A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Our blessed lord used images, parables parables in speaking to his disciples. Now this is the one about the blind man leading the blind and some other ideas. Our lord then continues. Can a blind man act as guide to a blind man?
Won't they both fall into the ditch? A student is not above his teacher, but every student, when he has finished his studies, will be on a par with his teacher. Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye when you miss the plank in your own? How can you say to your brother, brother, let me remove that speck from your eye, yet yourself fail to see the plank lodged in your own? Hypocrite, remove the plank from your own eye first, then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
This is the good news of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Obviously, this is a collection of, sayings or something because here but we have about four ideas here, and they're totally disconnected. I wanna take just one thought out of this. You know, the great the great phrase today is don't be judgmental.
How often I've heard people cast it at me, you're being judgmental, as if that settled everything, as if you're a a wacko. You're being judgmental. We mustn't be judged just recently, I I listened to some parents, the mother and father saying they thought it was very inconsiderate and un oh, undemocratic and all other things to try to give your sense of values to your kids. Let your children grow up and find their own way. That's the democratic way of doing things.
Of course, it's crazy. Those very same people don't take that attitude about their health. Now as I have said, there is no statement under god's heavens that you can make or any other person can make that is totally wrong. There's always some kind of a little bit of truth in everything, in everything. Let's so let's begin with that.
Another you're going to lie, for heaven's sakes, don't lie because you'll get caught. The thing to do is to tell an incomplete truth. That's the name of the game. Because if somebody misunderstands you, it's their dumbness, not your fault, of course. Now what this idea of not being judgmental, which you hear around all the time, you're being judgmental.
We must and then you see this. After all, remember remember and, you know, then they get very solemn and serious because religion is really smile less for a lot of people. You've gotta put on a long face. Anyway, then they'd getting very serious. You know, even even the master or, you know, the words they use said, don't you judge and look at this look at the then they'll quote you they, you know, they pick up the things they like.
They'll quote this or they'll quote Saint Matthew, judge not that you not be judged. And and that and they consider this a self evident truth. It's like running into the Washington Monument and bruising your nose. And, of course, it's totally absurd. It's untrue, unfactual, and crazy and crazy.
First of all, it's untrue. Our lord never said that we should never judge. He judged himself plenty of times. Just recently, a morning or two ago, we read the gospel, or was it last Sunday, having to do with fraternal correction. When your neighbor sins, what are you supposed to do?
Let him go on keeping sinning? Our lord said, no. You're supposed to go and tell him, look, guy, straighten up. And if he doesn't listen to you, our lord continues to get a few of your friends and go to the fellow to try to straighten him out. Then if he doesn't listen to you, let him go.
What do you think of that? Then they'll say, well, then, you know, you know the the that the good master, you know, these phrases are people use. They don't like to say Christ or Jesus. And of course, they don't think of saying son of god. Of course not.
They're not that, you know, ignorant. But our blessed lord himself just judged. And then these people will quote that when our lord says to the woman taken in adultery. He didn't judge her, they'll tell you. I say, why didn't he?
Well, he said, he didn't do anything to her. Well, you see, shows it such a blatant ignorance just of just of literature. Because that story is that that the woman had to be taken in adultery and her accusers had to have seen her committing adultery. Christ wasn't there. Christ didn't see it.
Therefore, he had no reason to judge her at all. But what did he say? Go and sin no more. What do you think of that? Now all of this stuff boils there's great confusion here, you see.
But, of course, in this country, as a nation, we are utterly confused as regards morality. Utterly. We are absolutely at the bottom of the pit. But here's what here's the way you first of all, which is completely foreign to the people's thinking, you have to distinguish between thing, which means res or reality, and person. You have to distinguish between what a person does and who does it.
You say that's simple. It's like a a friend of mine, a psychiatrist. He told me this himself. And I've I've used this story a number of times because it is so so concrete. He the the the doctor was talking to me, a psychiatrist, and his son were drying the dishes.
One was washing and one was drying. The father was doing the washing and his son was doing the drying of the little boy. And then in the course of of his drying, the the boy drops one of the plates, his mother's one of his mother's good plates. So he looks up at his father and says, daddy, you think I'm a bad boy, don't you? And my doctor friend said, no, son.
I don't think you're a bad boy, but I think you did a bad thing. Now that ought that ought to be pretty clear to anybody. He dropped the dish. That doesn't make him a bad boy. Just mean man means he had too much soap on his hands.
But you see, by and large today, people do not think this way. When you talk about abortion, if there's some people in the congregation who have had an abortion, and they're likely are, they'll say, look. It's condemning me. I haven't said a word about the person. I've only talked about abortion and action apart from know you can't have an abortion unless you have a mother who needs to be aborted.
But, logically, in the order of thinking, in the order of speaking, and above all, in the important order of addressing an issue, we can abstract from the totality of the thing, of the rez, of the reality, and face one or the other. And our moral theology makes this distinction all the time. One of the first things I ever learned when I I don't know how far back. Oh, if I didn't know, wouldn't tell anybody. We talked about the and the Well, you see, that's very cute in Latin.
Means a human act, an act which is done with knowledge, freedom, and will. An simply means an action that a human being performs. He may be drunk. He may be crazy. Or he may be sane.
There are a few of those people around too. This is a frightfully important distinction. And what our lord said time and again, he never said don't judge. Never. We're judging all the time.
He said we did judge. He did he judged himself. What our lord says was don't you dare judge people. That's a tremendous difference between saying that and don't you judge the quality of their actions, their morality. You go out and you talk against homo, say homosexuality is a heinous any any of those ugly adjectives you wanna use.
And I agree with all of them all of them. It's a you know, we have this case right now down in Virginia with with the two lesbian women and the baby and the child. That man's gonna be carbored. The judge, he called homosexuality perversion, and he's perfectly right. But you see, if you talk about that publicly, people say you're condemning homosexuals.
You haven't said a word about homosexual. You're talking about homosexuality. It's like it's like talking about skiing and then identifying skiing with the persons who ski. You see how crazy it is? And yet in this country where we've all lost practically all sense of logic, remember, to be logical in The United States is to have two strikes against you.
It almost it almost characterizes you as a charlatan, as a trickster. And so what our lord our lord here is not condemning or or criticizing people for making judgments about their moral actions. What he's saying is don't judge persons. After all, you know coming back to that woman taking an adultery. What did Christ say to to to the accusers?
See, we can't go into it, but that's a mighty wonderful wonderful story. Story. I mean, it's it's so dramatic and spectacular and so tight that our lord did not disagree with the law of Moses. All he said to the woman's accusers was, those of you without sin, you cast the first stone on the woman. That's all he said.
And, of course, they disappeared. He didn't say a word about about not enforcing the law of Moses. All he said was, sure. Go ahead. But whoever let the one who cast the first stone himself be sinless.
You know, CS Lewis said there are people in the world who should never read a book, and all I can say is amen, my friend. Amen. And when I meet him the next time, I'm gonna tell him what I think of that, how wonderful that is. Because some people oughtn't to be reading a book. They have a sense enough to interpret their written word.
Because you cannot lift things, just a phrase or a sentence out of the context. Everybody knows that, and yet the people do it all the time. All the time. Because they do not think. I remember someone quoting a teacher, Christian brother, and that he the Christian brother was very, very fond of saying that that was the worst thing you could ask anybody to do was to think.
And so let us not shy away from calling coal coal, concrete concrete. Let us not be afraid of talking about moral actions and condemning those which are immoral. They deserve remember, you can't love without hating the contradictories. You can't love without hating the contraries. You cannot possibly do that and think you're rational.
There's nothing wrong with hating the right things, and the right things are those which are contrary to the the good, the true, and the beautiful. We should hate ugliness. We should hate meanness. We should hate sin. That course, we're not hate's a four letter word, I think, as I used to spell it.
And so let us take our this when people take all that, you mustn't be judgmental. Ask them, what what are you talking about? What do you mean being by judgmental? You're making a judgment when you say that. You're being judgmental when you tell me not to be judgmental.
You see how nutty it is? It's going on all the time. I say it's it has permeated our society. There's no right or wrong today. I've heard it on my boat from high school boys from so called Catholic high schools.
There's no black or white. Everything's gray. Well, when I hear that, you're I know they're repeating something somebody said to them. They didn't find that idea themselves. They haven't been thinking enough even to create that idea.
And so but you see, you don't have a a right to judge things unless you know what you're talking about, and that means that you have some sense of morality. In other words, a right conscience, a r I g h t conscience, and that comes from a lot of hard work or getting advice from those who know better. As our lord said, if the blind leave the blind, both of them fall into the hole. Both of them fall into the hole. So don't be misled and don't don't give way too easily when people throw this phrase at you, you're being judgmental.
Throw it back at them and ask them, what are you talking about? Let's get that straight and we can continue because Christ never said, don't you dare judge. What he said was, don't you dare judge your neighbor, meaning to condemn him. That we can never do. That's between him or her and god.
In the name of the father, and the son, and holy spirit. Amen.