Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

The Franciscan
coat of arms
over the entrance of the
MSF Youth Center

If I tell the wicked, "O wicked one, you shall surely die, "

and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way,
the wicked shall die for his guilt,
but I will hold you responsible for his death.

As I write this, Colonel Moammar Gaddafi is still on the run. Newspaper articles have reminded us of his mercurial personality and sometimes insane behavior. But if I were surrounded for forty years by people who always agreed with everything I said, who always admired my every thought, word and deed, who rewrote my past to celebrate me as a god-king, I’d probably be insane also. How could I not be?

With the rise of despots in the 20^th century, we have seen how many maniacs controlling the course of events? Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi: all these men surrounded themselves with yes men and women who supported their every notion as a wonderful idea. They could not and did not abide disagreement. They assumed the support of a slim majority as a mandate to rule by their impulses and instincts and no one could or would stop them. Even when they were forced out of office in disgrace they clung to self-aggrandizing and paranoid notions of their greatness.

Occasionally churches fall into the same death trap. Loneliness at the top can be assuaged by maddening sycophancy but it leads only to the insanity of the entire community.

In today’s gospel Jesus gives precise instructions for how to deal with such problems in his Church. I count myself among the blessed who have been confronted by it; and occasionally I have been the confronter.

There is a three part process: first, one who sees the problem must confront the troublesome person. This fraternal correction is never fun for either party. It requires courage, honesty, humility and perseverance. Being nice is not usually the first step. The confronter should be prepared with facts: when and where was the offense committed; who was involved; how did it feel; what were the consequences. The confronter must be both compassionate and unyielding. Feeling sorry for the offender doesn’t help. Blame has to fall where it belongs, on the offender and not the victim.

If the offending person cannot or will not recognize his error, the confronter should gather two or more others to meet the offender. Professionals in the health community call this an intervention. First they should steel themselves for the ordeal; they resolve to be both honest and courageous in conversation. They should prepare options for the offending person: how to make amends, how to change his attitude, and so forth. In some cases he might have to resign his office temporarily or permanently.

The meeting before the encounter may feel like gossip, but gossip is a passive aggressive way of not dealing with problems in the community. It makes matters worse as it divides the community and creates factions by demonizing certain parties.

If intervention by a group fails, the group should be prepared to call upon higher authorities and excommunication.

(However, if a crime has been committed, it’s best to skip all that and call the police.  The Gospel has power to penetrate even the jail; sometimes it works better there. But churches are not designed to deal with crime. It’s been centuries since religious communities maintained penitentiaries to incarcerate religious criminals.)

Finally, if the offending person does not demonstrate real change – not just remorse – he should be ejected from the community. I have participated in these encounters on occasion. I once banned a known sex offender from a Secular Franciscan fraternity. He had already been jailed for his crime; but he had not demonstrated real change to satisfy a mortally wounded community.

We should never doubt our authority to oversee, challenge and correct our own members. Jesus guarantees it: Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

No one said it would be fun or easy to be Christian. It wasn’t easy for Jesus either, but his is the right path to follow.

On this day, forty years ago, Father Don Adamski and I made our Solemn Profession as members of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual. We praise God for keeping us so close to himself these many years.