Category Archives: Culture of Life

The NFP Lifestyle

Bioethics, Conscience, Contraception, Culture of Life, , ,

In recent years there have been a number of sociological studies linking marital happiness/success with methods of birth regulation.   Most of them show positive differences between those couples who practice NFP and those who use other methods of birth control, although not always to the degree that NFP Catholics like to advertise.  This is mostly due to the fact that couples practicing NFP fall into two categories—those who do so with a contraceptive mentality and those who live an NFP lifestyle.  It is the latter group which would likely show a significantly higher marital satisfaction.

I called it a “lifestyle” because it is about so much more than just family planning.  NFP reinforces the one flesh union of marriage even when the couple is not engaged in the marital embrace.  At the risk of pointing out the obvious, I will mention that, unlike woman, man’s fertility is non-cyclical.  He is fertile all the time.  This means that the burden of self-mastery often falls upon him.  In fact one could say self-mastery is at the heart of being a man.  The man, as he finds stamped into his body, is made to make a gift of himself.  But to give oneself away, you must first own yourself, that is, have total self-mastery.  Your yes only means something when you are free to say no.  Without this requisite self-mastery comes the constant temptation to “lord it over the woman” (c.f. Gen 3:16).  When you do not have control over yourself, you will attempt to control other people, especially those that are close to you.

The Burden of Fertility

While man does not experience his fertility as a burden per se, the woman does.  This doesn’t mean that it is a bad thing, only that it carries with it “labor” even if that labor is joyfully and willfully endured.  She is the one who, ultimately, must bear the consequences of fertility.  Family planning and birth control often fall upon her.  As proof of this, despite all the nasty side effects, a woman is willing to take a birth control pill.  This is also the arena in which NFP can facilitate a true one flesh union by enabling the man to help carry the load of her fertility with her.

The most obvious time of her cycle is during menstruation.  The man experiences his constant fertility as a burden so as to be united bodily with his wife during a particularly painful period of time.  The burden of fertility that she is feeling can also be felt, albeit in a different way, in his body too.  He literally is practicing compassion, that is suffering with.  When borne with love and patience he is making a bodily gift of himself to his wife.

Most men already do this, although perhaps in not such a deliberate way.  But for those men who practice NFP and have experienced the “disappointment” of the arrival of an early period, this can enable them to see how the one flesh giving might continue.  Likewise, when for “just reasons” the couple is using NFP to avoid pregnancy the man puts aside the drive of his constant fertility so as to share in and through his body her fertility.  This is where real manhood, that is manhood founded upon self-mastery, is particularly felt because he feels an increase in the burden of his fertility because of the inviting presence of her pheromones signaling her fertility.  Even in abstaining from the marital embrace the couple is experiencing a type of one-flesh union when they join their wills together in postponing pregnancy.

NFP’s Effect on Family Life

An NFP lifestyle also makes for a happier home life in general in the relationship between the parents and children.  Schooled in self-mastery by NFP the parents are better able to love their children in a disinterested fashion.  As John Paul II, in a defense of Humanae Vitae once said:

“[parents that are contracepting] cannot sacrifice their egoism to the good of their spouse, will likewise lack generosity, patience, serenity and calm assurance in their relations with their children.  They will love their children to the degree to which their children bring them joy—that is selfishly and not for their own sakes; they will cajole them and teach them self-indulgence and self-love.  Instead of the peace given by self-mastery, unrest will reign in the family, because the state of tension created by a truncated sexual act surrounded by precautions, an act that is to be an unreserved gift of self, must in the long term be communicated to the children.  It seems that the increasing prevalence of anxiety and even certain neuroses results in large part from contraceptive practices.”

For the better part of the last half-century, the teaching Church has been (at best) silent promoting her teachings on birth control.  It is time that the rest of the Church step out into the void and preach the freedom that comes from ditching contraception.  The one flesh union within marriage is a daily lived experience.

 

Defending Death?

Church and State, Church Authority, Culture of Life, Human Dignity, ,

In a previous post, two of the most common arguments for abolishing the death penalty, were examined and put to rest.  In the midst of this presentation, I promised to return to the topic because the arguments themselves are predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of the reasoning behind the Church’s position, a position she has held from her beginnings.  When asked where the Church stands on Capital Punishment, most would put forward the “self-defense” defense, a position based upon John Paul II’s explanation in Evangelium Vitae and later included in the Catechism:

“If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person. Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity ‘are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.’” (CCC 2267)

In summary, provided that the threat to society from the person can be neutralized, then the death penalty should not be used.  Given greater and greater security measures, we should expect that the death penalty will eventually be done away with.  Or so the argument goes.  This may come as a surprise to many, but “self-defense” has never been the primary reason why the Church has allowed recourse to the death penalty.  And if it was, this would represent a novelty (i.e. a change in something belonging to the Tradition of the Church).  Instead the Church has taught from the beginning that the death penalty was a valid means of punishment.

“From the beginning?”

Within the classical tradition, punishment has three distinct purposes.  The primary end is the re-establishment of justice.  When a crime is committed, the order of justice is upset and is only restored when a proportionate punishment is given to the offender.  This is why the punishment must always be carried out according to the judgment of a competent authority.  The other two purposes serve only secondary roles.  First, the punishment must be ordered to the correction of the offender himself, that is, it is medicinal in some way to the person who committed the injustice.  Finally, it must serve a social purpose, primarily as a deterrent and isolation of the offender.

We can examine Capital Punishment in light of these three ends to see if it can be applied.  It bears mentioning that this is a different question as to whether it should be applied in a given situation.  This is a question that only the competent authority whose role it is to promote and protect the common good.  We are interested here only in the question of why in principle the death penalty is not immoral.  That being said, we can examine the primary end, namely the re-establishment of justice.  Does the punishment fit the crime?

Almost on an intuitional level we must admit that there are some crimes that are so heinous that the only fitting punishment is death.  If this sounds like vengeance then that is because it is.  Vengeance corresponds to the innate desire for justice that is written into human nature and it is a good thing when it is exercised according to justice.  This is why punishment should always be carried out by the competent authority.  If “all authority comes from above” (Romans 13:1) and “vengeance is mine, says the Lord” (Dt 32:35) then it is the competent authority that carries out the punishments of the Lord.

Even if you are willing to concede this, you might answer “no, there is no crime for which the fitting punishment is death.”  The problem with this position is first that it contradicts Sacred Scripture.  In the midst of His covenant making with Noah, the Lord says “Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being, by a human being shall that one’s blood be shed. For in the image of God have human beings been made” (Gn 9:6).  This is the principle of proportionality.  A principle that even Our Lord did not abrogate in the Sermon on the Mount in which He addresses His individual followers to avoid unjust anger and vengeance while at the same time commanding them to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”  There should be no vigilante justice, only those for whom the competence rests (c.f, Romans 13:1-4).  Our Lord teaches how we should respond as victims to violence, not as punishers.  It is with this awareness that the Church has always taught that society may have recourse to the death penalty as a punishment; from St. Paul to Augustine to Aquinas to Pope Innocent III to Pope Pius IX to Pope Pius XII to Benedict XVI.

The second problem is more one of common sense.  To say that a mass murderer deserves the same punishment (life imprisonment) as say a rapist is to ultimately destroy the principle of proportionality.  That a mass murderer gets only life imprisonment would suggest that a rapist who, “at least didn’t kill someone” should get less.  This leads to a sort of arbitrariness in punishment, including excess or even no punishment at all.  We cannot eliminate per se Capital Punishment as a proportional punishment.

Although it is not immediately obvious, Capital Punishment also serves the second purpose of punishment.  It serves a medicinal as well.  St. Thomas says that the death penalty leads to either repentance or puts an end to their sin, both of which are good for the person.  Death is not the worst thing that can happen to us—hell is.  Repentance obviously leads the person away from hell, but keeping a person from sinning even more keeps them from further punishment in hell

Finally, how the death penalty serves a deterrent.  This also needs to further explanation.  Many people take this to be an empirical claim and think that the number of murders is no less in places where there is recourse to the death penalty.  But the claim is more about the law as a great moral teacher.  As a deterrent the death penalty is not a part of someone’s calculation, but represents an overall hatred of murder.  Most people would not commit and murder and one of the reasons why they have such distaste for it is the horror of the death penalty.  Rather than being an affront against human dignity, it actually shows the great worth of human life.  Recall the reason that God gave Noah as to why he should use capital punishment—“in the image of God have human beings been made” (Gn 9:6).

A Novelty?

It was mentioned above that the “self-defense” defense would represent a novelty in the Church’s teaching and would be a break with unbreakable Tradition.  “Still”, one might say, “the Catechism says what it says.”  That is true, except that the paragraph must be read from within its proper context.  The teaching on the death penalty is presented from within the context of punishment, that is, as Capital Punishment.

“The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people’s rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people’s safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.” (CCC 2266)

This is merely a summary of the principles of what we said above.  What follows then in the next paragraph is meant to be an application of those principles based on the Holy Father’s prudential judgment.  He thinks that given the current state of the penal system, the ends of punishment—proportionality, expiation and deterrence— can be met with something like life imprisonment, rendering the only issue being whether or not society can be protected from further violence by the perpetrator.  As proof that this is a merely prudential application we need only look to the comments of the future Pope Benedict XVI when he said “While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia” (Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion: General Principles Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith).  It is both permissible to have recourse to capital punishment and to disagree with how it is applied.  The principle is set but how it is applied, like many things related to the moral teachings of the Church, is debatable.   Put another way, that it can be used as punishment is not debatable, when it should be used is.  As an aside, I should mention as well that, despite taking a lot of flak for it, Edward Feser offers an excellent explanation of why this is an imprudential judgment in his new book By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of the Death Penalty.

In conclusion, the Church has repeatedly affirmed the validity of the death penalty as a moral option for punishing violent offenders.  Despite a move towards a more merciful approach, this particular doctrine will not and cannot change.  The death penalty should always be on the table.

Catholic Culture and the Collapse of the Self-Evident

Church, Church and State, Culture, Culture of Life

In a book written just prior to becoming Pope called Truth and Tolerance, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger describes the present day crisis of faith as coming about from a “collapse of the old religious certainties.” This collapse affects more than just faith, but leads to a total “collapse of human values” (Truth and Tolerance, p.140).  So connected are these religious certainties with our conception of human values, that we treat certain truths of the Christian ethos as self-evident.  Or at least, we did.  What we are witnessing is not just the death of a Christian culture, but also, what one author has called, the collapse of the self-evident.

The Enlightenment and the Collapse of the Self-Evident

Those who have been victimized by the project of the Enlightenment, the same project which promised to liberate reason from the constraints of religious truth, have seen reason collapse instead.  Rather than liberating reason, it has enslaved it to feeling and the scientific method.  There are no longer first principles, truths that we all hold as self-evident, from which reason and society might proceed.  Freedom reigns supreme, unfettered even by reason itself and it is every man for himself in this brave new world.  It seems that the only self-evident truth is that there are no self-evident truths.  Descartes’ skepticism has won the day—we now know nothing for sure.

Nevertheless, this is our reality and a failure to adapt to it only exacerbates the problem.  For those who desire to spread the Christian ethos they must come to accept the consequences of the “collapse of the self-evident.”  When we encounter another person who fails to acknowledge what is self-evident we assume that they are either stupid or wicked.  We assume that they are either unable or unwilling to see the truth. They are the swine upon which we should not cast our pearls and we counter with indifference and/or hostility.

Our Lord’s admonition regarding our pearls and the world’s swine is not without merit, but we miss a great opportunity when we fail to grasp that, in a culture in which the self-evident has collapsed, they may be neither stupid nor wicked.  In fact, in Christian charity, we should assume they are simply ignorant.  Rather than being, as we should all be, slaves to the self-evident, they become slaves to the fashionable.  There was a time when the Christian ethos was the fashionable, but those days are long past.

An illustration will help to drive the point home.  Many Christians find themselves absolutely flummoxed by those who support abortion.  The self-evident truth that acted as a cornerstone for our country, that no one may directly kill an innocent person, makes it practically self-evident that abortion is immoral.  Therefore we assume that abortion supporters are either stupid or wicked, marking them as enemies to be conquered rather than potential allies to be won over.  It is no longer self-evident what a person is.  Even if we are able to grasp that, then we run into a second “self-evident” roadblock, innocence.  What is an innocent person; one that poses no threat to my well-being or one that does not deliberately seek to harm me, or what?  That a child in the womb is innocent should be self-evident, the fact that so many people can’t see it is because of the collapse of the self-evident.

Every pre-Christian culture had abortions.  This was not because they were less enlightened but because they were pre-Christian.  Likewise with the dignity of women, slavery, euthanasia, and nearly every other societal ill.  It is only in light of the Christian conception of man that we can even speak of the value of every human being.  It is the fact that we are made in the image of God and worth enough for the Son of God to die for that we can even conceive of human dignity.  Throw out those two truths and the collapse of the self-evident is sure to follow.

We argue and argue, but our voice is lost because no one understands us.  We are, quite literally yelling into the wind.  Sure individual conversions still occur, but nothing on the massive scale that the Church is used to.  And that is because the smattering of individual conversions cannot sustain a Christian culture.

The Necessity of a Catholic Culture

Our Lord won a grace for the ignorant to see the truth on the Cross—“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”  But His Mystical Body, His visual presence on earth has been given a grace and a task.  This is the same grace and task that the early Church was given to “instruct the ignorant” through the foundation of a decidedly Catholic culture.  It started with a tightly knit sub-culture but before too long blossomed into an entire culture.  Constantine may have “legitimized” Christianity by adopting it as the state religion, but he was only acknowledging what every Roman already knew—the empire, thanks in no small part to a lifeless pagan worship, was in steady decline with the most vital part of society being the Church.  I am not calling into question the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion, there is no good historical reason to doubt that, only pointing out that it also turned out that a healthy Church has a unifying capacity in society, even if not everyone is Christian.  What follows from this is the rise of a Christian culture.

The Church may not be in favor of divorce, but they must finally admit that the marriage of the Church with liberalism is a failed union.  We have been trying for over a century to show how the Church is compatible with liberalism rather than showing how liberalism is compatible with the Church (or mostly how it is not).  Pope Leo XII may have been ahead of his time in declaring the heresy of Americanism, but he wasn’t wrong.

Culture, as the liberals (not in the liberal vs conservative sense, but in the sense of liberalism of which both liberals and conservatives are a part) know is built from the bottom up in the education of the young.  Why have Catholic schools adopted the liberal model and dropped the classical liberal arts model?  Catholic education was a battlefield in the 1950s when the Supreme Court put parochial schools in its sight.  Rather than continuing the fight, the Church schools simply adopt the liberal model.  There is no longer a uniquely Catholic education, except among a very small remnant.

Likewise, we are urged to call our Congressmen to protect the Dreamers, many of whom are Catholic immigrants, from being deported.  But if we are honest, they would probably be better off in their Catholic homeland rather than having their eternal salvation at stake as here.  Oppose Trump’s wall?  Fine, but how about building a wall around these young people so that they retain their Catholicism and not Americanism.  There was a time when there was enough of a Catholic culture to sustain many Catholic immigrants.

The examples could be multiplied, but the point remains that until we remain committed to building a Catholic culture, we will lose, not just the culture war, but eternal souls.  The collapse of the self-evident leaves many blinded by the fashionable and unable to see the truths of the Faith as livable and coming from the hand of a loving Father.

 

John Paul II and the Founding Fathers

Abortion, Culture of Life, , , ,

In his great encyclical preaching the Gospel of Life, St. John Paul II recognized the important role that politics plays in building a culture of life.  Civil laws are closely tied to an individual’s awareness of the moral law and therefore always act as a great moral teacher.  Unfortunately, especially from within a democratic ethos, there can be great difficulty in overturning unjust laws without widespread support and a moral catch-22 often arises.  This is the experience of many pro-life politicians who find themselves trapped and unable to avoid being complicit with evil.  It was in this light that the saintly Pontiff articulated an important principle encouraging those politicians to exercise what he would later call the “art of the possible.”

A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. It is a fact that while in some parts of the world there continue to be campaigns to introduce laws favoring abortion, often supported by powerful international organizations, in other nations-particularly those which have already experienced the bitter fruits of such permissive legislation-there are growing signs of a rethinking in this matter. In a case like the one just mentioned, when it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects (Evangelium Vitae, 74).

In truth, John Paul II was not introducing anything novel but simply applying some long-held principles within the Church’s social doctrine to the scourge of abortion.  It is well worth our time to examine these principles in depth because they have application in other arenas of social justice as well.

Morality and Legislation

There are those who contend that “you cannot legislate morality.”  While this is quite obviously false, they do have a point, even if they do not realize it.  While we can, should and do legislate morality, one cannot use civil law to create a utopia in which all moral evil is eliminated.  This is one of the serious errors (although certainly not the only) that totalitarian regimes, especially those that are Marxist in their roots, readily make in thinking they can absolutely enforce a complete moral code from above.  Even the best regimes, that is those that result in the most virtuous people, will have to exercise tolerance towards certain evils.

How do we know which ones should be tolerated and which ones should be legislated against?    The logic is relatively simple—you tolerate those for which outlawing would do more harm to the common good than the evil itself does.  This is why John Paul II doesn’t encourage those legislators to start a revolution and overthrow the existing government.  The chaos that would ensue would do great harm to all members of society, including those most vulnerable, the very ones you are trying to protect.  Relative peace and stability are part of the common good and thus cannot be tossed aside lightly.

This is not to suggest however that you must sit idly by and allow the evil to continue.  Instead you should seek ways in which to limit the evil and its effects on the common good.  All too often tolerance turns into acceptance which then turns into promotion and even provision.  The just politician must seek solutions to limit the evil and keep it from spreading.  This takes a fair amount of prudence because it always requires some accommodation with those who are bent on its continuation.  Prudence should not be confused with expediency.  The means of bringing about the reduction of evil should not create further evils.

Abortion is not the only application of the “art of the possible.”  In fact, there is a historical example from the founding of the United States that still gets much airplay today—slavery.

The “Art of the Possible” and Slavery

Slavery, like abortion, is gravely evil and something that no society should ever have to tolerate.  Nevertheless, our country had to confront this great evil during its Founding.  A grave distortion, animated by political correctness, revisionist history and chronological myopia, has occurred and left blinded us to the true dilemma that the Founders faced, casting a dark cloud over what could rightly be judged as a glorious achievement.

Like the pro-life politicians of today, the Founders were in no position to outlaw slavery outright.  It had become an institution upon which a number of the states had become so dependent that they would rather form their own country than to give it up.  The truth is that the Union of the Thirteen Colonies was extremely fragile with very little to bind them together.  In order to “form a more perfect union” they gathered in 1789 in order to re-constitute this Union with stronger ties among the states.  In order for the experiment in liberty to work, they would need to band together.

As the Constitutional Congress met it became very obvious that many of the southern delegates would not bend on their support of slavery.  Most of the Constitution’s framers condemned slavery, but there were powerful interests who still supported it, making those delegates demand concessions.  So divisive was this issue that James Madison himself said, “the real difference of interests, lay, not between the large and small but between the Northern and Southern states.  The institution of slavery and its consequences formed the line of discrimination.”

Faced with the prospect of no union at all and a union where slavery was tolerated, the Framers chose the latter.  Many have asked “why didn’t the North just form their own country and leave the South to its own devices?”  There is a sort of intellectual dishonesty in the question itself, because the South then would have never eliminated slavery.  Even the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass recognized this saying, “[M]y argument against the dissolution of the American Union is this: It would place the slave system more exclusively under the control of the slaveholding states, and withdraw it from the power of the Northern states, which is opposed to slavery…I am therefore, for drawing the bond of the union more closely, and bringing the Slave States more completely under the power of the free states.”  Even so, the North was not strong enough to stand on its own, especially without Virginia.  The greatest problem facing the new Nation was its collapse under its own weight.

The Framers decided to exercise the “art of the possible” so that the founding principle “that all men are created equal” could eventually shine forth.  They did this by instituting three measures.  First, they agreed that Congress could make no laws forbidding slave importation until 1808 (at which point they outlawed it).  Second, they instituted the 3/5 compromise by which each slave only counted as 3/5 of a person when determining congressional representation and electoral votes.  Finally, it outlawed the spread of slavery to new states and the Western territories (although not the Southern), and gave Congress regulation power over inter-state commerce, including in the commerce of slaves.  In short, the framers thought that, while not eliminating it completely, they were choking it out.

Chronological myopia also creates another blind spot—what would it actually look like to free the slaves?  There is the assumption that one day they would simply say, you are “free to go” and off the slaves went to live free.  Most were not educated and would not have been able to take care of themselves.  You could help to train them and give them the means to get started, but where was the funding to come from for this from a country that was begging other countries for loans?  Most of the slaves, once freed would end up worse off than they were currently.

There was also the historical problem that no two races had ever lived together peacefully.  This was foremost on the mind of Jefferson himself who said, “many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.”  This is exactly what happened in Haiti from 1791-1804 when every white person on the island was killed.  This is why many favored colonization (a solution also supported by Lincoln) rather than citizenship.

As we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. this week, the great Civil Rights reformer, it is important that we set the record straight.  The Framers may not have been prudent in their accommodations, but accusations of racism go too far, creating an atmosphere of suspicion and division.  When Jefferson penned the phrase “all men are created equal,” he and his compatriots believed this included slaves as well.  His further writings and those of the other founders support this.  In his book Vindicating the Founders, Thomas West furnishes primary sources—writings from the Founders themselves—to, well, vindicate the founders against the accusation of racism.  He thoroughly treats the subject, but five quotes in particular are noteworthy:

  • Washington—“There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.”
  • John Adams—“Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for he eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States…I have through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in…abhorrence.”
  • Franklin—“Slavery is…an atrocious debasement of human nature.”
  • Madison—“We have seen the mere distinction of color made in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”
  • Jefferson–“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

 

In short, to use the language of Evangelium Vitae, their “personal opposition was well known.”   There may have been some personal weakness in resolve, but their condemnation of it was clear.   They knew that a change in the law would strengthen their personal resolve.   In any regard, West’s book should be required reading for any American, especially American Catholics, if for no other reason than its clear presentation of  John Paul II’s “art of the possible” in action.

A Death Like His

Culture of Life, End Times, Last Things, Martyrdom, Sacraments, Scripture, Suffering, , ,

For those who have spent any time in school, it is a universal experience.  On the cusp of final exams, you perform the “what’s the worst I can do and still get an A?” calculation.  Or if you don’t have an A, you’ll ask “what will my grade be if I get 100%?”.   Crunching the numbers, the study plan develops accordingly.  Outside of the academic arena this approach can get us in trouble—especially when we apply a similar pattern of thinking to life’s final exam, death.  We assume that if we have performed well during the semester of life, then death will be a breeze.  Not only does this attitude ignore the tremendous temptations that await us, but it fails to discern the truly Christian meaning of death, or more to the point, the meaning of life.  For a Christian the meaning of life is dying well.

When St. Paul was being held captive in Rome, he penned his great opus on joy to the Church in Philippi.  Written during his first imprisonment in Babylon (c.f. 1 Pt 5:13), the Apostle reflected upon his own approach to death.  But rather than performing the “end of semester calculus” he “forgets what lies behind straining forward to what lies ahead” (Phil 3:14).  In other words, St. Paul eschews the cruise control and sprints all the way through the finish line.

This attitude is antithetical to the spirit of the world which confronts death in one of two ways.  First there is the mode of distraction.  It looms in the back of our minds, but as something we will deal with later.  Meanwhile we come up with creative ways to avoid thinking about it.  As Pascal maintains, “we run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.”  We know it is inevitable, but we hope it catches us by surprise and “peacefully”.  Second there is the wisdom of pop-psychology which summons us to “accept it.”  Paradoxically this type of acceptance is a denial.  Like its proverbial doppelganger, taxes, we simply treat it as something to be planned around and cheated.

Planning for Death

Scripture on the other hand tells us to plan for death.  As the Book of Sirach tells us, “Remember the Last Things and you will never sin” (Sir 7:36).  Biblically speaking, to remember is not simply to keep it in the back of our mind or to “accept it” but to make it a present reality.  Knowing you are going to die is one thing, knowing how you will die is quite another.  Very likely we have no knowledge of the external circumstances but we can rehearse the interior dispositions that will accompany our deaths.  Just as we plan fiscally for our deaths with life insurance and a will, we should plan physically by preparing our souls, making death a testament.

In order to hit the target, we must first distinguish what we are aiming at.  The goal is, as St. Paul tells the Romans, to be united to Christ in a “death like His” (Rom 6:5).  Our own death, not surprisingly, finds meaning in His Passion.  Like a lamb being led to slaughter, Our Lord was silent in His sufferings.  The only time that Christ lets out a cry of anguish during His Passion is at the moment of His death.  The agony of His death is so keen that He could not remain silent.  The cry of anguish was proceeded by His last words—“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”  That is, Christ the Priest, has made a definitive offering of the pain of death to the Father.  A “death like His” is one that has been offered to the Father.

Life is not really pass/fail.  We run through the finish line because in death we have something, perhaps our greatest something, to offer to the Father.  Death ceases to be a punishment and becomes a true offering of our lives to God.  Death, when offered in union with Christ, becomes the pathway to Life.  It is when we receive the fullest share in the priesthood of Christ and in turn conform ourselves more fully to Him as victim.  It is only at death that we can truly offer our life to God—no other person, even Christ Himself, can do that for us.

A Priestly Annointing for Death

To prepare us for the greatest of our priestly tasks, the Church “completes the holy anointings that mark the whole Christian life…completing our conformity to the death and Resurrection of Christ, just as Baptism began it” (CCC 1523) in the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick.  This Sacrament, even though it is often touted as a Sacrament of Healing, is first and foremost a priestly anointing so that “the sick person receives the strength and the gift of uniting himself more closely to Christ’s Passion: in a certain way he is consecrated to bear fruit by configuration to the Savior’s redemptive Passion. Suffering, a consequence of original sin, acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of Jesus” (CCC 1521).

A proper understanding of death as primarily a priestly occupation, enables the Christian, even when facing great bodily pains surrounding death, can remain spiritually joyful.  God loves a cheerful giver.  Unfortunately this aspect of death as a definitive offering has been lost to the prevailing culture.  We collectively accept the wine and myrrh thinking we can anesthetize death, depriving the person of their opportunity to give their life to God.  This is also why euthanasia is the very opposite of mercy, robbing the person of the only true gift they have to offer to God.

Seeing the Sacrament of the Anointing as an anointing for a good death also helps bring out another important facet of death.  The dying person often sees himself as a burden upon other people, especially his loved ones.  But the Church says that there is an Ecclesial grace attached to the Sacrament such that the “sick who receive this sacrament, ‘by freely uniting themselves to the passion and death of Christ,’ ‘contribute to the good of the People of God.’  By celebrating this sacrament the Church, in the communion of saints, intercedes for the benefit of the sick person, and he, for his part, though the grace of this sacrament, contributes to the sanctification of the Church and to the good of all men for whom the Church suffers and offers herself through Christ to God the Father” (CCC 1522).  By uniting themselves to Christ in a “death like His,” the sick man finds joy, able to say with St. Paul, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church…” (Col 1:24).  Far from being a burden, the sick actually lighten the burden on the other members of Christ body.

The great spiritual masters of the Church all speak of the art of dying well.  Like any art, it can only be done well when it is practiced and prepared for.  Remember death and you will do well in life.

What’s for Dinner?

Culture, Culture of Life, Fasting, Leisure, Moralilty, Natural Law, Scripture, Suffering, Theology, , ,

In keeping with tradition, President Trump pardoned Drumstick, the thirty-six pound presidential turkey, yesterday and sent her to Gobblers Rest on the Virginia Tech campus.  Millions of other turkeys will not be so fortunate however adorning the tables of Americans tomorrow gathering for the Thanksgiving Day feast.  For a small, but increasing, number of those families, they will forgo the fowl because they are avowed vegans and vegetarians.  Included within this group are a number of Catholic intellectuals who have rejected their omnivorous ways by making a moral argument for vegetarianism, seeing it as an antidote to the culture of death.   Before the Lion of PETA lies down with Lamb of the National Right to Life, it is instructive to offer a Christian perspective on vegetarianism.

Animals and Their Use

In examining the order of nature, it is patently obvious that there is a hierarchy in which the perfect proceeds from the imperfect.  This hierarchy also resides in the use of things so that the imperfect exists for the use of the perfect.  The plants make use of the earth for their nourishment, animals make use of plants and man makes use of plants and animals.  Man is said then to have dominion over all of visible creation because, having reason and will, he is able to make use of all of it.

Revelation supports human reason in this regard as Genesis tells of God’s granting of dominion to mankind because he is created in God’s image (c.f. Gn 1:26-27).  But this is really a two-edged sword.  Dominion means not just that we have the capacity for using things, but also that there is a right and wrong way to use them.  With free will comes the capacity for the misuse of creatures.   So that the question is not really whether man has dominion over the animals but whether this dominion includes the right to eat them.

Thus when we reflect on the proper use of animals, we usually use the term “humane.”  Although it is an oft-used term, it is not oft-understood.  When we speak of the “humane” treatment of animals it does not mean that we treat them as if they were human.  Instead it refers to the truly human (i.e. moral) way of treating animals as living, sentient beings over which we have been given not just dominion but stewardship.  Humane treatment refers to the truly human way of using the animals.  This would mean that all traces of cruelty or causing unnecessary pain carry moral weight.  Put another way, we should avoid any all forms of abuse, which, of course,  always assumes there is a proper use.

The question also needs to be properly framed.  It is not really whether or not this use includes the death of the animal.  Just as the use of plants by animals may lead to the death of the plants, so too do higher animals prey on the lower.  There is no inherent reason then why the use of the animal by man cannot results in death.  Some make the argument for the moral necessity of vegetarianism based on the fact that we should not kill a living thing.  A moment’s reflection however allows us to see that virtually all of our food, including many things like wheat and fruits and vegetables, results from the death of something that was living (see Augustine’s City of God, Book 1, Ch.20 for further discussion on this).  No one truly objects because the plant matter, lacking sentience, does not have the capacity for pain.  To advance further we must look more closely at animal pain.

Kindness

Every generation has its pet virtue and for our generation it is kindness.  Provided we “would never hurt a fly” we are deemed good people.  The great enemy of kindness is cruelty and its daughter pain.  Pain is the greatest evil.  But this is not entirely true.  Pain becomes an evil when it becomes an end in itself.  This is true in both humans and animals.  It can however serve as a means, provided it is minimized in carry out its purpose.  That purpose can be either corrective (like getting too close to a fire) or for growth.  Cruelty would not be to cause pain, but to cause it unnecessarily.  The power of sentience is not simply for feeling pleasure, but also allows for the feeling of pain.  This power is good and necessary for the creature to thrive.

The difference in humans and animals is the capacity, not to feel pain, but to suffer.  There must be an I to experience suffering or else it is merely a succession of pains without any real connection.  As CS Lewis says in The Problem of Pain it is most accurate to say “pain is taking place in this animal” rather than “this animal is suffering.”  We should avoid saying things like “how would you like to be in a slaughterhouse?”  The experience of animals in that environment is very different from the suffering that would have gone on in a place like Auschwitz.  They may be in pain in the slaughterhouse, but there is no suffering.  Any appeal to emotions based on an anthropomorphic comparison ultimately muddies the waters.

The causing of pain in other humans, always as a means, is licit provided the patient receives some benefit from it.  At first glance it would seem that animals would derive no benefit from the pain caused by humans.  When we view pain as means of moving a person towards perfection then we can see the parallel in animals.  The perfection of any creature consists in it achieving the end for which it was made.  Man was made for happiness (in the classical sense of becoming morally good) and animals were made for man.  If the pain that a man causes an animal is necessary for his own happiness and acts as a means to helping the animal reach the end for which it was made, namely the service of mankind, then there is nothing inherently wrong with it.

The Moral Case For Vegetarianism

All that has been said so far helps to clear up some of the ambiguities surrounding the issue, but has yet to address whether a moral argument could be made for vegetarianism.  In the state of original innocence man was a vegetarian (c.f. Gn 1:29).  Man had dominion over the animals but did not use them for clothes or food (ST I, q.103, art. 1).  The animals obeyed man, that is, all animals were domesticated.  For his own disobedience man was punished by the disobedience of those creatures which should have been subjected to him and they became difficult to domesticate and often posed threats to his life.  Shortly thereafter the animals were used for clothing (Gn 3:20) and food (Gn 9:3).  In short, because of the frailty introduced to the human body as a result of the Fall, it became necessary to make use of the animals for warmth and nutrition.

Any argument that man “was originally a vegetarian” ultimately falls flat because we cannot return to our Edenic state.  With the Fall came irreparable damage to both body and soul of which animal flesh provides a partial remedy.  Furthermore, within Church tradition, fasting from meat has long been practiced as a means of mortification.  We are called to abstain from good things so that eating meat is a good thing and thus worthy of being sacrificed.  In short, any attempt to make a moral argument that eating meat is wrong ultimately falls flat.

Likewise making a connection to the culture of death is problematic.  It is not clear how using animals for food is directly connected or acts like a gateway drug for the culture of death unless you equivocate on the word death.  The culture of death is one that causes spiritual death.  How the killing of animals, when done in a humane way and not out of greed, leads to a culture of spiritual death is not immediately obvious.

All that being said, there is a manner in which vegetarianism can represent a morally praiseworthy act, that is by way of counsel and not obligation.  Because meat is a concession made by God because of man’s fallen condition, abstaining from meat can act as a participation in the fruits of Christ’s redemptive act.  This is why the Church has long obligated abstaining from meat specifically (as opposed to some other kind of food) during certain liturgical periods.  Permanently abstaining from meat, when done with this intention, becomes a powerful spiritual practice.  It also becomes an act of witness to both the world and to those in the Church who often neglect this practice.

For the omnivores among us—enjoy your meat this Thanksgiving Day with a clear conscience.  But make an offering of thanksgiving Friday by holding the leftovers until Saturday.  Herbivores, allow your vegetarianism to be a constant sign of the redemption won at so great a cost.  Truly, something to be thankful for.

The Star of the New Evangelization

Culture, Culture of Life, Devils, Mary

In his 1999 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Pope St. John Paul II referred to Our Lady of Guadalupe as the “Patroness of all America and Star of the first and new evangelization” (Ecclesia in America (EA), 11).  In referring to her as the Star of the New Evangelization the Holy Father was calling to mind the profound effect on the evangelization of Mexico after her appearance to St. Juan Diego in 1531 and her guiding role in evangelization today.  With the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe upon us, it is instructive to look at least two ways in which we can look to her to guide us.

The first  is that Our Lady uses lay people who are specially devoted to her as instruments in the spreading of the message of Guadalupe.

At the time of the apparitions, the spreading of the Gospel to the Mexican people was largely unsuccessful.  Even though Cortes demolished all the blood soaked temples where human sacrifice to demons was going on, conversion was virtually non-existent because of a deeply rooted paganism.  Further slowing the process was a fundamental mistrust among the native peoples of the Spaniards because of abuse at the hands of the First Audience, the five administrators appointed by Charles V after Cortes returned to Spain.  Charles V also appointed Bishop Juan Zumarraga as the first bishop of the new world and the Bishop worked to protect the Indians against the harsh rule.  This brought the Bishop himself and his friars under persecution that he described as “worse than that of Herod and Diocletian.”  Eventually he was able to smuggle a message back to Charles V he immediately replaced Guzman with a Second Audience headed by Bishop Don Sebastian Ramirez y Fuenleal.  Knowing that the Aztecs were about to take up arms against the Spaniards Bishop Zumarraga begged Our Lady to intervene.  Secretly he asked her to send him some Castilian roses as a sign of her intercession.

Enter Juan Diego, a simple farmer who was on his way to Mass one Sunday.  When he passed a small hill named Tepeyac, six 6 miles north of Mexico City and the location of a former temple to the great mother god Torantzin (whose head was a combination of serpent heads and dress a mass of writhing serpents), he began to hear music and the voice of a woman bidding him to come to the top of the hill.  She told him she was the Virgin Mary and that he was to present himself to the Bishop and ask him to build a Church on the hill.  After two visits the Bishop and two additional apparitions, she eventually gave him the sign the Bishop had asked for in the form of roses and the beautiful image on the tilma (more on this below).

What makes St. Juan Diego a model for our collaboration with Our Lady’s work of evangelization is what he did after the apparitions.  He was appointed as custodian of the chapel on Tepeyac where the image was kept and he tirelessly explained the significance of the image to wave after wave of pilgrims.  He emphasized the providential location of the apparition as formerly the site of pagan temple and this had such an effect on them that they referred to the image as Teonantzin (God’s Mother).  It was His ability to re-tell his story in the Indian language that served as a major source of conversion.  In fact when many of the Indians presented themselves to the missionary priests for instruction and baptism they had already been converted.

A major obstacle to the spread of the New Evangelization has been a lingering clericalism.  Our Lady of Guadalupe shows us what happens when lay people live their vocation in the Church properly and when clerics live theirs.  Juan Diego, despite being a widower, did not become a priest.  Instead he remained as a lay person and embraced his role as the primary evangelizer of the pilgrims that came to the chapel to venerate the image.  It was only after they had been evangelized that he sent them to the missionary priests for further instruction to prepare them for the sacraments.  Like St. Juan Diego, laity need to see themselves as the primary evangelizers of culture.  We cannot abdicate that role to priests and bishops but instead must embrace it.

When the laity are living out their vocation to evangelize those outside the confines of the Church (and even those who need it within the Church), Priests and Bishops are able to focus on tending their flock through catechesis and the Sacraments.  They also will not feel the need to abdicate this role in order to change the culture.  They can comfortably focus on the formation and sanctification of the laity and support them in their mission to the world.  I dare say that Bishop Zumarraga and his friar priests understood that their role should be to support Juan Diego in his evangelizing mission and they reaped the fruit of it, sometimes baptizing up to 6000 people day—most of whom they had not evangelized.

The second lesson we can learn from Our Lady of Guadalupe is the power of images.

Like our culture today, the Aztec culture was one of the image.  In his account of the apparitions, the missionary Fernando de Alva Ixtilxochitl recalled:

“The Indians submerged in profound darkness, still loved and served false little gods, clay figurines and images of our enemy the devil in spite of having heard about the faith…But when they heard that the Holy Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ had appeared and since they saw and admired her most perfect Image, which has no human art their eyes were opened as if suddenly day had dawned on them.”

The devil in inspiring the creation of the little idols knew that the Indians found them visually appealing and he exploited that even after the destruction of the temples and human sacrifice.  That is why Our Lady did not haphazardly leave the image on St. Juan Diego’s tilma but instead every element was wrought with meaning.  The people were familiar with using glyphs rather than written language and so Our Lady offered them an evangelizing image.  Not only is it edifying for us to discover the meaning of this image but it increases our reliance upon her (for more detail on the image, see Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of the Civilization of Love by Carl Anderson and Msgr. Eduardo Chavez).

Guadalupe

 

  • Clouds — in the image, the Virgin is surrounded by clouds, showing that she is from heaven. The indigenous greeted people they believed came from God with the expression: “Among fog and among clouds.” which is why Montezuma thought Cortes a god at first when his ships came through the fog into the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Sun —golden rays from the second sun, behind her, signify that she is the “Mother of Light” and greater than the dreadful Aztec sun god, Huitzilopchtli, whom she eclipses.
  • Cross medallion — around her neck, Mary wears a gold medallion engraved with a cross. For indigenous people, the medallion symbolized consecration, so the medallion around Mary’s neck meant that she was consecrated to Jesus. It was also the same black Cross that appeared on the banners and helmets of the Spanish soldiers.
  • Hands — the indigenous people expressed prayer not only by the hands, but by the whole body. In the image on the tilma, Our Lady of Guadalupe is shown in a position of dancing prayer, with her knee bent in movement. Presented in the position of prayer, it would  have shown that despite the fact that she was greater than all the Aztec gods and goddesses, she herself was not God.
  • Mantle and tunic — Mary’s rose-tinted, flowery tunic symbolizes the earth, while her turquoise, starry mantle represents the heavens. The mantle also indicates that she is royalty since only the native emperors wore cloaks of that color.
  • Moon — the Virgin stands on a crescent moon. The Aztec word for Mexico, “Metz-xic-co,” means “in the center of the moon.” She is standing upon it as their mother. The moon also symbolizes the Aztec moon god, fertility, birth and life.  This was the serpent-god Quetzalcoatl.
  • Angel — an angel with eagle’s wings appears below Mary’s feet. According to Aztec belief, an eagle delivered the hearts and the blood of sacrificial victims to the gods. The angel holds up the pregnant Virgin, signifying that the child in her womb is the offering that pleases God and only those with eagles wings could go to god
  • Black ribbon — the black ribbon around Mary’s waist shows that she is expecting a child. For the Aztecs, the trapezoid-shaped ends of the ribbon also represented the end of one cycle and the birth of a new era.
  • Four-petaled jasmine — the only four-petaled flower on Mary’s tunic appears over her womb. The four-petaled jasmine represents the Aztecs’ highest deity, Ometéotl. It shows that she is carrying the true deity within her womb.
  • Flowers — nine golden flowers, symbolizing life and truth, adorn Mary’s dress. The flowers are made up of glyphs representing a hill and a river. The indigenous people considered hills the highest points of encounter between God and people. Viewed upside down, the flowers take the shape of hearts with arteries coming out, representing life, which originates from God and that sustains creation not by blood of sacrifice but shedding of His own blood.

One of the most amazing things about the image is the eyes.  In the eyes of Mary miniscule human figures were discovered.   Using digital technology, the images in the eyes were enlarged many times, revealing that each eye reflected the figure of the Indian Juan Diego opening his tilma in front of Bishop Zumarraga.  Obviously no merely human artist could have painted these.

Guadalupe_eyes

With nearly 9 million converts in 8 years (that’s an average of 3260 per day), this approach can be a very powerful force.  I have written about the importance of evangelizing the culture through media before, but I want to re-emphasize just how important that is.  Ultimately the grip that pornography has on many men (and an increasing number of women) is like the little idols that the natives in Mexico turned to.  But the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe also offered a antidote the fear from the horrific images of human sacrifices that they had all seen.  We are surrounded by violent images all day long and it creates a culture of anxiety and ultimately distraction.  As Christians we need to offer different images to the culture—one based on what is objectively beautiful not beauty that has been objectified.  Only Catholics truly know the difference.

In closing, it cannot be emphasized enough how much we can do when we give ourselves over to the hands of Our Lady.  On the day of the third apparition, Juan Diego’s uncle grew deathly ill.  Rather than turning to her to help him, he avoided Tepeyac hill and sought help elsewhere.  When he came close, she came down the hill and confronted him saying,

“Listen, put it into your heart, my youngest son, that what frightened you, what afflicted you, is nothing; do not let it disturb your face, your heart; do not fear this sickness nor any other sickness, nor any sharp and hurtful thing. Am I not here, I who have the honor to be your Mother? Are you not in my shadow and under my protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need something more?”

The gentle rebuke is for all of us.  We may be anxious about our culture, but for those who in her shadow and protection, we have nothing to fear.  It is ultimately she who will help us lead our culture back to her Son.  In fact, Pope St. John Paul II called upon Catholics in the Americas to rely on the power of Our Lady of Guadalupe to evangelize the culture.  “In America, the mestiza face of the Virgin of Guadalupe was from the start a symbol of the inculturation of the Gospel, of which she has been the lodestar and the guide. Through her powerful intercession, the Gospel will penetrate the hearts of the men and women of America and permeate their cultures, transforming them from within” (EA, 70).

 

 

What Is it?

Abortion, Culture of Life

In the landmark Supreme Court decision of Roe versus Wade, the majority opinion stated that we “need not answer the difficult question of when life begins.”  It seems however that this in fact is the fundamental question upon which the abortion debate hinges.  As proof that the inmates are running the asylum, the same decision concedes that “(If the) suggestion of personhood [of the preborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.”  For those who are in favor of abortion, they often will answer the question of when life begins by making a distinction between a human being and a person.  This distinction usually rests upon the presence of the soul in the person.  Rarely however is this premise attacked.  By using simple philosophy and modern embryology we can find where this assumption is flawed.

To begin it is important to mention that the question of the morality of abortion does not rest upon the question of when the human body is infused with a soul.  The Church has always taught that abortion is morally wrong.  She has affirmed that “the reality of the human being for the entire span of life, both before and after birth, does not allow us to posit either a change in nature or a gradation in moral value, since it possesses full anthropological and ethical status. The human embryo has, therefore, from the very beginning, the dignity proper to a person” (Dignitatis Personae, 5)

Secondly, from a philosophical point of view there is no such thing as a living being that does not have a soul.  The soul is the animating principle of all living things.  The Church has baptized Aristotle’s notion of the three types of souls that exist in a nested hierarchy: vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual.  Each of these has specific functions.  The vegetative soul is concerned with growth, nutrition and reproduction, the sensitive soul is concerned with locomotion and perception and the intellectual soul is concerned with rational thought.  These are nested in the sense that anything that has a higher degree of soul also has all of the lower degrees. All living things grow, nourish themselves, and reproduce. Animals not only do that, but also move and perceive. Finally, man does all of the above in addition to reasoning (Aristotle, De Anima¸413, a.23).

With this foundation in place, we can begin to look at the different theories of ensoulment that have been adopted throughout the course of history.  These theories fall into two broad categories.  The first is usually referred to as “delayed hominization” (or “serial ensoulment theory”) while the second is called “immediate ensoulment theory.”  As the name suggests, “immediate ensoulment” refers to the infusion of the soul at conception.

8 cell stage

The argument for “Serial ensoulment” is summarized as follows: First, because the soul is the form of the body (i.e. makes the body human), the rational soul cannot be present until there is a body present that is significantly complex and organized to receive the soul.  A mere “clump of cells” would not constitute a human body and thus could not receive a human soul.  Third, the claim is that there is no human body in the zygote. Therefore the conclusion is that until the soul is present there is no human being. It was Aristotle who first proposed this theory and called it “delayed hominization.”

He speculated that the human soul was received only after the body was properly prepared for it.  He thought that the embryo was formed from homogenous menstrual blood of the mother by the action of the semen that remained in the womb for at least forty days.  Since this matter was not sufficient enough for the infusion of a human soul, it formed a “pre-person” that had only vegetative functions with a vegetative soul.  Once it developed a heart and brain it then became an animal with an animal soul and eventually progressed into a true human being with an intellectual soul.  This is similar to what many people argue today when they call the child a “potential person.”

One could also find support based on this idea of delayed hominization for the position of someone like Peter Singer who says that a child may be killed up to 18 months old because they are not yet a person.  If we must wait until some (it would have to be arbitrary) milestone of growth is reached before the infusion of a soul then that could happen at any point during development, even outside the womb.

St. Thomas Aquinas agreed with Aristotle and many Catholic thinkers followed his thought.  Because Aquinas also had inadequate biological knowledge he thought that the body that was first formed was vegetative in nature and later underwent a substantial change with a new body in which it was animated by an animal soul.  A substantial change is one in which a whole new entity comes into existence.  It is not mere growth, but the bringing about of a new substance.  Finally there was another substantial change that occurred and the now human body was infused with an intellectual soul.  It is important to note however that for St. Thomas the infusion of the soul happens at the origin of the human body.

If we apply the principles of modern embryology we can then show where the theory of serial ensoulment is lacking.  To say that the body is not “significantly complex and organized to receive the soul” is to grossly misrepresent the nature of the being that results from syngamy.  From the moment of fertilization, the new entity carries out precise, self-directed processes.  From then on, the only thing necessary for growth and development is the same thing we need—water, food, oxygen and a healthy interaction with its natural environment.

Secondly, to say that “a formal cause is present only in a finished product,” is rather vague.  There is no such thing as a “finished product” in the truest sense.  Everything is journeying toward perfection.  However what does remain to be done in the embryo in order to reach perfection is the successive carrying out of inherent potentialities that are already present in the newly conceived person.  Because it has its own unique DNA that is different from either parent and possesses a full genetic program, from this point forward no new genetic info needed to make it into an individual human being.  It already is a human being, just at a particular stage of development.  Also, because the human body has all of the necessary genetic information and internally directed activity to lead to full development then the human soul must be present.

Although the Church has not definitively rejected the theory of delayed hominization, she teaches with relative confidence that theories of delayed hominization are in fact scientifically obsolete.  As the Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin says, “Certainly no experimental datum can be in itself sufficient to bring us to the recognition of a spiritual soul; nevertheless, the conclusions of science regarding the human embryo provide a valuable indication for discerning by the use of reason a personal presence at the moment of this first appearance of a human life: how could a human individual not be a human person?”

There are some today that have speculated ensoulment does not occur until implantation because of the possibility of twinning that occurs between the time of fertilization and implantation.  However this viewpoint is implausible because the early embryos develop continuously as individuals during that time.  There is not an active potentiality to develop into twins and all of the scientific data points to the possibility of twinning as a passive potentiality.  What this means is that there is nothing in the DNA of the child itself to suggest that it will twin.  Instead it is acted upon from the outside and performs as a mode of asexual reproduction, akin to cloning.

In conclusion, with the increase in biological knowledge (and St. Thomas would have likely agreed) most Catholic thinkers abandoned the delayed ensoulment theory because they recognized that the body that is formed at conception is a human body.  This seems the most reasonable because if the newly conceived child really has a human nature and does not undergo a substantial change then he must have an intellectual soul.  Arming ourselves with both philosophy and modern scientific knowledge we can attack this hidden premise and protect human life at its most hidden and vulnerable stage.

Idols and the Supreme Court

Contraception, Culture of Life, marriage, Scripture

In the minds of many people, the SCOTUS decision in Obergefell v. Hodges was inevitable. What comes next in many Christians’ minds is the four horseman of the apocalypse as God pours His chastisement upon our country.  But what if the decision itself is the chastisement?  While this may sound strange initially, anyone who reads the first chapter of St. Paul’s letter to Romans will find that God often chastises mankind for their sins by turning them over to them.

Here is what St. Paul says specifically,

“The wrath of God is indeed being revealed from heaven against every impiety and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness. For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them.  Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse; for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened. While claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for the likeness of an image of mortal man or of birds or of four-legged animals or of snakes. Therefore, God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Therefore, God handed them over to degrading passions. Their females exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the males likewise gave up natural relations with females and burned with lust for one another. Males did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God handed them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper. They are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and rebellious toward their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know the just decree of God that all who practice such things deserve death, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.” (Romans 1:18-32)

If we follow what St. Paul is saying, we can trace four steps in the degradation of man.

Step One: Idolatry

He says that it all begins with idolatry—“They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator.” The turn is away from God to material reality in some way.

Pope Francis has spoken often about the danger of idolatry in today’s world and has challenged all of us to examine ourselves regularly to see the idols in our lives.  Anything that we put in the place of God is an idol.  However, I think there is an idolatry that is unique to Americans of which we are now reaping the fruit—equality.

When Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America he found that for Americans, “equality is their idol.” While this drive for equality “excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored” and “tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great” there is always a danger lurking, namely that “there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom” (Democracy in America, Book 1, Chapter 3).

But isn’t equality a good thing?  How can Tocqueville call it an idol?  Aren’t we all equal in the eyes of God?  Certainly we are all equal in dignity, but the fact of the matter is that equality is a man-made legal fiction.  God, for His part, has made everything with varying degrees of perfection.  We are not all equal in God’s eyes.  He has made each of us to be perfect in one particular way, but not in all ways, much less for us to be equally perfect in all things.  We bring glory to God by achieving this perfection.  Whether we achieve this perfection or not does not change our value in God’s eyes—we are all still individually worth dying for.  But to try and change this important aspect of reality is to set ourselves up as God.  In other words, the fixation to create equality where there isn’t one is an attempt on man’s part to usurp God.  The gross manner in which it has been enforced from above in our country in particular has forged it into an idol.  Tocqueville identified it almost 200 years ago and it is no less true today.

CS Lewis encapsulates the idolatrous nature of equality in his book That Hideous Strength in a dialogue between Jane and the Director.

Jane: “I thought love meant equality.”

Director: “Ah, equality! Yes; we must all be guarded by equal rights from one another’s greed, because we are fallen. Just as we wear clothes for the same reason. But the naked body should be there underneath the clothes. Equality is not the deepest thing, you know.”

Jane: “I always thought that was just what it was. I thought it was in their souls that people were equal.”

Director: “You were mistaken; that is the last place where they are equal. Equality before the law, equality of incomes- that is very well. Equality guards life; it doesn’t make it. It is medicine, not food.”

Think of all the ways in which we attempt to create equality where there isn’t.  We try to make men and women identical.  We award trophies to everyone.  We attempt to make the rich poorer and the poor richer by governmental fiat.  Now we have said all loves are equal—“love is love”—and has been recognized as such by the highest court in the Land.

rainbow_court

Step Two: Sexual Immorality

What follows from idolatry according to St. Paul?  It is sexual immorality, namely “God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies.”

The move from God to material reality as its god leads a God-sized void in man’s heart. He turns to the closest thing that offers what he longs for with God (interpersonal communion), namely sex. It starts as the “old fashioned” kind, namely fornication. But for Americans it is pays homage to the idol of equality. Based on the false notion of equality of men and women, we have attempted to make women into men through the wholesale promotion of contraception.

Men could always, for the most part, have sex without consequences. If men and women are equal then women should be able to do that as well. To make this possible, chemical contraception came on the scene. Now men and women could engage freely in all the sexual activity they wanted. To make this even more possible, we should have our government provide the means to securing these pills. But there is a hidden assumption in the promotion of chemical contraception.  The assumption is this.  Women are inferior to men and so in order to be seen as equal they must either have a surgery or take a pill.  Now I personally don’t believe this for one minute, but I grieve for the millions of women who have never questioned this assumption that they are making.

Step Three: Sexual Perversion

In step three in the descent of man, God hands them over to even “more degraded passions.”  Not satisfied with unlimited sex, we must turn up the volume and get more disordered and depraved.  Thus homosexuality becomes more widespread.  In the name of equality, society must “give approval to those who practice them” through its laws. After all if a heterosexual couple can engage in an act they have deliberately rendered unfruitful, why can’t two people engage in an act that is by nature unfruitful? They are equal, especially when they love each other.

Step Four: Societal Chaos

Once it has been given the governmental seal of approval, God’s final punishment is to “hand them over to their undiscerning mind to do what is improper.” What follows is societal chaos, “[T]hey are filled with every form of wickedness, evil, greed, and malice; full of envy, murder, rivalry, treachery, and spite. They are gossips and scandalmongers and they hate God. They are insolent, haughty, boastful, ingenious in their wickedness, and rebellious toward their parents. They are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” God may not have forced Americans to drink this chalice to the dregs, but we can see signs of it all around.

The purpose of writing all this however is not to be a prophet of gloom, but to suggest a path out of this. If one listens to the arguments surrounding Gay marriage you find that they are irrational. This is only more obvious when one reads the Obergefell v. Hodges majority opinion. This is because one of the punishments is that “their minds are darkened”, as in not able to reason clearly. Sin makes us all stupid. To continue to engage in argument as the main point of attack is fruitless, especially if we view all of this as God handing us over to the idol of equality.

If we want to be free from the punishments of the sin of idolatry we must repent of that sin. What I am proposing is for Christians across the United States to fast on July 4th as an act of Penance for the sin of idolatry. Only by repenting of that sin can we break the cycle of chastisement. Just as Our Master did, we as the Body of Christ, have the role to perform acts of Reparation to God for the sins of mankind. We can voluntarily fast now, or we can offer reparation later when the effects of the legalization of Gay marriage are felt keenly by all Christians. It might require both

Will you join me? If so, I would like you each to invite five other people to offer a fast of some sort this Saturday. Imagine the effect on our culture we could have by offering our “bodies as a spiritual sacrifice” (Romans 12:1), especially on Independence Day and First Saturday. Our Lady, Queen of the Americas, pray for us.