It's Not My Fault!

Black comedian Flip Wilson used to tell a story about long-suffering Reverend Leroy, pastor of the Church of What's Happening Now, and his irresponsible wife, Geraldine, played by the same Flip Wilson. It went something like this:

One day, Geraldine came home with a new dress that she knew her husband would hate. Sure enough, Reverend Leroy hit the ceiling when he saw the scandalous frock. "What on earth ever possessed you to buy such a thing!" he demanded.

"The devil made me do it!" Geraldine replied.

"And just how did the devil make you do that?" her husband wanted to know.

"It's not my fault!" began Geraldine, "I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when all at once the devil said to me, 'Oh, my! Will you look at that fancy dress in the window over there!'"

"'Never you mind about that dress, devil,' I said to him. 'I ain't got nuthin' to do with a dress like that!'"

"'Well,' said the devil, 'it won't hurt to just look at it, will it?'"

"'No, I guess not,' I said. So I went over to the dress shop and looked in the window. My, that dress sure was fine!"

"'Why don't you go inside and have a closer look,' said the devil. 'After all, you're just lookin'.'"

"So I went inside the shop to have a closer look. That dress was even more fancy inside the store than it was outside. 'Why don't you try it on,' the devil said."

"'Uh, uh, Mister devil,' I said. 'You know better than that! My husband would never let me buy a dress like that!'"

"'Can't hurt to try it on,' the devil said. 'Reverend Leroy, he don't even have to know!'"

"So I tried the dress on. Why, it was like I was poured into it, it fit so good! 'Oh, you know that dress was made just for you,' the devil said. 'It wouldn't be right to let some other woman have it.' So before I knew what I was doing, I bought it!"

Reverend Leroy sat down in his favorite chair with a long sigh. "Why is it," he asked, "that the devil is always making you do what you want to do. Why doesn't he ever do anything for me?"

"Hah!" Geraldine responded haughtily. "The devil, he say, if it weren't for him, you wouldn't have no job!"

And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life!"

Today, personal responsibility is still uncomfortable and unpopular. It doesn't fit the "touchy-feely" instant gratification modern lifestyle. It comes in many different forms, all intended to shirk responsibility for our actions.

Parents know this too well. "I didn't mean it!" "I don't know!" "He (or she) started it!" "I wasn't doing nuthin'!" "It's Not My Fault!"

In the United States, we don't punish people for breaking laws, we punish them for being guilty of breaking laws. If the defendant can convince the jury that It Wasn't His Fault, he can get off scott free. John Hinckley shot the President of the United States, but It Wasn't His Fault! Andrea Yates drowned all her children, but It Wasn't Her Fault! It is now a defense in our society that a crime was so horrible, so monstrous in conception and so hideous in execution, that no sane person could have committed it--so we keep the perpetrator around (hopefully safely locked up) until he or she is "sane" again, which often happens in a remarkably short time. It's OK to execute some child-molestin' sonofabitch if he meant to rape and murder a little girl, but not if he did it because he was crazy or high on crack cocaine. Our legislators seem to think that insane serial child rapists and cocaine addicts are ever so much less dangerous than sane ones. I disagree, but that's another subject.

Recently the "It's Not My Fault" crowd has come up with a new excuse, that people who do bad things are addicted to them. Child molestation, rape, other kinds of sexual perversion, gambling, even playing too many video games are all addictions! It's Not Their Fault! We shouldn't be punishing these poor victims, we should be treating them, preferably at public expense. That's because somebody who's so totally out of control that he's a threat to his community is so much more socially valuable to the community than, say, a new civic center or library.

I'm an alcoholic, and I don't have a bit of trouble with my addiction, thank you. All we alkies have to do is not drink! We don't even have to go to those meetings, either.

The Catholic Church has always believed that people are basically responsible for their actions, and that to do something that is wrong is a sin. It defines sin this way

"Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as "an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law. Sin is an offense against God."

"Against you alone have I sinned; I have done such evil in your sight ."(Psalms 51:6)

Flee from sin as from a serpent. that will bite you if you go near it; Its teeth are lion's teeth, destroying the souls of men. (Sirach 21:2)

Before man are life and death, whichever he chooses shall be given him. (Sirach 15:17)

I tell you, on the day of judgment people will render an account for every careless word they speak. By your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned. (Matthew 12:36-37)

If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, where 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.. (Mark 9:43-48)

Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. (John 8:34)

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

"Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." (Galatians 5:19-21)

According to the Catholic Church, "Sins can be distinguished according to their objects, as can every human act; or according to the virtues they oppose, by excess or defect; or according to the commandments they violate. They can also be classed according to whether they concern God, neighbor, or oneself; they can be divided into spiritual and carnal sins, or again as sins in thought, word, deed, or omission. The root of sin is in the heart of man, in his free will, according to the teaching of the Lord: "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man." Matthew 15:19-20 Sins are rightly evaluated according to their gravity. The distinction between mortal and venial sin, already evident in Scripture, 1 John 5:16-17 became part of the tradition of the Church. It is corroborated by human experience. Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him. Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it."

The Church goes on to say:, "Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin. Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest."

My mother learned her moral theology from the Baltimore Catechism, that talks about sin in Lesson 6. Mom was really worried about sin, because the Catechism teaches that:

Besides depriving the sinner of sanctifying grace, mortal sin makes the soul an enemy of God, takes away the merit of all its good actions, deprives it of the right to everlasting happiness in heaven, and makes it deserving of everlasting punishment in hell." (Answer to Question 68, the Scriptural basis of which is Romans 6:23)

Neither one of them would ever have suggested that "It's Not My Fault!"

Today, of course, all that has changed. Nobody commits "sins" any more. He makes "mistakes." He commits "offenses." Occasionally he might "backslide," or unintentionally break a "law," or a "commandment," but, hey, everyone's doing it. We just can't help it. Of course, at church we "confess to Almighty God, and you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and words, in what I have done, and what I have failed to do."

But we don't really mean it. It's Not My Fault!

Our pastor recently told us during one of his homilies about a field trip our sixth graders took to the county jail. There, he said, they get to chat with the prisoners. According to the pastor, the reason that juveniles rape people is because they saw their mothers raped, and the reason they sell drugs is that it's the only way they can make money. Imagine, the only way to make money in the United States of America is to sell dope, and if your mom was raped, you get to do it, too!

It's Not Your Fault!

Of course, it does land you in jail! Maybe that's what "predestination" is all about.

Richard Henderson knows all about predestination and jail. He's currently a guest of the Texas Department of Corrections for grand theft auto. Seems that the Dallas police, fed up with the drastic increase in crime since the influx of irresponsible Hurricane Katrina victims, decided to equip some nice cars and trucks with a nifty little device that would lock the doors and windows and disable the ignition with a remote command, and then leave the modified vehicles where car thieves were known to hang out. In Mr. Henderson's case, they left a pickup truck so equipped with the "tools and stuff" in the back, music up, windows down, and the engine running outside a convenience store. Henderson, who was much more into doin' drugs than working, decided he could make a little extra cash by getting in the truck and driving away. As he put it, It Wasn't His Fault, a truck like that was "gonna git took!" The jury didn't agree, and sentenced him to 35 years with the TDC. But It Wasn't Their Fault. They didn't understand that he was just a po' old black man tryin' to git another high. He jokingly remarked that he thought it was a good idea to stay away from "them" cars and trucks, but it's so hard to tell nowadays which are the ones you should stay away from and which ones it's OK to steal.

It's Not His Fault.

Now, I don't know anyone who would disagree with the obvious intention of our good and holy pastor, a gifted and inspirational speaker. What I think he meant to say is that juveniles may be motivated to rape people because seeing their mothers raped falsely teaches them that this is acceptable behavior. Perhaps he meant that they sell drugs because they think that it's the only way they can make money. However, in his praiseworthy zeal to expose some of the pernicious lies of modern society, he may have unwittingly become their propagator. Perhaps he just got a little carried away. He does that, sometimes.

It's not his fault.

The fact remains, the Church, the Teacher of Truth, stands foursquare behind the truth that raping people is not acceptable behavior, regardless of what happened to your mother, even the intention to steal a car is a sin, and you have an absolute moral responsibility to make your money legally even if you come from a long line of drug pushers. Indeed, it is the duty of the Church aggressively to preach this message. Sin consists of a choice of self over God, and it is the function of the Church to teach which is which. It behooves its ordained preachers to assure that their words cannot have the faintest possibility of being misconstrued by people who are looking for an excuse for why they are in jail.

"It's Not Your Fault!" is a damnable lie! This same pastor talked about the evil effects of modern social values on our young people in a Sunday homily. He said, and here I quote, "the pre-adolescents who are having unprotected sex, are they doing wrong? I don't think so!"

Yes, Father, they are doing wrong! Fornication is a sin! Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2353!

My rule is to have all the sex you want, wherever you want, whenever you want, under any circumstances you want, with anyone you want, as long as you are married to that person. That seems like a good rule to me, because, besides protecting against illegitimate pregnancies, it also keeps you safe from syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, AIDS, crab lice, and genital warts, and birth control pills don't. That's what the Catholic Diocese of Davenport taught me in my high school.

How are parents going to convince our children that sex outside of marriage and violating civil law is wrong if they hear otherwise from the pulpit? For that matter, how are we going to know? The kids aren't looking for the Big Picture, or what the preacher meant to say. They're looking for the "out," for the excuse, for something to throw back at us that "It's not my fault!" when we tell them, "That is wrong, and thou shalt not do it! - Period!"

I don't believe that people in positions of responsibility, especially those who have never raised and will never raise children, understand the terrible damage that their irresponsible statements can do and are doing. There is no way to prove it, of course, but if there were, I would bet any amount of money that there is going to be at least one unwanted teenage pregnancy in our parish because "we weren't doing anything wrong! Father said so!" And "Father," never has to deal with the problem, either! It'll be left to parents, many of whom are single, whom he should be helping, for God's sake!

It would be nice to be able to go to church nowadays and be taught by an ordained minister of the Church only what the Church actually teaches. As far as I'm concerned, the pastor can believe (and teach) anything he wants as his mom's little boy, but when he puts his stole on and gets up in the pulpit, he ought to stick to the script or shut the hell up!

It would also be nice to be able to pray in church, but it's bloody difficult to do that any more, because as soon as the service is over in our church, all the "Chatty Cathys" who just have to chat with their friends during mass start congregating in the aisles to talk and laugh and call people on their cell phones afterward. I was taught that all that noise and frivolity in a place of worship is inappropriate and profane. I still believe that! Maybe I'm wrong.

But It's Not My Fault!

John Lindorfer