HOMILY FOR MASS FOR THE 22ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B) + EPHPHETA
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 1 SEPTEMBER 2024
The term ‘lawfare’ first came to prominence in 2001, when an American Air Force Colonel (now Major General and Professor of Law), Charles J. Dunlap Jnr, delivered a speech at Harvard University. He challenged what he saw as the weaponising of the legal system against the defence forces.[1] Since then, the term lawfare has morphed into the broader concept of anyone using legal processes to stifle or suppress others. Lawfare can be highly effective. It can paralyse or damage opponents by dragging them through the time and expense of courts and lawyers. It can distract people from their proper focus and cause them to self-censor out of fear of litigation. And it can injure reputations and self-confidence through negative publicity.
Nine years ago, the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart, Julian Porteous, was the victim of lawfare after he distributed to his school parents the Australian bishops’ pastoral letter on the marriage debate.[2] Activists fulminated with faux outrage that a Catholic prelate dared promote the Catholic understanding of marriage as between a man and woman, and encouraged complaints to the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner. Soon enough, a willing complainant stepped forward, and for nine months the archbishop was tied up in legal procedures and the attendant costs and time wasted. The transgender complainant, as it turned out, had no connection with the Catholic schools where the letter was distributed, and eventually withdrew the claim, but in lawfare the process is often the punishment…
Recently Archbishop Porteous has been copping it again, with activists threatening to drag him back to the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner.[3] This time his ‘crime’ was a pastoral letter calling out what Pope Francis has called a “harmful gender ideology”;[4] threats to religious liberty including freedom to choose Catholic school staff on the basis of faith and witness; and the misuse of law to discriminate against people of faith.
Misusing the Law for private or ideological ends is hardly new. In today’s Gospel, Jesus is confronted by Scribes and Pharisees who charge His men with failing to observe the Mosaic Law on ritual ablutions and other observances (Mk 7:1-23). As we heard in our first reading (Dt 4:1-8), Moses had commanded the people to keep their laws and customs. But by the time of Jesus, those laws had swelled from ten commandments and some other ordinances, to over 600 מִצְווֹת (mitzvot or customary laws) intended to surround and thus ‘protect’ the core laws, each with its own commentaries, guidelines and exceptions—what our Gospel calls collectively “the traditions of the elders”. Since the Scribes and Pharisees prided themselves on their strict observance, some took it upon themselves to be the sole authentic interpreters of the Law, and the judges of other people’s compliance.
Jesus is not much impressed by legal nit-picking to persecute people or promote private interests. Like the prophets before Him,[5] He rebukes those whose compliance and finger-wagging are hollow and hypocritical.[6] Elsewhere he refers to these temple police as ‘vipers’, ‘blind guides’, ‘accursed fools’ and ‘whitewashed tombs’—pristine in appearance but corrupt within.[7] It’s the closest He ever got to swearing!
What are we to make of Jesus’ stinging critique of those advocates of the Mosaic Law? Well, it’s clear He was no enemy of God’s Law. He declared Himself a ‘jot and tittle man’ when it comes to the Law (Mt 5:17-20). He regularly cited the Decalogue and the rest of the Law in his Teaching (Mt 19:16-19; 22:36-39 etc.). And He used it to defend Himself against critics.[8] He was called ‘Rabbi’ and clearly respected as a teacher of the Law.[9] And He resisted the watering down of the Law, for instance, on divorce and adultery (Mt 19:1-9). Yet where Christ found Himself radically at odds with some of these legal warriors was in His insistence on going to the heart of the Law, the ‘values’ such as faith and worship, friends and family, life and health, marriage and sex, truth and beauty, creation and property that the Law is there to protect, the ‘norms’ that give us direction in doing so, and the ‘virtues’ that make it more likely we will.[10]
So, it’s not that the Law doesn’t matter—after all, the Law of God is the Law of Christ who is God. But He wants us to go deeper than mere external compliance. No hypocrisy. No indulging violent, lustful or greedy passions that are the precursors of offences. No vain pride about your own moral efforts, as if you could do any of this without divine grace. Attend to your own souls before those of others, Jesus insists, to the kind of woman or man you are becoming. Observances are intended to bring you closer to God and His people, and to ensure your own flourishing, not to make you feel superior and judge others unworthy (cf. Lk 18:10-14).
So “submit to the commandments planted in you for your salvation,” James tells us today. “But don’t just listen to God’s Word and deceive yourselves: take it to heart and do what it tells you… going to the help of needy widows, orphans and the rest, and keeping your own hearts uncontaminated by the world.” (Cf. Jas 1:17-27)
[1] Dunlap used the word ‘lawfare’ in an address titled Law and Military Interventions: Preserving Humanitarian Values in 21st Century Conflicts, delivered at the Carr Centre for Human Rights, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University in 2001. http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/cchrp/ Web%20Working%20Papers/Use%20of%20Force/Dunlap2001.pdf
[2] Anthony Fisher, “The future of religious freedom in a secular world,” Quadrant 11 August 2024; Peter Kurti, “Identity politics threaten religious freedom in Australia,” Centre for Independent Studies 12 December 2015; John Steenhof, “The chilling effect of anti-vilification laws,” Human Rights Law Alliance 8 September 2023;Angela Shanahan, “Green-left lawfare forcing people of faith to the margins,” The Australian 23 March 2024.
[3] Julian Porteous, We are Salt to the Earth https://www.calameo.com/read/002628780aa0396aa14cc; A.C. Wimmer, “Australian archbishop faces criticism over pastoral letter on human dignity,” Catholic News Agency 14 May 2024; Monica Doumit, “It’s Groundhog Day, again,” The Catholic Weekly 15 May 2024.
[4] E.g. Pope Francis, General Audience, 15 April 2015; Discussion with Slovak Jesuits, 12 September 2021 https://aleteia.org/2021/09/21/pope-says-gender-ideology-is-dangerous; Interview with Elisabetta Piqué for La Nación, 10 March 2023 https://www.lanacion.com.ar/el-mundo/entrevista-de-la-nacion-con-el-papa-francisco-la-ideologia-del-genero-es-de-las-colonizaciones-nid10032023/; Address to International Symposium ‘Man-Woman: Image of God’, 1 March 2024.
[5] Cf. Isa 29:13; 1:10-12; 58:1-14; Amos 5:21.
[6] Mt ch 6; 7:1-6,21-23; 15:7-9; 16:10-15; 23:27-28; Mk 7:6; Lk 6:46; 20:46-47.
[7] Mt 23:16-17,24,28-28,33; Lk 11:40; cf. Num 19:11.
[8] e.g. Mt 9:13; 15:7-9; Mk 2:23-28; 10:7-8; 12:29-30; Lk 4:4,8,12; Jn 8:17.
[9] e.g. Lk 20:21; Jn 8:1-11.
[10] Mt ch 5; 15:3-9; 22:34-41; Lk 19:46; Jn 13:34-35; 15:13-14.
INTRODUCTION TO MASS FOR THE 22ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B) + EPHPHETA | ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 1 SEPTEMBER 2024
Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney for today’s Solemn Mass of the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time.
I’m delighted to acknowledge today staff and members of Ephpheta, the Catholic ministry to the deaf and hearing-impaired. It’s always great to have you here for the celebration of the Eucharist!
In our readings today, Moses, James and Jesus call people to hear the law of God. But humanity is hard of hearing, not physically but in not hearing with the ear of the heart. Our hearing-impaired brothers and sisters challenge all of us to open our hearts to the Word of God.
In the civil calendar today is Fathers’ Day and so we pray for our fathers and grandfathers, living or dead, and our spiritual fathers also.
To everyone present, both regulars and visitors, a very warm welcome to you all.