Category Archives: Culture

In Defense of Philosophy

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Carl Linnaeus was an Eighteenth-Century Swedish Biologist who first adopted the binomial nomenclature for naming organisms.  In so doing, he dubbed man has homo sapiens or “wise man”.  If Linnaeus was to have witnessed mankind’s evolution, not through random mutation, but through political correctness, he might dub him homo insapiens instead.  Modern man is a lot of things, but wise is most certainly not one of them.  For all of the supposed progress that modernity has offered, the threat of a new Dark Ages remains a real possibility.

Linnaeus’ choice of the participle sapiens to describe man was a recognition of the fact that among all of the species, only man has the capacity for wisdom.  It is, in a very real sense, his specific difference.  But it is only a capacity and not a biologically determined inevitability.  It is his destiny, but only if he accepts it as his vocation.  He must both value it, pursue it and come to love it.

Wisdom and Philosophy?

In order to do this, we must first admit that most of us don’t know what wisdom is.  The wise man knows the right ordering of things; not just some things, but all things.  He knows what the first things are so he can put them first, what the second things are so you can put them second, and so on.  It is only by acknowledging and choosing according to this order right order that he can be truly fulfilled.  Wisdom isn’t “no” but “instead of”.  To put it in philosophical terms, wisdom is to judge all things according to their final causes or purposes.

Accepting his sapiential vocation means that man strives to become a lover of wisdom.  He becomes a philosopher, not because he enjoys esoterica, but because he is a man.  Man can no more avoid being a philosopher than he can avoid thinking.  He will see the world according to his own first principles.  The choice then is not about whether he will be a philosopher but about his philosophy.  Will it be as Chesterton puts it, “thought that has been thought out” or will it be the “unconscious acceptance of broken bits of some incomplete philosophy” that comes in “nothing but phrases that are, at their best, prejudices”?

The Antidote to PC Culture

Ultimately then, Political Correctness in all its forms is perhaps the greatest threat to mankind today.  I say this without any danger of succumbing to hyperbole.  By serving as a substitution for thought, it threatens to make us into something less than human.  At the heart of wisdom, and therefore of any philosophy, is the question why.  We cannot order anything without investigating causes.  When a philosophy forbids, or at the very least, avoids that question, it becomes a danger to us all.  Usually very reserved in his language, GK Chesterton, playing the role of prophet warns of dire consequences:

The best reason for a revival of philosophy is that unless a man has a philosophy certain horrible things will happen to him. He will be practical; he will be progressive; he will cultivate efficiency; he will trust in evolution; he will do the work that lies nearest; he will devote himself to deeds, not words. Thus struck down by blow after blow of blind stupidity and random fate, he will stagger on to a miserable death with no comfort but a series of catchwords; such as those which I have catalogued above. Those things are simply substitutes for thoughts. In some cases they are the tags and tail-ends of somebody else’s thinking. That means that a man who refuses to have his own philosophy will not even have the advantages of a brute beast, and be left to his own instincts. He will only have the used-up scraps of somebody else’s philosophy; which the beasts do not have to inherit; hence their happiness.

The Revival of Philosophy–Why?

So many Catholics feel helpless in the face of modernity, especially as the detritus of secular philosophy continues to overflow into the Church.  Whatever the solution, it is clear that no solution will be viable without a cadre of right-thinking Catholics.  Only the Scholasticism of St. Thomas offers a complete and coherent explanation of reality that is able to refute political correctness in all its subtle forms.  Our enemies, much quicker than us to realize this, have successfully suppressed his thought for several generations.  Chesterton thought there needed to be a revival of philosophy, I am saying there needs to be a revival of a specific philosophy.  It is time that the Church and all in it sit and the feet of St. Thomas and learn how to be truly wise.

Only the wise man is truly free.  He moves about unhindered within the range of reality, seeing and using everything in its specific place.  This is why the attack on perennial philosophy is actually an attack against man’s freedom.  Controlling a man’s thoughts, controls the man’s actions.  Political correctness is enslavement to groupthink.  A man who is truly a freethinker, that is one who thinks freely about how to use his freedom, is impossible to control.  He sets his sights on the highest things and pursues them with love and zeal.  He is a philosopher in the truest sense of the word and enjoys the freedom of right action that always flows from right thought.  The future of mankind very much depends upon our decision to be homo sapiens.

Bigmouths and Gender Ideology

Bioethics, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Sexual Ethics, , , , , ,

When Our Lord issued the Great Commission to the Apostles, He was telling them, and by extension us, to be bigmouths.  The Lord of all knew that the Enemy of man would never cease telling lies and that the only way to confront those lies is by never ceasing to tell the truth.  The Church has been, throughout her history, the Great Truth Teller.  Until recently that is.  No longer does she breathe truth upon the ideological lies that the World tells but plays the part of the mute.  As proof of this, let’s compare the number of Papal Encyclicals dealing directly with the Socialist/Communist Revolution.  Nearly every Pope from Leo XIII to John Paul II addressed this ideological lie directly, never growing weary of repeating themselves.  Now compare that with the number of Papal Encyclicals against Sexual Revolution—one.  That one, Humanae Vitae, landed with a great thud and has been unceremoniously dismissed.  Whatever work John Paul II did in this area has been caught up in the whirlwind of ambiguity that is the current pontificate (i.e. Amoris Laetitia).  The point is that the Church attacked Socialism and all its incarnations directly while they have left gender ideology unscathed despite John Paul II calling it  the “new ideology of evil”.  As the silence mounts, more and more Catholics fall in line with the ideological spirit, especially during the latest manifestation, Transgenderism.   This should not be read as a complaint or a rebuke of clergy, but an undeniable statement of fact.  Ideologies have a way of silencing dissenters, so I am more interested in mobilizing and arming those willing to speak truth against the lies, than to blame anyone for not speaking out. 

Because of the relative silence on this issue, there are no authoritative statements regarding Transgenderism.  Clarity is not a habit normally associated with this lie, but for the sake of clarity we will distinguish between gender dysphoria as the internal struggle that one has with their sexual identity and Transgenderism as the act of attempting to alter one’s sexual identity.  The former is a psychological condition and the latter is a physical action that is said to solve the conflict.  It is relatively easy to show via Catholic moral principles why Transgenderism is wrong.  It can never be a real solution to the problem and ultimately does great harm to the person.  Nevertheless, because it is cloaked in a medical solution it is important that we understand the principles.

The moral principles involve the recently discussed Principle of Totality.  To summarize and review, this bioethical principle says that “except to save life itself, the fundamental functional capacities which constitute the human person should not be destroyed, but preserved, developed, and used for the good of the whole person and of the community.”  Whether it is a surgical intervention or hormonal replacement, the “treatment” modalities involved always seek to destroy the biological sex characteristics and replace them with simulated versions of the opposite sex.  The use of the term “simulated” is deliberate because “sex reassignment surgery” simply is not possible.  The person may resemble the opposite sex, but they can never actually be the opposite sex.  No matter how much plastic surgery you perform, you cannot artificially manufacture a sex organ.  It will always fail in its primary purpose.

The Harm Done

These principles are masked because the harm that is done to these people is often hidden.  It is a pernicious lie that, rather than solving the problem, puts the person into a sexual void.  They will have mutilated the bodily capacity that identifies one’s true sex and they will never be their “new” sex.  To solve the problem of confusion by causing them to truly identify as neither sex is, self-evidentally, not a real solution.  But anyone who questions this, including doctors and psychiatrists are ostracized and vilified, although never refuted.   

Rather than acknowledge this they cover it with an ambiguous term gender.  It is labeled as a “social construct” because of the inherent failure to construct sex themselves.  This is probably why many gender dysphoric people choose not to have surgery.  It is also why one of the few (semi-)reputable studies done found that those who had surgery were 19 times more likely to commit suicide (and this was a study done in “tolerant” Sweden).

Hormone intervention likewise have lasting effects and often constitute a chemical mutilation of sort because they render the person sterile.  Included in this are so called “puberty blockers” which permanently stunt the growth and development of children.   When a child presents with gender dysphoria, this is the standard treatment modality.  We do not let children under 16 vote, drink, smoke or choose not to go to school because of their intellectual and physical immaturity.  We will however allow them to decide what gender they will be and to begin permanent steps in making that a reality.  There is a built-in mechanism to clear up confusion related to sexual identity called puberty.  That is why the reputable studies of gender dysphoria all show that between 80-95% of children who express discordant gender identity come to identify with their biological sex over time (a statistic cited in Ryan Anderson’s excellent book When Harry Became Sally).  Those two sets of numbers, the 80-95% and the 19 times more likely to commit suicide would suggest that any medical intervention should be delayed until the person has reached full maturity.  The fact that these are never mentioned is because the best interest of the person is trumped by ideology.

The Intersex Exception

There is another aspect of this that is important to grasp.  Abortion supporters often argue from “the rape and incest and mother’s life in jeopardy exception” in favor of abortion on demand.  Transgender ideologues do something similar with their Intersex exception.  The argument goes something like “because intersex are biologically neither sex, therefore there are more than two sexes.”  Even if this was true, it is an example of the exception proving the rule.  Intersex individuals have a genetic defect, that is, they have a deviation from the normal condition.  Transgender ideologues, like the abortion advocates, would have us think the exception should be the rule and therefore a person should be able to decide on his own what sex he will be.

Second, the intersex condition is based upon direct observation. Transgenderism is based upon a subjective belief not rooted in any external condition.  The intersex individual is not changing their sex characteristics but attempting to repair them.  Quite frankly, it is surprising that the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) is so ambiguous in their language and allow the Transgender idealogues to co-opt what is a true medical, as opposed to psychological condition.  The ISNA says that persons with disorders in sexual development are not a third gender, but male or female.  Those are the only two options, even if may not always be easy to decipher.

In order not to appear to be “obsessed” with all of the issues of the Sexual Revolution, the Church has chosen to be silent.  It isn’t the Church that is obsessed but the culture.  In order to break that obsession the Church cannot be silent.  Millions of people are becoming ideological and there won’t be a culture to save unless we speak out.  We must arm ourselves with the truth and a willingness to engage.  We must be the bigmouths that Our Lord calls us to be.

If Harry Met Paul

beauty, Culture, Devils, Moralilty, Spiritual Warfare, , , , , ,

The former Chief Exorcist of Rome, of pious memory, Fr. Gabriele Amorth is well known in Catholic circles for his books on the demonic.  He is well known outside of Catholic circles for his repeated criticism of the Harry Potter series.  Speaking mainly from the experience of casting out thousands of demons, he once said, “behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of the darkness, the devil.”  This was met by mockery outside the Church and deaf ears within.  Many Catholics, clergy included, see “nothing wrong with Harry Potter” and thus allow and encourage children to read the series, see the movies, visit amusement parks and play video games.  Fr. Amorth is not the only exorcist who has warned against the series and even Pope Benedict cautioned against it during his time as Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith.  Deaf ears can often lead to blind eyes and thus it is imperative that we have a coherent explanation and not merely scare tactics of why Harry Potter is dangerous.

To begin, we must concede that for a parent to offer an “it is harmless” defense of anything is not good parenting.  Even if there is such thing as a “harmless” story (as opposed to helpful or harmful), it is questionable parenting to use that as a criteria for what you expose your children to.  Junk food for the body might be permitted, junk food for the mind ought not to be.  But in truth it is an attempt to feign neutrality when in fact there is really no such thing as a neutral story.  Inundated by television and movies, which condition us to accept views of the world uncritically, we can easily forget how powerful a story is to convey a world view.  We tend to equate entertainment and goodness.   

Why Stories Matter

Stories are, to borrow a phrase from JRR Tolkien, a sub-creation.  The author creates a world of his own imagining and then animates that world.  But it is not a creation ex-nihilio, but a sub-creation.  To be intelligible it must rest upon reality as it really is. A good story should also be entertaining, but to be good it must wrap a narrative around a particular aspect of reality so as to let the light of truth shine upon it.   A bad story may also be entertaining, especially if we are uncritical of what we are reading or seeing.  In fact, it often is in order to mask the ugliness of the story.  Ultimately what makes it a bad story is that it distorts reality.  It puts forth a false idea of truth and goodness, redefining them in subtle ways.

Stories have such a powerful effect on children because of their unbridled capacity for wonder.  Wonder gives them a much more expansive view of reality which makes them particularly apt to see the message attached to the narrative.  They don’t just read a book or watch a movie, they insert themselves into the world created by the author and move about.  This is why a whole generation of now adults grew up playing Star Wars and why another generation is growing up playing Harry Potter.  If you don’t want your children pretending to be magicians, using magic for good or ill, then you would not want them to read these books.  Children will play in the stories they hear and read.

There is also a bit of a mixed message that is being sent.  Magic, sorcery and divination are all presented as intrinsically evil by the Church (c.f. CCC 2117) but presented as something that can be used for good by the Harry Potter books.  Since “intrinsically evil” implies one can never use it for good, this sends a rather mixed message.  In short, on the one hand we have a story where the hero uses it and on the other we have stories in Scripture where it is strongly condemned regardless of how it is used.   Deuteronomy 18:9-12 describes magic as an abomination before God and tells how a believer should respond in the face of it.  One need not wonder what would happen if Harry met St. Paul given the latter’s interaction with the magician in Acts 13:6-12.  The point though is that a child will not naturally allow a contradiction to exist and thus will reject one story and accept the other.  One can hardly imagine that, without proper guidance and formation, the child will almost always choose the more entertaining story.

What is Magic, anyway?

A fuller understanding of magic itself will help us better grasp the inherent danger; a danger that is growing daily as our culture is re-paganized.  There are about 20,000 books on Amazon that describe different Wiccan spells so we are talking about more than just mere sleight of hand or some fringe movement if we merely follow the market. Magic is not a sub-creation created in the mind of the author, but something that exists in the real world. Magic is about harnessing superhuman power and using it to overcome our natural limitations.  So, when we speak about magic what we are really talking about is angelic power.  Angels by their nature can act upon material creation simply by willing it.  They can manipulate pre-existing matter in any matter that they wish.  This is exactly what those schooled in magic and the occult are trying to do.

The problem is that evil angels, demons that is, are willing to share this power with human beings.  Not in order to help them but to entrap them.  They give them superhuman powers through spells and the like in exchange for control of them.  By grasping at a power beyond them, they submit their own human strength to the demons.  The demons are only too happy to comply because it makes them “like God” because it is a cheap imitation of God’s power of miracles.  Ultimately it is an attack on God and the humans are simply pawns who end up bearing the brunt of it.

The Harry Potter books never say where the magic comes from, but it comes from the place that all magic comes from hell.  It can seemingly be repurposed for good, or else it would lack appeal, but ultimately this good is a mere smokescreen for the evil that lurks behind its power.  This repurposing of magic for the good is the theme behind another fantasy story, one that acts like the magic elephant in the room anytime Harry Potter is discussed–The Lord of the Rings.

Magic is a key element in the Lord of the Rings as well, and yet, most would say these would be categorized as good stories.  To grasp how it is different from Harry Potter we must return to what was said earlier about the source of magic.  If magic, at its core is angelic power, then there is nothing wrong with angels using it.  It is their natural power.  Those who naturally use magic in the story, namely the Elves and Gandalf, are not human.  Gandalf is not a man but an angelic being called a Maiar who had taken human form.  He and the Elves are, in Tolkien’s sub-creation, angels.  It is natural for them to use “magic” and thus they are not seizing something that does not belong to them, but applying their given powers in pursuit of the good.  The story makes clear that all those lesser creatures who ultimately try to harness that power, even if for good use, ultimately come to ruin.  It is a story ultimately against magic and not for it.  And in that way it is vastly different than Harry Potter which celebrates its use by men and women.

Abusing Wonder

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There is a national movement that is being played out in libraries, schools and bookstores in which drag queens read come and read to children.  The Drag Queen Story Hour is touring the country and drawing publicity wherever they go.  “Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) is just what it sounds like—drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores” according to its website.  Aimed at 4-7 year old children, these events are little more than child abuse however for reasons that ought to be readily apparent.

There probably has been “story time” for as long as there have been stories, which means almost always.  From time immemorial children have loved it because it feeds their soul.  Childhood is a time of wonder, a time where a child’s natural desire for truth, beauty and goodness are fed.  Stories are one of the means by which wonder is sparked and truth is found.  It makes use of the power of wonder to set them on the path of truth.  The architects of Drag Queen Story Hour also know about the power of childhood wonder, but they abuse it.  They abuse it by making the story-teller the focus rather than the story.  And in this way we can accurately say that these events are truly child abuse.

Why This is Really Abuse

This seems like hyperbolic rhetoric until we examine it a little further.  It was called child abuse, not just because it abuses their sense of wonder, but child abuse because it abuses childhood.  Man has natural desires that need to be fed.  The highest of these desires is for knowledge of the truth.  It is not the strongest, that privilege belongs to sexual desire, but it is the highest and is tied to our ultimate fulfillment.  Wonder is the fuel that sets man on the journey for truth.  Thanks to a child’s natural development, sexual desire is curbed for almost the first decade and a half of their life.  This creates room for them to develop their capacity for wonder and to find its ultimate fulfillment in Truth.  For full development of the child they must be allowed space for creative play, learning and discovery.  Story time is meant to fill the gaps where experience is lacking. 

To manipulate this natural course of development is the very definition of abuse.  Children are not naturally sexual beings nor are they particularly curious about sex.  We know this because of their natural hormonal development (sex hormones remain steady and relatively low for the first 10-12 years of life), but also because they exhibit a natural (and healthy) sense of shame.  These story times are meant not to sexualize children, at least not directly, but to remove their otherwise healthy sense of shame.  Once they do develop sexually, the protection of shame will be gone and the child will be particularly apt to participate in sexual activity.  But also, by removing their sense of shame, and this is the really important part, they also lose their natural protection against sexual intrusions.  A child with no sense of shame will not tell another adult they have been violated because they think it is normal.  This early sexualization is not really about them at all, but to make them into victims who offer no resistance.  To see this as anything other than an attempt to normalize pedophilia is to ignore the facts.

But it also has a second purpose that is closely related to the first.  The “revolution” in the Sexual Revolution is not for unbridled sexual activity.  The revolution is that it is the means by which a new world order can be imposed from above.  The old order, marked by Christian morality and founded upon the family, has to be overthrown.  It will be replaced by slavery to vice and founded upon the fiat of Big Daddy.  People who are addicted to vice are easy to control because they will regularly give away their freedom for a hit.  The Sexual Revolution is a direct attack on both Christian morality and the family.  And the Drag Queen Story Hour is yet another example. 

The New World Order

It is an obvious attack on Christian morality by breaking down the walls that have kept people free.  According to its website “in spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real” (emphasis added).  Notice the subtle use of revolutionary language first of all.  But the problem is that dress up can never be “real” because we are not the masters of reality.  Reality is something outside of us and only those who conform themselves to it, can truly operate freely within it.  Children are given wonder to discover reality, not to make up their own.  To abuse that is to make the next generation the revolutionary foot soldiers. The restrictions are there to keep us free.  Christian morality has, for the past two millennia, given the guiderails to reality.  Remove those guiderails and all that is left is power to keep order.

Story time replaces the family.  Parents have always told their children stories, even when they couldn’t read.  It was the primary pedagogical tool in the parents’ teaching toolbox.  It was the means by which true values were passed from one generation to the next.  All of this happened within the confines of the home, enabling wonder to run free and safe, while questions abound.  Parents would answer the questions and give their children not just stories but truth.  But now story time must be done outside the home so that indoctrination can occur.  A distinctly parental activity becomes a public one.  One more chink in the armor of the family. 

“It takes a village to raise a child” may not actually be true, but it will be made true unless we put a stop to this nonsense.  Children are being abused and are being set up for further abuse.  We are raising the lost generation unless we act counter to this movement.  The Sexual Revolution is winning and if we do nothing to stop it, then we will all be living in a new world order.

The True Christian History of Abortion

Abortion, Apologetics, Contraception, Culture, Culture of Life, History, , , , , ,

As the battle over legalized abortion continues rage as specific states more clearly draw their battle lines, there is a growing number of Christians who are attempting to make a Christian argument in favor of abortion.  In truth, there is no Christian defense of abortion and there never has been.  Not surprisingly, the abortion apologist’s arguments fall flat, even though they continually recycle the same talking points irrespective of truth.  Even if there are different variations on the propagandistic talking points, they seem never to grow weary of repeating them.  Given the increased frequency in which we are seeing them, it is important that we have a ready defense.

In order to avoid toppling over a straw man,  we will refer to an example that was printed in the Huffington Post last year entitled “The Truth About Christianity and Abortion”.  We use this one not because it was a particularly convincing argument, but because it invokes almost all the common arguments for Christian support of abortion in one place. 

Before diving into the exact arguments, it is a helpful to remember that there are plenty of arguments against abortion that don’t rely solely upon religious convictions.  Instead you can use philosophical reasoning and science.  Since that ground has already been covered, we will stick to the Christian-based arguments since that is terrain over which these abortion advocates like to stomp.

“There are no specific references to abortion in the Bible, either within Old Testament law or in Jesus’ teachings or the writings of Paul and other writers in the New Testament.”

This first argument, namely that the Bible doesn’t say anything about abortion is a bit of a red herring, at least as far as Catholics are concerned.  Not everything we believe need to be mentioned in the Bible explicitly.  If Scripture tells us that the pre-born being in the womb of Elizabeth (somewhere between 20-24 weeks) and the pre-born being in the womb of Mary (somewhere between 0-4 weeks) are both persons (Luke 1:26,41) and that directly killing an innocent person is always wrong (Exodus 20:13) then we could conclude that abortion, that is the direct and intentional  killing of an infant in the womb of the mother, is wrong.  The Bible need not, nor could it list out all the ways that a person might be murdered but can simply articulate the principle in what amounts to a blanket condemnation. 

That being said, the premise that the Bible does not mention abortion is also false.  In the ancient world, they were not nimble enough to play verbal gymnastics like us.  We are fall more sophisticated in the true sense of the word.  Even amongst the pagans, abortion was considered to be baby killing.  In fact, the device that they used to perform the abortion was called embruosqakths, which means “the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive.” (Tertullian, On the Soul, Ch. 25). 

They also used chemical potions to cause abortions, although they were far more dangerous to the mother than using the “slayer of the infant.”  This type of abortion is mentioned in Scripture, even if only implicitly.  We shall expound on this in a moment, but these potions fell under the broad Greek term pharmakeia, the same term St. Paul uses in Galatians 5:20 and we translate as “sorcery”.

“Likewise, throughout the history of the early church into the middle-ages, there is little to no mention of abortion as a topic of great alarm – from the days of the Old Testament until modern history. Hence, there is no case to be made for a definitive Christian stance throughout history on the spiritual or moral aspects of abortion.”

While it may have been convenient in supporting the point, the connection of pharmakeia to abortifacient drugs was not an exercise in originality, but something that the early Church did when they spoke against abortion.  The Didache, written during the Apostolic Age (probably around 70 AD) of the Apostles in expounding on the commandment of love of neighbor it said, “You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions [pharmakeia). You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:1–2).  Likewise, the Letter of Barnabas (74 AD), which is a commentary on the Didache says, “thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born” (19).

We already heard from Tertullian in the 2nd Century, but the list of Fathers who spoke against abortion down to the beginning of the 5th Century reads like a who’s who of Patristic teachers: Athenagoras of Athens, Hippolytus, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome.  It is also included in the twenty-first canon of the Council of Ancyra and among the Apostolic Constitutions.  In other words, it is hard not to stumble upon a condemnation of abortion among the Early Church Fathers, unless of course you don’t actually look.

Given the unbroken teaching to Apostolic times, abortion was a settled issue and we should not expect to hear about it much unless it is challenged (that is why St. John Paul II included the infallible statement of the Ordinary Magisterium in Evangelium Vitae).  The relative silence of the Middle Ages is a non-sequitur for that reason—it was a settled issue within Christendom and thus did not need to be defended or expounded upon much.

The Augustinian Exception?

Among those Church Fathers listed above there is one notable exception: St. Augustine.  He is notable not because of his silence but because of the fact that he is often quoted out of context.  The Huffington Post author does the same thing quoting him as saying:  “The law does not provide that the act (abortion) pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation.”  Not surprising she doesn’t cite the source of the quote which would enable us to establish context, but it comes from a commentary on Exodus 21.  Taken in context Augustine is asking whether, given the primitive embryology of his time, whether abortion before the 40th day after conception could be classified as homicide or not.  In his mind abortion was still a grave evil no matter how old the infant, but he wasn’t sure whether it should be classified as murder.

To cite this is really disingenuous, for the author knows it is based upon an ancient understanding of human development.  She knows that modern embryology has established that there is sensation long before the 40th day after conception.  Anyone who has seen an ultrasound image (or has watched the movie Silent Scream) can easily attest to that truth.  Unless the author of the article is willing to accept the primitive thinking of the 5th Century, then this is actually an argument against abortion.  If Augustine has access to modern technology, then he would have concluded that it was murder at any stage.

“I’m not saying abortion cannot be an important issue to a Christian, but there is no scriptural or historical backing for it to be the number one issue, at the expense of the ‘least of these’ who are suffering now.”

This line of reasoning really sets up a false dichotomy that pits poverty against abortion.  This is recycled secular thinking.  There are those who suffer because of destitution, and we ought to do what we can to alleviate that, but that does not mean you may alleviate it by reducing the number of mouths that need to be fed.  Why couldn’t the same argument be applied to the already born children of the poor, or even the poor themselves?  One definite way to end poverty would be to kill all the poor people.

As far as it being the “number one issue” is concerned, first we must admit that history is not a repeating cycle in which social ills always occur with the same frequency and intensity.  Perhaps destitution was a greater threat to human thriving than abortion was in ancient Rome or in the Middle Ages, but that does not mean it is still a greater threat.  In fact, we could argue that destitution (“poor” is a relative term and actually a Christian value, destitution is an objective measure) is at an all-time low.  What is not at an all-time low however is the number of innocent lives being snuffed out through abortion every day to the tune of about 125,000 per day worldwide (and this doesn’t include the number of abortions caused by birth control pills which could double or even triple that total).  Abortion, because it involves so many, all of which are the most vulnerable and voiceless, is by far the greatest injustice in the world today.  They are “’the least of these’ who are suffering now.”

The Danger of Playing House

Abortion, Bioethics, Contraception, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Homosexuality, Moralilty, , , ,

“Playing house” is a common children’s make believe game where the children take on adult roles usually centering around family life.  What happens when adults, armed with enough technology to make believe believable still like to play the game?  Something along the lines of what happened in Nebraska recently where a “61-year-old Nebraska mom has become a grandmom after giving birth herself — acting as the surrogate for her adult son and his husband.”   Even Aldous Huxley would find this truth stranger than fiction, despite being only half-way down the slippery slope into which our culture is descending.

Imagine little baby Uma, when she is much older Uma, looking at her birth certificate, the one that “looks really creepy for us.”  On it, she will find the name of one of her fathers, Matthew Eledge.  Under the heading of Mother, she will find the name of her grandmother.  Now this permanent public record will look like a case of incest.  Uma may know better, but is it better that she knows better?  In truth she will know that she was pieced together in a laboratory from various interrelated parts.  She will know she was a “product” of conception that originated with her father’s sperm and her other father’s sister’s egg.

Straight Out of A Brave New World?

As the origins of life grow to more closely resemble Huxley’s decanter than nature, it is increasingly difficult to point out this injustice.  Justice requires that equals be treated as equals.  When a child is conceived in a manner such as this, the relationship between parent and child is not truly a communion of persons but one of producer and product.  In essence this is, as Donum Vitae points out, “equivalent to reducing the child to an object of scientific technology.”   

No one can measure the psychological effects of knowing this upon the person, and, interestingly enough, no one has attempted to study it.  Children of divorce often face an identity crisis even though they are told that their parents “love them very much.”  That is because it is not enough to know you are loved, but you must also know that you came from love, that is, you are not an accident.  Likewise children conceived in a laboratory could face a similar identity crisis.

If you doubt the person-product connection, re-read the linked article and notice the description of the process they went through, including a quality control measure called “preimplantation genetic testing which would help determine the embryos most likely to develop into a healthy baby.”  If you are going to spend all the money (again described in detail in the interview) then you want to make sure you get the most bang for your buck.  Meanwhile six other children, Uma’s brothers and sisters, were set aside as byproducts of conception.  The article doesn’t say what happened to these six children but they were likely frozen or test subjects for human experimentation.  At least there was some semblance of a human decency when the men decided that choosing the sex of the child was too much “like playing God.” 

Procreation and the “Right to Make Life”

Perhaps the clearest indication of where this slippery slope leads is revealed in the form of a question.  After laying out all of the specific costs of the procedure and a complaint from the two men that IVF is cost prohibitive for most “couples”, the author asks, “should citizens have a right to make life?”  And this is, the battleground over which must fight if we are to rectify this injustice.

Humans do not reproduce, they procreate.  This is more than a mere semantical distinction.  Reproduction is a closed activity.  It simply requires two material creatures to exchange their genetic matter to produce offspring.  Human procreation is different however.  Like other material creatures, humans exchange genetic matter.  But they lack the capacity to exchange or create the spiritual element within their offspring.  This must be created by Someone else and requires His intervention.  Because procreation requires the intervention of a Third, the child must always be received as a gift and not as something that the couple is owed.  Couples receive children rather than grasp at them. 

The biological limitations that God has written into nature are there for our own good and for our own thriving.  Seizing what should otherwise be a gift, perhaps the greatest gift that God can bestow on us in the natural realm, leads to spiritual ruin for the parents.  But it need not be so for the children.   Even though the children conceived in this manner face an existential crisis and appear to be a mere product of technology, in truth they are not.  They are still persons of inestimable value because despite their immoral beginnings, God, as the ignored Third, still chose for this child to exist.  He still loved them into existence, even if their parents chose to hide that love behind scientific techniques.

One way to put a halt to the skid down this slippery slope is to change our rights language.  Even if the State grants them, there are no such thing as “reproductive rights” and not just because humans don’t, properly speaking, reproduce.  As proof of this, notice how they have little connection to actual duties towards other people connected to these rights.  In fact, they render children’s rights obsolete.  What people do have are procreative rights.  These natural rights are always in reference to their duties to children and ensure the dignity of children both born and unborn.   

In closing, there is one more thing that needs to be said regarding giving up on gay marriage as a battle already lost.  This is no mere “playing house” precisely because of stories like this.  In order to keep the game up, six children had to be condemned to death or a frozen existence.  This couple may be the first of its kind, but it won’t be the last.  The demand for procedures like this (as well as the demand to develop lower cost alternatives) will continue to increase unless we do something to protect these children.

The Church and the Question of Slavery

Church, Church and State, Church Authority, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, , ,

History, it is said, is written by the victors.  Whether this dictum is absolutely true or not can be debated.  What cannot be debated is that history is always rewritten by those seeking victory.  Historical rationalization allows the combatants to demonize their enemies, therefore justifying the annihilation of the culture.  Who can doubt that this has been a weapon in the arsenal of the Church’s enemies throughout the last few centuries?  As of late the enemies of the Church have attempted to rewrite the annals of history in order to paint the Church as indifferent, if not positively in favor of slavery.  In order to show this to be a lie, we must arm ourselves with the truth.

We must first set the stage by examining the world into which Our Lord took flesh.  Christianity arose.  Approximately 1/3 of the population of Ancient Rome were slaves.  All manual labor was performed by them.  In the fiefdom of the paterfamilias they were viewed as human property, essentially chattel, and held no rights.  In this regard Rome was no different from any culture prior to the arrival of Christ, including those encountered by the Jews (more on this in a moment).  Slavery was always viewed as acceptable and absolutely no one questioned the institution.  The only places it wasn’t practiced were those places that could not support it economically because the cost of maintaining the slaves was greater than their output.  This is an often overlooked, but nevertheless very important, point for two reasons.

Ending Slavery as a Practical Problem

First, given that slavery was ubiquitous, ending it as an institution would take power—either physical or moral.  This is why when Moses gives the Law to ancient Israel it says nothing condemning slavery but only how slaves were to be treated (c.f. Exodus 21:26-27, Deut 23:15-16).  And how they were to be treated was far greater than any other ancient culture.  This does not make it right or whitewash the immorality of it, but it does see how God was setting the stage for a moral revolution that would eventually topple slavery in the Christian world.  To condemn it would have been to shout into the wind.  He chose not an ethic, but to form an ethos.  And some of the different Jewish sects like the Essenes caught the ethos sooner than others and refused to practice slavery. 

Those who often try to change history forget that Christianity is a historical religion.  What this means is that God acts within specific cultures and in specific times.  Without understanding the cultural context, we will fail to miss the principles upon which His commandments are founded.  Any criticism of St. Paul for example must first include the cultural context in which he wrote.  To label his household codes (c.f. Col 3:18—4:1; Eph 5:21—6:9) as anything other than revolutionary is to trivialize what he is saying.  He demands that the slaves be treated justly (implying they are people with rights and not property) and that they will have to answer for how they treat their slaves.  While it might be implied that just treatment would include freeing them, he does not explicitly call for this.  This may insult our modern sensibilities towards anything other than absolute freedom, but it is because if the slaves were treated well by their masters, especially in the harsh Roman culture, then they might actually be better off remaining with their masters.  Many of them would have had nowhere else to go.

There is one particular case in which St. Paul did call for the release of a slave because he did have a better place to go (see Philemon 8-14).  Onesimus was a slave who stole money from his master, Philemon, and escaped to Rome.  When he ran into hard times in Rome, he found Paul whom he met at his master’s home in Colossae.  They developed a friendship and Onesimus was baptized.  At this point, Paul tells him he must return to his master and gives him a letter to present to his master.  This is the point where we must read the letter carefully to see what St. Paul was saying.  He tells Philemon that “although I have the full right in Christ to order you to do what is proper, I rather urge you out of love”.  Paul is saying that he could order Philemon to release Onesimus because it is “proper” (i.e. slavery is wrong).  But instead he wants him to release him out of love for his Christian brother.  The only reason he sends him back is so that “good you do might not be forced but voluntary.”  He wants to give him the opportunity to do the right thing for the right reason based upon a fully Christian ethos.

And based upon the history of the Church, Philemon responded just as St. Paul had hoped.  First, because the letter was saved for posteriority, that is, Philemon would not have saved a letter and distributed it if he did not comply with it.  Secondly because we find in the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles that Onesimus was ordained by St. Paul as the bishop of Macedonia.  Onesimus is the first beneficiary of the revolutionary view of mankind set in motion by the God made man.

The Impossibility of Judging Christianity by Its Own Principles

The second reason why we cannot overlook the fact that slavery was ubiquitous in the ancient world is that, in truth, without Christianity slavery would never end.  If we flash forward 1000 years to the end of the first Christian millennium we find that slavery is non-existent in the Christian world.  This condition continued through the Middle Ages so that by the 15th Century all of Europe is slavery free except for the fringes in the Iberian peninsula (under Islamic control) and in certain areas of Russia.  The Muslims were indiscriminate as to who they enslaved—black or white it did not matter.  Once they were run out of Spain and Portugal they went to Africa and joined in the already indigenous slave trade, that is, Africans enslaving and selling into slavery other Africans.  Again, another often overlooked fact that the African slave trade was already an institution long before the Europeans arrived in the late 15th Century. 

With slavery practically eradicated in Christendom, then how did slaves end up in the New World?  The Spanish and Portuguese Christians, living under an Islamic regime for nearly 700 years, had grown accustomed to it.  So when labor proved itself both lacking and necessary in the New World, the Spanish, Portuguese and eventually English turned to chattel slavery once again.  They did this against the very clear and repeated condemnations from the Church.  Beginning in 1435 with a bull Sicut Dudum, Pope Eugenius IV demanded that Christians free all enslaved natives of the Canary Islands within fifteen days or face automatic excommunication.  Over the next 450 years, the Popes unequivocally prohibited the enslavement of any peoples (see this link for a complete list).  With fists full of mammon covering their ears, many of the so-called Catholics simply ignored the Church’s teachings, especially because there was no real way of enforcement.

And herein lies the reason why the facts cannot be overlooked.  The Church’s teaching on slavery as intrinsically evil has been and always will be unchanging.  St. Paul’s Magna Charta of Christian brotherhood in Col 3:26 is forever established.  In this regard Christianity cannot be judged because to judge it, is to judge it based on its own principles.  Put another way, only Christianity taught the evil of slavery and so you cannot judge the principle by the principle itself.  What you can judge and absolutely should judge is Christians themselves for failing to live up to these principles.  For that, many Christians themselves have failed miserably to protect the dignity of their fellow men.  Parents sometimes are blamed for the actions of their children when there is a bad upbringing, but the clarity and insistence of the Church on this issue makes it clear that it was the children themselves who went astray.  What must be absolutely clear is that without the Catholic Church, millions, if not billions of people, would be in physical chains today.  No matter how the usurpers of our post-Christian society may try to paint the issue of slavery, that is a truth they must ultimately contend with.

On the Heresy of Marriage

Culture, Eucharist, Grace, marriage, Sacraments, , , , ,

In a previous post, the logical and theological necessity of the Development of Doctrine was discussed.  One of the points made was that corruption of doctrine, normally what we label as heresy, always leads to a dead end and ends up destroying the very doctrine it was trying to explain.  But there is a sense in which heresy also can be an impetus for the development of authentic doctrine by “forcing” the Church to elaborate more fully on the doctrine in question.  History is replete with examples, but we are faced with a prime example today in the attack within the Church on the Sacrament of Marriage.

We do not need to go into the details of the attack specifically other than to say the widescale acceptance of contraception, remarriage, and even gay marriage within the Church all signal an attack on the Sacrament itself.  Part of the reason why the response has been so slow is that there is still a lack of clarity within the theology of the Sacrament of Marriage.  St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body was a beginning, but it remains just that—a beginning.  His teaching is so dense that there remains much work to be done to clarify and expound on what he hoped to accomplish.  This essay is an attempt to move the discussion forward by clearing up some common misconceptions.

Natural Marriage vs Sacramental Marriage

The first distinction is between natural and Sacramental marriage.  Marriage by its very nature is something sacred because it is ordered towards the co-creative action of procreation.  Even in its natural state it acts as a sacrament (note the small s) pointing to God’s covenant with mankind.  But this natural state of marriage is different not just in degree but in kind from Sacramenta Marriage.  So often people see the Sacrament as something added on to natural marriage but in truth it is a different reality.  It is a different reality because it has a different end.  Natural marriage is for the propagation of the species, Sacramental marriage is for the propagation of the Church.  Natural marriage is for the mutual help of the spouses, Sacramental marriage is for the mutual sanctity of the spouses.

Because natural marriage and Sacramental Marriage (for ease we will call it Matrimony moving forward) are distinct realities we must resist the temptation to lump them together.  It would be akin to not seeing bread and wine as essentially different from the Eucharist.  They may look the same from the outside, but the interior reality makes all the difference in the world.  Matrimony is not just a Catholic way of getting married, but instead its interior life becomes a cause of grace in the souls of the spouses.  In other words, its sacramentality is a direct participation in the mystery of Redemption.   

The Fruits of the Sacrament

Failing to grasp this and thinking that something like divorce is possible is not just to disobey a commandment of Christ.  Instead it is a denial of the Sacrament and threatens the entire Sacramental structure.  Matrimony, like all Sacraments has specific fruits.  The first fruit is the unity of the spouses.  Rather than trying to “hold it together”, Matrimony is a cause of their unity.  They are bound together as Christ is bound to the Church and their union continually approaches this ideal.  And in so doing, it brings about the thing it signifies by uniting them closer to Christ as members of His Church. 

Secondly, the Sacrament also bears the fruit of indissolubility.  As St. John Paul II puts it in Familiaris Consortio, “the indissolubility of marriage finds its ultimate truth in the plan that God has manifested in His revelation: He wills and He communicates the indissolubility of marriage as a fruit, a sign and a requirement of the absolutely faithful love that God has for man and that the Lord Jesus has for the Church” (FC, 20).

The Church uses the term fruit very purposefully.  For fruit comes about when a tree is matured and it is always sweet once it is ripe.  The fruits of Matrimony are felt more deeply as the marriage matures.  Lacking this maturity, the fruit often tastes bitter.  In other words, the gifts of unity and indissolubility do not guarantee that things will be easy, even if they guarantee they will be possible.  Before the fruits are matured the couple will have to have their faith purified.  His commands—“you shall not divorce and remarry another”—are not made in a vacuum, but instead ought to be read as promises—“because of the power of the Cross you shall not divorce and remarry another.”  As an they grow in faith in God, their faithfulness to each other increases likewise.  The fruit day by day matures until it becomes sweet.

Even tolerating divorce and remarriage is not just a practical issue but has theological consequences as a denial of the power of the Sacrament.  It says that the Sacrament really doesn’t do anything and ultimately Matrimony is no different than natural marriage.  To deny this ultimately is to deny the power of the Cross to save.  And this is ultimately why we are facing a heretical crisis.  Marriage in all appearance is impossible.  Matrimony however is not because “nothing is impossible for God.”  It is, as JPII put it, “permanent reminder to the Church of what happened on the Cross” (FC, 13).  The Church is facing a great modern heresy about the Theology of Marriage and the Faithful must respond in both their living and understanding of Matrimony as a Sign of Contradiction.

Standing Firm in History

Church and State, Culture, History, , , , , ,

The attendant clatter of a silent statue falling on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was loud enough to be heard throughout the country.  Loud, not just because of the coverage it received in the main stream media, but also because it was joined in chorus by the death knell of one historical vision and the triumphal melody of its replacement.  Although Confederate statues have been toppling over with great regularity, this one is different.  Different because it occurred on the campus of an institution of higher learning, an institution that prides itself on its department of history whose “primary goal is to foster the creation and communication of historical knowledge.” History as it has been understood up until now is, well, history.

We must first admit that there is no such thing as merely communicating historical knowledge.  The essence of history is not found in facts, but in interpretation of specific historical events.  Good historians always allow the data of facts to drive them, but in the end how they view reality itself is always going to color their communication.  Events never occur within a vacuum so that the context itself also matters.  As the great Catholic historian Christopher Dawson once quipped, an alien may witness the Battle of Hastings and have more facts than we do, but this knowledge would not be historical because it lacked both an understanding of reality and a context.

The Two Views of History

What are these two views of history that have been grappling for the Western Mind?  What we might call modern history has won out strictly because it is modern.  It is modern because it feeds off of the two great modern ideologies—communism and liberalism.  In the communist view, all of history is marked by a conflict between oppressor and oppressed.  History for liberalism is only subtly different in that it documents the struggle at various stages pitting those who fought against for freedom against the enemies of freedom.  Either way, a reduction occurs in which history is driven by conflict with the bad things always left in the past.  This inevitability of progress assumes everything in the past was backwards and that those who do not see this are evil, ignorant or both.

In this way history parallels the theory of evolution in that there is always progress towards a time of enlightened peace.  Progress will save us.  And like its intellectual counterpart, the evolutionary view of history also suffers under the weight of materialism (even if there is some lingering Deism).  With conflict as the only thread, there is a sit-com-like disconnect of events from each other.  History is simply one episode after another, with very little reference to the previous episode.  Retaining a historical memory really has no value, because, as the great historical student Henry Ford once said, “all history is bunk.  The only history I care about is the history I am making.”

The toppling of Silent Sam gives us a prime example of this viewpoint of history.  The Civil War was a battle between the white oppressors in the South and the Union proxies of the oppressed slaves.  Even the great Karl Marx saw it that way.  Sure there are other things that happened, but it all really comes down to this one thing.  Freedom, of course, won the day and the United States marched on in its messianic mission as the instrument of liberal progress.  Because the statues harken back to those days of un-freedom, they must be literally dumped in the dust bin of history.  Anyone who sets his hand to the handle of the bulldozer and looks back can have no part in progress.  History, like our favorite sit-com, has nothing to do with here and now so why would we need reminders of it?  If you do not understand that then you are, at best, an ignorant fool, or just as likely, a racist xenophobe who wants to put other people in chains.

This view of history has finally eclipsed its previous contender; what one might call the Christian view of history.  Christianity is by definition of historical religion because its Divine Founder “in the fullness of time pitched His tent and dwelt among us.”  Whether you use BC/AD or BCE/CE, the fact still remains that the Incarnation is the center of history.  It is the center of history because it proves once and for all that history does not merely have a direction, but a Director Who regularly makes cameos in His story. History now becomes the field in which the redemption of Creation plays out.

Knowing this, history must always leave room for the supernatural.  There are no accidents.  Where would the world be if St. Joan of Arc was blown off because she merely “heard voices”?  What if St. Pius V hadn’t pleaded with the Queen of Victory at Lepanto?  Or what if Pius VI when imprisoned by Napoleon in France had not prayed while the Emperor mocked him (Napoleon is purported to have said “does he think the weapons will fall form the hands of my soldiers?” which is exactly what happened in Waterloo)?  What if the steady handed, trained assassin had not encountered the hand of God in the chest of John Paul II?

The exemplar of all Christian historians is the great St. Augustine.  His City of God is a synthesis of human history read through the lens of Christian principles.  History for Augustine, and for us as Christians, is not a record of events but the revelation of a divine plan that embraces all ages and peoples.  He also shows that history, in order to be truly history, must be continuous.  There are no episodes or seasons, but a continuing story.  Memory is a key component of identity.  Both liberal democracy and Communism create regimes for forgetting the past.  Fans of the Jason Bourne series know the dangers of forgetting the past—not that you are doomed to repeat it, but that an amnesic people is defenseless and malleable.

What About the Statues?

Through the lens of the Christian notion of history, what place do Confederate Statues have as tokens of history?  In an age in which the conflict theory of history prevails they are very important.  When we think we have moved on, it is easy to think we should sanitize all versions of the past.  When we see history as the revelation of God’s plan of redemption for mankind however we need statues.  Statues, as the name suggests, are not symbols of honor but signs of someone who stood firm.  They may have stood firm for bad things like slavery.  Or they may have stood firm for good things like the courage to defend your homeland.  Or, as in the case of many of the Confederate statues, it was both.  But as tokens of history they teach us to choose carefully those things we are going to stand firm in.  They also teach us through real life examples that our actions, good and evil, endure.  They will not be erased.  Finally, they remind us that even the greatest of men is still flawed.  We wonder how courageous young men like those depicted in the Silent Sam statue could have such a blind spot and hopefully wonder where our own blind spots are.  Finally, it keeps our hubris in check in thinking we can build some messianic kingdom.

Let the statues stand—if for no other reason that they keep history from falling into the dustbin.

Making Up Your Mind about Mindfulness

Anthropology, Culture, Devils, New Age, Paganism, , ,

As Christians we are somewhat conditioned to look east, for east has long been believed to be the direction that Our Lord’s triumphant return.  While we wait however there are some of us who have looked further east and sought to adopt spiritual elements from the religions in the Far East.  The latest practice to be pondered is Mindfulness.

One of the most vocal proponents of Mindfulness is Dr. Gregory Bottaro.  As a practicing clinical psychologist and Catholic, he has sought treatments to help his patients in ways that are consistent with the Catholic vision of man.  To that end, he has been using Mindfulness within a clinical setting and has even written a book called The Mindful Catholic defending its use.

Mindfulness finds its origins in modern Theravada Buddhism and purports to create within the practitioner an awareness and acceptance, without judgment, of what he or she is thinking or feeling.  Or, to use Dr. Bottaro’s simple definition, mindfulness is “paying attention to the present moment without judgment or criticism.”  It is this inherent connection to a “New Age” practice that has many people concerned about its use.

Dr. Bottaro believes, like the Church herself, that even if a technique is borrowed from a New Age religion, it does not automatically make it wrong.  Instead we must look to see whether the technique can be stripped of its spiritual elements so that it can be “baptized” and used and prescribed licitly by Catholics.  In the case of Mindfulness, Dr. Bottaro claims that it is possible and that Mindfulness is not just a therapeutic technique, but one that all Catholics should be practicing.  This, of course, has been met with serious opposition questioning whether or not it can be severed from its Buddhist roots, including a book written by Susan Brinkmann as well as those at EWTN.  We will not add another voice to that particular debate here, but instead will examine Mindfulness from a different angle, namely Catholic anthropology.

Mindfulness and Catholic Anthropology

In the opening line of Appendix I of his book, Dr. Bottaro makes the claim that “Catholic mindfulness is built on Catholic principles.”  It is not clear from the rest of the article which principles he has in mind.  He seems to spend the bulk of his time defending its use against New Age claims that he never gets around to discussing how mindfulness harmonizes with Catholic anthropology.  It is in this arena of Catholic anthropological principles that mindfulness fails.  Rather than leading to mental health, it can facilitate further mental illness.

In anticipation of an immediate objection, what qualifies me, a theologian, to answer the question as to whether Mindfulness can lead to mental health?  To ask the question is to admit just how steeped we have become in the empirical mindset.  There is a distinction of vital importance to be made between what I will call the philosophy of psychology and the science of psychology.  The philosophy of psychology is concerned with, to use Dr. Bottaro’s terms, “Catholic principles” while the science of psychology is concerned with the clinical application of those principles through various techniques.  The theologian or philosopher can ask whether a given technique can lead to mental health (i.e. it leads to actions in accord with human nature) while a psychologist, once he knows the answer to this question, can ask if a given technique does in practice lead to mental health.

Foundational to Catholic anthropology is the fact that each one of us, to greater or lesser extents, is mentally ill.  This is said not to make us all victims or belittle those who suffer greatly because of serious mental illness.  Instead it is to point out a fundamental flaw in that we have a tendency to embrace the brokenness that comes from the Fall.  We equate natural (what we are) with normal (what everyone around us is doing).  This means that mental health can only come about through practices that restore what is natural and not necessarily what is normal.

Man, by nature, is an intellectual creature.  This means that he was made to rule himself by right reason to do the good passionately.  In other words, the intellect in man was to reign supreme, guiding the will to the good which had full cooperation from the bodily powers including the emotions, memory and imagination.  Post-edenic man finds his intellect darkened by ignorance, the will weakened and the bodily powers running amok.  The Fall left man in disarray, but not beyond repair.  God, using supernatural means such as actual and sanctifying grace can heal us.  But there are also natural means at our disposal to heal these effects.  Primary among those means are the virtues by which we develop habits that overcome the effects of the Fall.  The virtues rescue what is natural from what is normal.

Secondly because man is (and not just has) body and soul, the soul depends upon the body for its operation of knowing.  It does this primarily through the imagination and memory.  They provide the “raw material” upon which the intellect works.  The intellect abstracts the contents of its thoughts from the image (called a phantasm) provided it by the imagination, an image it received either from the outside world or from the memory (or both).  It is not just productive, but also reproductive in that it exercises insight and control to produce images as reflections of ideas.  This puts flesh to concept so to speak.  When we think of a concept, say like God, some image comes into our mind, even though we have never seen Him.  The images we form greatly affect our thoughts.  Imagine a demon who looks like a terrible dragon.  Now imagine a demon wearing red tights with horns.  Which of these reflects right thought about demons?

Given the material prominence of the imagination and to a slightly lesser extent the memory, one can readily see how important they are to mental health.  Whether we like it or not, they affect not just what we think about, but also how we judge.  A trivial example might help.  Suppose I fall out of a chair because I wasn’t being careful.  The next time I see a chair that memory will be invoked and I may recall the pain of the fall.  Chairs (and not just that one chair) will become associated with pain and something to be feared.  My intellect must then make a judgment on the phantasm that the chair poses no danger.  If I do not make that judgment, or I judge wrongly that chairs are bad then the association becomes stronger causing fear each time the phantasm is present, reinforcing the idea that chairs are dangerous.  A feedback loop is created and mental illness is comes about.  This can only be corrected when the judgment that chairs are not harmful is adopted and the intellect “corrects” the phantasms attached to chair.  Until the imagination comes under the complete control of the intellect, the person will still be torn between reality and perception.

Quieting the Interior Chatter

Obviously the memory and imagination are necessary faculties for mental health and therefore we can’t simply shut them off.  Instead they must be schooled so that they do not, as Adolphe Tanqueray says in his classic book The Spiritual Life, “crowd the soul with a host of memories and images that distract the spirit” but fall under the control of the intellect and the will.

Although he never says so explicitly, it is these two faculties, memory and imagination, which mindfulness attempts to govern.  Dr. Bottaro says that the goal is to turn away from the “interior chatter.”  This interior chatter comes from overactive memories and imaginations that lead to wrong ways of judging reality.  He suggests that by focusing on the present moment through mindfulness exercises you can begin to bring these powers under the control of the “mind.”

In this regard Dr. Bottaro is no different from many of the spiritual masters who say that one of the best ways to mortify the interior senses of memory and imagination is by focusing on the present moment.  However, there is one important difference—none of them would say that you can learn to govern the interior senses by “paying attention to the present moment without judgment or criticism.”  Mental health consists in the right judgment of reality.  The remedy to judging incorrectly is not to cease judging.  Any exercises that promote this lead away from mental health and not towards it.

Why is this the case?  Because the mind judges “automatically.”  It judges because that is what it does.  The mind has three acts—understanding, judgment and reasoning.  Once the mind has grasped what a thing is (understanding), it immediately attempts to relate it to other things (judgment).  As Blessed John Henry Newman put it, “It is characteristic of our minds to be ever engaged in passing judgment on the things which come before them.  No sooner do we learn that we judge; we allow nothing to stand by itself.”

Inevitable Path to Buddhism?

Dr. Bottaro says that “mindfulness does not meaning turning off the thoughts in your mind, but using them as a door to greater awareness of yourself.  This is actually one of the essential differences between Catholic mindfulness and Eastern-based forms of meditation.”  But one cannot simply turn off judging without doing violence to the natural process of reasoning.  In essence by trying to abort the second act of the mind, it shuts down the mind completely, precisely what the Eastern-based forms are proposing.  It seems the very thing he is trying to avoid, he inadvertently brings about.  Perhaps those who are concerned about the spiritual traps of Buddhist practices are right after all.  Mindfulness may be not just a practice that Buddhist use, but a Buddhist “sacrament” that brings about the desired outcome of emptying the mind.  This happens regardless of the intention of the practitioner.  Perhaps there is a “genius” in the technique that, by doing what a Buddhist does, it causes the person to think like a Buddhist.  And once they think like a Buddhist they begin to act like one.

This may explain why, given that the doctor is also a “patient” of mindfulness that his book has a number of New Age red flags in his book when he attempts to articulate some Catholic principles.  Under the sub-heading Finding Peace, Dr. Bottaro sounds more New Age than he does Catholic.  He describes Jesus as “the human person of God, Jesus Christ.”  As Nestorius found out in the 5th Century, Jesus is not a human person but a Divine person who took to Himself a human nature.  One might excuse this merely as a lack of theological precision except he goes further making the reader wonder whether the label Catholic can be applied.

In the same section he also says “You have heard that you are a temple of the Holy Spirit, but you are also more than that.  You exist in the form that God Himself would take if He were to enter into the created universe…”(emphasis added)  To say that we are more than temples of the Holy Spirit has a very Buddhist “feel” to it.  The only thing “more than” being a creature with the indwelling Holy Spirit is to be God Himself, something a Buddhist would readily accept.  Christ did not take to Himself a human nature because human nature was so great, but because He is so great.  In other words the doctor gets it backwards by putting man at the center instead of God.  We should not be surprised then when he says that “the central being that is consistently in your awareness in each present moment is you.  Therefore, mindfulness is a journey to find peace with yourself.”

Buddhism is a journey to find peace within yourself.  Catholicism, however, is a journey to find peace with God; peace that is only found outside of man.  The two are not compatible.   You will look forever, perhaps we might say eternally, for peace with yourself and you will never find it.   For Buddhists peace is found within because God is found within.  But for Catholicism the interior division that we experience is caused by our division with God and only when that is healed, can be even begin to experience the “peace with surpasses all understanding” (Phil 4:7 ).  Perhaps it is better not to let our gazes go any further east than Rome and leave Mindfulness to the Buddhists.

Gender Dysphoria and the Brave New World

Culture, Freedom, Homosexuality, Moralilty, Theology of the Body, , ,

After receiving an overwhelming thumbs-down from the LGBT community for her upcoming role as a transgender man, Scarlett Johansson has withdrawn from her participation in the film.  Initially she defended her casting by reminding the critics that actors in movies are not actually turning into the characters they play but instead are merely portraying them.  Never ones to fully grasp the distinction between imagination and reality, the transgender supporters continued to blast her until she finally relented telling Out.com that she had made a mistake.  In her official statement she said, “I am thankful that this casting debate, albeit controversial, has sparked a larger conversation about diversity and representation in film.”  While Ms. Johansson may be grateful that a conversation has been sparked, this particular group of people’s track record with actual conversation and debate is rather sketchy.  Adept at verbal sleight of hand and ad hominem (would they call it something different like ad et identify hominem?) arguments transgender activists avoid answering the tough questions.   But just in case they are in a talkative mood, there are a few questions that many of us would like to have answered.

The movie is supposed to tell the life story of a “transgender” man, Tex Gill.  I put the adjective in front of man in quotation marks not to be a contrarian but because my question has to do with the label transgender.  If he really is a man and not constructed to be a man, then why must that label appear at all?  Is he any less of a man than say a man who hasn’t transitioned?  It seems to me that by applying the modifier, you are admitting as much.  What if a man had been cast to play the protagonist?  Would we have seen the same response?

Why Must There Be a Label?

The label will always apply because the dirty little secret is that you cannot actually change someone’s sex to match their gender identity.  No amount of hormone therapy can change the biological reality, a reality that touches the entire person all the way down to the cellular level.  Some differences are not due to hormones but are a direct result of the genetic differences between the two sexes as numerous studies have shown. (like the ones detailed in Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?).  The best you can do is to give that woman some masculine characteristics.  Likewise, no amount of plastic surgery can turn that same woman into a man.  Perhaps you can remove breasts and construct something that looks like a penis, but it will never achieve true biological functioning completely like one.  This, and the exorbitant cost, is why most people opt out of genital reconstruction.

At best the person suffering from gender dysphoria can hope for artificial changes in their bodies in hopes of matching their gender identity.  How is it then that this will remedy the inner turmoil they experience?  In other words, how will they ever be able to remove the “transgender” label and live merely as a man or woman?  They will always carry some physical reminders of who they really are.  It is no wonder then that most of the evidence points to the psychological benefit being relatively minor given that they have only deepened their existential crisis by living in, as Dr. Paul McHugh says, “counterfeit sexual garb.”

St. John Paul II reminded us over and over that men and women only find true meaning in their lives by making a sincere gift of themselves to others.  In a fallen and wounded world this is far from obvious so that God has left our bodies as a sign of this path to happiness.  To mutilate this sign in hopes of finding your true identity only serves to lead a person further into darkness rather than light; unhappiness rather than fulfillment; transgender man rather than man.

One of the reasons why Johansson was hesitant to give up the lead in this film is because it has all the makings of an Oscar winning performance.  In fact it does not take much prognostication skill to predict that whomever ends up playing Tex Gill will be nominated for an Oscar.  We can be just as sure that Hollywood won’t be making any movies about the thousands of horror stories of those who at various stages of transitioning realized they were making a mistake and couldn’t sufficiently de-transition to undo the damage already done.  That is because these people do not fit the narrative that transgender activists are writing.

Thanks to the rise of radical feminism, all distinction between the sexes must be erased.  In her 1970 book called The Dialectic of Sex, Shulamith Firestone added a Marxist twist to Simone Beauvoir’s idea that the female body (with its capacity for bearing children) is at odds with women’s freedom.  Enslaved to their bodies and victims of male privilege the only way out (synthesis in Marxist terms) is to erase all differences between the sexes.  Rather prophetically she calls for an end to “sex distinction itself” by any means necessary including the use of biotechnology.  Thanks to the invention of the term gender and Gender Studies programs her vision has become a reality.

The question however is how many innocent people must fall prey to the creation of a Brave New World in which rather than helping those with gender dysphoria come to grips with who they are, we must be coerced into agreement with them.  They outlaw “conversion therapy” saying it is cruel to help someone live in accord with their biological sex while they encourage actual conversion therapy that includes hormone therapy, puberty blockers and surgical mutilation.  They silence all those who disagree with them and bully actresses into passing on movie roles.  Welcome to the Brave New World!

The American Athanasius

Creed, Culture, Defending the Faith, Freedom, Natural Law, Paganism, Politics, ,

Throughout her 2000 year history, the Church has confronted a number of great heresies that put Our Lord’s promise that she would not fail to the test.  The greatest of these may have been the first, Arianism.  It challenged the divinity of Christ, labeling Him as the greatest of all divinely inspired creatures.  The Arians taught that “He was”, as Hillaire Belloc put it, “granted, one might say (paradoxically) all the divine attributes but divinity itself.”  At its height, almost ¾ of the world’s bishops were Arian along with most of the army.  So widespread had the heresy become that there were many “rank and file” Christians who were Arians and didn’t even know it.  Swimming within the Arian waters, they were presumably orthodox even though they were, in truth, heterodox.  It was really the grace-filled insistence, mingled with plenty of personal suffering, of one man, St. Athanasius, that kept us all from becoming Arians (and not knowing it).  But rather than offering an account of how he did this, instead he is put before us as an example to be followed.  Many of us, wholly unawares, are swimming within the waters of a different heretical tank.  It is the heresy of Americanism.

This term, Americanism, may be vaguely familiar to some of us, but for the most part it is as foreign as the term Arian was to our 4th Century counterparts.  Although appearing under different guises such as Gallicanism, it is essentially a subordination of the spirit of Catholicism in favor of a nationalistic one.  In an 1899 letter to James Cardinal Gibbons called Testem Benevolentiae, Pope Leo XIII warned his American colleague of the danger confronting both the American Church and, because of its rising prominence, the Church universal.  It is, as one papal biographer of Leo XIII put it, “A spirit of independence which passed too easily from the political to the religious sphere.”

The Errors of Americanism

Pope Leo XIII attached four specific errors to Americanism.  First, all external guidance is set aside as superfluous so that all that is needed is the interior lights of the Holy Spirit.  It is the American ideal of rugged individualism, freedom of conscience, and a rejection of any authority that animates this error.  Second there is a higher regard for natural virtues than for supernatural virtues as if the latter are somehow passive and therefore defective.  This comes from the practicality of the American spirit that shuns philosophy in favor of the empirical and a do it yourself mentality.  Third there is a rejection of religious vows as somehow incompatible with the spirit of Christian liberty.  There is a certain irony here given how important religious communities like the Jesuits and Franciscans were in the beginnings of our country.  Finally, and perhaps the underlying principle of the entire heresy is that the Church should shape her teachings in accord with the spirit of the age.  To gain those who differ from us we should omit certain points of teachings so as to make the faith more palatable.

At the time the letter was written the US Bishops agreed that these would be a great problem if they were present in the American Church, but denied that they could be found and dismissed them.  This point is obviously historically debatable, especially given that Americanist tendencies can be found from the beginning in the actions and writings of the first bishop in the United States John Carroll who was a cousin of Charles Carroll (of Carrollton as he reminded the British in signing the Declaration of Independence) and was mostly American before he was Catholic.  But what cannot be debated in an age of “personally opposed but…” Catholicism Leo XIII was definitely prescient.

One of the reasons that Arianism had such great appeal was that at heart it was simply a clever attempt to save paganism by making Christianity more palatable.  For a pagan, a religion in which a creature was endowed with god-like qualities is easier to swallow than the truth that the Creator became man and suffered to redeem wayward mankind.  And so it is with Americanist Catholics who cleverly seek to focus only on those things that are easy for Americans to swallow.  As she grows older, America’s palate becomes increasingly limited.  For the Catholic the highest law is God’s law mediated through the Church.  For the American it is the Constitution mediated through the Supreme Court without any reference to a Higher Authority.  How long can these two things can co-exist without significant concessions by the Catholic?  Regardless of the timeframe there will come a moment of crisis for both the individual and the Church.  Simply agreeing to disagree and focus only on what unites us is not a solution.  The problem with this of course is that there is no reason then to convert to the fullness of the truth that is found only within the confines of the Barque of  Peter.  Why convert when you are simply promised more of the same?

Patriotism and the Catholic American

Why would I offer this reflection on July 4th of all days on the greatest of all secular holidays?  Could I be any more un-patriotic than to offer a criticism such as this on today, of all days?  To ask the question is to admit the problem.  We are not patriotic to the American ideal.  That is to treat America as a religion, which is at the heart of the problem.  To be sure we love America because it is our home, but it is our home only because we share it with people that we love.  We are patriotic because we follow Our Lord’s commandment to love our neighbor.  Those people who we share a home with are those that God has placed closest to us in order that His commandment might take flesh.  And there can be no greater love than to offer to them the Truth that has been handed on to us by preaching and living it unapologetically.

We find ourselves in a society that is coming apart at the seams and it is because what unites us is not greater than what divides us.  No matter how well the Founding Fathers framed the Constitution (and they did frame well) it was never strong enough to keep us united forever.  There is only one thing in this world that can keep a people united and it is the Church.  Only a reformation of Christendom can save this country and that begins with the Church being more Catholic not less.  For a Catholic resident in a non-Catholic country it is an act of true patriotism to want to convert his country—what we need is an American Athanasius.

 

On Not Walking the Extra Mile

Church and State, Culture, ,

As the archetype of all spiritual masters, Our Lord left a rule of life for His followers.  This rule of life finds the bulk of its content in the Sermon on the Mount.  There is hardly any aspect of life that isn’t touched by Jesus’ prescription for happiness.  The bar is set ridiculously high to prove both its practical impossibility and His power to transform us.  Those who set out under their own power quickly find His maxims unlivable.  But this is not the only reason why many find it unlivable.  It is also unlivable when, although with the best of intentions, Christians treat it not as a rule of life, but as a social blueprint.

An example may help better illustrate what I mean.  When addressing the issue of retaliation, Our Lord tells His followers: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, offer no resistance to one who is evil. When someone strikes you on [your] right cheek, turn the other one to him as well.  If anyone wants to go to law with you over your tunic, hand him your cloak as well.  Should anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.  Give to the one who asks of you, and do not turn your back on one who wants to borrow” (Mt 5:38-42).  There are a multitude of ways in which this new law manifests itself in the lives of individual Christians, but it all boils down to how we are to respond when we are victims of evil.  We may, like Our Lord (Jn 18:23) and St. Paul (Acts 16:22) choose not to turn the other cheek, but only if we are prepared to absorb the evil rather than respond in kind.  How this plays out in the day to day is left to the discernment of each Christian man and woman.

Our Lord’s Blueprint

What Our Lord was not offering a plan for social justice.  All too often these verses and others like them (except oddly enough the ones on divorce) are quoted in support of a political agenda.  These verses are meant to be a plan of life for the individual Christian.  This is not to imply that there is not a social dimension to living in accord with them, but it is not Our Lord’s blueprint for society, but His recipe for leaven.

A society made up of Christians who are willing to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile or lend without condition is a society that will be animated by charity and forgiveness.  But society itself has no cheek to turn.  It may be governed by men living out the Beatitudes, but their rules of governing must be based in service of the common good.

Jesus was not condemning “an eye for an eye.”  Many people go far beyond what Our Lord was saying.  In a qualified, that is a non-literal sense, there is nothing unjust about it.  The principle represents a sound basis for the foundation of any society.  Offenses must be punished and any punishment that is just must have the proper degree of proportionality to it.  A society that offers no resistance to evil is sure on the path to anarchy.  To attempt to apply Our Lord’s personal principle to society as a whole makes Christians look foolish no matter how well intentioned.  Non-Christians conclude then that the Gospel is not only unlivable, but unreasonable as well.

Punishment

There is a second aspect of this as well that is important to mention because it does apply to society.  We should never respond to evil with evil.  This is worth mentioning because, although punishment may be perceived as an evil by the one punished, it is not evil in itself.  In fact, it is a good for both society and the individual when it is carried out in a just manner.  In other words, to expect society to “turn the other cheek” in the face of evil is actually responding to evil with evil.

This habit of socializing the personal permeates much of the discourse of priests and prelates for hot button issues like the death penalty and immigration.  Jesus telling us to “turn the other cheek” is not an argument against the death penalty, no matter how Christian society is.  “Welcoming the stranger” may be the basis for allowing any immigrants, but it can never be used as an argument against specific policies.  The examples could be multiplied but each time they are invoked the power of the Gospel to be leaven is greatly minimized.

Music and Morality

Culture, Moralilty, Music, Virtue, , ,

When Plato set out to write the Republic, he was attempting to present a blueprint for a just society filled with just men.  You might be surprised then to find several sections in which he discusses music.  Plato, like many of the ancients, thought music was not invented but discovered; a sacrament that made the order and rhythm of the universe felt.  “Rhythm and harmony,” he thought, “find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful.”   In other words, music, because of its power to captivate us and bring us pleasure, also has to be evaluated morally.  And in this, we moderns would think him entirely backward.  Maybe the lyrics matter a little, but music itself is entirely neutral.  Good music is in the ear of the listener.  Plato himself would group us moderns with the fools of his day who “[I]n their mindlessness [they] involuntarily falsified music itself when they asserted that there was no such thing as correct music, and that it was quite correct to judge music by the standard of the pleasure it gives to whoever enjoys it, whether he be better or worse” (The Laws 700e).

This is not an attempt to empirically verify what Plato thought as true, but only to set the table by asking a simple question—what caused the sexual revolution?  Put more precisely, why did things change so drastically in the mid-60s and 70s?  It would be hard not to connect it to the revolution in music that preceded it.  In fact we can do this for many periods of recent and not-so recent history; from the nihilism of the late 19th Century and its connection to the denial of tonality in music to the denial of tradition in the Romantic composers, Plato seems particular prescient—“ [A]s Damon says, and I am convinced, the musical modes are never changed without change in the most important of a city’s laws” (Republic 424c).

The Moral Aspect of Music

Although we could continue to trace the music-cultural connection, it is more instructive to examine the nature of music and its effects on morality to show why this will always be the case.  What makes this particular topic difficult to discuss is that most of us have a fundamental misunderstanding regarding morality.  We have come to see it mainly as following rules, that is, as a training exercise of the intellect.  But the moral man is one who trains his will such that he learns to take pleasure in the right things.  It is no unlike the man with a healthy diet in that he learns to like the taste of food that is healthy for him.  When driven by pleasure alone he will consume only those foods that are sweet to his palate, treating health as, at best, a secondary concern.  When he is concerned with his health and sees food as necessary to maintaining it, he will develop his palate such that he finds pleasure in foods that are truly good for him.

The food analogy is a helpful aid to understanding music.  Music naturally has a capacity to move us and bring us pleasure.  It is able to target specific emotions or evoke certain images.  Military men were able to cover much greater distances when marching to music.  They were able to go bravely into battle on the heels of the otherwise unarmed military drummers and buglers.  Movies add to the suspense of the scenes by playing music.  Try watching the shower scene in Psycho without the music and see if it elicits the same response from you.  Music clearly feeds the soul and therefore we should ask how to separate the healthy music from junk food.

This inherent capacity of music to move us is where music takes on a moral component.  Emotions are part of the constitution of man and are meant to be bodily responses to good and evil.  They can be stirred up (or permitted to endure) interiorly through reflection or they can be stirred from contact with something exterior to us.  When they are stirred up from the outside prior to any moral reflection, there is no moral aspect per se.  But once we choose the particular emotion, then it becomes subject to moral evaluation.  The morality of emotions is something most of us already grasp.  What we may not realize however is that when we choose a thing because it will stir up an emotion, this too is subject to moral norms.

When we choose a song that we “like” what we are really saying is that “I like the emotion this music causes me to feel.”  Fallen as we are, without reflection we tend towards those things that stir up base emotions.  To continue to feed certain emotions develops in us a habit for those emotions to arise on their own with ever greater frequency.  These unbridled emotions then dispose us towards vice, making it easier and more pleasurable.  Music that is rhythm-heavy with a syncopated beat (like modern popular music and rock) for example, tends to stir up the base emotions associated with anger and lust.  Train the body enough in these emotions and acts will follow.  The angry teenager who only wants to listen to his music (he is addicted to the pleasure of feeling angry) and the “bumping and grinding” that sets the scene of the dance club are both caused by the accompanying music.

Evaluating Music

Because of the melody, harmony and rhythm, music has the capacity to bring us pleasure; and not just bodily pleasure.  The melody and harmony can bring pleasure to our souls while the pleasure of rhythm can be felt bodily.  Music that respects this ordering, placing rhythm at the service of the other two, will bring us spiritual pleasure.  This gives us a way in which we might evaluate the quality of the music.  Music that corresponds to the ordering of the soul, when the artistic primacy of melody and harmony above rhythm is respected, is objectively good music.  Classical, folk and liturgical music are all examples of genres in which this hierarchy is respected.

Notice that I have said nothing about the lyrics.  In truth, lyrics serve only, at best, a secondary role.  To say “you don’t listen to the lyrics” doesn’t really change anything.  Even if you don’t understand German, you know that Beethoven’s Ninth is an Ode to Joy.  Much of the music in vogue today, you can’t understand the lyrics anyway.  Regardless, lyrics are meant to serve the other aspects of the music.  They are meant to make clearer the artist’s intent.  In rhythm heavy rock and pop music, the lyrics are supporting the beat and the song would have the same effect (maybe not as deeply) without the lyrics.  This is why Christian rock is an absurdity.  The rhythm is saying one thing and the words another.  There is no due proportion and the result is ugly in the truest sense of the word.

In a world where arguments are ignored(especially when someone might be addicted to the thing you are arguing about), there is value in personal experience.  The easiest way for us to evaluate our own musical choices is to simply observe ourselves when we listen to a particular song.  Where does your mind go and what emotions are stirred in you?  What is it that you like specifically about the song?  Conversely when you think of the “anti-one hit wonders” like Mozart, Bach, Palestrina and the like, what is it you don’t like about their music?  Is it boring?  That might be because you have been feeding on junk food for so long that you need to refresh your musical palate.  With a steady diet of only music that uplifts your soul, you will come to draw pleasure from objectively good music.  Trust me, if I, with the steady diet of crappy music I used to listen to, can do it then so can you.  And you will be that much the better for it.  In fact, society as a whole will be that much better for it.

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.

 

Jealous of Our Ideas

Anthropology, Culture, Moralilty, Relativism, ,

Regardless of whether or not Plato took artistic liberties with the character of Socrates there can be little doubt that the father of modern philosophy was one of history’s world’s greatest teachers.  Great for the content of his teaching, but especially renowned for his manner of teaching.  Many people cannot tell you one thing he taught, but they can tell you how he taught—the so-called Socratic Method that involves leading a person to the truth through a series of leading questions.  The genius of his method was the homage he paid to the irrationality resulting from original sin (even if he probably would deny the existence of original sin itself, believing all vice was solely brought about as a result of ignorance) that causes us to be jealous of our own ideas.  His method of cooperative argument destroys the protective walls we erect around our ideas by giving the appearance that the new ideas are also our own.  I have written in the past on how this method can be very powerful as a tool for evangelization, but today I would like to focus on the effect this seemingly innate jealousy has on us individually and societally.

“My Ideas, Right or Wrong”

Our ideas are true or false based upon whether or not they conform to reality.  Truth is, in essence, a relationship between thought and what really is.  This relational understanding of the truth as both subjective (my idea) and objective (reality) is the key to safeguarding against the jealousy of which we are speaking.  For this jealousy of our own ideas causes each of us to zealously defend our ideas even to the point of blinding ourselves to reality.  When left unchecked it leads to a deeply rooted stubbornness (what St. Thomas calls pertanacia) that refuses to give up its ideas because it would be an admission that the other person is more intelligent than ourselves.  St. Thomas says that this eventually leads to a crass obstinacy that is the mother of all discord in which we are constantly arguing to find at least one other person who can agree with us.

Jealousy for our ideas is manifest in the tendency we have not only to demand agreement in conclusions, but in the manner of arriving at those conclusions.  How often do we find ourselves experiencing jealousy when someone else explains something differently than we would?  We may agree with the conclusions, but we pick apart their explanation and think about how much better we would explain it.  This jealousy blind us by turning our subjective understanding of the truth into the truth itself.  It objectifies the properly subjective.  Coming at the truth from different angles always benefits all of us if we have the humility to allow others to teach us what we already know.  If Our Lord could grow in wisdom and knowledge, coming to the truth he already knew in a new way, then we too can do the same thing.

We apprehend many things, but comprehend nothing.  Because we never know anything fully, we can always grow in knowledge of a thing by coming at it from a fresh angle.  Coming at the truth from different angles always benefits all of us if we have the intellectual humility to allow others to teach us what we think we already know.  If Our Lord could grow in wisdom and knowledge, coming to the truth he already knew in a new way, then we too can do the same thing.

We not only objectify the subjective, but we also “subjectify” the objective.  What I am thinking about here specifically is when reality becomes entirely subjective, what we call relativism.  The self-refuting quality of relativism as “the absolute truth that there is no absolute truth”, notwithstanding, many people accept this into the treasury of their ideas.  In fact, a whole generation has practically grown up with this as a fundamental tenet of their reality.  In response to one of his teachers telling him “you cannot force your beliefs on other people,” my 12-year old son told his teacher that during the next test he was going to cheat because “you cannot force your belief that cheating is wrong on me.”  The only response he got was “touché.”  He had challenged the deeply seeded relativism and lost by way of his opponent conceding.  Welcome to the new world order.

The point is that because of relativism, any attack upon one’s ideas is an attack upon the person.  There is no longer a distinction between an idea and reality because they are in essence the same thing.  The truth is entirely subjective.  In calling into question their ideas, you have threatened their world.  Now not only are they jealously guarding their ideas, they must zealously defend their world.  Wed the jealousy of our own ideas with relativism and their offspring is the “safe-space.”  We laugh at the iGens and Millenials who need “safe-spaces,” calling them soft, but we forget that we have created their environment in which an argument is scary because it is always personal attack.  How can they see it any other way given how they have been formed?

It is this combination of jealousy and relativism that also is the source of the “division in our country” that everyone is so fond of talking about.  Argument, the very thing that held the founders together, is impossible in that climate.  Everyone takes everything as a personal attack and therefore responds in kind.  This cocktail is literally poisoning our society and could, without any danger of hyperbole, lead to its ultimate demise.  Interiorly we all need to lighten up and avoid succumbing to jealousy.  Exteriorly we have to fight relativism and its two daughters, tolerance and indifference, wherever we find them especially as they are being taught to the young.  Perhaps we can learn from Socrates in this regard as well.

Socrates: ” So you believe that each man’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s.”

Protagoras: “That’s correct.”

Socrates: “How do you make a living?”

Protagoras: “I am a teacher”

Socrates: “I find this very puzzling. You admit you earn money teaching, but I cannot imagine what you could possibly teach anyone. After all, you admit that each person’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s. This means that what your students believe is as good as anything you could possibly teach them. Once they learn that each person is the measure of all things, what possible reason would they have to pay you for any further lessons? How can you possibly teach them anything once they learn that their opinions are as true as yours?”

 

 

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.

Changing the Cultural Smell

Culture, Moralilty, Natural Law, , ,

Long before it was fashionable to write books whose titles include profanity, philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote an extended essay On Bullsh*t.  Written in 1986, it is as current as ever, explaining why male cow excrement is a fitting metaphor for how Political Correctness spreads like manure, fertilizing our social landscape while carrying with it a noxious stench.  Thanks to its ubiquitous nature, we grow wearing of pinching our noses and eventually let go allowing it to saturate our minds.  Case in point—the recent scandal of sexual impropriety has shown not only that we have been holding our noses to it, but that we may in fact have forgotten how to breathe properly.  It is in that spirit, that I hope to end the bullsh*t by offering an introduction and application of Frankfurt’s work.

When I was in college, we used to play a card game called BS.  It was like Uno, except, rather than picking up cards when you did not have anything to put down, you would attempt to bluff your way out of it.  If another player thought you were bluffing then he would call BS and whoever was right became the owner of the pile.  The really good players were skilled at bluffing that they were bluffing, calling out the wrong number (which was really the right number), thus making it really hard to know what the player actually believed.

BS and Indifference

Nostalgic as I am for that game, it is relevant because it is illustrative of what real BS is like.  It is not really lying, but a form of bluffing.  It is merely an attempt to represent yourself as a certain kind of person.  Whether you are really that way is secondary at best, really inconsequential—it is only the appearance that matters.  As Frankfurt says, BS is really short of lying because it doesn’t really care what the truth is only how what you say makes you appear to be.  Its indifference to the truth makes it, in a certain sense, worse than lying because at least a lie pays a certain deference to the truth, even if it is still trying to deny it.

BS is not so much that someone gets things wrong, but that they are not really even trying to get things right.  The feigned conviction is not grounded in either a belief that what you are saying is true nor, as with a lie, in the belief that it is not true.  This indifference to the truth is really the essence of BS.  In fact we even have a special word for it—Political Correctness.  BS is at the heart of Political Correctness.  Whether or not I actually believe X is wrong or not is inconsequential—only that I say the things that make me appear to think it is wrong.  If tomorrow the court of public opinion changes then I will spout my BS to the contrary.

Frankfurt uses the example of the man leading a July 4th celebration standing up and giving a patriotic speech.  Whether the man is a patriot or not does not matter, his only goal is to appear patriotic because the setting demands it.  The man may be, and probably is, indifferent.  As the BS spreads so does the indifference.  All of the mouth breathing leads to brains that have been deprived of oxygen and no longer know what or why they believe certain things.  They simply become parrots repeating what someone else has said and keeping up appearances.

The BS Meter

The BS meter is maxed out with the latest sexual impropriety scandal.  For years Hollywood and Washington, as hubs of US power, were also seedbeds of exploitation.  Once a few women had the courage to speak up, the BS starting flowing.  Now to be clear, I am not saying they aren’t telling the truth.  I am sure the overwhelming majority of them are and that there are any number of victims who won’t speak up.  What I am saying is the “outraged” response.  One day Actor X is hitting Twitter saying all the PC things.  He doesn’t believe a word of it because the next day we find out he is just as guilty.  Next day Senator Y is condemning Actor X and it turns out there are pictures of him exploiting another woman.  Just as sure as tomorrow will bring another outing, there will be the accompanying BS.  BS kills conviction and once the next scandal hits, the problem creeps back into the shadows.

How do I know this?  Because it isn’t just Actor X and Senator Y that are guilty of it.  We are all complicit.  We may talk about how horrible sexual exploitation is, but it is all BS.  Take a look at your favorite news web site today and glance at the stories.  You will see a story about Al Franken, Roy Moore, and will also find one about some young female teacher arrested for sexual encounters with a teen boy.  Franken and Moore will pass but each day brings another story of a woman (usually a teacher) being arrested for a rendezvous with a male (underage) student.  The numbers are increasing (latest available data, collected in 2014, showed that a third of nearly 800 student-teacher sex prosecutions involved women) and we pretend it is not a problem.  But rather than outrage at this blatant abuse we click on each story to see the mug shot of the latest Mrs. Robinson with the accompanying Facebook or Instagram “sexy” photo.  Barstool Sports (BS), who just got their own SiriusXM radio station, even came out with a Sex Scandal Starting Lineup of the hottest teachers in 2016.  BS needs to keep the cycle of BS going by appealing to “guys.”  After all, what guy didn’t fantasize being with some hot teacher at some point?  Somehow without any basis in truth, these same guys who have bought BS’s BS are supposed to turn around and not sexually exploit women.  BS is dizzying if nothing else.

The examples grow exponentially.  What about the BS of equality?  Or the BS of freedom?  Or the BS of tolerance?  Even the Church is not immune with the BS masquerading as ecumenism.  BS has a funny way of infecting an entire culture.

In our collegiate game of BS there was only one way to win.  Once you got down to one card the other players would always call BS to keep you from winning.  The only way you could win is if you told the truth—that is you actually had the next card in the sequence.  It is only the truth that can set us free from cloud of BS and in the midst of a cultural crisis we as Catholics have a unique gift to offer the world.  We must preach the Good News of who we are as men and women, equal and not, and who we are in light of Christ.  Christ came so we would not have to deal with BS any longer.

The Boredom of Heaven

Culture, Divine Mercy, Heaven, Last Things

Perhaps it is because I am bald, but I cringe at the theological hair splitting that often goes on in the Church.  It is not just “professional” theologians that are guilty of this, but priests and ordinary lay folks as well.  Don’t get me wrong— I think making distinctions, defining your terms and the like are very important to coming to understand the truth.  But it is when the split hair itself becomes the answer that I feel the shiver in my spine.  There are two questions that immediately come to mind.  I will save the second for another time, but in today’s post I would like to look at the first—“how can a loving God send people to hell?”

To ask it is almost to reflexively answer it—“God does not send anyone to hell.  People choose hell.”  In most cases that is sufficient for the prosecution to rest.  But the better prepared interlocutor will demand a cross-examination.  In the parable of the sheep and the goats it certainly seems as if the wicked are being sent by God to “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt 25:41).  Even though it may not fit with the image of God we are trying to portray, the fact of the matter is that there are simply too many references to divine judgment to avoid the conclusion that God sends some people to hell.  There must be a more tactful answer.

Now, I have made the reader cringe.  God becomes not Father but harsh Judge, the exact image you are trying to overcome with your hair splitting answer.  The reflexive answer to the question really only serves to perpetuate two common misconceptions about heaven; misconceptions that are often stumbling blocks to our desire for Heaven.

Heaven May Not Be What You Think It Is

The first delusion embedded in both the question and the answer is that Heaven is a reward for being good and hell a punishment for being bad.  But that is not true.  Heaven is the (super)natural consequence of being holy.  Sure, everyone in Heaven is good, but only because they are holy.  No amount of goodness can make us holy, even though holiness makes us good.  The author to the Letter to the Hebrews says “without holiness no one will see God” (Heb 12:14).

One of the reasons why someone like Aristotle could only get so far in his thinking about God was that he could not conceive of a way for the gods and men to be friends.  Friendship can only occur between equals and since there was a great chasm between the two, while men might placate the gods, they could never enjoy their friendship.  What Aristotle didn’t consider is that the real God was Love and desired nothing more than to be friends with each man.  To make that happen, He would first become equals with us so that we might become equals with Him.

God makes us equals with Himself by filling us with the Divine life, what St. Peter calls becoming “partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4).  Catholics call it sanctifying grace or the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Whatever you call it, it is the only thing which makes friendship with God possible.  We really must be “like God,” but only on His terms and not our own.

The problem with the answer is that it only feeds the “faith vs works” controversy.  Holiness is bigger than either faith or works.  It is accepting the invitation of friendship with God and then having that friendship grow.  This is why the authors of the New Testament repeatedly stress the necessity of Baptism and all the great missionary saints like St. Peter Claver saw it as their mission to enflame a desire for baptism in the natives (or in the case of St. Peter Claver, slaves) and then baptize them.  Baptism is the only sure way we know of to become friends with God.

Heaven, then properly understood, is the culmination of a lifetime friendship with God.  This leads us to the second delusion veiled in the question and answer and that is the tendency to see Heaven as the place where you finally get everything you ever wanted.  But Heaven is the place where you get the One Thing you really wanted—God.  Heaven is only heaven because God is there.  It is not a collection of the best things of earth.  There may be many other things there, but it is only God that matters.  All of the other things that are there are there simply to increase the enjoyment of Him.

Hell is hell because God is not there.  It may have many other things, but once God is removed their emptiness becomes apparent.  That is why the pain of loss, that is rejection of the free invitation to friendship, is considered to be the greatest pain of hell.  There is a diabolical corollary to the divine maxim “seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you”—“seek ye first all these things and the Kingdom of God will be forfeit unto  you.”

Medieval art often presented Heaven with cherubs playing harps on clouds.  For those operating under our two embedded assumptions this image of Heaven is not awe-full, but awfully boring.  While it remains just an artistic representation, these images contain a truth that Heaven is about being with God and nothing else.  For those who are interested in that sort of thing then the experience will be far beyond what we could possibly image (c.f. 1 Cor 2:9).  But for the worldly man it would seem boring.  He would soon get weary of heaven because he would continue to hear only about one subject which he has no real interest in hearing about.

Increasing the Desire for Heaven

This is one of the reasons Catholics have a decided advantage thanks to the Mass.  Mass really is training for Heaven.  It is Heaven with a Sacramental veil over it.  If you love the Mass then you will love heaven.  If you don’t love the Mass, then get to work on growing in love with it.  Pray for this singular grace and persevere in that prayer.  As Blessed John Henry Newman says, “‘Enter into the joy of thy Lord’ will sit with us the same way ‘Let us pray’ does now.”

Although the conclusion might not seem obvious at first based on what we have said, it is most certain that God “sends” people to hell because hell is not really the worst thing that can happen to someone.  The worst thing that can happen to a man who is not holy is to go to heaven.  Newman said, “Heaven would be hell to an irreligious man.”  Heaven is a place of happiness only for someone who is holy.  Otherwise it would be a place of eternal torment.  God is “a consuming fire” that burns hotter than the fires of hell.  Only those who have been clothed with grace can withstand and enjoy the heat of His Presence.  The thicker the cloak, the closer one gets.  That is why God does not cease to be merciful even to those in hell.  Returning to Newman once more: “even supposing a man of unholy life were allowed to enter heaven, he would not be happy there; so that it would be no mercy to permit him to enter.”

Catholic Culture and the Filet-o-Fish Sandwich

Culture, Eucharist, Evangelization, Sacraments, Saints, Spiritual Life

The Bishops of England and Wales recently made a change to their liturgical calendar, effective the first Sunday of Advent, that added back to the calendar two Holy Days of Obligation—Epiphany and Ascension Thursday.  While this decision obviously only effects those Catholics in England and Wales, their decision is remarkable because it is counter to a trend that has plagued the Church since the Second Vatican Council that has seen the reduction of Liturgical Feasts of Obligation.  One can hope that this will spur other Episcopal Conferences to follow suit.

The Code of Canon Law (1246) has this to say about Holy Days of Obligation:

  • Sunday is the day on which the paschal mystery is celebrated in light of the apostolic tradition and is to be observed as the foremost holy day of obligation in the universal Church. Also to be observed are the day of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Epiphany, the Ascension and the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, Holy Mary Mother of God and her Immaculate Conception and Assumption, Saint Joseph, the Apostles Saints Peter and Paul, and finally, All Saints.
  • However, the conference of bishops can abolish certain holy days of obligation or transfer them to a Sunday with prior approval of the Apostolic See.

In Advent of 1991, the NCCB of the United States (now known as the USCCB) issued a general decree defining the Holy Days of Obligation (in addition to all Sundays throughout the year) for Latin rite Catholics in the US as follows:

  • January 1, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
  • Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter, the solemnity of the Ascension
  • August 15, the solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
  • November 1, the solemnity of All Saints
  • December 8, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
  • December 25, the solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Whenever (1), (3) or (4) fall on a Saturday or on a Monday, the precept to attend Mass is abrogated.  The Feast of the Ascension, in most dioceses in the US, has been moved to the following Sunday, effectively reducing the number of feasts of obligation from ten to five.

Plummeting Mass Attendance

When faith is in decline, the power of binding and loosing enables the shepherds of the Church to make the practice of the Faith “easier.”  Although this is often abused (I will avoid that rabbit hole here), the shepherds may alter Church disciplines in order to keep the sheep from falling to grave sin.  Seeing regular Mass attendance drop precipitously from 55% to 41% in the years from 1965 to 1990, the Bishops thought that by reducing the obligation, it might keep at least some from committing the serious sin of missing Mass.

That this approach proved ineffective seems obvious, especially since regular Mass attendance dropped to 22% in 2016.  Likely, it had the opposite effect by contributing to it.  Removing some obligations is always a danger because it challenges all obligations, especially when their removal goes unexplained.  Perhaps, the thinking goes, if those days really weren’t obligatory, then the ones they say are obligatory now aren’t either.  After all, one can still be “spiritual” without religious obligation.

The crisis in Mass attendance was not really the problem, but merely a symptom of a larger disease that the Doctors of the Church failed to properly diagnose.  While the reasons are legion, the issue was the death of Catholic culture.  There may have been some compromises with the surrounding culture, but Catholics always stood out because of their religious practices. Think of the Catholic practice of no meat on Fridays throughout the year (another one that has been done away with) and how restaurants made special accommodations to win Catholic patronage.  Once that practice was no longer obligatory even the meat fasts of Fridays in Lent went ignored.  The point is that these practices, even when done with less than pure intentions, bind Catholics together.

The point is that there can be no culture without cult so that if you take away from the liturgical life of the Catholics, you will most assuredly do harm to the sheepfold.  It is not only, or even primarily, for the natural reason that it creates, for lack of a better term, Catholic “identity.”  It is also for the supernatural reason of Communion.  The more often the believers come together and receive life from the Altar of Sacrifice, the closer they will be to Jesus.  The closer they are to Jesus, the closer they will be to one another.  The closer they are to one another, the greater their witness to the world.  The Eucharist is like the nucleus of a primordial atom drawing each negatively charged man to Itself.

When faith is in decline you should increase the obligations, not reduce them.  Fear of hell, while imperfect motivation, can still keep you from hell.  Someone may come to Mass out of obligation, but Our Lord will not be outdone in generosity giving actual graces to those present to receive Him more purely.  There are always those who will go to Mass regardless of whether it is a Holy Day of Obligation, but there are also a great number who will only go because it is.

Catholic culture has to be built from the ground up and is something that needs to be instilled in the young.  I find it very strange that Catholic schools all treat the few Holy Days of Obligation as “regular” days, instead of true holydays.  Should they really celebrate Labor Day while simultaneously demanding work from students on the day when we celebrate all those “who from their Labor rest?”  Going to Catholic school in the 1980s was certainly a confusing time, but one thing they always did right was give us off from school on all the Holy Days of Obligation.  That has always stuck with me and left me with the awareness that these days were no ordinary days.

The Fullness of Time

This leads to one further point that could come under the heading of unintended consequences.  One of the great heresies of modern times is compartmentalization, that is creating a “wall of separation” between Church and the rest of life.  God can have Sunday (even if only for an hour) but the rest is mine.  The Incarnation made it glaringly obvious that God is with us, not just on Sundays, but all days.  The Son came in the “fullness of time” not just because everything was Providentially ready for His arrival, but also because when time and eternity meets in His Person time is filled.  This is part of the reason the Church celebrates Mass not just on Sundays, but every day.

If you really believe that God is actively participating in every moment at every time, you will reject compartmentalization.  The great Christian feasts mark those moments in history when God stepped into the ordinary.  They not only mark them, but make them present.  It brings God into the humdrum, or rather, shows that there really is no humdrum.  It shows them to be real, as in really,really real and not just something relegated to the past.  Take away these celebrations and you move God to the periphery.  Move Ascension Thursday to Sunday and you make it nearly impossible to fully prepare for your share in Pentecost.  Pentecost was not a single event, but one that unfolds throughout time and also at specific times on each Pentecost Sunday.  The Apostles and Our Lady taught us how to prepare for it by nine days of prayer.  Seven days may be more convenient, but it isn’t how it’s supposed to be done.  It makes it all seem manufactured (work of man) and just ceremonial rather than truly liturgical (work of God).

Likewise with Epiphany—we complain about keeping Christ in Christmas, but meanwhile we don’t keep Christmas in Christmas.  Want to win back Christmas from the clutches of commercialization, restore Epiphany to its rightful place in the calendar.

Please God that all the Bishops will follow those of England and Wales and reinstate all the Holy Days of Obligation!