Occasionally I am able to post something out of my own personal life, and today is such a day. First let me say that Father Jim did an outstanding homily. I have rarely seen him so intense, so focused, and so strong in his statements in a homily…of course it’s sanctity of life Sunday, so the topic was abortion. Father Jim essentially set up every argument that the pro-abortion crowd rolls out and knocked each one down. I may touch this more in a future post.

Then came the prayer of the faithful. Not too often do I think much about those prayers (which is an indictment of myself, by the way) but my wife and I both perked up when one of them was read. I didn’t know exactly what I had heard, so after Mass I stepped up to the lectern to look at what was printed out on the paper. It said

For civil authorities, that they will work for a just distribution of Christ’s bounty, we pray to the Lord.

Whoa! Does that say what I think it says? Am I reading too much into it? Or did we just pray to the Lord that He might compel civil authorities to distribute wealth? This seems really ironic, seeing as the Church has historically been the entity that distributes things to the needy. The whole problem with the government distributing Christ’s bounty is that the government sees it as the government’s bounty, collected up from those who earned it and redistributing it to those who need it. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Where have I heard that before? This prayer smacks of an opinion that all wealth belongs to the government, and is portioned out to everyone (hopefully in a just way.) Rather sick to hear it coming as an “official” prayer from the entity that ought to be distributing the wealth that Her members are willingly entrusting to Her for distribution.

I’m all for helping the needy, I just don’t think the government’s the best way to do it. And confiscating wealth from some so it may be redistributed to others is certainly not the way to encourage the giver to give from the heart. I sure hope I am just reading too much into this.