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Looking with Lust

Anthropology, Contraception, Human Dignity, Incarnation, Sexual Ethics, The Life of Jesus, Theology of the Body, , , , , ,

Our Lord would most accurately be labeled, at least according to modern standards, a total prude.  He reached a puritanical pinnacle by inventing a totally new category of adultery which he dubs “adultery in the heart” that occurs when a man looks at a woman with lust.  This divine priggishness makes it practically impossible for men and women to even be around each other, or at least that is how it seems.  The modern mind, trapped in a world without virtue, can only see two options: puritanical or prurient.  But Our Lord is really offering a third option, one that ultimately leaves us with the power to love freely and not free love-ers.

Anyone encountering the Sermon on the Mount for the first time must immediately be struck by the unbelievable idealism of the mode of life Christ is putting forth.  He would be the world’s most moralistic man except for one important detail.  Whenever Our Lord issues a command, He never simply leaves us to our own devices, but also seeks to give us the power to fulfill His commands.  His coming to “fulfill the law” isn’t just a matter of prophecy but a matter of grace.  Through the power of His grace we are able to fulfill even the most idealistic of His commands, the command not to look upon a man or woman with lust included.

Christ the True Moralist

Herein lies a major point of misunderstanding about Christ the moralist.  His commandments are such that they both contain the path to freedom while simultaneously leading us to freedom.  He is the Truth and the Way.  What Christ is commanding is really an offer that will free us from looking upon another person with lust.  The power to see the other person as a person and not merely an object of pleasure.  This power then opens the gates of freedom that enable us to love purely as the only true path to happiness.

This pathway to love however also requires us to properly understand what it means, and more importantly what it doesn’t mean, to look at someone with lust.  Lust is not just looking at person of the opposite sex, but is a gaze that is filled desire to use the other person.  In this regard it is helpful to turn to Pope St. John Paul II’s teachings in Love and Responsibility.

Love and Responsibility and Lust

The former Fr. Wojtyla sought to explain how attraction is felt between members of the opposite sex.  In encountering a person of the opposite sex, a man or woman has a natural response to the sexual value of the other person.  These responses come in two forms: sensuality or the reaction to the sexual value in the other person’s body, and sentimentality or the reaction to their perceived masculinity or femininity.    This spontaneously felt response, without the governing of reason, finds its culmination in the desire to possess the value.  Notice that it is the value itself that we desire to possess regardless of the person who possesses that value.  The other person becomes an object of use, rather than a subject to love.  John Paul II labels this phenomenon subjective egoism because it is based completely on how the person feels in response to the other person.  Lust then is the expression of the desire to possess the value, it is the choice to use the other person.

This distinction between interest and expressing the desire is important because merely acknowledging the sexual value of the other person (we might call this interest) is not the same thing as lust.  Interest is perfectly natural and in a very real way something that happens to us rather than something chosen.  It is not just the seed of lust but also the seed of love.  Once the interest is piqued, desire is sparked.  Desire sees the person as an object to be enjoyed but still is not sinful as long as the will resists that desire to use the person.  This too is an important element of love, but it must always be purified such that it is directed to the whole person.

A few examples might help.  A man sees a woman and is drawn towards some perceived sexual value in her body.  His emotional response brings him pleasure and he must now make a decision.  Will he continue to linger on the fact that she is “hot” and the pleasure that looking at her brings or will he remind himself that it is a person and that using her (even though all he is doing is looking at her) is wrong?  If it is the former, then he has lusted.  If it is the latter then he has, even in a very primitive way, expressed love for her by willing her good in choosing not to treat her like an object for his own enjoyment. 

Notice that what is being suggested is not repression.  The attraction is natural and there can be no love without it.  What has to be “repressed” is the urge to use the person.  The man may feel the attraction and move to meet her, but in order not to be lust, he must go to her as a person and treat her as such.  The attraction is still there, but it must move the man towards its proper end—the woman who has stirred his heart and not just her body.  In being free from lust, he is now free to love the woman and not his own emotional response to the sexual value of the woman.

Adultery in the heart has everything to do with what is happening interiorly in the man and it is from this that Christ offers freedom.  How this happens can be shown by two further examples. 

Imagine a married man meets another woman with whom he has regular contact and she awakens sexual interest in him.  He begins to develop sexual desire for her and so now he chooses to avoid her because he fears that he may lust after her.  To avoid the near occasion of sin is a good thing, but it is not yet freedom.  Freedom comes when there is no threat of lust, that is, when the man is chaste. 

Like all virtues, chastity governs the spontaneous arising of the emotions attached to attraction.  The man is simply able to acknowledge the woman’s beauty without being stirred to lust.  He is free now to see her as a person who is beautiful without any desire to possess either her or her beauty.  He can simply appreciate it as beautiful and move on.  The truly chaste married man only feels attraction for his wife. 

Likewise, the chaste unmarried man will feel the emotions of attraction, but they will be moderated such that they do not move him to use the person.  Instead he is drawn towards the person and able to pursue her purely based on her personality and not solely on her attributes.  He can see her in truth and not be blinded by those attributes.  He is completely free in his love for her.

Our Lord’s prudery then is nothing less than an offer for authentic freedom.  Our Lord practiced chastity to the perfect degree and has offered us each a share in His virtue in order to free our hearts to love to the full.

On Snitching

Conscience, Moralilty, Sin, , ,

What parent hasn’t told their child “don’t be a tattletale”?   What child hasn’t gone to great lengths, including getting in trouble themselves, to avoid being a “snitch”?  What adult has turned the other way to avoid becoming a narc or a whistleblower?  Whether a child or an adult, a teen or a parent, it seems that we never quite know how to avoid pledging our allegiance to what might aptly be called the Canary Code of Honor.  For Catholics, especially those committed to living a moral life, this represents a serious challenge that, unfortunately, we do not give enough thought to.  How can we avoid being a “snitch” while still doing the right thing?  Thankfully, St. Thomas Aquinas has already done much of the intellectual and moral legwork on this question and gives us a set of rules we can live by.    

In one of his Quodlibetal questions, St. Thomas addresses the issue of correcting an erring brother.  In his usual cogent manner, the Angelic Doctor takes two seemingly conflicting Scriptural commandments and helps to reconcile them.  On the one hand, Our Lord says, “if thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone” (Mt 18:15).  On the other hand, St. Paul tells Timothy that “them that sin reprove before all: that the rest also may have fear” (1 Tim 5:20).  To reconcile them, St. Thomas begins by reminding us that the order of charity gives more weight to the common good than the good of individual reputation or conscience.  Therefore, a public sin that is, one that is manifestly known and draws other people into it (through scandal and the like) takes a certain precedence over the private sin.  In general then “if your brother sins against you”, that is, it is private (Mt 18:15) then it should be corrected privately.  If it is public then you should rebuke publicly following 1Tim 5:20 “Rebuke the sinner before all.” 

As a side note, someone might go to the individual in private to rebuke them for a public sin first.  This is because it is always better for the person who committed the public sin to correct themselves in public rather than to be corrected.  Nevertheless, if the person obstinately refuses to acknowledge their wrongdoing then it remains for another person to correct them. 

When snitching pertains to a public sin, then it is manifestly appropriate that a man turn the offender over to some authority figure.  In fact, St. Thomas says it is morally obligatory.  But when it is a private sin then the snitching becomes problematic.

Snitches get…

Snitching is almost always done, not for the improvement of the offender, but in order to punish the person, get revenge upon them, belittle them or win the favor of someone in authority.  When it is done for these reasons, St. Thomas says that snitching would constitute a grave sin.  But he says it is also a grave sin not to follow Our Lord’s prescription for fraternal correction.

It is not that denunciation has no place within the realm of fraternal correction, but its place is not primary.  It requires that there first be fraternal admonition.  This admonition might come from another individual with whom the offender is more likely to receive the correction well.  As St. Thomas says, “in all these cases charity should be preserved, and what seems best and most expedient should be done.”  It is only when the person does not receive the correction, according to Our Lord, that denunciation to an authority figure may occur. 

Forming the Potential Snitch

A young person’s abhorrence to snitching is well founded then, even if for the wrong reason.  Understanding how fraternal correction works then is vitally important, especially because Aquinas thinks that a failure to properly observe the manner in which fraternal correction occurs is a grave sin.  There is an art to fraternal correction and it is something that we rarely teach young people how to do.  They think that the only choice is between minding their own business or becoming a snitch.  Fraternal correction is an act of charity and thus it binds the corrector and the correctee more closely together. 

Rather than correcting the potential corrector as a tattletale, it is a formative moment to teach them how to properly correct another person whenever they come to tell on one of their peers.  In larger families and Catholic schools children often seek acceptance from the adults by snitching on their siblings and peers.  It is then an obligation of parents and formators to teach the children how fraternal correction works.  Any adults who encourage, or at least do not correct snitching without fraternal correction are likely to earn a giant millstone for themselves. 

If we are to finally undo the Canary Code of Honor then we need to learn the art of fraternal correction.

On Contrition

Church, Conscience, Divine Mercy, Mercy, Sacraments, Sin, , , , , , ,

If you are a “chalice is half-full” kind of person, you might be able to find a silver lining in the Sacramental suppression that the Church has to endure thanks to, what one Prelate has called, the “dictatorship of the sanitary”.  With ready access to the Sacraments, there is always the danger of them becoming mere formalities.  It is, after all, hard to do things well when we do them regularly.  The optimist sees this as a way to overcome this temptation. 

Regular Confession is a good example of this.  There are many of us who go to Confession regularly, yet rarely see the kind of growth that we would expect from these regular encounters with Our Lord.  When access becomes limited, we are forced to examine both our desire and our real motives.  In the case of Confession that desire and motivation are one and the same thing—Contrition.

When the Confessionals were sealed, the faithful were instructed to make an act of perfect contrition and go to Confession when they could.  Thanks to bad Sacramental Theology and poor catechesis over the past half century, hardly anyone knows what that means, let alone how to do it.  That is why it behooves us to examine the topic of Contrition more closely in hopes that this great gift will grow in our hearts.

What is Contrition?

Contrition is the grief of soul brought about by the hatred of sins committed and marked by the resolution to avoid them in the future.  This “grief” is primarily effective, that is, it is an act of the will to leave our sins behind and run into the embrace of the Father.  It need not be affective to be true contrition, although often we will feel sorrow or even have tears.  This internal grief may express itself in words through prayers like the Act of Contrition, but no mere lip service will do.  Furthermore, true contrition is always a supernatural gift because it is based on a supernatural motive, namely a love of God.  Because it is based on this motive, it must also be universal in that it covers not just a sin, but all our sins.

The supernatural motive of love of God occurs in degrees.  We may love God for what He can give us or help us avoid.  This mercenary love is still love, even if it is imperfect.  Out of this love comes imperfect contrition or attrition.  This is a sorrow for sin based on the loss of heaven or the fear of hell.  What makes this imperfect is that it is still tinged with self-love.  When our love is completely focused on God and we experience sorrow for our sin then it will always be based the fact that we have offended God, independent of any benefits He might bestow upon us.  This is perfect contrition.  Although we might not be aware of it, we make this distinction every time we pray the tradition Act of Contrition when we “detest our sins because of Your just punishments [attrition] but most of all because You are all Good and deserving of all my love [perfect contrition].” 

We might be tempted to think that an act of Perfect Contrition is impossible.  But God does not command the impossible.  Instead He makes it possible through the gift of grace.  Perfect contrition, while outside of our natural grasp, may be bestowed upon us if we ask.  St. Charles Borromeo, no stranger to Sacramental crises brought on by pandemics, offered us what he called the “Three Visits” in order to prepare our souls for the gift of perfect contrition.  The first two visits, one to Heaven and one to Hell, are meant to stir up imperfect contrition.  We should meditate both on what we risk losing and what we are gaining so as to be sorry for our sins.  The third visit is to the foot of the Cross to look upon the sufferings of Jesus all brought about by your sins.  He says to stay there until you are sorry for the pain you have caused Our Lord.  In so doing you have made an act of Perfect Contrition.

“Perfect” contrition then might be a somewhat of a misnomer in that it makes it seem like you have to love God perfectly, rather than loving the God Who is perfect.  The Scholastics avoid the terms perfect and imperfect contrition and instead use contrition for the former and attrition for the latter.  This distinction helps us to grasp that contrition may occur in degrees, degrees that are proportional to our charity.  We need not be St. Mary Magdalene, whose sins were forgiven because “she loved much” and wiped Our Lord’s feet with her tears, but there can be no contrition without some degree of charity.  We need not be anxious if we struggle to make such acts, but only ask God to bestow upon us that great gift.

Contrition and Confession

If an act of contrition then forgives sins, even mortal sins, then what is the connection with Confession?  Contrition may have the same effect as Confession, but its effects are not independent of the Sacrament.  Contrition may be sorrow expressed, but Confession is sorrow received.  Even if we may an act of perfect contrition in response to mortal sin, we must still go to Confession before we can receive the Eucharist.  Perfect contrition then is an extraordinary means of forgiveness provided that we avail ourselves of the ordinary means, Sacramental Confession. 

The advice to “make an act of perfect contrition until you can get to Confession” that has been given during the pandemic is very dangerous without all of the proper qualifications.  A person, no matter how hard they try, cannot make a perfect act of contrition without the necessary grace.  To act as if God always grants it immediately when it is asked for is to be guilty of presumption.  God may withhold such a gift for reasons only His loving Providence could explain.  This is why Canon Law protects the Faithful from Prelates who would withhold the Sacrament.  The Sacrament does not require that we have contrition; only attrition is needed to be valid.  As Fr. Alfred Wilson reminds us in his classic book Pardon and Peace, when we go to Confession, Christ has already confessed those sins.  He has sorrowed for them.  Your task is to supplement His perfect confession and contrition the best you can.

This connection with Christ’s confession and sorrow brings us to the whole point of contrition.  Perfect contrition comes from Christ Himself and thus is best understood as a participation in His sorrow.  This understanding is important because it takes any of the focus off us and our faults. leaves us standing squarely on the solid ground of His Mercy.  Genuine contrition is a habit then that grows out of this.

St. Therese on her death bed offers us the best example of this.  The sisters had gathered around her and were singing her praises.  She requested that they stop and instead to list her faults, not because she was worried about her humility, but because she wanted to have more reasons to praise God in His mercy.  She was quite literally filled with Contrition because she loved God.  Let us beg her intercession that during this time we might likewise receive and develop such a precious gift.

Why We Need Churches

Church, Eucharist, Sacraments, , , , , ,

As we endure continued lockdowns, masks and church closings, a new consensus has arisen—“we don’t need a building to be a Church.  We don’t need a structure to be Catholic.”  I say new, but in truth it is old, half a millennium old.  It is simply the Protestant spirit rearing its ugly head once again.  Protestants don’t need a building because they aren’t, at least properly speaking, a Church.  Catholics on the other hand do need a building to be a Church and the fact that we don’t immediately recognize this truth shows how deeply infused the Church has become with this Protestant spirit.

All true religion requires the offering of a sacrifice to God.  St. Thomas even goes so far as to say that sacrifice is a precept of the natural law.  A true sacrifice begins with an inward act in which a man “should tender submission and honor…to that which is above man.”  But because man’s person is both interior and exterior, spirit and matter, his mode of offering inward acts of sacrifice must also include an outward expression.  “Hence it is a dictate of natural reason that man should use certain sensibles, by offering them to God in sign of the subjection and honor due to Him, like those who make certain offerings to their lord in recognition of his authority” (ST II-II, q.85, a.1).

This helps to explain the near universal phenomenon within ancient religions of every ritual act of worship including as a constitutive element sacrifice.  It also explains why the religion of the Old Testament portrays a continual groping for the perfect sacrifice that only finds its fulfillment in Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.  Only in Him do we find a perfect fit between the interior and exterior acts; the perfect victim making the perfect sacrifice.  The New Adam sets the sacrificial standard and becomes mankind’s representative.  Through His representation, it remains for each man to re-present that sacrifice in order to make it his own.

Sacrifices must be offered from within a temple.  A temple is the dwelling place of God and the place where God and man meet.  The believer who is in a state of grace, that is one who has “put on Christ’ is one such meeting place enabling the man to offer a sacrifice to God.  For the Protestant and our Catholic friend who has no need of a church building, this is sufficient.  But for God, this is not yet sufficient.  To be “a Church”, that is the People of God, they must also offer a sacrifice. 

Making the People of God

What exactly makes the People of God a People?  Unlike the Jewish People who were united by blood, the Church is truly catholic, uniting men and women of many different races.  The Church then is a People because it is united by the Blood of Christ, the Blood poured out on Calvary and of which we partake in the Eucharist.  As Saint Paul says, it is “The bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:16-17).  It is the “bread that we break” that creates the communion that is the Church. 

The Eucharist is what makes the Church the Church.  Without it, there would be no Church because there would be nothing that unites us.  St Thomas says that the Eucharist is the cause of “Ecclesiastical unity, in which men are aggregated through this Sacrament; and in this respect it is called ‘Communion’ or Synaxis. For Damascene says that ‘it is called Communion because we communicate with Christ through it, both because we partake of His flesh and Godhead, and because we communicate with and are united to one another through it’” (ST III q.73, a.4). 

In commenting on St. Paul’s passage, Pope Benedict XVI says that “the Eucharist is instrumental in the process by which Christ builds Himself a Body and makes us into one single Bread, one single Body…It is the living process through which time and again, the Church’s activity of becoming the Church takes place…The Church is a Eucharistic fellowship.  She is not just a people: out of the many peoples of which she consists there is arising one people, through the one table that the Lord has spread for us all.”  If the Church were to cease making this living process which is the Eucharist manifest, then the Church would cease to be the Church. 

The sacrifice of the Eucharist needs a Temple in which it may be offered.  Therefore, the church is not “just a building”, but the fulfilment of the Jewish Temple and the sacrament of the Temple in Heaven.  It offers a real experience of Heaven, even if it “only” does so sacramentally.  So while the church building itself does not make us the Church, it is a necessary element for the formation of the Church.  In short, without churches in which the Eucharist is offered there would be no Catholic Church.      

Eliminating the Other Police Force

American Founding, Church and State, Church Authority, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Ecumenism, Freedom, ,

While we are about the project of reforming the civil police force, we are allowing the Thought Police to run amok.  The Thinkpol are slowly rendering certain ideas unutterable simply because they do not conform to the Ochlocratic Orthodoxy.  Not only do they have ritual humiliation at hand, they have co-opted corporations so that private views now have become fireable offenses.  The mob silences dissenters by threatening livelihood and so most people simply conform.  Free speech has come under attack in America in ways that would make even Woodrow Wilson blush.  Like the previously discussed freedom of conscience, freedom of speech also needs defending.  And like freedom of conscience, only Catholics who have a proper understanding of it, are in a position to lead the charge.

On the one hand, it is not wholly unexpected that free speech in our country has taken such a sharp left turn into a ditch.  The Founders had an absolute faith in the power of the popular mind.  Individuals might err, but the entire society could not.  Free speech, coupled with democracy, serves as a recipe for finding the truth.  All debate, they thought, would eventually lead to the truth.  All ideas, even bad ones, then must be protected in order to keep the debate moving.  In Gertz vs Welch, the Supreme Court declared that “”Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea … (it) requires that we protect some falsehood in order to protect speech that matters.”

Captivity to the Mob

Any freedom that is directly linked to democracy is always susceptible to becoming captive to the mob.  If debate over an issue ceases then it is assumed that the truth has been reached.  Now those who do not accept the orthodoxy become a threat to the well-being of society and need to be shut up.  Thus we have things such as “hate speech” becoming punishable offenses.    

A vicious circle is formed so that truth as a democratic matter always ends in an assault upon true liberty including free speech.  It is as if they must saw off the limb they are sitting on.  Liberty can only be connected to purpose and the purpose of speech is to utter truth.  Therefore, there is such thing as liberty to speak falsehood.   Freedom of speech is not unlimited but instead is not then a justification to say anything. 

Truth is not democratic but is strictly governed by the dictatorship of reality.  Truth, that is, the accordance of mind with reality, is necessary for liberty. Summarizing, Leo XIII says that the right to free speech “is a moral power which – as We have before said and must again and again repeat – it is absurd to suppose that nature has accorded indifferently to truth and falsehood, to justice and injustice. Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the State what things soever are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but lying opinions, than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and moral life should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the State” (Libertas, 23).    

This abuse of free speech eventually leads to its destruction as ironic as that seems.  The problem is that there is no set of public truths that are immune to criticism, no intellectual foundation upon which debate may be carried out.  Leaving everything open to debate actually closes it, a situation that Leo XIII anticipated when he said “The excesses of an unbridled intellect, which unfailingly end in the oppression of the untutored multitude, are no less rightly controlled by the authority of the law than are the injuries inflicted by violence upon the weak. And this all the more surely, because by far the greater part of the community is either absolutely unable, or able only with great difficulty, to escape from illusions and deceitful subtleties, especially such as flatter the passions” (ibid).

Americanism and the Fallout

Eventually, “nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of natures, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail. Thus, too, license will gain what liberty loses; for liberty will ever be more free and secure in proportion as license is kept in fuller restraint” (ibid).  This is exactly where we find ourselves.

Because many prelates in the Church in the United States are infected with the Americanist heresy, they often confuse the authentic Catholic (i.e. true) understanding of free speech with the American model.  The former leads to peace and justice while the latter leads to further division.  One prelate recently said that our religious principles demand that we “defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree.”  Such a statement is misleading at best.  What we are disagreeing about absolutely matters.  Some topics are still open to debate, or as Leo XIII said, “In regard, however, to all matter of opinion which God leaves to man’s free discussion, full liberty of thought and of speech is naturally within the right of everyone; for such liberty never leads men to suppress the truth, but often to discover it and make it known” (ibid).  Others, such as the right to religious liberty and the immorality of racism God has not “left to man’s free discussion”.  Both sins against God cry out for justice.  Therefore, it is neither “baffling nor reprehensible” that a Catholic institution, faced with playing a role in rectifying either, would seize the opportunity; unless, that is, you think the Thinkpol, rather than God, has closed the discussion.  

Cutting Ourselves Off at the Knees

Church Fathers, Prayer, , , ,

In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, the future Pope Benedict XVI frets over the fact that believers have grown unaccustomed to kneeling.  Not prone to hyperbole, Ratzinger said that a “faith no longer familiar with kneeling would be sick at the core” because it “no longer knows the One before Whom kneeling is the right, indeed the intrinsically necessary gesture” ( The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 194). His is a clarion call to the Faithful to rediscover both the necessity and power of kneeling during prayer.

By referring to kneeling as an “intrinsically necessary gesture,” Cardinal Ratzinger is making a profound point, that given our cultural malaise, we are prone to miss.  A gesture can be necessary; necessary because as body-soul composites we are incapable of being “spiritual” without accompanying bodily postures.  To divorce our bodily actions from our spiritual ones does not make us more spiritual, but makes us less human.  Worship for man is done in his body and therefore must be reflected by his body bodies.  Not only that, but his bodily posture affects his soul and disposes it to receive Divine gifts.  Common sense would tells us that a man lying in a recliner and addressing Almighty God is far less likely to be disposed to receive the Divine Guest than a man standing at attention or kneeling.  Summarizing then, St. Thomas Aquinas says, “thus external, physical symbols are shown to God for the purpose of renewing and spiritually training the inner soul. This is expressed in the prayer of Manasse: ‘I bend the knee of my heart.’ ‘For every knee shall be bowed to me: and every tongue shall swear’ (Is. 45:24)” (Commentary on Ephesians, Chapter 3, Lecture 4).

If our bodily posture conveys a message both to the outer and inner world, then what makes kneeling specifically necessary?  There is, of course, the argument from authority.  We kneel before “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 3:14) because God has commanded it.  “Kneeling,” Ratzinger says, “does not come from any culture—it comes from the Bible and its knowledge of God.  The central importance of kneeling in the Bible can be seen in a very concrete way.  The word proskynein alone occurs fifty-nine times in the New Testament” (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p.185).  St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians says that “In the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth” (Phil. 2:10). Kneeling is our response to Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This helps to explain why it is also the preferred position of Christ Himself when He prays, especially when He prays in the Garden of Gethsemane (c.f. Luke 22:42).  Since all of our prayer is simply a participation in His prayer, we should assume the same posture.  More accurately, when we kneel down to pray, we are kneeling beside Christ Himself and praying with Him.

Why God Wants Us to Kneel

But God does not command us to perform anything without reason so that the reason for kneeling also matters.  Kneeling is an exterior manifestation of our interior humility.  It is a recognition, and even at times a reminder, of the fundamental chasm between us and God.  Prayer, in order to be heard, must come from the place of humility (c.f. Ps 101:18, Sirach 35:21).  For “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).  Kneeling is an act of recognition of one’s weakness and insignificance.  Also, because strength is found in the knee, to bend the knee is to make oneself weak and vulnerable.  As Ratzinger says, to bend our knee is to bend our strength to the living God in acknowledgment of His lordship over us.

Kneeling then is good for us because it disposes us to receive God as He is and as we are.  It is when we are on our knees that we are strongest—“for when I am weak, I am strong.”  Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History gives us two examples of kneeling that further demonstrate the point.  He tells of St. James the “brother of the Lord” having callouses on his knees from his constant prayer for others.  Likewise, he gives an account of a certain Abba Apollo who saw the devil as a hideous creature with no knees.  The Devil has no knees because he has rendered himself incapable of adoration.  He cannot stoop at all because of his pride.  He is, to use modern parlance, spiritual but not religious.  At the heart of religion is giving to God what is due to Him so that modern man has lost the ability to kneel because he has ceased to be religious. 

Kneeling is the only way in which we might see God.  We must make ourselves smaller to see the Big Picture.  This is why when Christ reveals Himself to soldiers who seek to arrest Him in the Garden, His words of self-revelation knock them to their knees.  Likewise the Wise Men when they journey to meet the King of Kings must stoop to enter the cave in which He was born.  It is only from that vantage point that He can be recognized.  Kneeling is necessary to see God.

Protecting Marriage

Culture, Family, marriage, Moralilty, , , ,

A study recently released by the US Census Bureau found that in the past two decades, the number of couples that cohabitate had nearly tripled from 6 million to 17 million.  The study found that the increase was due to the fact that “cohabitation has become increasingly accepted by a broad swath of social and demographic groups.”  Most people view this as a sign of “progress”, no longer bound to the Victorian restraints imposed by marriage.  It is most certainly progress, but it is likely not progress in the direction of anything other than cultural decay and collapse.  The institution of marriage is vital to the life of every society such that without it, the society is sure to crumble.

All of us sort of intuit why this might be the case but having plummeted into the morass created by the Sexual Revolution, we may not be able to articulate why this is the case.  Nevertheless, if we are to turn back to a society built upon marriage, then we ought to grasp the logic as to why this is so.  Thankfully, the great Counter-revolutionary to the Sexual Revolution, Pope St. John Paul II, has already done the intellectual heavy lifting for us in his book Love and Responsibility.  Written just prior to the “Salacious Sixties”, the then Fr. Wojtyla provided an intellectual basis for why the institution of marriage matters.  We would do well to examine his argument in order to apply the tonic to our decadent culture.

The future Pope set out to examine how erotic love develops and matures between members of the opposite sex.  In order to mature, the strong feelings that govern the relationships must always be subordinate to the true value of the person as a person.  When we fall in love with the feelings that the other person stimulates in us, rather than the person who stimulates those feelings, then love can never mature.  In fact, rather than being the basis for love, it becomes its exact opposite—use.  Once this foundation is laid, Fr. Wojtyla then seeks to set up the conditions by which love can truly mature, and one of which is the Institution of Marriage.

Marriage as an Institution

As the word institution suggests, Marriage is something that is established or instituted in accord with the concept of justice.  Marriage justifies, that is makes just, sexual relations between two people.  It does this by ordering them to their proper ends.  In other words, Marriage ensures that sexual relations between a man and a woman are governed both by commutative justice and social justice. 

With respect to commutative justice, that is, the justice that governs the relationship between two people as equals, Marriage protects conjugal love from the threat of use.  There is a vast difference between a concubine or a mistress and a wife—the former implies a relationship of use while the latter one of love.  Likewise, love is always attached to the value of the person as a whole and not just their sexual value.  Therefore, because the value of the person never changes, love must last forever.  This is why Marriage, as an expression of this love, is naturally indissoluble.  By committing one’s life to loving the other person, Marriage justifies sexual relations between the spouses.

This is also why sexual relations between deeply committed people, even if they are engaged say, is always wrong.  “Pre-ceremonial” sex ignores the fact that a Wedding is no mere convention or ceremony, but an entering into the institution of Marriage.  A new reality comes into being when vows are exchanged and it is this new reality that justifies sexual intimacy between the spouses.  Prior to the wedding there was no permanence, afterwards there is.  The permanence of the relationship rests upon the free choice of the spouses.  And because sexual relations always carry with them the possibility of becoming permanently parents, there must be a permanent commitment which justifies their sexual expression.  It is just that a child be conceived from within a marriage because only the institution of marriage forms the proper foundation for the institution of the family.

There might be a tendency to think that love between two people is a completely private affair between “two consenting adults”, but, according to John Paul II, the couple soon “realize that without this [social] acceptance their love lacks something very important.  They will begin to feel that it must ripen sufficiently to be revealed to society.”  There is a need to both keep private the sexual relations deriving from love and on the other hand a need for there to be a social recognition of this love that comes only through marriage. 

Why Marriage Matters for Society

This felt need directs them to fulfill the requirements of social justice.  This may not be immediately obvious, especially when we live in such an individualistic society, but it becomes clearer when we recognize that society itself is built upon the foundation of the family.  The institution of marriage is necessary to signal a mature union exists between two people, a mature union that is based upon a permanent love.  Thus, society can be built upon that foundation. 

One need not imagine too hard what a society would look like when its foundations were unstable or constantly being swapped out, especially given our current plight.  It looks like a society in which cohabitation numbers are tripling and marriage rates are falling.  It looks like a society that is committing cultural suicide.  There cannot be a society without stable families and there cannot be stable families without permanent marriages.  A sane society would enact legislation that protects families and legislates justly regarding the family by recognizing the rights and duties of marriage since the family is an institution based on marriage.

Instead, the inmates are running the asylum.  We feed a “divorce industry” with lawyers, social workers, and judges to name a few whose economic sustenance comes from the breakdown of marriage.  We make divorce “no-fault” and make single parenting “easy” with day-care, public schools, welfare and WIC (why isn’t there a FIC by the way?).  The family is then replaced by an elaborate bureaucratic machine that seeks to control the formation of children so that they grow up to see this as “normal”.  Meanwhile we all accept this as an accident rather than as a planned attack to seize the power of the family.  The sexual revolution was never about liberation but about control and the totalitarians will win unless we begin to think and act like our saintly Counter-revolutionary is instructing us.

Pentecost and the Three Conversions

Church, Communion of Saints, Grace, Heaven, Holy Spirit, Prayer, Spiritual Life, , , , ,

The first Christian Pentecost was a feast of fulfillment.  It was, in a very real sense, a graduation ceremony in which twelve simple men from various walks of life became prophets, preachers, priest, prodigies, and polygots.  A feast of fulfillment because they became what they were destined to be.  Removed some 2000 years from Pentecost, it is, for us, a feast of possibility.  The Holy Spirit is ever ready to pour out His power on each and every believer.  The problem though is that the average believer is not ready to receive His power.  Part of the reason for this is that we view Pentecost as an isolated event; a miracle for sure but not magical.  The Apostles were ready to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit and in so doing, left for us a model of preparation that we need to follow.

Protestants would have us to believe that union with the Holy Spirit comes about through faith, that is, by a single moment of conversion.  Sacred Scripture and the Mystical Doctors of the Church teach otherwise.  They teach, each in his or her own way, that three conversions are necessary for union with the Holy Spirit.  One of them, St. Catherine of Siena, shows how the Spiritual life of the Apostles reveals the content of these three conversions which culminate in the fullness of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

As in all activity, our spiritual lives are marked by three levels of maturity—beginners, proficients, and perfected.  These three stages are clearly delineated in the Scriptural account of the lives of the Apostles and therefore serve as a model for each of us.  St. Catherine in her Dialogue traces each of the three conversions of St. Peter and enables us to see some of the qualities of each in order to facilitate our own growth towards union with God.

St. Peter and the Three Conversions

The first conversion happens when St. Peter acknowledges he is “a sinful man” and Our Lord promises to make him a “fisher of men”.  From that point forward, St. Peter set out on what St. John of the Cross calls the Purgative Way.  This is the most active of the stages in that we must, under the instigation of actual grace, remove all the obstacles to true growth.  For St. Peter, this purgative stage lasts almost the entirety of the pre-Passion and Resurrection accounts in the gospels.  It also helps to explain why St. Peter shows such incredible flashes of sanctity while also being called “Satan”.  St. Peter will remain in this stage until he is no longer scandalized by suffering and is willing to mortify himself completely.  Even during the Trial of Jesus, he keeps the suffering Christ at a distance and therefore fails to admit to even knowing Him.  He loves Jesus, but not more than he loves himself. 

It is just after the three-fold denial that St. Peter experiences his second conversion.  When Our Lord gazes upon Him just after his third denial, He receives the grace of deep sorrow for his sin.  St. Peter’s second conversion occurs when he has him “come to Jesus” with Our Lord on the shore of the Sea of Galilea with his three-fold affirmation of his love for Jesus.  In loving Our Lord “more than these” St. Peter is no longer deterred nor scandalized by the fact that he will have to suffer.  Each of his affirmations, according to Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, marks each of the three distinct motives for the second conversion.  We find the juxtaposition of the two Greek words for love—love of friendship (philia) and love of God (agape)—in the dialogue to mark the rooting out of all traces of self-love by a desire for Divine friendship and filial love of God.  Secondly, Peter is aware of the great price of Christ’s Blood.  Third is the love of souls that need to be saved in his desire to “feed my sheep.” 

Furthermore, he must first go through the Night of the Spirit where he no longer is aware of Christ’s continual presence.  He only “feels” His presence on a few occasions and loses it completely when Our Lord ascends into Heaven.  Just as in the transition from the first conversion to the second there must be a purgation of the sense, a purgation of the spirit must be undergone in order to pave the way for the third conversion.  It would seem that the Apostles were on the fast track in that they only had to endure the Night of the Spirit for 50 days, until we put ourselves in their sandals and realize how painful it must have been for them.  They had spent three and a half years, day in and day out, with the constant awareness of God’s physical presence.

All of this leads up to the third conversion on the day of Pentecost.  Our Lord had meticulously been leading St. Peter to this moment when he would be united to God in the fullest sense possible on Earth.  He still was not perfected, but he was closely yoked to God in the Unitive Stage.  What we need to focus on is that Pentecost was not just an isolated event in their spiritual journey but the culmination of it.  He, along with the other Apostles, received the Holy Spirit because they were ready for it. 

All of this talk of the need for a “New Pentecost” is really a call for more saints who have the courage to set out through the Dark Nights and to be so purified as to become completely united to the Holy Spirit.  Without the proper preparation work this “New Pentecost” will never happen.  With the path of the threefold conversion the Apostles have left us along with the instructions of the great Mystical Doctors of the Church, we “shall renew the face of the earth”  and share in the fruits of the same Pentecost that marked the birth of the Church.

On Liberty of Conscience

American Founding, Church and State, Church Authority, Faith and Reason, God's Will, Magisterium, Martyrdom, Politics, Saints, , , , , , ,

The character of evil, in imitation of its greatest champion, is such that it is ever on the prowl looking to devour the freedom of each man.  One of the means by which such freedom is protected is liberty of conscience.  This natural right of conscience protects each man from having to act in such a way that he is forced to participate in something that he knows to be evil.  As the prevailing culture moves further and further from its Christian roots, the protection by law of the rights of conscience becomes increasingly important.  Therefore, it is worth examining more thoroughly in order bring into relief why it is so vital.

The Character of Conscience

First, we must clear up some of the popular misconceptions about conscience.  It is not a thing like the proverbial angel on the shoulder, but a mode of judgement.  More specifically it is a judgment of practical reason that is linked to the power of man to do what is right and shun what is evil within the concrete circumstances of human life.  Since it is a power of practical reason, it depends upon a knowledge of the principles that lead to genuine human thriving even if it is only concerned with applying those principles.  It is then the power of man to link truth with goodness. 

Conscience, even if it issues commands to the will, is not an act of the will.  Therefore, we must always keep conscience from becoming synonymous with self-will.  Most people treat conscience as if it were freedom to do whatever they want rather than being beholden to the truth.  It carries about with it a certain obstinacy of “sticking to your guns” no matter what.  Therefore, authority is quick to use its power to command actions in conformity with cultural norms.  This is nothing more than Power attempting to replace conscience. 

Conscience protection is the Catholic’s last line of defense against the growing power of the State.  The next step is to cross over into the field of martyrdom.  So we must fight vehemently to keep it in place.  The necessary principles for this defense were laid out quite articulately over a century ago by St. John Henry Newman.  In a letter to the Duke of Norfolk, the saint gives us a defense of the Supremacy of Conscience that fits with a true and Catholic understanding of conscience and its inviolability.

Conscience and Character

Newman notes that all men are by nature bound to observe the natural law.  Our apprehension of this Divine Law occurs within the realm of conscience.  Even “though it may suffer refraction in passing into the intellectual medium of each, it is not therefore so affected as to lose its character of being the Divine Law, but still has, as such, the prerogative of commanding obedience.”  Steeped within Catholic tradition, Newman views conscience as the voice of God and not merely the creation of man.  It may be more or less heard correctly by each man, but it still remains what he calls the “aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”

Based upon the fact that conscience is properly viewed as the voice of God, the Fourth Lateran Council said: “He who acts against his conscience loses his soul.”  To act against conscience is to act against God.  Despite the fact that God has implanted this voice of conscience commanding us to do good and avoid evil, the ear of the intellect needs to be trained and given its “due formation.”  This formation must come through reason enlightened by Divine Faith because the latter was given to purify the former.  To fail to form the conscience properly constitutes a great evil, perhaps one of the greatest because it chooses to deny conscience its rightful dignity.

A man has a right to something because he has a corresponding duty.  The right of conscience flows from his obligation to obey it.  But this obligation does not flow from a need to be true to oneself, but to obey God.  As Newman puts it, if conscience is the voice of the Moral Governor then the rights of conscience are really the rights of the Creator and the duties toward Him.  “Conscience,” Newman says, “has rights because it has duties”. This ultimately is what makes freedom of conscience so important and why we must protect it at all costs.  St. Thomas More is the model in this regard.  He was a martyr because he obeyed the dictates of God mediated through His conscience.

As religious liberty goes into decline, conscience protection becomes more and more important.  Pope Leo XIII called it true liberty, the liberty of the sons of God that shows that “the dignity of man and is stronger than all violence or wrong.” (Libertas, 30).  When all the power of the State bears down upon a single man and he still refuses to join in evil, it shows that man is bigger than the State and shows that he is made for God. Leo XIII calls it “the kind of liberty the Apostles claimed for themselves with intrepid constancy, which the apologists of Christianity confirmed by their writings, and which the martyrs in vast numbers consecrated by their blood. And deservedly so; for this Christian liberty bears witness to the absolute and most just dominion of God over man, and to the chief and supreme duty of man toward God” (Libertas, 30).

Restoring the Kingdom

Church, Church Authority, Holy Spirit, , , ,

Just prior to Our Lord’s Ascension, the disciples ask Him about the coming of the Messianic Kingdom; “Lord, will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?” He responds rather cryptically, saying “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samar′ia and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:7-8).  Many people read this answer as a non-answer, a dismissal of sorts because the Apostles were asking the wrong question.  It is usually followed up by a comment as to just how clueless the Apostles still were even after spending their 40-day bonus round with Our Lord.  But it is not the Apostles that were clueless, but us.

Notice first, that the Apostles were expecting Jesus to restore the kingdom to Israel.  Having had “their minds opened to understand the Scriptures,” (Luke 24:45) the Apostles understood that the Christ would restore the kingdom to Israel.  Their question is not if, but when.  This is no dodge or redirection, but about the most direct answer He can give.  The restoration of the kingdom to Israel will occur when they “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” that is, on Pentecost.

The Meaning of Pentecost

For us to grasp this, we need to first understand the meaning of the Jewish feast of Pentecost.  Fifty days after the first Passover, the People of Israel “came into the wilderness of Sinai” (Ex 19:1).  It was there that Moses ascended Mt Sinai and brought the Torah to the people.  This giving of the law that governs Israel marks the birth of Israel as a People.  The Feast of Weeks, as it was known, was instituted to mark this event and was one of the three great Jewish feasts, when “all males shall appear in the sight of almighty God” (Ex 34:23).  This feast was also known by its Greek name, Pentecost.  This is what St. Luke was referring to when he mentions that the disciples were all gathered in one place “When the day of Pentecost had come” this is the feast that he is referring to” (Luke 2:1). 

The Feast of Weeks was also the Feast of Reaping (c.f. Deut 16:9-11) to offer to God the first fruits of the Wheat Harvest.  This helps to explain the abundant harvest of the 3000 souls that the Apostles reaped on that day, 50 days after the Divine grain of wheat became standing grain (c.f. Deut 16:9).  The harvest of 3000 souls also ties back to those who, while God was giving Moses the Law, worshipped the Golden Calf and were punished by death (Exodus 32:28). 

Pentecost then is the “time the Father has fixed” for the restoration of the kingdom to Israel.  This restoration occurs when the Jewish Feast of Weeks finds its fulfillment in the Christian Pentecost.  Jesus, the New Moses, ascended to Mount Zion, and God gives the New Law.  This New Law is not written on stone, but on our hearts by the Finger of God’s Right Hand (i.e. the Holy Spirit, c.f. Veni Creator Spiritus).  Just as in the giving of the Law to Moses, it is accompanied by a mighty wind and flashes of fire (c.f. Ex 19:18 and Acts 2:2-3). 

Because the Jews were obligated by Divine precept to travel to Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, “there were devout Jews from every nation” (Acts 2:5) to show the universality of the restored Kingdom.  But it also has unity as reflected by the fact that all present heard Peter in their own tongue.  God undoes the disunity that was created at Babel by uniting all mankind under the Tower of Peter, the house built upon the Rock.  This restored Kingdom then bears four marks: Unity, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity.

Therefore, Just as the People of Israel found its birth at Sinai on the 50th day after Passover, the People of the New Israel finds its birth on Pentecost, on the 50th day after the new Passover.  Our Lord restored the Kingdom to Israel on that day, the same day that we celebrate the birth of the Church.  This link created by Our Lord in his response to the Apostles’ question between the Ascension and Pentecost helps to maintain the inseparable link between Israel and the Church.  The new Israel formed from a remnant of the Israel of Old (c.f. Is 10:20-22) will be gathered together by the Messiah.  All such promises made to Israel are taken up and fulfilled in the Church.  This connection also maintains the necessity that the Church be both universal (catholic) and united from within a visible structure.   

The Rehabilitation of Chastity

Anthropology, Contraception, marriage, Moralilty, Sexual Ethics, Theology of the Body, Virtue, , , ,

In his book Love and Responsibility, the future Pope John Paul II lamented the demise of virtue, and in particular, the virtue of chastity.  A spirit of resentment has emerged in the modern psyche towards high moral standards and anyone who practices them.  What was once admirable, even if very few people could master it, is now met with scorn and rationalization.  Chastity is viewed as repression and psychologically harmful, especially in young people.  But in truth, without chastity there can never be any true love.  That is why John Paul II thought modernity needed a “rehabilitation of chastity” and set out a program in Love and Responsibility for accomplishing it.

An Elusive Definition of Chastity?

Part of the reason that such a rehabilitation is necessary is because chastity is rarely defined in positive terms.  St. Thomas Aquinas defined chastity as a sub-virtue of temperance, the virtue that controls the concupiscible appetite.  He points out that chastity “takes its name from the fact that reason ‘chastises’ concupiscence, which, like a child, needs curbing” (ST II-II, q.151, a.1).  Of course, modern sensibilities being what they are, any whiff of restraint, is seen as an assault against freedom. If chastity is to be revived then we must expand our view of it as “a purely negative virtue. Chastity, in this view, is one long ‘no’” (L&R, p.170).  What Fr. Wojtyla hoped to accomplish then is to see chastity as “above all the ‘yes’ of which certain ‘no’s’ are the consequence” (ibid).

Chastity’s alleged violation of freedom really seems like an assault on love.  But this is only because our view of love, especially between the sexes, is far too narrow.  When the love between a man and a woman is viewed as primarily based on the subjective emotional and sexual experiences of the individuals then chastity will always be something negative.  This is not love, but use.  The two people use each other in order to “feel” like they are in love.  They do not love the other person but they love the feeling of being in love.  And they will be “in love” with the other person only so long as they are able to cause the emotional response. 

As opposed to its counterfeit, love is something objective because it is based not upon on an emotional and sexual response that the other caused, but on the objective value of the other person.  Love must always be directed towards the person and the value that they have as persons.  As good and as powerful as the sexual value of a person is, it does not exhaust their value.  Love between the sexes incorporates that sexual value into the total value of the person as a person.

When use is substituted for love, then chastity “feels” like it is holding love back and keeping it from blossoming.  In truth, chastity is an indispensable ingredient for love because “its function is to free love from the utilitarian attitude” (p.169).  Chastity is not a ‘No’ to sexual pleasure but a ‘No’ to treating the other person as an object of sexual gratification.  It is a steady and habitual refusal to use the other person.  It is a habitual readiness to affirm the full value of the other person.  Returning to JPII’s words, “only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love. For chastity frees their association, including their marital intercourse, from that tendency to use a person” (L&R, p. 171).

Pleasure Freed by Chastity

The traditional definition of chastity, true as it is, does not exhaust its full meaning.  Chastity does not just moderate our sexual desire, but “liberates love from the attitude of use.”  It is then both a ‘No’ and a ‘Yes’—no to use, yes to love.  No longer under the sway of unbridled emotion, sexual desire is liberated to roam free and be directed towards the full value of the person.  Only the chaste man and woman experience true pleasure of sexual desire because it is governed by reason and directed towards its natural end. 

This is the great lie of those who would have us believe that chastity is mere repression.  Sinners always love company and seek a way to rationalize their own vices.  On the surface, and at least initially, it is easier to yield to sexual desire.  But pleasure is always fleeting and when chosen as an end always operates under the law of diminishing returns.  But John Paul II encourages his readers to persevere because virtue takes time and suffering because of our fallen nature.  Once it matures pleasure is restored to its natural place and, surprising to our untrained minds, actually increases.  The “in-between” time in which chastity feels like repression is certainly difficult, but once it grows, like a fully mature tree, it provides the sweet fruit of pleasure.  This reality only comes about however when chastity is seen as worthwhile.    

Fully rehabilitated chastity enables us to see that it is, like every decision that we make, both a no and a yes.  It is a no to a utilitarian relationship and a yes to the full blossoming of both spousal love and friendship.

Religious Liberty and the Coronavirus Quarantine

American Founding, Church and State, Church Authority, Vatican II, , , , , ,

One of the more closely related issues to the Coronavirus Quarantine is Religious Liberty.  Some have argued that the State demanding the shutdown of Church’s infringes upon the right to religious freedom.  Arguments have but put forth, at least from a Constitutional perspective, that in general the demand that churches be shut down is not unconstitutional.  We will set the constitutional question aside for the time being and examine it from the Church’s traditional teaching on religious freedom.

From the outset it must be admitted that examining religious freedom from the standpoint of traditional teaching is not without controversy.  Ever since the Second Vatican Council this teaching has been contested thanks to what amounts to a document plagued by ambiguity.  This despite the fact that the Declaration on Religious Freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, makes it clear that “it leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ” (DH 1).  This “traditional Catholic doctrine” can be summarized as follows.

The Traditional Teaching on Religious Liberty

Man has an obligation to worship God, not just in any manner that he wishes, but according to the religion that God has revealed.  More to the point, man has an obligation to be a member of the Catholic Church.  This membership however must be voluntary.  No one can be forced to embrace the True Faith against his will.  Two corollaries follow from this.  First, no one may be forced from acting against his religious conviction in private or in public.  Vatican II affirms this teaching when it says that religious “freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.” 

In a discourse in 1953, Pope Pius XII said ‘That which does not correspond to truth or to the norm of morality has objectively no right to exist, to be spread or to be activated.”  Because “error has no rights”, the public exercise of religion is another issue.  Only the true religion has a right public expression and thus a person may be kept from publicly acting upon their religious convictions.  To summarize, a man can’t be forced to act against his conscience but can be kept from acting on it.  The second corollary then is that the State, because it is the custodian of the Common Good may prohibit public expression of false religions.

In Catholic countries the State may tolerate some public expression of false religions only for proportionate reasons in order to protect the Common Good.  St. Thomas gives two reasons in general—to avoid civil unrest or avoid prejudicing non-Catholics toward the Church.  What is clear is that this must be viewed merely as tolerance and not a right.  No one has right to be tolerated.  Either way a non-Catholic religion must not be given the space to flourish and propagate itself. 

In non-Catholic States the obligation to protect and promote the true religion still remains in place, but the level of tolerance of false religions obviously increases because of the Common Good and the threat of civil unrest.  This is where Dignitatis Humanae seems to veer from the traditional teaching of the Church saying both that “religious communities…have the right not to be hindered in their public teaching and witness to their faith, whether by the spoken or by the written word”(DH 4).  It seems to confuse true rights from mere tolerance.  How this can be reconciled with the traditional teaching remains to be seen.

The traditional understanding then differs from the American Model.  The American Model treats all religions as equal.  This is contrary to justice however.  As Leo XIII put it:

“Justice therefore forbids, and reason itself forbids, the State to be godless; or to adopt a line of action which would end in godlessness-namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them) alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and privileges. Since, then, the profession of one religion is necessary in the State, that religion must be professed which alone is true, and which can be recognized without difficulty, especially in Catholic States, because the marks of truth are, as it were, engravers upon it.” 

Pope Leo XIII, Libertas 21

This also means that the Church cannot be treated as merely one other social organization.  This means that the constitutionality defense, namely that religious congregations have not been singled out, of the religious quarantine does not fly.  The Church not only should be treated differently than other religious groups, but also from all social groups.  Lumping it in with other “large gatherings” is unjust and does great harm to the Common Good.

Religious Liberty and the Power of the Church

The confusion regarding religious liberty has led to a grave misstep when it comes to the quarantining of the Church’s public worship and Sacraments.  To be clear, the issue isn’t about whether Bishops should comply with the order of the State regarding not gathering.  That question is best left up to the prudential judgment of the Bishops and their charism as Shepherds.  But any compliance must be shown to be voluntary.  It must be “we will comply” and not “we must comply”.  Very few Bishops (if any) have made it clear that this is a voluntary cooperation, “signal proof of her motherly love by showing the greatest possible kindliness and indulgence” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei 15) in cooperating with the State.

The Church has an obligation to repeatedly tell the State to stay in its lane and this situation is no different.  Leo XIII, always aware of State encroachment upon the Church, said “Whatever, therefore in things human is of a sacred character, whatever belongs either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judgment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly subject to the civil authority” (ibid).  This is because the spiritual common good always has precedent over the temporal common good.

When the transition back to normal life happens, the question is who decides when the Church may resume Masses?  Is it the State or is it the Church?  The way this has played out so far it appears that it will be the State which sets a dangerous precedent and gives the Church’s enemies great leeway in performing a “soft persecution” in the name of public health.  The Shepherds of the Church must defend religious freedom and not cede any power over to the State.