“Why do the Gentiles rage, and the people imagine vain things? The kings of the earth set themselves in array and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Anointed.”
St. Luke quotes the Psalmist (Psalms 2:1-2) in telling of the release of Peter and John from arrest by the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:23-31). He could be reporting on the frenzied fulminations against the proposed pastoral letter from the Council of Catholic Bishops.
The letter condemns economic processes which leave seven million people without job opportunities, push more than 25 million of our people below the poverty line, and drive an ever widening gap between the affluent and the impoverished. The bishops call such a condition an offense against human rights, a sin against God and man, Excessive wealth, side by side with abject want, is morally wrong.
The gentiles (“heathen” in the King James translation) rage.
A Notre Dame University professor says the bishops have succumbed to Democratic partisanship, and they should retreat to administering their dioceses. He means they should raise money for bigger buildings and forget about the hunger and suffering of their parishioners. In the April issue of the so-called “Christian Life” magazine a writer claims the bishops are promoting Marxism. Jerry Falwell joins the chorus, announcing that the bishops advocate socialism.
A clamor of arch-conservative protest berates the bishops for giving President Reagan a “slap in the face.” If the apostles of the right wing feel that the bishops’ call for biblical morality is a threat to their opportunities for economic exploitation, so be it. The commissars of the Kremlin also feel that the Judeo-Christian religious faith is a threat to them. The church and the synagogue are always a threat to those whose philosophy is summed up. “What’s in it for me?”
The “gentiles” are dragging a red herring over the conflict. The real issue is not a matter of economic orthodoxy but of ethical patterns. The debate should center on whether the bishops’ ethical concerns are in harmony with biblical teachings. The arch-conservatives have always tried to drag a smoke screen of communism into the discussion to hide their real motives. They did it when the churches, in 1920, joined the workers in opposing the 12-hour day, seven-day week in the steel mills. They did it again when the leadership in the churches spoke of the need for unemployment insurance, pension programs for workers, and health insurance. They are now bombarding the Catholic bishops who have joined in the call for basic human rights.
The basic issue is clear. It is the impoverished state into which 25 million of our people have been pushed within the last four years, without hope of escaping. The churches, both Protestant and Catholic, and the synagogues are calling for a change in the name of “the Lord God and His Anointed.”
The authorities in the Sanhedrin commanded Peter and John to stop preaching Jesus and His way of life.
Their answer was quite clear. “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:32)
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