Guest Post: On Trinitarian Symbolism in the Family

Family, Guest Post, Trinity, , , , ,

By Connor Szurgot

When speaking of the Blessed Trinity, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself.” (CCC 234) Beyond even that epic and truly awe-some reality is the reality that, since every cause is in some way in its effect, all of created reality is in some way Trinitarian. One of the clearest examples of this Trinitarian symbolism in created reality is the family. As such, the devil seeks to attack the Blessed Trinity through His image: the family.

A Community of Persons, United by Love

Through the mystery of the Trinity is not able to be fully comprehended by man, certain facts about the mystery can be understood. Some of those facts are: 1) There is one Divine nature, 2) there are three distinct Divine Persons in the Godhead, 3) each of these Divine Persons is co-equal, co-eternal, and fully God, 4) each of the Divine Persons is only differentiated from the others by their relations to the other Persons. These relations are as follows: 1) the Father, the first Person of the Trinity, eternally begets the Son, the second Person of the Trinity and 2) the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. Without delving too deep into this mystery, it is important to understand that all three Persons are united in love. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father and this eternal perfect love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit.

With that understanding established, it is not hard to see how the family images this. A man and women love each other so much as to give themselves to each other in the life-long bond of matrimony and the fruit of their married love is a child. What unites them in the child on a material level are their shared genes. (Indeed, the father and the mother are in a way now more completely united since the child is the product of both of them.) Yet, beyond the material level, the are united in mutual love, one for another. Also, each member is distinct in their role within the family. They are a community of persons, united in love, that images the community of Persons, united in eternal love.

The First Attack: Gender Theory

Progressive gender theory advances the idea that men and women are the same. This positions leads to two conclusions: 1) to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ has no actual meaning and 2) that one can switch between being a man or a woman at will because what you are is defined only by what you think you are. In addition to the obvious absurdity of this claim, a problem with this is shown by a passage from Genesis, “So God made man in his own image, made him in the image of God. Man and woman both, he created them.” (Gen. 1:27) Notice two things: 1) that God clearly created two distinct sexes and 2) that He created them in the image of God. Clearly, the complementarity of man and woman are supposed to reveal, in a subtle way, something about the Trinity.

The complementary of man and woman is supposed to model the relationship of the Father and the Son. The Father (the man) eternally loves and gives Himself to the Son (the woman) Who receives Him and gives Himself back in return. The man is the giver in the relationship while the woman receives him and gives herself back in return. The natural inclinations in man and woman show this to be true and to attempt to defy this is not only to make oneself miserable, but to destroy this image of the Trinity in man.

The Second Attack: Divorce

Divorce is the first of these three attacks that has found its way into mainstream acceptance among Protestant Christian circles. This is strange since Christ is very clear that, “[husband and wife] are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” (Matt. 19:6) This practice attacks the Trinity by destroying the Love that binds the Father and the Son together, the Holy Spirit. When a man and woman give themselves to each other in marriage, something new is created even before they step away from the altar. The objective reality of their marriage comes into being and exists in a way that is separate, but dependent on the two people in the marriage. This dependency is not upon the will of the two people joined, but upon their lives. Their marriage will objectively exist until death do they part.

When a couple divorces, they tear apart and divide what God has created to be the symbol of His Unity in the Trinity: the family. The painful effects of such a rupture are often far reaching. It can be particularly damaging to the children of their marriage, who have lost what was supposed to be their image of complete and unconditional love—their image of God on earth.

The Third Attack: Contraception

The second attack of the three that has broken through the walls of the broader Christian kingdom and proceeded to pillage and destroy the interior of that kingdom is contraception. At the beginning of Creation, God gave all animals the blessing of the ability to produce another being like itself. Only in man, however, can we call this blessing procreation instead of reproduction. Only man has been given the privilege of assisting God in the creation of new souls. It is a privilege so important and sacred that it has always been entrusted to two people and marked with a degree of pleasure befitting the goodness of such an act. Moreover, it is a power which makes man truly God-like in the love which motivates it. To will to bring into existence a creature that you will care for and sacrifice for and who has done nothing for you, is indeed incapable of doing anything for you at the beginning, is an act imaging the love that drove God in the act of creation.

The act of contraception, however, opposes the image of the Trinity by removing from a man and woman the natural end of their love and the damage caused by this removal is proportional to the good it damages. While a single contraceptive act, even between a man and wife, is gravely sinful as it opposes the end set forth by the natural law, the effects of a contraceptive mindset are even more terrifying. Through the adoption of a contraceptive mindset, our culture has separated marital love and the creation of children into two separate camps. The fruits of such a separation are bountiful in our culture: pre- and extra-martial relations, masturbation, pornography, abortion, fatherless children, the acceptance of homosexuality and numerous other sexual disorders. It paves the way for marital love, which is supposed to express perfect self-giving to another, to corrupt into selfishness and mutual use. The Trinity shows that love is fruitful by its very nature. The love between the Father and the Son spirates out from them and is another Person. To act contrary to the natural end of love is to act contrary to love itself.

The family is the building block of society and God has will that it be the building block of the supernatural society of the Church as well. He has also made it the natural image for His very Nature, the greatest mystery of the Catholic faith. We must defend this great gift from God which has been entrusted to us by living and proclaiming the truth.

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Cancelling Anger

Culture, Freedom, Virtue, , , , , ,

Virtuous men are rarely, if ever, prone to propaganda.  That is because they can ascertain when to “fight the good fight”.  Vicious men, on the other hand, are extremely prone to it.  They have no idea which are the good fights and so they must be told.  But simply telling them is not enough.  Lacking any real control over their anger, they need someone else to stir it up for them by turning events that fit the narratives catastrophes.   Having no way to turn it off, they are absolutely unforgiving and must find offense around every corner.  Discerning ears will recognize this scenario for what it is—our modern society and its incessant need to cancel other people.

In truth then, at the heart of cancel culture, is the inability to discern the difference between wrath and anger.  These terms, even if they are often used synonymously, are not truly referring to the same thing.  Anger is, first and foremost, a passion or an emotion built into human nature to deal with the presence of evil.  More specifically, it is the emotion that provides an interior motor to fight against a specific evil that acts as an obstacle to achieving some good thing.  When a man discerns some good thing is being blocked, he wills to be angry in order energize him to fight the good fight.     

Fighting the Good Fight

The virtuous man knows the good fight when he sees it because he has the virtue of justice.  He is habitually desiring that each person receives what is due to him.  When some obstacle is placed in the way of that being achieved, he grows angry in order to move him to fight to restore justice.  This is why St. John Chrysostom thought that: “He who does not get angry, when there is just cause for being so, commits sin. In effect, irrational patience sows vices, maintains negligence, and encourages not only bad men to do wrong, but good men as well.”

Not only does the virtuous man grow angry when he should, he also directs his anger at the source of the injustice and does not just “vent”.  Likewise, he also filters it through the virtues of clemency and meekness to avoid becoming excessively angry and aim it at the injustice first and then the cause of it.  He truly knows how to “hate the sin, but not the sinner” because he is just.

Our Lord, Who referred to Himself as “meek and humble of heart” is the example par excellence.  When He cleaned the Temple, it was because His Father was not being rendered what was due to Him.  So, fueled by anger, the Just Man removed the obstacle.  With meekness He whipped the tables but with clemency avoided whipping the money changers.

The reason why anger is such a strong emotion is because it must often supply enough fuel for us to fight for justice for other people.  When that fuel turns inward and ignites a fire in us because of how we perceive we are being treated then it is truly wrath.  This is why wrath has been considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins—it turns what should be an outward-facing passion into a selfish one.  The wrathful man sees red, not because of an offense against justice, but because he has been slighted in some way.  To use modern parlance, he has been offended by the words or actions of another person.  Because anger must always be justified, he must also search for a reason why his own personal offense is really unjust.  In essence wrath turns anger off of justice onto my feelings and directs it not towards rectifying an injustice, but mercilessly punishing the offender.

A simple example might help us discern the difference.  A man is getting on to a crowded bus and he steps on your foot.  You feel anger arise, but look at him and realize he had tripped over someone else’s foot a few feet ahead of you and it was merely an accident.  In that case the just response is clemency because it was an accident.  Now suppose that same man enters the bus looks you in the eye, smiles and stomps on your foot.  Now the anger is justified, but the meek man would temper his response such that it did not include punching him in the face.  But the anger would be directed towards the action and not just the fact that it was done to you.  The way to know the difference is by imagining after stepping on your foot he goes and steps on an old lady’s foot.  If you are just as angry (or more) about that as you are about your own foot being stepped on, then you know the anger is justified.

This scenario also highlights an important point that is often a source of confusion regarding anger.  The Christian in imitation of Our Lord, when He is the sole victim of the injustice, will often suffer it in silence and not be angry.  But when there are other victims, including those who might be scandalized by you not confronting the evil, then zealous anger will confront the wrong directly.  The “others” include the offender because he needs to know that he has done evil in order to repent—and will need to be justly punished as part of that repentance.

Back to the Cancel Culture

Every passion, when not properly wedded to virtue, needs increased stimuli in order to get an equivalent response.  Related to the question at hand, wrath needs to be constantly fed, especially when it is being used to keep the vicious fighting.  It no longer becomes about justice, but about keeping them angry.  There is no need to discern whether something is actually unjust or not, because the anger will make it “feel” that way.  There is no need to make the distinction between victim and perpetrator because the object of that anger will tell which is which.  There can be no forgiveness until the perpetrator is “cancelled” and is no longer exists, either literally or figuratively. 

Thankfully, history has many examples of cancel cultures that always end with the cancellers eating their own.  When there is no one left to be angry at, when there is no one left to cancel, wrath demands that you execute the executioner.  For those who are trapped in this vicious circle the only option is for the virtuous to step up and restore justice.  Fear, masquerading as prudence, is never the solution.  Neither is the ersatz anger that we call “outrage.”  Nor is any attempt at cancelling the cancellers.  Only true zealous anger for justice can repair our decadent culture.

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The Worst Sin

Church, Church Authority, Eucharist, Magisterium, Sacraments, , , , , , ,

What is the worst sin that afflicts the world today?  Our immediate inclination might be to respond, Abortion.  And we would not be wrong in identifying the sheer magnitude, done with impunity and under the legal protecting of the State, of the deliberate murder of the most innocent members of society.  We most certainly cannot turn a blind eye nor remain silent in the face of such a grave evil.  The murder of the innocent cries out to Heaven for vengeance prompting us to clothe ourselves in “sackcloth and ashes”—doing public penance for so public a sin—but, as evil as it is, it is not the worst sin. 

Admittedly, all sin is evil because it is an offense against God first and foremost.  Sins such as murder, abortion, adultery, and theft are direct offenses against love of neighbor.  Other sins such as sacrilege, idolatry, blasphemy, apostasy, heresy, final impenitence, and the like are offenses directly against the love of God.  The latter set always represent, objectively speaking, graver offenses for that reason.  So as evil as abortion is, it is not the greatest evil.  Instead, the greatest evil in the modern world, both in magnitude and frequency, is sacrilege against the Eucharist.

Sacrilege

Sacrilege is, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, “irreverence for sacred things.”  A thing is sacred because it is been set aside for Divine worship.  “Now just as a thing acquires an aspect of good through being deputed to a good end, so does a thing assume a divine character through being deputed to the divine worship, and thus a certain reverence is due to it, which reverence is referred to God…and is an injury to God” (ST II-II q.99, art.1).  The worst acts of sacrilege St. Thomas says are committed against “the sacraments whereby man is sanctified: chief of which is the sacrament of the Eucharist, for it contains Christ Himself. Wherefore the sacrilege that is committed against this sacrament is the gravest of all” (ibid, art.3).

Considering the magnitude alone should give us great pause in both the manner and intention by which we approach the Eucharist.  But in our time, it is the frequency by which this sin is committed that makes it the worst sin.

First of all, at least objectively speaking, Protestant services by which “Communion” is “blessed” and given represents an act of sacrilege against the Eucharist.  This does not, to be clear, consider the subjective guilt of those who participate which may be relatively light.  Still, simulation of a Sacrament, even when done by professing Christians who have no intent of offending God, still can be an act of sacrilege.  I bring it up, not as an attack on Ecumenism, but for Catholics to be conscious of this fact when they are considering participating in such services, even if they choose not to actually partake of the communion wafers and grape juice.  Regardless, it is still objectively an act of sacrilege and calls for those who do love Jesus in the Eucharist to do penance and acts of reparation.  Perhaps the Ecumenical Movement would gain more steam if Catholics did not commit what St. John Paul II referred to as Eucharistic “duplicity” (c.f. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 38) by ignoring the fact that Communion will never be achieved while these sacrileges are glossed over.

Then there are the sins of those who are professed members of the Catholic Church.  By far these are most grave and frequent because “he who handed me over is guilty of the greater sin” (John 19:11).  For a Catholic to commit any sacrilege of the Eucharist is akin to betraying the Son of Man with a kiss.  The Eucharist is Christ’s gift of Himself to His friends.  To betray a friend, especially when that friend is Christ Himself, is a diabolical deed.  These sacrileges tend to happen in one of three ways.

Sacrilege in the Church

First, there are those who “eateth and drinketh unworthily” (1 Cor 11:28) by receiving when in a state of mortal sin.  These sinners, according to St. John Vianney, crucify Jesus in their hearts:

He submits Him to a death more ignominious and humiliating than that of the Cross. On the Cross, indeed, Jesus Christ died voluntarily and for our redemption; but here it is no longer so: He dies in spite of Himself, and His death, far from being to our advantage, as it was the first time, turns to our woe by bringing upon us all kinds of chastisements both in this world and the next. The death of Jesus Christ on Calvary was violent and painful, but at least all nature seemed to bear witness to His pain. The least sensible of creatures appeared to be affected by it, and thus wishful to share the Savior’s sufferings. Here there is nothing of this: Jesus is insulted, outraged by a vile nothingness, and all keeps silence; everything appears insensible to His humiliations. May not this God of goodness justly complain, as on the tree of the Cross, that He is forsaken? My God, how can a Christian have the heart to go to the holy table with sin in his soul, there to put Jesus Christ to death?

Sermon on Unworthy Communion, Book IV, Sermons of St. John Vianney

When members of the Hierarchy either promote such sacrilege by encouraging those who are living in an objective state of sin to receive the Sacrament or by those who look the other way when a public sinner presents themselves for Communion, then they become complicit in the guilt.  At least Judas kept his betrayal to himself and did not try to corrupt other members of the Apostolic College or the rest of Our Lord’s disciples.

Likewise, sacrilege can also occur when a sacred thing is treated as profane.  This is, to use St. Paul’s terminology, a failure to properly “discern the Body of the Lord.”  Faith is vitally important to receiving Our Lord in the Eucharist because it is our part in the exchange that occurs in Communion. Our Lord gives Himself completely while we give Him our faith that the Eucharist is.  It is only by first believing that the Victim for our sins is truly and really present that we can identify with Him as Victim and join Him in offering ourselves to the Holy Trinity.  This exchange cannot happen unless we first receive in Faith. 

This profanation of the Eucharist can occur in the manner in which Our Lord is handled.  I will not belabor the point that was made previously about how the unnecessary use of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, Communion in the Hand, and all of the sanitary abuses related to the pandemic have only served to increase the number of offenses against Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.  Still, I would like to point out that when there is mass sacrilege going on, we must have the zeal to receive Our Lord in the most reverent way possible.  This means making acts of faith, hope and charity and self-offering (Suscipe) before receiving Our Lord on the tongue.  It also means approaching Him after making a sincere act of contrition and an act of thanksgiving afterwards.

It also calls for acts of reparation and penance to repair the harm done to the Church by abusers of the Blessed Sacrament.  This starts by committing to watching for one hour with Our Lord in Adoration in reparation specifically for sins against the Eucharist.  But it continues by joining Bishop Schneider’s Crusade of Reparation to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.  He has a prayer (at the bottom of this link) that should be said at the end of every Mass and each of the acts contained within the prayer offers a concrete way in which we might offer Reparation.

In many ways, the sin of sacrilege against the Eucharist and abortion are simply parallels in the same failure of love of God and love of neighbor.  Just as we fail to love the God Who hid Himself in the Eucharist we also fail to love our neighbor hidden in the womb of his mother.  Out of sight, out of mind as the expression goes.  But until we treat Our Lord in the manner worthy of us great gift, we likewise will not see an end to the mass killing of the hidden children in the womb.

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The Second Sin

Moralilty, Virtue, , , ,

It was, St. Paul said, through one man’s sin of pride that death entered the world (c.f. Romans 5:12).  It was through another man’s envy that death was realized.  Cain killed Abel out of envy.  This pattern, pride followed by envy, is the same path followed by Lucifer.  First pride in defining how he would be like God, then through envy he attacks mankind (c.f. Wisdom 2:23-24).  It is one of the Seven Deadly Sins and is perhaps the deadliest of these vices because of the way in which it addicts us to misery. 

Envy is, according to St. Thomas Aquinas (who cites St. John Chrysostom), is “sadness at another’s good” (De Malo, q.10 art.1).  And herein lies the reason for its deadliness.  Properly speaking, sadness is oriented towards evil and should only be experienced in its presence.  For the envious, it is good that causes it.  This is because the man with the vice of envy experiences someone else’s good as a threat to himself.  More specifically the good of the other person is thought to detract from his own excellence.  And since he experiences sorrow, sorrow that can only be mitigated by removing the evil cause, they will for the person’s excellence to no longer below to him.  They don’t really care if they receive the excellence, they only want the other person not to have it.  Victor Hugo, in his poem, Envy and Avarice, captures the envious heart.  When God offers envy anything he wants with the only condition that his neighbor will get double, he says “I would be blinded of one eye!”.   

The Evil Eye

What Hugo is subtly pointing out is how envy has its punishment built in.  The misery the envious experience never really lets up as long as envy lives in their heart.  Their sadness never subsides while the vice is still present.  In this way some have called it the “just vice.”

The blindness that comes from only one eye is also particularly descriptive because, although envy is in the will, it stems from the inability to see correctly.  The envious see everything in terms of competition.  Their self-worth is predicated upon being better than someone else.  Their self-love is only possible when they hate their neighbor since envy renders them unable to “will the good of the other.” 

As a culture addicted to self-esteem, we are particularly vulnerable to envy.  This is why when someone does or achieves something good, there are always people who go searching out, usually through old social media posts, evidence that the person is deeply flawed.  Apologizing to the envy mob only has the effect of inflaming them further.  There can be no forgiveness for wrongs, real or perceived, when it is the good that the person has done that is experienced as the evil.  Cancel culture is not just about controlling thoughts, but also, and maybe primarily, about indulging envy.

The Second Greatest Commandment, according to Our Lord, is to “love your neighbor, as yourself” (Mark 12:31), but the envious find this command impossible because they do not grasp what the love of self means.  This connection between love and self and love of neighbor often causes us to confuse envy with jealousy.  Although they are often used synonymously, jealousy means that you love something that you possess, but fear that that it might be taken away.  Envy has no such desire to possess, only to see the other not have it.  Jealousy regards sadness at the prospect of losing something good that you already have while envy is sadness in reaction to someone else’s good.

The envious also are rendered incapable of fulfilling the First Commandment as well.  The hatred of neighbor necessarily spills over to God who is “the Giver of all good gifts” (James 1:23-24).  He ultimately bears the blame for unequally distributed His gifts and excellencies among His creatures.  Envy makes us like the younger brother in the story of the Prodigal Son.

Like all vices, envy is baked into our fallen nature and can only be removed by intentionally acting against it.  This, of course requires that we are able to identify it in our pattern of thoughts.  Envy is tricky because it hides in the dark.  Unlike the other vices, no one wants to admit to being so petty.  As Rebecca Konyndyk puts it in her book Glittering Vices, envy shuns open warfare mostly because of the feeling of inferiority—to declare one’s envy is to admit one’s inferiority.  And so, it normally is exercised through sins of the tongue such as detraction, slander and calumny.  We use all of these to keep others from holding the person in such high esteem.  It also manifests itself through belittling and “roasting” the other person.

De-programming Envy

Just as Sloth is the vice by which we fail to love God, envy is the vice though which we fail to love our neighbor.  So, one of the opposing virtues is charity.  Properly understood, charity is loving another person for God’s sake.  By loving the excellence of the other because it ultimately comes from God, we develop the habit of rejoicing in the good of others. 

In practice it consists in the virtue of kindness which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit (c.f. Gal 5:22).  Kindness flows from a burning desire to do good for one’s neighbor in a specific and concrete way.  As an example, St. Martin de Porres who often was the subject of severe ridicule because of his mixed-race complexion, would run after someone when they made fun of him in order to do some kindness for them.

St. Thomas also mentions that because envy regards two objects—namely the sadness and the prosperity of a good person, it has two contrary virtues.  First there is pity by which one grieves, both affectively and effectively, the misfortune of a good person.  Likewise, zealous anger is the opposing virtue by which one is saddened at the prosperity of the wicked.

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The Battle Over the Origin of Species

Anthropology, Creation, Creed, Evolution, Science, Scripture, , , , , , ,

Writing in his journal in 1873, Charles Darwin said “I have lately read Morley’s Life of Voltaire and he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity (even when written with the wonderful force and vigor of Voltaire) produce little permanent effect; real good seems only to follow the slow and silent side attacks.”  Using his slow and silent theory of Evolution as his side attack, Darwin decided that he would reimagine the Book of Genesis.  The original Origin of Species speaks of the supernatural beginnings of all of creation and it was to be replaced by a completely naturalistic explanation for the origin of all that is.  Darwin’s Theory of Evolution started a revolution, first by consigning the first three chapters of Genesis to “myth” and then systematically deconstructing each of the tenets of the Creed.  The Church was certainly caught flat-footed when the attack began and the Faithful made compromises with Darwinists that can be labeled as “theistic evolution.”  But this compromise does not just remake the beginnings but removes the supernatural from nearly every element of the Faith.  It is high time then that we reconstruct a theology of Creation which starts with a proper understanding of the opening chapters of Genesis.

Before diving into the specifics, we must first admit that the use of figurative language has as its goal to make the truth clearer.  Those who attempt to reconcile the two Origin of Species accounts often speak as if Genesis is using figurative language to convey the truth that God created all things, but that it is not intended to explain how He did so.  Nevertheless, the account does in fact reveal how He made things.  Genesis speaks very clearly that the animals are made from the clay(Gn 1:24), Adam from the slime of the Earth (Gn 2:7) and Eve from the rib of Adam (Gn 2:23). 

The Figurative Catch-22

It is often contended that the author of Genesis is merely using figurative language thus opening the door to an evolutionary explanation.  The problem with this interpretation is that there is no need to use figurative language; ordinary language will do.  Darwin did it and didn’t need the Holy Spirit’s help.  If Theistic Evolution is true, then the figurative language makes this less clear, not more, and violates the sole purpose of using figurative language to begin with.  No one would read “Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds” (Gn 1:23), and think this is simply a metaphor for one living species becoming another.  It is quite clear, even if we admit that it is figurative language, that the author is saying that the living animals all came directly from inanimate matter.  Likewise with man who God “breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” If man’s body came from animate being, then “breathing the breath of life” into the man so that he “became a living soul” may be figurative language, but the figure does not actually point to reality.

This also invites the more fundamental question as to why God needs to use figurative language to begin with.  Certainly, there are truths that are beyond human understanding and thus only a metaphor or the like will do.  But when speaking of God’s actions in Creation, the Omnipotent God, can do things in such a way as to make them explainable.  In other words, why would God need a metaphor to describe how He created—couldn’t He just create in a way that enables Him to also describe it in relatively simple terms? Why do we default to thinking that “the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth” isn’t actually how God actually did it?  The only reason why we wouldn’t read that literally is because we a priori remove any supernatural action on God’s part and assume that it is a metaphor for some natural explanation.  Again, why would God then use a metaphor when there is a natural explanation that could be explained using clear language?  The ancient peoples knew of different theories of evolution, so it would have been intelligible to even them.  “Slime” or “dust” (depending on your translation) is not a metaphor for ape, even for the most inarticulate person you could imagine.

That it should be read with a supernatural interpretation is clear from the fact that things are created by God’s Word—“through Him all things were made.”  How can we reconcile God’s “let there be” and evolutionary construction of the universe by natural processes?  The only way is through a Deistic conception of God by which He speaks not directly into creation (i.e. supernatural creation and miracles) but through some Divine blueprint by which the universe reaches its completion without any direct intervention on His part.

The Mind of the Church

It was mentioned above that the Church was caught somewhat flat-footed in its response to Evolution.  That was not the case initially.  A local synod was held in Cologne, Germany in 1860 to specifically address Evolution. They sought to respond to the release of Origin of Species in Germany and nip any attempt to say humans were subject to evolution in the bud.  Although it was a document of a local Church it did receive the unreserved acceptance of Rome because it contained the ordinary Catholic teaching.  Likewise, Vatican I declared that all things were created directly “according to their whole substance” by God.  Pope St. Pius X also commissioned the Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC), giving them Magisterial Power to declare the truths about Genesis.  In his 1907 Motu Proprio, Praestantia Scripturae, he declared that “all are bound by duty of conscience to submit to the decisions of the Biblical Pontifical Commission, both those which have thus far been published and those which will hereafter be proclaimed.”

Related to the specific question at hand, the PBC issued the document “Concerning the Historical Character of the First Three Chapters of Genesis” in 1909.  The question that was posed was “[N]otwithstanding the historical character and form of Genesis, the special connection of the first three chapters with one another and with the following chapters, the manifold testimonies of the Scriptures both of the Old and of the New Testaments, the almost unanimous opinion of the holy Fathers and the traditional view which the people of Israel also has handed on and the Church has always held, may it be taught that: the aforesaid three chapters of Genesis contain not accounts of actual events, accounts, that is, which correspond to objective reality and historical truth, but, either fables derived from the mythologies and cosmogonies of ancient peoples and accommodated by the sacred writer to monotheistic doctrine after the expurgation of any polytheistic error; or allegories and symbols without any foundation in objective reality proposed under the form of history to inculcate religious and philosophical truths; or finally legends in part historical and in part fictitious freely composed with a view to instruction and edification?” to which they answered, “In the negative to both parts.”

Genesis, according to the mind of the Church then, contains actual events “which correspond to objective reality and historical truth” and is not “allegories and symbols without any foundation in objective reality proposed under the form of history to inculcate religious and philosophical truths.”  Genesis is true history from “the beginning”.    

If the modern Church that has been steamrolled by the slow and steady onslaught of Darwinian Evolution it is because these teachings have been mostly forgotten.  If we are to reverse the tide, then we must reassert our confidence in the truth and meaning of God’s Word.  We have abandoned it for dubious science and the fallout has been great.  Only by reasserting the Traditional understanding of the Church can we restore a belief in the supernatural action of God.

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The Gateway Vice

Anthropology, Eucharist, Fasting, Virtue, , , , , ,

As Eve twisted the apple from its stem, little did she grasp that she was also twisting the desires of her progeny for all time.  By mingling good and evil, their desires would no longer be the North Star that God intended them to be.  For He had willed that man, in pursuing those things that were truly good for him, would be rewarded with pleasure.  Reason commanded the will towards the good and pleasure was its reward.  Adam seized the reward instead by choosing that which was “pleasing to the eye and good for food,” Adam truly upset the apple cart.  In choosing pleasure over reason, reason no longer ruled but instead wrestled with pleasure.  In seemingly becoming “like unto the gods” he became like unto a beast. 

God did not leave mankind unaware of its fundamental brokenness but instead left an orientation towards those things that are truly good for them intact.  It became difficult, but not impossible.  Generation after generation knew this and sought to root out vice and find fulfillment in virtue.  But few of those generations have embraced this brokenness with such gusto as our own.  Virtue is something to be signaled, not actually owned, and vice is to be rationalized away as, at worst, a “bad habit” akin to cracking your knuckles or clicking your tongue before you speak.  If virtue is to be more than signaled, then we must restore a proper understanding of vice. 

Following in the footsteps of the desert monks, St. Gregory the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas, Tradition has left us with Seven Deadly Vices.  St. Thomas called them Capital Vices because these seven vices are usually the source or head of all of the sins we commit (see ST II-II, q.153, art.4).  The reason why this is important is that these vices remain hidden to us as subconscious motivations for the sins we do commit.  They cause us to steal pleasure where none should be found.  Only once they are recognized can we restore pleasure to its rightful place as a side effect. 

A Useless Vice?

One of these vices, gluttony, at least on the surface does not seem to be a big deal.  How could a little overeating or carrying a little too much have anything to do with our spiritual life?  But, as St. Gregory the Great said, “unless we first tame the enemy dwelling within us, namely our gluttonous appetite, we have not even stood up to engage in the spiritual combat.”  His point is that gluttony is a gateway vice that, left unconquered, will most certainly lead to hell.  It trains us in the practice of self-indulgence and causes us to more and more of it.  Likewise, when we abandon reason when it comes to eating, we are almost certainly going to abandon it in other areas too.

Now I mentioned the connection between being fat and gluttony, but we would err greatly if we thought gluttony is all about whether we are fat or not.  The skinny woman who drinks a six-pack of Coke Zero a day is likely to be far more gluttonous than the man whose six pack is buried beneath 25 pounds of fat.  The latter might recognize that the purpose of eating is to provide nutrition while the former has no such awareness.  She merely wants the pleasure of Coke without the caloric consequences.  She is limited only by the amount of pleasure she craves, not by any bodily need or capacity.  And herein lies the vice of gluttony: “the sin of gluttony is when the desire for such pleasures goes beyond the rule of reason.  And so there is the saying that ‘gluttony is the intemperate desire to eat.’” (St. Thomas Aquinas, On Evil).  

The problem is not the pleasure attached to eating—God has attached that pleasure to eating because eating fulfills our nature.  Nor is it necessarily that we choose a food we like better than another to eat.  Gluttony is deeper than that, it resides interiorly in that it is the pleasure, rather than the reason for eating, that drives us.  Right reason says that food is necessary for humans in two ways: first as nutrition and second as a means of sharing life with others.  Anytime we go beyond those reasons, we are operating under the vice of gluttony. 

As proof that gluttony is more than just about girth, there are five ways in which it tends to manifest itself.  These can be remembered by invoking the acronym FRESH—fastidiously, ravenously, exceedingly, sumptuously, and hastily.

In the Screwtape Letters, Wormwood complains to Screwtape about how useless gluttony is for capturing humans.  Screwtape quickly corrects him and says that fastidious gluttons are often very easy to ensnare.  The Fastidious Glutton is the one who suffers from the “‘All-I-want’ state of mind.”  Its hiddenness makes it quite useful in capturing her in a diabolic net because she is so particular about her food and how it is prepared that she is miserably attached to the pleasure of eating foot that is “made your way.”  The taste is all that matters for the fastidious glutton.  The pleasure dominates her eating rather than coming as a side effect.  It also makes all those who have the misfortune of eating with her or preparing her food positively miserable.

There is also the glutton who eats sumptuously.  He is preoccupied with the pleasure of being full.  He will only choose those foods which are substantial enough to leave him with the feeling of fullness.  Reason should dictate when we have eaten enough to sustain ourselves and not the feeling of fullness.  When we eat to be full, we are again chasing pleasure rather than being controlled by reason.  Again there is no concern for what they are being filled with, only that they experience the pleasure of being full.   This is, by the way, the reason the Church in her wisdom traditionally recommends fasting from sumptuous foods during Lent and restricting the menu to bread and vegetables instead.

The ravenous glutton is the one who must eat as much as they can, regardless of whether there is enough food for anyone else and how full they are.  Their eyes might be bigger than their stomachs, but their stomachs will soon be bigger than their belts. 

Similar to the ravenous glutton there is the glutton who eats hastily.  This glutton treats his utensils like a shovel and must always have his mouth full without chewing or eating slow enough for digestion to occur.  The glutton who eats excessively.  He will eat past the point of fullness in order to indulge the tastes even if it leads to bloating and upset stomach later.

The Only True Antidote

The antidote ought to be obvious and something we have spoke about numerous times in the past—cultivating the virtue of fasting.  There is one particular aspect of fasting however that bears mentioning and that is the Eucharistic Fast.  We spoke of the reason for food and for eating being nutrition and sharing of life.  But the reason from God’s perspective is more expansive than that.  God gave us food as a sign of the only true Food that is the Bread of Life.  Therefore, we should forego the sign for the reality. 

The Church has us fast before receiving the Eucharist so that in experiencing bodily hunger we might recognize what that hunger actually points to.  By receiving the Eucharist in a state of hunger, it is Real Food that nourishes us.  To show us the truth of this, God gave a grace to the Saint of the Eucharist, St. Catherine of Siena by which she ate only the Eucharist for 7 years prior to her death.  This miraculous sign enabled her to eat only the Bread of Life and to suffer no ill effects from what would otherwise be a severe fast.  In order to truly hunger for the Eucharist then it becomes necessary to fast for more than just the obligatory hour before receiving.  We may choose to do something similar to what the Church had previously held that you could not eat anything during a day until you had received the Eucharist that day.

In his book Victory Over Vice, Venerable Fulton Sheen says that Christ’s cry of “I thirst” was His definitive destruction of the power of gluttony to rule the lives of Christians.  What better place then than the Mystical Foot of the Cross of the Eucharistic Sacrifice to receive those hard won graces to finally overcome the Gateway Vice of Gluttony.

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What is Actual Grace?

Grace, Heaven, , , , , , ,

Our Lord told the Apostles that they were given the power to understand the mysteries of God’s Kingdom.  For the rest of the people, He relied on the power of parables to teach them about these same mysteries.  To explain one of the most central mysteries of our Faith, grace, Our Lord repeatedly relied on the image of a seed.  Just as there is a hidden cooperation between soil and seed, there is a mysterious cooperation between human freedom and Divine power. 

While this action remains in the realm of theological mystery, this does not mean that we need to remain fully ignorant or passive to how grace works on and in us.  If that was true, then Our Lord would not have bothered using natural things to describe these supernatural realities.  Understanding the “mechanics” of grace turns out to be vital (in the truest sense of the word) to our sanctification and personal redemption. 

Shedding Light on the Mystery

The problem is that most of us labor under a vague understanding of grace as a concept.  As the Latin term gratis implies it involves a gift given freely.  But we must take the term also in the sense of being pleasing to someone—as in “I am in his good graces.”  Fully understood then grace is a free gift that makes us truly pleasing to God.  This bestowing of “pleasing-ness” happens in two ways that have been traditionally categorized as Actual Grace and Sanctifying Grace. 

Just as in the natural life, God must both bestow existence and continue to sustain that existence, it is also in the supernatural life.  God bestows supernatural life through Sanctifying Grace and continues that life through the power of Actual Grace.  This distinction is clearly laid out in Chapter 3 of the Book of Revelation when Our Lord says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with Me” (Rev 3:20).  Our Lord’s knocking and our opening is the action of Actual Grace while the dining together that is the sign of a shared life is Sanctifying Grace.  In order to be brief, we will limit our discussion to Actual Grace here and will cover Sanctifying Grace another time. 

“Without Me You Can Do Nothing”

Men and women, even in their fallen state, are still capable of morally good actions naturally.  What they are not capable of are supernaturally good (i.e. meritorious) actions.  For this, they must both have supernatural life (Sanctifying Grace) and the sustained supernatural power that we call Actual Grace.  When Our Lord says “without Me you can do nothing” He is primarily referring to the supernaturally good actions we are moved to do by actual grace.

As an aside, some of the Doctors of Prayer in the Church say that at a certain point actual graces are no longer needed in the person in the Unitive Way because the Gifts of the Holy Spirit are fully operative.  This makes sense, but because all of us must journey through the Purgative and Illuminative Way first, we can assume that every supernatural act that we perform must first be motivated by actual grace.

By “nothing” then Our Lord means “nothing that will last for eternity”.  This includes not just our supernaturally good actions, but conversion itself.  This leads to a further distinction between two kinds of Actual Grace: operative and cooperative. 

Operative Grace

The sinner finds himself in a literal “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.  Under his own power, he can never turn or return to God.  Justification and sanctification requires Divine intervention.  This intervention however must be done in such a way that it is still an act of the person’s will to repent.  Put in more theological terms, actual grace must prompt the sinner to return to God.  This “knocking at the door” is what is called operative grace.  Operative grace, according to the Council of Trent’s Decree on Justification, is the grace that moves that touches the person and movies them towards a desire to conversion.  More specifically it tackles the catch-22 so “that in adults the beginning of that justification must proceed from the predisposing grace of God …whereby, without any merits on their part, they are called; that they who by sin had been cut off from God, may be disposed through His quickening and helping grace to convert themselves to their own justification by freely assenting to and cooperating with that grace.” 

The whole purpose of this operating grace is to pave the way for the second “type” of actual grace, cooperating grace.  Once that operative grace is consented to, once the person decides that “yes, I desire conversion” they must still move to “open the door.”  This movement towards conversion is the work of cooperating grace.  This grace too, requires the consent of free will and can be rejected. 

Two Saintly Examples

Two famous conversion stories will help to shed light on how these two graces work.  The first is St. Paul’s Road to Damascus encounter with Our Lord.  The story is well known, but we can couch it in terms of actual grace to make the distinction between the two kinds clearer.  The powerful operative grace comes specifically when Our Lord invades Saul’s life saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  St. Paul acknowledges a desire for conversion by asking, “Who are you, sir?”  Now Our Lord offers St. Paul a cooperating grace: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.”  St. Paul consents and the actual grace moves him to go to Damascus.

From that moment forward, cooperating grace becomes the motivating force for all the supernaturally good actions in St. Paul’s life.  It sustains the supernatural movement in his life always with his free will consent.  So powerful is this force that it prompts him to tell the Corinthians “by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective. Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God [that is] with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

A second famous example shows how operative grace might be accepted but how we can run from cooperative grace.  St. Augustine in his Confessions tells how he “had prayed, ‘Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.’ For I was afraid lest thou shouldst hear me too soon, and too soon cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have satisfied rather than extinguished” (Book 9, Ch. 7).  Consent to the operative grace occurs (he prays), but there is no will to accept the cooperative grace.  This is instructive because it shows how operating grace does not come just once, but many times.  In Augustine’s case the frequency of the invitation was greatly increased because of the prayer of his saintly mother, Monica.  This ought to prompt us to ask God very specifically and repeatedly to send operative graces to those whom we know personally to convert.

To summarize, we can once again turn to Augustine.  Like St. Paul, St. Augustine understood the operations of actual grace from experience earning him the title Doctor of Grace.  There is no better summary of the action of actual grace then his:

“For He who first works in us the power to will is the same who cooperates in bringing this work to perfection in those who will it. Accordingly, the Apostle says: ‘I am convinced of this, that he who has begun a good work in you will bring it to perfection until the day of Christ Jesus’ (Phil 1:6). God, then, works in us, without our cooperation, the power to will, but once we begin to will, and do so in a way that brings us to act, then it is that He cooperates with us. But if He does not work in us the power to will or does not cooperate in our act of willing, we are powerless to perform good works of a salutary nature.”

Free Will and Grace, 17.33

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An Act of Charity?

Abortion, Bioethics, Science, , , , , ,

In the last post, it was discussed that an evolutionary paradigm, motivated by a spirit of transhumanism that was at the heart of the development of the new delivery methods for so-called vaccines.  It was also mentioned in passing how much of the debate so far as centered upon the question of the use of aborted fetal tissues in both the testing (Moderna and Pfizer) and delivery (AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson).  Despite this connection to abortion, there are many in the Church that have reasoned that it is morally licit and perhaps even laudatory to receive the vaccine.  In this post, we will discuss why it is neither and we should avoid these and all abortion tainted vaccines.

As usual, the devil is in the details—except this time, the Devil really is in the details.  The four current vaccines all make use of fetal cell lines originating in an aborted child.  Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca all used cells derived from the HEK293 cell line while the Johnson and Johnson used cells from the PER-C6 line.  These came from different children; the former came from the kidney (HEK=Human Embryonic Kidney, one can imagine that it was not the only sample since it has the number 293,even if it is the most “fruitful” of the collection) of a child in 1973 and the latter from the retina of a child in 1985.  The degree to which each of these vaccines is tainted by the evil of abortion is certainly different.  Although whether this is morally relevant or not is open to discussion.  Before getting to that however, it is good to ponder just what we mean when we say it is tainted by abortion.

The Devil Is in the Details

Most of us would have difficulty imagining how these cell lines are gathered.  Perhaps we might think that a bunch of abortions are performed and they have a bunch of tissue left over that they then sell to harvesters and researchers.  Or maybe we think that the harvester went door to door at abortion mills and ask if they had any extra tissue around.  In truth however the harvester must have arranged a priori, presumably through informed consent of the mother, to gather the cells from the child at the time of the abortion.  Like regular organ donation, fetal organ donation must be fresh in the sense that the live tissue would be preserved right as the abortion is happening.  It might also be that the child is removed along with the womb and kept alive until the harvesting could occur at some secondary site.  The point is that the developer wasn’t just some opportunist, but absolutely complicit in the abortion.  He arranges with both the abortionist and the mother beforehand and does nothing to stop it at the time. Presumably, there is compensation both to the abortionist and the mother, meaning that he has actually encouraged it.

But it isn’t just the abortion that is the problem now.  The developer of the line commits a further evil when he keeps the child alive and harvests his or her organs.  Let that settle in—a child is removed from (or with) his mother’s womb, possibility refrigerated and then, while still living, has his organs removed.  This is the stuff of Mengele’s dreams.  The evils now begin to multiply.  The researcher, because he demands the cell lines for testing, may or may not be cooperating with the abortion, is most certainly cooperating and complicit in organ harvesting.  So while we might be able to say there is a moral difference between simply using the cell line for testing versus using it for delivery, it is not a difference in degree but in number.  Any researcher that uses the cell line formally cooperates in the organ harvesting.      

In order to avoid the reductio ad Hitlerum accusation, it is important to discuss the reference to Josef Mengele.  Regardless of the usefulness of the results and the data, everyone agrees that to use data from any of his experiments is unethical.  This is because the way in which these experiments were conducted was so evil that conscience forbids the use of the results.  Certainly a Catholic conscience should shudder at having anything to do with abortion and organ harvesting tainted vaccines, regardless to what degree a given Pharmaceutical Company used them.  Some actions such as harvesting organs from innocent, living pre-born children is so evil that there is no good that would justify using them.  As the former abortionist Bernard Nathanson said, “it is impossible to separate the issue of abortion from the use of the tissue obtained therefrom.”

Appropriation vs Cooperation

This is why framing the use of these vaccines only in terms of cooperation is incomplete at best.  Cooperation with some act in the past is almost always remote.  Appropriation, that is, whether we can reap the fruits of someone else’s past evil act in the present is another question.  We might not cooperate to the evil of abortion and organ harvesting, but that does not automatically mean we are free to benefit from it.  For example, suppose I buy a bike that I later find out was stolen.  I am obligated to return that bike to its rightful owner, regardless of whether I actually cooperated with its theft and regardless of how desperately I need the bike. 

The theft of the bike is illustrative because in a very real way the organs have been stolen from these children.  Once we become aware of that fact, we must make restitution by returning them to their rightful owner, God by providing them with a proper burial.  This is why it is always an act of charity to bury a person.  When these aborted children were murdered, in justice they must be buried and as long as they remain unburied, the evil is ongoing.  While we may not have the means to gather up all the remains from this child, we most certainly have no right to benefit from their murder and dismemberment.

This is why the two vaccines, Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca, that deliver the vaccine through cultures grown in the cell line (that will contain a part of the child’s body, namely their DNA) must be avoided.  There is no question as to whether if there is a grave enough cause or not. It is a clear violation of justice.  The other two vaccines currently on the market, might be justified for an extremely grave reason.  I say might because it is hard to imagine that given the evil that has been done to the unborn persons anyone would in good conscience be willing to do so.

What is clear is that receiving any of these vaccines can not be reduced to an act of charity nor as an obligation to the common good.  Charity is a love of God and love of neighbor for His sake.  It cannot be an act of charity to compromise with evil or reap the fruits of a gravely evil action.  Furthermore, the common good must work for the good of every member of a society.  For the vaccines to truly be instruments of the Common Good, then the goods attached to them must flow back over even the unborn members of society. Clearly, these vaccines are prejudiced against some of the unborn.

In closing it is worth mentioning that the Church’s teaching that focuses on the principle of cooperation has truly backfired.  There are many cases in which a child (or an adult with the COVID vaccines) receives a “a vaccine which was developed using cell lines of illicit origin” when there is no serious “danger to health.”  Not surprisingly the “the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their healthcare system make other types of vaccines available” (c.f. Donum Vitae, 8) has fallen upon deaf ears.  We are currently 0 for 4 on the COVID vaccines and there is no reason to think that will change.  Perhaps if, and this would need to happen from the top, Catholics en masse refused the Covid vaccines, then we wouldn’t be in this moral quandary. 

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Evolution and the COVID-19 Vaccine

Abortion, Anthropology, Bioethics, Evolution, , , , , , ,

It has been noted on a number of occasions on this site, the bait and switch that those wedded to scientific materialism use to sell their evolutionary worldview.  They use the term Evolution in such an elastic manner that it is refute.  Only the most narrow-minded Fundamentalist would fail to see evolution in action in even the tiniest bacteria that grows resistant to antibiotics.  Darwin himself used the example of finches on the Galapagos islands with their varying adaptive beak lengths.  In short, the fact that there is abundant evidence of limited variation within species does not allow us to conclude that finches turned into something else.  This grand claim does not follow from the smaller claim.  In fact, the smaller claim fits perfectly well with the Biblical notion that God created various kinds of creatures.  But this foundation of limited variation (or what we might call microevolution) is not strong enough to carry the weight of Macroevolution.  In fact, intellectually honest scientists all admit that limited variation is little more than a prop for Evolution because there is no currently accepted mechanism among scientists by which, even given long time periods, one kind becomes another.  The insistence that the evolutionary claim is true, despite no solid evidence, is really meant to be a smokescreen that scientists are actually not as sure as they present themselves to be.  This smokescreen is necessary because it is really because Evolution is a philosophy and not about science at all.

Humanism and the Evolutionary Smokescreen

For evidence of this we need look no further than the ongoing Covid crisis.  Under the microevolutionary model, we should expect that as time goes on, different variants of Covid-19 would tend to be more contagious and less deadly.  Why is that?  Because of survival of the fittest.  Those variants which are able to spread easier while not killing their host, would naturally be selected.  Viruses that are deadly, even if they are highly contagious, simply don’t last because they kill their host.  Assuming that the numbers are accurate, this is precisely why we are currently seeing an uptick in “cases” while the attributed deaths are in decline.  This is exactly what should be expected according to the microevolutionary model.

Why then, if we are following the “science” should we have terror in our hearts for the new variants?  Because science, even when it fits the evolutionary narrative, always takes a backseat to philosophy.  The philosophy that is propped up by scientific evolution is humanism and when science is not useful then it must be discarded or ignored. 

Humanism represents a catch-all philosophical school in which man is the measure of all things.  All forms of it end up in the deification of man and the de-deification of God.  It is at the heart of the not-so-modern attempt to fulfill the promise that “you will be like God”.  Buttressed by the view that man has evolved from bacteria rather than as a Special Creation from the hand of God, it professes that man is at the pinnacle of reality.  Every problem, every limitation, natural or not, can be overcome by human reason aided by technology.

Humanism and the Vaccine

It is this viewpoint that causes the oligarchs to set aside actual science in pursuit of their humanistic ambitions.  If the evolutionary truth that the virus is losing some of its power gets out, then people will not get the “vaccine” which is, in a very real way, the next step in humanism’s evolution of man. 

I put vaccine in scare quotes because what is currently being pedaled as a vaccine isn’t a vaccine, at least in the traditional sense of the term. Vaccines are artificial attempts to trigger the body to act in a natural way, enabling it to defend itself when it encounters the wild-type virus.  There are various schools of thought as to whether this triggering of the immune response works, but its goal is to keep you from getting sick using the natural processes of the body.

The new mRNA vaccines, at least according to the manufacturers, are altogether different.  Rather than acting as vaccines, they are akin to gene therapies.  They do not keep the person from getting the virus but instead attempt to stimulate them to create it.  More specifically, it injects a strand of artificial mRNA into the person that causes them to create the S1 spike protein.  In short, it has your body create the very toxin that normally makes it sick.  The hope is that your body will become “familiarized” with the protein and not have as strong of an immune response when it encounters it in the wild.

The details matter not just from a health standpoint but also from a moral and anthropological standpoint.  The ongoing debate in the Church about the moral obligation to receive these vaccines and their complicity in abortion is mostly a red herring.  And not just because these are not vaccines in the traditional sense, but they also represent an attempt at transhumanism.  Coaxing the body to produce something that is not natural is simply an attempt to modify human nature.  It is not in accord with the nature of man to make spike proteins.  This power of making spike proteins, in other words, goes beyond (trans) human nature.  And the Church has always taught that such attempts to alter human nature, either temporarily or permanently, is a grave evil.   

Summarizing then we can say that these “vaccines” even if they didn’t rely on aborted fetal cells would still be wrong.  Catholics should recognize that they are thinly veiled attempts at transhumanism and the Church should condemn them for what they are.  Unfortunately, the pandemic of humanism has even infected many in the Church as well.

It is an evolutionary mindset that is behind this attempt.  If random selection is true, then tinkering with human nature itself is not only licit, but laudatory.  It is simply speeding up man’s ultimate deification through evolution. As Harvard University Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson once said, “The fact that man knows he evolves entails the possibility that he can do something to influence his own biological destiny. The fact that uncontrolled evolution often leads to denegeneration and usually to extinction makes it highly advisable that man take a hand in determining his own future.”

This understanding of reality, in which man is “nothing but” a collection of cells arranged by natural selection, means that it is possible to manipulate man’s production of certain cells, without upsetting the rest of the body.  This paradigm ultimately does great harm to the whole person because the body is not just a conglomeration of parts, but an integrated whole designed by God. If the vaccine ultimately doesn’t work then it really doesn’t matter because the more fit will survive either way.  There is no way to lose because it has moved evolution chain ever upward to man’s deification.

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The Visible Church

Bible, Church, Church Authority, Defending the Faith, Ecumenism, Protestantism, , , , ,

Sacred Tradition is, and always has been, a great obstacle for Protestants to overcome.  There is an utter incongruity between the Christianity of history and Protestantism that requires much mental gymnastics to avoid.  St. John Henry Newman put it another way: “if ever there were a safe truth, it is this…To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”  The early Protestants, because they were drawn from the ranks of Catholics, knew this so that their theological acrobatics required them to discredit, or at least mitigate the role of the Catholic Church during the first fifteen centuries of Christianity, while still maintaining the revealed truth that the Church could not totally fail.  From this they developed the idea of the “Invisible Church” as the true Church.  This “spiritual” society was to be comprised of all the just men and women.  It would only be made visible to the extent that the various religious communities more or less perfectly realize the ideal proposed by Christ.  All of this leads to the notion that one Church is as good as another and only the “heart” of the individual believer really determines whether they are a part of the true, invisible Church.

We must admit at the outset that this ecclesiastical sleight of hand by the original Protestant revolutionaries was deliberate.  But for Protestants today, it is simply an unquestioned maxim upon which the entire façade of Protestantism rests.  This is why Newman thought, especially from his own personal experience, that studying the Church Fathers would lead one to the conclusion that the Protestant Fathers invented a new Christianity that was, at least in theory, based on the Bible alone.  But prior to this study it is often necessary to raze the foundation upon which the entire building of Protestantism rests—the invisible Church.

That Christ intended to form a single Church is clearly testified to in Sacred Scripture.  The one mustard seed, the one field, the one Bride of Christ and telling it to the Church all put this unity on display.  He prayed to the Father before making His sacrifice that all believers would be one.  Of these facts both Catholics and Protestants can agree.  But in order for this unity to real, there must be certain characteristics among the body of believers.

For any society to exist there must be a true union of minds and wills between members.  This unity in intellect means that the same doctrines are known and professed by each of the members.  Likewise, the union of wills means, not just that they do the same things, but that there is submission to a common authority.  Because man is not just a mind and will however, there must also be a third characteristic.  This third characteristic is a set of external signs that symbolizes this internal unity. 

Unity in Visible Government

In merely human societies, this unity is usually realized imperfectly.  Nevertheless, there are some core set of beliefs, recognition of authority and visible signs that mark members of a society as belonging to that society.  In the supernatural society that is the Church, these are necessarily realized perfectly.  No mere core set of beliefs will do because of the Divine promise of being given “all truth” (Jn 16:13).  There are no “core beliefs” in Christianity because the Truth is one.  This unity of doctrine likewise means a unity of acceptance and a unity of government. 

The Truth must be guarded and protected so as to avoid corruption.  Protestantism bears this aspect out.  Because there is no unity of belief, there can be no unity in government and thus we have thousands of “denominations.”  Protestantism, rather than leading to the unity willed by Christ, has led in the opposite direction.  This government must not only be one, but it must be visible.  The Government of the Church, because of the nature of man and the nature by which men are cooperators, must be something visible and external. 

As Leo XIII said in Satis Cognitum:

The Apostles received a mission to teach by visible and audible signs, and they discharged their mission only by words and acts which certainly appealed to the senses. So that their voices falling upon the ears of those who heard them begot faith in souls-“Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the words of Christ” (Rom. x., 17). And faith itself – that is assent given to the first and supreme truth – though residing essentially in the intellect, must be manifested by outward profession-“For with the heart we believe unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. x., 10). In the same way in man, nothing is more internal than heavenly grace which begets sanctity, but the ordinary and chief means of obtaining grace are external: that is to say, the sacraments which are administered by men specially chosen for that purpose, by means of certain ordinances.

SG, 3

Unity in Visible Worship

But this visibility in government is not the only aspect by which the Church must be visible.  Since it is a religious society, there must be a unity in worship.  It is this unity of worship that signals to the world that the Church is one. 

Man, on his own, is incapable of worshipping God in a fitting manner.  For that, God must reveal the form of worship that is pleasing to Him. Throughout salvation history, God always makes a covenant with Israel that includes regulation of a concrete form of worship that God seeks.  The New Covenant is no different in that regard.  The worship that God seeks, the only worship that is pleasing to Him is the Mass.  This is exactly the point that St. Paul makes to the Corinthians.  First, he reminds them that the liturgy is their source of unity: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?   Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (1Cor 10:16-17).  Then he tells them that the form of the liturgy, including the manner in which they participate, is regulated by Christ Himself: “In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes” (1Cor 11:25-26).

Practically speaking then there can be no true Christian Unity without unity of Faith, government and worship.  True Ecumenism then must always have as its purpose conversion because until we have unity in the True Faith, governed by the True Church and worshipping with the True Sacrifice, we remain a divided society.

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A Healthy Sense of Sin?

Freedom, Sacraments, Sin, , , , , , ,

In a 1946 Radio Address, Pope Pius XII said that “perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin.”  There has been no great moral awakening since he uttered those words so that what was begun has found its completion in our age.  The widespread loss of a sense of sin has led to a great spiritual malaise in which any semblance of shame has been lost and sins are demanded as rights.  The soul of our culture is dead, which is not surprising because its natural soul, the members of the Church, have also lost their sense of sin.  Communion lines grow longer while Confession lines grow shorter and even public sinners are given Communion as a right. 

A Great Spiritual Awakening

Pope St. John Paul II thought that the only way to stimulate a Great Awakening was to restore this sense of sin:

“The restoration of a proper sense of sin is the first way of facing the grave spiritual crisis looming over man today. But the sense of sin can only be restored through a clear reminder of the unchangeable principles of reason and faith which the moral teaching of the church has always upheld.  There are good grounds for hoping that a healthy sense of sin will once again flourish, especially in the Christian world and in the Church. This will be aided by sound catechetics, illuminated by the biblical theology of the covenant, by an attentive listening and trustful openness to the magisterium of the church, which; never ceases to enlighten consciences, and by an ever more careful practice of the Sacrament of Penance.”  

Reconciliation and Penance, 18

The Holy Father was reminding the Church that one of her essential tasks in to preach the bad news of sin.  In fact, the Church has no mission if there is no sin, or at least if there is no sin to be forgiven. Just as the Father sent the Son into the world for the forgiveness of sins, so the Son sends the Apostles and their successors (c.f. John 20:21-23).  To omit the reality of sin from the Gospel renders the Good News utterly senseless. 

The Pontiff did not just say that a sense of sin was necessary, but a healthy sense of sin.  Sin and guilt, at least according to spirit of the world, are things to be explained away because it is unhealthy.  That we can develop a healthy sense of sin is itself Good News because it frees us from not only rationalization but also scrupulosity.  Both of these ensnare us because they leave us closed to the reality of God’s mercy.  What then would a healthy sense of sin consist in?

Elements of a Healthy Sense of Sin

We must first see sin for what it really is.  First and foremost it is an offense against God, but not God as Divine Rulemaker, but God as Father.  In fact, JPII says that all sin is ultimately a rejection of God’s fatherhood.  God gave to us the gift of freedom, but not so that we choose whatever we want, but so that we can choose Him.  He is at every moment providing (e.g. Providence) the means for us to do that.  We only need to orient our freedom towards this reality.  Sin then is disorientation, setting our eyes off in the wrong direction and away from God.  And this is why one of St. Thomas’ thought that “God is offended by us only because we act contrary to our own good” (SCG, 3.122).

A healthy sense of sin then begins by orienting our freedom with acts that are truly good.  When we see sin as ultimately harmful to us and enslaving us, we lose the desire to rationalize and self-forgive.  Now we desire to flush our sin and move forward in freedom.

But it also consists in seeing sin through the lens of God’s Providence.  God only permits our sin if He can turn it to our good.  The obvious example is the “happy fault’ of Adam that won for us the Redeemer.  But this principle applies to each and every sin that we commit.  Ultimately, we are permitted to commit certain sins and not others because those certain sins ultimately can be oriented by God towards our sanctification.

This sense of sin is unfathomable unless we drop the God strictly as Rulemaker paradigm.  He is not sitting in Heaven with His Divine Gotcha Button waiting for us to mess up.  From all eternity He plotted how He was to redeem me and you and that would include using those sins we commit as a means to that sanctification.  This is not to trivialize our sin, but to see them from God’s perspective.  We are permitted to commit certain actual sins because those are the sins that, when repented of, will draw down upon us the grace of a true and deeper conversion.  So that when we sin, the grace of repentance follows right behind it, causing us to run back harder and faster than when we fell.  This healthy sense of sin then takes the focus off of our actions and shines it upon Divine Mercy.  In other words, a healthy sense of sin sees all personal sin as a means that Providence uses to glorify God’s Mercy and save our souls.  Only a healthy sense of sin rooted in this reality protects us from falling into scrupulosity.    

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Make Lent Hard Again

Fasting, Lent, Prayer, , , ,

In an age afflicted by ecclesial bar lowering, there is always a great danger that the inherent rhythm in the liturgical year will lose its meaning.  This is perhaps most true when it comes to the season of Lent.  Lent “officially” begins on Sunday, but Pope St. Gregory the Great added the four days between Ash Wednesday and the First Sunday in order to add four extra days so that the Faithful would fast for a total of forty days between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday (Sundays and the two Solemnities of St. Joseph and the Annunciation being days to relax the fasting).  In other words, unlike in our own times where we are required to fast two days during Lent, the great Pope wanted to raise the bar and make it harder!  It is in this spirit that we should all resolve to make this our hardest Lent ever.

A Harder Lent?

Now admittedly, Gregory the Great was not simply trying to make it harder, even if that was one of the side effects.  Instead, he was adjusting it so that Lent would retain its meaning.  He wanted us, day by day, to join Our Lord in the desert during His great fast.  Our Lord, true God and true Man, merited specific graces for each one of us individually each day that He fasted and fought in the desert.  Lent is meant to be the time when we receive those graces, but our Lord asks us to meet Him in order for Him to give them to us. 

It was no accident that Our Lord chose 40 days.  Whether it is the forty days and nights of rain during the Flood, the Forty Years spent wandering in the desert, or the 40 days by which Ezekiel had to lay on his side, forty is the number of punishment and affliction.  It is also the number of reparation with both Moses and Elijah joining Our Lord in reparatory fasting for 40 days.  It turns out, although not surprisingly, that forty is also the magic number for developing a new habit.  It is as if forty days of affliction and reparation is written into our fallen nature. 

Because Christ first instituted Lent in the desert, it has all the qualities of a Christian mystery.  And like all Christian mysteries it was instituted in order to bestow grace upon us.  It is like a sacrament, or better yet, a sacramental.  A sacred sign that is given to us that disposes us to receive grace.  Living out a true Lenten spirit disposes us to receive those graces Our Lord wants to give us.  Prayer, fasting and almsgiving take on a sacramental meaning, but especially fasting.  The emphasis of Lent is on fasting for good reason—Our Lord sanctified and weaponized it in the desert.  Lent is meant to be 40 days of hard fasting in reparation for our sins and growth in virtue. 

Lent Began Well, Ends Well

Another key component of Lent is the reception of ashes on Ash Wednesday.  This is not, as many think, because it is only a symbol of our sinfulness and need for Penance, but because it is a Sacramental that, when received in faith, disposes us to the necessary graces to live a hard Lent.  This disposal happens through the prayer of the Blessing of the Ashes.  One of the prayers of blessing in the Novus Ordo Mass says:

O God, who desire not the death of sinners, but their conversion, mercifully hear our prayers and in your kindness be pleased to bless + these ashes which we intend to receive upon our heads, that we, who acknowledge we are but ashes and shall return to dust, may, through a steadfast observance of Lent, gain pardon for sins and newness of life after the likeness of your Risen Son. Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

As I have spoken of previously, the power of Sacramentals come through their actual blessing and so we must, in order to properly take advantage of them, pay attention to what they have been empowered to do.  The ashes in particular then are true Sacramentals that, through the power of the Church, dispose us to receive all the graces necessary to have a “steadfast observance of Lent” and “gain the pardon of sins.”  By receiving the ashes, we are each individually guaranteed to receive the prayers of the Mystical Body that we can live a hard Lent.

As an aside, Ashes are a prime example of why the blessings from the Tridentine Rite are far superior to those of the Novus Ordo.  As a side-by-side comparison, take a look at the prayers.  The former clearly gives a more abundant blessing upon the ashes, rendering them far more powerful to aid us during Lent.   This is not a shot across the post-Vatican II bow, but a comment that, objectively speaking, the Church was far more generous in bestowing blessings upon the Faithful in the pre-Vatican II era.

Either way, armed by Our Lord in the desert and further disposed by the Ashes, we have everything we need to live a hard Lent.  What if each one of us, rather than measuring out “what we will give up”, went “old school” and fasted for these 40 days.  I have found that Dr. Jay Richard’s method detailed in his book is particularly effective for growing in the virtue of fasting and implementing as a daily practice in Lent.  Recalling that one of the reasons why the Church had so many fast days previously was so that we could develop the virtue of fasting, we may have to start at a level that is proportional to our current level of virtue.  But by the end of Lent we should all have developed the virtue and that only comes about through making it hard.

The “Great Bar Lowering” then must be met by a voluntary raising of our own bars.  Genuine contrition of soul can never be achieved without mortification of the body.  We are both body and soul and any attempt to separate the two in practice leads to great harm to our persons.  A hard Lent, fasting especially, will create in us a disposition of sorrow for our sins and a generosity of spirit in making reparation to Our Lord.  It is as if the diminishing of our physical energy brings about a supernatural energy.  Make Lent Hard Again!

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Scoffers in the End Times

Evolution, , , , , , ,

In writing about Our Lord’s second coming, St. Peter says that despite the fact that “the day of the Lord shall come as a thief,” (2Peter 3:10) there is a sure sign that the end is near.  In those days deceitful scoffers will arise saying “Where is his promise or His coming? for since the time that the fathers slept, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:5).  He goes on to describe these scoffers as “willfully ignorant of, that the heavens were before, and the earth out of water, and through water, consisting by the word of God.  Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.  But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of the ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:6-9). 

What the Scoffers are Scoffing About

A moment’s reflection on his words will allow us to realize that these “scoffers of the End Times” are living in our midst.  Peter the Rock is telling us that the scoffers will be those who insist that “things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.”  They are, in short, evolutionists.  Evolutionists are those who believe that everything in the universe is a result of an unfolding of naturalistic processes that began with the Big Bang.  There is no room for God in their view and evolution forms the philosophical foundation for their secularist vision of reality. 

Given St. Peter’s caution then, it is odd that many Catholics are so quick to accommodate these scoffers by subscribing to what might be called Theistic Evolution.  They proclaim that Evolution is the mechanism by which God created the world and everything in it.  This proclamation comes despite the clear testimony of Scripture and Tradition that creation was not a result of the unfolding of some natural process, but a supernatural one in which God created each thing immediately.  He did not create by some natural law, but created the natural law along with the rest of creation.  Long before Darwin, the Church Fathers knew of evolutionary explanations for Origins and rejected them (see Summa Theologiae I q.73 a.1, obj 2-3 for a good summary of the Fathers’ explanation).

This accommodationist position usually presents in one of two forms.  Because it seeks to accommodate “science” it only concerns itself with human origins specifically.  These might aptly be called natural transformism and special transformism.

Natural Transformism

Those who hold the position of Natural Transformism hold that man was created through some natural process.  By some “accident” of nature, two primates, through normal reproduction, prepared a body that was capable of receiving a human soul.  This spontaneous generation of a human being from primate parents has been condemned by the Provincial Council of Cologne (which has approval of the Holy See):

“Our first parents were formed immediately by God. Therefore we declare that the opinion of those who do not fear to assert that this human being, man as regards to his body, emerged finally from the spontaneous continuous change of imperfect nature to the more perfect, is clearly opposed to Sacred Scripture and to the Faith.”

It also suffers from a common sense problem as well.  This “accident” would also need to be met with a simultaneous “accident” of the creation of another (wo)man that would allow for reproduction or else this first human would have to mate with another non-human.  To accommodate to this position, rather than synthesizing faith and reason, is destructive of the Faith and requires further setting aside of the perennial teachings of the Church related to the Special Creation of Eve and polygenism.

Special Transformism

Special Transformism is usually presented as Evolution preparing the body of some brute and then God infuses a soul into it.  To at least discuss this as a possibility is not out of the question.  In the most authoritative teaching on Evolution, Pius XII’s Humani Generis, the Holy Father said that it was licit to make inquiries “into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter… However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.” 

Most read this freedom to discuss as freedom to assert it as true.  The Holy Father was quite clear that this was not the case: “Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.”  Using this as a guideline, let us see what we can say about Special Transformism and what we can’t.

First, we cannot say, without falling into some form of dualism that the body of the primate did not also undergo a transformation.  The soul is not some add-on to a body, but its form (see CCC 365), making it what it is.  We have spoken previously about this type of change as a substantial change, but this position creates a metaphysical Catch-22 such that before the matter that was the primate’s body can take on the form, it must already be a human body.  The only way for this to happen would be if God intervened and changed the body such that it was capable of receiving the human soul.

How this “miraculous” intervention is any different than holding a literal interpretation of Genesis 2:7 is not clear.  Whether God used inanimate matter (the slime of the earth) or previously animate matter (the body of the primate) really makes no practical difference.  Both stretch the limits of scientific explanations for our origins and strike down any concession that involves evolution preparing a body for man.  It is probably better to stand with Moses, St. Peter, Augustine, Chrysostom, St. Basil, Aquinas, and more and stick with a literal interpretation of Genesis.

Theistic Evolution, then, rather than appearing to be an enlightened compromise, actually turns out to look really dumb.  The problem is that Evolution and Christianity are completely incompatible and any attempt to reconcile them simply enables the Scoffers to keep on scoffing.  Moses said one thing about our origin, Darwin said another and the two shall never meet.  You are either a creationist or an evolutionist, but you can’t be both.

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Confronting the Mass Identity Crisis

Angels, Church and State, Creation, Culture, Devils, , , , , ,

When Our Lord and His Apostles came to the great rock of Caesarea Philippi, He asked a poignant question about His personality: “Who do you say that I am?”.  Only Simon, enlightened by Divine grace, saw Our Lord for Who He really was: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).  Once Peter identified Our Lord, Our Lord in turn gave him his true identity as the Great Rock upon which the Church herself would be identified.  Peter was not alone in this regard.  Our Lord came to bestow our identity upon each one of us.  He identified with us in order that we might come to share in His identity as “sons in the Son.”  Modern man, perhaps more than any other ailment, suffers from a great identity crisis that makes this moment in Our Lord’s Life particularly important. 

The First Identity Crisis

Lucifer had the greatest natural endowment of all creatures.  In this way he was entirely unique and, created in a state of grace, he was the most like God.  This was his true identity. Rather than receive this identity as a gift, he instead chose to create his own.  Lucifer became Satan and lost his true identity forever.  He became, in the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger an “Un-person”, corrupted beyond any personal recognition.  Out of envy, Scripture says, Satan then became an Identity Thief attempting to steal everyone else’s identity.  He began by coaxing a third of the angels to follow him in asserting their own identity.

Misery loves company and so Satan set his sights upon mankind.  Ultimately his temptation of Eve amounts to questioning her true identity as a beloved daughter of God.  He tells her that she will become like God.  The problem, of course, is that she already was like God.  God had gifted her with sanctifying grace which already made her “like God”.  Satan tempts her to see her identity as something she must grasp, rather than receive and so simultaneously attacks her femininity.  Likewise, with Adam, both his identity as being like God and being a man.  It was the man who was commanded to protect and till the Garden. 

Our identity crisis has its roots in the Fall then.  Original Sin removed sanctifying grace, which forms our true identity, our God-likeness if you will.  But it also wounded us in our sexual identity, the manner in which we individually image God.  Not only does the distinctly feminine power of childbirth become labor for the woman, but, because man will be tempted to lord over her, she will be tempted to seize masculinity.  Likewise, for man, the uniquely masculine way of working also becomes labor and he will be tempted to seize the feminine.  Not only was God-likeness lost, both forgot what it meant to image God in their masculinity and femininity.

The crisis would grow until the New Adam and his suitable helpmate, the New Eve came. Satan could not steal either of their identities.  He tried to steal Our Lord’s when He went into the desert.  The enmity between him and Our Lady made her immune to Satan’s wiles.  Our Lord and Our Lady then, each in their proper way, cooperated in restoring us not just as children of God, but sons and daughters. 

Our Identity Crisis

Satan may have lost the war, but he is still engaging in the Battle across the centuries, trying to keep us from our true identity.  He has had varying degrees of success but has been particularly successful in our own age.   His battle plan remains the same as always by destroying the image and suppressing our desire for the true likeness of God that lies at the root of our real identity.

Rather than accepting God-likeness as a free gift that comes only through Baptism, we chase immortality through technology.  The Covid crisis has been particularly eye-opening in this regard in that we are all expecting a technocratic Messiah to save us.  Technology can make us like gods.

The Church has not been immune to this attack either, putting bodily health before spiritual health.  One soul, dying in a state of grace, is far greater than 1000 people “safely” locked in their houses without any access to the gift of true God-likeness in the Sacraments.  Christ instituted the Church, so that, throughout all-time, His unique power to bestow our true identity might be made available to all.  When the Church forgets her true identity, then a mass identity crisis is sure to follow.    

While technology is the weapon of choice to suppress our desire for true God-likeness, intersectionality, rooted in identity politics, is the weapon of choice to suppress our identity as being made in the image of God.  Intersectionality attempts to root our identity in victimhood.  Christ became a victim so that we could overcome this temptation and clear the way for our real identity.  Sex, masquerading as gender, rather than being a way in which we individually image God, is simply a social construct made malleable (through technology) according to personal whims.  This Great Lie destroys our identity rather than restoring it.  It sits at the heart of today’s mass identity crisis and is nothing more than a ploy of the Evil One. 

Genesis tells us that the Serpent, in attacking Adam and Eve’s identity was the most subtle of all the wild animals (Gn 3:1).  What makes our age unique is that he has thrown subtlety out the window and has chosen to unmask himself.  That is why we must be prepared to fight the identity crisis by refusing to be a party to any of the lies that have enabled the crisis to become so deep.  Too often we simply go along to get along.  The Devil has been hard at work stealing people’s identities, we need to be equally hard at work helping them find their true one.

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Making the Ordinary Extraordinary Again

Church Authority, Eucharist, Magisterium, Sacraments, , , , ,

G.K. Chesterton once said that there is “a silent anarchy eating out our society” because there is a wholesale “incapacity to grasp that the exception proves the rule.”  What he meant by this the very fact that when we treat something extraordinary, we are in fact admitting that there is an ordinary.  The anarchy has come in because we now treat the exception as the rule.  Possible is interpreted as probable and all dogmatic statements are rendered useless.  Unfortunately, this habit has crept into the Church as well and has led to a widescale adoption of things that were hitherto thought sacrilegious.  One such example considers special attention today and that is the use of so-called Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. 

The Church has not been immune to the Covidiocy that has attacked our world, especially in the Liturgy.  Not only was there a long-term liturgical blackout, but the dictatorship of the hygienic has led to all kinds of abuses of Our Lord in the distribution of Communion.  Part of the issue can be placed at the feet of bad catechesis. 

The Real, Real Presence

In the 12th and 13th Centuries, the Church was confronted with a Eucharistic heresy that might be described as an exaggerated realism in which the broken Host or half-filled chalice was thought to no longer contain the whole Christ since the sacred species had become corrupted.  The Church, adopting the view of St. Thomas that Christ was wholly present as long as the appearances of bread and wine were not corrupted (say through digestion for example) was quick to defend the truth that Christ is wholly present in even the smallest particle of the Host or the smallest drop of the Precious Blood.  As St. Thomas puts it:

If there be such change on the part of the accidents as would not have sufficed for the corruption of the bread and wine, then the body and blood of Christ do not cease to be under this sacrament on account of such change, whether the change be on the part of the quality, as for instance, when the color or the savor of the bread or wine is slightly modified; or on the part of the quantity, as when the bread or the wine is divided into such parts as to keep in them the nature of bread or of wine. But if the change be so great that the substance of the bread or wine would have been corrupted, then Christ’s body and blood do not remain under this sacrament; and this either on the part of the qualities, as when the color, savor, and other qualities of the bread and wine are so altered as to be incompatible with the nature of bread or of wine; or else on the part of the quantity, as, for instance, if the bread be reduced to fine particles, or the wine divided into such tiny drops that the species of bread or wine no longer remain. 

ST III q.77, art.4

In summary, provided that the Eucharist does not undergo a substantial change, Christ remains whole and entire in each and every part.  This foundational truth has profound practical implications both in the manner in which we receive and respond.  If Christ remains whole and entire as long as the borrowed accidental appearances of bread and wine are present, then we truly have Christ wholly present within us until the species are digested.  This ought to inspire in us a profound reverence and gratitude by which we remain wholly attentive to the Divine presence.  We should be slow to leave the Church and never omit sentiments of sincere thanksgiving and self-offering.

Our response however is conditioned on our reception and so a special emphasis needs to be placed on the manner in which Communion is distributed.  Communion in the hand, which I have spoken of previously, is one such abuse that should be avoided.  The passing of the Sacred Host back and forth most certainly leads to particles of the Host falling to the ground.  Add to this the phenomenon of masks which are usually touched after receiving the Host in the hand and there is an even greater risk that the small particles of the Host is lost.  Receiving in the hand is also by far the less sanitary means of receiving as our hands are far dirtier than our tongues, especially considering that Communion on the tongue, when done properly, does not lead to any tongue to hand contact the way that there is hand to hand contact when receiving in the hand.

The hygienic considerations hinge on the clause “when done properly”.  Those who receive on the tongue know to tilt their head back and extend their tongue and priests know how to place it on the tongue without touching it.  Consider further that when the Priest is taller than the person receiving (which happens 100% of the time when Communion is received while kneeling) then the chances of contact are far less than if Communion was received in the hand.  The problem of course is that far too often, Communion is distributed by someone other than a Priest.

“Eucharistic Ministers”

All of this leads up to the question of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.  This “office” is a relatively new phenomenon in the Church and was not present anywhere at any time during the first 1900 years of Christianity.  It was added as part of the Liturgical changes made in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.  It was meant to facilitate the distribution of Holy Communion when some extraordinary circumstance dictated it.  The problem of course was that it fell upon the soil of anarchy that Chesterton mentioned so that it became ordinary and thus has led the way to great abuse of the Blessed Sacrament.

One of the reasons the Church has traditionally avoided the sanctioning of Extraordinary Ministers is certainly the practical things we have already discussed.  But there are deep theological reasons for not using them also.  Not only does it lead to abuses of Our Lord in the Sacrament, but it ends up being an attack upon the Faith itself.

Traditionally only men who received the Sacrament of Orders could touch the Eucharist because only they, by virtue of their ordination, have been consecrated to the service of God in the Liturgy.  This consecration is not merely symbolic but real.  Sacraments effect what they signify so that they have been Sacramentally conformed to Christ the Priest through a Sacramental Character.  It is Christ who distributes the Eucharist and only those who have been Sacramentally conformed to Him should do so.  This power cannot be delegated.

If that is true then why did the Church reverse course?  They thought that there might be times when, because of some extraordinary circumstance such as a Priest not being available or too infirm to come off the Altar and distribute Communion.  But like all “exceptions” those who have a clear agenda to Protestantize the Church seized the opportunity to further blur the distinction between the Ministerial Priesthood and the Priesthood of All Believers.  The exception became the rule. 

The Vatican has repeatedly cautioned against the “habitual use of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion…[as something that is] to be avoided and eliminated where such have emerged in particular Churches” (Ecclesia de Mysterio, 1997).  Despite the clear mandate and the fact that most churches are now at less than 50% capacity, the practice has continued.

The Mandate

The Congregation for Divine Worship in 2004 called upon all the Faithful to maintain Eucharistic integrity, saying “In an altogether particular manner, let everyone do all that is in their power to ensure that the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist will be protected from any and every irreverence or distortion and that all abuses be thoroughly corrected. This is a most serious duty incumbent upon each and every one, and all are bound to carry it out without any favoritism” (Redemptionis Sacramentum §183).  It is in that spirit that “everyone” should actively work to remedy the abuse.  This can be done, not in some democratic way, but through an application of the law of supply and demand.  Those who want to see greater reverence for Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament should not serve as Extraordinary Ministers to cut off the supply.  To reduce the demand, one should avoid receiving from them in situations where it is reasonable to receive from the Ordinary Minister of Holy Communion.

St. Paul informs the Corinthians that many of their infirmities are being caused by their Eucharistic irreverence.  Abusing the Blessed Sacrament is literally causing their sickness.  That is why it is ironic that in the name of keeping people from getting sick, the Church has turned a blind eye to the many Eucharistic offenses.  What if, rather than making it better, it was actually making people get sick?  We need to all work to restore Eucharistic piety, which starts by eliminating the ordinary usage of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.

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Guest Post: Against the Institution of Female Acolytes and Lectors

Church, Church Authority, Eucharist, Guest Post, Magisterium, Sacraments, Women's Ordination, , , , ,

Recently, the Holy Father promulgated a ruling which allows for laywomen to be formally accepted into the to roles of lector and acolyte, roles which for sometime they have already been filling in practice. Up to this point, however, the formal acceptance was restricted to men. The move, while having very little visible effect on the current state of the liturgy, formalizes growing problems that will now be explored.

Why is Reading a Big Deal?

In the liturgical tradition of the Church, the priest reads from Sacred Scripture from the altar while facing away from the people. This liturgical choice preserves two important ideas: 1) the sacredness of the Word of God and 2) the offering of the Word to God. The first idea, the sacredness of the Word of God, is shown by the fact that only a person that has been in some way consecrated to God is able to the proclaim the word of God in the Church’s public worship. In the past, a distinction has existed between those possessing sacramental ordinations (deacons, priests, and bishops) and those that had received non-sacramental ordinations (lectors, porters, acolytes, exorcists, and subdeacons). Those receiving non-sacramental ordinations (also called minor orders) were understood to be acting as an extension of the ministry of the deacon, who possessed a sacramental ordination.

It is also important to note that, keeping in mind the principle that liturgical actions often have both a practical and symbolic purpose, the restriction of the ability to read publicly to those who will have a clear reading voice and will be knowledgable enough to correctly pronounce the more difficult words in Scripture will stop the proclamation of the divinely revealed Word of God from becoming an event the faithful laugh about on the car ride home.

Why do you hate Altar-girls?

With regards to the second idea, it must be kept in mind that the priest is offering the entire Mass as a sacrifice to God. This reality is reinforced by the priest facing towards the tabernacle while he is proclaiming the Word. The addition of women to the role of lector, in addition to the problems created by reading while facing the people, destroys this because God has always indicated that He desires the priestly ministry of offering sacrifice to be reserved to males.

In the liturgical tradition of the Church, only men are allowed to approach the altar, be it as bishops, priests, deacons, or even humble altar servers. Why is this? Is it because the Church fell to the spirit of past ages and has reinforced in its liturgy sexist ideas? The answer is a clear ‘No.’ To see why this is, one only needs to open a Bible and observe the patterns of worship that have been in place since the beginning and have been shown to please the Lord. (Exo. 28-29, Num. 3) They all contain male-only clergy because they are types of Christ Who will be both Priest and Minister in the New Testament. Those who participate in that liturgy act as sacramental signs of Christ, Who is male. This practice continues into the New Testament when Jesus and His Apostles continued the practice of male-only clergy even though they could have changed it. This change would not have even been perceived as strange outside the Jewish community as female clergy already existed in other religions in other parts of the Roman Empire, e.g., the vestals.

While the change only allowed for female acolytes, the formalization of an altar server, the principle on display is one that would eventually advocate for the female diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy. This principle is rooted in the denial of the different roles of men and women in the Church, roles that have been clearly established in Scripture and vindicated by two millennia of tradition.

What about the Priesthood of the Baptized?

Forgetting the problems introduced by these changes discussed above, let us ask ourselves the question, ‘To what end are these changes made?’  Some would advance that it is desire to teach the doctrine of the priesthood of all the baptized. In response to this, it must be realized that this method will never achieve that goal because it obscures that reality more than it reveals it.

The sacrifice of the Mass is the perfect prayer of the Church and it is the meeting of Heaven and earth. All the faithful ought to hear Mass and offer this most perfect offering to God. An authentic teaching of the doctrine of the priesthood of all the baptized would teach the faithful how to more perfectly offer this sacrifice, because offering sacrifice is exactly what priests do. However, the priesthood within the liturgy is not the same as the priesthood outside the liturgy.

The ordained priest has been given the honor of offering the Mass and the faithful participate in the Mass to the degree that they spiritually unite themselves with him in his offering. This, however, is precisely the opposite of what is shown by allowing more and more faithful on the altar. Does the man or woman that reads at Mass participate more fully than one that doesn’t? If so, does that mean that we need to multiply roles until everyone attending the Mass is able to more ‘fully’ participate? This, again, is exactly the mindset forwarded by the increase of the roles of the laity in the Church’s liturgy.  From this, confusion emerges and we are left with a faithful that has traded true spiritual participation for a visible and ‘active’ participation and reduced the ability of others to spiritually participate in the liturgy by needlessly multiplying distractions.

Stripping down the Priesthood

What these changes leave us with, in addition to a liturgy less able to lead the faithful to union with God in prayer, is a sacramental priest stripped down and lacking identity. The priest has a sacred duty to offer sacrifice to God, namely the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. At the center of his spirituality must be this sacrifice and his entire life must be conformed to this sacrifice such that his entire life becomes a sacrifice. Just as a married man must lay down his life daily for his wife (who is the altar upon which he offers himself to God) and they are so conformed together that they become one flesh, so to must the priest become so conformed to the sacrifice of the Mass that he becomes a Victim-Priest just as Christ was. These changes, however, lead him more towards the roles of presider and orchestrator. One by one, his sacred duties are ‘contracted out’ to the laity and therefore lose their priestly character and change the character of the priest. The retractions are even more impactful to the diaconate, who has the duty to preform the exact ministerial actions that are being given to the laity.

The clergyman (be him a deacon, priest, or bishop) is a man chosen by God and consecrated such that he is given God-like powers, e.g., forgiving sins, calling down Christ from heaven, and strengthening a soul to endure death. Why are we stripping him of his duties and making him seem like an ordinary man? The evidence of this transformation is clear from priests being uncomfortable with saying, “I absolve you”, and replacing the ‘I’ with ‘Jesus’ or something similar. How can a man unconvinced of the massive amount of supernatural grace given to him and unwilling to proudly proclaim, with St. Paul that, “by the grace of God, I am what I am,” (1 Cor. 15:10) going to be able to fill the souls entrusted to his care with supernatural grace. We, the faithful, must support our clergy in living out their vocation by insisting that they keep the clerical duties for themselves.

About the Author

Connor Szurgot is currently a senior study for his BS. He has given multiple talks to the Catholic Campus Ministry at his university on topics such as Eucharistic reverence and mental prayer. He is a member of the Thomistic Institute and is a regular participant in their intellectual formation. He enjoys discussing the practical and philosophical aspects of politics as well as religion, particularly systematic theology.

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Plot Holes in Reality

Culture, Evolution, Moralilty, Natural Law, Science, , ,

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 Panic in 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.

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Masking and the New Religion

Apologetics, Church and State, Church Authority, Conscience, Culture, Human Dignity, Magisterium, Marxism, Moralilty, Natural Law, New Age, Paganism, Politics, Sacramentals, Sacraments, Virtue, , , ,

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.

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