Memorial of Saint Scholastica, virgin

…what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him, from within the man, from his heart….

In today’s gospel Jesus gives us a list of defilers emanating from the human heart. But he doesn’t seem to allow for evils that come from outside the human heart, the natural disasters.

Earthquakes, floods and hurricanes are tragic only when they slam into human life. We’ve been living on this planet a long time; you’d think we would have figured out how to build nature-resistant roads, bridges, buildings and cities by now. In many cases, we have!

But mendacity corrupts our thinking and our infrastructures. Buildings are not built to code; neglected bridges collapse; ticky-tacky houses disintegrate before our eyes. Sometimes, as in Haiti, tens of thousands of people die because they’re homes, schools, and public buildings are badly built. Even in America, as we like to say, most natural catastrophes are foreseeable and preventable.

I have seen how fragile a virtuous society can be. I lived in a small southern town where, after a half-century of neglect we desperately needed to repair and rebuild our schools. Every newly-elected school board would tour the buildings and be appalled by what they heard, saw, and smelled: mice scurrying through the walls, water leaking through the roof, carpets stained with mildew; classrooms smelling of moldering wood. They would float a bond to support the schools, to be repaid with a local sales tax. Teachers and parents would mobilize support for the new tax. And it was invariably defeated. Then the members of the school board would quit, or be defeated in their run for re-election, and the cycle began again. A city with four large school facilities to educate children K-12, should expect to build a new building every 20-25 years, completing a cycle every 80-100 years. That city had not added a new school since integration in the 1960’s.

The roots of this willful neglect were obvious: racism, illiteracy, poverty and corruption. These four pillars of defilement were as entrenched as the four horsemen of Revelation are irresistible. But the problems of the Deep South are not unique. Every American city and state struggles to some degree with these four pillars of defilement; and natural disasters – like the four horsemen – will expose them even in America.