"How big is my neighborhood?"

Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." This raises a very interesting question for each of us to ponder: How big is my neighborhood?

"Oh, Father Ray, I live in a large, beautiful neighborhood here in Westerly. There are dozens of beautiful houses, two cars in every driveway; everyone has a lovely green lawn . . . "

That’s not what I’m asking! Actually this has very little to do with where you physically reside, although it does have everything to do with where you live mentally and spiritually.

Here’s a case in point. Peter Singer was recently given a distinguished chair in ethics at Princeton University. That’s a very prestigious teaching position. This immediately caused a storm of protests throughout the country, as well as a demonstration at the school. Steve Forbes, a Princeton alumnus with big bucks who happens to be running for president, said that he would withhold all financial donations to his alma mater as long as Singer teaches there. Now why all the fuss? Well, to put it in the terms of this homily, Peter Singer has a very small neighborhood. In other words, in his mind not everyone deserves the title "neighbor." Here’s a list of some of the people who don’t qualify: the unborn (he’s a strong advocate of abortion), the newborn (as incredible as it may sound, Dr. Singer believes it’s okay for parents to kill their less-than-perfect children until they’re one month old), old people with Alzheimer’s disease, younger people in some condition of unconsciousness, the mentally handicapped and the "defective." In fact, Dr. Singer (a big guru among animal rights activists) would say that a healthy dog or cat has more rights than any of the groups I just mentioned. Thus in Singer’s neighborhood it’s much better to have four legs and the name Fido, than to have two legs and the name Fred.

Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself." But it’s very easy to relativize the term "neighbor" isn’t it? Such that (like Dr. Singer) we exclude those we find "unattractive" or "different" or "inferior" by our standards. And of course when we do this—when we exclude people from our neighborhood--we begin to think it’s okay to treat them uncharitably. Hitler, for example, did not see Jews as his neighbors, consequently in his mind it was morally acceptable to put them in death camps and kill them. Racists don’t see blacks or orientals as their neighbors, therefore they see nothing wrong with treating them as inferior persons or even as non-persons. Advocates of abortion don’t recognize unborn children as neighbors; advocates of euthanasia don’t see the terminally ill or the elderly as neighbors. But even those of us who try to be above such sins have got to be careful, lest we put up a "Do Not Trespass" sign in our neighborhood. For example, those of you who are in school: think of the person in your class who always gets picked on (the unpopular kid, the nerd). As soon as you begin to treat that person like your classmates are treating him you’ve excluded him from your neighborhood. And what about Christians who hate homosexuals or adulterers or thieves or prostitutes? St. Augustine said that we are to hate the sin, but LOVE the sinner. In other words we’re to look at the sinner as a neighbor: a neighbor in need of repentance. We are never to hate him and thereby exclude him from our neighborhood.

In the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus mentioned this commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, a scribe said to him, "And who is my neighbor?" Do you recall how our Lord responded? He responded by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. That was not a coincidence! Jesus knew how great the temptation is to exclude certain people from our personal neighborhood, and so he told that particular story. He told it to Jews who traditionally hated Samaritans. (In all fairness, the Samaritans were also known for their hatred of others, specifically the Jews.) But in this parable a Samaritan treats a needy Jew as a neighbor and a brother. Jesus was reminding us that even our enemies are our neighbors.

In today’s Gospel text Jesus tells us that "the whole law and the prophets" depend on the commandments to love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourself. Which means that if we misinterpret one of these two foundational commandments in any way, we will probably misunderstand every other aspect of our Catholic faith. This is why it’s crucial that we have a proper understanding of the word "neighbor" in commandment #2. This is why it’s crucial that we don’t relativize that term in any way.

How big is my neighborhood?