The mountains skipped like rams,

the hills like lambs of the flock.

What was it, O sea, that thou shouldst flee,

O Jordan, that thou shouldst turn backward?

Ye mountains, that you skipped like rams,

ye hills like lambs of the flock?

 

On Saturday my husband and I went for a long walk in the Pentland Hills. Our map was inadequate, but we managed not to stay lost, thanks in part to the sheep. There are a lot of sheep on the Pentland Hills. They are in Scotland, after all. Being a stone’s throw from Edinburgh is not excuse enough to deny pasture to sheep. Because Scotland,  because sheep.

Sheep are often accused of being stupid, a libel that incensed a religious sister I know who had grown up with sheep in rural Slovakia. “Sheep are smart,” she informed me. They really do know their master’s voice, and they follow only their master. Her own sheep tried to follow her to school, rather like the lamb celebrated in “Mary Had A…”.

By contrast the sheep in the Pentland Hills did not show any sign of following my husband and me. Although we meant them no harm whatsoever, acknowledge them the rulers of our land and bear them no grudge for their role in the Highland Clearances, the sheep regarded my husband and I with suspicion and dislike. Again and again, as we approached, the sheep gathered themselves up and ran a few yards away. We were strangers to them. We were weird. We probably smelled funny. They probably smelled like sheep droppings. It was hard to tell as the hills were covered in sheep droppings. Also with cow pats from the Hieland Coos, but never mind them. Right now we are thinking about sheep.

The sheep don’t know us, but they certainly know the Pentland Hills. And when we got lost, the map being so simplified as to be inadequate, we were saved by the paths made by the sheep. They were narrow and well dotted with sheep droppings, but they guaranteed safe paths around the hills.

The sheep knew the way, and we followed the paths they had made. What we did not do, however, as much as we wanted to, being tired, was lie down with the sheep, or where the sheep may have lain, because that’s how you get ticks and horrible tick-borne diseases.

Naturally my thoughts were full of the Synod and of the Synod’s sheep, many of whom have been gathering themselves up and running away because these soi-disant shepherds look, sound and smell like strangers. This Archbishop Cupich guy, a very recent hire: who is he? Why was he – and not Bishop Robert Barron – appointed Archbishop of Chicago? Was his name on the list of candidates sent in by the papal nuncio? Was he recommended by some other? He obviously wasn’t appointed for his grasp of Latin. (About which more anon.)

What’s with those 50 archdiocesan employees who “accepted early retirement packages” after he took the reins from Cardinal George? And while it’s great that he doesn’t want Catholics to incite hostility against homosexuals…is he himself a homosexual? If he is, he would surely be showing a lot of solidarity with Catholic homosexuals if he were to say so. It would also be helpful for the Faithful to put his remarks on the subject of “gay couples” in context.

Since Vatican II and_ Philadelphia_, Catholics have been wont to say it doesn’t matter if priests are homosexuals if they don’t act on it [NB: this idea is directly contrary to the teaching of the Church according to an instruction issued by the CDF, under Cardinal Ratzinger, in 2005]. However, the more bishops talk about bending doctrine and/or practice to accommodate homosexuality, the less Catholics are likely to say that.

Naturally “acting on it” has been a euphemism, but even the nicest old lady has to admit lobbying is certainly an activity. In fact, the more certain bishops talk about accepting homosexuality, the more they incite hostility against homosexuality – if only episcopal homosexuality. (How is Archbishop Weakland these days?) Really, I do not know what Saint Paul would say to them.

Oh, wait. Yes, I do, since he said it to the Romans, Corinthians, the Colossians, and Timothy.

Possibly there are shepherds (or hirelings) who do not know these books of the Bible all that well, or who honestly think Saint Paul was a-okay with same-sex relationships between consenting adults over 21 and was just opposed to the practices we read about in the John Jay Report. However, the sheep know these books, for the sheep have known them since Saint Paul wrote them. And the paths left by nineteen hundred years of the sheep reading, listening, learning, praying and communally worshiping cannot be erased by fifty years of American pop culture.

That said, a lot of Western sheep have certainly strayed from their paths since 1965. Thousands of them. Thousands upon thousands. Hundreds of thousands.

I do wonder why. Could it be that all of a sudden they couldn’t recognize their shepherds?

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