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In Season and Out of Season
George Strickland, Editor
I am starting a new observations column. The title is derived from St. Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy in which Timothy is enjoined to preach the Gospel “in season and out of season” (4:2).
The commentary reflects on the church, theology, philosophy, politics, family life, and society-at-large. I would like to think of it as serious discussions of religious and social topics—sometimes critical, occasionally blunt, and from time to time humorous, if not irreverent.
When I was in seminary so many years ago, our homiletics professor passed out biblical passages that we would use to write and preach our first sermons. My passage was from Isaiah, “The word will not return empty.” As a know-it-all Middler, I thought that was a passage of consolation for ineffective preachers.
After finishing the in class preaching exercise, the professor returned our work products to us. The professor scrawled on my paper, “Mr. Strickland, it appears you have learned very little in exegesis. It decidedly is not how to be a successful preacher, but how to be faithful.” If you are wondering what grade I got for my first sermon effort, it was a lousy ‘C’.
The professor was right, of course. Innumerable saints and Church Fathers have said in their own ways that the Church is not to be successful but to be faithful.
Politicians are prone to make inane public statements. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors issues a good many outrageous magisterial resolutions. In fact, they seem to make more such declarations than the pope in Rome.
Recently, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution condemning the Roman Catholic Church for prohibiting church involvement in adoption by same-sex couples, describing such teaching as “absolutely unacceptable” and urged Catholics to “defy” the Vatican directive.
In response, the Thomas More Law Center filed a federal lawsuit against the Board, charging it with an unwarranted attack on the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality.
Politicians overestimate their own opinions of themselves, but they occupy positions of considerable influence over the lives of ordinary people. Even if most people of good conscience are suspicious of politicians’ definitions of reality, there are serious political consequences in the moral vacuum of the public sphere, where religion has been pushed to the margins.
William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of the conservative publication National Review, famously said:
“I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”
No doubt the same holds true for San Francisco and other cities throughout the country.
This, also, brings to mind Pastor Martin Niemoeller’s well-known statement:
"In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me."
Confronted by new challenges in the 21st century, the Orthodox Church denounces what is contemptible, illuminates what is dark, and corrects what is error. Put another way, the Church, to paraphrase William F. Buckley, "stands athwart history, yelling Stop!"--at a time when no one else is inclined to do so.
Orthodox Christians share with Catholics the same view of homosexual practices—sexual practices condemned from New Testaments and through the millennia of Church teachings. I urge all Orthodox Christians to denounce this unwarranted, political attack on the Catholic Church. It is to be remembered that Catholics in America have from time to time have experienced bigotry and hatred by other Americans. Recall, for example, the “Know Nothing” party of the 1840s and 1850s. If we do not speak up now, who will stand with us when we are under assault for our beliefs and moral teachings? Almost certainly, no one will.
© George Strickland, Ph.D.
