June 24th, 2001

12th Sunday of the year Lk 9/18-24

The three readings today tell us that there are no free rides. In the first reading and the Gospel we learn that the one who is sent from God must suffer and die before he would be validated by God. In the second reading we learn that we must put aside our prejudices and biases whether they are based on ethnicity or social class or even gender. For many of us putting aside such
biases would be a form of death. Where would we be without or stereotypes, our pet hates, our seemingly "harmless" little bigotries?

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Once upon a time there was a young woman who was about as political correct as anyone could be. She advocated the rights of African Americans and women and gays and poor people and people from the third world and people with AIDS and condemned criminals and whales and seals and birds and fish. She wrote letters, she marched, she protested, she corrected everyone who ever used a word which might be considered a slur. She had, truth be told, a wonderful time being on the right side of every cause. Sometimes it was hard because
she was never quite sure as in the case of Israel which side was politically correct. The Irish of course she dismissed as religious bigots beneath her notice, and drunken bigots at that. Nor did she like "middle class" people or hard hats or people that drove big cars. She condemned them with pure delight. They were the bad guys. Then one day someone pointed out that she
was a white middle class Irish Catholic from a family with a union background and that she drove a Ford Taurus. She wasn't part of the solution, she was part of the problem. She cried herself to sleep that night. It was so hard to know whom you could hate and whom you could not hate.