All posts by Rob Agnelli

On Technological Neutrality

Moralilty, Work, , ,

One of the most harmful delusions that many Christians operate under is that technology is neutral.  The fence-sitter posits that most, if not all, technology is neutral.  As long as we exercise authentic prudence in its use, then it acts as an unquestionable good.  The problem with this approach is that it seems to consistently lead us into a technological Catch-22 where some sort of calculus must be invented to make sure that the good outweighs the bad.  A moment’s reflection will lead us to understand that this leads us into a moral pitfall.  The will itself can never be the sole determiner of the moral worth of a given object.  There must be some objective standard by which we can measure the worth of a technology a priori.  But in order to develop such a standard we must first be willing to challenge this belief in technological agnosticism.

Technology and the Perception of Reality

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates tells the story of King Thamus who is talking to the god Theuth about his invention of writing.  Thamus thinks the technological advance of writing is actually harmful because it will eliminate the need for memorization.  Man’s memory will atrophy such that he longer needs memory but reminding.  The point here is not whether or not this is true, but that even a crude technology like writing is not neutral.  Writing changes not only how we describe reality but also changes the person himself.  No one would dispute that writing acts as an “external hard-drive” to document things to be remembered, but it can never be as rich as memory itself.  Writing then, like all technologies, affects not only how men interact with reality but the perception of reality itself.

Pope Francis in Laudato Si (107) says something similar:

“It can be said that many problems of today’s world stem from the tendency, at times unconscious, to make the method and aims of science and technology an epistemological paradigm which shapes the lives of individuals and the workings of society. The effects of imposing this model on reality as a whole, human and social, are seen in the deterioration of the environment, but this is just one sign of a reductionism which affects every aspect of human and social life. We have to accept that technological products are not neutral…”

Developing a Rule

Once we recognize the relationship between technology and our perception of reality, we can develop a rule by which to evaluate its worth.  To start, we can draw on an insight from Fr. Romano Guardini which compares sailboats and ocean liners:

“Take a vessel sailing on Lake Como. Though it is of considerable weight, the masses of wood and linen, along with the force of the wind, combine so perfectly that it has become light. When it sails before the wind, my heart laughs to see how something of this sort has become so light and bright of itself by reason of its perfect form…Do you not see what a remarkable fact of culture is present when human beings become masters of wind and wave by fashioning wood and fitting it together and spanning linen sails? In my very blood I have a sense of creation here, of a primal work of human creativity. It is full of mind and spirit, this perfectly fashioned movement in which we master the force of nature…let the remoteness from nature become greater! It grieves me when I see built into one of these vessels, these noble creations, a gasoline engine, so that with upright mast but no sails the vessel clatters through the waves like a ghost of itself Go even further and the sailing vessel becomes a steamer, a great ocean liner – culture indeed, a brilliant technological achievement! And yet a colossus of this type presses on through the sea regardless of wind and waves. It is so large that nature no longer has power over it…Mark you, something decisive has been lost here.”

In the case of the sailboat, you must cooperate with both the waves and the wind and when you do, the boat is powered by them.  The potency of the wind to move a boat equipped with a sail is made actual by man’s effort.  There is something beautiful that happens when the sail fills with wind and the boat glides across the waves and for that reason it is lovely.  With the ocean liner, it is no longer about capturing the power of the wind but overcoming it.  Potency and act are separated and this aspect of reality is abstracted away.  The point is not that the sailboat is better than the ocean liner, but that something has been lost without us even realizing it.  By harnessing the wind, the sailor is better able to grasp the meaning of the wind and its symbolic (or even sacramental) meaning.  Seeing the wind merely as a nuisance parameter to factored out, the captain of the ocean liner stands in an abstract reality.  He merely needs to calculate how much it will speed or slow his pace.  This changes how he not only interacts with reality but also how he views it.

    

The sailor on the sailboat is also freer than the captain of the ocean liner.  The former needs only to adjust his sails, while the latter depends upon his engine.  The wind does not break down the way engines do.  Moving from sailboats to ocean liners means a natural competence is traded for a technological one.  The cost of acquiring power over nature is the diminishment of one of man’s natural powers and becomes something less than he would otherwise have been.  Homo sapiens is reduced because he is no longer also homo nauta.  The sailor knows how to use the wind not only on the sea but on land.  The captain knows only how to factor it into an equation.   

Once we drop the myth of neutrality and realize that technology shapes the subject using it just as much as it does the object we apply it to, we can proceed with a greater sense of caution.  Specifically, we must begin to accurately calculate the tradeoffs we are making when we use technology.  Not only are we losing competence in many areas, we are also becoming less virtuous.  A man may not choose to take a cruise on a sailboat, but he may choose to buy a sailboat (instead of a motorboat) so as to become more human by becoming a sailor. 

Avoiding the Evolutionary Creep

Church Fathers, Evolution, Magisterium, , ,

One of the unintended, at least from a human point of view, consequences of accepting a Big Bang/Evolution Creation account is that reinterpretation doesn’t merely stop in Genesis 2.  This “Evolutionary Creep” extends itself into the account of Noah’s flood with the adoption of a so-called “local flood theory.”  Once it sweeps through Noah, all Scripture becomes fair game.  Because of the damage that is ultimately done to Scriptural inerrancy, it is worth examining this issue in some detail.

Why the Flood Matters

It might not be immediately obvious why a reinterpretation is necessary, but it was clear to Charles Darwin and his friend Charles Lyell.  In his Principles of Geology (1833), Lyell came up with the theory of uniformitarianism which posits that the same physical laws and processes that are observed today were operable in the past and will continue to be so in the future.  Because the processes are uniform, the dating of fossils and the rock formations in which they are found would also follow a uniform distribution making it easy to date them based on their placement.  This theory is opposed to catastrophism which states that fossils and the sedimentary rock formations they are found in are laid down at irregular time intervals due to the irregular occurrences of catastrophes such as volcanoes and floods. If catastrophes, especially one of the magnitude of the Flood, are primarily responsible for the geologic column, then the age of the earth would be orders of magnitude younger than it would be under uniformitarianism.  In other words, in order for Lyell and Darwin’s theory to work, the Flood as a world-wide catastrophe would need to be reinterpreted to just a local event.  And for the most part, Lyell was successful prompting Darwin to contend that “Lyell is most firmly convinced that he has shaken the faith in the Deluge far more efficiently by never having said a word against the Bible than if the had acted otherwise.”

Those who are well versed in Scripture will recognize that St. Peter prophesied against those “scoffers” who rejected the literal historical truth of the Flood and promoted uniformitarianism: “First of all you must understand this, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own passions and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.’ They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished” (2 Peter 3:3-6).

Given such a clear warning, this ought to give pause to any Catholic who entertains or even defends the Local Flood Theory.  Instead, we must defend ourselves against the scoffers by defending the traditional interpretation that the Flood was a world-wide event.

What the Fathers and Scripture Say

First, it is clear that the Church Fathers unanimously interpreted the Flood as covering the whole earth.  This includes Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch (who wrote against Plato’s belief that it was a local flood), Gregory Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, and Augustine.  As Vatican I taught by infallible decree, “It is not permissible for anyone to interpret holy scripture in a sense contrary to this, or indeed against the unanimous consent of the fathers.”  Catholics are not free to interpret Genesis 6-8 as a local flood.

In addition to the unanimity of the Fathers, there is the fact that we are commanded “not to depart from the literal and obvious sense [of Scripture], except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity requires” (Providentissimus Deus 15).  To twist the straightforward language such as God’s promise that “every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground” (Gn 7:7) and “The waters prevailed and increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily upon the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, birds, cattle, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm upon the earth, and every man; everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the air; they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those that were with him in the ark” (Gn 7:18-23) requires some serious interpretive gymnastics to get away from the literal historical truth of the account of the Flood.

There is a further difficulty in that God, in making a covenant with Noah promises that He will “establish My covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth”(Gn 9:11).  If He did not actually flood the entire earth, then the covenant is nonsense.  If it was a local flood only, then God has broken His promise with regularity.

It is also true that the Flood is a type of the Last Judgement.  Both are universal in scope.  Returning to St. Peter who prophesies that “the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.  But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” (2 Peter 3:6-7).  Just as the world was destroyed by water, it will likewise be destroyed by fire at the end of time.  It is also the testimony of Our Lord testified that the world-wide flood is a type of His Second Coming (Mt 24:36-42).

In conclusion it is worth noting again that St. Peter warned us that such a rejection of the Flood was coming, but so many Catholics have capitulated.  We must, for the sake of faith in the Sacred Scriptures put a stop to the Evolutionary Creep.

On Signs and Wonders

Incarnation, Passion of Christ, , , ,

Once when Our Lord was coming into Capharnaum, He was approach by an official there asking Him to come and heal his son.  Jesus tells him, “unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe” (John 4:49).  One might be tempted to read this as a rebuke, but it is clear from the fact that Jesus did heal his son that He was instructing His followers that miracles are an essential element for the spreading of the Faith.  Miracles are one of the Motives of Credibility (CCC 156) by which the act of faith is deemed reasonable and thus we should expect to find them everywhere the gospel is preached.  Our age is unique in that we no longer wonder at signs, but instead assume there is some, perhaps hitherto unknown, natural explanation for everything we experience.  Immersed in such a culture, Catholics give little thought to the miraculous and the role that they might play in the conversion of many in our world.

What Are Miracles?

Miracles are, according to St. John Henry Newman, “irregularities in the economy of nature, but with a moral end…Thus while they are exceptions to the laws of one system, they may coincide with those of another.”  What he means by this is not that they are mere exceptions to the physical order, but that they belong properly to Divine Providence and that God uses them with some regularity for a “moral end.”  This “moral end” highlights the fact that they are signs that God uses for the very specific purpose of drawing people to the central saving mission of Christ.  It is meant to be a divine stamp of approval that the message of the gospel is true.  Furthermore, although we use the term colloquially for anything that causes us to wonder (like the “miracle of life”), St Thomas says that a true miracle is one that has a cause that is hidden from everyone and can only be attributed to God Himself.

In his Oath Against Modernism, Pope St. Pius X taught that it was necessary to “accept and acknowledge the external proofs of revelation, that is, divine acts and especially miracles and prophecies as the surest signs of the divine origin of the Christian religion and I hold that these same proofs are well adapted to the understanding of all eras and all men, even of this time.”  Modernism has infected the Church so that many people think miracles were simply the effect of a primitive culture in which people were superstitious and did not understand the laws of nature. Belief in miracles, far from depending on ignorance of the laws of nature, requires knowledge.  You cannot deem something extraordinary if you do not know what is ordinary.  They were well aware that water does not directly become wine and that dead people don’t merely walk out of their tombs when commanded. 

It is this Modernist infection that has caused many “theologians” and preachers to explain away the miracles of Jesus with some natural explanation. The problem with this is that if Jesus did not perform miracles then His followers can’t do likewise in His name.  The power embedded in the gospel message is gone.   

Miracles and Free Will

Often Christians will reject the idea that God uses miracles because it appears to impede a person’s free will.  This is obviously not true when we look at examples of the gospels.  For example, many people saw the three hours of darkness that preceded the Crucifixion, but presumably only the Centurion believed.  That is because the act of belief is not in the miracle per se, but the consequences of the miracle.  The Centurion cooperated with the grace to believe that “this truly is the Son of God” while the others simply accepted the fact that they had experienced something unexplainable.  A similar thing happens when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.  The Jews were unwilling to accept the consequence of the miracle (Jesus was Who He said He was) and instead wanted to kill Him and Lazarus both.  The point is that each miracle has a grace of belief attached to it that not everyone will cooperate with.

Somewhat tangentially, the example of the three hours of darkness serves as a good example of rejecting the miraculous.  Most people would say that it was merely an eclipse.  The problem of course with that is that an eclipse normally lasts for about 8 minutes and not three hours.  Furthermore, the Jewish Passover always occurs with a full moon (Lev. 23:5), and it is astronomically impossible to have an eclipse at such a time. Christ must have hung on the Cross in almost complete darkness and everyone around must have known that something was going on.

After Our Lord cursed the fig tree, He told the Apostles “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will ” (Mk 11:22-24).  He expects His followers not only to believe in His miracles but to believe that they will do “greater works than these” (John 14:12).  He cautions them that the only true obstacle is doubt and so it is important that we come to expect the miraculous to occur.

On God’s Providence and Man’s Free Will

God's Will, , ,

There are certain questions that perennially puzzle the minds of men.  Once these questions are answered, they often change the way reality itself is perceived.  Perhaps one of the most foundational of these questions is how, if God is both omnipotent and omniscient, there can be any such thing as free will.  Distilled down to its simplest form, the question relates to the possibility of God’s Providence and our freedom to choose.  Thankfully, this question was cogently resolved over 1500 years ago by St. Boethius in his book The Consolation of Philosophy.  Grasping what he taught will help us not only to address objections from non-believers but to strengthen our understanding and determination to cooperate with God’s Providence.

What is Providence?

As always, once we define our terms, the clouds blocking the rays of understanding are lifted.  First there is Providence.  God’s Providence is analogous to the virtue of prudence in that it represents the manner in which all things are directed towards their end.  And like prudence, it has two aspects.  The first is the eternal plan for creation.  The second is the execution of this plan in time, which Boethius calls Fate.  The first includes creating certain causes that are capable of carrying out His desired effects and the second is the employment of those secondary causes in time.

God’s plan is both immutable (unchangeable) and infallibly certain.  This is because He is the universal cause to which all particular causes are subject.  From this it follows that while it might be possible to avoid a particular cause, it is impossible to avoid the universal cause.  As St Thomas puts it, one might freely choose to avoid a particular cause, but only

“through the intervention and hindrance of some other particular cause; as, for instance, wood may be prevented from burning, by the action of water. Since then, all particular causes are included under the universal cause, it could not be that any effect should take place outside the range of that universal cause. So far then as an effect escapes the order of a particular cause, it is said to be casual or fortuitous in respect to that cause; but if we regard the universal cause, outside whose range no effect can happen, it is said to be foreseen. Thus, for instance, the meeting of two servants, although to them it appears a chance circumstance, has been fully foreseen by their master, who has purposely sent to meet at the one place, in such a way that the one knows not about the other.” ST I, q.22, a.2 ad.2

There are two necessary consequences associated with this.  The first is that there is nothing that happens that isn’t willed by God either directly or permissively.  Second, there is no such thing as chance.  Chance is merely our way of describing the experience of ignorance of the particular causes of thing since nothing can escape the universal cause.

God’s Foreknowledge

Notice that St. Thomas draws an important conclusion related to the existence of the universal cause.  He says that everything that happens is also foreknown.  This is where St. Boethius’ explanation about God’s foreknowledge is particularly useful.  We use this term, foreknowledge, because it helps us to understand what God knows.  But it does not really describe how God knows.

God is eternal.  When we see this term, we think that means “He is outside of time”.  It is this overly simplistic explanation that makes it difficult for us to grasp exactly how God knows.  Saying that God is eternal means, according to Boethius, that He has “a possession of life, a possession simultaneously entire and perfect, which has no end” (Consolation of Philosophy, Book V).  Eternity is changeless life possessed wholly at once so that God possesses His infinite life wholly at once.  God lives in the eternal present and therefore everything happens at once.

God does not really foreknow anything.  He knows all things because they are happening Now.  It is like you knowing that you are reading the word word.  Because He knows all things at once, He submits each particular cause to Himself as the universal cause in “real time”.

With this understanding in place, we see that there is no ideological conflict between Providence and free will.  God’s knowledge of the choices of our will does not impose any necessity on them.  His knowledge may be certain but that does not mean that the outcome itself was fixed.  We still have the power to choose.

While there may be no ideological conflict between Providence and free will, there is, what for all of us, is an interior conflict.  This is why Our Lord taught His disciples to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  God’s will is immutable and thus we are not praying that what He wills happens, but that we will cooperate with it.  The purpose of having free will is so that we can cling to God’s will.  By understanding that God will is always accomplished, there is no reason for us to avoid it.  The moment Providence reveals its plan to us, we should abandon ourselves to it and embrace what God has ordained.  This is why we should leave the distinction between His active and permissive will to the theologians and focus only on the fact that both are willed.

It is always true that the foundational way for strengthening our resolve is to strengthen our understanding.  This is exactly what St. Boethius was doing when he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy.  He had been abandoned by everyone dear to him and left to rot in prison.  In this midst of this great suffering, he turned to Lady Philosophy to help strengthen his resolve to abandon himself to God’s will.  And once strengthened, he ultimately won the martyr’s crown.

Unholy Sophistry

Human Dignity, ,

In his classic book, The Death of Christian Culture, John Senior comments that one of the surest indications that a Christian culture is in demise is when believers come to rely on sophistry.  The sophist seeks, not to bring the force of truth into a conversation, but to fabricate compulsion through the mere use of words.  This unholy sophistry, at least in its latest incarnation, seems to afflict the Hierarchy of the Church more than the man in the pew as evidenced by the recent debate in the United States over the crackdown on illegal immigration.  Many Bishops insist that the policies of the new administration are “contrary to the dignity of the human person” and “harm the common good.”  Because these principles have been reduced to mere catch-phrases, it is helpful to take a look at how they are abused.

According to Aristotle, the favorite fallacy of the sophist is the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion.  The sophist presents an irrefutable truth as an argument and then is aghast when the interlocutor takes exception to the truth.  This sophistry should be readily recognizable to anyone who has tried to wiggle out of the “Black Lives Matter” verbal finger trap.  The Catholic sophists are skilled at taking the foundational principles of the dignity of the human person and the common good as verbal trump cards to defend what is ultimately, not a moral or religious position, but a political one.  Because this often does harm to the moral authority of the Church, it is important that lay people recognize it and be able to avoid the confusion that is sure to follow from the sophistry buffet that picks and chooses which doctrines to emphasize.

“Dignity of the Human Person”

The dignity of the human person is, of course, the foundation of the Church’s Social Doctrine.  For this reason, it readily lends itself to abuse as an irrelevant conclusion.  The problem is that nearly every issue in society involves a collision in human dignity.  You might speak of the dignity of the immigrant, but you cannot in turn ignore the dignity of the citizen.  The principle of the dignity of the human person is always a two-edged sword.  In fact, this collision occurs so often that God uses the dignity of the human person as His reason for commanding the death penalty in Gn 9:6.

What governs every collision of human dignity is justice.  While a migrant has a natural right to migrate when a dire need arises, it can only be done in a manner that respects the rule of law of the country he is immigrating to.  Assuming that the laws around immigration are just then the country has a right to enforce those laws including removing those immigrants who refused to respect the rule of law. 

The unfortunate part is that the Catholic prelates have done little to explain how the immigration enforcement of the new administration is unjust.  They simply appeal to the dignity of the human person without acknowledging that it is contrary to the dignity of the human person for a country not to enforce her laws.  It comes across as a mere sophistry especially when combined with the fact that Church-affiliated organizations have benefited financially from aiding illegal immigrants.  Because of the way that is often perceived the exchange rate on those millions of dollars comes out to be 30 pieces of silver.

“Contrary to the Common Good”

Likewise, the notion that immigration enforcement is “contrary to the common good” also serves as an unholy sophistry.  How it is exactly contrary to the common good is not really explained, but merely stated without support.  The problem of referring to the common good is that it is really a form a question begging.  Residents of one society do not share in the common good of another.  Furthermore, the role of the State is to protect and promote the common good of its citizens.  Therefore, the citizen always has a precedence over the non-citizen.  To speak of immigration enforcement as contrary to the common good is to assume that the immigrant is a member of the society.  That is clearly a contradiction.

Like the “dignity of the human person” argument, the argument that it is “contrary to the common good” is also avoiding the question of justice.  Justice is a constitutive element of the common good.  The State has an obligation to enforce its just laws as guardian of the common good.  The sophisticated Catholics then need to make an argument based on what is just.

The Church has clearly laid out the principles that ought to govern just immigration policy (Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno and Exsul Familia Nazarethana).  With such clear principles, it should be relatively easy to show how the current policies are contrary to Catholic principles.  Instead, the sophists have relied on unholy sophistry that ultimately undermines their credibility and the moral credibility of the Church as a whole.

Moral Worlds Apart

Contraception, Magisterium, Natural Law,

The Orthodox Church is going through its “Lambeth moment”.  In 1930 at the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Church opened the door contraception as a morally licit means of birth control provided that “this is done in the light of the same Christian principles.”  Every mainline Protestant community soon followed suit.  Always behind the times and proud of it, the Orthodox Church is going through a similar debate currently.  Many in the Church hold that contraception is always wrong while others think it can be used as long as the couple has the permission of their pastor.  With no central teaching authority and guided by “the free conscience of the people” one can imagine where they will eventually land.  In the meantime, they use the debate as an opportunity to attack the Catholic Church.  Specifically, they claim that contraception and Natural Family Planning (NFP) are essentially the same thing.  Reasoning that because the intention is the same in both cases, they are either equally to be condemned or equally allowed.  Since this objection comes from other opponents of the Church it is worth examining in full.

Understanding the Plan

Although this should be obvious, it bears mentioning at the outset that NFP is not an action but a plan.  NFP is a plan for avoiding or getting pregnant.  In this regard it is like an exercise plan that someone puts together in order to lose 10 pounds or to gain ten pounds.  Just as no one would morally evaluate the workout plan, you cannot morally evaluate NFP.  There is, of course, the decision to put the plan into action which has a moral quality, but the moral quality comes from the individual acts that make up that plan.  We are not judged for plans but for actions.  So, we cannot immediately compare contraception and NFP because we are trying to compare an action with a plan.

With this necessary distinction in place, we can alter the objection slightly and say that because contraception and recourse to temporary abstinence both intend to avoid pregnancy, they have the same moral quality.  To frame it properly almost makes the objection absurd, but it is still worth examining the two actions to see how they differ.

Evaluating the Moral Quality of an Action

Every human act has three sources—the object chosen, the intention and the circumstances surrounding the action.  We can look at these three elements to evaluate the morality of any given act.  If all three are good, then the action is good.  If any of the three is evil, then the action is evil. (see CCC 1750-1753 for more detail).  Without getting into the weeds too much, it is also important to note that the object, that is the action we are choosing as a means to carry out our intention, carries a certain primacy in that it must be examined first in order to see if it can ever be ordered to the good.  There are certain intrinsic evils that, no matter the intention or circumstances, can never be ordered to a good end.  As. Pope St. John Paul II puts it, “[T]he primary and decisive element for moral judgment is the object of the human act, which establishes whether it is capable of being ordered to the good and to the ultimate end, which is God” (Veritatis Splendor, 79).

Let’s begin with an easy example to see how it might work.  Suppose a father is intending to give his son a $100 gift and is contemplating two acts.  The intention of the two actions is identical and good.  For the sake of argument assume the circumstances are the same and good as well.

Object1: Rob a bank

Object 2: Work two extra hours at work.

Despite the intention being the same, it is clear these are two very different acts.  The act that includes Object 1 would be wrong because stealing is intrinsically evil.  The good intention and circumstances do not override this.  The act that includes Object 2, because all three elements are good, is good.

The Moral Difference

We can now apply the same sort of analysis to the question at hand.  We will start by setting the circumstance that the woman is thought (in most cases you cannot be absolutely certain) to be fertile.  Their intention is twofold: to avoid pregnancy (for reasons that are just) and to have sex.  On the surface this seems absurd, but it is clear that because God designed the woman to only be fertile in certain times that this remains a possibility.  As stated previously, there is a link between the physical laws and the moral laws such that the former can be a guide for the latter.         

Returning to our example, the couple contemplates two acts.  Object1 is to have contracepted sex while Object2 is to abstain.  With Object1 in view, the action becomes evil because contraception is an intrinsic evil and thus can never be chosen directly as a means for avoiding pregnancy and having sex. Object2 is good per se so that when it is combined with a good intention and circumstances, it is part of a good action.

Changing the circumstances to a time when the woman is believed to be infertile, we can evaluate if the couple does anything wrong in engaging in the marital embrace.  The intention remained the same, but the object must retain its connection to procreation.  In other words, the act must be one that is procreative in nature.  An act that is procreative in nature is one in which pregnancy is the result.  There are no artificial barriers, either physical or chemical put in place by the couple.  Because fertilization is not automatic and occurs outside the actual act there are natural “barriers” that, known and unknown, can be present.  These include whether the woman is temporary or permanently infertile (like post-menopausal), the health of the man’s sperm, the woman’s pH and many others.  The key is that neither partner has intentionally rendered the act infertile.  That the circumstances have rendered the act ultimately unfruitful is beyond our control and are not morally relevant.  Therefore, when we examine the object (conjugal act), intention (marital act while avoiding pregnancy for just reasons) and circumstances we can determine that the conjugal act when the woman is infertile is morally good.  

Some have questioned whether the object with the circumstance of infertility is per se good and will cite some (definitely not a consensus view) Church Fathers who said it is wrong; it is never licit to engage in the marital embrace when the woman is infertile.  The problem with this view is that it seems to be contrary to Sacred Scripture.  Abraham, Issac, and Zechariah all had marital relations with women they knew were infertile.  Rather than bringing down a curse for something that is wrong, God eventually blesses each of them with children.  Given the abundance of examples without condemnation and the appearance of blessing, it is at least implicit that infertile sex is permitted.  The Church has since made it explicit.  Furthermore, there is also the additional problem that such a prohibition would mean that those women who get married after going through menopause could not consummate their marriage.

The tendency to only look at the intention of acts is ubiquitous in our culture, but we must look at the entire act itself to determine its moral quality.  Despite the fact that contraception and NFP both attempt to avoid pregnancy, the acts associated with them are moral worlds apart. 

Making Senses Out of Scripture

Church Fathers, Scripture, , ,

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bible sales are “booming,” up 22% from the same time last year.  There are a variety of reasons why this is the case, but one of the major reasons is that the one of the most famous public intellectuals of the day, Dr. Jordan Peterson, has made the Bible compelling for a lot of people through his lectures and his newest book, We Who Wrestle with God.  For anyone who has listened to or read Dr. Peterson, it is clear that he has a gift of seeing the moral meaning of a text and presenting it in a way that makes it relevant to the audience.  While this might increase interest in the Bible, there is a great danger that it will lead people away from Faith.

To be fair, it is clear that Dr. Peterson is wrestling with the texts in real time (thus the name of his book) and in a public fashion.  He believes that the Bible is true, or as he puts it, “more true than just true” and forms the “precondition for the manifestation of truth.”  But what he doesn’t believe is that it is inspired.  Instead, in true Jungian fashion, he thinks that it is best explained by the collective unconscious (pp.103-104 We Who Wrestle with God).

Why Inspiration Matters

It is not necessarily expected that a man who has not yet found the Faith would believe that the text is inspired, but anyone who is going to truly plumb the depths of its meaning must accept this as a precondition.  It is an assumption that the Author Himself expects the reader to make and it is an assumption that Dr. Peterson himself should make.  He should place himself in the seat of the intended audience and see the text come alive.

Inspiration essentially means that God is the primary author of Sacred Scripture.  He uses human authors as secondary instruments, but those authors using their own language, always say exactly what God wants them to say.  Why this matters becomes clear when we turn to the Angelic Doctor’s Disputed Questions (VII, Q.6, art.1):

“the author of Scripture, namely the Holy Spirit, is not only the author of words but also of things. Hence not only can he accommodate words to signify something, but also he can arrange things to be the figure of something else. And according to this, truth is manifested in two ways in Sacred Scripture: one way is how things are signified through words, and in this consists the literal sense; another way is how things are figures of other things, and the spiritual sense consists in this.”

When a human author writes a story, he uses words to symbolize things.  God is not hamstrung like a human author.  When He writes a story, He uses not only words but also events.  He does not need to make up stories to write them down, He can simply make the events in the story happen.  These same events can then have a deeper meaning.  These means truth can be manifested in both the event itself and the meaning of the event.

An example from Scripture itself will make this clearer.  In writing to the Galatians, St. Paul says the following:

“For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.  But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother.”

St. Paul takes the actual historical event and circumstances around Abraham and his two sons (literal sense) and deciphers the meaning of those events (spiritual sense).  Each son represents a covenant.  But just because they represent something else does not mean they did not actually exist and that those things did not actually happen.  This is what Peterson struggles to grasp and therefore posits that the collective unconscious grasped the deeper truth and made up the story to demonstrate it.

Before discussing the problem with this approach, it is worthwhile to understand more fully the Four Senses of Scripture.  The literal sense is the meaning of the words themselves.  Every passage has a literal sense and we should always start with the literal before attempting to understand the spiritual sense.  The spiritual sense is broken down into three elements: the allegorical, the moral and the anagogical.  The allegorical sense is how the passage relates to Christ or the Church.  It probably the most oft used in Scripture, especially the Old Testament, because every word of the Bible points to the Word Made Flesh.  The moral sense is the sense in which they are commands to govern our actions and train us for righteousness (1Tim 3:16).  Finally, there is the anagogical sense which points towards eternity. 

An Example of the Four Senses

An example might help, especially because there was a long debate recently on X about the interpretation of the Good Samaritan in which a group of Protestants each argued for only one sense of Scripture being the “clear interpretation”.  If they were Catholic they would have known that there are at least four “valid” interpretations.  The literal meaning of the Parable is in the question that Christ answered, “Who is my neighbor?”.  Essentially the literal sense is that anyone in need, even someone who we think is our enemy, should be given aid so that they can live in the Inn (the Church).  The allegorical sense is that the Good Samaritan is Christ Himself who rescues us from the ditch, gives us the Sacraments and securely places us in the Church.  The moral sense is the same as the literal in that we are always to imitate Christ Himself.  Finally, through the anagogical sense we can see the inn as heaven and that only Christ can bring us there.

With a foundational understanding of the senses of Scripture in place we can see that Dr. Peterson’s focus is completely on the moral sense.  This overreliance on just one of the senses renders Scripture a dead letter.  This is why the Church condemned Origen in the 3rd Century for a similar approach.  Those passages that do not have a moral sense are set aside and the Scriptures become a giant self-help book.  The other problem is that any interpretation must first be based on the literal sense.  We must first understand the meaning of the words themselves before trying to assign some symbolic meaning to them.  If we skip this step, Scripture loses the power of “reverse inspiration” so that God no longer speaks to us personally in them.

Symbolic Superstition

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Over on X, there is a video circulating of a woman who, while struggling during a particularly hard season of life, decided to pour grape juice around her yard in order to protect her and her family with the Blood of Christ. While claiming that it is just a symbol, nevertheless she is willing to roll the dice that it might work saying, “at worst, I wasted $6 on grape juice, and at best my house is protected by the blood of Jesus and we finally hop off this wild, chaotic, awful rollercoaster that we’ve been stuck on.” 

Not surprisingly she was met with accusations of superstition which seems to be fair given she has no faith that it will actually work.  She seems particularly prone to this given that she claims to have recently thrown out her crystals.  She, like many others in our day and age, fell victim to the what is best described as “Self-help Witchcraft”.  In both cases it is not so much the superstition that is noteworthy but the fact there is an expectation that symbols when combined with faith ought to have some power to effect a situation.  In other words, what is worth examining is that there seems to be an innate desire among Christians for Sacramentals.

Sacramentals and Scripture

This desire is more than just an intuition, it has a biblical basis.  St. Paul, in writing to the Romans speaks of creation waiting “with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:19-22).  Every element in Creation was meant to serve man in worshipping and revealing God.  With the Fall, that purpose “was subjected to futility,” but with the dawn of the New Creation in Christ, it is eager to have the power to do this restored.  This capacity it made more explicit when St. Paul tells St. Timothy “Everything created by God is good…for it is made holy by the invocation of God in prayer” (1Tim 4:4-5). 

The battle over creation is ongoing and Christians have the power to take it back.  In fact it becomes a key element of spiritual warfare to take individual things in creation and make or constitute them as holy so that they can be put to service of God and are no longer under the dominion of the devil.  Jesus, when he made mud and put it in the eyes of the blind man was taking the cursed dust of the earth and restoring it to a holy use (John 6:6-7).  Likewise, to make holy water is to render the water no longer under the control of the devil who is prince of this world.  This is why the best way to fight the use of crystals and amulets is by using Sacramentals.

Many Catholics would not immediately pick up on the fact that the woman is looking for a Sacramental.  This is because, for the most part, they have fallen into disuse in the last fifty years.  Sacramentals, in order to be effective, require that those who use them be educated in their use.  This is because, unlike Sacraments, they depend on the faith and moral condition of the recipient in order to be effective (referred to theologically as ex opere operantis—”from the work of the doer”).  They are causes of actual grace that disposes person to receive Sanctifying grace.  The effectiveness of sacramentals depends upon three things—(1) disposition of minister (2) disposition of recipient (3) intercessory power of the Church.

The Prayer of the Church

This third element, in a certain sense, is the most integral part.  The Sacraments are instituted by Christ and of a fixed number.  Sacramentals are instituted by the Church and there is no fixed number of them.  It belongs to the Church’s binding and loosing power and it gives to the Church the power to affect a blessing.  It is also an essential element of the Church’s holiness—“The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects” (James 5:16).  The power comes from the prayer of the Church which is efficacious.  For example, when a candle is blessed and the priest asks that the light from it drive away the powers of darkness, it really does drive demons away when it is lit.

Since it depends upon the prayer of the Church, it is the actual formula of blessing that matters.  One of the changes that was made shortly after the Second Vatican Council was to the Book of Blessings.  Many of the specific blessings of objects were dropped in favor of a generic blessing and an emphasis on blessing persons rather than things.  What has emerged from that is a set of Sacramentals that is less powerful and consequently used less frequently.

As a comparison, look at the older blessing of the St. Benedict medal versus the one recommended in the Book of Blessings:

In the name of God the Father + almighty, who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them, I exorcise these medals against the power and attacks of the evil one. May all who use these medals devoutly be blessed with health of soul and body. In the name of the Father + almighty, of the Son + Jesus Christ our Lord, and of the Holy + Spirit the Paraclete, and in the love of the same Lord Jesus Christ who will come on the last day to judge the living and the dead, and the world by fire. Amen.

Let us pray.  Almighty God, the boundless source of all good things, we humbly ask that, through the intercession of Saint Benedict, you pour out your blessings + upon these medals. May those who use them devoutly and earnestly strive to perform good works be blessed by you with health of soul and body, the grace of a holy life, and remission of the temporal punishment due to sin. May they also with the help of your merciful love, resist the temptation of the evil one and strive to exercise true charity and justice toward all, so that one day they may appear sinless and holy in your sight. This we ask through Christ our Lord. Amen.  

And the Book of Blessings:

May this (name of article) and the one who uses it be blessed, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, + and of the Holy Spirit. 

The medal under the Old Blessing has the power to protect the person who devoutly and intentionally uses it from attacks of the evil one.  Under the New Blessing, its power is essentially unknown (other than to “bless” the person) making it practically impossible to use it devoutly and intentionally.  Thankfully, the Old Blessing is still an option, but you usually have to ask for it.

Returning to the video above, it seems that the woman intuitively grasps that Sacramentals are a thing and that they are effective in protecting us.  Perhaps what she was really looking for was the Four Corners’ Blessing with St. Benedict’s medal.

On Ex Cathedra Statements

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When Our Lord promised to Peter the power of “binding and loosing” (Mt 16:19), he was giving to Peter and his successors, the protection of infallibility.  This prooftext is well-known by Catholics.  What appears to be not as well known is exactly how often this charism has been invoked by the Popes.  There is a widely-held belief that it has only been twice—Pope Pius IX in 1854 (Immaculate Conception) and Pope Pius XII in 1950 (Assumption of Mary).  Given our great need for certainty in this age of ambiguity, it is fortunate that it has been wielded far more often than that.

What is Infallibility and How Is It Exercised?

Although the First Vatican Council was interrupted when Rome came under occupation, the Fathers of the Council did declare among other dogmas the infallibility of the Pope (Pastor Aeternus, 4):

“Therefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith, for the glory of God Our Savior, the exaltation of the Catholic Religion, and the salvation of Christian people, the Sacred Council approving, We teach and define that it is a divinely-revealed dogma: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex Cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals: and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church.”

Notice that the solemn declaration not only formally recognizes infallibility as being divinely revealed dogma, but also outlines the conditions for its exercise.  First, the Pope must be acting “in discharge of his office as Pastor and Teach of all Christians.”  Second, he must be teaching specifically “regarding faith and morals.”  Finally, he must be defining the doctrine to be “irreformable” or as Vatican II puts it, “by a definitive act” (LG 25).

Two other things are worth mentioning because they often cause confusion.  First, it should be noted that nowhere does it say he must intend to speak ex cathedra.  All that is necessary is that he intends to speak definitively about a particular subject.  Second, there are no infallible documents.  There are only infallible statements contained in certain documents.  The question as to whether a document like Humanae Vitae is infallible is the wrong way to look at it.  The question would be whether specific statements within it are infallible.

With these three conditions in mind, it is clear that there are far more ex cathedra statements than the two previously mentioned.  As an example, we do not need to look too long after the Council to find a clear case of an ex cathedra statement in Pope Leo XIII’s 1893 Encyclical on sacred Scripture, Providentissimus Deus (#20).

“To Our Venerable Brethren, All Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops of the Catholic World, in Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See… But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it-this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true.”

The Holy Father is exercising his role as universal teacher, is teaching on faith and morals and defines it to be “absolutely wrong and forbidden” (a definitive statement).  Therefore, he is infallibly declaring that the doctrine of limited inerrancy of Scripture is wrong.  Given how often Catholics subscribe to limited inerrancy, it is clear that few know this to be an infallible declaration.

A Controversial Example

A second example, which has already been mentioned, is found in Pope St. Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae(#14). In it, the Pope says:

“Therefore, We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary.”

Again we find the three conditions fulfilled.  The Pope is clearly exercising his office as universal pastor and teacher and is proclaiming “a teaching which is based on natural law as illuminated and enriched by divine revelation.”  He directly declares that any contraceptive act or temporary or permanent sterilization as “absolutely excluded as lawful.  This is a definitive statement that admits of no exception.  Therefore the Pope is exercising his power to teach ex cathedra.

Once we learn how to apply the three criteria for ex cathedra statements, we readily find that there are far more than the two Marian dogmas and the two examples I mentioned.  Naturally we might want a complete list of them.  Setting aside whether it would be even be possible for the Church to publish a complete list, there is a list of examples found in a CDF commentary on the Oath of Fidelity, Professio Fidei (#11).  In addition to the two Marian dogmas everyone knows and the inerrancy of Scripture listed above, it also lists three other examples:  Benedictus Deus (1336) on the immortality of the spiritual soul and its immediate recompense after death; IApostolicae Curae (1896) on the invalidity of Anglican orders; and Evangelium Vitae (1995) on the grave immorality of murder.

These are meant to be, according to the document, just examples and by no means should be interpreted as exhaustive.  In any regard, it is clear that there are far more than two cases in which the Pope has spoken ex cathedra.

Creation as God or Gift?

Anthropology, Creation, Evolution, Paganism, ,

It is anything but surprising that the California Wildfires have been met with a bevy of Climate Cassandras chiming in about how the fires offer indisputable proof that man-made climate change is real.  They then will call for us all to do “something” because it represents an existential crisis.  Others will try to reason with them, acknowledging that because man lives in the world, it is reasonable to expect that the environment will be changed by him.  But their failure to acknowledge the impending doom ultimately will earn them the branding of climate denier.  There is no reasoning with them because ultimately we are dealing with a subtle form of paganism.

Seeing environmentalism as a secular religion certainly helps explain its proclivity to serve as a metanarrative.  Not only does it cause natural disasters like the wildfires in California, but it also causes migrant crises, racism, and even the rise of ISIS. When coupled with the aptly named Politician’s Fallacy it becomes a instrument for seizing power and limiting the freedom of those under their thumb.

A Real Religion

It might be easy to dismiss it all as a power grab, but it seems there are many who are true believers, even those in power.  We cannot dismiss the fact that man has a natural religious impulse and must worship something.  Environmentalism serves to feed this religious impulse.  The reason why this realization is important is because they do not need convincing that their interpretation of the facts is wrong, but conversion from what is ultimately a false religion.

The foundational belief is that creation is not inherently good, but in a process of becoming so.  Nature itself (or Gaia) is God and must be worshipped in its purest form.  Creation was self-guided towards a future utopia; a day when Nature walks in the pseudo-Garden of Eden and all creation becomes one with Nature.  Everything was on the right track until at some point in history (usually the Industrial Revolution), man committed the sin of taking creation off its course.  Now we must atone for that sin by “doing something” to take it back to the pre-1800 state and get it back on track.  Otherwise we will face an Apocalypse some time in the near future. 

The Climate Cassandras are its prophets of doom who feign certainty using weasel words (like “may”) to warn us of the impending doom just beyond the horizon.  Climatologists are its priests, transubstantiating their models into reality.  Its enemies are not only the nay-sayers but the numinous, invisible ghosts like UV radiation and CO2. 

In his excellent book, Apocalypse Never, Michael Shellenberger points out something similar regarding the religious nature of environmentalism:

Environmentalism today is the dominant secular religion of the educated, upper-middle-class elite in most developed and many developing nations. It provides a new story about our collective and individual purpose. It designates good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. And it does so in the language of science, which provides it with legitimacy. On the one hand, environmentalism and its sister religion, vegetarianism, appear to be a radical break from the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. For starters, environmentalists themselves do not tend to be believers, or strong believers, in Judeo-Christianity. In particular, environmentalists reject the view that humans have, or should have, dominion, or control, over Earth. On the other hand, apocalyptic environmentalism is a kind of new Judeo-Christian religion, one that has replaced God with nature. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, human problems stem from our failure to adjust ourselves to God. In the apocalyptic environmental tradition, human problems stem from our failure to adjust ourselves to nature. In some Judeo-Christian traditions, priests play the role of interpreting God’s will or laws, including discerning right from wrong. In the apocalyptic environmentalist tradition, scientists play that role.

The Path to Conversion

Properly understanding that we are dealing with religious conviction rather than an interpretation of facts, we can work towards conversion.  The path has been laid out for this rather clearly in Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Caritas in Veritate in what could be described as a Metaphysics of Gift:

The environment is God’s gift to everyone, and in our use of it we have a responsibility towards the poor, towards future generations and towards humanity as a whole. When nature, including the human being, is viewed as the result of mere chance or evolutionary determinism, our sense of responsibility wanes. In nature, the believer recognizes the wonderful result of God’s creative activity, which we may use responsibly to satisfy our legitimate needs, material or otherwise, while respecting the intrinsic balance of creation. If this vision is lost, we end up either considering nature an untouchable taboo or, on the contrary, abusing it. Neither attitude is consonant with the Christian vision of nature as the fruit of God’s creation.

Notice how he first puts the blame for environmental abuse at the feet of an evolutionary worldview in which creation is a mere accident.  The Environmentalist already rejects this, seeing in it a meaning and purpose.  If they can begin to see it not as a god, but as a gift, then it is natural for them to wonder at the nature of the Giver. 

The use of the word wonder is particularly appropriate.  Modern philosophy begins with doubt whereas for the Greeks and Aquinas it begins with wonder.  Modern man only wonders at how a thing works, while the Catholic ought to wonder why it exists like it does.  In fact, why does anything exist instead of nothing?  Why am I the kind of creature that can appreciate a beautiful sunset or wonder about the size of the universe?  Beauty can save the world.  This is the path to conversion for the Environmentalist.  By fostering a spirit of wonder, it predisposes the person towards gratitude and the recognition that everything is a gift. 

On Anti-Judaism

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In an effort to join the fight against antisemitism, the USCCB’s Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, in cooperation with the American Jewish Committee, released “Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition.”  The document was meant to “equip Catholics with the tools to recognize antisemitism” and insofar as the description of the terms in the glossary goes, it is especially helpful.  What is not helpful however is the commentary at the beginning by Bishop Bambera in which he condemns as equally “insidious” both antisemitism and anti-Judaism.  It is, according to His Excellency, a denial of “the spiritual patrimony that Catholics share with the Jewish people.”  Unfortunately, the Bishop is merely reflecting the attitude of many Catholics since the Second Vatican Council and helps to explain the reason why many Catholics think evangelization of the Jews is unnecessary.

While the Bishop never really explicitly defines what he means by anti-Judaism, it seems to be implicit in his comment that “Anti-Judaism compares the faith of Israel to other religions as defective, inferior, and/or rejected by God.”  Combined with the fact that he makes a distinction between it and antisemitism, one could assume that he means it in the sense of treating modern-day Judaism as a false religion.  While it is true that Judaism is unique among the false religions because of its connection to the Old Testament, it is nevertheless a false religion in that it openly rejects Christ.

Modern-Day Judaism

At the heart of the issue is an ignorance of what exactly modern-day Judaism is and its relationship to the Judaism of Christ and the Apostles.  Christ came to fulfill all that was in Judaism at His time.  Israel was simply the Church in its larval state and once Christ emerged from the tomb, the chrysalis was torn open and the butterfly that was the Church emerged.  Those practitioners of Judaism did not merely stand still, waiting for the Messiah.  Their religion was also transformed into something else.  In other words, the religion of Christ and the Apostles no longer exists.

Although the transformation took many years, Judaism slowly became, not the religion of Moses, but a religion that opposes Christ.  Rabbinic Judaism was born in the early first century and the Talmud (the sayings of the Rabbis) eventually replaced the Torah as the authoritative source of Jewish teachings.  Erubin 21b says “be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah.”  If the Talmud allows something that the Torah forbids, then it is the Talmud that is to be obeyed.    

The Talmud also established Rabbinic Judaism as anti-Christ.  Christ is presented as the bastard son of a Roman soldier after his mother strayed from her husband (Shabbat 104b:5), a practitioner of sorcery (Sanhedrin 43a:20) and residing in hell in boiling feces (Gittin 57a). 

Rabbinic Judaism then is not merely the religion of the Old Testament whose practitioners are simply waiting for the Second Coming because they missed the first.  It is a false religion that is anti-Christ.  Therefore, anti-Judaism is a necessary consequence of being Christian.  To oppose the blasphemies of modern Judaism is not anti-Judaism but anti-Christian.  Anti-Judaism is not, as the Bishop insists, a rejection of the spiritual patrimony that we share with the Jews, it is an acknowledgment that they have rejected that spiritual patrimony.

Antisemitism is always wrong, but it is especially grave for a Christian because Christ, His Mother and all the Patriarchs of the Old Testament were ethnically Jewish.  It is for the sake of these men and women that we ought to always hold them in special regard.  They are “are beloved for the sake of their forefathers” (Romans 11:28).  But only by being anti-Judaism can we acknowledge that modern day Jews are outside of God’s covenant.

The New Covenant?

This is a second source of confusion.  There is no such thing as the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.  There are multiple covenants in the Old Testament (c.f. Ex 20, Deut 6-7, Numbers 14:7-23; Dt 29:1) and not simply a single Old Covenant.  In each case a previous covenant is either modified or nullified by God in favor of a newer one that depends on the historical conditions.  The newer proscriptions themselves can replace the former ones.  The point is that God does not change, but the conditions under which men come to him in a covenantal relationship do (or at least did). He makes a covenant with each person such that he may become a member of His People by fulfilling the conditions of the covenant that is active during the particular historical setting. He does not make a covenant with a people in the generic sense; a mistake that often leads Christians to consider Jews as “God’s chosen people.”  Those Jews schooled in the Scriptures would be well aware of this fact and would be expecting a definitive and everlasting covenant with God (c.f. Ez 37:26-28; Jeremiah 31:31-34).  The promised covenant was to be rooted in Baptism (c.f. Ez 36:24-28).   

There really is then only a single covenant operative at a given time by which a person is incorporated into God’s People.  Baptism, rather than circumcision, is the way in which a person in our day enters into covenant with God.  The “gift and the call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:30) so that the offer of a covenant is still open to the Jews but they must enter into covenant with Him through the new Circumcision (c.f. Col 2:11-12).  Christians should be anti-Judaism in order to invite those in Rabbinic Judaism into God’s covenant.  There is no other means by which they can be saved.

True Devotion to the Saints

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Before he died, St. Ignatius, yielding to pressure from his assistant and secretary Fr. Luis Gonzalez de Camara, dictated a spiritual biography.  The future saint knew just how important it was to study the lives of the saints, especially because God had brought him to conversion through his exposure to different hagiographies.  At one pivotal point Ignatius, led by the grace of God, began to “think and reason to himself.  ‘Suppose that I should do what St. Francis did, what St. Dominic did?’ He thus let his thoughts run over many things that seemed good to him, always putting before himself things that were difficult and important which seemed to him easy to accomplish when he proposed them. But all his thought was to tell himself ‘St. Dominic did this, therefore, I must do it. St. Francis did this, therefore, I must do it.’”   In this way, St. Ignatius could be the Patron Saint of studying the lives of the saints.

In coming to read the lives of the saints, many of us seem to take a similar approach to Ignatius.  We are moved by their exploits and try to model our spiritual lives after theirs.  We think St. Dominic preached the Rosary, therefore I must preach the Rosary.  St. Francis went to great lengths to tame “Brother Ass” (the epithet he gave his body), so I too must regularly fast by eating nothing several times a week.  The problem with this, as Ignatius later hinted at, is that it has all the makings of a self-help trap in which we risk running out ahead of grace instead of cooperating with it.

The Importance of the Floating Pronouns

Ignatius understood the deeper meaning of the floating pronouns this and it when he was moved by the Holy Spirit to think “because Francis or Dominic did this, therefore I must do it.”  The this is not the specific exploits.  Ignatius was wholly incapable of doing those things because the great and holy things that Francis and Dominic did were done under the influence of grace.  They were impossible no matter how determined Ignatius was.  But moved by supernatural grace, they made the extraordinary seem ordinary and sanctity achievable.  It becomes the key and by it Ignatius meant cooperating with grace.  What made Francis and Dominic, and ultimately Ignatius, saints was not what they did specifically, but their habit of never missing a single grace that God sent to them.  They were, according to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, inhabitants of the Third Class of Men who “seek only to will and not will as God Our Lord inspires them.”  They didn’t just do good, but they did the good that God wanted.

To study the saints then we should understand that everything they did was because they were docile to grace.  We ought to begin, not by being amazed at their exploits, but by being amazed at what grace can do to an ordinary person who desires to always cooperate with it.  That is what we should seek to imitate first and foremost.

True Imitation of the Saints

The reason why this is important is because we are each given different graces.  We are all commanded to fast and thus given the grace to carry out that commandment, but only some of us are given the grace to fast in the manner of Francis.  It would be wrong for us to imitate Francis in that regard unless we have been told and equipped—”to will and not will as God Our Lord inspires us.”  The first question we must ask is not what Francis would do, but whether God is asking it of us.  Too often we get ideas to do something extraordinary that turn out to be of our own (or the Enemy’s) making. It is important to discern those graces because God will equip us to do the extraordinary, but unless we have the necessary sensitivity to grace we will miss it.  We should be regularly asking for the grace of being faithful and docile to grace.

It is important to stress that this is not the only reason we should study the lives of the saints.  It is simply what our initial approach should be aimed at.  Armed with the realization of what grace can turn us into, we now ought to turn to their example personally.  Each of the Saints is still, perhaps even more, alive and active in the Church today.  Our eternal destiny is not just a “me and Jesus” twostep, but to be united to the Holy Trinity and the Saints.  This is the Communion of Saints.  We will know each of them personally.  That friendship is based on mutual devotion.  We study their lives because we cannot love who we don’t know.  But when we do get to know them, we not only grow to love them, but also come to rely on them.  They become devoted to us as well. 

One of the things that most of the Saints did during their earthly sojourn was to develop relationships with the Saints who had gone before them.  St. Thomas relied on St. Paul to explain to him the difficult parts of his letters.  St. Gemma relied on St. Margaret Mary Alocoque to help her in her suffering with spinal meningitis and to teach her devotion to the Sacred Heart.  Because St. Margaret Mary had received the unique grace of knowing and understanding the Sacred Heart of Jesus, she became a distributor of that grace when she entered into her eternal reward.  St. Gemma knew this about St. Margaret Mary and so she knew to go to her when she wanted the grace of devotion to the Sacred Heart.  This is why we must also come to treat the notion of patron saints as much more than a mere talisman and part and parcel with holy friendship.  God gave each saint very specific graces in his lifetime so that he in turn could become a distributor of that grace from heaven.  Please God that we too might take those special graces that He gives us and become His distributor from heaven. 

Better Off Dead?

Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, , , ,

One of the greatest challenges confronting the Church today is embracing the realization that the majority of people, including most Christians, think with a post-Christian mindset.  The opposition to the Terminally Ill (End of Life) Bill in England comes to mind as the most recent example.  The Catholic Bishops of England vociferously opposed the bill, even though the passage of the bill was fully expected.  Yet their reasoning would really only be convincing to someone deeply rooted in a Christian culture.  That is why they are forced to keep saying “The Catholic Church teaches…”  To use language that speaks of the dignity of the human person, while true, falls rather flat in a culture of death.   In fact, you could argue that it is really at the crux of the issue.  When people no longer practically believe in God, there is little interest in protecting His image in man.  My proposal then is to update our approach by going backwards.

In many ways St. Augustine is a perfect model for our times.  He lived in an era when Christianity was mostly tolerated but the Christian mindset was nowhere to be found.  What he did was to address social evils using the examples and thought patterns of the day.  He would then show how they fit with the understanding of the Church.  In fact he was so good at it, that he wrote a thousand+ page book that has remained intact for nearly 1500 years that uses this technique throughout called The City of God.

Augustine on Suicide

What makes his approach especially relevant is that he tackles the question of suicide in Book I.  The Romans tended to view suicide as something noble.  Augustine examines two famous examples to make his point.  The first was Lucretia who was a Roman noblewoman who had been raped.  After her brother and husband exacted revenge on the offender, she killed herself to avoid the shame.  The second was Marcus Cato who strongly opposed Julius Caesar so that once Caesar came into power, he killed himself rather than submitting.  The Romans looked to both of them as models of nobility.

Rather than leading with the dignity of the human person or the Commandments, Augustine first attacks the value the Romans found in suicide, namely its nobility.  He shows how it is anything but noble.  He calls Lucretia weak and a coward: “it is not even right to call it greatness of soul when someone kills himself because he is not strong enough to endure hardships or other people’s sins.”  Because he is questioning whether or not it is truly noble to run away from hardship, he now has the Romans’ ears.  They value nobility and Augustine has called into question what is truly noble.

Likewise, he calls Cato a coward especially because he and his friends admitted that when his son killed himself it “was an act showing weakness unable to bear adversity rather than honor on guard against disgrace.”  He then goes on to say he prefers a different Marcus, one surnamed Regulus, whom the Romans “offer none better for their outstanding virtue”.  He, rather taking his own life after losing to the Carthaginians, remained patient and bore the shame and bad fortune.  Only then does he offer up the example of Job asking the reader whether he would prefer to be Job or Cato.

Challenging on Their Terms

All of this is pertinent because one of the arguments in favor of assisted suicide is that, just as in the propaganda ad above, there is something noble in taking one’s life.  In order to meet the anti-lifers on their terms we must call it out for what it is; it is most decidedly an act of cowardice on the part of the person and those who surround him.  We all know this, but very few are willing to say it and call it out.  We may think we are being kind by not pointing out the obvious, but it is a false compassion.  There is true nobility in bearing suffering well and facing it head on.  There is true nobility in being Simon of Cyrene and courageously allowing another’s suffering to spill over onto you.  The false compassion that leads to silence is not much better than the false compassion that leads to support of deadly bills like this.

Imagine the difference between offering a person facing suffering and death a pill versus offering them support to lean into it.  When given the choice, wouldn’t any one of us rather be St. Paul than King Saul?  We cannot be afraid to challenge people directly, especially when they have suffering in front of them.  Ask them how they want to be remembered: as someone who went out on their own terms or someone who fought to the very end?  Telling the stories of great saints who endured suffering, especially modern day examples like St. Maximillian Kolbe, St. John Paul II and St. Teresa Benedicta, can be sources of inspiration.  It is a natural transition from them as sources of inspiration to their Source of inspiration. 

Part of the dignity of the human person and a sign of man’s greatness is the fact that he can see suffering coming and can plow right into, and Lord willing, through it.  The reason many will choose to end their lives is because they have not met Christ crucified.  We must not be afraid to preach the truth that because He suffered, suffering now has eternal value.  The Lord suffered so that no suffering is ever meaningless, and the only real “sweet death” is the one that He has set aside for each of us.

A Porch to Christianity?

Church, Culture, Evangelization, Faith and Reason, Paganism, , , , ,

Although it is not clear who first pointed this out, it is most certainly true that there is a certain law of undulation at play in every time and every culture related to the quality of the men: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”  We are, by almost any accounting, living in hard times, plagued by weak men.  Historically speaking it is hard to say how long the hard times must go on before the strong men emerge, but there is a growing awareness among many men in our culture that something is amiss with manhood.  This awareness helps to explain the growing popularity of Stoicism, especially among young Catholic men.  Because of Stoicism’s emphasis on virtue, most assume that Stoicism and Catholicism are compatible.  It is worthwhile then to examine whether this is true.

Sitting on the Porch

Stoicism has a long history that extends back to ancient Greece and the lectures that Zeno of Citium gave to his students on his porch or stoa.  It lay mostly dormant until around the 1st Century AD when it was revived by Epictetus and Seneca, followed by the first philosopher king, Marcus Aurelius.  It is marketed as a practical philosophy (i.e. ethics) based on the pursuit of virtue.  According to Epictetus this pursuit is governed by two principles.  First, “In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choice.”  This dichotomy of control is supplemented by a second principle aimed at our response. “What hurts this man is not the occurrence itself…but the view he chooses to take of it.”   Essentially this means that there is nothing good or bad in itself, only our attitude towards it gives it an ethical color.  We have the opportunity to see everything that happens as a means grow virtue.  Although it is often described as such, Stoicism is also not an emotionless ethic.  Because of its emphasis on virtue, it is about bringing our emotions under the control of reason.

It is ultimately this pathway to an inner freedom that comes about by focusing only on those things that we can control that makes it appealing to modern men.  The hard times make the battlefield seem so large and many men struggle to pick their battles and end up in a holding pattern.  But there is more to Stoicism than just this.  Stoicism ultimately is a pantheistic religion.  The reason why the Stoic can practice the necessary detachment is because he believes that everything that happens is necessary and good serving the Good of the whole.  There are no physical evils and the only moral evil is personal vice and folly. 

Ideas Have Consequences

That I labeled Stoicism as a pantheistic religion anticipates the fact that it is not wholly compatible with Catholicism.  But in truth, the two cannot be reconciled at all.  Its insistence that it is only our reaction to what happens that makes something good or evil leads to a subtle form of moral subjectivism.  There are many evils in the world that we cannot control and yet we must offer resistance or even fight against.  Detachment to things we cannot control is great until we are confronted with the suffering of another person.  Their suffering is only because they are thinking about it wrongly and thus empathy and compassion are folly.  Epictetus unashamedly counsels a fake compassion when he says,

“When you see a person weeping in sorrow, either when a child goes abroad, or when he is dead, or when the man has lost his property, take care that the appearance do not hurry you away with it as if he were suffering in external things. But straightway make a distinction in your mind, and be in readiness to say, it is not that which has happened that afflicts this man, for it does not afflict another, but it is the opinion about this thing which afflicts the man. So far as words, then, do not be unwilling to show him sympathy, and even if it happens so, to lament with him. But take care that you do not lament internally also.”

This fits with my experience with many men who practice Stoicism, Christian or not—they are usually the most judgmental and disinterested especially towards those who they deem not as strong-willed as themselves.

This brings up a necessary, although slightly tangential point.  The reason the Church maintained the Index of Forbidden Books for so long was not just to protect the Faithful from heresies.  There is a very real way in which false teachers of religion and philosophy can put an enchantment on the reader.  They have a tendency to draw the reader in and make him question reality, even when he is only curious or trying to adopt certain aspects of that philosophy/religion.  In this regard Stoicism is no different.  Read enough of it with an open mind, even while trying to filter it through a Catholic sieve, and it will “magically” cause you to see the Faith differently.  It seems that there is a fine line between reading a prayer and saying a prayer—a line that may be safe when it comes to the Faith but when encountering false belief systems becomes perilous.  This is why Augustine ultimately rejects Stoicism in his City of God (Book XIX, CH.4); because Cato came under its spell and committed suicide out of pride.

Stepping Off the Porch

In truth it does not actually help the person grow in virtue either.  First, it has a false view of human nature that borders on dualism.  It sees an evil that is done to body as not being done to the person.  The only evil is what is done to the soul.  Furthermore, because everything that happens is good, it rejects any negative emotions.  The 2nd Century Stoic Aulus Gellius tells the story of a Stoic philosopher who is at sea when a terrible storm breaks out.  Because he cannot control the storm, it is wrong for him to fear.  Likewise, it is wrong to be angry or sadness.  The emotions are good and especially important in hard times as they serve to propel the battle against evil.  

Because it denies the negative emotions, it ultimately pins our problems, like Buddhism, on our desires.  Epictetus tells the stoic, “Therefore altogether restrain desire…Demand not that events should happen as you wish but wish them to happen as they do happen.”  The last thing men of hard times need is to become men without chests.  That is exactly what happens when you stamp out desire and create a whole group of men who are aloof. 

Ultimately then the Cross and the Porch are incompatible.  Stoicism’s emphasis on virtue may seem like a good thing, but it is wholly unnecessary for those who accept the counsel of Christ to “take up your cross and follow Me.”

Transgenderism and Transhumanism

Defending the Faith, Evolution, Magisterium, ,

There is a sense that the cultural tide is shifting away from widescale acceptance of transgenderism.  One gets the feeling that yesterday’s advocates are turning into today’s skeptics.  That the ideologues were willing to sacrifice children on the altar of “gender affirmation” certainly sped up the process, but there is another reason why ideological support is waning.  For the intellectual elite and their ilk transgenderism was always meant to be a port of entry into a Brave New World and nothing more; an on-ramp to the Transhumanist superhighway.  Once the court of public opinion begins voting to convict, the “Transgender Moment” will have outlived its usefulness and they will begin to sever their ties to it, leaving thousands of victims in their wake.

Linking them Up

Transgenderism and transhumanism may only seem to be tangentially linked, but a closer examination shows the transgenderism to be fruit from the transhumanist tree.  At the heart of the transgender ideology is a shift in identity.  We are not body and soul composites, but minds operating in bodies. The body is viewed as no more than gendered machines that can be modified to suit the sexual intuition of the individual.  What it found out rather quickly is that no amount of technological tinkering can alter the machine so that a man might really become a fully-functioning woman and vice versa.  “Gender affirming care” became quite the opposite and left its victims in sexual limbo by becoming permanently disfigured, resembling neither sex.

From this perspective it appears to have been a failure.  But that was never really the point.  The point was to sell an intellectual bill of goods and the culture was found willing to pay the dues.  Not only does it show that most people view themselves as ghosts in a machine, but that there is no such thing as a fixed human nature. 

This is not mere speculation, but the plan of one of the planners himself.  Martine Rothblatt is one of Forbes’ Top 50 richest self-made women .  He is so successful that not being a woman isn’t an obstacle to appearing on a list of the most successful women.  Rothblatt shows his hand when, in his 2011 book Transgender to Transhumanism, he says:

“I came to realize that choosing one’s gender is merely an important subset of choosing one’s form. By form, I mean that which encloses our beingness … I came to this realization by understanding that 21st century software made it technologically possible to separate our minds from our bodies. This can be accomplished by downloading enough of our neural connection contents and patterns into a sufficiently advanced computer and merging the resultant mindfile with sufficiently advanced software—call it ‘mindware.’…”

If you can choose a body to house your gendered mind, then why must we ultimately choose a body at all?  Why couldn’t we choose an avatar that avoids all the messiness of the body like pain, sickness and ultimately death?  What if we just linked our minds with some computer or some other hive mind? 

Building on this point, Rothblatt connects the dots further by saying:  

“In a similar fashion I now see that it is also too constraining for there to be but two legal forms, human and non-human. There can be limitless variation of forms from full fleshed to purely software with bodies and mind being made up of all degrees of electronic circuitry between. To be transhuman one has to be willing to accept that they have a unique personal identity beyond flesh or software and that this unique personal identity cannot be happily expressed as either human or not.  It requires a unique transhuman expression.”

If gender is not binary, then, Rothblatt contends, any aspect of personality is also on a spectrum.  This leads him to conclude that we should view humanity itself as a spectrum.  This is at the heart of the Transhumanist project, expanding the spectrum towards some post-human ideal. 

The Connection to Evolution

It also shows a willingness to abandon biology in favor of evolution.  What I mean by this is that biology really doesn’t matter when you can grab the evolutionary reins for yourself.  This is, according to the popular author Yuval Noah Harrari account in Homo Deus, the great project of the 21st Century:

“In the twenty-first century, the third big project of humankind will be to acquire for us divine powers of creation and destruction, and upgrade Homo sapiens into Homo deus. This third project obviously subsumes the first two projects, and is fueled by them. We want the ability to re-engineer our bodies and minds in order, above all, to escape old age, death and misery, but once we have it, who knows what else we might do with such ability? So we may well think of the new human agenda as consisting really of only one project (with many branches): attaining divinity…Now humankind is poised to replace natural selection with intelligent design, and to extend life from the organic realm into the inorganic.”

Herein ultimately lies the reason that the Church was caught flat-footed during the transgender moment and will remain so as the Transhumanist train leaves the station: an unwillingness to address the false evolutionary paradigm that animates the posthuman agenda.  Because God is Logos, there can be no disconnect between the physical laws and the moral law.  The physical laws can even be instructive of the moral law.  For human beings to cooperate with the physical laws constitutes a morally good act.  Now, if (macro)evolution is true, then it would not be wrong to cooperate with it or even to aid in the process.  More specifically, if evolution is true, then there really is nothing wrong with men trying to enhance humanity so as to bring about the next evolutionary step. 

In order to combat it then, we must go to the source of the error—evolution.  The Church, still gun shy from the Galileo affair 500 years ago, is scared to confront the theological, metaphysical and moral errors of evolution.  Instead, her members try to remain neutral and some even go so far as to reinterpret Scripture to make it fit.  This simply cannot go on any further and it is time to reach back into Tradition and refute this error head on.

Forgiving from the Heart

Mercy, , ,

When Our Lord teaches the disciples to pray the Our Father, He connects the forgiveness of sins with our capacity to forgive others.  Just to make sure that the point was understood, it follows up the prayer by making it more explicit: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mt 6:14-15).  This commandment is shocking, especially for those of us who assume that God’s forgiveness is unconditional as long as we are sorry for our own sins.  Upon reflection however, to put such a restriction on forgiveness however, like all of Christ’s commandments, is for our good and it turns out that the necessity is more closely related to our capacity to receive forgiveness than to give it.

To grasp the meaning of the dictate then we must first reflect on forgiveness itself.  When a person purposely does real harm to us in some way, we are “spiritually” wounded by that person.  That is why we often say “I was hurt when you said/did X”.  It is important to note that this is a perfectly natural reaction to a perceived injustice; a reaction that is accompanied by sorrow and sometimes even anger.  In other words, to dismiss it as “nothing” is irrational.  It is something and it has done something both to you and the offender that needs to be addressed for the good of both of you.

The Dangers of Unforgiveness

Only forgiveness can heal this wound.  Unforgiveness allows the wound to fester meaning that the person is unable to turn away the suffering of the injury.  Demons, keenly aware of the wound, will tempt the person to focus on the wrong in order for the wound to remain open and keep them trapped in a state of sorrow and anger.  Because he dialogues with the Tempter, he slowly gains more and more control over the person especially concerning anything related to the wound.  A stronghold is developing and forgiveness becomes even more difficult because the person is now beginning to identify himself as a victim.

This “victim” status now blocks him from receiving forgiveness from God. This is the point of the parable that Our Lord tells about the Unforgiving Servant later in Matthew’s gospel (Mt 18:21-35).  The man is offered forgiveness but because he is so focused on the slights against him, he is unable to generate the sadness (or the gratitude for forgiveness) necessary for the Master forgiving him.  Unforgiveness then makes it impossible for God to forgive us because all of our sorrow and anger is directed at the slights against us rather than at the wrongs we have done.

How to Forgive

Given how important forgiveness is for us then it is worth reflecting on how we can, as Our Lord commands “forgive your brother from your heart” (Mt 18:35).  First, we make the distinction between what might be termed volitional forgiveness and emotional forgiveness.  Because we are fallen and our emotions do not always follow our will, they are often separate acts.  The easier of the two is volitional, especially because the demons cannot touch our will.  To forgive in the will is to release the person from the debt of justice and turn them over to God so that He might deliver a just punishment.  This can sound and feel like wishing for a smiting and so you should always pray that God forgives them as well. It is this latter step that provides the most healing for the one that has been offended.  It is important to remember that Christ does not merely issue commandments but promises the grace to fulfill that commandment as well.  It is important to always pray for the grace to have forgiveness in your heart.

Emotional forgiveness is often the harder of the two because we must break the association of the pain caused with the person.  This is why it is always easier to forgive someone who apologizes.  When he bears the burden of the sorrow he caused by expressing that sorrow, it lessens the burden on the offended person.  This solidarity in sorrow also acts as a unitive force strengthening the communion between them.  Love always means saying your sorry.

While it is easier when the offender expresses sorrow, it is not automatic.  Nor is it, obviously, automatic when the offender shows no remorse.  In that case, it often takes repeated acts of the will in order to bring the emotions in line with the will.  Each time the thoughts drift towards the hurt, it is necessary for the offended to make the same act of the will until the emotion subsides.  What will begin to emerge are feelings associated with mercy and compassion.  This again is extremely difficult and is at the heart of Our Lord’s admonition to Peter that he must forgive his brother seventy times seven times.  It may actually take 490 (or more) acts of the will to fully heal the emotional wound that has been inflicted.

In closing, it is important to reiterate the fact that “forgiveness is divine”.  Christ never commands without equipping.  Many times unforgiveness traps us in a web of guilt because we feel like we are powerless to forgive.  The first step in the process, like in every process, is to ask for the grace to forgive, knowing that was one of the graces He won for you on Calvary when, in the face of those who weren’t sorry, He asked “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Are We Alone in the Universe?

Angels, End Times, Redemption, Science, , , ,

There was a time, not too long ago, when mentioning Area 51 or aliens, invited ridicule as a conspiracy theorist.  But the difference between a conspiracy theory and reality is currently measuring about four years so that many Americans (2/3 according to a 2021 Pew Research study) now believe that extra-terrestrial intelligence (ETI) exists.  Interestingly enough, American Catholics believe at a slightly higher rate than Americans as a whole.  One can only speculate why that might be, but the Church has not spoken definitively on the subject leaving Catholics somewhat free to follow the evidence.  It is the qualifier “somewhat” that I would like to use as the launching pad for a discussion of ETI given that Divine Revelation gives us some guardrails for investigation as to both the possibility and the likelihood.

It is worth mentioning at least at the outset that we already have proof that we are not alone in the universe.  Angels and their fallen counterparts are constantly acting within material creation, even in visible ways.  It is certainly possible that the UFO sightings and even the discovery of “non-human biologics” are simply diabolical manifestations.  But it is contemptuous to insist upon this as the only possible explanation.

Setting Up the Guardrails

The temptation when dealing with the question is to leave it to “science” to determine the possibility and likelihood of intelligent life.  This approach neglects the fact that theology is also a science.  Because its first principles come from God Who can neither deceive nor be deceived, it is the highest of the sciences. 

By looking to theology, we are able to eliminate some possibilities.  The ETI must be of a completely different race from mankind in that they have a different line of descent.  The Church has condemned polygenism and so there must be more than mere accidental differences between human and the other race of ETIs.  They must be a different substance altogether.  In other words, they would have to be biologically distinct humanoids with a rational soul.  Scripture and the Magisterium both describe the “human race” as descended from Adam so that it at least seems possible (an argument from silence) that there could be another race or races in the universe.

Once we allow at least for the possibility, then we must examine the ETIs relationship to Christ.  For everything that exists, exists in relationship to Christ Who “is the center of the universe and of history” (Pope St. John Paul II,Redemptoris Hominis, 1 ).  St Paul tells the Colossians that “in Him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through Him and for Him” (Col 1:16-20).  This point is vital not only in considering ETI, but in understanding reality as a whole.  Everything that exists, does so for His sake (not only for His sake but primarily).  Fig trees were created for Him to curse, trees for crosses and water for baptism.  Most importantly, human nature exists for His sake so that He might take on human flesh.

The fact that Christ took on human flesh gives to the human race a special dignity such that “all material creatures[exist] for the good of the human race” (CCC 353).  This would include ETI who, even if rational beings existing for their own sake, would exist in a similar manner to the angels, acting in service to the race of Adam.  This might be an argument against the existence of ETI in that we appear not to have received any benefit from them.  This is likely an argument St Thomas would have made in light of his contention that to speak of a universe in any meaningful way is to assume that the elements must form an ordered an interactive whole.  If there were no communication among the citizens, then the civil good could not be perfected (c.f ST I q.47, a.3).  Communication could still come later, but it is hard to imagine why it would be so delayed.

Building on the principle that the ETI must be related to Christ, then we can examine the relation of the race itself.  First, we would posit that they were, like the angels and mankind, created in a probationary state of grace.  As St. Thomas says, “It pertains to divine freedom to infuse grace into all who are capable of grace, unless something resisting is found in them, much more than he gives natural form to any disposed matter” (Commentary Sentences, 4, q.1 art.3).  The question would then be what the outcome of their testing was.

Fallen or Unfallen?

One thing that becomes immediately clear in reading the New Testament is that in the act of redemption, God willed a correspondence between the fallen and the Redeemer “since the children share the same blood and flesh, he too shared equally in it, so that by his death he could…set free those who had been held in slavery all their lives by fear of death” (Heb. 2:14).  This means that if the ETI were fallen, they would need a separate incarnation.  A second incarnation however would be incompatible with the Faith according to an infallible teaching found in Dominus Iesus: “Therefore, the theory which would attribute, after the incarnation as well, a salvific activity to the Logos as such in his divinity, exercised ‘in addition to’‌ or ‘beyond’‌ the humanity of Christ, is not compatible with the Catholic faith” (DI, 10).  The Son’s sole redemptive act is through His human nature.  Therefore, there can be no other fallen race in existence.

This leaves open only one possibility; that there is a heretofore unknown, unfallen race of intelligent creatures in the universe.  Like the Angels, Christ would be their Lord and Head, but not their Redeemer.  In His human nature Christ is “the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:12-13).

St Thomas says that if Adam had not fallen then he would immediately attain “that happy state of seeing God in His Essence, he would have become spiritual in soul and body; and his animal life would have ceased, wherein alone there is generation” (ST I q.100, a.2).  Likewise, because they would have passed their probationary period, the ETI would have spiritual bodies (which might help to explain the manner in which UFOs seem to move) and would not reproduce.  Of course one could also ask why, if they have passed their probationary period, they don’t immediately receive their reward in the beatific vision. 

According to Paul Thigpen in his book Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Catholic Faith, St Padre Pio once told a reporter that “The Lord certainly did not limit his glory to this small Earth. On other planets other beings exist who did not sin and fall as we did.”  Despite this saintly endorsement, I think another saint provides the logic for why they do not exist.  When speaking of how Providence guides even our sins, St Thomas says that because the angels contain a higher perfection than men, a far fewer number of them fell as compared to mankind (Sentences I D.39 q.2 A.2).  It would seem that if there were a race of men that did not fall, this test of proportionality would fail and the ladder of perfection of the universe upended.  It is for this reason that I ultimately find the existence of ETI very unlikely. 

Before closing, I want to mention another resource that I found very helpful in addressing the existence of ETI; Marie George’s Christianity and Extraterrestrials.  Part of the challenge in thinking theologically about this issue is being able to formulate the questions correctly and frame it from the perspective of Divine Providence.  She does both.  I might weigh her conclusions differently than she did, but her framing of the issue is invaluable for anyone who wants to approach the issue from a Catholic perspective.

Gender as a Mental Construct

Marxism, Natural Law, Sexual Ethics, , , ,

In his Poverty of Philosophy, Karl Marx attacked eternal truths and natural law as nothing more than constructs of the bourgeoisie to repress the working class.  This has powered the campaign of his intellectual progeny to take everything that is natural and paint it as a “social construct” that fuels the engine of repression.  The most recent, and perhaps the most pernicious example of this is gender.  By labeling it as a social construct, all natural differences between the sexes, including complementarity, explained away as effects of changing social conditions.  All that needs to be done is to construct the right social conditions and equality and androgyny will usher in a sexual utopia.  

WHO Should We Listen To?

In combating the social contagion of transgenderism, we must first irradicate the mind virus that leads to it.  Ironically, this global mind virus has spread even into the World Health Organization who  defines gender as a social construct in this way:

Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed.  This includes norms, behaviors and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time. Gender is hierarchical and produces inequalities that intersect with other social and economic inequalities…Gender interacts with but is different from sex, which refers to the different biological and physiological characteristics of females, males and intersex persons, such as chromosomes, hormones and reproductive organs… Gender identity refers to a person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond to the person’s physiology or designated sex at birth.

Notice first the circular nature of the experts’ definition.  They say it “interacts” with sex but is different than sex.  Its definition is teaming with sexual terms—“women, men, girls, and boys”  Those terms are only meaningful in relation to each other.  A women is a human being whose body is ordered towards the gestation of new life while a man is human being whose body is ordered towards the gestation of new life in another.  Girls and boys are merely immature versions of those two.  No amount of verbal gymnastics of degrading a woman by reducing her to her function as a “birthing person” will change this inherent sexual relationality.  The fact that WHO advocates for transition “treatment” modalities such as hormones and surgery which make the person “look” more like the opposite sex also betrays the fact gender and sex are inseparable.  Is it really a social construct that men have beards and women have breasts?  If it is not, then why would it be necessary for a woman to “transition” to a man physically?  If gender and sex can be different, then why all the effort to match them up?  If gender identity is “person’s deeply felt, internal and individual experience of gender”, then why is it necessary to touch the external at all?

Why We Shouldn’t Give Them a Hearing

Once we grasp that the purpose of labeling gender a social construct is to apply the magical Marxian dialectic to it, then we are more apt to defend it in a way that combats this directly.  We need to actively reaffirm what is natural.  First there is the fact that we are social creatures which means that society, rather than being a vehicle of oppression is a necessary element of our fulfillment.  Boys and girls are first formed in masculinity and femininity (and their interaction with each other) in the social setting of the family.  They learn how they have a unique capacity for self-giving based on their sex and they enter into society as a whole and form families of their own in order to fulfill this capacity. A further element that must be combated is the overt dualism that animates most people’s thinking.  Because we are a body/soul composite, the inner experience can never be divorced from the outer reality.  Any attempt to do so ultimately leads to a disintegration of the person which manifests itself externally in the mutilation of the body.  Hylomorphism means that essentially everything we consciously experience has its foundation in material reality  We might imagine something like a unicorn, but that image must come from our experience in the real world of either a picture we have seen of a unicorn (from someone else’s imagination) or a mixture of our own images of a white horse with a horn.  Likewise we might imagine what it was like to be Louis XVI, but could never fully imagine what he felt like when he was about to be guillotined.  It is simply outside of our experience.  The philosopher Thomas Nagel has an essay entitled What Is It Like to be a Bat? in which he gives a deeper explanation of this limitation of consciousness in relation to the “inner” experience of other beings.   

The point is that a man feeling like a woman is by definition outside of his range of experience.  He only has experience of being a man who feels like a woman (which is by definition still a man).  He may know what it feels like to be confused, but he is confused as a man.  How can a man struggling with gender dysphoria know that what he is experiencing is “feeling like a woman”?  Doesn’t someone have to be a woman to feel like a woman?   How does he know that what he feels like is exactly what a man should feels like?  This is why he must go to the cultural priests (psychologists) and receive their blessing that his feelings are authentic.

The fact that an expert must authenticate the experience returns us back to the fundamental truth that transgenderism is ultimately a mental construct by those who are seeking to eliminate all hierarchies by destroying nature itself.  It is designed to power the latest instance of the Marxist dialectic.  This is not to trivialize the experience of those who suffer from gender dysphoria but to discredit the so-called experts who are willing to sacrifice them to their ideology.