Casuistry and Prophecy

“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” St. Luke 10:36-37

The book was called “The Casuist: Cases in Moral and Pastoral Theology,” and because it was published in 1906, I was able to download it onto my Kindle for free.  In the little town where I last served as rector, they gave free gym memberships to the local clergy, so I took my exercise on the elliptical machine, and for about six months, “The Casuist” kept my mind occupied as my arms and legs ran through the machine’s monotonous courses.

I don’t know if any of you read in the gym or not, but I’ve found that books with short chapters and relatively punchy content works best.  And “The Casuist” filled the bill in spades.  Over several volumes, it collected hundreds of “hard cases,” moral quandaries that had been sent to the author, a certain Stanislaus Woywod, OFM, by puzzled priests who ran across them while hearing confessions and giving spiritual advice. 

Fr. Woywod’s cases tend toward the curious and the colorful.  There’s Mary, who lays dying and would like to make her confession to the priest over the telephone because her antireligious husband forbids him from entering the house.[1]  John, who becomes engaged to a (presumably different) Mary, and then breaks it off without any good reason and marries Martha in a civil ceremony needs to sort out what he owes to his jilted.[2]   And there’s a certain Father X, who because of his scandalous conduct, has been forbidden by his bishop to enter a saloon for a full year except to administer the last rites.  If he is vacationing in another diocese, the good father wonders, does the prohibition still apply?[3]

For Meditation: No such thing as love without risk

Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. When a legal scholar asked him who counts as a “neighbor,” Jesus did not answer but instead told a story about senseless attackers, a helpless victim, callous leaders, and a good Samaritan. Then he asked, “Who was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

Basically, when the man asked, “Which people do I have to love?” Jesus rejected the question. It is not up to us to discern who to love. We are to love indiscriminately, not asking whether our beloved deserves our attention and assistance. We are to love universally, not allowing differences in ethnicity or religion to become barriers to compassion. We are to love dangerously, making ourselves vulnerable to betrayal, misunderstanding, and perhaps even death. Don’t forget that the Samaritan offered to pay the wounded man’s hospital bills, not knowing in advance what kind of commitment that would be. He did not interrogate the victim to make sure he was trustworthy, nor did he stop to calculate the cost of mercy. He loved, knowing full well that there is no such thing as love without risk.

Russell Johnson, from Facebook, 20 Nov. 2015