Who are those guys? Not the Catholics again!

Christians have always been a target of governmental persecution. Shoot, even the crucifixion and death of Jesus was plotted by the Sanhedrin, which served as the judicial branch of the Jewish body politic. It hasn’t stopped.
Catholics have always had a reputation for being both a thorn in the side and a scapegoat for the powers that be.

That reputation was even used to incite hatred of Catholic teachings and thereby make abortion legal.

And we’re such nice people!

Written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG AS YOU LISTEN:

In the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, there's a scene where the, I guess the heroes, of the show tried to rob a train, and the train was full of Pinkerton men. And so for a period of time in the movie, they're running away as fast as they can and they keep on looking back and the Pinkerton people are still following. And the classic line, as least from my perspective is, "Who are those guys?" because it is very emblematic of the world.

There's always somebody out there: "Who are those guys?"

You know, like in Mayve's case. She does a good job of working hard and every year auditors come in to make sure she did it right. And there are times where they say, "Mayve, why did you do this?" And she's thinking, "Who are those guys?"

And if you get into a position of power, even someone was powerful as the mayor of Farmers Branch, there are always groups of people who are going, "Can you do this? Why did you do this?" They are just always picky, and you go, "Who are those guys? How do I get rid of them."

And you see this in politics, we see it in American politics, we see it in other politics, there's always this group of people.

"I'm the most powerful person in this country and... Robert is always saying something bad about me. Who is he? Who does he think he is to have the right to give me a bad time?"

Well, in ancient Rome the emperor was considered to be divine and the Christians were a problem because if I'm divine I can do whatever I want to do and many of the Roman emperors did a lot of nasty things.

So there are people out there like Robert who's going, "You shouldn't do that! You're immoral! You're horrible!"

"Who is that guy?"

And then all of a sudden not only is Robert doing it, but Darlene's doing it, and Beth's doing it, Wisdom's doing it and John's doing it. And you're going, "Who are those guys?"

And if you have a sense of insecurity, which I think every ruler does you know, you bring in... yeah, you guys are old enough to bring in John Dean. Do you remember John Dean, Richard Nixon's guy?

"John, how do we get rid of them. They're undermining my authority. I'm the divine emperor. They keep on saying bad things about me."

"Well, you know, if we just started repressing the Christians, one, there wouldn't be as many of them, and we could shut them up."

"Good idea. Go kill them."

That's what happened to Januarius. The Emperor Diocletian was feeling insecure. And you always need a scapegoat, too. "Vote for me because Robert is a horrible person." You need that, too. And the Christians were horrible people. And he has the power of life and death and he exercises it and cuts his head off. There are some stories about whether he was killed by bears. They don't know. They just really don't know.

The question is, "Do you have what it takes to be a martyr?"

Let's put ourselves in an imaginary situation where the country....eh it's imaginary; we'll call it the United States... is engaged in policies that some or all of us don't like and we decide that it is appropriate to go out and tell the government that we don't like their policy on gun control, immigration, abortion, sexual rights... we don't like it and we're loud about it. We make it clear that we think that the people who are doing what we believe is wrong are immoral people, horrible people and they should never be in the government again.

Just because our government officials don't have the right to simply say, "Chop Robert's head off," it still places you in a position of being an outcast, of being a problem... something that needs to be eliminated.

Remember how many times I have talked about the making of a martyr many times is the interface between government and religion. The government and faith. That the government is doing something that is improper and that as a person of faith, you go out and do something that the government doesn't want you to do.

The question that we face as individuals... choose your issue; the issue is not that important... no, I take that back; the issue is always important... but for purposes of discussion the issue is not important.

There is an issue involving golf that's extremely important to John. And the city of Farmers Branch elects a new mayor and city council and says, "You can't play golf on the weekend in Farmers Branch. It disrupts all the people who live around the golf course, and you can only play during the day when people are off at work between 10:00 and 3:00 every day."

Well, John takes umbrage. And John goes out and protests. John's out there with with a little sign and he's got the sign tied onto his golf club. "The city of Farmers Branch is unfair!"

And the mayor comes and says, "Mayve, you go tell John to stop doing that. And tell him that if he doesn't stop doing it, we're going to take his golf club, wrap it around his neck, and throw him into the water hazard on whatever..."

Laughter

At what point when we deal with the government, which tends to be amoral at best, so we protest and where do we draw the line? Does John draw the line at saying, "John look if you don't stop doing this we're going to throw you in jail." Does John say, "Okay, I don't want to go to jail."

"John if you keep on doing this, we're going to send you to prison for five years." John, says, "Well, I don't really want to go to prison." But John's always being very practical. He says, "Do they have a golf course at the prison?" And they say, "No."

More laughter

Now take a fanciful discussion about golf, and this is one that we have had in the United States for forty years, what if the issue is abortion, what if the issue is euthanasia. What do we do? What do we protest? How do we protest? How do we deal with the situation?

What if the issue is sexual rights? "You're going to go to jail if you say on a moral basis that homosexuality is wrong.” That's called "Welcome to Canada". You're going to go to jail. Do you say the beliefs, or do you say, "I'm just going to be quiet, because Jesus Christ obviously would not want anybody to suffer for his faith. Look at Him, He just led a great life. Why would He ever want anybody to suffer?"

Why do we have martyrs?

And the question that it really comes down to is, "Do we..." you notice that I'm using the first person plural there... "do we have the courage to be a martyr for our faith?" Do we have the courage to do the equivalent of being torn apart by bears, having our head chopped off, being on the heated rack like St. Lawrence, there's all sorts of them. Do we have the courage? Do we have the courage to simply be like John and say, "If you're going to take away my ability to play golf, go ahead and wrap that stupid golf club around my neck and kill me because life... I'm going to show you that it's not worth it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to be martyr for the faith."

Do we have that courage? I don't know the answer to that question for myself. What does it take? Where is that line? What is that line?

And I have to admit that one of my favorite saints, and I don't even know the name of the saint, but he was a deacon. Of course you know that deacons are kind of strange anyway. His bishop was being abused and misused by the governmental authorities because he kept on telling the rulers that they were bad people. And they were arresting him and they were going to kill him. And the deacon was moving along and he probably was going to be, like the deacons of Pope Sixtus, they were probably going to kill him, too, but they were abusing him. They were abusing his bishop! And he says, "Wait a minute! Stop it! Don't abuse the bishop," "Oh shut up, deacon. Just go away. We're going to take care of you. Don't worry about that." And this wonderful deacon saint punched him right in the face. And in the order of being martyred they put him ahead of the bishop at that point.

But the question that I have for all of us is: at what point do we become a martyr in dealing with the government? In dealing with this immoral entity that each and every one of us can think of a list of at least five items in which the United States government is doing something that we believe is morally repugnant. What have we done about it in the face of the power of the government? What would it take for us to do something?

Ask it differently, what would it take for us to be a martyr?

September 12, 2019