Fr. John's weekly letter

Dear Friends,

So let’s pick on a family that is down on its luck…that seems to be the game the media is playing lately with the Palin family. Imagine an American family that is having some struggles with a teenager! There is a shameless amount of glee that the media is taking from the fact that Governor Palin’s daughter is expecting a child or that her husband had a DUI arrest a few short 22 years ago. Grant it someone’s political record is fodder for a news story but not their personal lives. Governor Palin stepped under the hot lights not her teenage daughter. Yet it seems the media feels an obligation to destroy this young girl completely. Maybe they are mad she didn’t have an abortion or maybe they don’t like her mother or maybe they are just displaying their usual haughtiness about what they perceive as the “white trash” from the boondocks of Alaska showing up unexpectedly. After all they eat moose stew and not out of a can! It is reminiscent of the media condescension we witnessed when Jimmy and Roslyn Carter came on the scene in the 70’s or those “hillbilly’s from Arkansas with the little girl with buck-teeth”. Whatever the case, I am sure it was hard enough for this teenager to tell her parents the news, yet alone having everyone in Alaska know about it and now the entire world. How’s that for magnifying someone’s mistake.

Yet in the midst of it there have been some bright lights. I deeply appreciate Senator Obama’s strong statement to his staff, “Keep out or be fired.” Thank you Senator for your decency and compassion. He also reminded us his mother started out as a teen mother and stuck with it. And we’re glad she did. I also thank Senator McCain for picking a running mate that has a less than perfect family. If you want someone who understands our struggles, well there it is. And that is the point. Every Sunday I see families that struggle, where things get messy, I see pregnant teens, or teens with babies, or mom’s who started out that way. Aren’t the people who sit in our pews or live in our neighborhoods part of “we the people” whom we elect or is there an aristocracy that only the media know about? (I’m not trying to sway anyone’s politics in any direction just their hearts towards compassion.)

And that is us. We are not the perfect, just the redeemed. Which means we had to have something to be redeemed from. In this case it was our sin, our faults, our weaknesses and failures. We never claim spiritual perfection, nor moral superiority yet alone behavioral infallibility. No we take to heart the words of Christ, who said, “the healthy do not need a physician, the sick do.” Hence why we come to Christ, why we hold on to the Church. If you want to see the biggest bunch of losers turn winners go to a Church on any given Sunday. As Paul said, ‘it is in powerlessness that I am made strong.”

One of the reasons this hits close to home is our support of the Elizabeth House in Tempe. The way we are trying to show love to women who find themselves unexpectedly expecting demonstrates the uselessness of casting judgment. Just because someone has a moral failing doesn’t invalidate the principles they try to uphold. In other words weakness of character does not imply doctrinal failure. The Elizabeth House shows that love in action overcomes just about any wrong choice and creates a happy ending we could never foresee. Such is grace.

I remember another person who came on the scene out of nowhere and was called “an outsider, from a backward place, doesn’t know the system, has no experience, has a narrow world view”: Karol Wojtyla , the late and great John Paul II. He taught us compassion for those in difficult situations. May he intercede for this young girl who desperately needs our love.

Love,

Correction: In the letter of Aug. 24 I incorrectly stated the American Medical Association (AMA) issues a report that stated “that no credible evidence that a single elective abortion of an unwanted pregnancy in and of itself causes mental health problems for adult women”. It was the American Psychological Association (APA).

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