As a Catholic, I find it strange that some commentators presume that the people listening to a sermon are supposed to agree with everything the preacher says. In our church, it is often presumed that sermons are like a dose of bitter medicine, educating us about hard things that are not always welcome. We used to call such preaching, “Blood and Thunder Sermons.” There are a lot less of these since the II Vatican Council, but the principle still holds: the Christian message includes “tough love.” That the words are harsh, that they deliver a biblical prophet’s indictment against the state, that they preach God as more important than Country – is a REQUIREMENT for righteous faith. In fact, Jesus Himself spoke truth to power and wound up on the cross. Ours is not a religion of comfort.

The issue then is whether the Rev. Wright’s sermons distorted the Christian message. Hearing 30 seconds of a two sermons delivered five years apart is not enough criteria for my judgment. I have heard Catholic priests call Hillary Clinton a “baby killer;” Jewish rabbis condemn all Palestinians as “terrorists;” on TV I saw both Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson claim the 9/11 attacks were punishment for the sins of the United States; I have heard homosexuals denounced from the pulpit as “perverts” and just recently I witnessed the quotes from John McCain’s favorite Evangelical preacher who reviled my church as the “Whore of Babylon.” If every Catholic, every Jew, every Protestant and Evangelical had to leave their church because of such sermons, the houses of worship would be empty indeed.

People of my faith are taught to place the emphasis on Christ. While ministers and priests have a sacred duty to serve the Gospel, they are only human beings subject to sin and failure. If the priest who baptized me turned out to be a drunk and the priest who officiated at my wedding is arrested as a pedophile, I am saddened for them, but my baptism is still valid as is my reception of the Sacrament of Marriage. Christ’s saving grace is present ex opere operato.

Ironically, I agree with the sentiment (but not the words) of the snippets taken from the Rev. Wright’s sermons. As a Puerto Rican, I know all to well from history that the US which has the might is not always in the right. I also remember reading a sermon by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen saying that the atom bomb should not have been dropped on Hiroshima, so the Rev. Wright came to that subject much later than my own church, despite having the same name as the prophet Jeremiah. Apparently, the snippet I head from him was intended to admonish Christians after 9/11 to abandon revenge as part of the cycle of violence. This is a necessary message, and it is appropriate to recall that the attackers professed to be taking revenge for violent interventions by the US upon their people. Perhaps the Rev. Wright remembered what Gandhi and Dr. King once said: “If we live by an eye-for-an-eye, we both wind up blind.” And since Jesus said that those who “live by the sword, die by the sword,” it should not be surprising to people of faith that invading Iraq to kill Sadaam Hussein has brought only trouble.

I also wonder if those who consider the Reverend Wright to be abominable have ever undergone the crucible of suffering that has been the African American experience. Past injustices included lynching by the Ku Klux Klan that was once given a Congressional certification as a “Christian” organization. It is a tribute to their faith that African Americans in this country continue to be the most religious of the major groups in our society. Barack Obama may have a political problem with the words of his former pastor, but I do not think that the Junior Senator from Illinois has a problem with his Christian faith.