Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Dt 18: 15-20
Second Reading: 1 Cor 7:17, 32-35
Gospel Reading: Mk 1:21-28
We live in a democracy, and in principle when the people cannot agree on how to act, we do what the majority wants (at the same time protecting the rights of the minority). In practice, we cannot consult all the people on every question, so we elect a government by majority vote and then follow its lead.
In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year), Pope St. John Paul II said that the Church “values the democratic system” insofar as it allows us to participate in political choices, elect those who govern us and hold them accountable, and replace our leaders peacefully.
A month later, La Civilta Cattolica, whose editorials are reviewed by the Vatican Secretariat of State before publication, said that the Church accepts democracy as the preferred way of conducting political life and safeguarding human rights.
It is understandable, then, that in our society, “democratic” is a term of praise and “authoritarian” a term of censure. Accordingly, some people reject the Church because she is authoritarian and not democratic.
Now, following the wishes of the majority may be a good way to make a decision, but only if we have no better way. For example, nobody decides the answer to a mathematics question by vote, because there is a better way: logic. Nobody decides the answer to a scientific question by vote, because there is a better way: experiment.
How much less should we vote to decide what is right or wrong in the eyes of God, who has given us a better way.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “from the beginning,” God implanted “the precepts of the natural law” in our hearts. However, after the fall of our first parents, our reason became “obscured” and our wills “went astray.” If we were to have “complete and certain understanding” of God’s commandments, he had to reveal them.
In the Old Testament, God revealed them through prophets like Moses, as we hear in the First Reading this Sunday. He put his word in their mouths. Their job was to interpret God’s word to the people, who were too terrified to have God speak to them directly. God warned the prophets most solemnly against saying anything in his name that He had not told them to say, or neglecting to say anything that he had told them to say.
In the New Testament, God spoke to us by his own Son. Jesus proved that he was God the Son in many ways. In the Gospel Reading this Sunday he gives orders to evil spirits, proving that the authority he claimed in His teaching was backed up by his divine power.
Before Jesus left us, he founded a Church. To this Church he gave “the keys of the Kingdom of heaven,” so that what the Church binds on earth is bound in heaven; what the Church looses on earth is loosed in heaven. Here, “binding” and “loosing” are the terms used among the Jews to describe their rabbis’ judgments, based on the Mosaic Law.
How should we respond to the Church’s authority?
Jesus warned us that unless we become like little children, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Now, one of the most obvious characteristics of children is curiosity. Little children constantly ask questions of the adults around them: their parents, their older brothers and sisters, their teachers, etc. They trust the authority of these adults to give them the right answers.
How much more should we trust the authority of the Church, backed up as it is by the authority of Christ himself! Let us thank God that the Church is not democratic. In the Church, like little children, we can ask whatever we want to know about “the affairs of the Lord” and “how to please the Lord,” as St. Paul says in the Second Reading, and be sure of getting the right answers.
Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English with new insights, in both print and YouTube form, at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. He is also teaching the course in person on Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver, and Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver. Next week’s topic is Matrimony. The course is entirely free of charge and no pre-registration is necessary.