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Pastor's Corner
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Clergy
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Pastor’s Corner From the desk of Father Larry Gearhart June 15, 2008
Heads Up Just a reminder, after Monday Noon Mass, I will be gone this week to a bible seminary in Latrobe, Pa., headlined by Dr. Scott Hahn. I'm really looking forward to this.
My sincere congratulations to our parish fathers. This is your day. May you appreciate both the love of your families and the responsibility to care for them, and may your wives and children, for their part, express their heartfelt appreciation for all that you do.
Another reminder about our June 29th Sunday collection. All the money collected that day will go to Peter's Pence, as per the Archbishop's instructions.
Come July, yours truly will receive a $15/month raise. Also, come July, we will be using a different allocation formula for parish costs. Prior to may coming to St. Michael's and Immaculate Conception, pastor salary and rectory expenses were allocated according to different formulas. Salary was divided 60%/40% and utilities were divided 70%/30%. In view of changes in parish attendance since these formulas were first instituted, I believe it is time to reconsider them. Come July, we will allocate all such expenses according to the same formula: 60%/40% (St. Michael's/Immaculate Conception). Individual parishes will continue to be responsible for the upkeep of their respective properties. Anything considered held in common, such as the rectory or the parish telephone, will be allocated according to the unified formula. I will be happy to respond to any of your questions regarding the changes.
As soon as my contract with Dish Network expires, we will be converting to a bundled package of services from Time Warner Cable. This should save about $30/$40 dollars/month. If you have any ideas for further cost reductions, please see me or one of the members of your finance committee. If you have any expertise in high-tech wiring and would like to assist Bernie Zoppa in bringing services from the St. Michael's parish hall into the rectory, please get in touch with Bernie. The Logic of Voting in a Pro-Choice Culture Although the Presidential Primary season is effectively over, the U.S. Bishops' and the Vatican's instructions on voting still apply, come November. One cannot, in good conscience, knowing the value of human life from the moment of conception, vote for a pro-choice candidate. Nor can one vote in good conscience, knowing the sacred character of marriage (whether natural or supernaturally sacramental) vote for a candidate who supports redefining marriage to be gender, number or species independent, or any subset thereof.
Other moral issues enter in, of course (like the just war doctrine of the Church, the issue of capital punishment, the issue of solidarity with the poor, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, etc., the issue of prudent and responsible use of the environment, the economy, the cultural patrimony, etc., the issue of access to education, employment and health care, etc.
The rule of thumb is, make a list of candidates for a given office. If they are anti-life (i.e., support abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research or human cloning) delete their name from the list. Among those remaining on the list, if any support redefining marriage in any way, delete them from the list. If they support forcing harmacists, doctors or other medical people to violate their conscience in regard to abortion, birth control, IVF, etc., delete them from the list. If you are convinced they support a war in violation of the just war doctrine, delete them from the list.
If there are still multiple candidates on the list, optimize you choice based on prudent use of resources and solidarity with the poor, etc. If there is only one candidate on the list and you find you have no good reason to vote for them, then don't. If you find you have no registered candidate to vote for, then consider a write-in.
The logic changes in very rare circumstances. For example, if Joseph Stalin were running against Adolph Hitler, you wouldn't vote for either, but if one of these two candidates were running against a pro-choice candidate who is otherwise supportive of the dignity of the human person, you might, in such a rare and extreme case, validly consider voting for the pro-choice candidate as the lesser of two great evils, hoping, of course, that the pro-choice candidate's platform will be frustrated by events. Make no mistake about it, however, you'd better think very long and hard about any more ambiguous trade-off. Your very soul is at stake. When you are not absolutely, positively certain, that one great evil is less than another, you may not choose between them, and you may never deliberately choose the evil that a given candidate's position proposes without directly sharing the responsibility for that evil.
Of course if you truly do not believe that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God from the moment of conception, and that they are endowed, from the moment of conception, with an immortal soul, then you may validly consider other options. One of the options you should seriously consider, in such a case, is whether it makes sense for you to consider yourself a Christian. In other words, life and the sanctity of marriage are core issues for what it means to be Christian. In your deliberations, you should not be influenced in any way by politicians who consider themselves to be both Catholic and pro-choice. What they mean by Catholic, in such a case has nothing whatever to do with the Catholic faith.
Spiritual Focus In today's Gospel, Jesus enjoins his disciples to pray for God to raise up "laborers for his harvest." Who are these laborers? St. Paul tells us in the 12th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians that the Holy Spirit bestows many kinds of gifts, such as priesthood, prophesy and teaching, all for the purpose of building up the Body of Christ. We may view the harvest Jesus spoke of as the moral and spiritual maturing of the Body of Christ when we consider the people as a whole, and we may view the harvest as the growth toward heaven of individuals when our focus is on individuals.
Either way, there are many kinds of laborers for the harvest of God. Anyone who builds up the Body of Christ, either one person at a time or collectively, is a laborer for the harvest. When Jesus asked his disciples to pray for such laborers, however, he was speaking primarily of people who dedicate their lives to this effort.
The need for such dedicated laborers is greater today than it was a few decades ago, but the numbers have fallen drastically since then. Perhaps one reason this has happened is that we have failed to respond to Jesus' call to prayer. Let us redouble our efforts, then, to pray for laborers in the harvest of God. All of our souls depend upon it.
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