna talk about, and I certainly don't wanna give the impression that a woman who is in the way of being raped has to sacrifice her life. Please, I'm not saying that at all.
I'm saying the I'd say the opposite. But here's this little girl of 12 years of age. She came from a family peasant family peasant farmer, little South of Rome. She was born in 1890, 1890. She died in nineteen zero two at the age of 12.
When she was 10, her father, who had six children, died suddenly. He left this family, his his wife and the six children, practically penniless. And so the mother had to go into the fields to take his place to try to support the family. And then it became Maria, who was the oldest of the six children, to run the house and to take care of the children. She never went to school.
She never learned to read or write. See, people today talk about reading and writing as as it was the treasure of gold. Remember, it's a key, only a key. Whether you turn it in the lock and and then make use of the treasures, that's something else, something else. We always have TV.
You don't have to be literate. Anyway, this little girl never went to school. She never learned to read, never learned to write. She made her first first holy communion in May 2100. In May.
In July, her 19 year old next door neighbor's boy by name Alessandro barged into her house when she was trying to keep keep do her duties there and wanted to seduce her. And she said no. Then he thought pulled out a knife and put it at her at her throat. Now here's the point. I'm quoting from the New Catholic Encyclopedia.
This little girl who couldn't read or write, here's what she said to Alessandro with a knife at her throat. No. God does not wish it. It's a sin. You will go to hell if you do it.
So he stabbed her to death. He went they got him. They put him in jail. And when he was released in due time, he devoted the rest of his life to her sat canonization, and she was canonized in 1950. Now I wanna go back.
I always run out of time. But though no. Notice, there's not a word in there about herself. Did you notice that? She's thinking of the boy.
She's thinking of him with the charity of Christ. If you commit this as a mortal sin, and you'll go to hell for it. She's not thinking of herself at all. The word I doesn't occur. She doesn't fight him.
She just says, no. God does not wish him. So this little girl who couldn't read or write, the first thought is, god. Not the trauma of being raped with a throat at her at a a knife at her throat. She says, god.
That's the first no. God. God does not wish it. She's appealing to an absolute. God does not wish it.
That's the major premise of a syllogism. Then she says, it's a sin. No. She doesn't say it's a violation of a a value system. She says, it's a sin.
Notice, we don't use the word sin today. We use something like an error, poor judgment, you know, some antisocial conduct. But sin oh, no. Because sin brings in God. It brings in God's law.
It brings in God's threat. If you sin, you go to hell if you're not forgiven. So the first thing this little girl does, this girl who couldn't read or write, who was illiterate, but who had made her first holy communion in in May, and this is July, just about two months later, the first thing she says is, look. No. You can't do this.
Why can't you? Because god doesn't want you. God. God. And today, we cannot even have a moment of silence in a public school.
And in our culture in general, we cannot speak of an absolute. We cannot speak of principles. That's judgmental. So that's the first thing little Marie does. She brings god in.
And then she says, god doesn't want you to do it. He's commanded you to be chased. You cannot do this. And if you do, you are you go to hell for it, for the sin. That is absolutely astounding.
There's a whole theology there. The whole blooming book of moral theology is there. And that guy was converted in jail. I forgot to put that in. While he he got a long sentence, of course.
They don't have the capital punishment over there. And, so during while he was in jail and when he went to jail, he was one of their worst prisoners. But something happened, and he became a very devout Catholic. And when he got out, as I say, devoted the rest of his life to working to get that little girl that he murdered canonized. And notice, he she wasn't in the least.
She says, you will go to hell. She didn't want that boy to go to hell. And and and I'm not I'm not exaggerating this at all. Thomas Aquinas, that's my late friend, you know, in the thirteenth century. What why how does he does he say that women have to resist being raped?
What's his argument against it? That there's any immorality on the part of the woman? Of course not. That's something twentieth century brought up. Aquinas says that that a woman or any of us, if someone's going to commit a crime, it's our duty, not in justice, but in charity, to keep that person from committing a sin.
And, therefore, if if someone is attempting to rape a woman, she is bound in charity out of love for that person, to resist with reason with reason. She doesn't have to lay down her life for it at all. Conrad Farris never said that. And notice, Marie Goretti doesn't say it either. She doesn't say anything about herself at all.
She just says to him, look, guy. If you do this, you're going against god, you're going against god's law, and you'll be damned to hell for it. And I don't want that to happen to you. Isn't that isn't that absolutely marvelous? Now there's no reason to doubt the authenticity of this because, yeah, her canonization was in 1950.
She died in nineteen o two. We're not talking about a twelfth century saint over there in Ephesus or something. And that's what I want you to take out here, that the world has not known god. But this little 12 year old girl who couldn't read or write knew god, knew his law, knew his commandment of love, and and proclaimed it with a knife at her throat, and he killed her. She became a martyr, and she's a saint.
In the name of the father, and with the son, and holy spirit. Amen.