Ezek22 Lectionary Reflections

Today’s Readings (text):

• 2nd Peter 3:12-18
• Ps 90:1-4, 10, 14, 16
• Mark 12:13-17

According to an editorial filed by the Becket Fund on the Catholic Exchange, the town of Leon Valley, Texas, is trying to prevent a church named “The Elijah Group” from conducting worship services on Sunday, even though the town has allowed the use of the church’s building for daycare and other purposes.

“It is shocking that a church would not be allowed to hold church services because they are not profitable to the City,” the story quoted Lori Windham, senior counsel at the Becket Fund, as saying.

Other ministers have picked up the story as well. For example, I received an email from the Lutheran Hour Ministries, in their daily devotion for Monday, May 31, as follows: “… let me observe the world has devised all manner of means to stop the Gospel from being proclaimed. Some of these prohibitions are threatening and violent. That kind of persecution we see in some of the Islamic countries of the world.”

Although persecution and the squelching of the free exercise of religion may exist in many places around the world, including in the US, that is not likely the bottom line of the story in Leon Valley. Preachers should know this, since it is not difficult today to get both sides of a story.

The town of Leon Valley has issued a statement, mentioned in neither of the one-sided stories cited above, that claims the blocking of certain uses for the building — namely of holding worship services — is within the law and supported by the courts.

The town says “… this is not a case about tax revenues or excluding churches. It is about a bank attempting to maximize its profits.”

The facts of the case are these: The Elijah Group offered $1.3 million to the bank to buy the property, which was a foreclosed church, and the bank would like to get that money. The deal, however, is contingent upon the changing of the zoning laws within the city to allow worship services. If the church can’t conduct worship services, the Elijah Group won’t buy the building.

The bank has an offer of $575,000 for the building from a retail group, but obviously, the sale of the building as a church would bring in more money. The building is in a retail zone, which would make its use as a church illegal.

As I said, the building was once a church, so the Elijah Group could have been grandfathered in as a church. However, a window of opportunity for doing that expired. Now the Elijah Group, with the Becket Fund as its agent, wants to rewrite the zoning ordinance to allow them to hold worship services in the church and allow the sale of the building for the higher amount to go through.

As Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s.” We need to take into account the words of our Lord, and we need to realize, all of us, that he is not advocating anyone breaking any civil laws here. In fact, he is advocating our compliance with civil laws.

The bank in Leon Valley and the Elijah Group knew the laws, but they were hoping to get those zoning laws changed. The city was not obligated to do that just because a window of opportunity had expired. The building is within the city and falls under the city’s ordinance, and we support the city of Leon Valley in this decision.

An appeal has been filed with the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Judicial Circuit, and we will follow it for our own purposes. However, motives on the part of the bank are about profit. That makes our decision easy, since this is not a case about squelching free religious practice, as so many have cast it to be.

My advice to the church known as The Elijah Group and their friends would be to look elsewhere for a better deal. Keep your money and remember that you are here to serve God’s people, not the city of Leon Valley or the Happy State Bank. Let them keep their building and their taxes, and give to God your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Proverbs 8:22-31
• Ps 8:2, 4-9
• Romans 5:1-5
• John 16:12-15

At St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix several months ago, Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator at the hospital, authorized an abortion for a 27-year-old woman suffering from pulmonary hypertension, secondary to her fourth pregnancy.

In ruling that Sister McBride was “automatically excommunicated” from the church, the Most Rev. Thomas J Olmsted, bishop of Phoenix, wrote, “An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother’s life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.”

The premise for this ruling, that an unborn child is not a disease, is a complete misrepresentation of the medical facts underlying the case. Pulmonary hypertension during pregnancy is a known and pernicious pathological condition.

Furthermore, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has a slightly different take, in Part 4, Issues in Care for the Beginning of Life, No. 47: “Operations, treatments and medications that can have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.”

In fairness, we must note in this case that doctors said the pregnant woman’s death from pulmonary hypertension during pregnancy and delivery was not 100 percent certain. Nor was the probability that she would carry the pregnancy to the point at which the unborn child was viable.

You will have to decide for yourself whether Sister McBride did the “right” thing, but I tend to think that is a matter between her and God himself.

What concerns me is the message her excommunication sends to other Catholics and people of all religious traditions who believe in the infinite value of every single human life. Sister McBride has been described, almost universally, as a “saintly” person, one who has exercised great compassion and Jesus-like care for the people of her community, God’s children every one of them. The church has now said they don’t want her any more. She can no longer receive Christ’s body and blood in the Most Holy Sacrament.

St. Paul writes in today’s passage from his great letter to the Romans, “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith.” As Sister McBride has already gained this access, the church’s official declaration of her excommunication can be considered irrelevant, especially since the logic behind that decision contradicts the published statements by the Conference of bishops.

We find ourselves not caring so much about what church leaders have to say when their bishops can’t even follow their own testimony about our Lord. Turn instead to the words of our Lord. Follow his example. This will show you how to love. This will teach you how to be of compassionate service to one another in our world today.

As for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, their language can be considered a reasonable compromise, since neither the pregnant woman’s nor the baby’s life has a greater value than the other. They are equal in value, and that value is infinite.

Today’s Readings (text):

• Acts 15:1-2, 22-29
• Ps 67:2-8
• Revelations 21:10-14, 22-23
• John 14:23-29

Happy Mother’s Day (officially, the apostrophe goes before the s, making “mother” singular). My mother died several years ago, but I celebrate Mother’s Day every year as well, knowing, as Jesus told his disciples in today’s gospel passage about his own death, “If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.”

Americans will spend an estimated $670 million on greeting cards, according to the National Retail Federation, for mothers today, and there is no problem with a little patting on the back on one day out of 365 days of toil.

But Jesus also told us, “Not as the world gives do I give it to you.”

This is a fairly common theme throughout Jesus’ teachings: that what we expected from God, based on our worldview, is not what God actually has in mind for us. And since I have no (living) mother to send a card to, I feel that a tribute of a different kind is in order, to honor my mother and my God.

The US doesn’t have a terrific maternal mortality record. In fact, depending on which data source you read, we’re somewhere between 37th (The Lancet) and 41st (Amnesty International) when it comes to mothers who die because of their pregnancy. A mother is about twice as likely to die because of her pregnancy in the US than in Europe, the Lancet report says.

And mothers’ problems in the US are definitely mild in comparison with their problems in other countries. In many African countries, such as Niger, pregnant women can’t go to the doctor’s office unless it is specifically allowed by their husbands. Thus, if the man is not at home when an emergency during pregnancy occurs, the woman may die right at home.

Less serious is a problem known as an obstetric fistula. During childbirth, this injury can make a woman incontinent so she leaks waste uncontrollably. If a fistula develops, the woman may become repulsive enough that she will be outcast, but the condition can usually be fixed with a $450 operation. The work of the Fistula Foundation helps heal these women, and this year, I sent them some money.

Of course, I’m not so conceited as to think my contribution is anything more than a monetary donation that I probably would have used on my own mother, had she been alive. But when I read the gospel passage about not doing things like those in this world, as Christ would have done out of pure love, my mind sees the natural irony between the $670 million we spend on greeting cards for this day and the great need to help not only mothers in other countries but in our own as well.