Bad Shepherds, Heresy and Schism – 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; July 21, 2024

Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the Lord. … I will take care to punish your evil deeds.

This is a severe warning coming from God, but it does not directly apply to you who belong to Christ’s flock, but rather to the shepherds, who in the Church are the Pope, bishops, and priests, particularly those who mislead and scatter the flock of Christ, the bad shepherds. We, who are counted among the shepherds, must take heed to the warning lest we come under the judgement of God.

Nevertheless, since you need the guidance of the shepherds of the Church, you need to pray for them that they be faithful and good shepherds. At the same time, it is also necessary to be able to distinguish good shepherds from bad shepherds.  We must not be like those with itching ears, who reject sound teaching, while accumulating for themselves teachers after their own liking. (2 Tim 4:3)

So how is that that a priest or bishop might mislead or scatter the flock of Christ?

First of all, most obviously, by bad example, by living a bad life. If that is all there is to it; if a priest is doing nothing more than living a bad life – which is bad enough – but is otherwise fulfilling his ministry, then the words of the Lord apply: The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach but do not practice. (Mt 23:2-3)

Second, by silence when they should speak up to give warning that the wolf is coming. In this regard, the Lord commanded the prophet Ezekiel, saying that he had set him as a watchman for the people of Israel, that if God commanded him to warn someone to turn from his wicked way and he failed to warn him, the wicked man would indeed perish, but the prophet too would have to answer to God for his failure to warn. (cf. Ez 3:16-21) In the Gospel, Jesus says about the bishop or priest who fails to warn others about sin: He who is a hireling and not a shepherd, to whom the sheep do not belong, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees – he flees by his silence – and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hireling and cares nothing for the sheep.  (Jn 10:12-13)

Yet notice, even if the bishop or priest is silent, the faithful are responsible for their own sin. Everyone has an obligation to keep his eyes on Christ, the Good Shepherd, to listen to his word, and follow his teaching. He says, My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. (Jn 10:27)

Third, by bad, false, or heretical teaching. By his bad example a priest teaches others to sin, by his silence he condones his sin, by bad teaching he gives rise to confusion, leading others to think that sinful conduct might not be sinful after all. Heretical teaching, though, undermines the faith itself, which is the foundation for the entire Christian life.

St. Paul names what have come to be called the three theological virtues, the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul, that lie at the heart of the entire Christian life: There remain faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (1 Cor 13:13)

Charity or Christian love is the greatest, but without faith, there is no charity, because charity is not any old love, but chiefly the love of God as he makes himself known to us through Jesus Christ, and the love of neighbor, for the sake of God, according to the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. So, if someone who does not believe in Jesus Christ engages in a deed of philanthropy, like endowing a hospital, it is not an act of true charity and the words of St. Paul apply to him, If I give away all that I have and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not charity, I gain nothing. (1 Cor 13:3) Charity looks to the neighbor in the fulness of his dignity and need, as one who has been created in God’s image, redeemed by the Blood of Christ, and called to sanctification in the Holy Spirit. Without faith, that vision of the true dignity and worth of another is impossible.

Likewise, hope looks to eternal life, as promised by Christ, as made possible through his redemption, to be attained by the means he has given to us, which includes the devout use of the sacraments of the Church. Again, this is impossible without faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. For whoever would draw near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (He 11:6) And Jesus said, Let your hearts not be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many mansions … I go to prepare a place for you. (Jn 14:1-2)

So, without faith, hope and charity are lost, but so long as faith remains, the root of the tree is there, capable of sprouting anew, by God’s grace. Yet, heresy destroys faith, thereby destroying also, at their root, hope and charity.

Faith, guided by the Holy Spirit, believes what God has revealed to us, because he has revealed it, who is absolutely truthful, the source of all truth, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. (cf. Vatican I, Dei Filius, ch. 3; Vatican II, Dei Verbum, 5) Heresy picks and chooses, as in a cafeteria, what it wants to believe and what it doesn’t want. Faith relies on God’s authority; heresy on one’s private judgment, one’s personal opinion, one’s own likes and dislikes. What has been revealed, the ‘deposit of faith”, guaranteed by the Holy Spirit, was entrusted to the Apostles and has been handed on in the Tradition of the Church, recorded in Sacred Scripture, and is proposed to the faithful by the Magisterium, or “teaching authority” of the Church.

Now imagine a Catholic in the 4^th century, the time of the Arian heresy, which denied that Jesus was truly God. He believes that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before the ages, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, consubstantial to the Father. His Bishop, however, is an Arian heretic and he denies all this and regards Jesus as the first of all created beings, higher than the angels, but below God. The Catholic cannot say, “Well my Bishop says it, so I will believe it.” If he follows the bad shepherd, he loses his own faith. The Creed has been entrusted to him to believe and he must hold fast to it.

The Arian Bishop might be more subtle and deceptive. He does not outright deny the Catholic Creed, but he seeks to “relativize it” through sophisticated arguments. He might say, “That is fine, but we need to avoid the extremism of Athanasius of Alexandria. We really must not be so strict about these matters. Instead let us seek unity and accommodate our brethren who want to say that Jesus is the true Son of God, like in substance to the Father.” In Greek the difference between “like in substance to the Father” and “consubstantial to the Father” was literally the difference of an “iota”.

I am not talking about artificial scenarios; this is the sort of thing that happened in the 4^th century. Most of the Catholic bishops even had been bullied into silence by the Roman Emperor. St. Athanasius was one of the few brave defenders of the faith. Catholics kept the faith despite their bishops.  

Or we could move to our own time. There are priests who deny that the bread and wine become really, truly, and substantially the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. They effectively hold the Protestant doctrine, reducing the Eucharist to no more than a symbol. There might not be so many who are open about it, but there are others, who may not deny the doctrine in words, but do so in deeds. Like the priest I saw (1,000 miles away from here and many years ago) who set the monstrance out for adoration by the faithful in such a casual and dismissive manner that his every gesture said, “I don’t want to do this; I think it is a bunch of nonsense; but I have to do it for you superstitious idiots.” There was evidently a group of laity in that parish who held fast to their Eucharistic faith, despite the opposition of their priests and had succeeded even in getting the Pastor to approve a weekly holy hour.

Now, God has made known to us not only what we are to believe, but also how we are to live, so divine revelation comprises both faith and morals. Today we are faced not only with denials of matters of faith, but we are faced also with what might be called “moral heresies”, the chief of which might be called the heresy of Sodom or more generally the heresy of the “culture of death”; this is not just a matter of bad living, but of calling evil good and good evil. (cf. Is 5:20)

St. Vincent of Lerins (5^th century), referring to the teaching of Moses in Deuteronomy (cf. Dt 13:3), wrote that God allows these bad shepherds “in order to make trial of us, whether or not we love God with all our heart and with all our mind.” (Commonitory, I.19)

In any case, through our baptism and confirmation, we have all been given to share in the Holy Spirit, and this means we all have a responsibility to keep our eyes on Christ, the Good Shepherd, hold fast to the faith we have received from the Church, and not let ourselves be led astray by bad shepherds. We must keep our eyes on Christ and recognize and listen to the good shepherds he continues to send us.

Ironically, heresy is often promoted in the name of unity. So, we come to today’s 2^nd reading that teaches us about true unity.

Jesus Christ is our peace and our unity. He destroys enmity by uniting us in himself, in his own Body, the Church. He unites us by reconciling us to God, freeing us from sin through the Blood of his Cross, and giving us to share in the life of grace in the Holy Spirit.

Balance of powers is not peace, but an uneasy truth between those who have power, while those who are powerless in this world are left out in the cold. As for human fraternity, there can be no real brotherhood among men without the fatherhood of God, and it is only through the mediator, Jesus Christ, that we are reconciled to the Father.

True peace, true unity, cannot be had except in the Body of Christ, the Catholic Church, which is a visible reality in this world, visibly united by bonds of faith, sacraments, and government.

We must be united in the profession of the same faith, which centers on a person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, who gives us a doctrine that his inseparable from his person.

We must be united in the same acts of public worship, the same “liturgy”, which revolves around the seven sacraments, especially the most Holy Eucharist. Now, on the one hand, these sacraments derive their power from Christ, through the working of the Holy Spirit. For that reason, so long as the minister intends to do what the Church does and so celebrates the sacrament according to the rite of the Church, the sacrament is “real” and grace is given by God through the sacrament. Even the unbelieving priest makes bread and wine to become the Body and Blood of Christ, because it is Christ who acts through him, despite his lack of faith, when he celebrates Mass according to the rite and intention of the Church.

Nevertheless, when someone approaches the sacrament without true faith, the sacrament is real, but his reception of it is nothing more than an empty show, a mockery of Christ. Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. (1 Cor 11:29) So also when someone comes to receive communion in a state of mortal sin.

Finally, Christ’s family (cf. Lk 8:21) is governed in his name by the Pope and the bishops in union with him, as a family is governed by its father. As I have loved you, so must you love one another. (Jn 13:34) That is Jesus’ own commandment, given in the first place to his own disciples, that must be lived out in the family of those who believe in him. That means not withdrawing from the family but living together under the rule of the family authority. The father should preside in charity, but as we know that does not always take place, not even in the Church.

Maybe it is easier to live familial charity beneath a good, kind, and loving father, but even when the father fails, the members of the family must strive to maintain the bond of charity, in the midst, at times, of great suffering. That is true also in the family of the Church. This requires great patience, bearing one another’s burdens and so fulfilling the law of Christ. (Gal 6:2)

Schism, whereby someone removes himself from the rule of the Pope, or from communion with those who are subject to him, is a radical and fundamental sin against fraternal charity. Schism is to charity, what heresy is to faith. When a priest, or worse even a bishop, is involved, one altar is set in opposition to another, and the celebration of the Mass, the sacrament of unity, becomes a weapon of war.

The bad shepherds to whom the Lord gives warning and about whom he warns us, mislead and scatter the flock by heresy and schism.  For our part, we must show our love of God by our fidelity in heart, mind, and deed.