St. Maria Goretti - Pastor's Note

Hello! It sure is good to be home and to see every one again. I hope and pray that everything is going well for you. I’d like to thank every one who prayed for all of us as we traveled in Italy these past two weeks. I dearly love going back to Italy, and traveling around the “old country”, and seeing my Italian friends, but it is so good to come home and to return to this community. There is a peace here that can’t be found any place else, not even in Italy.

I wanted to spend a little time writing this week about a topic that needs to be a concern for all of us, especially as we head indoors as the weather turns cooler outside, and that topic is GOSSIP. We have all done it. It’s one of the easiest sins of all to commit, because all we need to do it is use our big mouths and our imaginations. I’ve always thought of gossip as a sin of leisure. People who have too much time on their hands fall easily into gossip. Insecure, weak, and ineffective people turn to gossip. Far too often, it is a desperate grasp by people who can’t do anything else to make a difference. I find it so strange that otherwise really decent people, who would never kill anybody, or torture any one, or cause harm to another person, have no problem whatsoever hacking up the name and the reputation of someone that most of the time they don’t even know! Gossip is a sin against the Fifth Commandment. Let me remind you, the Fifth Commandment is “Thou Shall NOT kill.” And you might say, “Well, I’ve never killed anybody.” IF you have gossiped about another brother or sister, you have KILLED their reputation and their good name. Guys, it’s really time that we did our absolute best to root this particular sin out of our lives, out of our relationship, and most especially out of our community.

You know, our tongues and our words can do terrible things. We can destroy lives with our tongues, and unfortunately, some of us have destroyed lives. We must be very careful about how we talk about our brothers and sisters. So many times, the justification given by gossips for their sinister behavior is that what they say is true. So that in some strange way, that is supposed to make their gossip morally justified. It doesn’t matter whether it is true or not, some things do NOT need to be shared or passed on with others. And we do it as the HOT news of the day, and to make ourselves look better and more informed. This is NOT right. We’ve got to stop this. And unfortunately, voice mail and e-mail have made this even worse!

How do we do this? Gossips thrive on people willing to listen to them. If all of us would become a whole lot less tolerant of listening to gossips from these individuals who mistakenly believe that it is O.K. to treat a brother or sister in this way, then gossips wouldn’t find anybody to tell their fantasies to. Sometimes, we SHOULDN’T listen. Some times, the best thing that we can say to a gossip is “I’m sorry. I really don’t need to hear this” and walk away. Do you think that that is rude? There’s nothing rude about stopping someone from dragging you into THEIR sin. What’s rude is the audacity of some of these same individuals who are the constant source of gossip in our community, who continually spout off their half-truths and lies, and who want to drag all of us down to their level by making us receivers of gossip. You would not hesitate to say “No thanks” to someone who wanted to involve you in their robbery, by passing on stolen goods to you. Then why in the world should we hesitate to stop these gossips in our midst, by not allowing them to pass on their venomous tales? I don’t want to be a gossip. Do you? I don’t want to hang around with gossips. Do any of us? You hang around with gossips and it is only a matter of time until you are going to be the featured attraction for their tales. Gossip thrives where it is tolerated. We’ve been “too” nice for way too many years now. It’s time that all of us did every thing that we can to stop ALL gossip. We can start with ourselves. What was that that our parents taught us, “If you don’t have something nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.”? Yeah, that was it! We can learn to control our own tongues. Maybe if we quit gossiping ourselves, then others around us would improve also.

This is serious stuff, folks. Right now, there are some people who would undoubtedly like to send me back to Italy. Am I bugging you? I don’t mean “to bug” you. My job is to help you get to Heaven. There are people in our midst who really need to hear this message. Their souls are in danger. Most of them, right now, I’m sure, are saying “Oh, he’s not talking about me.” Hey, I’m talking about all of us! This is a community issue. We’ve got to address this. It’s the only way for us to get better.

In Christ,

Fr. Kevin

The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid.