I am a long ago convert to the Catholic Church—from 1969. This is how it happened. I was enrolled in a Christian Ethics class in college. The professor taught Christian Ethics as “Situation Ethics.” We were given selections from Catholic theologians to read as the “bad guys.”
Situation Ethics teaches that what is right or wrong in a given situation depends on the situation and the belief system/values of the person making a moral choice. Something could be “right” to me and “wrong” to you.
The Catholic theologians we were given to read in contrast spoke of “objective moral standards.” Whether something was right or wrong depended on more than a person’s personal, subjective judgment. While there was an element of personal judgment, that judgment had to be based on matters of the goodness of the end, the means, and the intention. (See CCC 1749-1756).
I was fascinated by the Catholic perspective and went to the public library to find a book on Catholic theology. I found Frank Sheed’s Theology for Beginners. Seven months later I entered the Church.
Objective moral standards remain a core draw to the Church for me. Yet today it is sometimes hard to determine what those standards are when good people within the Church differ profoundly in their interpretations of them. While professing objective moral standards, subjective standards are what it seems we practice.
Today’s Gospel
Regular readers know that I’ve struggled the past few weeks with the Gospel readings. EVERY Monday since the Gospels have been from the Sermon on the Mount, the Gospel has hit me square between the eyes. Ouch! How do I wax eloquent on what the Gospel says when living by it is so hard for me? On June 8th it was the Beatitudes. On the 15th it was “offer no resistance to one who is evil.” Today it is, “Stop judging that you may not be judged….How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? You hypocrite, removed the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”
God just keeps scrubbing on my soul.
And really, the dilemma is the same: how do I follow the objective moral standards of the Sermon on the Mount with its mixing of the Ten Commandments with Jesus’ consistently saying, “But I say to you…” and then taking the objective moral standard from obedience to laws to the complexities of loving others as God loves them?
I keep reading the Sermon on the Mount and I keep hearing Jesus say his objective moral standards are to hold myself to a strict standard of both following the Ten Commandments AND going beyond them to live with a Beatitude attitude that sees the good and seeks the good in every sparrow that I encounter.
The Gospel for Sunday included, “Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge…you are worth more than many sparrows.”
If I am worth more than many sparrows, so is every other person.
Serious Questions
Today the confrontation: Why do I focus on what disturbs me about the behavior of others? Why do I see what’s floating around in other people’s eyes instead of what’s blocking my own vision?
The first answer to that is, “Because there is a lot of behavior going on around me that does not match God’s objective moral standards.”
But prayer takes me deeper to also realize there is a second answer: “Because if I look at the evils in others, I can ignore what does not match the Sermon on the Mount in myself. I can feel better about my failure by focusing on the failures of others.”
Ouch, Jesus!
When prayer puts it that way, I can see seeds of many evils in the beams of judgment in the eyes of my soul.
2 Kings and the Psalm
We have also heard these past three weeks of God’s efforts through prophets to lead and guide the people of Israel to remain faithful to him. Today we read briefly of the deportation of many in the Northern Kingdom of Israel to Assyria (Babylon) in 722 BC. “This came about because the children of Israel sinned against the Lord, their God, who had brought them up from the Land of Egypt.” It had been about 200 years since Solomon’s death and about 600 years since the exodus from Egypt.
God had been patient. But the consequences of ignoring God and his objective moral standards added up. God’s objective moral standards lead to a better life, but ignoring them leads to survival of the fittest living. The Northern Kingdom fell. They lost the fitness race.
There are lines in the Psalm today that cause me to catch my breath: “You have rocked the country and split it open; repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering. You have made your people feel hardships; you have given us stupefying wine.”
Yes, Lord, repair the cracks in us. We are tottering. And I want to judge. I want to be a prophet and cry out like Elijah. But even Elijah had to learn that God can be in a “still, small voice.”
What the Still, Small Voice Says
At the beginning of Lent, I started reading two pages each day from Part Three of the Catechism—“Life in Christ.” I had read and studied Section Two of Life in Christ on the Ten Commandments, but I had never read and studied Section One: Man’s Vocation Life in the Spirit. It talks about our vocation to Beatitude, human freedom, grace, justice, morality, and how we are to behave in society.
Today it forms a strong, still, small voice in me. From the catechism:
1721 God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve him and so to come to paradise. Beatitude makes us “partakers of the divine nature” and of eternal life. With beatitude, man enters into the glory of Christ and into the joy of the Trinitarian life.
1724 The Decalogue, the Sermon on the Mount, and the apostolic catechesis describe for us the paths that lead to the Kingdom of heaven. Sustained by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we tread them, step by step, by everyday acts. By the working of the Word of Christ, we slowly bear fruit in the church to the glory of God.
Prayer:
Lord, thank You for Your still, small voice that calls me to become more like You. Help me to know and follow Your objective moral standards—all of them. Help me follow Your Ten Commandments and your Beatitudes and Your way of valuing every sparrow. Dig out the roots of sin in me. Keep forming me in Your image. Lead me, guide me, Lord.
