Archbishop of Sydney

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time

St. Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney
Is 43:18-10, 21-22, 24-25; 2 Cor 1:18-22; Mk 2:1-12

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
19/2/2006

The gospel today is taken from the second chapter of St. Mark and highlights a central problem for the early Christians and for us also.  Jesus was preaching a message of love and performing many miracles of healing, yet he was already beginning to provoke fierce opposition, not from the mass of the people generally, but from the religious and political leaders of the time.  All in all there are five or six cures listed in chapter one and two and then a number of clashes over his teaching and his authority to teach like that.

I have been around the Sea of Galilee a couple of times and visited Bethsaida, Chorazim and Capernaum which are, or at least were when I was there, basically uninhabited after Our Lord’s curses, lamenting the miracles performed there and their refusal to convert!  Very few people over thousands years have been game enough to live there!

On one visit I saw the type of house which, the guide claimed would have been used in Jesus’ time.  I cannot recall whether it was a complete reconstruction, or whether some part had been unearthed and they built on the remains.  It was a squat rectangular building with sturdy walls of mud and rock, while the roof was made of thatch or straw.  Therefore the four resourceful friends of the paralytic probably did not have to remove wood or tiles, much less corrugated iron, but simply stripped the straw away and lowered their friend or family member onto the floor below.  It says a lot for their resourcefulness as well as their faith.

Our Lord muddied the waters thoroughly by telling the young man that his sins were forgiven.  Many of the listeners would have understood the religious significance of this claim and have been genuinely scandalized or at least surprised.  Theirs was not a religiously ignorant age like ours (at least for devout Jews) and they would have known that only God had the power to forgive sins.  Some thought this was blasphemy, an insult to the one true God.

Jesus did not back off from his claim that the Son of Man in fact did have the power to forgive sins; he ordered the paralytic to rise from his stretcher and walk home.

Like Christ the Church, not just pope, bishops and priests but the whole Church, all her members, are called to be healers of body and soul.

The psalm refrain asks God to heal our souls because we have sinned and commends all who consider and help the poor and the weak.  If we look after others the psalmist claims that God will look after us!

No one is more powerless and weak than the unborn and I want to say a few concluding words about the long struggle we have in front of us to convince our fellow Australians that it is wrong to kill human life in the womb, even when it is very young. The major task is to educate convince and explain because only a majority of people who understand the pro-life cause will enable laws to be passed in Parliament and enforced in the courts.

As you know on Thursday The House of Representatives voted conclusively to shift responsibility for approving the importation and use of the killer drug RU486 from the Minister for Health to the Australian Drug Evaluation Committee.  This was a disappointment.

It was an abdication of responsibility and we can only hope that the TGA will give serious consideration to the well established health risks for mothers associated with RU486.

In 1996 the Parliament had decided differently because it recognised that this drug was destructive, unlike drugs which heal.  Only five years ago in 2001 both Coalition and Labor rejected a minor party attempt to alter the 1996 law.

Times have now changed in this new Parliament which is more anti-life than its predecessor.  So much for all the talk of more religious influence in this parliament.

Pro-lifers have lost a battle, but the struggle will continue to convince public opinion of the importance of human life in the womb.  Public opinion is already changing in a pro-life direction although a clear majority of the middle-aged and older politicians stuck fast to the attitudes learnt years ago.

Earlier this month a Bill know as “Holly’s Law” was introduced into the United States Congress, which, if enacted, would take RU486 off the market until the Comptroller General of the U.S.A. reviewed the process.  This Bill responds to the growing public concerns about deaths and other serious complications suffered by women using RU486.  The law itself was named after a 17 year old who died in September 2003 of septic shock after undergoing an abortion using RU486.

It would be a sad irony if the U.S. Congress moves to a position like ours from 1996 to 2006, just as the Australian parliament passed the buck.

We Catholics, with our Christian allies and some secular pro-lifers, have a big task ahead of us.  Practical help is needed, active volunteers to work hard and gather support especially among the young.  In the United States they are far ahead of us on this issue.

When Christ himself taught and healed he provoked opposition and misunderstanding.  We should not be surprised today by the hostility of the anti-life forces.  But I am.  It continues to surprise me that the same people who regularly work for humanitarian causes can be so bitterly opposed to the right to life of the unborn.

Let us pray that on this issue of life we will not be those who are “yes, but” people; or “yes” on principle, but “no” in this instance.  May we say yes to life and stick with it.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.