Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2021-01-31-usccb-daily-mass-readings
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time – January 31, 2021
Welcome to the one hundred and forty-ninth episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time. In our Gospel this Sunday, Jesus was teaching in the synagogue when a man with an unclean spirit cried out to him. Jesus rebuked [the spirit] and said, “Quiet! Come out of him!” (Mk 1:25) This passage made me ask myself, “What would I do if I were face-to-face with something evil? Would I call it out? Or would I keep quiet and ignore it?”
In the marketplace, we are presented with this choice all the time. Most of the time they are small and seemingly insignificant issues like someone taking company supplies for their kid’s schoolwork or badmouthing a co-worker. While you may not think that these minor offenses deserve to be labeled as “evil”, seemingly insignificant issues, left unchecked, can develop into substantial problems. So, do you speak up or keep quiet?
Courage to Confront Evil
When I work with clients on developing a values-centered culture, one of the principles that must be embraced by everyone in the company is honoring the company’s core values. In doing so, we acknowledge that the company is currently failing to live up to its values 100%, otherwise, there would be no need for a change. But in accepting that reality, they also have to accept responsibility for transforming failure into continuous improvement by calling each other out when they witness behavior that violates their values. This requires humility from every person from the top to the bottom of the organizational hierarchy. Each person must express their desire to honor the values and to ask others for help when they fail.
I had one client tell me that he heard the company president publicly embarrass another employee on a conference call which was a violation of the company’s core value of “respect”. So, after the conference call, my client called the president and confronted him. He said that while he understood that the other employee had done something wrong, the way the president handled it violated their values. He told him that if he didn’t acknowledge he was wrong, it would cause irreparable harm to all the good work they had been doing to create a values-centered culture. The president agreed and made a public apology to the employee and everyone on the call for his lapse of judgment. He also thanked my client for calling him out on it.
It took courage for my client to speak up. Many of us don’t because we’ve been trained not to or haven’t been taught how to do so effectively.
Encouraging Others to Speak Up
You probably can’t forget the horrific video footage from last May where George Floyd died with a police officer’s knee pressed to his neck. What made that footage even more horrifying was the other three officers who stood aside watching for almost eight minutes and did nothing to stop it.
As a result of the fallout from Mr. Floyd’s death is that the New York Police Department has enrolled in a nationwide program hosted by the Georgetown University Law Center that teaches officers to step in when another officer—including a higher-ranking one—uses excessive force or goes against police department guidelines.
In an article in the Wall Street Journal this week, the program’s founders said “the program applies a template developed years earlier from lessons learned in operating rooms, airplane cockpits, military bases, and college campuses: that a ‘duty to intervene’ means nothing if others in the room aren’t empowered to speak up. ‘Active bystandership’ is not about whistleblowing or turning on a fellow cop but looking out for each other.”
Looking Out for Each Other
Looking out for each other is a lesson we can take from our second reading from this Sunday and the words of St. Paul, “I am telling you this for your benefit.” (1 Cor 7:35). That is, when you have something that you know is going to be difficult for someone to hear, coming from a place of love, where love is willing the good of the other, is the only effective way. That’s what my client did when he reminded his boss of all the good work they had done and how that one blunder would have set them back significantly. He was telling him for his benefit.
A lot of us don’t know how to go about effectively calling someone out. In Episode 128 of By Your Life, we talked about how to be a good critic using Matthew’s Gospel 18:15-17 as a guide. But we also may not speak up because we know that we are also guilty, in one way or another, and we don’t want the tables to be turned on us, which can also happen, so we stay quiet.
I mentioned Jeff Orlowski’s documentary “The Social Dilemma,” (available on Netflix) in episode 138 of By Your Life. The movie calls out the dark side of social media and how Facebook’s, Google’s, Twitter’s, and other tech giant’s platforms manipulate us to make money. Tristan Harris, the film’s star and former Google Design Ethicist, along with other early leaders from Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter, call out how what they had believed to fundamentally be a force for good, has a nefarious flip side. But the film was not without its own share of criticism from industry insiders who call it out for being guilty of many of the practices it decries, by stoking fear and outrage in exchange for mass appeal.
To address the film and its critiques, Tristan Harris, now co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, was interviewed on the Big Technology Podcast with Alex Kantrowitz ( a transcript is available on OneZero.) I encourage you to listen to the interview (or read the transcript), but net/net Tristan Harris’s message is, “We built these things, and we have a responsibility to change it.”
And that’s the purpose of calling out evil, to make a change for good. That’s the purpose of the Center for Humane Technology, to call out the social media companies who profit from addiction, depression, and division in order to create a world built on humane technology that operates for the common good, strengthening our capacity to tackle our biggest global challenges.
Evil Co-existing with Good
Nothing is entirely good or evil. They co-exist so we need to acknowledge and care for the good while calling out the evil. In our Gospel this Sunday, the man was good, but the unclean spirit was evil. (Mk 1:23) The president of my client company was making a lot of positive changes in his leadership and the culture of the company. He also behaved badly on that conference call. The internet and social media have enabled meaningful positive change in the world. They also have contributed to violence, depression, suicide, polarization, and the spread of false information.
In the past two weeks, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has released several statements regarding the policies of the new administration. Beginning with the Statement on the Inauguration of Joseph R. Biden, Jr., as 46th President of the United States of America, by Archbishop José Gomez, the President of the USCCB, the bishops have acknowledged the good and the evil of this new administration’s policies. They have praised the president’s “longstanding commitment to the Gospel’s priority for the poor”, and at the same time pointed out “that our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity, most seriously in the areas of abortion, contraception, marriage, and gender. Of deep concern is the liberty of the Church and the freedom of believers to live according to their consciences.”
As the president began signing executive orders, the USCCB has praised the Biden Administration’s early actions to address urgent food and housing needs for those experiencing hardship during the COVID pandemic, ensuring all residents will be counted and included in the census and apportionment, and the announcement preserving and fortifying DACA.
But the USCCB has also called out the new administration saying, “It is deeply disturbing and tragic that any President would praise and commit to codifying a Supreme Court ruling that denies unborn children their most basic human and civil right, the right to life, under the euphemistic disguise of a health service.” They also condemned his intention to rescind the current regulation prohibiting Title X family planning from funding abortion, and the executive order that allows U.S. taxpayer funds to be sent to organizations that both promote and provide abortions in developing countries.
Who Am I?
Certainly, by their position, the Catholic bishops have both the authority and the responsibility to speak out on a wide range of concerns. As pastors, they are responsible for the souls of millions of Americans and advocates for the needs of all our neighbors so they are vocal about abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty, immigration, racism, poverty, care for the environment, criminal justice reform, economic development, and international peace. On some issues, they are more on the side of Democrats, while on others they stand with Republicans. Their priorities are never partisan. They are Catholics first, seeking only to follow Jesus Christ faithfully and to advance his vision for human fraternity and community.
But you may be wondering, “Who am I to call out someone else?”
Edmund Burke is often attributed with saying, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”, but Burke didn’t say it. This quote in its earliest form was by John Stuart Mill, who said, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
So, who am I to speak up? A good person. A Catholic. It is who we are. In our Gospel, Jesus spoke as one with authority. (Mk 1:22, 27) By our baptism, we have the same authority and responsibility to speak up against evil out of love. And that should be the guiding principle. Am I speaking out of love, willing the good of the other, for their benefit and the benefit of others? If yes, you have a God-given right and responsibility.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, grant us the wisdom and insight to recognize evil when we see it. Help us to discriminate between the good and the bad. Give us the courage to speak your words of life, peace, mercy, and human solidarity when they are violated. And guide us so that we always speak with love and for the benefit of others.
May God bless you abundantly this week so that in everything you do, you will glorify the Lord by your life.
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