Evil On Our Doorstep
Mark S. Roberti, Director of Stewardship
Heartland Parishes of Ellis County
Today, I am going to compare and contrast two cultures, “fundamentalist Islamic Sudan” in 1987 and “tolerant Christian America,” in 2006. The point I will try to make is that evil is on our doorstep. We can choose to do something or choose to do nothing. But evil not confronted does not dissipate. It gets stronger. Ultimately it kills. It may not kill immediately, or here, but it does kill at some time, somewhere. In time, our unwillingness to confront evil here, comes back to haunt us and our families here.
In 1987, I did some volunteer relief and development in Khartoum Sudan. Not a San Diego, California, by any stretch of the imagination. While there, I further volunteered at the Mygoma Children’s Home. If an infant had been abandoned, had been left in a dumpster, etc, it was taken to Mygoma. Most of the children were newborns.
There were about 40 infants in one room from newborn to about nine months. Few were older than six months. I would start with a first child cleaning its soiled diapers until I had gone around the entire room and all were done. I would take each child to the sink to wash it. If there were clean diapers, I’d put one on. If not, I would find the least soiled diaper there was and put that on. I would hold the babies kiss them, and talk to them. They just loved it. They were starved for affection. Many of the children were illegitimate, outcasts in an Islamic culture. Although some of the workers were very caring, most were not.
When I got to the end of those 40 babies, the child I started with would have inevitably soiled his/her diaper again. Flies often covered their lips. This place was so depressing that we could seldom even get trained relief and development nurses to help.
If I thought a baby was going to die, I would take it to the sink and baptize the child. I baptized over 40 babies…all subsequently died. I was very discreet. In Sudan, this was something for which I could have been severely punished.
Since I had access to a vehicle, when babies died it was often my job to take them to the morgue. They were wrapped in newspaper. Never will I forget the feel of their warm, stiffening (or stiffened) little bodies through the paper. Nor will I forget the smell of that morgue. Evil killed those babies.
Flash forward, now, to 2006. The morning after the elections, I see that South Dakota’s noble effort to stop abortion lost, by a considerable margin. I saw the parental notification referendums on teen abortions lost in every state. I saw that cloning of human stem cells passed in Missouri, our neighboring state. Though referendums to keep marriage between a man and a woman passed in each case, they passed by declining margins than in the past.
I said to myself, “What the heck is going on here?” Fully realizing it is difficult to be loyal to politicians and parties in this day and age, can we no longer even believe in moral values and the dignity of human life?
When I got to work, the calls started coming from pro-life friends. “Where was the Catholic vote? Where were the priests? Where were the bishops?”
I’ve reflected on that. In my opinion, the bishops were stronger than they have been in past years. I was kind of proud of them this election. Sure, I would have liked them to be more outspoken. But my guess is that each was hesitant to be the one to cross that nebulous line where the Church moves from being a non-profit, religious, organization to a political organization. That’s no one person’s call. The priests were probably in the same place.
Then it comes down to you and me, the voters. I voted exactly what I believe the Church would have me vote. My guess is that some other Catholics who consider themselves just as devoted and just as passionate about their faith voted just the opposite. For others, party trumps faith. I leave this problem to holier and wiser men.
Evil, brothers and sisters, is on our doorstep. My concern as a brother in the faith, and a stewardship director, is that many of us are not allowing ourselves to be converted. We are not putting our faith first. Practicing stewardship forces us to convert. The more we practice stewardship, the further we get on our lifelong journey of conversion. Stewardship continuously, and not so gently, nudges us to sell what we have to buy the pearl of great price. (Mt 13:46)
John Paul II taught us that evil needs to be called by name. That’s how we stop it. The dragon we battle within ourselves, that evil, is selfishness. We don’t want to convert because we don’t want to sacrifice. That allows me to put me and my own first. Conversion slays that dragon. A commitment to stewardship forces our conversion, which becomes a joy. The stewardship to conversion cycle never stops; the commitment just continuously gets deeper and more substantive.
So, what are we going to allow in our lives and in our world, good or evil? Evil is waiting on our doorstep.