A recent campaign ad that Democrats have been running shows a Republican congressman interrupting a man in his bedroom watching porn threatening to make it illegal. I would not suggest that you subject yourself to the ad because it is disgusting, but it is at least worth mentioning it because it is a sign of just how decadent our culture has become. The problem isn’t just that the Democrats are unfaltering promoters of perversion, but also the fact that Republicans’ response was a denial that they wanted to restrict access to pornography to adults.
If there is one thing that both sides agree on, it is the fact that tolerance is a positive good rather than a necessary evil. In order to live in society and get along with everyone, we need to tolerate certain things. True enough, provided that it doesn’t become a masquerade for neutrality. And in truth, it has become just that. Some of the more Scholastically minded among us will even say that St Thomas supports this position. It is useful to go directly to the Angelic Doctor to shine some light on the issue of tolerance especially because it touches close to the issue at hand.
St. Thomas on Tolerance
In ST II-II q. 10, a. 11, St Thomas says “…those who are in authority, rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain greater evils be incurred: thus Augustine says (De Ordine ii.4): ‘If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust.’” His point is that the governing authority will tolerate certain things because outlawing them will create more disorder than the order that will come about by leaving them in place. Citing Augustine’s tract on order, he says that some societies will tolerate prostitutes because it will lead to greater evils than outlawing it altogether.
In his Treatise on Law, Aquinas explains further that “The purpose of human law is to lead men to virtue, not suddenly, but gradually. Wherefore it does not lay upon the multitude of imperfect men the burdens of those who are already virtuous, that they should abstain from all evil. Otherwise these imperfect ones, being unable to bear such precepts, would break out into yet greater evils…” Laws in a certain sense then ought to be catered to the character of the populace and bear a certain proportionality. To demand too high a level of virtue creates a certain impossibility of living up to it and increases criminality.
It would seem then that St. Thomas would look at our sexual libertine culture and advocate for tolerating pornography because outlawing it would go far beyond our collective virtue. The problem with this is that it is only reading half of what he said. You don’t just look at the level of virtue, but also “the greater evils” that will come about when you make demands beyond the average virtue level. It wasn’t too long ago in the “Wild West” that greed, rage and a lust for revenge led to murder rates that were more than twice the most violent cities of today. Does that mean they should not have had laws against murder because it was beyond the virtue of the average person? Because law is an ordinance of reason for the common good of the society, tolerance must always refer back to the common good.
The Primary Question for Tolerance
The question of virtue of the citizenry is secondary. What is primary is enumerating the “greater evils” that are to be brought about by choosing to outlaw a given evil. There are a plethora of evils attached to it: related to the common good there is the harm done to marriage and the family, and the fact that it is linked to sexual aggression . It also constitutes a growing public health crisis because of its addictive nature and its neuroplastic effects on the brain. There is a great paper summarizing all the scientific findings of the damage porn does to society and individuals here. What exactly are the evils that we are avoiding in tolerating it and how do they pass the proportionality test?
Tolerating evil never works for very long. Social evils always move from tolerance to acceptance to promotion. It is far easier to head it off while it is in the tolerance stage than to wait until it gets to the later stages. God has baked this principle into our social reality so that we must make a stand on our convictions. That is why tolerance, according to Chesteron, “ is the virtue of the man without convictions.” If we are convicted that pornography is wrong, then we cannot merely tolerate it but must take a stand both personally and politically. Abusing the principles of St Thomas will only lead to more self-abuse. We must lobby to outlaw it.
In his Poverty of Philosophy, Karl Marx attacked eternal truths and natural law as nothing more than constructs of the bourgeoisie to repress the working class. This has powered the campaign of his intellectual progeny to take everything that is natural and paint it as a “social construct” that fuels the engine of repression. The most recent, and perhaps the most pernicious example of this is gender. By labeling it as a social construct, all natural differences between the sexes, including complementarity, explained away as effects of changing social conditions. All that needs to be done is to construct the right social conditions and equality and androgyny will usher in a sexual utopia.
WHO Should We Listen To?
In combating the social contagion of transgenderism, we must first irradicate the mind virus that leads to it. Ironically, this global mind virus has spread even into the World Health Organization who defines gender as a social construct in this way:
Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviors and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time. Gender is hierarchical and produces inequalities that intersect with other social and economic inequalities…Gender interacts with but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones and reproductive organs… Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.
Notice first the circular nature of the experts’ definition. They say it “interacts” with sex but is different than sex. Its definition is teaming with sexual terms—“women, men, girls, and boys” Those terms are only meaningful in relation to each other. A women is a human being whose body is ordered towards the gestation of new life while a man is human being whose body is ordered towards the gestation of new life in another. Girls and boys are merely immature versions of those two. No amount of verbal gymnastics of degrading a woman by reducing her to her function as a “birthing person” will change this inherent sexual relationality. The fact that WHO advocates for transition “treatment” modalities such as hormones and surgery which make the person “look” more like the opposite sex also betrays the fact gender and sex are inseparable. Is it really a social construct that men have beards and women have breasts? If it is not, then why would it be necessary for a woman to “transition” to a man physically? If gender and sex can be different, then why all the effort to match them up? If gender identity is “person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender”, then why is it necessary to touch the external at all?
Why We Shouldn’t Give Them a Hearing
Once we grasp that the purpose of labeling gender a social construct is to apply the magical Marxian dialectic to it, then we are more apt to defend it in a way that combats this directly. We need to actively reaffirm what is natural. First there is the fact that we are social creatures which means that society, rather than being a vehicle of oppression is a necessary element of our fulfillment. Boys and girls are first formed in masculinity and femininity (and their interaction with each other) in the social setting of the family. They learn how they have a unique capacity for self-giving based on their sex and they enter into society as a whole and form families of their own in order to fulfill this capacity. A further element that must be combated is the overt dualism that animates most people’s thinking. Because we are a body/soul composite, the inner experience can never be divorced from the outer reality. Any attempt to do so ultimately leads to a disintegration of the person which manifests itself externally in the mutilation of the body. Hylomorphism means that essentially everything we consciously experience has its foundation in material reality We might imagine something like a unicorn, but that image must come from our experience in the real world of either a picture we have seen of a unicorn (from someone else’s imagination) or a mixture of our own images of a white horse with a horn. Likewise we might imagine what it was like to be Louis XVI, but could never fully imagine what he felt like when he was about to be guillotined. It is simply outside of our experience. The philosopher Thomas Nagel has an essay entitled What Is It Like to be a Bat?in which he gives a deeper explanation of this limitation of consciousness in relation to the “inner” experience of other beings.
The point is that a man feeling like a woman is by definition outside of his range of experience. He only has experience of being a man who feels like a woman (which is by definition still a man). He may know what it feels like to be confused, but he is confused as a man. How can a man struggling with gender dysphoria know that what he is experiencing is “feeling like a woman”? Doesn’t someone have to be a woman to feel like a woman? How does he know that what he feels like is exactly what a man should feels like? This is why he must go to the cultural priests (psychologists) and receive their blessing that his feelings are authentic.
The fact that an expert must authenticate the experience returns us back to the fundamental truth that transgenderism is ultimately a mental construct by those who are seeking to eliminate all hierarchies by destroying nature itself. It is designed to power the latest instance of the Marxist dialectic. This is not to trivialize the experience of those who suffer from gender dysphoria but to discredit the so-called experts who are willing to sacrifice them to their ideology.
As Moses departed from the people of Israel, he promised that God would send another prophet just like him (Dt 18:15). This prophet would not only lead them into the True Promised Land, but would give them a new law. So the Jews were constantly on the lookout for this “new Moses” and the early Church repeatedly preached Jesus as the Mosaic prophet they were looking for (c.f. Acts 3:22, 7:37). It is no surprise then that Our Lord, just after beginning His public ministry in Matthew’s gospel (addressed to the Jews), climbs a mountain and delivers the Sermon on the Mount. For just like Moses who had to climb Mount Sinai to bring the law from God down to the people, the new Moses, God Himself, speaks directly from the mountain about the Law.
Chronologically and culturally removed from the Sermon on the Mount, it is often confusing for us when the Bible speaks of “the Law”. What exactly does that mean and, more specifically, what does it mean when Our Lord tells those gathered that “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Mt 5:17)?
The Old Law
In his treatise on Law in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas enumerates three kinds of precepts of the Old Law: moral, ceremonial, and judicial. By placing all of the Old Law within these three broad categories, we are able to better understand both our relationship to the law and the manner in which Christ can say that He did not abolish it but came to fulfill.
When most people think of the “Old Law” the Ten Commandments immediately come to mind. It serves as the foundation for all the moral precepts contained within the Old Law. The Decalogue is in a certain sense superimposed upon the Natural Law, making the precepts of the Natural Law specific. Some of the precepts are easily discernible based on the natural law—“thou shall not kill…thou shall not bear false witness”. Other precepts require wisdom and reflection such as “thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” Still others, especially those of the first tablet require Divine instruction. Nevertheless, they do all relate to what can be known from the natural law.
Second, there are the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law. These pertain to Divine Worship. This would include things like sacrifices, sacred things such as the tabernacle, Old Testament “sacraments” such as Seder Meals and circumcision, and observances that distinguished them as worshippers of the True God (not eating pork, etc.).
Finally, there is judicial law. Judicial law is similar to civil law in that it determines the way that a People is governed. It maintains the sovereignty of the People, it governs relations within the People, and governs how citizens interact with non-citizens. Much of the book of Leviticus lays out in detail how Israel is to govern itself in these areas. Israel was to be a “light to the Gentiles” but must remain a distinct People because “salvation comes from the Jews.”
Fulfillment of the Law
With three types or precepts of the Old Law, there are also three ways in which Christ fulfilled them. When we speak of “fulfillment” we must first grasp intention. The moral precepts, reflected in the Ten Commandments, are the direct intention of God with respect to how we are to relate to Him (1st-3rd Commandment) and to each other (4th-10th Commandment). As St. Thomas says, there can only be dispensation of the law when the letter of the law frustrates the intention of the Lawgiver. Therefore, there is no abrogation of the moral precepts of the Old Law.
Christ, nevertheless, fulfills the moral precepts in Himself. He perfectly follows the moral law. In so doing, He wins graces for His followers such that they are empowered to do the same thing. It is as if He gives us the power to “re-read” the Decalogue not in terms of rules but as a prophecy. “in Christ you shall not make false idols…in Christ you shall not covet your neighbor’s goods” etc.
Christ likewise fulfilled all the ceremonial precepts. The purpose of the ceremonial precepts was to prefigure and act as a foreshadowing of the mystery of Christ. All of the sacrifices find their meaning and fulfillment in His sacrifice on the Cross. He is the true tabernacle. Baptism becomes the “new” circumcision. All dietary laws are abrogated because the Bread of Life has become man’s true food.
The judicial precepts had as their purpose setting apart the Jews for the sake of the Messiah. In Christ there is no distinction between Gentile and Jew so that the judicial precepts are no longer binding (Heb 7:12). The catholicity of the New Israel means that the theodicy of the Old Israel has ended and the principles of the New Covenant can guide men in civil life, regardless of the form of government they take. Church and State work together, each within its respective sphere, to bring men to salvation, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s” (Mk 12:17).
We see then how Christ came not to abolish but to fulfill the Law. He fulfills the moral, ceremonial, and judicial precepts of the Law, but each in a unique way. The moral by empowering men to live according to God’s law. The ceremonial by giving us Himself on the Cross and through the Sacraments. And the judicial precepts through the Church.
Over the past 40 years, the median age of men and women getting married in the US has risen steeply. Catholics, it seems, are no different in this regard. A Pew Research Center study in 2014 found that only 14% of Catholics between the ages of 18-29 were married. Marrying at a much later age has become the “new normal”. Statistics are helpful, but they do not answer the most important question as to whether this is a good thing or not. The answer, not surprisingly, is a resounding “No”.
To see why this question is answered in the negative, we must first make the distinction between what is normal and what is natural. Normality expresses to what degree a man conforms to a cultural norm. These norms are always relative to the culture in which they are established. In the best of all possible worlds, they are also relative to what is natural. It is when the natural and the normal coincide that the behavior in question leads to true flourishing and happiness (in the fullest sense). While it may be normal to get married older, it is questionable whether it conforms to what is natural.
A Natural Time to Get Married?
Marriage in itself is natural for the human person, but the question is whether the nature of marriage itself demands that the spouses wait until they are older to marry. To address this question we must first ask how we determine what is natural.
One way that we can do this is by looking at the biological reality of the human body. What I mean by this can be best illustrated by an example. We know that, despite being deeply immersed in a Freudian-Kinseyan paradigm, children are not sexual beings. If they were, then they would develop sexual capacities before the normal age of puberty (12-16). This is why, as I have written previously, something like Drag Queen Story Hour is an abuse of childhood.
While we might readily admit that biology reveals the grievous nature of sexualizing children, we tend to make a the same error when it comes to marriage and sexual development. Is it reasonable to think that God made men and women sexually mature by their late teens and early 20s only to have them enter a holding pattern for up to a decade? Perhaps you could say yes, except for the fact that they also experience their strongest libido at the same time.
Sexual desire is the strongest desire we experience because it is meant to fuel the courage to make the necessary gift of self necessary for marriage and family life. It is at its strongest at such an early age because it is meant to propel the man and woman out from their parents so as to become parents themselves. The problem is that we now tell young adults that, despite the fact that they experience strong sexual desire, they are too young for marriage. There is the obvious disconnect then between God’s design and lived reality.
With these considerations in mind, it becomes clear that there is something contra-natural about waiting so long to get married. As mentioned, marriage in and of itself at any age is natural so we cannot say it is against nature. It does however tend towards being contrary to the nature of marriage itself, especially because it is the foundation of the Family. Rather than making it possible to be “fruitful and multiply” it contributes to what would more accurately be called the modern “fruitful and maintain” paradigm. Again to be clear, I am not saying there is anything wrong with waiting to marry in individual cases, but in the general trend and attitude towards the later marriages.
Marriage as a Life Accesory
Once we are able to grasp that younger marriages conform with God’s design for marriage, we can begin to ask why many people fail to see this. To say that “Marriage is natural” means that it is one of the things that fulfills our nature (i.e. become virtuous). This fulfillment comes not just because we biologically passed on our genes, but because Marriage and the Family are foundational for our moral growth. The Family is a school of virtue, not just for children, but for the man and woman as both husband and wife and then father and mother.
Our culture, on the other hand, treats marriage as if it is merely an add-on. The professional has taken precedence over the personal. Marriage is not even considered until a certain level of professional success is achieved. The person trains himself to link fulfilment with professional achievement. They also become very set in their ways and their capacity for self-giving in marriage and family is diminished. We should expect the age to continue to increase unless a fundamental shift in attitude occurs. The longer the person waits, the less they are “ready” for marriage.
This putting of the occupational cart before the conjugal horse fails to acknowledge that, as Pope St. John Paul II pointed out, the communion of persons in marriage is a fundamental human good upon which all human goods are built (Veritatis Splendor 14). To add it into an already settled life is to risk disintegration because the true accessories have been placed before the essential. Professional decisions are for the sake of supporting a family. Rather than seeing education and careers as means to supporting a spouse and family, they have become competitors. The attitude is “once I go to school and get a job, then I will think about marriage” rather than “I am choosing to be trained in this profession because it will allow me to take care of my family.” And this attitude is encouraged even by well-meaning Catholics.
In his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, St. Thomas makes the observation that when Aristotle reckons that “art imitates nature,” he means that man, because he is an intellectual creature, can make things that help him fulfill his nature. For example, a beaver builds a dam by instinct, while man uses his reason to fashion a house. But it doesn’t just pertain to servile arts like building a house, but fine arts like making a movie or writing a book. But because man is also fallen, he can also use those same arts to distort and do harm to his nature. In this way we might say that, in addition to imitating nature, “art forms nature.”
Examples abound on how this uniquely human capacity is abused, but there is one way that has a profound effect in our age. The aforementioned storytelling arts use the inherent power of storytelling to activate wonder and convey important truths about what it means to be human. One way in which this art abuses our nature has been covered previously regarding “Drag Queen Story Hour.” While this is still somewhat rare, thee is a more common abuse of story that may not even be on our radar at first—it wasn’t on mine until a friend of mine pointed it out.
Tolerating Plot Holes
We have all seen movies in which there are both subtle and gigantic plot holes. Sometimes they are too much and we turn off the movie, but most of the time we simply tolerate them for the sake of moving the plot along. We might think that the producers of the movies are simply lazy in not tying up loose ends, but in truth we should expect them when the story presents a falsehood about human life. The problem is that if we watch enough movies, then we eventually learn to overlook them. We become, in a very real sense, conditioned to overlook them—not just in the movies but in the rest of life as well. Point of evidence is the current Covid crisis which is riddled with plot holes that the majority of people of good will simply accept.
More on this particular example in a moment, but there is something further here that needs to be pointed out. We accept the plot holes for the sake of the plot and to move the story along. But if we look at it from the perspective of the producer, he has a plot in mind and includes the plot holes in order to make his story fit together. In a certain sense then we can say that the plot holes actually reveal the plot and the intention of the producer.
This principle is important because it is applies to the incongruous in real life as well. We will usually have one of two tendencies; to overlook the plot hole completely or to point out that it makes no sense and then, like the fist tendency, simply move on. The point though is that it makes perfect sense because it moves the story along. In other words, if we pay close attention to the incongruities rather than dismissing or mocking them, the plot that the artist is advancing will come into relief.
Focusing on the plot holes themselves then will enable us to see through the agenda of those who insert them into reality. These holes may look different in the various arenas of public life, but the principle is always the same. If we consider three examples from the fields of morality, science and politics then we can learn how to see the plot holes for what they really are.
Plot Holes in the Moral Realm
Any number of examples could have been chosen to demonstrate moral plot holes, but a recent one from Pope Francis is particularly helpful here. In a documentary that aired in October, the Holy Father was quoted as saying that “we have to create a civil union law.” While not a tacit acceptance of gay marriage (few things, unfortunately, are tacit with Pope Francis), the comment caused an uproar because he was suggesting that the civil realm should create space for gay couples.
Let us assume that the Holy Father’s “plot” is promotion of the Gospel and true human thriving in this world so as to be residents of the next. From within that context we would say marriage is a fundamental human good that helps to fulfill human nature. But not any “union” between two people will do, but only one that is in accord with nature. In short, as Catholics, we know that only monogamous marriage between a man and a woman leads to authentic happiness. Any other domestic arrangement leads away from this. The laws and the practices of the Church herself are reflective of this awareness. The Church teaches what she does about marriage because she knows that it is a good thing for those involved to act according to nature.
To suggest that this is just a “Church law” or only binding on Catholics with no effect in the civil realm creates a giant plot hole. No law should be made to protect or promote something that we know will ultimately lead to unhappiness. By suggesting that there should be some civil law, the Holy Father is really expressing that he doesn’t believe that marriage is a true human good.
Pope Francis in choosing the name Francis has seen his role as one who would reform the Church. He has been open about this from the beginning of his pontificate. Applying our principle of looking along the plot hole (at this and many of his other ones), we can discern what that reform consists in. The Holy Father is attempting to reform the Church, not according the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of the age. The plot holes reveal the plot.
Plot Holes in the Scientific Realm
Plot holes in the scientific realm are usually more difficult to discern for the layman, but usually become apparent once you check assumptions. When a scientific theory is full of unsubstantiated claims that are labeled as “assumptions” the plot of the Scientists are unmistakable.
A good example of this is what we is commonly referred to as the Big Bang Theory. This theory claims that the universe began as a dense ball of primordial matter that exploded and over billions of years organized into the universe that we observe today. This cosmology is accepted as scientific fact, but once we pull back the curtain we find that it rests on many untested and untestable assumptions. There is a growing gap between observation and theory and in order to advance the plot, several plot holes needed to be introduced. According to Big Bang Cosmologists, ~95% of the universe is composed of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The problem is that these hypothetical entities have never been observed and they can’t be measured. Instead they are theoretical constructs that hold the Big Bang Universe and its accompanying theory together. You can read more about these two things elsewhere, but the point is that in order to use the theory to explain what we observe in the universe, physicists had to make up an unobservable “force”. As one physicist observed,
Big bang theory relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities – things that we have never observed. Inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent. Without them, there would be fatal contradictions between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory…the big bang theory can’t survive without these fudge factors.
Eric Lerner, “Bucking the Big Bang”, New Scientist
The point is that we hold as scientific fact a theory that only explains 5% of what we observe in the universe.
Viewed as plot holes, these assumptions reveal that Big Bang Cosmology is not about the science but about scientism and the ability to explain natural phenomena using only natural causes. It is an attempt to discredit the Genesis account of creation and theology and create an atheology that is completely devoid of God. It is essentially the theory of Evolution on a cosmic scale. The plot holes reveal the plot.
Plot Holes in the Political Realm
As is becoming increasingly obvious, the political realm is not devoid of plot holes either. In fact one could say that the plot holes in this arena of life will be the way in which 2020 is best remembered. Covid-19 itself is not a plot hole, but the way in which it has been managed has revealed the plot holes in reality. If we examine them carefully then we can come to see the plot more clearly.
We will discuss the vaccine some time in the near future, but the manner in which masks, social distancing and closures have been implemented have represented serious plot holes because of their lack of consistency and scientific justification. I already discussed this with relation to masks, but it also applies to social distancing. This has never been tried before and it is based on a simulation. Yes, you read that right, not an experiment, but a simulation. Drs. Jay Richards and William Briggs cover this in their book Price of Panicin detail, but in short the CDC went with recommendations from this paper in which found that social distancing would “yield local defenses against a highly virulent strain” in the absence of effective treatment. The “science” behind it was simple; you create a model to simulate an environment in which closing schools and implementing social distance measures lower the rate of infection and then you test to see if the rate is in fact lower. Besides proving that you are a good programmer, this also, surprisingly proved that social distancing worked. The fact that it is a simulated environment and not a real one should have no bearing on our decisions, right? This is, after all, Science. No matter anyway because we now have effective treatment and thus no more need for social distancing, right?
Once we view these inconsistencies as plot holes related to the plot, we can see that there are powers that be that have chosen not to waste a good crisis and to implement their grand plot—The Great Reset—which we will discuss in the coming weeks. The plot holes reveal the plot.
In conclusion, we might be willing to tolerate plot holes in our movies, but we should never overlook them in real life. If we do, we may find that we are caught up in someone else’s story for how the world should be. The plot holes reveal the plot.
We have been hearing for decades that we are living in a post-Christian society. This has mostly been a way to describe the fact that Christian values have been in decline. But Christianity has still been the dominant religion; dominant, that is, until the Covid-19 crisis hit. The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in our society marked the official changing of the guard. While we have been hearing about the emergence of a post-Christian society for decades, Christianity was still the dominant religion. No longer is this true, however. Christianity has been toppled and replaced by a new Gnosticism that we call Science.
To be clear, the issue is not against science per se, but what is more accurately described as religion masquerading as science. After all, as Aquinas says “He who neglects the experimental order in natural science falls into error” in all aspects of knowledge. To solve the Covid-19 crisis, natural science plays a necessary, although not sufficient, role. The peddlers of the new religion, would have us believe that it is sufficient because all we need to do is “trust the science.” We are saved by faith, not in Christ, but in Science.
The New Priesthood
Nor should we be quick to dismiss expert opinion. But expert opinion is not fact, it still must be based on solid reasoning. The problem is that expert opinion is often treated like dogmatic truth because the Scientific Elite are the new priests. Based on their secret knowledge that only “experts” such as themselves can understand, they dictate religious dogma. Spoken word becomes fact. Thus says the Scientist—“Masks don’t work” and it is so. Thus says the Scientist two months later—“Masks do work” and it is so. The Shepherds have spoken and the Sheeple must follow suit. Laws are made to punish heretics who dare to question the spoken word.
This, by the way, is why masks have elicited such a strong response. The High Priest initially said that they don’t work. Then he spoke again saying they did and that the Priests lied because they were worried about a shortage. But if a person unapologetically lies once, how do you know they are telling the truth now? Actually, a leading Priest at Johns Hopkins says, it wasn’t lying but that “[A]t first, researchers and scientists did not know how necessary mask wearing would be among the general public. Now we are aware that wearing masks is an effective way to help prevent spread of this coronavirus” (Emphasis added). Given the timeframe and the rather dramatic shift from no-mask to mask, where did this awareness come from? Changing your mind is fine. But changing your mind without a change in the data is based not on science, but fiat. If you search prior to the dogmatic declaration, scientific opinion for the most part deemed them ineffective. The fact is that the Priests exercised their hidden knowledge (because there was no new data) and declared them so. I would probably be clothed in a scarlet mask for this statement alone, but let me go a little further as a statistician and speak about what a reasonable approach to this question would look like.
The Statistician Speaks
First, proving a negative is extremely difficult. To conclusively say “masks don’t work” is a practical impossibility. Having said that, there is little data to suggest that they do work (a complete summary that is thoroughly documented can be found here). There have been studies in the last few months that have suggested they might, but these are inconclusive at best. They are all very poorly done because they are being done in the midst of the crisis. To study the problem properly you need to set up what would be something akin to a clinical trial in which you had a placebo group to compare it to. But you also have the problem that mask usage is almost certainly confounded with social distancing. Is social distancing the thing that helps, or is it masks, or is it both? You’d have to set up a study to separate them. Secondly, not all masks are created the same or are equally effective.
Carnegie Mellon tracks (among many other things) mask compliance here. Notice that many places are in the high 80ish% for compliance and yet “cases” continue to increase in all of those areas. If any intervention works, then you should expect the slope of the line of increase to decrease (“flatten the curve”). But the data suggests that the lines are actually steeper. For example, see the plot below of my home state of North Carolina which instituted a Mask Mandate on June 26th and has had above an 85% mask compliance rate (currently 91%). North Carolina is far from unique in this regard and you can find similar data for all your favorite states.
If we were true to “Science” we would look at this medical intervention and determine that it does not work. A drug company running a clinical trial (where they are using their own money) would stop the trial and might even decide that the intervention is actually making it worse.
This might mean that…wait for it…masks are making it worse. You would again need to study this, but it is a reasonable supposition given the data. It also makes sense in that it could easily be creating a false sense of security or become a petri dish of germs just waiting to be deposited on someone else or an aritficial barrier suppresses the body’s natural barrier of the immune system. To be sure though, if we were testing a drug and the data looked like this, we would stop giving it to people.
This tangent was necessary because it speaks to the reasonableness of mask mandates. Law, according to St. Thomas, is “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community and is promulgated.” Any law that does not fulfill those four requirements—reasonable, aimed at the common good, proper authority, and made known—is not, properly speaking, a law. Therefore, because they are not reasonable (or at least can not be proven to be at this point reasonable) we have no obligation to obey them. As true Shepherds of the Flock, Bishops and Priests need to stop being so deferential to mask mandates precisely for this reason.
The New Sacrament
The revolt against masks then is really a revulsion to what they symbolize. They have been made into sacraments through the words of the New Priests. They are said to protect and so therefore they do. Those who do not want to subscribe to this religion therefore will not want to wear them. It seems like a small thing to do, but it plays a key role in the overall narrative that Science can save us. As a sacrament it symbolizes the fact that the Coronavirus is a serious threat to our overall well-being. If you are tempted to think “well 99.99% of people that get this will survive”, then you only have to look around at everyone wearing a mask to tell you that you should be scared anyway. The smiling face of your neighbor, which would normally comfort you, is now hidden from your sight. The masks will permanently disfigure us because when the next virus comes along, and it will, they will tell us “this is more serious than the Coronavirus (which it likely will be) you must put the mask back on.”
By blessing the mask, the Priest also makes it into a Secular Scapular. Through the words of Mary to St. Simon Stock, we know that the Brown Scapular helps to save you eternally. Through the words of the Scientist, the mask saves us from Covidoom. The Brown Scapular is an aid to our growth in virtue, the Covid Scapular signals that we have virtue.
One of the things that the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century was their exaltation of Science as the new religion. Lenin, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Hitler all committed their atrocities using “Science” as their justification. Had someone stood up to them early on, one has to wonder whether things would have been different.
In a previous post, the effects of Consequentialism on our moral thinking was examined. One of the effects that was briefly mentioned pertains to how consequentialism clouds are political thinking making it difficult to decipher between intrinsically evil actions and those which are not. The example that was put forward was the widespread habit of equating abortion with immigration policies because, well, in both cases, “people die.” In this essay I would like to show why this type of thinking is wrong.
First of all, if we accept the consequentialist mindset, then more immigrants die via abortion in the United States than via even the most draconian immigration policy. Nearly a million people, immigrants included, were killed by abortionists last year. The number of immigrants who died in US custody pales in comparison. Even if we limit the numbers to immigrants alone and conceding that those numbers are difficult to pinpoint, there is no comparison. Planned Parenthood claims that at least 450 minors sought to obtain abortions while in US custody at the border and were able to after a judge blocked the current administration from saving those lives in 2017. Either way, there is no comparison.
Conceding to the consequentialist viewpoint is helpful because it acts as a filter for those who attempt to use immigration as an excuse for abortion on demand. There can be no doubt that if the goal is really to save lives at the border then you would seek to eliminate abortion first. But the person who remains unconvinced really has no interest in saving lives at the border but instead seeks to create a smokescreen in which they support abortion. Apparently temporarily separating children from parents is far worse than permanently separating them. Arguing with someone who is disingenuous is fruitless, especially when they simply are looking to rationalize what they find politically expedient. This approach at least keeps us from wasting our time to be able to identify it and call it out.
Assuming the person is being genuine, then we can set out to show why something that is intrinsically evil must never be tolerated while bad policy might. Abortion and control of the borders can never be placed on the same moral plane. Governmental control of the borders is a positive and necessary component of the common good as relates to security. Abortion is always an evil because it is the direct and intentional taking of an innocent human life.
Policy and Political Prudence
There was a time when what was just said would require no further explanation, but in an age in which patriotism is dead and global nationhood is the (oxy)moronic goal, more explanation is necessary. Nations are necessary both by nature and divine decree (c.f. Deut 32:8). Governments exist for the sake of the common good, but the common good, or at least the means for achieving it, will always differ according to peoples, place, and culture. Nations and the borders that delineate them are the consequence of this natural truth. To secure the common good for the citizens of a country then, it is necessary to control those borders and who is allowed to enter. As Ronald Reagan once famously said, “A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”
Governments therefore would be guilty of a grave evil if they simply allowed anyone to enter. The obligation to secure borders is absolute, but the means by which this can be carried out can be a matter of political prudence. Some policies will be objectively better than others, but there is no one best means that can be applied. How that is carried out will depend upon the current circumstances of the country in question. Do they have the additional resources necessary to allow the new citizens to flourish without, at the same time, harming those who are already citizens? If so, then what would be the best way to ensure that the new citizens will contribute to the common good? What policies would best prepare them for this? With each of these questions, there are obvious tradeoffs and people of good will may come to various conclusions as to the best policy. The point however is that there can be no debate that border security is necessary even if there is debate in how to justly set policy.
An Illuminating Example
Perhaps an example will help to bring all of this together. Suppose you had an immigration policy in which each person, upon approaching the border, was deemed wanted or unwanted by the country. Those who were wanted would be allowed to enter and those who were not were slaughtered. We would all have an obligation to oppose any politician who put this forth as his policy, regardless of where he stood on any other issue. We would in essence become single issue voters. This, unfortunately, is no mere hypothetical, but reflects what is currently happening. The border is the womb of a woman and the migrant is an innocent child trying to cross over the birth canal. We have an obligation to fight anyone who is in favor of such a policy and to vote against it. No matter how bad the immigration policy, there is no possible way these two things can be put on the same level.
The Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen thought that the demise of Western Culture, specifically American culture, began on the morning of August 6,,1945. That was when the United States dropped the first of two nuclear bombs on Japan at Hiroshima. It was the moment that “blotted out boundaries. There was no longer a boundary between the military and the civilian, between the helper and the helped, between the wounded and the nurse and the doctor, and the living and the dead. For even the living who escaped the bomb were already half dead. So, we broke down boundaries and limits and from that time on the world has said we want no one limiting me! We want no limits, no boundaries.” As usual, the first televangelist was also a prophet. Since that fateful day, the boundaries between right and wrong, natural and unnatural, good and evil have all broken down. This is because, lost amidst the rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was traditional morality and a firm belief in God’s Providence.
By all accounts even down to our own day, dropping the atomic bomb was the only viable option. Continuing to fire-bomb cities like Tokyo was going to kill far more Japanese citizens than the Bomb would ever do and, even more likely, would harden Japanese resolve, leading to a long drawn out war. A full ground assault would lead to thousands, if not millions, of deaths on both sides. In order to save American lives then it was necessary to drop the Bomb as both a show of force and a deterrence to any further Japanese aggression. Many Americans, including the one writing this article would likely never have been born had the Bomb not been dropped. Thousands of men were headed to Japan with the sure knowledge that they would not return. To most of them, Harry Truman is a hero who made the best possible decision.
Another man whose existence is linked to “Truman’s Terrible Choice” is George Weigel. In a web article for First Things last week, he defended Truman saying that he “it was the correct choice” given the options. Weigel’s logic is paradigmatic for many Catholics and follows from the loss of a traditional morality in favor of, what St. John Paul II condemned in Veritas Splendor –Consequentialism. In Weigel’s defense, he mentions that consequentialism is wrong in the article, but he still goes on to employ its logic. Nevertheless, he is defending the indefensible.
The Two Moral Camps
The tradition understanding of morality has always included the notion that there are intrinsically evil acts. These acts, no matter the circumstances or the intention of the person, can never be ordered towards the good. Some examples would be the deliberate killing of an innocent person, lying, and adultery. Among these acts would be the direct targeting and indiscriminate bombing of civilians during a war. This would include the aforementioned “fire-bombing” of German and Japanese cities as well as the dropping of the Bomb on the two Japanese cities. When no distinction is made between military and civilian targets then the dropping of any powerful bomb, atomic or otherwise, is always an intrinsically evil act and is akin to mass murder or terrorism. One can clearly see under this moral paradigm that there could never be any justification for dropping the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequentialism, on the other hand, evaluates all moral actions based upon the consequences. It requires a form a moral calculus in which you decide that if there is more good than evil in the consequences of an act then the act is morally permissible. Consequentialism, as St. John Paul II puts it, “draw[s] the criteria of the rightness of a given way of acting solely from a calculation of foreseeable consequences deriving from a given choice…[and] maintain[s] that it is never possible to formulate an absolute prohibition of particular kinds of behavior” (Veritatis Splendor, 75). It is, in essence a form of moral relativism, in that leaves all our actions relative to circumstances and the moral calculations of the individual. With Consequentialism as the guide, the decision to drop the Bomb would depend upon a moral calculation in which the good of American and Japanese lives are weighed against the loss of innocent Japanese lives.
Consequentialism and Providence
Embedded within Consequentialism is a rejection of Providence. Not only does the person assume divine status in thinking they can foresee the actual consequences of their actions, but it also assumes that God could ever leave us in a situation when the Good could not be done. This is the flaw in Weigel’s logic when he says that Truman chose the best option. No situation falls outside of God’s Providence and therefore no situation leaves us without an option to choose good. Truman could have chosen otherwise, and his choice could have been in accord with the good. Perhaps the decision would have been to send the troops in on the ground and allow the men to courageously fight for goodness and truth even to the giving up of their lives. Giving your life in noble defense of other people is always a good. Or perhaps it was to accept the non-absolute terms for Japanese surrender. The point though is that God had allowed the circumstances to be as they were and, incapable of causing us to sin, would always include a way to choose the Good.
Bishop Sheen thought August 6,1945 was the turning point for America because it created a new moral environment. Large swaths of the population owe their existence to the consequentialist logic of Truman and others. America herself, in order to avoid facing the music for such a heinous action, adopted Consequentialism as the new moral order. Gone, thanks to the Freemasonic court-packing of Roosevelt and Truman, was legal reasoning based on natural law. Gone too is the idea of intrinsically evil acts. Try explaining to someone about abortion being intrinsically evil and they will get caught up in the consequences of brining an unwanted child into the world. Or, relevant to today’s political climate, tell them why they cannot support a candidate who promotes and defends intrinsically evil actions. You will instead get some moral ledger that pits immigration against abortion.
When Truman decided to drop the Bomb he opened a moral Pandora’s Box in which true moral reasoning was shed in favor of Consequentialism. Now people with no sense of morality are the ones performing the moral calculus leading to all kinds of evils that have put our society in jeopardy of collapse. The only way forward is to reconnect Americans to the moral tradition of the Founders.
In his new Post-Synodal
Apostolic Exhortation, Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis mentioned the process of
inculturation as a starting point for the conversion of the region. The Holy Father most certainly had the Pachamama
controversy in mind when he exhorted the Faithful to “not be quick to
describe as superstition or paganism certain religious practices that arise
spontaneously from the life of peoples. Rather, we ought to know how to
distinguish the wheat growing alongside the tares, for ‘popular piety can
enable us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a culture and
is constantly passed on.’ It is possible to take up an indigenous symbol in
some way, without necessarily considering it as idolatry. A myth charged with
spiritual meaning can be used to advantage and not always considered a pagan
error. Some religious festivals have a sacred meaning and are occasions for
gathering and fraternity, albeit in need of a gradual process of purification
or maturation” (QA 78-79). Setting aside
the fact that all false religions are by definition superstitions, the Holy
Father’s remarks call for a deeper understanding of what the Church means when
she uses the term Inculturation.
Understanding authentic
inculturation begins by grasping what we mean when we use the term culture.
Culture is the soil in which the human person grows. As the Second Vatican Council put it, “Man
comes to a true and full humanity only through culture, that is through the
cultivation of the goods and values of nature…. The word ‘culture’ in its
general sense indicates everything whereby man develops and perfects his many
bodily and spiritual qualities” (GS, 53).
Against Cultural Relativism
When viewed in relation to
“goods and values of nature,” it becomes evident that cultures are not ends in
themselves, but instead means for human growth.
Likewise because there are objective “goods and values of nature,” we
can also evaluate cultures objectively in terms of good and bad. Good cultures are those that cultivate
authentic human flourishing and bad cultures are those that do harm to true
human goods. Authentic culture must
always be, according to the International Theological Commission, that which
“reveals and strengthens the nature of man.”
In short, there is no such
thing as a neutral culture nor can anything like cultural relativism be
tolerated. We must evaluate and judge
cultures by the objective criterion of whether true human goods are protected
and promoted. It is the Church’s role to
be judgmental towards cultures in three specific ways. Those values that are true human values, even
if expressed in “local” terms are adopted as part of the vernacular of the
Church and are the means by which the Gospel takes root. If they point to true human values, but are
deficient in some way then the Church purifies them. Finally, if they are irreconcilable then the
Church condemns them. This process of promoting,
purifying and purging is what the Church calls inculturation.
The point of reference for
the Church is not the culture itself, but as in all things, the transmission of
the Gospel. The culture is simply the
means by which the message takes root.
This is why it is disingenuous to speak of inculturation as a two-way
street. The Church has the fullness of
truth and thus has no new facts to learn from the various cultures. The culture gives to the Church what is for
its own benefit—a language that speaks the truths of salvation. What she does gain is a fuller manifestation
of her catholicity. It becomes proof
positive that the Gospel can be put in terms that are intelligible to men of
every age and place and answer the deepest longings of all human hearts.
Because he was the most traveled
Pope in the history of the Church, St. John Paul II constantly emphasized the
connection between inculturation and evangelization. In an address to the People of Asia while he
was visiting the Philippines he reminded the Church that “Wherever she is,
the Church must sink her roots deeply into the spiritual and cultural soil of
the country, assimilate all genuine values, enriching them also with the
insights that she has received from Jesus. Given the mission entrusted to it by
our Lord, the Church’s priority is always the evangelization of all peoples and
therefore of all cultures. Inculturation is a means of evangelization, being at
the same time its consequence.”
With all of this laid as a
foundation, we can see what role, if any, Pachamama would play in legitimate
inculturation. Those who defended it
treated it as something that could simply be taken up (literally) as an
authentic human value. But worship of a
false god, however seemingly benign or how “spontaneously” it arises (how do we
know if something arises spontaneously or at the prompting of demons?), is not
a true human value. Nor is that
something that can be purified but instead must be something that is
rejected. Pachamama may have crossed the
Tiber after it was tossed in the Tiber, but it was only because certain
churchmen lacked both the faith and charity towards the Amazonian people to
give them the saving truth of Jesus Christ.
As St. John Paul II, who was not immune to failures in authentic
inculturation, told the people of Cameroon, “the Gospel message does not come
simply to consolidate human things, just as they are; it takes on a prophetic
and critical role. Everywhere, in Europe as in Africa, it comes to overturn
criteria of judgment and modes of life; it is a call to conversion.” Never once was the call to conversion issued to
the worshipper of Pachamama.
The great missionary saints,
whether it was St. Paul, St. Patrick, St. Francis Xavier, or St. Isaac Jogues,
were all masters of inculturation not because they were clever but because
theirs was a call to conversion even if they translated them into
colloquialisms. It was because they were
holy men that they were up to the task.
As John Paul II put it, “Only those who truly know Christ, and truly
know their own cultural inheritance, can discern how the divine Word may be
fittingly presented through the medium of that culture. It follows that there
can be no authentic inculturation which does not proceed from contemplating the
Word of God and from growing in likeness to him through holiness of life”.
Our country was founded upon a
rather strange amalgamation of principles.
A perusal of the writings of the Founders will uncover both references
to Catholic Natural Law and principles of the Enlightenments. One can imagine
that there are some pretty stark contradictions. One such contradiction is found in the
question of why we need government at all.
In the midst of defending the need for a government that includes checks
and balances in Federalist
Paper no. 51, James Madison makes what seems like at first to be a very
Catholic statement saying that government is “the greatest of all reflections
on human nature.” Rather than remaining
on that train of thought, Madison diverts to another track claiming that “If
men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Understanding both of his statements will
help us go a long way in understanding why our country seems to be plagued by
moral decay.
If Men Were Angels…
Obviously one of the important
questions that the Founders sought to address was how authority was to be exercised
by the State. Trying to emerge from the
shadow of Divine Right Theory, the Founders thought authority came from the
individual. Men would form a society
like the State by bartering freedom for security. The individuals would bestow authority upon a
Governor in order to ensure that his rights would be secured against encroachments
from other men who had all entered the society via a social contract.
When Madison says that
government is the “greatest reflection upon human nature”, he has this view of
human nature in mind—man as the individual who enters society via the social
contract. This principle of the
Enlightenment treats government then as a necessary evil that must be tolerated
because man is fallen. In his own words,
“anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the
weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger.” If men were not fallen, like the angels, then
government would not be necessary. So
commonplace is this idea today, that hardly anyone questions whether Madison
has greatly misunderstood human nature.
Madison’s anthropological
error comes into relief if we challenge his theological assertion that “if men
were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Angels do, in fact, live within a hierarchy, a hierarchical structure
that includes authority. Scripture
provides us with an example in Chapter 10 of the Book of Daniel. Daniel calls upon the help of Gabriel, but
the angel does not immediately respond because the Guardian Angel of the
Kingdom of Persia would not allow him to act.
After Michael intervenes, the lower angel is allowed to help Daniel (Dn
10:11-21). What this reveals is that
angels, even unfallen ones, do have a government, one that is based upon a
clear authoritative structure.
The Greatest of All Reflections on Human Nature
So, if men were angels then
government might be necessary rather than being a necessary evil. Contra Locke, Rousseau and their intellectual
progeny, including the Founders, man is not a solitary being, but is naturally a
social creature. In order to fulfill his
nature, man has need of other men. This
is not just a matter of convenience but part of his natural instinct. There are two natural societies in which man’s
needs are supplied, the Family and the State.
Because men naturally form
these two societies, they must have an authoritative structure. As Pope Leo XIII put it, “no society can hold
together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the
common good, every body politic must have a ruling authority, and this
authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has,
consequently, God for its Author. Hence, it follows that all public power must
proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world.
Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so
that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single
source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler of all. ‘There is no power but from
God.’” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 3).
St. Thomas says that the act
of authority would be applied in four ways.
First, the ruler must direct the members of society towards what they
should do to contribute to and achieve the common good. Second, the ruler should supply for
difficulties such as protection against an enemy. Third, the ruler should correct morals via
punishment and (four) he should coerce the members to virtuous acts.
Now it becomes obvious that
the first two would apply whether or not men were fallen or not. Virtuous men might agree about some common
good, but because it is possible to achieve a good in multiple ways, they disagree
as to means. Without a ruler, that is
one without authority, there would be no one to make the final decision. Because men, even in a state of innocence
would not be equal with respect to virtue, it is the most virtuous who would govern.
St. Thomas describes this
virtuous ruler in the Summa:
“But a man is the master of a free subject, by directing him either towards his proper welfare, or to the common good. Such a kind of mastership would have existed in the state of innocence between man and man, for two reasons. First, because man is naturally a social being, and so in the state of innocence he would have led a social life. Now a social life cannot exist among a number of people unless under the presidency of one to look after the common good; for many, as such, seek many things, whereas one attends only to one…Secondly, if one man surpassed another in knowledge and virtue, this would not have been fitting unless these gifts conduced to the benefit of others…Wherefore Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xix, 14): ‘Just men command not by the love of domineering, but by the service of counsel”: and (De Civ. Dei xix, 15): ‘The natural order of things requires this; and thus did God make man.’”
(ST I q.96, a.4)
Madison, because he thinks
government a necessary evil, would have us tolerate evil in our rulers. But when we see the State as something
natural, we begin to identify its purpose of making men better. It is necessary for men to fulfill their
nature by becoming more virtuous. The
virtuous ruler will create virtuous subjects.
St. Thomas thinks we can, and must, do better. The transition may be rocky, but if our society
is to turn around and become morally sound, we must not settle for moral
degenerates in our leaders. With Primary
Season upon us, especially with a total lack of emphasis on the character of
our leaders, this is an important message.
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.
Set in medieval England, the exploits of Robin Hood have captured the imaginations of young and old for the past two hundred years. The story is familiar to most of us—Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. While it is debatable whether or not Robin of Locksley was a real man or not, there is no debate over the fact that many real men in our own age, especially those with political power have fashioned themselves after him. Like their beloved patron, these men see it as their vocation to take from the rich and give to the poor. Most of us simply cheer them on, quibbling only with the amounts that are taken. “Quibbling” is rather a gentle description as the dispute can often grow quite contentious even though it need not be so. For with a proper understanding of private property the lines are drawn more clearly and Robin Hood himself is revealed not as a hero but a thief.
Private Property
When examining the question of what constitutes theft, St. Thomas Aquinas asks whether it is lawful for men to own private property. He replies in the affirmative, but, in his usual manner, he does not give an unqualified assent. Private property is linked to man’s innate capacity for freedom. First, because man is dependent upon natural resources in order not only to survive but to thrive, he must have access to those resources that are necessary to his survival. In order to remain free he must have not just temporary access but also have the means by which he gains permanent access to those necessary things. This need extends also to goods not just for the man himself but also those necessary for those for whom he has responsibility for. Finally, to assure that this freedom is preserved in the future, especially in time of emergency, he may set aside a certain amount.
We can see why access to the goods is needed, but perhaps not yet why private property is necessary. When we speak of the relationship of man to things there are three aspects of particular interest—the power to procure and disburse the goods and their use. Regarding the first two, St. Thomas says man has a right to possess private property, that is, he might obtain natural resources, apply his personality to them and claim ownership over them. Private ownership is not only expedient, but also necessary for three reasons. First, because a man is more careful to look after what belongs to him than something that is owned in common. All men tend to shun labor and when “someone else” is doing the work and no one then does it. Second, human affairs are more ordered when each handles his own rather than the confusion of who has responsibility for what. Finally, society remains at peace when each is content with his own possessions. Intuitively this is easy to grasp once we reflect on our own experience. A man is more likely to pick up trash in his own yard than in a public park both because he owns the property and wants to keep it looking good and because he knows the boundaries of his responsibilities for the upkeep.
Ownership and use however are not coterminous. Just because a man owns a thing does not mean he has absolute dominion over that thing. Not only does it mean he may not use the thing in a way that is immoral, but also that he may not use it in a manner that inhibits others from reaching their fulfillment. A man may own his own backyard but this does not mean he can landscape it such that all the runoff water floods his neighbor’s house.
The Universal Destination of Goods
The use of property is also limited by a particular mindset. St. Thomas articulates what became the Church’s teaching on the Universal Destination of Goods—“a man should possess external things not as his own but as common so that to wit he is ready to communicate them to others in their need” (ST II-II q.66 a. 2). We may possess as much as we want, but we should use them as if they belonged to everyone. That is because in a very real sense they do. So insistent is the Church on this point that it, at least in appearance, justifies stealing. When a man has an extreme need and cannot otherwise help himself, he may make use of the property of another person. There is an important nuance that must be highlighted because it pertains to use. He may use the thing as if it belonged to no one, but he does not become the owner of the thing. For example, suppose that a man has an allergic reaction but does not have an EpiPen with him nor any money to pay for one. He could enter a pharmacy and take one and not be guilty of theft. He could not grab an extra one for later, but can only take what he needs to keep from perishing.
Now suppose a man meets another man in anaphylaxis, but has neither an EpiPen nor the money to purchase one. He too may enter the pharmacy and take one and administer it to the man without being guilty of theft. Like the first example, he can only take what is immediately needed to save the man’s life. The example seems like common sense until we begin to extend it a little. The Good Samaritan may not enter the pharmacy take an EpiPen for the man who is ill and then take a few more in case he meets another man. Nor can he take five of them and go out and look for five people having allergic reactions. The use of the object that is taken must be immediate and it must be immediately necessary. Otherwise it is theft.
Now we are closing in on Robin Hood and his modern day crony. Assuming the property truly belongs to the rich man, they may not take it from him to give to the poor except in the case of dire need of a specific man. That is, only in the extreme case can they redistribute specific property to a specific man. They cannot take from the rich and then find the poor who might benefit from it. In other words, Robin Hood and his cronies are thieves.
This does not absolve the rich from giving to the poor even if their need is not dire. Because of the Universal Destination of Goods, redistribution is obligatory. As St. Basil the Great said, “the bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.” But the redistribution must be done freely because the property is truly his. The goods that are redistributed are not the only things that are stolen—forced redistribution robs from the rich the opportunity to exercise charity and from the poor the opportunity to receive it.
One of my favorite all-time commercials is a Geico ad in which President Lincoln is asked by his wife whether or not the dress she is wearing makes her backside look fat. As cleverly designed as the commercial is, and as refreshing as “Honest Abe” might be in our current political climate, this short ad is particularly compelling because it forces the viewers to think about the nature of lying. Drenched in a culture that has shown a particular allergy to truth-telling, we “spin the facts” and color-code our lies, bleaching them of any wrong doing. As lies increase, trust decreases, turning us all into masters of suspicion. Lies will break down any society, the family included, but there is an ever-greater danger hidden in the weeds of lying—losing a grip on what is real. Telling a lie over and over, we can easily forget the truth. As philosopher Hannah Arendt put it, “The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lies will now be accepted as truth…but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world…is being destroyed.” It is time to tell the truth about lying.
Most of us know a lie when we tell it, but there is a shadow over truth telling that creates a grey area. That is because we lack a really good definition. Even the Church has struggled to come up with a good definition. In the 1994 edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the definition of lying was “to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth”(CCC 2483). When the official Latin text was released 3 years later, the italicized part was left out, rendering lying as “speaking or acting against the truth in order to lead someone into error.” This is true as far as it goes, but it does not shine enough light to remove the shadow. This is why St. Augustine’s definition is especially helpful. He says that lying is deliberately speaking (verbally or non-verbally) contrary to what is on one’s mind. In other words, there is an opposition between what one speaks and one what thinks in lying.
Loving the Truth
Because most people look at lying as mostly a legal issue, it is first important for us to discuss what makes lying wrong. Our communicative faculties have as their end the ability to convey our thoughts. When we lie, that is when we say something that is contrary to what we are thinking, we are abusing that power. Notice that in this teleological (looking at the purpose of the power) approach circumstances do not matter. Lying is always wrong.
Seen another way, we can make further sense of the intrinsically evil nature of lies. Our Lord is pretty harsh in His condemnation of lying; calling those who lie the devil’s offspring “because he is the father of lies” (Jn. 8:44). There are no such thing as white lies. A lie is an offense against the truth, the same reality that God, in His Providence, has orchestrated. That is, all lies, are primarily offenses against God because we are rebelling against the way things are and revolting against His ordering of things. It is our love for God and with gratitude for His Providential care that we should love the truth so much that we would never lie.
In this case, removing the white does not necessarily remove the grey area until we can answer what constitutes lying. Recall Augustine’s definition of a lie as the willful communication of an idea that is contrary to what one is thinking. This definition is preferred because it removes the situation where the speaker is wrong in their thinking from the realm of lying. If your son did not know he had homework and then told you he didn’t then that would not be lying. He communicated the truth as he understood it. Similarly with joking or story telling where the purpose is to convey irony or illustrate a deeper truth. Many people say “I was just kidding” when they are caught in a lie, so again this is something we all naturally seem to grasp. Regardless, at a certain point—like when the person asks “are you joking?” –it ceases to be a means of laughter or truth telling and becomes lying
Intuitively we grasp that to forget or joke around is not the same thing as lying. But it is the so-called hard cases that make it more difficult. For example, there is the oft-cited situation of the Nazi asking where the Jews are hidden. It was an attempt, although not precise enough, to deal with these hard cases that motivated the authors of the Catechism to include the clause “who has a right to know the truth” in the original definition. It would seem that the only way out of this Catch-22 would be to lie because it is “the lesser of two evils.”
Living the Truth
It is necessary as this point to make the distinction between deception and lying. All lies are deception, but not all deception is lying. There are times when deception might be necessary, especially when the interlocutor plans to use the information in order to commit some evil. Although our communicative faculties have as their purpose the communication of the truth as we know it, this does not mean that we have an obligation to communicate the truth. In fact, the obligation may be to remain silent such as when you are keeping a secret. Likewise the obligation to communicate the truth does not mean it has to be communicated in the clearest fashion. But because lying is intrinsically evil, that is, it can never be ordered to the good, it can never be a means of deception.
Protecting the truth from those who have no right to the truth is done then not through lying but through what is called Mental Reservation. A mental reservation is a way of speaking such that the particular meaning of what one is saying is only one possible meaning. There are two classes of mental reservation—a strict mental reservation involves restricting it in a way that the listener could never guess what you mean. This would be a form of lying. A broad mental reservation means that the average listener could figure out one’s meaning, even if it is not very clear. Blessed John Henry Newman uses the classic example from St. Athanasius’ life when he was fleeing persecution and was asked “Have you seen Athanasius?” The great enemy of the Arians replied, “Yes, he is close to here.” Obviously there are a number of ways this could have been interpreted, but it was not a falsehood strictly speaking. A similar approach could be taken with the example of the Nazis and the Jews but never in a way that would constitute lying.
What if however the soldiers had continued to probe Athanasius, forcing him to answer directly? Broad mental reservation may be employed for as long as possible but when it fails, one may, out of a love for the truth, simply remain silent and suffer whatever consequences may come from that. Likewise, many people tell other’s secrets simply because the other person asked and “I wasn’t going to lie.” One can keep a secret without lying, but it may mean suffering at the hands of the interrogator. However, before my teen readers see this as a Jedi mind trick and add it to their war-chest to use against their parents, this only applies when the person in question does not have a right to the truth. When the person has a right to the truth, you have an obligation to give it to them in as clear a manner as possible. There are some, especially in the Church, that rely on mental reservation to mask heresy.
In the commercial, Honest Abe, wanting to avoid lying, answers that the dress does make Mary Todd look a little fat. Is this the only possible answer he could have given, or could he have exercised a mental reservation? I’ll leave that for the readers to answer and debate in the comments section below…
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.
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.
Man is, according to Aristotle, a political animal. Politics, on the other hand, is fast becoming a ravenous beast devouring every social interaction and institution. The NFL and Hollywood, hurricanes and mass shootings, bedrooms, bathrooms, and classrooms are all being swallowed whole as we stand impotently by. The Right complains that the Left politicizes everything, overlooking the irony that even lobbing the accusation against “the Left” is to play the game. They do have a point however. Everything is in danger (yes danger) of becoming a political issue and unless we step in, civilization as we have known it will be relegated to the dustbin of history, politicization’s last victim. It is only by understanding this tendency that we can hope to turn the tide.
Plato and Christopher Dawson on the Democratic Ethos
It is Plato that can help us explain the ubiquitous nature of this behavior. Putting his obvious personal biases towards democracy as the system responsible for the death of his teacher Socrates, his insight into the democratic ethos is particularly relevant to our current conditions. The spirit of democracy is animated by a single principle—freedom. In order for this to happen, a second principle needs to arise—equality. Equality exists so as to maximize the number of options upon which a man may exercise his freedom. This equality is not merely the belief that “all men are created equal,” but an absolute equality, even in areas where equality does not actually exist. The democratic ethos then sees equality everywhere.
In a democracy, the political realm exists to maximize freedom for the individual and, since any threat to equality becomes a threat to freedom, the polis must enforce equality. In other words, in the democratic ethos there is a pretense that all views and ways of life in society must be regarded as worthy of equal treatment. It is the threat to equality, equality enforced by the polis, that forces all debate about views and ways of life, into the political arena. In short, democracies, especially those in which the populace has become a law unto themselves (i.e. only able to make arguments in terms of “Constitutionality” without reference to a higher law), always tend towards a totalitarian mob rule in which everything becomes a political issue.
It is the totalitarianistic tendency that brings us to another important point, one that was made by the great 20th Century historian Christopher Dawson. Dawson points out that the Left-Right distinction, at least historically speaking, is a relatively new phenomenon, arising with the French Revolution. Not only is it relatively new, but it is ultimately based upon what he calls the Left-Right Fallacy. The terms left/right, progressive/conservative, etc. are relative terms. They attempt to grade men according to their relation to a central point. The problem is that this central point does not actually exist. What exactly is the Progressive left of or the Conservative right of? What is their central point? Dawson thinks this is what makes the whole system irrational and ultimately a trap designed to create division. As he says, the “tactics of totalitarianism are to weld every difference of opinion and tradition and every conflict of economic interests into an absolute ideological opposition which disintegrates society into hostile factions bent on destroying one another.”
Changing Our Way of Seeing
We speak so much about division—division in our country, division in the Church–and the reason is quite simple. We continue to think from within the left-right distinction rather than thinking about it. We cannot transcend it while we are trapped within it. The fact that it makes its first appearance in the French Revolution ought to give us a hint as to who we have in mind as its designer. Diabolos, one of the name’s we give the devil, literally means one who tears apart. The Left-Right distinction is one of his greatest inventions for tearing men apart. This is not to over-spiritualize things to point out something that should be obvious. Any time we regularly speak of They without actually being able to name who They are, it is usually an indication that it has a preternatural cause. Any time we find ourselves demonizing other people (evidence this 2014 Pew Survey that found 1/3 of Americans think the other side is out to destroy the country), you can be sure there is more than a fully human explanation. There are always willing human instruments involved, but when its origin and its subtle irrationality are unmasked we should need to change our own pattern of thinking.
It is particularly disconcerting to have seen the Left-Right distinction enter the Church as well. On the heels of the French Revolution, in 19th Century France, liberal Catholicism was born as an attempt to find some sort of accommodation with liberal theory and practice. This yeast has spoiled the whole lump, infiltrating the hierarchy and rank and file Catholics alike. The danger using these terms here is that there is a middle term around which the liberal/conservative filter could be applied—divinely revealed truth. It makes it seem as if the truth is somehow open to interpretation like it is in the democratic ethos. So not only does it divide members of Christ’s Mystical Body, but it also destroys faith in Divine Revelation.
The Church among all human (even if it is not merely human) institutions should transcend these labels and the fact that it can’t does not bode well for the rest of humanity. The Church must lead the way. Not just because a more united body of believers will spill over into the world, but because it is vital for the health of the Body itself. The current division within the Church is a work of the Devil and we only feed it when we allow our thinking to pass through the Left\Right Sieve. Think you’re immune? Who you are closer to—if you identify as a liberal are you closer to your liberal agnostic neighbor or the conservative Catholic who annoys you because of his false piety at Mass? If you are conservative, are you closer to the conservative Jewish man down the street or the liberal Catholic who has the coexist bumper sticker? If it is not the fellow believer, with whom you have an ontological connection within the Mystical Body, then you may only be able to see through the liberal/conservative paradigm. The Church is the only truly liberal society—extending love and mercy to all mankind and teaching man to govern his use of freedom (the true meaning of liberal) by her conservative clinging to God’s revealed truth.
If you are sick and tired of everything being politicized then refuse to play the game and transcend the Left-Right Fallacy. It is the only way to restore any sense of unity in the Church and in Society.
In a recent interview with Fox News, Dr. Robert Jeffress, an Evangelical adviser to President Trump, claimed that “the Bible gives President Trump the moral authority to use whatever force necessary, including assassination” to remove threats to humanity like Kim Jong-un. Justifying his views by citing Romans 13:3-4, he contends that “most Christians understand that.” Some however have taken exception to Pastor Jeffress’ comments, questioning whether one verse of the Bible can be used to justify the removal of a leader of a foreign nation. In truth whether or not assassination is morally permissible or not is far from self-evident and would require more justification than a single line from Sacred Scripture.
A Not-so Careful Citation
A quick gloss on the cited passage is in order because it is unclear that it even applies. In this section of the letter, St. Paul is addressing the question of social justice and these particular lines refer to the reasons why the citizen is subjected to authority in the first place. In short, St Paul says that it is by God given authority that the ruler, as custodian of the common good, is given the power to punish evildoers. The ruler is God’s minister by inflicting punishment on the evildoer. Pastor Jeffress is most certainly going beyond what is being said here. This particular verse might be applicable if President Trump was King of the World, but as President of the United States it is a giant leap to suggest that God has given him the authority to punish any evildoers in North Korea, let alone their leader. President Trump’s authority simply does not extend that far. This line of reasoning will ultimately lead the President and his adviser down a rabbit hole that only serves to discredit both.
There is another line of reasoning, one with a historical precedent that could be used to support a similar conclusion. During the Second World War, there were a group of patriotic, anti-Nazi German men who plotted to assassinate Hitler. Although these men were helped by the British, most of their outside help came from Fr. Robert Leiber, who was acting as an intermediary for Pope Pius XII. This remarkable story is told by an intelligence specialist named Mark Riebling in his recent book, Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler.
Not only does Riebling’s book ring the death knell for the myth of Hitler’s Pope, but, relevant to the discussion at hand, it shows the great difficulty the plotters had in getting German buy-in. What little they did receive was mostly along confessional lines. The Catholics, schooled by St. Thomas Aquinas could morally defend the assassination of the tyrant Hitler. The Protestants (mainly Lutheran) schooled in a distorted view of state authority and found themselves in a moral quandary not unlike what Pastor Jeffress has found. In short, the argument based strictly on the authority of the ruler cuts both ways.
In examining the question of assassination, President Trump might be better served expanding his advisory group to include Catholics who have sat at the feet of St. Thomas. It is Aquinas who gives the best argument in favor of tyrannicide; the same argument that convinced Pius XII to help those Germans opposed to Hitler. It is this argument, rather than the one put forth by Jeffress, that might be used to justify the removal of the North Korean leader.
Aquinas on Tyrannicide
St. Thomas did not rule out tyrannicide, but instead thought it to be a laudable act if the conditions warranted it– “He who kills a tyrant to free his country is praised and rewarded”(Commentary on the Sentences 1,d44,q2,a2). What exactly were those conditions? The first has to do with how the tyrant came to power. If he was legitimately elected, then it is the community that must remove him (assuming they can). If he is a usurper and therefore a criminal, then an individual (or group of individuals) may act to depose the tyrant even by assassination. Secondly, the tyrant must pose an actual threat to the well-being and the morality of his subjects by ignoring divine and natural law. Third, that there is no other reasonable recourse. Finally, that his death would lead to a better situation and not create a vacuum such that the citizens were likely to become subject to a worse leader.
Applied to the situation in North Korea, there is no doubt about whether Kim Jong-un is a tyrant. Nor is it really questionable whether he is a usurper or not. Since becoming “eternal President” he has become a self-appointed leader in more and more areas in order to consolidate power both politically and militarily and has murdered anyone who he has viewed as a challenge to his power grab. Likewise, there is no doubt that he is a threat to the well-being of the people both physically and morally through his blatant disregard for natural law.
It is the third and fourth condition that ought to lead President Trump to ponder his actions carefully. It is not entirely clear that every reasonable remedy has been tried nor is it clear that his killing would lead to a better state of affairs. In a militarily bureaucratic system like North Korea, the killing of one tyrant can easily pave the way for another.
While St. Thomas is clear that tyrannicide can be jusitified, he is rather silent about whether it is morally acceptable for someone outside of that particular country to orchestrate such an action. In the example cited above, Pius XII (and the British) did not orchestrate but only provided material and strategic support. The deposition of a tyrant should always occur from within. The US and its allies might aid those from within North Korea, but they should not be leading the charge.
As laws legalizing the recreational use of marijuana use continue to spread like, well, like a weed across the country, there seems to be little hope in stopping its momentum. According to NORML, a lobbying group dedicated “to move public opinion sufficiently to legalize the responsible use of marijuana by adults, and to serve as an advocate for consumers to assure they have access to high quality marijuana that is safe, convenient and affordable,” the “era of marijuana legalization is upon us.” Perhaps it is a sign that its use is more prevalent than we think, but the push back from American Catholics (with the exception of Cardinal O’Malley in Boston) has been uninspired at best. It is with that response in mind, that this author attempts to clear the haze surrounding the issue of marijuana use.
Why Sin is Wrong
In a world where the only real sin is to call something a sin, it is important for us to frame what it is that makes marijuana use wrong. Otherwise, it appears that Christians are always on the prowl looking for people who might actually be having some fun in the valley of tears. Sin is an offense against God, but only in the sense that it tries to usurp His role as Creator. As Creator of our human nature, He is the judge as to what constitutes the best use of that nature so that we can truly thrive and fulfill what we were made for. As creatures who have exercise of their own freedom, we can, in a sense, choose those things that ultimately harm us. But just as violating the law of gravity has dire consequences, so too does choosing against the law of freedom. We will ultimately not thrive. So while sin is an offense against God, it ultimately means doing something that is harmful to us. This is why St. Thomas said “God is offended by us only because we act contrary to our own good” (SCG, 3, 122).
This particular way of looking at sin is particularly important in today’s culture where there is such an emphasis on freedom such that it trumps law. Put simply, some acts are in accord with the proper use of man’s nature, which we call good, and some are not, which we call evil. Reason recognizes these goods as true goods and commands that they be protected and preserved. Thus the moral Law is not a bunch of arbitrary rules but dictates of reason that keep us on the path to happiness, both natural and supernatural.
It is with this view of sin in mind, that we can examine marijuana use. To use a common idiom, marijuana use is wrong because you get stoned. That is you lose, even though temporarily, the use of our distinctly human capacity to reason. We become, as it were, like stones. In other words, marijuana turns us into something less than human by depriving us of our use of reason.
There are, some might object, other things that cause the temporary loss of our reason that we would not classify as wrong: things like painkillers, laughing gas, even sleep. What makes marijuana and other recreational drugs like it different? In each of the other examples conscious experience is not treated as an evil, as something to be avoided (and if it was as in the case where someone sleeps too much just to avoid life then it would be wrong). To deliberately pursue a chemically-altered state of mind is always immoral because it does direct harm to the good of our reason.
Alcohol and Marijuana Use
I have deliberately avoided mentioning the use of alcohol up to this point in order to make the principles clear, but no discussion of marijuana use and its legalization can avoid this topic. Drunkenness, like “getting stoned”, is always objectively wrong. But alcohol is different in that it can be used “responsibly.” By temperately approaching alcohol, it can have its intended effect of raising one’s spirits (which is where we get the name Spirits from) without altering one’s level of consciousness. This is why Catholics have never shied away from imbibing strong drinks. It may represent a temptation to abuse, but with temperance it is one of the goods of this life. I like to think that one of the reasons why the Bride and Groom at Cana ran out of wine was because Our Lord and His followers had showed up unexpectedly. If nothing else, He clearly had some on hand at the Last Supper.
This connection between alcohol and pot is worth examining a little further because the two are often conflated in public discourse. The argument goes that because “alcohol is a drug and legal, therefore, marijuana, which is a somewhat harmless recreational drug ought to be legal as well.” Recalling that a good law is one that helps people to be good, we can say that the reasoning here is faulty. In the social realm, temperate use of alcohol can be seen as a good in that it stimulates social interaction and appears to have positive physiological health benefits. Therefore any laws governing its use ought to promote temperance (such as penalties for drunkenness, age restrictions, limiting places and times of purchase, etc.). Pot, on the other hand cannot be used moderately. There is no such thing as “responsible” use of pot since its mind-altering effects are felt immediately
The fact that we even have to get into the “why” using pot is wrong shows us the reason why a libertarian approach would not work. “If someone wants to smoke a little weed, who are we to stop them?” While it may seem like a benign, personal vice, we can never forget that the law is a great moral teacher. Most, especially those divorced from Christian morality, equate morality and legality. By criminalizing its use, the law remains connected to the truth. The fact that most people cannot see why it is wrong is an argument for keeping it legal, especially when the best argument for de-criminalizing is license masquerading as liberty. Freedom does not mean to do whatever you want as long as no one else is harmed by it, but to exercise our ability to reach our God-given potential. Far from being an exercise in freedom (which requires the use of reason), marijuana use actually makes us slaves to a less than human craving. Given this and the “substantial adverse effects” of marijuana use, it is hard to fathom why anyone would promote its legalization.
In his 1950 Encyclical, Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII cautioned about a number of ideological trends that undermined the Faith of the Church. Among these was a certain idea connected with the Theory of Evolution called polygenism. For the evolutionary idea to be accepted it would require not just two first human parents, but the transition from animal to man would require a multitude of men and women. In other words, it is a rejection of the belief that Adam and Eve were two real people from which the entire human race descended. The Pope strongly condemned acceptance of this idea saying, “When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own” (Humani Generis, 37).
On the surface, it appears to make little difference as to whether there was an actual Adam and Eve or whether mankind traces its roots to a multitude of first humans. Diving beneath the surface, we see that acceptance of polygenism threatens to undermine the foundations of the Christian faith. If polygenism is true, then the Christian faith is necessarily false.
Evolutionary theory applied to man does not only mean that man was made by blind forces but is ultimately an attempt for men to remake themselves. The creature becomes his own creator. No Adam and Eve means no Original Sin. No Original Sin, no need for Christ. If we were never “in Adam” then there would be no need to be “in Christ.” With a multitude of races at our beginning, there would be fallen and unfallen men living together and only those who are direct descendants of Adam need redemption. Evolution eventually weeds this out through natural selection, removing any distinction and Christ becomes entirely unnecessary. Even if this is a case of unintended consequences on the part of Darwin and his ideological descendants, we can be sure there is at least one highly intelligent person who revels in this idea.
In the mind of many Christians, this sets up a Catch-22. If we accept a literal Adam and Eve, then where did their grandchildren come from? To accept a belief in only first two parents means to accept that their children were incestuous in populating the earth. With no outsiders to marry, Cain, Abel, Seth and their unnamed sisters would have married each other. Rejecting a literal Adam and Eve seems to be better than accepting this morally repugnant option. Or is it?
Why Incest is Wrong
When asked why incest is wrong, most of us would say because the genes of those closely related by blood are so similar that it can result in offspring with serious genetic defects. Looked at properly however, this is a consequence of the wrong and not necessarily the reason why it is wrong. Whether we posit that because Eve was taken from the rib of Adam they were nearly genetically identical (making their act of intercourse genetically the same as fraternal twins) or that Eve was fashioned with a different genetic code than Adam, the important point to remember is that their genetic code would have had no mutations in it. After the Fall, their offspring may have had mutations in their DNA, but, if we accept the modern scientific explanation of these mutations as appearing at random, we should not expect identical mutations to occur in Adam and Eve’s offspring. Without the necessary doubling of mutations in the parents, we would not see the same effects that we see with inbreeding today. Once the gene pool has a sufficient number of these mutations present in it and the likelihood of some deleterious effect occurring on the rise, God issues a positive command that a man may not marry someone of close relation like his sister, aunt, or niece (Lev 18-20).
In short, the consequence of serious birth defects is a sign that incest is wrong, but is not what makes it wrong. In City of God (Book XV, Ch. 16) Augustine visits this question as to why Cain, for example, committed no wrong when he married his sister. We can borrow from his explanation to help us see past this intellectual obstacle.
The Augustinian Solution
First, he looks at the purpose of marriage and procreation and says something that most of us would not think of as a purpose today. Augustine see this as one of the goods of marriage—marriage multiplies relationships. In the past, especially in ruling families, marriage was viewed as a means to bring the families together, making them one. It brings strangers together and makes them a family. A woman’s brother becomes the man’s brother-in-law, her father, his father-in-law. Without the marriage of the man and woman, these men would not have entered into a familial relationship.
When closely related persons married, this good is lost. When siblings marry, their mother is both mother and mother-in-law. This was obviously unavoidable in the case of Cain and his sister, but, according to Augustine, is a reason to avoid close marriage.
Obviously, this would not be a precept of the natural law, but Augustine and St. Thomas both say that marriage between a parent and a child was always contrary to the natural law because of the relationship of parent and child could never be placed on the equal footing required for marriage. A child always owes their parents piety while spouses have no such obligation. This is why Noah curse Ham when he “saw his nakedness” (Gn 9:20-25), which is a Hebraic euphemism for sleeping with his mother.
While not a precept of the natural law, marriage between siblings and close blood relatives is still wrong because of our fallen human nature. For men and women to live closely together (like siblings do today or close blood relations such as cousins did in the past) with the potential for the relationship to become sexualized is a great temptation to lust and use. This is why it would be just as wrong for Greg and Marsha Brady to get married as it would be for two blood siblings. To make such a union illicit can serve to remove this temptation and makes it taboo. The fact that we initially recoil at the thought of Cain and his sister means that this taboo has had its intended consequence.
Removing incest as an obstacle to belief in two first parents goes a long way in helping us to see why polygenism must be false and why we should reject any form of it. Grandpa Adam and Grandma Eve, first parents and first grandparents.
As the primary season comes to a close and clear candidates begin to emerge, we should expect to hear more and more about how to vote as Catholics. The discussion will center on “voting according to conscience.” If we are not careful however, we will fall prey to the vague notion of conscience that has plagued the Church in the last 50 years. Instead we should strive to vote according to an informed conscience. In an age in which fact is often equated with truth it is necessary to speak of what we mean when we say that a conscience is informed. We don’t mean that it is full of information or data, but instead it is alive in the way that a soul informs or brings life to the body. An informed conscience is a conscience which is fully alive.
An informed conscience is able to recognize that not all goods and evils are equal. An informed conscience has no room for a seamless garment approach to morality. Instead it recognizes that there are certain acts that are intrinsically evil and cannot be ordered to the good no matter what the intention of the person.
To aid us in discerning how these evils present themselves in political life, the Church for her part has listed the so-called five non-negotiables. The first four are related to the protection of life at its most vulnerable stages including abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and human cloning and the fifth is support for so called “same-sex marriage.” These are non-negotiable not because we are stubborn but because they are aligned so closely to the intrinsic goods of man that form the basis of the natural law.
It is grave matter to vote for candidates that support policies that promote these. When we vote for these candidates, even when it is not our intention to support those particular policies, we still cooperate in the evil. Certainly our level of cooperation may be remote, it is still true that without our votes these evils could not be promoted by civil law.
It would seem based on this then that the Catholic position is that we should be single issue voters. The response to this is rather nuanced so that an example should make the distinction clear.
Suppose I take you in my time machine parked outside to Berlin in 1932 and ask you to cast a vote for or against Hitler. How would you vote and why?
Despite all the robust economic policies that brought Germany out of the ashes of World War I and the restoration of German military might, you would hopefully vote no. Why? The reason is simple—no matter how much good he may do in those other realms you would not vote for him because his platform advocated mass murder of innocent people. This means a single issue would cause you to withhold your vote.
It is the same with us today. We should not vote for a particular candidate based on their stance on a single issue, but their stance could be a reason to disqualify a candidate from consideration. Even if a candidate is pro-life for example, this does not mean that we should vote for them. That just means they can be in the running. We must then also look at his other policies and see how they promote and protect the common good. In this way we are not single issue voters.
This principle is summarized well in a document that then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that deals with when Catholics may receive Communion:
“Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia”
What about voting for candidates that may be in favor of one of these non-negotiables but whose office has no effect on policies related to these non-negotiables? Even though these issues may seem tangential, they are still important indicators. The first virtue we should look for in a candidate for any office is prudence. A person who cannot identify something that is intrinsically evil shows a lack of prudence. Secondly, these offices are often stepping-stones into higher and more influential offices. It is better to stop their ambitions before they get any steam going.
An informed conscience is an uncompromising conscience. All too often someone will say something like “since there is no hope of overturning Roe v Wade we should not even worry about whether someone is pro-choice or pro-life but instead focus on the candidate whose social programs will also reduce the number of abortions.” This position however amounts to a compromise with evil and in fact is untenable upon closer inspection.
Pope John Paul II spoke of what he termed the “art of the possible” in Evangelium Vitae. He said that in some societies it may not be possible to completely overturn laws that support intrinsic evils such as abortion in one fell swoop. Instead we might need to enact legislation in pieces that seek to limit the number of abortions while moving the social consciousness towards laws that abolish it altogether. This sounds similar to the position of “social programs to reduce abortions” with an important exception. The legislation that the Holy Father speaks of must have the intention of reducing the number of abortions and not just as a mere side effect. Social programs that may reduce poverty may also have the side effect of reducing the number of abortions, but that is only accidental, especially when the overall policy is to promote and even provide them.
An uncompromising conscience is one in which the Catholic will call an evil for what it is and not simply attempt to make the evil “safe and legal.” Still an uncompromising conscience may have recourse to the “art of the possible” and fight intrinsic evils piecemeal if necessary.
During the Vice Presidential debate in 2012, Congressman Ryan gave us an example of how an uncompromising conscience uses “the art of the possible.” He was even criticized for it—but he has been very clear from the outset that abortion is always gravely evil. Still he was part of a ticket which would not make the so-called abortion “hard cases”—rape and incest—illegal. This is not because he was capitulating but because he recognizes that making abortion illegal in 99.9% of the cases will not only significantly reduce the number of abortions but lead to a greater awareness that abortion is always wrong even in the cases where the mother was a victim of a violent crime.
There are many who will argue that the best approach when confronted with two candidates, both of whom support an intrinsic evil, is to refrain from voting at all. This ignores the fact however that one of those candidates will in fact win the election. One should vote then consistent with their judgment as to which candidate will do the least amount of moral harm.
Imagine if you can, an America in which the nearly 70 million Catholics voted as a single block. Imagine how far candidates would be willing to go to cater to 22% of the voters. This is why we must understand these principles and be able to clearly articulate them and present them to our friends. It starts now, not in October and November when everyone has made up their minds. St. Thomas More, pray for us!
