Acts 20:16-36
Psalm 27:1-8
John 17:1-13

An Age of Wolves

At his elevation to the Roman Papacy, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger famously petitioned,

Wolves had set upon him long before this date demonizing him as, of all things, a vicious guard dog: "God's Rottweiler." I recall sitting with a lady volunteer in Haiti. She had come to help us in our Franciscan ministry. I sat at the breakfast table with her as she ranted about Pope Benedict XVI, calling him callous and brutish. I asked her, "Have you ever met him? Have you read anything he has written? Do you know him in any way?" She did not see how my questions could be relevant. For everyone, she said, knew that he was a vicious man. I thought to myself, a more vivid case of psychological projection you will never see, for here was vicious wolfishness, her wolfishness, savaging the gentlest and shyest and most meek man among us. I replied, "Joseph Ratzinger is, with Hans Urs von Balthasar, perhaps the greatest Roman Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, maybe of any century, possessing the serenity and gentle nature of a saint." But for this woman the only important things were far-fetched issues — like the ordination of women or gay marriage. Whether humans, even saintly humans, happen to be in her way, then they were to be vilified, destroyed if possible. For she was white hot with her "vision of the Church," as she styled it. And this vision had super-heated countless other minds and hearts. As I stepped in to insist that reason have its voice and that issues ought to come first, I saw that I too would be vilified, demonized, ... perhaps with false stories circulated about me and condemned by false accusation as Pope Benedict had been.

During my years in the Roman Catholic Church, which I served as a professor of theology, I studied under one of the Roman Church's leading teachers, a longtime president-rector of a Pontifical College in Rome. He knew Benedict XVI. And he knew the state of the Church very well. Among the first things he asked me to read were St. Augustine's homilies on the wolves among the sheep. Completing that task and then looking out on the world in which I was now placed, I feared, Do we live in an age of wolves? Is that the stamp our historical period will bear? For all around me I saw men who, in very public ways, claimed to be shepherds but who preyed upon their own in order to satisfy perverted desires. But I am getting ahead of myself. Who or what is a wolf? A wolf is an apex predator, who lives at the top of the food chain devouring those below him. The whole world is seen through the lens of me.

I suppose wolves console themselves by saying, "I am what I am. The desires and needs I see in myself God gave me. At least, I don't pretend to be something else." Such wolves would reject the premise that they wear sheep's clothing. But this would not be true:

Today, my religious community is no longer Roman Catholic, but Orthodox Catholic. We have been granted safe haven "where sheep may safely graze" (Bach). I tell people cheerfully day after day, I am living through the golden age of my life. Every day and every night we offer heart-felt thanks for this safety and sanctity. But we must admit that the world beyond the Hermitage and the events we read in the headlines point to roving wolfpacks that continue to prey on the vulnerable and which fill the public square, and our mass media, with the images of wolfish life.

But how is this able to go forward? Such outlandish images, not to say lifestyles, would have been unthinkable only two generations ago. Yet, today they dominate our lives, are even celebrated and held up to be ideals. And the flock cowers before them. They say not a word, fearing to be vilified and demonized in public. And as our world descends into hellishness, we hear echoing in every quarter the Two Great Commandments of Hell: "Don't judge me!" and "Live and let live!" Meantime, the flock stands stock-still in a paralysis of fear, silent, but watching, as its most sacred treasures fall one-by-one: marriage, the family, our children, the Church. And we hear a whisper proceeding from the evil one's lips: "Checkmate."

St. Paul would not have been surprised for wolfish life is what we expect from the world:

Wolfish life within the Church has become well known to everyone. The widely respected president-rector of a Roman Catholic seminary estimates that 60% of the Roman priesthood participates in the homosexual lifestyle. Another book released in the past few weeks, which has been well received for its thorough research and credibility, sets that number at 80% among bishops and priests who serve in Rome itself.

"How can this be?" we ask "How could the whole Western Catholic Church be caught up in widespread heresy?" For these men assert the rightness of their actions and lifestyle. You see, these are not people who have fallen into sin. These are people who stand in the pulpit and proclaim their lifestyle. Those who have followed events in the Archdiocese of Boston know that these events were lived out by priests as being a theological and spiritual ideal. Today who can doubt the connection between homosexuality and pedophilia? This mania overbrims and spills out onto our children. The formidable Roman priest, the Revd Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, asked rhetorically, What?! No connection between homosexuality and clerical pedophilia?! With nearly all abuse cases involving priests with boys?! Do you really claim that removing all homosexual priests will not bring an end to this egregious sexual abuse? And leading prelates of the Roman Church say succinctly, "The problem is not pedophilia. It is homosexuality."

Historical research shows that this homosexual-pedophile nexus was current in the eleventh century (dramatically described by St. Peter Damian in his Book of Gomorrah). It was current in the thirteenth century (resulting in the Cathar rebellion, which called for a catharsis in the Church). It has been current throughout the history of the Western Church. For the Church was designed and constructed at its inception (1054) to cultivate a fraternity of men who were not permitted to express their love through marriage. This was the first experiment of a celibate priesthood in the thousand year history of the Church and the only one its two thousand year history. No, this is not the case of a few priests falling into perversion and sin.

But still we ask, How could this be? How could an enormous fraternity of priests pioneer a new morality? Is this not the Church? But on the subject of sin, we go to first principles and recall that the forbidden fruit of Eden did not grow upon the Tree of Good and Evil but of the Knowledge of Good and Evil — we might say the Philosophy of Good and Evil. What Adam and Eve claimed for themselves was the right to define moral right and moral wrong, to make their own rules, rejecting the ways of God. Look around you. Does this concept seem so foreign? "I have my own truth. Don't judge me. Live, and let live."

Again, a great line is drawn across the human lifeworld, both the quick and the dead. On one side, the Kingdom of God. The other side we call, the world. Do you make your own rules? Do you have your own truth? Do you pride yourself in not calling anyone's conduct into question? Is that your religion? This is the way of the world. Or do you embrace God's way of life, seeking to make His mind and heart your mind and heart. If you do, then "you are not far from the Kingdom of God" (Mk 12:24). The way of the world in the end, in its permanent state, is called the House of Death. The way of God we call Heaven. In other words, in the end each person will receive what he or she has desired all along. Remember, these two ways can never be reconciled to each other. In fact, the House of Death has no reality of its own; it is merely the anti-life.

This morning we heard the Lord comment on these two, very different realms. At the point of His departure to Heaven leaving the world, He says,

Today, the Orthodox Catholic Church celebrates the assurance of truth. For in the years 325, bishops from all over the world were summoned by the Emperor of the Roman Empire to a conclave at Nicaea. This truly Catholic assembly of the Apostles-among-us, guided by the Holy Spirit, remembered Jesus' word on Pilate's pavement: "Every one who is of the truth hears my voice."

Yet is the Church through the ages always threatened by the counterfeit, the false, and the fragmentary. And deception is as simple as the wolfish posing, not only as sheep, but also as the shepherd. And even the slightest adjustment of doctrine can be fatal.

The Edict of Milan (313) marked the Church's acceptance in the Roman Empire. Indeed, the Emperor Constantine and the Empress Helena were devout Christians. Yet was the Church already plunged into grave heresy on account of a single letter being altered in one word of doctrine: Homoousios is changed to Homooisios:

What led this benighted world back into the light? What saved Christianity from extinction only three centuries after our Lord's death on a Cross? Truth. Only truth. In 325 Constantine I convened the First Ecumenical Council, held at Nicaea, attended by bishops from all over the Roman Empire, and led by the Holy Spirit. This Council would not as yet define Christian doctrine concerning the Holy Spirit. And, yes, another Council would be needed to refine details of the Nicene Creed (at Constantinople in 381). Yet, the Fathers of this First Council would enshrine our Trinitarian belief in a universal Creed, which was to become the lifeline of our faith, setting out core principles:

Was that First Council really and truly led by the Holy Spirit? Isn't that the pivotal question? For if it were not, then how could be make the same claim for the other six great councils? You may be shocked to hear that we can answer this question and to a certainty. On May 7, 351, a Cross ascended over Jerusalem so radiantly brilliant and so large as to span the distance from the Mount of Olives to Golgotha (five and a half miles). It stood in the sky day and night for for a whole week, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, St. Cyril, wrote a letter to the Emperor Constantius I, who had fallen back into Arianism, admonishing him to fear God. Is Jesus not the Son of God?! Not of the same substance with the Father?! Not of the same dignity as God?! O man, behold the Cross on which God was hung, and fall to your knees!

Today, the Orthodox Catholic Church is our last bulwark against ruinous change. Our Cathdral in Washington D.C. recently posted this: