St. Francis in the Modern World: Problems of Race Relations, Poverty, and War

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Text of the keynote address delivered to the Annual Conference of the Eastern Region, St. John the Baptist Province of the Third Order of St. Francis, at the University of Dayton

by Robert M. Bowman, Ph.D., TOSF

Editor’s Note: This speech was reprinted on the 30th Anniversary of its delivery; as a result, this sermons contains language you’ll find hopelessly outdated — talking about negroes instead of African-Americans, for example. At the time this sermon was given, Vatican II was just ending, the Vietnam War was raging, and Dr. Bowman’s seventh child was just two months old.

When we look at the world, what do we see? Wars, riots, lawlessness, immorality, degradation, hatred, bigotry, white supremacy, black power, yellow peril, treason. Our young people are abandoning the morality, patriotism, and religious beliefs we have passed on to them — values of civilized man, which have been preserved and developed over centuries.

I’d like to tell you a true story of two young men who each had the opportunity, the intelligence, the home life, and the talent to become highly-respected members of their community — lawyers, generals, senators, governors — but who instead turned from society and wound up in jail.

The first of these young men, in spite of his good upbringing, was continually in trouble with the authorities for disturbing the peace. His favorite targets were religious leaders. His attacks on priests often went no further than name-calling, but at least once resulted in actual violence on church property. This was just a beginning. As time went on he defied more and more laws. He founded an underground organization that the government considered so dangerous that it made it a federal crime to be a member. Its leaders were in and out of jail on all sorts of charges from prostitution and drug addiction to inciting to riot and conspiracy.

The second of these young men is a member of that organization. Now I think we all recognize the right of peaceful demonstration, but have you heard about the “nude-ins”? This guy put on one of the first. His own father admitted that his son was an unprincipled thief. He was not a draft-card burner; he was a deserter!

We have been talking about symptoms. In order to get at causes, I’d like to discuss some parallels between the lives of these two young men.

1. They both came from good families — upper middle-class, no fatherless homes, no divorce.
2. They both, according to neighbors, kept bad company.
3. They both rejected the political, social, and religious customs and practices which were their inheritance.
4. They both attracted throngs of barefoot, bearded followers.
5. They both wound up in jail at one time or another.
6. They both died with nail-holes in their hands and feet.

They were Jesus Christ and Francis of Assisi. They were outcasts from their society. Would they be treated any better today? Are they among those we persecute and condemn?

It was the will of God that made them misfits in their time. Their mission was not to adjust themselves to the world in which they lived, but to adjust the world to the will of God. If they were walking the earth today, on whose side would they walk?

They “kept bad company” in that they consorted with sinners — not to join in their sinfulness, neither to condemn them for it, but to befriend them, to love them, and to bring them to the knowledge of God’s love and mercy.

Christ attacked the Pharisees not because they were sinners, but because they were hypocrites!! Comfortable in their self-righteousness, they were more interested in the letter of the law than in the spirit, more interested in the preservation of their way of life than in charity and true justice.

St. Francis was ridiculed, mocked, and dismissed as a madman by the Pharisees of his time — bishops who preserved a life of ease and luxury for themselves and built monuments to their ego through the sale of indulgences to the poor, who spent more time playing power politics than preaching the Gospel, who despised St. Francis for undermining their means of income, and who feared St. Francis because he not only preached the Gospel, but dared to live it.

But was Francis not accepted and followed by most of the people? No. Most of the respectable, upstanding, law-abiding citizens rejected him with as much vigor as did the landed clergy. Then who were his followers? Youth! A 16 year old Clare, her 14 year old sister Agnes. St. Francis, like Jesus, found his followers in the young, the poor, the visionary, the inspired. The ranks swelled in time. Gradually the movement grows. But in their own time and for years afterward, both Jesus and Francis were disowned by the generation which gave them life and by the world which they tried to change — and the conflict is still going on.

By St. Francis’ time, millions had accepted Christ in name, but His Spirit was a dying ember.

Today, millions of us bear St. Francis’ name, but I say to you his spirit is a dying ember in our hearts! … and therefore so is the spirit of Christ.

Let’s take another look at the modern world - only this time let’s look deeper than wars, riots, lawlessness, immorality - Let’s look at people. What do we see?

Poverty — grinding, crushing, killing poverty. Prejudice, fear, greed, hate, envy — but not as much of these things as we might expect. We look at most of the world and we see only poverty, mixed with a little fear, a little envy, and very little hope. These ingredients occasionally mix with hate and the result is violence — maybe in Asia, or Africa, or Detroit, or West Dayton.

But let’s look at North Dayton, or Centerville, or wherever us good, respectable, law-abiding Christians live. Let’s see — no fear. It’s no longer a federal crime to be a Christian; we’re harmless. No hate — people leave us alone, we leave them alone. Prejudice? Well really, we’re not prejudiced against anybody. I bet each one of us knows at least one nice negro we don’t mind being around. Of course if he wanted to move next door, … “I’m not prejudiced, mind you, but you know what happens to property values” (Have you ever heard that?) Envy? Don’t be ridiculous, who have we got to envy! (except the Kennedys and my boss, and …). Immorality? Why we never go to dirty movies. We bind ourselves with cords. We pray every day.

Well we rocks of the community must have some fault. Got to dig deeper.

Oh, my God! Have mercy on us! You know what it is as well as I do — it’s hypocrisy!!! The same hypocrisy for which Jesus condemned the Pharisees; the same hypocrisy which infected the Church in St. Francis’ time; the same hypocrisy which led to the Reformation; this same hypocrisy fills our hearts, dominates our attitudes, and dictates our actions. And I’m going to try to prove it to you.

We faithfully follow the letter of the law, but the Spirit is not in us. The other day Madeline Murray, the famous atheist, appeared on a local television show. So-called Christians called in, one after the other, berating and condemning Mrs. Murray, calling down the wrath of God upon her, refusing to pray for her, and assigning her to hell. Is that what Jesus would have done?

We congratulate ourselves for our charity when we give a small pittance out of our great abundance toward the crushing needs of the poor. But is it charity? It’s not even justice!! Charity demands more than justice. And justice demands more than we are willing to give.

When St. Francis was young, even before his conversion, he was generous. He used to send alms to the lepers even though they revolted him so much he could not bear to take it to them himself. Later, during his conversion, he finally overcame his revulsion, went to the lepers, gave all he had, embraced them, and kissed them. Then he knelt before them and asked their forgiveness for his earlier injustice to them. He did not feel that his earlier almsgiving was charitable, nor even just. It was less than he felt he owed them. Why?

What do we owe in justice to the poor in India, in North Vietnam, in West Dayton, in Appalachia?

We have several clear guides. Recent Popes have spelled out in clear terms the responsibility of rich nations and individuals to poor ones — a responsibility not of charity, but of justice which goes much farther than our past or present deeds.

We do not truly own anything we possess. All things come from God and ultimately belong to Him. We are merely stewards to whom God has given permission to use the fruits of the earth during our journey through this life. At the end of that journey, we must give an accounting of our stewardship. Many of us will find, I’m afraid, that those extra pairs of shoes under the bed did not belong to us, but to the shoeless; the extra coats in our closet were not ours but the poor’s; the food we wasted had belonged to the hungry. I think it was Pope Gregory the Great who said, “If you have more than you need, and you do not give it to him who has none, then you have stolen it from him.”

This concept of Christian justice is unpopular and difficult, but it is part of our stewardship. And it is taught by Christ and St. Francis.

The justice we are concerned with here is enforceable only by our conscience, for it does not depend on the letter of any law, but is essential to the spirit of Christ, the spirit of St. Francis, and the spirit of the law of God. We hypocrites lull our consciences into thinking we are not only just but charitable, since we follow the letter of the law and maybe a little more. But this is no more than the Pharisees did, and Christ said, “Unless your charity exceeds theirs, you will not have life in you.” No power on earth is going to punish us for our great injustices against the poor, the Negro, the Communist, the atheist, the sinner, — but God will punish us.

I know what you’re thinking. “That’s going too far. Maybe we’re not saints; maybe we could do more; we could give more to the poor, we could do more for our Negro neighbors, but after all we do do something, and we’re not sinners. God isn’t going to punish us just because we don’t give everything we’ve got.”

Alright. If you don’t believe me, let God tell you himself. From St. Matthew, chapter 23: “Woe to you, hypocrites! because you pay tithes and have left undone the more important matters of the Law — true justice and mercy and faith. These things you ought to have done, as well as the other.”

You answer me — how have we measured up until today? Have we been Franciscans or Pharisees?

St. Francis interpreted that passage literally. Was he being unrealistic? Or was he simply recognizing and being obedient to the will of God?

“That’s all well and good,” you say, “but we’re laymen — and most of us married. Just how far can we go? After all, charity begins at home.”

To try to answer this question, let me tell you of the first members of the Third Order of St. Francis — Blessed Luchesio and his wife Buona Donna. They distributed their goods to the poor, put on the penitent’s habit, and dedicated their lives to the poor. They received them into their home and shared the vegetables from their garden with them. If the sick were too feeble to come, Luchesio cared for them in their own houses. Sometimes he brought them home with him. Often his neighbors would see him coming back with a couple of them — one perched on the back of his donkey, and the other one on his own back. He would journey far away to help in districts where malaria was raging. When their own resources were exhausted, they would beg from door to door to get food and medicine for the poor ones in their care.

All this means just one thing: You too can live the Gospel, — if you WILL.

Why haven’t we? Selfishness. Attachment to things of the world. And hypocrisy.

We value the equity in our house above the rights of our Negro neighbor.

We value a quiet evening in front of the TV set in our wood-paneled, plush-carpeted rectory over visits to sick and troubled parishioners.

We value a low tax bill over the chance for an education for children in a neighboring slum district. “After all, we paid for our school, let them build their own.

We value our high standard of living over the chance to prevent starvation in a far-away land.

“But,” you might say, “the Communists (editors note: you could insert: “terrorists”) are unprincipled killers engaging in wars of aggression to gain their ends.” But then I ask you what we are doing in Vietnam today. We’re killing, and as much as we try to avoid it, we’re killing men, women, and children to gain our ends. Our respected Church leaders tell us that’s alright in a just war — like the Crusades. Alright, we’ll skip the question of whether there is such a thing as a “just war” and ask only “Is this a just war?” If we’re there to keep the South Vietnamese people from being enslaved, then maybe the answer is yes — and I hope it is. But if we’re killing off the people we say we’re trying to help, if our motive is really to protect ourselves and prevent the “fruits of our labors” from being distributed to the poor of Asia, if we’re really only interested in preserving the affluence gap between ourselves and the have-nots, then the war is no more just than is the existence of such a gap. In that case, it would be a selfish, hypocritical war, an immoral war that would bring the wrath of God upon us.

These questions are not easy to answer. I have not yet answered them to my own satisfaction.

All these things we have discussed — poverty, prejudice, and war — are part of the one unifying problem we must solve: replacing hypocrisy with justice and charity.

This is not a very pleasant picture of the modern world which I have painted for you. Happily, there is another side. There is hope. As in St. Francis’ time, the young, the poor, the visionary, the inspired are ready to cast off this hypocrisy. They recognize it for what it is — and they want no part of it. The hippies may not know exactly what to replace it with, but they know that they want no part of the false, self-righteous, hypocritical morality thrust upon them by our generation. They want something true, real, worthwhile. Who can blame them for rejecting a morality which teaches that it’s a mortal sin to neck but it’s alright to drop an atomic bomb on thousands of helpless children? Who can blame the Rather Groppis and the Reverend Martin Luther Kings for defying laws which preserve artificial barriers between those who have and those who have not — barriers which kill and de-humanize those within. There is hope that these barriers now will be taken down by those who built them, and not torn down amidst violence and bloodshed.

There is opportunity in this modern world. We in the United States have it within our power to completely eliminate poverty in our country with the negative income tax or some other similar plan, at the same time wiping out the jumble of welfare programs which have destroyed the family life of the poor.

There is, for the first time, hope that Christian unity will be achieved at least to the extent that all denominations will work together for social justice and peace.
The Holy Spirit is filling the world with a plea for justice for all. He’s calling each of us, but we must heed the call. And those of us for whom St. Francis holds a special place, we must seek out new meaning in the example he gave us and apply it to the world in which we live, and ask ourselves this question:

“Am I a Franciscan (am I follower of Jesus?) … or a Pharisee?” and “If St. Francis were here today, in what direction would he lead?”

Posted on February 15, 2006 12:00 AM