Homily: Catholicism & Culture

[00:00:00] Good evening. Welcome to St. Mike's to our guests. It's good to have you tonight. Welcome. Those of you that may have visited Italy, you probably know that in Italy, Rome is the center of history, but the center of food in Italy is Bologna. Bologna in the north is kind of considered the epicenter of food for Italian food.

[00:00:28] It's also considered, Bologna, the center of academic learning in Italy. And that makes sense because Bologna was the site of the very first university in the world. In the year 1088 it opened in Bologna. And if you've ever been to Bologna, there's a beautiful building if you ever get a chance to go. It's called the Bologna Academy of Science. And it's a beautiful, amazing building.

[00:00:55] And so there's a statue in the courtyard of a woman. And that's a big marble statue of a woman named Dr. Laura Bassi. Spelled B-A-S-S-I. Dr. Laura Bassi. So in April of 1732, thousands packed into an auditorium to hear Laura Bassi speak. Now this is interesting.

[00:01:22] Because she wasn't given a presentation, she wasn't given a performance. She was defending her doctoral dissertation. Up until that point, no woman had ever earned a doctorate degree. So all these thousands of people come to hear her defend her dissertation. She's defending it in front of 12 men from the university. And this is interesting.

[00:01:49] She defended her dissertation not in Italian, but in Latin. Full defense of her dissertation in Latin, thankfully. She had been fluent in Latin for most of her life, taught by her father. So she won her, she became the first woman in history to earn a doctorate in science, Dr. Laura Bassi. Interesting, two years later, she got her second doctorate in philosophy. Brilliant woman.

[00:02:16] As luck would have it, Dr. Bassi became good friends with the Pope at the time. His name was Pope Benedict XIV, who among other things built the Trevi Fountain in Rome. Gave her full access to the Vatican libraries. Brilliant woman. But what a lot of people don't know about Dr. Laura Bassi is she was also a very devout Catholic wife and mother.

[00:02:45] And she said this. She said, Catholicism needs the impact of culture. Culture needs the impact of Catholicism because the culture needs Catholics. Culture impacts, Catholicism impacts culture because Catholics impact culture. Her point is simply to say this. What is your legacy?

[00:03:11] You and I have one shot, folks, at this thing we call life. By God, make it a good one. We got one shot. What do you want your legacy to be? That's her point. The truth is, as you know, many people, they may not like the church. They may not come to church. They may not agree with the church, but they certainly can't ignore the church.

[00:03:38] I mean, think about the impact of Catholicism on world culture. Right? Everything from law to medicine to education. We invented the universities that started with us. To date, there's over 5,000 Catholic hospitals in the world, 30,000 clinics operating for those with AIDS. Free. Free.

[00:04:05] Do you know that civil law started with canon law, which can be traced back to the eternal law, i.e., the Ten Commandments that we've been going over. And the natural law, days also addressed by founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence. We have been dealing with impacting cultures for generations as the oldest institution in the world.

[00:04:29] Culture needs the impact of Catholicism, but the question is, how are you and I going to impact it? We need to do something. I mean, Jesus talks about this right in Matthew chapter 5. He said, look, you're the light of the world. You're the salt of the earth. Go do something with it. What is, here's a question. Who can tell me what does the word mass mean? I mean, we're all here at mass. What does the word mass mean?

[00:05:01] I know, I know. I mean, are there any Catholics here that, okay? You know what it means? I mean, we should know this. It's no offense, but we should know this. It means, go out. Ite misa est. It's the last thing the deacon of the priest says. Go out. It's the last thing you hear before you leave. What are you going to do with this? From whom much has been given, much will be what?

[00:05:28] Did you know that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lugwyd von Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, and George Friedrich Handel were all Catholic. Arguably the top five composers in the world. You listen to the music, the church, Christ, is woven all throughout the work.

[00:05:54] However, I would argue that Handel's Messiah Chorus is perhaps the single greatest piece of music ever written, perhaps of the least top three. Every time I hear it, it lifts my soul out of my body. Their Catholic faith impacted culture. So what are we going to do? You know, I remember my last parish.

[00:06:21] They told me there's a big hive of wasps on the roof. Father, you've got to go do something. We didn't have a maintenance man. So I go up there, I get up on the roof with my wasp, right? Get up there. And I remember right before I was going to spray him that St. Francis of Assisi used to preach to the animals. So I thought, well, I'll try. So I'm standing up there for five minutes preaching to this wife's nest.

[00:06:51] I know my neighbors thought I'd lost my mind. So I was preaching. They didn't listen, so I killed them with full malice in my heart. Father, about four years ago at our parish picnic, I'm sitting there talking to somebody. And this young man runs up, Father, we've got a situation. I said, well, what happened? We've got a hive of bees, Father.

[00:07:20] And we don't know how to get rid of them. So I'm like, all right, whatever. So I go over there. There's a hive of bees the size of a watermelon. Thousands of them. Right? Right out here. We don't want to kill them because they're bees. We wouldn't do that. On the other hand, we've got to get rid of them. There's kids running around everywhere. So he was like, well, how are we going to get rid of the bees? And I said, well, we could show them the Bishop's Appeal video.

[00:07:50] That'll make them leave, right? So instead, we called Shelby Farms. They came out and got them. So these nice Catholic bees, I'm sure, are happy in Shelby Farms. Right? Did you know that the Catholic Church has a long history relationship with bees? It's odd. Numerous orders of monks and nuns are beekeepers.

[00:08:19] Those of you that have ever been to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, you know that right above the high altar where St. Peter's buried, there's four pillars, what's called Bernini's Baldacchino in bronze. And if you look closely at these pillars, engraved in each one of them, believe it or not, are bees. Also mentioned, by the way, in the Psalms. Bees. Why?

[00:08:47] Because bees represent to us work. Ora et labora. Work and prayer. Again, we go back to the question, how are you going to leave the world better than you found it for your progeny? Mahatma Gandhi, he said this. He said, you can see a nation's soul reflected in their culture.

[00:09:17] You can see a nation's soul reflected in their culture. If that's true, then what is this state of our soul as a country reflected in the culture? We see both good and bad. Interesting. I think the way we can do it is we can improve the good by making small decisions every single day. That's what Jesus tells us to do. Here's a little factoid.

[00:09:47] Did you know since COVID, since COVID, over the last five years, almost 70 colleges and universities in this country have closed their doors. Wow. Since COVID, almost 70 colleges and universities have closed their doors. And at the same time, other smaller Catholic colleges are exploding. They can't build fast enough. They've got a waiting list to get in. Hmm.

[00:10:18] Interesting. I mean, the logical question is why are these closing and why are these exploding? Simply put, incoming freshmen want the challenge of Catholicism. They've been handed their whole life, they've been pandered to their whole life. Anything you want, it's all right there. There's no objective truth. There's your truth and her truth and his truth, but nothing is the truth.

[00:10:46] Whereas we would say, yeah, there's truth and his name is Jesus Christ. They're attracted to it. They don't want watered down Christianity. They want what I call caffeinated Catholicism. They want caffeinated Catholicism. Or as John Paul II said, being a Christian today does not require virtue. It requires heroic virtue. It requires heroic virtue. Heroic.

[00:11:14] And trust me, some of the classes that these incoming freshmen sit in at some of these universities, I can't begin to tell you how much courage it is, it takes to be a Christian. It takes arguably more courage to be a Christian in college today than any other place in this country. And the people that are attacking them are not their fellow students. It's the professors. With letters before and after their name.

[00:11:43] It takes courage. Years ago when I was living in Italy with Father Joe Sachs, I got to know a priest there, Father Joe and I did. His name was Father Benoit. Father Benoit was from the Côte d'Auvoir, the Ivory Coast in Africa. What's interesting about Father Benoit, he was blind from birth.

[00:12:07] So when he would be at the altar celebrating Mass, he would have one hand up like this and the other hand reading the book with his finger in Braille. Fully fluent in four languages, Father Benoit. I was serving Mass for him one time and after Mass I started a conversation and he told me the story of Louis Braille, if you didn't know this.

[00:12:32] Louis Braille who invented the Braille system in the 1850s in France was a devout Catholic. And he saw his work as impacting culture in a better way. And he said to me, Father Benoit, he said, you know, Benjamin, this man had a big impact on this woman named, what's her name? Helen Keller in your country?

[00:13:01] Who is also, also fluent in multiple languages because of the work of Louis Braille. So I'll close with this. At the exact same time that Louis Braille was living in France coming up with the system called Braille, there was another Louis living in France working in a very different field. His name was Louis Pasteur, as you know. Came up with pasteurization.

[00:13:34] And Louis Pasteur, the father of microbiology, it's just an objective fact that this man's work has saved millions upon millions upon millions of lives. No question. No question. What a lot of people don't know about Louis Pasteur is he was a very devout Catholic and father of five. And he saw his work as bettering culture. And this is what he said before he died. Quote,

[00:14:01] The search for science is a search for God because the search for God is a search for truth. Love that. Louis Pasteur, The search for science is a search for God because the search for God is a search for truth. Louis Pasteur, Catholicism must impact culture because culture needs the impact of Catholics. Brothers and sisters, you may say, where has father been going with all this? This is what I'm, this is my point.

[00:14:32] What are you and I going to do before we are filling a pine box in Calvary Cemetery to leave this world a better place? We got one shot at it. Let's get it right.