From the Gospel according to St. Matthew: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
In Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
When President Obama recently came out as supporting gay marriage, the media focused on congratulating him (using the phrase of the moment) that he is now on “the right side of history”. They did not comment except in passing on the President’s claim that he had reached this decision as a “practicing Christian”. It is this part of the President’s statement that I found most interesting and thought-provoking.
The President referred to himself, in the context of his pro-gay marriage statement, as a “practicing Christian”. What that means is certainly not very clear in the contemporary American religious scene. But it would seem to mean for the President that he does see himself as a Christian. He summed up his Christian belief with two brief references: first, that Christ died to save sinners. Second, that the basic Christian moral imperative is the Golden Rule. Such a summary of Christianity is common among liberal Protestants, who have in effect reduced Christianity to a lowest common denominator moralism that places the individual as the arbiter of what is right and what is wrong. There is indeed a large gap, some would say a quantum leap, between the dogmatic statement that Christ died to forgive the sins of mankind and the Golden Rule. The latter can be agreed upon by most people, religious or not. But the former is an assertion that demands belief in Christ as Savior and in the reality of sin—sin not as “inappropriate behavior” or not being nice to people, but rather as the deliberate choice to do what is objectively wrong, that is, according to the Law of God.
It is quite easy to see how liberal Protestantism can morph into secularism with a religious veneer. The President said that he talked about same-sex marriage with his young daughters, who told him that it makes no sense to deny marriage to two men or two women. Of course it makes no sense if sexual morality is based on the personal feelings of whoever is having sex. Only if there is a moral question about same-sex marriage does it make sense to at least speak about whether this is right or wrong. The practicing Catholic Joe Biden wonderfully eliminated any debate over same-sex marriage by the self-referential statement: “I am comfortable” with same-sex marriage. The comfort of Joe Biden leaves no room for any discomfort for those who have moral questions about same-sex marriage. Biden further walks further down the path of self-referential relativism by declaring that the fundamental question about marriage is: “Who do I love?” Despite Biden’s grammatical gaffe, this is a marvelous example of the distillation of moral relationships to the feelings of those involved.
What we are witnessing here is more and more common in this society: the complete rupture between dogma, things to be believed about God, and the understanding of moral relationships. This rupture occurred years ago in most of Protestantism, which rupture led to the virtual dissolution of dogma itself. What we see in the current controversy over the Vatican’s criticism of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is another example of moral vision and moral theology separated from the teaching of the Church.
Blessed John Henry Newman saw quite clearly well over a century ago that if what he called the anti-dogmatic principle took hold in the Church and in society that the moral foundation of society would disappear. This should strike us on this particular and peculiar Sunday on which we do not celebrate an event in the life of Christ or of his blessed Mother: rather we celebrate the dogma of the Trinity: that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, that God is within himself a community of love. This is a distinctly Christian understanding of God, and one which has implications for belief and practice of the faith for the individual Christian. One obvious implication of the doctrine of the Trinity is that the Christian must always insist on the primacy of the We over the I. And what this means is that the Christian can never live his life based on that individualism that is so much a part of contemporary American life, where the naked individual and his wants become the basis for what are moral decisions, where the consensus of we the people is trounced by powers that are determined to gut the Christian basis of morality from public discourse. One can still believe in God in this culture, just as long as that belief has no effect on the society in which we live.
Pious people have been bamboozled into going along with all of this, and such people will say: in the end, we all believe in the same God. This is not true and to say such a thing is mere sentimentality that has fallen prey to the anti-dogmatic principle. The Christian, and specifically the Catholic, believes in a triune God who has disclosed himself in the historical person of Jesus Christ and whose presence in the world is called the Church and to which Church he promised the presence of the Holy Spirit who would lead us into all truth. This is not the Jewish understanding of God, and even more, not the Islamic understanding of God. While it is true that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam appeal to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, it is Christianity alone that understands God as a community of love in the dogma of the Trinity and therefore has an understanding of freedom, of pluralism, of moral law, of knowledge of truth, of beauty, and of love itself that is not shared by Judaism or Islam.
And yet, how many priests on this Trinity Sunday will preach on the dogma of the Trinity and what it means for their people? How many Catholics will even bother to think about their understanding of God? How many will confront the uncomfortable reality that our belief in God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit has real implications for how they live their lives and how they inter-react with people who do not share this understanding of God? I will not offer an answer to these questions. I can only hope and pray that in this parish, blessed with the Traditional Mass and blessed with clergy who constantly wrestle with these questions and who try to teach their people even though they are merely earthen vessels themselves—I can only hope on this Trinity Sunday that we may all know the life-giving power of the Father and the saving grace of the Son and the comfort and wisdom of the Holy Spirit. And so we must end as always as we begin: In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
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