These things happen every once in awhile. I was standing in the back at mass when the deacon threw out something that knocked my socks off. In full disclosure, I have considered the process of becoming a deacon. It involves a number of sacrifices which includes nearly a decade of study and an extra masters degree in the process for most. So, when the deacon speaks it carries some weight.

In this case the deacon was talking about venial and mortal sin. There are four key mortal sins which include blasphemy, heresy, and murder. I highlight those three because he did. He said that if you go into the voting booth and pull the lever for someone that advocates policies against the sanctity of life then you are guilty of murder.

He’s a fairly smart guy. He’s not going to mention the specific political party because that would be a violation of the church’s tax exempt status, but anyone paying attention to politics knew what he was referring to. My initial response was rage. Thankfully I was in the back when he uttered that line or I might have been tempted to storm out. He was calling me and most of my family murderers.

My trouble is that we have taken something as expansive as life itself and narrowly construed to focus on the birth. The sanctity of life means so much more. It refers to the refugee looking for safety and being turned away. It refers to that same refugee that encounters barbed wire that endangers her life or the life of her child that the church professes to care about so deeply.

It applies to those that don’t have enough food to eat during the day and may need those two meals at school to keep them healthy. It refers to those adults and children that can’t reasonably afford health care coverage and need the Medicaid to get the treatment they need.

It refers to the prisoner that has committed the worst sins in our society. It governs whether we as a society have the right to take their life because it will make us feel better temporarily. Life is about dignity. It is about dignity from natural birth to natural death. We don’t get to pick and choose which planks we care about and when a life might be worth less to us than it does to someone else. There isn’t a ledger sheet where a brown person’s life is worth less than a white one’s. Someone speaking Spanish is not worth less than someone speaking English.

Our Lord and savior was a refugee. His family fled to Egypt when King Harrod threatened his life. They didn’t put barbed wire on their border. They didn’t consider him a potential terrorist. They didn’t put him on a bus and ship him off half way across the country for a political stunt. They were allowed to stow away and return when it was safe for them to do so. This is in the Bible they profess to love so much.

Which party is kinder to life in general? Which party fights more for the rights of people and for their general safety and welfare? Which party cares more about people? If we answer that question honestly then maybe we can turn that whole notion around on them. Perhaps that tune would quickly change if it became palatable to say that voting Republican is a mortal sin.

The simple truth is that voting is not a sin. It can’t be. It is a choice and like most choices, there are no perfect ones. The choice is whether to simply pull the lever for the party you think highlights the majority of your values or not to vote at all. What is in your head, heart, and what you do with your mouth and hands makes that determination. Do you personally support life? Do you follow the laws and rules that God has laid down? Do you make the world a better place or a worse one? I’m not about to confess for voting for Joe Biden when the choice clearly dictates I vote for an evil man. If that’s the standard then I’ll find the door.

There is an episode of South Park where some of the boys go watch “The Passion of Christ” by Mel Gibson. They concluded that it was a snuff film that sucked. They embarked on a pilgrimage to Gibson’s house to get their twenty dollars back. They found a downright batty Gibson who seemed determined to be tortured.

I suppose that plot line follows. If you watch a number of his movies that seems to track. He gets tortured or beaten down in most of them. He was Jesse Pinkman before Breaking Bad. I suppose conservative thought seems to be arriving at the same place as Gibson.

https://mobile.twitter.com/JennaEllisEsq/status/1275215576684802049?cxt=HHwWgsC9xfDzvLIjAAAA

As some of you may know, Ellis is one of the attorneys that was supposed to help Donald Trump overturn the election. Unfortunately, she is probably a C level attorney in an A level world. For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, she is essentially saying here that if we want to cancel their Christianity then she will go down fighting. Good for her.

Studying conservative thought these days is a fascinating study for those of us with some psychology in their background. Sigmund Freud came up with his defensive mechanisms and the password here is projection. See, when your movement is about canceling stuff (abortion, CRT, history, LGTBQ+, ect) then I suppose it makes perfect sense for them to believe everyone else thinks the same way.

As you might surmise, there were a ton of good responses to her twitter. My personal favorite was the woman that retorted that Donald Trump spent more time in Stormy Daniels than he has a church. Well played ma’am. This projection goes beyond just Christianity into just about everything else. If you want to guess about their plans and their confessions you can simply wait to hear what they are accusing you of doing.

The idea of converting any human being into a god is distasteful. We don’t have Biden flags. We don’t camp out at Biden rallies. We don’t paste Biden bumper stickers all over our cars. We don’t worship the guy. So, you can focus on gaffes, past cringeworthy statements, or his son’s laptop. We simply want a decent human being and not a deity.

When you worship the golden calf you will find that calf threatened or stolen. We’ve seen what happens to those folks. Our number one objective is not to become one of them. If you are picking up your arms to combat the phantom menace you need to ask yourself who is telling you to do this. It certainly isn’t God.

Author’s Note: I know many readers are not religious, but this story has its roots in religion since the story itself involves the practice of it. The statements made are statements of my own faith and are not meant as anything beyond that. If anyone is offended by the profession of faith I humbly apologize.

John Pavlovitz was introduced to me over a year ago by a friend and I’m glad he did. His columns are very similar to these to the point where it could seem that one inspires the other. He said what I was about to say yesterday. He put it in such a way that I couldn’t and yet a part of me was upset that I was being upstaged.

Yet, it is another concept I took from him that I borrow today. God’s nature is infinite and mysterious, so having a father, son, and spirit makes perfect sense. At different points in our lives we relate to one more than the others and that reliance can change depending on what we need in that moment.

Numerous folks are responding to the story of Nancy Pelosi being denied communion. Ultimately, that’s what we are talking about here and what John was talking about above. The communion is a sacred mystery and at the very center of our faith. We believe deeply that Jesus is present in the Eucharist. So, in denying communion, the archbishop isn’t merely denying her rights to attend a ceremony. He is denying her access to Jesus himself.

As John eloquently points out in his post, Jesus would have never done that to anyone no matter who they were or what they had done. He never would have denied himself to a sinner. That not only flies in the face of the central event of our faith (death and resurrection) but also every story we encounter in the gospels. “Whatever you do to these least of these you do unto me.”

Of course, the church’s stance on these things has always troubled me. I’ve watched my mother sit in the pews for over 40 years of my life and over 50 years of hers while the rest of us partook of Jesus. She was not welcome. She had not fully converted to Catholicism. She had attended mass more regularly than most Catholics and yet she was not welcome. Of course, most people would say why not just convert, but is that really the point? Can we imagine this Jesus (or any other Jesus) saying you can’t have me unless you have this special document that says you can?

It is a terrible contrast of having a gift that was given freely and completely that is as infinite as it was selfless. Yet, you have someone that can arbitrarily and publicly deny that gift to one or multiple individuals based not on what they have done, but what they have said and believe. It is impossible to reconcile these two. Moreover, it is mind-boggling to take something that is symbol of sacrifice, selflessness, and purity and debase it like that. It makes Jesus small. It makes our faith small. It makes us all somehow smaller.

God did not become human, humble himself, and sacrifice himself to become weaponized like this. God did this so he can be given freely to all that would accept him and seek him. God did this as an example of what we were supposed to be in this world. God did this knowing full well that all of us need love and yet none of us truly deserve it. For one to deny that to someone else is a sin. It might be the greatest of sins. None of us has a right to do that because it was a gift given freely to all of us. We can deny it to ourselves. We can’t keep it from anyone else.