Last year, media mogul Ted Turner publicly ridiculed the Ten Commandments and the Holy Father. Regarding the former, he said, "If you’re only going to have ten rules, I don’t know if prohibiting adultery should be one of them." In referring to the pope, he said, "Ever seen a Polish mine detector?" Then he said the Holy Father should "get with it," and sarcastically added, "Welcome to the 20^th century."

In November of 1999, Jesse Ventura, the ex-wrestler and present governor of Minnesota, said this in an interview: "Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people’s business."

Last June, the United States House of Representatives began to search for a new chaplain. More than 40 people applied for the job, including Fr. Timothy O’Brien, a Catholic priest and professor at Marquette University. An 18 member committee--made up of both Republicans and Democrats--selected 6 semi-finalists, and then submitted the top 3 names to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, House Majority Leader Dick Armey, and House Minority Leader Dick Gephart. They chose Rev. Charles Wright, a Presbyterian minister. The problem? Wright had placed 3^rd in the committee voting! Fr. O’Brien was the committee’s first choice. This has led to accusations that certain members of Congress are anti-Catholic, accusations which have yet to be disproven.

These are 3 contemporary examples of how worldly people respond to what they consider the "leprosy of our age." What is this leprosy, you ask—this horrible disease which must be eradicated from our culture at all costs? It’s religion/Christianity/Catholicism: it’s religion in general, Christianity in particular, and Catholicism first and foremost—because Catholicism is Christianity in its fullness. Karl Marx once called religion, "the opium of the people." Well, by today’s standards--set by people like Ted Turner and Jesse Ventura--Karl Marx was much too kind! Religion/Christianity/Catholicism is now attacked in many quarters as if it were the "arsenic of the people," the "lethal disease of the masses!" In fact, do you know what the most frustrating part of preparing this homily was? Picking 3 examples from the huge number of possibilities! Since the anti-religious bias is so prevalent in the arts, in the press, in education, and in government, I literally had hundreds of examples to pick from! Choosing 3 was not a simple task.

The Book of Leviticus has a lot to say about leprosy and about how lepers were to be treated in ancient Israel. In this regard, let me add one footnote before I go any further: in the Bible, the title "leprosy" is given to many different skin infections, not only to "Hanson’s disease," which is what we today would call leprosy. But in spite of the fact that the term included many different illnesses, two facts about leprosy in the Bible are crystal clear: number 1, it was to be diagnosed by the priests—they were to determine whether or not someone had it; and number 2, once someone was diagnosed as a leper, he was immediately excluded from the community. We heard all this in today’s first reading from Leviticus 13: "If someone has on his skin a scab or pustule or blotch which appears to be the sore of leprosy, he shall be brought to Aaron, the priest, or to one of the priests among his descendants. If the man is leprous and unclean, the priest shall declare him unclean by reason of the sore on his head. . . . [And] he [the leper] shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp." Now, I ask you: Isn’t this what we see happening, at the present time, in our own culture? Isn’t this what we saw in the 3 examples I gave you a few moments ago? The Ted Turners, the Jesse Venturas, the members of the Supreme Court, the editors of the New York Times, the A.C.L.U., the leaders of N.O.W. and the N.E.A., the anti-religious professors of academia: these people—like it or not—are the high priests and high priestesses of our society! They are the ones who have social and intellectual credibility. And because they routinely oppose religion, religious people like you and me are treated like lepers: our opinions are not welcome in public discourse, our influence is excluded (as much as possible) from public life: "Keep your creches off our property, keep your prayers out of our graduation ceremonies, keep your Ten Commandments out of our courtrooms and out of our schools!"

And meanwhile, the real leprosy runs rampant, does it not?—the leprosy of materialism, the leprosy of sexual impurity, the leprosy of anger and hatred--all of which can be cured only by Jesus Christ and his truth. But, like the leper in today’s Gospel reading from Mark 1, we must want Jesus to cure our culture and we must give him permission to do so!