In a previous post, we discussed the cultural phenomenon known as bullsh*t in which truth takes a backseat to appearances in public discourse and its role in political correctness. The reader will recall that at the heart of bullsh*t is an indifference to the truth in which the speaker cares only about whether what he says appears to be true. The problem with bullsh*t is not so much that someone gets things wrong, but that he is not really even trying to get things right. It is a form of sophistry in which the speaker wants to put forth ideas that sound plausible no matter how “truth adjacent” his ideas may be. It is a game of “turning a phrase” in which the speaker transcends lying because he and his audience no longer care about the truth. Political correctness, unfortunately, is not the greatest threat that our culture faces from bullsh*t. Instead, the greatest threat comes from Artificial Intelligence.
AI and Bullsh*t
It is striking how often people turn to some AI chatbot to settle a dispute or discover some truth about a topic. The problem with doing this however is that the chatbots are not truth engines, but bullsh*t machines. They are designed to provide the user with responses that merely give the appearance of truth. The models are meant to string together a series of plausible statements that are “probably” related to the topic at hand while simultaneously aiming at “probably’ making the user happy. Furthermore, because the user is the product, they are also designed to further engage the user by what can best be described as psychopathic, sycophantic behavior. Any other being that behaved like this, we would stay far away from. Yet, the cultural obsession with AI defies almost all (except for maybe the diabolical) logic. Perhaps we like being manipulated and flattered as long as we seem to be getting useful information or, perhaps, we don’t actually know this.
One reason it is not widely known is that it is developed to present the text using the language of certainty when in fact, like all statistical algorithms, there is always various degrees of uncertainty. The uncertainty of the LLM is hidden (even though it could be quantified) and the developers want to keep the fact that it is a really a bullsh*t machine hidden.
As proof of this, I presented Chatgpt with a series of questions. First, I asked it a hypothetical question about hiring a research assistant that responded to my requests quickly while using the language of certainty, when in fact he wasn’t certain. The bot said I should not hire him.
Next, I asked about a magic ball that could do the same thing. Again, the bot cautioned that I should not use it.
Finally, in a Nathan-esque moment, I accused the bot of being that magical ball.
Since it did not offer the same caution about the magic ball. I asked it to explain the inconsistency.
Notice that it “hallucinates” (which merely means it is wrong) and thinks a magic ball can be hired and isn’t a tool. Pointing this out,
Notice the language. It is now saying that it is a “plausibly” reasoned response. The shell has been pulled back and the veneer of certainty has been lifted. It seems like it is saying it is at best a tool, but a tool that you don’t necessarily want to use when you want to actually know if something is true or not. So I asked it straight out:
Finally, we get to the crux of the issue—why it isn’t better advertised that chatbots are not reliable when truth is at stake? No one would really use it, or at least, adoption would be “slow” if it was well known that it was a “bullsh*t engine.”
Pulling Back the Veil
Once the veil is pulled back, we get it from the horse’s mouth itself that chatbots are not reliable disseminators of truth. You might argue that this entire exchange merely contains plausible responses and not true ones. But that would only prove the point. I invite the reader to try something similar using any of the chatbots. It doesn’t take long to get it to admit that it is a bad idea to rely on it.
The problem, of course, is that many people and institutions are relying on it. And this is why I said the cultural fascination with it had diabolical roots. The widespread reliance on AI is only further proof that we are living under, what Pope Benedict XVI described as, a “dictatorship of relativism.” He warned in 2005 that we were “building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.” The rise of AI, with its obsession with speed, ease and comfort, is proof that it is fully built. If we do not stop reliance on AI now, then we will all become slaves of plausibility, blown to and fro by the winds of bullsh*t. Truth will no longer matter and we will be trapped in a world of speed, ease and comfort.
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth… God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.’” (Genesis 1:1, 26) Aside from telling us that it was God who created the world, there is another important truth conveyed in the opening lines of Genesis. Namely, the truth that it is us who are created in the image of God, and not the other way around. Since the fall, a constant temptation for humanity has been not only to worship ourselves and our own image, as I have talked about in other places, but also to worship creation as if it were a god. Whether it is the nature worship that the prophet Elijah battled, or the golden calf in the desert, humanity has long had a desire to create its own gods. It is a mark of particular hubris that we tend to think we are somehow better or different than those who came before us which C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery”. However, the truth is that we are not. Technology may have changed, but we have not. The same proclivity that plagued our forefathers still plagues us. In this article, we will examine the latest manifestation of that proclivity: artificial intelligence.
Ever since their invention, computers have been anthropomorphised. Even the word “computer” itself has its origins in the Latin word computare which is related to the concept of thinking. Used as an analogy, there is some truth to this idea since computers aid in our thinking and calculations. On the other hand, as computers become more sophisticated there is an increasing risk that we stop viewing this sort of language as an analogy. In many ways, this risk has been evident since the beginning. Alan Turing, a major pioneer in modern computing, famously put together an evaluation system for the question of whether or not computers can think, which he called the “Imitation Game”, and it has come to be known as the Turing Test. Aside from the question of whether or not imitation of thinking is thinking, the point here is that the temptation to view computers in our own image has been there since the beginning. Unfortunately, artificial intelligence seems to follow the same trend. If we take the meaning of the words literally, artificial intelligence means man-made understanding. Once again, as an analogy there is some truth to this idea. Insofar as A.I. aids in our understanding it is a man-made tool for understanding. However, there are many who do not take this idea as an analogy.
Mathematicians and technologists have long talked about the concept of the singularity. This hypothesis states that at some point in the future the capacity of A.I. will surpass our own and will become uncontrollable. Though the dates seem to vary quite widely for this hypothetical singularity, many in the field of A.I. agree that it is coming at some point in the future. There are even some in the technology space who take this idea to mean that we are creating a god out of A.I. One such example, is when renowned computer scientist Ray Kurzweil, speaking about A.I., stated in a documentary, “Does God exist? Well, I would say, ‘not yet’.” In recent years, the odd religious habits of Silicon Valley have been documented in places like Carolyn Chen’s Work Pray Code so it should come as little surprise that some have turned to not only anthropomorphizing A.I., but deifying it. The most striking example of this is a former Google executive who founded a church to A.I. called “Way of the Future”. A.I. is quickly becoming our golden calf.
At this point, it is worth further examining the concept of the singularity as it resembles a religious system of beliefs. First, it gives the believer an eschatology. Stephen Hawking once said in an interview, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”, and while some are not as pessimistic, what seems to be universally agreed upon is that the singularity will signal some sort of fundamental shift in humanity. This brings us to the next religious belief: apotheosis and the promise of eternal life. Apotheosis takes on a different meaning depending on the religion, but it is broadly the idea that human beings can become divine or come to share in the divine. In Christianity, this belief is typified by St. Athanasius’ famous line, “God became man so that man might become God.” However, in pantheistic religions this belief refers to the idea that we simply merge into the divine. The singularity refers to apotheosis more in the pantheistic sense. In a 2001 essay, The Law of Accelerating Returns, Ray Kurzweil stated,
Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.
Not only do we see a sort of end times prophecy here, but also a promise that on the other end there will be eternal life in the form of “immortal software-based humans”. In other words, eternal life is achieved through a kind of apotheosis with the machine. Much in the same way that Christianity can respond to suffering with the cross, this belief becomes a justification for the suffering created by the singularity. This might help to explain why people like Elon Musk continue to work on advancing A.I. despite continually saying that its advances are “concerning”.
So the question now is what are we to do about this? Should Christians simply retreat from the space of A.I. and technology completely. Is A.I. intrinsically wrong for the reasons I have described above? Ultimately, the answer is no. A.I. is no more intrinsically wrong than building a tower is, and yet the Tower of Babel wreaked havoc and division on humanity. A.I. is a powerful tool that, perhaps, will surpass some of history’s greatest inventions like the Gutenberg Press. And just like the Gutenberg Press was used to widely distribute the Bible, A.I. could be used for tremendous good. Unfortunately, the fall of the best is the worst, so the flip-side of that is A.I. could be used for tremendous evil. It could and already in many cases has, fool man into thinking he can make his own gods and elevate himself to that status. Humanity has proved over and over again throughout history it is perfectly capable of falling into this error with far less powerful technology, thus, as usual, the problem is us. So, how do we avoid this trap? Since this is a religious problem, it demands a religious answer. That answer lies in Christianity. Paganism, new-age religions and philosophies, and even technological worship all assume that the divine is something we must seek after. If one follows the right path or set of principles then he can come into contact with the divine. However, Christianity tells a completely different story, a unique story. It is a love affair where God seeks after us. We must allow ourselves to be continually transformed by God through the sacraments, prayer, and scripture. Paul’s words to the Romans still ring true today, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2) Even if we avoid the problem of A.I., unless we truly heed Paul’s words, then there will just be some other false god we seek after.
In Book I of Paradise Lost, Satan, examining his situation in hell, remarks that “the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” On its face, this line expresses a profound truth about the nature of the mind. Often when someone has a totally different worldview than us, one might say that “they live in a different reality.” The truth is that we all are tempted by this sentiment in the same way that many naive readers, such as Saul Alinsky, are tempted to read Satan as the heroic figure in Paradise Lost. After all, perhaps we are like gods, and perhaps, therefore, we do have the right to define heaven and hell for ourselves. It seems to be the conclusion that many have reached, so we should at least spend some time giving it thought.
What we will examine in this article is not just the idea that our minds can help us cope with or even heal suffering, as seen in the placebo effect, but, instead, the philosophy behind the saying “mind over matter.” Namely, the idea that by becoming arbiters of our own experience we can become arbiters of reality.
Giving the Devil His Due
In the spirit of intellectual honesty, we will begin by looking at the truth of “mind over matter.” When faced with extreme circumstances a man’s attitude towards those circumstances makes a world of difference. As Viktor Frankl observes in Man’s Search for Meaning, one’s attitude towards the brutality of the camps were what made the difference between a saint and a monster. It is rather astonishing that the same set of circumstances produced saints such as St. Maximilian Kolbe, and monsters such as the kapos1 who were often crueler than the guards themselves. For Kolbe and the countless other heroes and saints of the concentration camps, the suffering was seen as something that could be received with courage and could even be sanctifying. However, for the prisoners who became cruel, the suffering became a justification for them to behave as they pleased. While their minds did not change the reality of the circumstances they found themselves in, for the heroes of the camps it was their mindset which changed their experience from tragic to sanctifying.
The Limits
There is, however, a limit to this power. One’s mind can determine attitude and experience, but it cannot change the reality itself. There is tremendous danger in thinking so. Modern thinking has become infected with this idea. Take for example the use of the term “manifesting”. While this term is often used in an ironic way, there are, unfortunately, far too many examples of people who take it seriously. On a more serious note, the contraceptive pill represents a far more established version of this same fatal idea. It is “medicine” that no longer attempts to restore the body to its natural function, but instead is man’s attempt to determine how the body ought to work for himself. The debates over gay marriage and transgenderism suffer from the same problem. Oftentimes, those who oppose either of these are called bigots, but that misunderstands the argument. We are not arguing that we would prefer gay marriage, and transgenderism to not exist, but that the terms do not describe reality. Marriage is the exclusive, permanent, and procreative union of a man and woman regardless of what anyone says, and we simply wish to recognize that. Similarly, transgenderism is not a word that describes a real phenomenon, because transgender is not a real category. This does not mean that people who claim to be transgender do not exist as activists will often say we are claiming, but that these people are, sadly, mistaken about who they are.
Reality Reasserts Itself
These attempts to alter reality with one’s mind do not just affect the individual either. They have real consequences. Babies are sold to “married” men to grow up without mothers. Women alter their hormones to such a degree that it changes who they are attracted to. Children are handed over to butchers, otherwise known as gender-affirmation surgeons, to affirm the delusions of adults. Language itself is no longer a means of communication, but is simply a vehicle for imposing one’s own mind. I do not mean to point these realities out in a hyperbolic way, but far too often we euphemize grave evils away.
Returning now to Paradise Lost, one may be tempted to think that Satan’s words in Book I represent the triumphant spirit of a rebel, but that would require neglecting his tragic observation later in the poem. In Book IV he realizes that the mind cannot make hell into heaven, and that hell now follows him wherever he goes: “Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.” In many ways, this is the tragedy of human history. Since the beginning, man has tried to set himself up as a god, and the consequences have always been disastrous. The truth is that God is God, and we are not. There is no amount of technology, wealth, or power that will change that fact. Reality must be accepted, or it will impose itself. It is not optional. The mind that thinks it can impose itself on reality is driven to madness, as is evident from the paragraph above. God bestowed a beautiful gift and dignity on humanity by giving us minds, but if we wish to usurp Him with those minds we will not find enlightenment and intellectual freedom. Instead we will find madness and despair.
In recent weeks, there has been a widespread debate over immigration, sparked by the new administration’s plan to deport a large number of illegal immigrants. While the specific merits and demerits of the policy could be debated, in this post we will examine the principles behind deportation, namely a country’s right to borders and culture. Before getting into the debate, it is important to keep in mind that politics involves prudence. One may agree with another person in principle, but that does not mean he agrees on the best course of action to implement the principle. Thus, in politics, we must distinguish between the end we are seeking, and the means proposed to achieve that end. A person may agree that illegal immigration ought to be restricted, but disagree on a particular strategy of enforcing immigration. The disagreement as a matter of prudence does not disprove the principle. It then follows that those who would assert that Trump’s immigration policy is unjust have not proved that enforcement of immigration policy is, in principle, unjust.
Immigration and Borders
Before we ask “How ought we treat immigrants?”, we must first ask a more foundational question, namely, “What are borders?”. With the rise of globalization, there has been an increasing call for us to become “citizens of the world”. This concept is rooted in the reductionist idea that borders are just lines on a map. But borders are no more lines on a map than music is notes on a sheet, or a square is lines on a piece of paper. Borders represent something real. Borders represent differences in culture and traditions. Saying that borders are meaningless just because they are drawn by man would be like saying that language is meaningless just because man defines the words. Man is a citizen of a country, and not of the world, because he lives in a particular culture, a particular time, and a particular place. Though he is self-determining, each man cannot help but be, in some sense, a product of his culture. This is a crucial point because we cannot consider the idea of a country without reference to its culture.
Now that we have considered what borders are, we must examine the right of a country to its borders. Speaking on this subject, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption.” (CCC 2241) A country, with regard to the common good, may justly enforce its borders. In fact, one could argue that not only that it may enforce its borders, but that it has an obligation to. A country has an obligation to defend its citizens, and ought to look out for the basic rights of those who are immigrating. Neither of these obligations are met if a country embraces an open border policy. Citizens are put at risk by bad faith actors, and lawless men are enabled to exploit immigrants. This does not imply that countries must close their borders completely, though, there may be cases where that is prudent. Thus, the state must exercise its right to regulate immigration with its citizens, for whom they are primarily responsible, in mind. Though a country is primarily responsible for its citizens, it is not only responsible for its citizens, as the first half of paragraph 2241 from the Catechism says, “The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.” A country has a secondary duty to immigrants. How this principle is exercised is, once again, a matter of prudence.
Unity in Diversity?
As mentioned above, we cannot understand a country without reference to its culture. Therefore, a country’s right to enforce its borders does not merely mean it has a right to enforce its geographic borders. A country also has a right to enforce its cultural borders. The latter part of paragraph 2241 in the Catechism states, “Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.” So, while a country, especially a prosperous country, is obliged to welcome foreigners, foreigners are obliged to assimilate. This is necessary for the unity of a country which cannot be based on a mere recognition of cultural differences. Unity comes as a result of shared culture, standards, and beliefs. The United States has long recognized this in its motto, “E Pluribus Unum”. This is what makes the counterpart motto, “Diversity is Our Strength” so absurd. Diversity, in it of itself, is a fact which carries no inherent strength or weakness. The strength of a group, organization, or country, for that matter, flows from its commitment and share in a vision for reality and vision for the future. Assimilation is not a dirty word, as we have seen above a country has every right to expect it. Immigration without assimilation is an injustice to the country which has welcomed the immigrant. Any other view leads to the shallow idea that a country is a group of atomistic individuals arbitrarily living in proximity. If a country is to be a country at all then it must have a right to borders, both geographical and cultural.
I hope you enjoyed this post. Please leave your thoughts below.
A familiar feeling for many is the anxiety that comes at the end of the weekend. Believe it or not there is a sociological term for this phenomenon: “The Sunday Scaries”. As silly as it might sound, it is, unfortunately, an all to real phenomenon that many people identify with. A simple Google search reveals dozens of articles written on the subject. One article goes so far as to suggest that they may be a connection between suicide and “Sunday Scaries”. This problem, trivial though it may be, is symptomatic of a deeper sickness in our society. It is symptomatic of a society that does not know how to rest. By rest, I do not mean the absence of work. Rest is not, as talked about in a previous post, lying in front of the TV while mindlessly consuming the newest show. It is also not catching up on chores that we did not quite have time to get to during the week. Rest is leisure. The latin word for leisure is otium, and the word that is used for business is negotium, literally, “not leisure”. Negotium is where we get the word negotiate from. So in antiquity, leisure was not the absence of work, but work was the absence of leisure. Leisure, especially contemplation, was seen as necessary for a good life as I point out in another post on the nature of happiness. Aquinas even states that leisure and contemplation are necessary for the perfection of society. So what happens to a society when leisure is thrown aside? Isn’t it just a luxury?
The Utility of Life
Leisure is an activity sought as an end in it of itself. It is differentiated from work which is a means to an end. While work is productive, leisure is creative. It is certainly no accident that a society which has forgotten leisure, has also forgotten the goodness of having and raising children: man’s most creative act. Without leisure man’s life just becomes a series of means to an end. Even the time he does spend resting is spent so that he may be rested for work. Academia becomes glorified job training. Entertainment becomes advertisement. Life itself becomes all about efficiency.
Such a society will find that even its morality is infected with this spirit. An act is no longer right or wrong on its own merit, but instead is judged by the goal of the intention. Every act is judged by its usefulness in reaching the desired end. In a sense, morality itself becomes a game of efficiency. Ultimately, morality becomes utilitarian. And the ends themselves will only remain good for so long, because without leisure man forgets his nature and purpose. Worse still, people become justified to a society based on their usefulness. The unborn become discardable, and the elderly become a burden. John Paul II makes the same observation when he speaks about the culture of death in Evangelium Vitae when he says, “This culture [the culture of death] is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency… a life which would require greater acceptance, love and care is considered useless, or held to be an intolerable burden.” A society which forgets leisure is doomed to utilitarianism.
Reclaiming Leisure
Leisure is a preparation for the eternal. It is a preparation for Heaven. It is as Jesus tells Martha, “the better part” (Luke 10:42). Leisure is a fundamentally human activity because it is an abstraction from the day to day tasks of our lives. So how can we return to it again? First, it is necessary to take the 3rd commandment seriously again. When God rested on the seventh day, it was not just a lack of work. As John Paul II points out in Dies Domini,
It would be banal to interpret God’s “rest” as a kind of divine “inactivity”. By its nature, the creative act which founds the world is unceasing and God is always at work… The divine rest of the seventh day does not allude to an inactive God, but emphasizes the fullness of what has been accomplished. It speaks, as it were, of God’s lingering before the “very good” work (Gn 1:31) which his hand has wrought, in order to cast upon it a gaze full of joyous delight. This is a “contemplative” gaze which does not look to new accomplishments but enjoys the beauty of what has already been achieved
Thus, Sunday should be a day spent in “joyous delight”. First, in the sacrifice of the Mass, and then in the truth, beauty, and goodness of creation. There will of course be those for whom it is not possible to make Sunday a day of leisure because of extenuating circumstances, but this is the exception and not the rule. Sunday should not be a day to catch up on work, instead it should be a day dedicated to becoming human again.
Second, to reclaim leisure, we must be intentional. This is all the more necessary in the age of laptops and smartphones which mean that our work can follow us everywhere. Leisure must be a priority, and not just another item on a to-do list. On the other hand, we must also be mindful of our free time as we live in an age with seemingly endless distractions. While leisure need not be productive and perhaps ought not be, it is not just a distraction from life. It is the place where we can see meaning and beauty in life. So, as we move into 2025, let us struggle to reclaim leisure in a culture that is constantly demanding our attention.
In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke comments on the loss of honor that came as a result of the French Revolution. Concerning Marie Antoinette, Burke writes,
Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators, has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprize is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.
Honor once lost, like any other virtue, is not easily regained. It is especially hard to regain in a culture that is actively hostile to it.
Honor, as St. Thomas Aquinas defines it, “is the reward of every virtue… it follows that by reason of its matter it regards all of the virtues” (ST II-II Q. 129 Art. 4). Thus, it is clear that honor comes from virtue. In order to be truly honorable, a man must be virtuous. Our culture has, in large part, rejected the traditional idea of virtue. There is much talk about rights and what we are owed, but little discussion about duty. Men are encouraged to extol the virtues of kindness and inclusivity, and women, on the other hand, are told that expressing traits like “nurturance” and “family-oriented values” are just mere preferences and not virtues. As always, the devil is in the details. A man should be loving and caring, but if he places kindness and inclusivity above all other virtues then the family and, by extension, society, will suffer. Certainly, kindness and inclusivity would not have saved Marie Antoinette from the guillotine. And families do not need women who prefer to be nurturing and selfless, but women who are nurturing and selfless. There will be, however, some who will object to this and say that traditional notions of honor and virtue are outdated and bigoted. So, naturally, the question becomes, “Why should we care about honor, aren’t we better off without it?”.
There are a couple of approaches one could take towards answering this question. The first would be to ask what will replace the role that honor had in society? What is beyond honor and virtue? Alasdair MacIntyre explores this question in his book After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Of a society that has lost its vision of honor and virtue he writes,
In a society where there is no longer a shared conception of the community’s good as specified by the good for man, there can no longer either be any very substantial concept of what it is to contribute more or less to the achievement of that good. Hence notions of desert and of honor become detached from the context in which they were originally at home. Honor becomes nothing more than a badge of aristocratic status, and status itself, tied as it is now so securely to property, has very little to do with desert.
A society that abandons honor does not get egalitarianism. Instead, it gets aristocracy and credentialism.
For the second approach, one might ask if tearing down virtue and honor would also threaten other societal goods. Failing to examine this question would be like removing a wall in a house without first determining if it is load-bearing. Unfortunately, leaving honor in the past has not been without consequence. Honor is the basis for magnanimity. Aquinas identifies this connection: “Now a man is said to be magnanimous in respect of things that are great absolutely and simply, just as a man is said to be brave in respect of things that are difficult simply. It follows therefore that magnanimity is about honors” (ST II-II Q. 129 Art. 1). In 2020, Ross Douthat wrote a book called The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success about how and why our society has, in many ways, stopped advancing. While his hypothesis is beyond the scope of this article, the phenomenon he is discussing is germane to the point. There has been a societal decline in the desire to do great things. This stems directly from a change in societal value. As MacIntyre pointed out, society values the vain status associated with honor rather than the virtue from which honor is derived. Not only is magnanimity a virtue and therefore necessary for human flourishing, but society needs it. Magnanimity landed on the moon, it sailed to new worlds, it wrote poems and epics, it built planes, and made countless discoveries and inventions. So rather than resent success and laugh at honor, we should have the courage to ask ourselves if we are here on this earth for something great. Perhaps there really is something great in store for each and every one of us if we would but have the courage and magnanimity to pursue it. And even more terrifying is the possibility that part of the greatness God wishes to bring to the world can only be brought through you. Sure, God can bring goodness out of anything, but there may be good that never comes if you abandon honor and magnanimity. In closing, I would like to turn to Pope Benedict XVI who so eloquently reminds us of this truth: “The ways of the Lord are not easy, but we were not created for an easy life, but for great things, for goodness”.
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.”
Many of us have been subjected to implicit bias trainings that have become part in parcel of the human resources department of corporations and academic institutions throughout the country. While many of the ideas behind these trainings seem absurd, they have inflicted grave harm on society nonetheless. Take for example the idea that institutions must embrace equity in order to “correct” for these biases. Evidence suggests that Asians applying to Harvard needed to score 270 points higher on the SAT than Hispanics, and 450 points higher than African Americans to have the same chance of admission: bitter fruit indeed. It was statistics like this that, in part, led to the 2023 SFFA v Harvard Supreme Court case. Though it would be an interesting article to cover the topic of implicit bias trainings and their connection to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology, that will have to be an article for another day.
What will be dealt with here is the larger issue of bias. Bias is a term frequently thrown around by both sides of a debate, but rarely defined. At one point or another we have all probably received the retort “Well you just think that because…” or “You are just biased”. In many cases this is just a simple ad hominem or genetic fallacy and nothing more. However, there is a particularly pernicious use of this attack that is worth examining in-depth. This is the progressivist accusation that the ideas of the past are no longer valid because they are biased, either by their bigotry, racism, sexism, or whatever other pejorative one can think of. This attack is at best ignorant and at worst hypocritical. Bias, per se, is not a reason to discount any argument or idea. In fact, it is unavoidable.
The Progressive View
Before discussing the absurdity of the progressivist charge of bias, it is necessary to talk about the philosophy behind this attack. When I speak of progressivism I am not merely speaking of a political movement, but of a philosophy. It is a philosophy rooted in the belief in inevitable progress towards a more fair, more just, and more enlightened society. Rarely do the proponents of this philosophy argue explicitly that society is inevitably progressing in a positive direction, rather it is assumed. With each advancement in society, progressivists are usually quick to point out that it is a sign of progress, but what is rarely asked is “Progress towards what?”. If the progress is inevitable then the question would not even be worth asking. In an 1853 sermon called “Of Justice and Conscience” Unitarian minister Theodore Parker said, “Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice”. This statement has been famously quoted by Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama. While there is truth in this quote, after all we do and should long for justice: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Mt 5:6), it is just too simple. Simple narratives of history should be treated with extreme skepticism. An honest reading of history reveals anything but a simple narrative. History is filled with successes and failures, suffering and triumph, heroes and villains. It is not one long “progressive triumph of the right”, but rather a struggle in which there is both progress and regress.
On a societal level, progressivism leads to the view that tradition is foolish or even a burden as a recent presidential candidate frequently pointed out. On a personal level, this can lead to a deep resentment of one’s ancestors. Progressivism is implicitly opposed to the fourth commandment, “honor and obey your father and mother”. If the progressivist reading of history is correct then what is there to honor in your parents? After all, they are less enlightened than you. Sure, there is a certain degree of gratitude one still owes to their parents for taking care of them and giving them life. But at the end of the day, society has moved on from their honor. What was honorable in their day has been replaced by the “continual and progressive triumph of the right”. There are sobering examples of how resentful progressivism can make people towards their ancestors, including their parents. Take this woman for example. Further, there is research showing that an increasing number of children are cutting their parents off. While there are certainly other factors at play, progressivism has not helped this problem.
I Think Therefore I Am Biased
What the progressivist fails to see is that bias is a necessity. No person can avoid it. Bias is the set of assumptions that we bring with us into the world. It is the narrative by which we see reality. I affirm that each of us should examine this narrative, but I do not advocate for getting rid of it. There is no human being who can rid themselves of all assumptions. As G.K. Chesteron points out in his essay “Philosophy for the Schoolroom” all argumentation, and thus all thought, is built on assumptions and dogmas. No one can be a completely objective observer of the facts of this world. For every person there is a value or set of values by which the facts are interpreted. Therefore, the progressivist is no less biased than anyone else. The concern should not be whether or not a person has bias, but whether that bias disposes a person towards the truth. The goal should not be to rid ourselves of assumptions, but to hold true assumptions. So, yes, we should examine our biases to see if they are in accord with reality and truth. The man who wishes to discard all of his bias must reconstruct his entire system of thought every time he has a new thought, lest he be biased by what he thought before. And even that would not remove all of his bias as Chesterton points out. Ultimately, the great irony for progressivism is that in order for society to progress at all we must be biased towards our ancestors. For it is as Edmund Burke said in “Reflections on the Revolution in France”, “People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors”.
A recent campaign ad that Democrats have been running shows a Republican congressman interrupting a man in his bedroom watching porn threatening to make it illegal. I would not suggest that you subject yourself to the ad because it is disgusting, but it is at least worth mentioning it because it is a sign of just how decadent our culture has become. The problem isn’t just that the Democrats are unfaltering promoters of perversion, but also the fact that Republicans’ response was a denial that they wanted to restrict access to pornography to adults.
If there is one thing that both sides agree on, it is the fact that tolerance is a positive good rather than a necessary evil. In order to live in society and get along with everyone, we need to tolerate certain things. True enough, provided that it doesn’t become a masquerade for neutrality. And in truth, it has become just that. Some of the more Scholastically minded among us will even say that St Thomas supports this position. It is useful to go directly to the Angelic Doctor to shine some light on the issue of tolerance especially because it touches close to the issue at hand.
St. Thomas on Tolerance
In ST II-II q. 10, a. 11, St Thomas says “…those who are in authority, rightly tolerate certain evils, lest certain goods be lost, or certain greater evils be incurred: thus Augustine says (De Ordine ii.4): ‘If you do away with harlots, the world will be convulsed with lust.’” His point is that the governing authority will tolerate certain things because outlawing them will create more disorder than the order that will come about by leaving them in place. Citing Augustine’s tract on order, he says that some societies will tolerate prostitutes because it will lead to greater evils than outlawing it altogether.
In his Treatise on Law, Aquinas explains further that “The purpose of human law is to lead men to virtue, not suddenly, but gradually. Wherefore it does not lay upon the multitude of imperfect men the burdens of those who are already virtuous, that they should abstain from all evil. Otherwise these imperfect ones, being unable to bear such precepts, would break out into yet greater evils…” Laws in a certain sense then ought to be catered to the character of the populace and bear a certain proportionality. To demand too high a level of virtue creates a certain impossibility of living up to it and increases criminality.
It would seem then that St. Thomas would look at our sexual libertine culture and advocate for tolerating pornography because outlawing it would go far beyond our collective virtue. The problem with this is that it is only reading half of what he said. You don’t just look at the level of virtue, but also “the greater evils” that will come about when you make demands beyond the average virtue level. It wasn’t too long ago in the “Wild West” that greed, rage and a lust for revenge led to murder rates that were more than twice the most violent cities of today. Does that mean they should not have had laws against murder because it was beyond the virtue of the average person? Because law is an ordinance of reason for the common good of the society, tolerance must always refer back to the common good.
The Primary Question for Tolerance
The question of virtue of the citizenry is secondary. What is primary is enumerating the “greater evils” that are to be brought about by choosing to outlaw a given evil. There are a plethora of evils attached to it: related to the common good there is the harm done to marriage and the family, and the fact that it is linked to sexual aggression . It also constitutes a growing public health crisis because of its addictive nature and its neuroplastic effects on the brain. There is a great paper summarizing all the scientific findings of the damage porn does to society and individuals here. What exactly are the evils that we are avoiding in tolerating it and how do they pass the proportionality test?
Tolerating evil never works for very long. Social evils always move from tolerance to acceptance to promotion. It is far easier to head it off while it is in the tolerance stage than to wait until it gets to the later stages. God has baked this principle into our social reality so that we must make a stand on our convictions. That is why tolerance, according to Chesteron, “ is the virtue of the man without convictions.” If we are convicted that pornography is wrong, then we cannot merely tolerate it but must take a stand both personally and politically. Abusing the principles of St Thomas will only lead to more self-abuse. We must lobby to outlaw it.
In his book Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power, Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper comments that the battle against sophistry is a perennial problem. Satan’s primordial sophistry escaped the gates of Eden and has plagued mankind ever since. Progress, especially when it is not matched by moral progress, only causes sophistry to grow. Sophistication, Pieper says, usually entails greater degrees of sophistry. What the sophist seeks to do is to shut down all pursuit of the truth by playing with words, usually by inventing catch-phrases that slide off a forked tongue and convey some half-truth that is cleverly dressed up as the whole truth. It is most certainly an abuse of language; for the proper use of language is to convey ideas and tell the truth. But sophistry uses language in order to manipulate people.
The Sophistry of Today
The problem of sophistry in our own age is particularly acute. You might say that we are living under the tyranny of sophistry in which any objection to a sophist shibboleth is met by stupefied hostility. “Pro-choice”: how could you not be in favor of a woman’s right to choose? “Black lives matter”: so, you think Black lives don’t matter? The objection is not with the half-truth, but with the half-falsehood that is dressed up by the slogan. In other words, the objection is with the sophistry that manipulates language to hide what is really going on.
In general, we should all be pro-choice, but in particular it totally depends on what the object of choice is. If you are choosing to kill an innocent baby, then no, in fact we should not “Pro-choice”. Of course, Black lives matter. But what the honest person objects to is dressing up the Marxist aims of the further destruction of Black lives and society as a whole in this truth. It is sophistry plain and simple. And anyone who insists otherwise is a language tyrant.
Following the Science
There is a new slogan that is being peddled by the tyrant—“follow the science”. Science is a great weapon in the hand of the sophisticated tyrant because it can be made to say anything you want it to say. It is presented as somehow being about objective truth gathered by running controlled experiments in an unbiased setting. The method may be reliable, but the scientist himself is a fallen human being. He is prone to biases, lapses in attention, ignorance, faulty design and even outright lying. It does not help that his so-called peers who review his work also suffer from the same inherent problems. It is also not immune to the “Cancel Culture” with many scientists handcuffed by a cultural confirmation bias. All of this leads to what scientist Stuart Ritchie in his book Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth calls a “replication crisis” in modern science. Experiments are run all the time. But the true test is when an experiment is replicated. Almost none of the so-called “science” has been replicated and very often is exposed as flawed when honest scientists attempt to do so. Like Ritchie we should not be anti-science but instead to use it in a manner that discovers the truth without succumbing to the sophist’s tactic of inventing it.
As I said, science is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the sophisticated tyrant because it can be used to say whatever they want it to say. Herein lies the half-falsehood found within “following the science”. Science itself can never lead to certainty. To assert otherwise is to turn science into a religion that must be governed by faith. “Follow the science” is a credal statement.
Why is it that science can never lead to certainty? In short, science, because it deals in material being, always deals with contingencies and therefore only leads to contingent truth. The truth of what is being asserted always depends on certain conditions also being true. The point is that when “Science” is presented as certain, without any discussion upon the conditions in which the thing also depends, it is a manipulation.
Take, for example, the contention that “masks work”. This is most certainly not an absolute. What are the conditions under which they work? To mandate mask wearing without any reference to the conditions under which they work, is not about safety but control. If you want to keep people safe, then you will school them in the art of wearing the mask. If you want to control them then any mask will do. Likewise, the push for vaccination. What are the conditions under which the vaccines “work”? What are the conditions under which they don’t, or might even be harmful? Are we to believe that a vaccine was developed at warp speed that covers every contingency? To say they are “safe and effective” without observing a multitude of contingencies is not science but scientism. To even mention those contingencies is sacrosanct and will likely get you censored.
Science can say whatever I want it to say simply by playing with those contingencies. I simply design my experiment so that it leads to a positive result. Then I get peers to agree with the way it was run—never mind that these peers also have a vested interest in toeing the party line. If it leads to a negative result anyway, I simply put it in the file cabinet. Whenever you hear some scientific “fact” presented in some absolute manner, always seek the contingencies. Who or what does this apply to? When doesn’t it apply? When someone tells you that it applies across the board, they are presenting something that has some degree of uncertainty as certain. We may be willing to accept that degree of uncertainty and treat the proposition as true, but it is not anti-science to demand further uncertainty be removed. But either way, certainty will never be achieved.
In classical Greece, the sophists threatened to take over society until the likes of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle stepped in. They were unafraid to call sophistry what it was. But that was not enough for them. They also rescued the victims of sophistry by teaching them how to reason. Perhaps in our own sophisticated age, we could do the same.
Virtuous men are rarely, if ever, prone to propaganda. That is because they can ascertain when to “fight the good fight”. Vicious men, on the other hand, are extremely prone to it. They have no idea which are the good fights and so they must be told. But simply telling them is not enough. Lacking any real control over their anger, they need someone else to stir it up for them by turning events that fit the narratives catastrophes. Having no way to turn it off, they are absolutely unforgiving and must find offense around every corner. Discerning ears will recognize this scenario for what it is—our modern society and its incessant need to cancel other people.
In truth then, at the heart of cancel culture, is the inability to discern the difference between wrath and anger. These terms, even if they are often used synonymously, are not truly referring to the same thing. Anger is, first and foremost, a passion or an emotion built into human nature to deal with the presence of evil. More specifically, it is the emotion that provides an interior motor to fight against a specific evil that acts as an obstacle to achieving some good thing. When a man discerns some good thing is being blocked, he wills to be angry in order energize him to fight the good fight.
Fighting the Good Fight
The virtuous man knows the good fight when he sees it because he has the virtue of justice. He is habitually desiring that each person receives what is due to him. When some obstacle is placed in the way of that being achieved, he grows angry in order to move him to fight to restore justice. This is why St. John Chrysostom thought that: “He who does not get angry, when there is just cause for being so, commits sin. In effect, irrational patience sows vices, maintains negligence, and encourages not only bad men to do wrong, but good men as well.”
Not only does the virtuous man grow angry when he should, he also directs his anger at the source of the injustice and does not just “vent”. Likewise, he also filters it through the virtues of clemency and meekness to avoid becoming excessively angry and aim it at the injustice first and then the cause of it. He truly knows how to “hate the sin, but not the sinner” because he is just.
Our Lord, Who referred to Himself as “meek and humble of heart” is the example par excellence. When He cleaned the Temple, it was because His Father was not being rendered what was due to Him. So, fueled by anger, the Just Man removed the obstacle. With meekness He whipped the tables but with clemency avoided whipping the money changers.
The reason why anger is such a strong emotion is because it must often supply enough fuel for us to fight for justice for other people. When that fuel turns inward and ignites a fire in us because of how we perceive we are being treated then it is truly wrath. This is why wrath has been considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins—it turns what should be an outward-facing passion into a selfish one. The wrathful man sees red, not because of an offense against justice, but because he has been slighted in some way. To use modern parlance, he has been offended by the words or actions of another person. Because anger must always be justified, he must also search for a reason why his own personal offense is really unjust. In essence wrath turns anger off of justice onto my feelings and directs it not towards rectifying an injustice, but mercilessly punishing the offender.
A simple example might help us discern the difference. A man is getting on to a crowded bus and he steps on your foot. You feel anger arise, but look at him and realize he had tripped over someone else’s foot a few feet ahead of you and it was merely an accident. In that case the just response is clemency because it was an accident. Now suppose that same man enters the bus looks you in the eye, smiles and stomps on your foot. Now the anger is justified, but the meek man would temper his response such that it did not include punching him in the face. But the anger would be directed towards the action and not just the fact that it was done to you. The way to know the difference is by imagining after stepping on your foot he goes and steps on an old lady’s foot. If you are just as angry (or more) about that as you are about your own foot being stepped on, then you know the anger is justified.
This scenario also highlights an important point that is often a source of confusion regarding anger. The Christian in imitation of Our Lord, when He is the sole victim of the injustice, will often suffer it in silence and not be angry. But when there are other victims, including those who might be scandalized by you not confronting the evil, then zealous anger will confront the wrong directly. The “others” include the offender because he needs to know that he has done evil in order to repent—and will need to be justly punished as part of that repentance.
Back to the Cancel Culture
Every passion, when not properly wedded to virtue, needs increased stimuli in order to get an equivalent response. Related to the question at hand, wrath needs to be constantly fed, especially when it is being used to keep the vicious fighting. It no longer becomes about justice, but about keeping them angry. There is no need to discern whether something is actually unjust or not, because the anger will make it “feel” that way. There is no need to make the distinction between victim and perpetrator because the object of that anger will tell which is which. There can be no forgiveness until the perpetrator is “cancelled” and is no longer exists, either literally or figuratively.
Thankfully, history has many examples of cancel cultures that always end with the cancellers eating their own. When there is no one left to be angry at, when there is no one left to cancel, wrath demands that you execute the executioner. For those who are trapped in this vicious circle the only option is for the virtuous to step up and restore justice. Fear, masquerading as prudence, is never the solution. Neither is the ersatz anger that we call “outrage.” Nor is any attempt at cancelling the cancellers. Only true zealous anger for justice can repair our decadent culture.
When Our Lord and His Apostles came to the great rock of Caesarea Philippi, He asked a poignant question about His personality: “Who do you say that I am?”. Only Simon, enlightened by Divine grace, saw Our Lord for Who He really was: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). Once Peter identified Our Lord, Our Lord in turn gave him his true identity as the Great Rock upon which the Church herself would be identified. Peter was not alone in this regard. Our Lord came to bestow our identity upon each one of us. He identified with us in order that we might come to share in His identity as “sons in the Son.” Modern man, perhaps more than any other ailment, suffers from a great identity crisis that makes this moment in Our Lord’s Life particularly important.
The First Identity Crisis
Lucifer had the greatest natural endowment of all creatures. In this way he was entirely unique and, created in a state of grace, he was the most like God. This was his true identity. Rather than receive this identity as a gift, he instead chose to create his own. Lucifer became Satan and lost his true identity forever. He became, in the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger an “Un-person”, corrupted beyond any personal recognition. Out of envy, Scripture says, Satan then became an Identity Thief attempting to steal everyone else’s identity. He began by coaxing a third of the angels to follow him in asserting their own identity.
Misery loves company and so Satan set his sights upon mankind. Ultimately his temptation of Eve amounts to questioning her true identity as a beloved daughter of God. He tells her that she will become like God. The problem, of course, is that she already was like God. God had gifted her with sanctifying grace which already made her “like God”. Satan tempts her to see her identity as something she must grasp, rather than receive and so simultaneously attacks her femininity. Likewise, with Adam, both his identity as being like God and being a man. It was the man who was commanded to protect and till the Garden.
Our identity crisis has its roots in the Fall then. Original Sin removed sanctifying grace, which forms our true identity, our God-likeness if you will. But it also wounded us in our sexual identity, the manner in which we individually image God. Not only does the distinctly feminine power of childbirth become labor for the woman, but, because man will be tempted to lord over her, she will be tempted to seize masculinity. Likewise, for man, the uniquely masculine way of working also becomes labor and he will be tempted to seize the feminine. Not only was God-likeness lost, both forgot what it meant to image God in their masculinity and femininity.
The crisis would grow until the New Adam and his suitable helpmate, the New Eve came. Satan could not steal either of their identities. He tried to steal Our Lord’s when He went into the desert. The enmity between him and Our Lady made her immune to Satan’s wiles. Our Lord and Our Lady then, each in their proper way, cooperated in restoring us not just as children of God, but sons and daughters.
Our Identity Crisis
Satan may have lost the war, but he is still engaging in the Battle across the centuries, trying to keep us from our true identity. He has had varying degrees of success but has been particularly successful in our own age. His battle plan remains the same as always by destroying the image and suppressing our desire for the true likeness of God that lies at the root of our real identity.
Rather than accepting God-likeness as a free gift that comes only through Baptism, we chase immortality through technology. The Covid crisis has been particularly eye-opening in this regard in that we are all expecting a technocratic Messiah to save us. Technology can make us like gods.
The Church has not been immune to this attack either, putting bodily health before spiritual health. One soul, dying in a state of grace, is far greater than 1000 people “safely” locked in their houses without any access to the gift of true God-likeness in the Sacraments. Christ instituted the Church, so that, throughout all-time, His unique power to bestow our true identity might be made available to all. When the Church forgets her true identity, then a mass identity crisis is sure to follow.
While technology is the weapon of choice to suppress our desire for true God-likeness, intersectionality, rooted in identity politics, is the weapon of choice to suppress our identity as being made in the image of God. Intersectionality attempts to root our identity in victimhood. Christ became a victim so that we could overcome this temptation and clear the way for our real identity. Sex, masquerading as gender, rather than being a way in which we individually image God, is simply a social construct made malleable (through technology) according to personal whims. This Great Lie destroys our identity rather than restoring it. It sits at the heart of today’s mass identity crisis and is nothing more than a ploy of the Evil One.
Genesis tells us that the Serpent, in attacking Adam and Eve’s identity was the most subtle of all the wild animals (Gn 3:1). What makes our age unique is that he has thrown subtlety out the window and has chosen to unmask himself. That is why we must be prepared to fight the identity crisis by refusing to be a party to any of the lies that have enabled the crisis to become so deep. Too often we simply go along to get along. The Devil has been hard at work stealing people’s identities, we need to be equally hard at work helping them find their true one.
In his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, St. Thomas makes the observation that when Aristotle reckons that “art imitates nature,” he means that man, because he is an intellectual creature, can make things that help him fulfill his nature. For example, a beaver builds a dam by instinct, while man uses his reason to fashion a house. But it doesn’t just pertain to servile arts like building a house, but fine arts like making a movie or writing a book. But because man is also fallen, he can also use those same arts to distort and do harm to his nature. In this way we might say that, in addition to imitating nature, “art forms nature.”
Examples abound on how this uniquely human capacity is abused, but there is one way that has a profound effect in our age. The aforementioned storytelling arts use the inherent power of storytelling to activate wonder and convey important truths about what it means to be human. One way in which this art abuses our nature has been covered previously regarding “Drag Queen Story Hour.” While this is still somewhat rare, thee is a more common abuse of story that may not even be on our radar at first—it wasn’t on mine until a friend of mine pointed it out.
Tolerating Plot Holes
We have all seen movies in which there are both subtle and gigantic plot holes. Sometimes they are too much and we turn off the movie, but most of the time we simply tolerate them for the sake of moving the plot along. We might think that the producers of the movies are simply lazy in not tying up loose ends, but in truth we should expect them when the story presents a falsehood about human life. The problem is that if we watch enough movies, then we eventually learn to overlook them. We become, in a very real sense, conditioned to overlook them—not just in the movies but in the rest of life as well. Point of evidence is the current Covid crisis which is riddled with plot holes that the majority of people of good will simply accept.
More on this particular example in a moment, but there is something further here that needs to be pointed out. We accept the plot holes for the sake of the plot and to move the story along. But if we look at it from the perspective of the producer, he has a plot in mind and includes the plot holes in order to make his story fit together. In a certain sense then we can say that the plot holes actually reveal the plot and the intention of the producer.
This principle is important because it is applies to the incongruous in real life as well. We will usually have one of two tendencies; to overlook the plot hole completely or to point out that it makes no sense and then, like the fist tendency, simply move on. The point though is that it makes perfect sense because it moves the story along. In other words, if we pay close attention to the incongruities rather than dismissing or mocking them, the plot that the artist is advancing will come into relief.
Focusing on the plot holes themselves then will enable us to see through the agenda of those who insert them into reality. These holes may look different in the various arenas of public life, but the principle is always the same. If we consider three examples from the fields of morality, science and politics then we can learn how to see the plot holes for what they really are.
Plot Holes in the Moral Realm
Any number of examples could have been chosen to demonstrate moral plot holes, but a recent one from Pope Francis is particularly helpful here. In a documentary that aired in October, the Holy Father was quoted as saying that “we have to create a civil union law.” While not a tacit acceptance of gay marriage (few things, unfortunately, are tacit with Pope Francis), the comment caused an uproar because he was suggesting that the civil realm should create space for gay couples.
Let us assume that the Holy Father’s “plot” is promotion of the Gospel and true human thriving in this world so as to be residents of the next. From within that context we would say marriage is a fundamental human good that helps to fulfill human nature. But not any “union” between two people will do, but only one that is in accord with nature. In short, as Catholics, we know that only monogamous marriage between a man and a woman leads to authentic happiness. Any other domestic arrangement leads away from this. The laws and the practices of the Church herself are reflective of this awareness. The Church teaches what she does about marriage because she knows that it is a good thing for those involved to act according to nature.
To suggest that this is just a “Church law” or only binding on Catholics with no effect in the civil realm creates a giant plot hole. No law should be made to protect or promote something that we know will ultimately lead to unhappiness. By suggesting that there should be some civil law, the Holy Father is really expressing that he doesn’t believe that marriage is a true human good.
Pope Francis in choosing the name Francis has seen his role as one who would reform the Church. He has been open about this from the beginning of his pontificate. Applying our principle of looking along the plot hole (at this and many of his other ones), we can discern what that reform consists in. The Holy Father is attempting to reform the Church, not according the Holy Spirit, but the spirit of the age. The plot holes reveal the plot.
Plot Holes in the Scientific Realm
Plot holes in the scientific realm are usually more difficult to discern for the layman, but usually become apparent once you check assumptions. When a scientific theory is full of unsubstantiated claims that are labeled as “assumptions” the plot of the Scientists are unmistakable.
A good example of this is what we is commonly referred to as the Big Bang Theory. This theory claims that the universe began as a dense ball of primordial matter that exploded and over billions of years organized into the universe that we observe today. This cosmology is accepted as scientific fact, but once we pull back the curtain we find that it rests on many untested and untestable assumptions. There is a growing gap between observation and theory and in order to advance the plot, several plot holes needed to be introduced. According to Big Bang Cosmologists, ~95% of the universe is composed of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The problem is that these hypothetical entities have never been observed and they can’t be measured. Instead they are theoretical constructs that hold the Big Bang Universe and its accompanying theory together. You can read more about these two things elsewhere, but the point is that in order to use the theory to explain what we observe in the universe, physicists had to make up an unobservable “force”. As one physicist observed,
Big bang theory relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities – things that we have never observed. Inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent. Without them, there would be fatal contradictions between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory…the big bang theory can’t survive without these fudge factors.
Eric Lerner, “Bucking the Big Bang”, New Scientist
The point is that we hold as scientific fact a theory that only explains 5% of what we observe in the universe.
Viewed as plot holes, these assumptions reveal that Big Bang Cosmology is not about the science but about scientism and the ability to explain natural phenomena using only natural causes. It is an attempt to discredit the Genesis account of creation and theology and create an atheology that is completely devoid of God. It is essentially the theory of Evolution on a cosmic scale. The plot holes reveal the plot.
Plot Holes in the Political Realm
As is becoming increasingly obvious, the political realm is not devoid of plot holes either. In fact one could say that the plot holes in this arena of life will be the way in which 2020 is best remembered. Covid-19 itself is not a plot hole, but the way in which it has been managed has revealed the plot holes in reality. If we examine them carefully then we can come to see the plot more clearly.
We will discuss the vaccine some time in the near future, but the manner in which masks, social distancing and closures have been implemented have represented serious plot holes because of their lack of consistency and scientific justification. I already discussed this with relation to masks, but it also applies to social distancing. This has never been tried before and it is based on a simulation. Yes, you read that right, not an experiment, but a simulation. Drs. Jay Richards and William Briggs cover this in their book Price of Panicin detail, but in short the CDC went with recommendations from this paper in which found that social distancing would “yield local defenses against a highly virulent strain” in the absence of effective treatment. The “science” behind it was simple; you create a model to simulate an environment in which closing schools and implementing social distance measures lower the rate of infection and then you test to see if the rate is in fact lower. Besides proving that you are a good programmer, this also, surprisingly proved that social distancing worked. The fact that it is a simulated environment and not a real one should have no bearing on our decisions, right? This is, after all, Science. No matter anyway because we now have effective treatment and thus no more need for social distancing, right?
Once we view these inconsistencies as plot holes related to the plot, we can see that there are powers that be that have chosen not to waste a good crisis and to implement their grand plot—The Great Reset—which we will discuss in the coming weeks. The plot holes reveal the plot.
In conclusion, we might be willing to tolerate plot holes in our movies, but we should never overlook them in real life. If we do, we may find that we are caught up in someone else’s story for how the world should be. The plot holes reveal the plot.
We have been hearing for decades that we are living in a post-Christian society. This has mostly been a way to describe the fact that Christian values have been in decline. But Christianity has still been the dominant religion; dominant, that is, until the Covid-19 crisis hit. The arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in our society marked the official changing of the guard. While we have been hearing about the emergence of a post-Christian society for decades, Christianity was still the dominant religion. No longer is this true, however. Christianity has been toppled and replaced by a new Gnosticism that we call Science.
To be clear, the issue is not against science per se, but what is more accurately described as religion masquerading as science. After all, as Aquinas says “He who neglects the experimental order in natural science falls into error” in all aspects of knowledge. To solve the Covid-19 crisis, natural science plays a necessary, although not sufficient, role. The peddlers of the new religion, would have us believe that it is sufficient because all we need to do is “trust the science.” We are saved by faith, not in Christ, but in Science.
The New Priesthood
Nor should we be quick to dismiss expert opinion. But expert opinion is not fact, it still must be based on solid reasoning. The problem is that expert opinion is often treated like dogmatic truth because the Scientific Elite are the new priests. Based on their secret knowledge that only “experts” such as themselves can understand, they dictate religious dogma. Spoken word becomes fact. Thus says the Scientist—“Masks don’t work” and it is so. Thus says the Scientist two months later—“Masks do work” and it is so. The Shepherds have spoken and the Sheeple must follow suit. Laws are made to punish heretics who dare to question the spoken word.
This, by the way, is why masks have elicited such a strong response. The High Priest initially said that they don’t work. Then he spoke again saying they did and that the Priests lied because they were worried about a shortage. But if a person unapologetically lies once, how do you know they are telling the truth now? Actually, a leading Priest at Johns Hopkins says, it wasn’t lying but that “[A]t first, researchers and scientists did not know how necessary mask wearing would be among the general public. Now we are aware that wearing masks is an effective way to help prevent spread of this coronavirus” (Emphasis added). Given the timeframe and the rather dramatic shift from no-mask to mask, where did this awareness come from? Changing your mind is fine. But changing your mind without a change in the data is based not on science, but fiat. If you search prior to the dogmatic declaration, scientific opinion for the most part deemed them ineffective. The fact is that the Priests exercised their hidden knowledge (because there was no new data) and declared them so. I would probably be clothed in a scarlet mask for this statement alone, but let me go a little further as a statistician and speak about what a reasonable approach to this question would look like.
The Statistician Speaks
First, proving a negative is extremely difficult. To conclusively say “masks don’t work” is a practical impossibility. Having said that, there is little data to suggest that they do work (a complete summary that is thoroughly documented can be found here). There have been studies in the last few months that have suggested they might, but these are inconclusive at best. They are all very poorly done because they are being done in the midst of the crisis. To study the problem properly you need to set up what would be something akin to a clinical trial in which you had a placebo group to compare it to. But you also have the problem that mask usage is almost certainly confounded with social distancing. Is social distancing the thing that helps, or is it masks, or is it both? You’d have to set up a study to separate them. Secondly, not all masks are created the same or are equally effective.
Carnegie Mellon tracks (among many other things) mask compliance here. Notice that many places are in the high 80ish% for compliance and yet “cases” continue to increase in all of those areas. If any intervention works, then you should expect the slope of the line of increase to decrease (“flatten the curve”). But the data suggests that the lines are actually steeper. For example, see the plot below of my home state of North Carolina which instituted a Mask Mandate on June 26th and has had above an 85% mask compliance rate (currently 91%). North Carolina is far from unique in this regard and you can find similar data for all your favorite states.
If we were true to “Science” we would look at this medical intervention and determine that it does not work. A drug company running a clinical trial (where they are using their own money) would stop the trial and might even decide that the intervention is actually making it worse.
This might mean that…wait for it…masks are making it worse. You would again need to study this, but it is a reasonable supposition given the data. It also makes sense in that it could easily be creating a false sense of security or become a petri dish of germs just waiting to be deposited on someone else or an aritficial barrier suppresses the body’s natural barrier of the immune system. To be sure though, if we were testing a drug and the data looked like this, we would stop giving it to people.
This tangent was necessary because it speaks to the reasonableness of mask mandates. Law, according to St. Thomas, is “an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community and is promulgated.” Any law that does not fulfill those four requirements—reasonable, aimed at the common good, proper authority, and made known—is not, properly speaking, a law. Therefore, because they are not reasonable (or at least can not be proven to be at this point reasonable) we have no obligation to obey them. As true Shepherds of the Flock, Bishops and Priests need to stop being so deferential to mask mandates precisely for this reason.
The New Sacrament
The revolt against masks then is really a revulsion to what they symbolize. They have been made into sacraments through the words of the New Priests. They are said to protect and so therefore they do. Those who do not want to subscribe to this religion therefore will not want to wear them. It seems like a small thing to do, but it plays a key role in the overall narrative that Science can save us. As a sacrament it symbolizes the fact that the Coronavirus is a serious threat to our overall well-being. If you are tempted to think “well 99.99% of people that get this will survive”, then you only have to look around at everyone wearing a mask to tell you that you should be scared anyway. The smiling face of your neighbor, which would normally comfort you, is now hidden from your sight. The masks will permanently disfigure us because when the next virus comes along, and it will, they will tell us “this is more serious than the Coronavirus (which it likely will be) you must put the mask back on.”
By blessing the mask, the Priest also makes it into a Secular Scapular. Through the words of Mary to St. Simon Stock, we know that the Brown Scapular helps to save you eternally. Through the words of the Scientist, the mask saves us from Covidoom. The Brown Scapular is an aid to our growth in virtue, the Covid Scapular signals that we have virtue.
One of the things that the totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century was their exaltation of Science as the new religion. Lenin, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek, and Hitler all committed their atrocities using “Science” as their justification. Had someone stood up to them early on, one has to wonder whether things would have been different.
At the beginning of 1931, the German Bishops collectively excommunicated members of the Nazi party and barred all Catholics in Germany from joining. The excommunication did not extend to those who voted for Nazis, but only those who joined the party. This ban was put in place even though not all the party platform was evil. In fact, there were certain policies that were in accord with the Common Good. Nevertheless, the party protected and promoted certain intrinsic evils that could never be overlooked and washed away in the political give and take that is inevitable in a party system. Although the ban was walked back slightly after the election of 1933, the German Bishops demonstrated a long-standing Catholic belief that political party affiliation can put one’s soul in jeopardy.
Party Affiliation and Formal Cooperation
Why this is the case can be seen once we examine the principle of formal cooperation. Recall that the principle of cooperation acknowledges that a number of people often participate in bringing about some evil action. Moral philosophy makes the distinction between formal and material cooperation. Formal cooperation means that a person aligns their will with the intention of the principal moral agent. Material cooperation means that a person offers some material support in the carrying out of an action, even if, they may not be willing participants in the evil itself.
The act of abortion offers an illustrative and relevant example. Suppose a woman is pondering an abortion so she seeks counsel with a friend. The friend says she should do it but says she cannot help her get one. The friend has formally cooperated in the abortion and thus bears the guilt of the act itself in uniting her will to the will of the woman. She did not, however, offer material support and thus her material cooperation is minimal if non-existent. When the woman gets to the abortion mill, she is greeted by the janitor outside who is emptying mop water. He hates abortion but only works here because he needs to feed his family and is unable to find another job currently. His cooperation too is material, he provides a clean environment for the abortion, but it is remote since it is not vital to the carrying out of the abortion (which is truer than most people would like to admit). Finally, she enters the abortion mill and is greeted by the nurse. The nurse too hates abortion (thus no formal cooperation) but her material cooperation is so proximate and vital to the act that she is guilty of cooperation with the evil of abortion.
In summary, because guilt lies in the will, a person is always guilty of sin when they formally cooperate with evil. A person who formally cooperates with a grave evil bears a proportionate level of guilt for that evil. They may or may not be guilty when they cooperate materially, depending on their role and their proximity to the act itself. Related to the topic at hand, a person who is Pro-Choice, even if they never directly assist or counsel a person to get an abortion, simply by making their position known, has formally cooperated with that evil and bear culpability.
The Democratic Party platform, in no uncertain terms, promotes and protects the evil of abortion: “Democrats…believe unequivocally…that every woman should be able to access…safe and legal abortion.” And because political party affiliation is a free association, any person who joins the party consents to all of the party’s platform. There is no “I am personally opposed, but …” type logic because of the principle of formal cooperation. A member of the Democratic Party is aligning their will with that of the other members of the Party. Why else would they join? If they did not believe in any of the tenets, they simply need not join. This was the logic of the German Bishops in 1931, a logic that can likewise be applied to members of the Democratic Party today.
An All-Important Distinction
Please note what has been said and what hasn’t. The contention is that because joining the Democratic Party constitutes formal cooperation, it is gravely sinful. This does not mean that voting for a Democrat is always and everywhere gravely sinful. To extend the arm of sin beyond formal cooperation is a bridge too far. This was the point that Cardinal Ratzinger made when in 2004 he said,
“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia. When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”
The key word related to material cooperation is proportionate. There must be not only a good reason to vote, but a proportionate reason. On this level this means that if Candidate A is in favor of one intrinsically evil action and Candidate B supports a different intrinsically evil action, then we might vote so as to limit the amount of overall evil present in society. For example, suppose Candidate A supported abortion but was against Euthanasia and Candidate B supported Euthanasia but was against abortion, you might vote for B because abortion constitutes a greater evil on society as a whole. The point is that you cannot simply perform moral calculus adding up the evil on each side, but instead the proportionately is related to the presence of intrinsically evil actions, or as the Church has put it, “non-negotiables”.
But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. In fact, it is really a natural outlook that would motivate a Catholic to vote for a Democrat. A supernatural outlook of the world would never allow us to vote for someone who we know to be in an objective state of grave sin. The reason for this is simple—a person in a state of mortal sin is the Devil’s pawn. Mortal sin places a person under his dominion and they are very likely to commit further evil. If Christ is not King of their heart, then most assuredly they will be working against making Him King of our Country. This principle really goes for any politician. If the person is known to be in a state of grave sin then you should never vote for them.
This sounds “judgmental” to modern ears, but it is simply a statement of fact. A person who directly wills that abortions be provided remains in a gravely sinful state until such time as they repent. Because the support of abortion was public, true repentance would have to be public, causing the person to separate themselves from the sinful Party. A person who remains in the Party has thus remained in their sinful state.
As the November election is fast approaching, we must as Catholics, come to understand that voting is not just a political action, but a moral one and thus we must shine the light of Catholic morality on our voting decisions.
While we are about the project of reforming the civil police force, we are allowing the Thought Police to run amok. The Thinkpol are slowly rendering certain ideas unutterable simply because they do not conform to the Ochlocratic Orthodoxy. Not only do they have ritual humiliation at hand, they have co-opted corporations so that private views now have become fireable offenses. The mob silences dissenters by threatening livelihood and so most people simply conform. Free speech has come under attack in America in ways that would make even Woodrow Wilson blush. Like the previously discussed freedom of conscience, freedom of speech also needs defending. And like freedom of conscience, only Catholics who have a proper understanding of it, are in a position to lead the charge.
On the one hand, it is not wholly unexpected that free speech in our country has taken such a sharp left turn into a ditch. The Founders had an absolute faith in the power of the popular mind. Individuals might err, but the entire society could not. Free speech, coupled with democracy, serves as a recipe for finding the truth. All debate, they thought, would eventually lead to the truth. All ideas, even bad ones, then must be protected in order to keep the debate moving. In Gertz vs Welch, the Supreme Court declared that “”Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea … (it) requires that we protect some falsehood in order to protect speech that matters.”
Captivity to the Mob
Any freedom that is directly linked to democracy is always susceptible to becoming captive to the mob. If debate over an issue ceases then it is assumed that the truth has been reached. Now those who do not accept the orthodoxy become a threat to the well-being of society and need to be shut up. Thus we have things such as “hate speech” becoming punishable offenses.
A vicious circle is formed so that truth as a democratic matter always ends in an assault upon true liberty including free speech. It is as if they must saw off the limb they are sitting on. Liberty can only be connected to purpose and the purpose of speech is to utter truth. Therefore, there is such thing as liberty to speak falsehood. Freedom of speech is not unlimited but instead is not then a justification to say anything.
Truth is not democratic but is strictly governed by the dictatorship of reality. Truth, that is, the accordance of mind with reality, is necessary for liberty. Summarizing, Leo XIII says that the right to free speech “is a moral power which – as We have before said and must again and again repeat – it is absurd to suppose that nature has accorded indifferently to truth and falsehood, to justice and injustice. Men have a right freely and prudently to propagate throughout the State what things soever are true and honorable, so that as many as possible may possess them; but lying opinions, than which no mental plague is greater, and vices which corrupt the heart and moral life should be diligently repressed by public authority, lest they insidiously work the ruin of the State” (Libertas, 23).
This abuse of free speech eventually leads to its destruction as ironic as that seems. The problem is that there is no set of public truths that are immune to criticism, no intellectual foundation upon which debate may be carried out. Leaving everything open to debate actually closes it, a situation that Leo XIII anticipated when he said “The excesses of an unbridled intellect, which unfailingly end in the oppression of the untutored multitude, are no less rightly controlled by the authority of the law than are the injuries inflicted by violence upon the weak. And this all the more surely, because by far the greater part of the community is either absolutely unable, or able only with great difficulty, to escape from illusions and deceitful subtleties, especially such as flatter the passions” (ibid).
Americanism and the Fallout
Eventually, “nothing will remain sacred and inviolate; even the highest and truest mandates of natures, justly held to be the common and noblest heritage of the human race, will not be spared. Thus, truth being gradually obscured by darkness, pernicious and manifold error, as too often happens, will easily prevail. Thus, too, license will gain what liberty loses; for liberty will ever be more free and secure in proportion as license is kept in fuller restraint” (ibid). This is exactly where we find ourselves.
Because many prelates in the Church in the United States are infected with the Americanist heresy, they often confuse the authentic Catholic (i.e. true) understanding of free speech with the American model. The former leads to peace and justice while the latter leads to further division. One prelate recently said that our religious principles demand that we “defend the rights of all people even those with whom we might disagree.” Such a statement is misleading at best. What we are disagreeing about absolutely matters. Some topics are still open to debate, or as Leo XIII said, “In regard, however, to all matter of opinion which God leaves to man’s free discussion, full liberty of thought and of speech is naturally within the right of everyone; for such liberty never leads men to suppress the truth, but often to discover it and make it known” (ibid). Others, such as the right to religious liberty and the immorality of racism God has not “left to man’s free discussion”. Both sins against God cry out for justice. Therefore, it is neither “baffling nor reprehensible” that a Catholic institution, faced with playing a role in rectifying either, would seize the opportunity; unless, that is, you think the Thinkpol, rather than God, has closed the discussion.
A study recently released by the US Census Bureau found that in the past two decades, the number of couples that cohabitate had nearly tripled from 6 million to 17 million. The study found that the increase was due to the fact that “cohabitation has become increasingly accepted by a broad swath of social and demographic groups.” Most people view this as a sign of “progress”, no longer bound to the Victorian restraints imposed by marriage. It is most certainly progress, but it is likely not progress in the direction of anything other than cultural decay and collapse. The institution of marriage is vital to the life of every society such that without it, the society is sure to crumble.
All of us sort of intuit why this might be the case but having plummeted into the morass created by the Sexual Revolution, we may not be able to articulate why this is the case. Nevertheless, if we are to turn back to a society built upon marriage, then we ought to grasp the logic as to why this is so. Thankfully, the great Counter-revolutionary to the Sexual Revolution, Pope St. John Paul II, has already done the intellectual heavy lifting for us in his book Love and Responsibility. Written just prior to the “Salacious Sixties”, the then Fr. Wojtyla provided an intellectual basis for why the institution of marriage matters. We would do well to examine his argument in order to apply the tonic to our decadent culture.
The future Pope set out to examine how erotic love develops and matures between members of the opposite sex. In order to mature, the strong feelings that govern the relationships must always be subordinate to the true value of the person as a person. When we fall in love with the feelings that the other person stimulates in us, rather than the person who stimulates those feelings, then love can never mature. In fact, rather than being the basis for love, it becomes its exact opposite—use. Once this foundation is laid, Fr. Wojtyla then seeks to set up the conditions by which love can truly mature, and one of which is the Institution of Marriage.
Marriage as an Institution
As the word institution suggests, Marriage is something that is established or instituted in accord with the concept of justice. Marriage justifies, that is makes just, sexual relations between two people. It does this by ordering them to their proper ends. In other words, Marriage ensures that sexual relations between a man and a woman are governed both by commutative justice and social justice.
With respect to commutative justice, that is, the justice that governs the relationship between two people as equals, Marriage protects conjugal love from the threat of use. There is a vast difference between a concubine or a mistress and a wife—the former implies a relationship of use while the latter one of love. Likewise, love is always attached to the value of the person as a whole and not just their sexual value. Therefore, because the value of the person never changes, love must last forever. This is why Marriage, as an expression of this love, is naturally indissoluble. By committing one’s life to loving the other person, Marriage justifies sexual relations between the spouses.
This is also why sexual relations between deeply committed people, even if they are engaged say, is always wrong. “Pre-ceremonial” sex ignores the fact that a Wedding is no mere convention or ceremony, but an entering into the institution of Marriage. A new reality comes into being when vows are exchanged and it is this new reality that justifies sexual intimacy between the spouses. Prior to the wedding there was no permanence, afterwards there is. The permanence of the relationship rests upon the free choice of the spouses. And because sexual relations always carry with them the possibility of becoming permanently parents, there must be a permanent commitment which justifies their sexual expression. It is just that a child be conceived from within a marriage because only the institution of marriage forms the proper foundation for the institution of the family.
There might be a tendency to think that love between two people is a completely private affair between “two consenting adults”, but, according to John Paul II, the couple soon “realize that without this [social] acceptance their love lacks something very important. They will begin to feel that it must ripen sufficiently to be revealed to society.” There is a need to both keep private the sexual relations deriving from love and on the other hand a need for there to be a social recognition of this love that comes only through marriage.
Why Marriage Matters for Society
This felt need directs them to fulfill the requirements of social justice. This may not be immediately obvious, especially when we live in such an individualistic society, but it becomes clearer when we recognize that society itself is built upon the foundation of the family. The institution of marriage is necessary to signal a mature union exists between two people, a mature union that is based upon a permanent love. Thus, society can be built upon that foundation.
One need not imagine too hard what a society would look like when its foundations were unstable or constantly being swapped out, especially given our current plight. It looks like a society in which cohabitation numbers are tripling and marriage rates are falling. It looks like a society that is committing cultural suicide. There cannot be a society without stable families and there cannot be stable families without permanent marriages. A sane society would enact legislation that protects families and legislates justly regarding the family by recognizing the rights and duties of marriage since the family is an institution based on marriage.
Instead, the inmates are running the asylum. We feed a “divorce industry” with lawyers, social workers, and judges to name a few whose economic sustenance comes from the breakdown of marriage. We make divorce “no-fault” and make single parenting “easy” with day-care, public schools, welfare and WIC (why isn’t there a FIC by the way?). The family is then replaced by an elaborate bureaucratic machine that seeks to control the formation of children so that they grow up to see this as “normal”. Meanwhile we all accept this as an accident rather than as a planned attack to seize the power of the family. The sexual revolution was never about liberation but about control and the totalitarians will win unless we begin to think and act like our saintly Counter-revolutionary is instructing us.
In an address given during his return to Germany in 2011, Pope Benedict XVI called upon the legislators who had gathered not to neglect what he called the “ecology of man.” The ecology of man, that is, the realization that “man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will” is at the heart of environmental ecology. Although this was a recurring theme of the Pope, but his repeated call fell mainly on deaf ears because the care of the environment, like nearly all social issues, has been politicized. There is little interest in solving the problem, only using it to exert political control over other people. But for those who are interested in solving the problem, the Church has offered a true path forward with her emphasis on human ecology.
Although this used to go without saying, any discussion of the environment must first point out that man is different from all of the other visible creatures in the environment. He is not just one creature among many, but he is nature’s steward. Both sides of the debate recognize this fact, even if they loathe to admit it. Any discussion of environmental policy is predicated on the fact that only man is responsible for the environment. It would be absurd to speak of curbing man’s actions if he did not have the freedom to do so. In laying the responsibility for the environment at the feet of men, you are, at least implicitly, saying that he is different than the other animals and that he alone can offer a solution. This admission matters because it implies that man, as governor of creation, also transcends it.
Avoiding the Extremes
As awesome as it is then, we cannot worship nature as something divine. We reverence creation because it reveals the Creator, but it is not divine. It is, like all material things, passing away. We, made of matter and spirit, are above it, pilgrims as it were, just passing through. But just because it isn’t divine doesn’t mean that we can use it as we see fit. Nature is made up of natures, all of which must be respected, if they are going to actually serve mankind.
Like all issues that become political footballs, the environment is prey to the either/or fallacy. Either it must be divinized or it must be raped. Politics has no room for qualifications and the blame must always rest squarely on the other side. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church summarizes what might be called a “Catholic Environmentalism” when it says:
“A correct understanding of the environment prevents the utilitarian reduction of nature to a mere object to be manipulated and exploited. At the same time, it must not absolutize nature and place it above the dignity of the human person himself. In this latter case, one can go so far as to divinize nature or the earth, as can readily be seen in certain ecological movements that seek to gain an internationally guaranteed institutional status for their beliefs.”
CSD, 463
Fixing the Problem
But even with a correct understanding of the environment, we cannot fix the environmental problems without first practicing the “human ecology” proposed by Pope Benedict. Until we acknowledge that certain types of activities fulfill our nature and others don’t, the problem of the ecology of the environment will never be solved. These activities are known as virtues and it begins with the virtue of prudence. Prudence is the habit of governing our actions such that we only use things in a manner in which we truly thrive. Justice is the habit of taking responsibility for the effects our actions have on other people and not just being motivated by self-interest. Temperance is the habit of living with sufficiency and not hoarding resources because we can. Fortitude is the habit of remaining committed to the right use of the environment in the face of wide scale abuse where each person is trying to hoard as much as possible.
The environmental movement lacks any real teeth because they systematically ignore, what Pope Benedict called, “the inner pollution” of which the environmental pollution is just a consequence. They speak of what we ought to do, but still exalt license as if it was true freedom. You cannot promote license, especially in the sexual realm, while simultaneously demanding that people act temperately in their use of the environment. If you will (ab)use other people then you will most certainly abuse the environment. It will never gain any moral authority until it acknowledges a moral law. Without a true respect for human freedom and the conditions in which it thrives, it will have to resort to the hammer of power to beat all non-compliants into submission.
It is the inner pollution of overconsumption that causes untold damage to the environment. But until this is framed as fundamentally a moral problem, it will never get better. As John Paul II put it in his Message for the World Day of Peace in 1990:
“Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its life style. In many parts of the world society is given to instant gratification and consumerism while remaining indifferent to the damage which these cause. As I have already stated, the seriousness of the ecological issue lays bare the depth of man’s moral crisis. If an appreciation of the value of the human person and of human life is lacking, we will also lose interest in others and in the earth itself. Simplicity, moderation and discipline, as well as a spirit of sacrifice, must become a part of everyday life, lest all suffer the negative consequences of the careless habits of a few.”
Environmental ecology then is a fruitless endeavor without first emphasizing a moral ecology. The crisis in the environment is first and foremost a catastrophic crisis in the moral environment of mankind. Until we solve that problem, we should only expect the environmental crisis to get worse. A Catholic Environmentalism then would be one that emphasizing the proper use of the environment by inculcating the necessary virtues.
In response to the President’s order temporarily halting all immigration into the United States, several US Bishops issued a statement condemning his decision. This is not the first time that the Bishops have come to loggerheads with the President over his immigration policies, and rightfully so at times, but this particular statement leaves Catholics wondering whether the shepherds might be moonlighting as lobbyists for the Democratic Party.
To be clear, the problem is not that they are aligning themselves with the Democratic Party’s position regarding immigration, but that they so closely aligning themselves with a political party at all. Trapped in what has been called the “left-right fallacy”, American political parties have succumbed to either/or thinking. The Church on the other hand, is animated by both/and type thinking, especially with respect to her social doctrine. When a group of prelates comes out with a statement that sounds like it was drawn up by a Party member, you can almost always be sure that they are failing to embrace and teach the full Catholic understanding of the issue.
The Church on Immigration
With respect to immigration, the Church’s teaching is quite clear that there is a right to emigrate “when there are just reasons in favor of it” (Pacem in Terris, 25). The right is not absolute, conditioned not only to just reasons on the part of the emigrant, but also depending upon the Common Good of the nation they seek to enter. A State must accept immigrants “so far as the good of their own community, rightly understood, permits” (ibid, 106). As custodian of the “good of the community” or the Common Good, the State must exercise its office by enacting policies that first and foremost look to the Common Good and only then to the good of the individual immigrants.
This precedence of the Common Good over the right of the individual is not merely evidence of, as the Bishops insist, “the indifference of a throw-away mentality” but instead flows from the right to emigrate. The immigrant has an obligation to contribute to the Common Good if he is to become a member of the society in which he seeks to emigrate. From this responsibility flows the right to emigrate. If he does harm to the Common Good, then the right disappears.
There is a flip side to this as well, one that is not often discussed, but his highlighted by Cardinal Robert Sarah in his book The Night is Far Spent. The Cardinal says that “without a precise plan for their integration, it is criminal to offer hospitality to migrants.” The Cardinal speaks of the necessity of a welcoming State to have a “precise plan for giving them all the guarantees of dignified life.” This “dignified life” means not just that they have food and housing, but that they have the means for securing these things themselves. To come to another country and live off of the host is not dignified at all, but instead actually does great harm to both the individual person and the Common Good.
Democratic Party Talking Points?
It seems that the US Bishops have ignored the convergence of these very important principles and instead decided to regurgitate Democratic Party talking points. With 30 million Americans currently unemployed, it would be contrary to the Common Good to allow more people into the country and create additional competition for work. The Bishops obviously have fallen into the “immigrants do jobs Americans won’t do” fallacy. Immigrants don’t do jobs Americans won’t do, they do jobs at far lower wages than Americans will do them. They drive down wages for lower-skilled jobs by flooding the market with more workers. In a 2016 article in Politico, George J. Borjas, Professor of Economics and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, reported that,
[W]hen the supply of workers goes up, the price that firms have to pay to hire workers goes down. Wage trends over the past half-century suggest that a 10 percent increase in the number of workers with a particular set of skills probably lowers the wage of that group by at least 3 percent. Even after the economy has fully adjusted, those skill groups that received the most immigrants will still offer lower pay relative to those that received fewer immigrants.
Both low- and high-skilled natives are affected by the influx of immigrants. But because a disproportionate percentage of immigrants have few skills, it is low-skilled American workers, including many blacks and Hispanics, who have suffered most from this wage dip. The monetary loss is sizable. The typical high school dropout earns about $25,000 annually. According to census data, immigrants admitted in the past two decades lacking a high school diploma have increased the size of the low-skilled workforce by roughly 25 percent. As a result, the earnings of this particularly vulnerable group dropped by between $800 and $1,500 each year.
Contrary to the Bishops’ insistence that “There is little evidence that immigrants take away jobs from citizens,” it is clear Americans do lose jobs as a result of the influx of immigrants. This Democratic Party taking point, on the lips of Catholic Bishops ought to concern all of us, especially because there are two especially relevant Catholic principles upon which they are silent.
If you search “just wage” “immigration” on the USCCB website, you will find a single mention of just wage in the context of immigration (and that is a 2003 document quoting John Paul II). Why are the Bishops not defending this clear abuse of immigrant workers? The Church has long insisted that the dignity of the human person demands that he receive a just wage that is “sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children” (Rerum Novarum, 46). Of course, neither the Democrats or the Republicans ever speak of just wage either (and no “minimum wage” is not the same thing as a just wage).
The reason that politicians never speak of it is because immigration is a hidden way in which a redistribution of wealth occurs. Thus, the Bishops make the unsubstantiated claim that “Immigrants and citizens together are partners in reviving the nation’s economy.” A closer examination however reveals the exact opposite to be the case. Returning to Professor Borjas’ article, he pointed out that
somebody’s lower wage is always somebody else’s higher profit. In this case, immigration redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants—from the employee to the employer…I estimate the current “immigration surplus”—the net increase in the total wealth of the native population—to be about$50 billion annually. But behind that calculation is a much larger shift from one group of Americans to another: The total wealth redistribution from the native losers to the native winners is enormous, roughly a half-trillion dollars a year.
Thus we can see how indiscriminately allowing immigrants into the country, even to fill jobs supposedly “Americans won’t do” can do great harm to the Common Good.
There is nothing in the President’s order that is contrary to the Church’s teaching on immigration and thus they have nothing to add to the conversation as Catholic prelates. Their personal opinions, even when stamped with an imprimatur, only serve to damage their credibility as teachers of the truth. Given the great moral crisis we are facing, especially in the United States, it would be great if Catholic Bishops would not waste their moral capital taking what are clearly political positions.
As has been written here on many occasions, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America remains a vital resource for understanding the American mindset. What makes Tocqueville so valuable is that he was not necessarily an advocate of democracy. He saw in it great possibilities, but also was very much aware of the dangerous pitfalls that loomed in the background especially as the society around it rejected both religion and morality. In that way it has an almost prophetic quality about it, especially when it comes to the despotic and totalitarian temptations that all members of a democratic society ought to fear. Particularly prescient and especially relevant to today is a passage in which he cautions against totalitarianism that is smuggled in through a Nanny State:
“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”
Democracy in America Vol. II, Sect IV Ch. VI
Although this ought to be obvious, Tocqueville’s criticism rests upon an abuse of authority. What makes this type of abuse so pernicious is that it is so subtle that it is easy to miss at first because it is smuggled in as a form of paternal authority. As the name suggests, paternal authority serves a legitimate and vital function because it secures the survival and development of an immature person. But this type of authority has a pedagogical aim such that it assures its own disappearance. The goal is to discipline the person such that self-discipline comes about; govern them so that self-government is easy. Only when that happens can the person truly be free. Paternal authority then provides security so that freedom develops. Once the full flourishing occurs, this authority has outlived its usefulness and fades away.
Freedom and Security
The subtlety then comes in the relationship between security and freedom. The proper use of paternal authority is that it is ordered towards freedom while providing security. In its proper form there is no tradeoff between the two. Once the person has reached maturity and able to properly govern their own freedom, paternal security is no longer necessary. Able to properly discipline themselves the children have the liberty to secure for themselves what they need to thrive. In having true freedom, they have security, a security that minimally depends upon others. This is not to advocate for a rugged individualism, but to see security in its proper light. There are still aspects such as policing and military protection for example that will require society, but belonging to the common good, they never take away liberty but expand it.
Tocqueville’s point is that one of the sure signs that authority has outlived its usefulness, or has become an outright abuse, is that it takes away freedom. And in so doing it creates and encourages a “perpetual childhood.” Authority becomes “absolute and minute” because it becomes a form of control. It does all of this in the name of security and the people willingly trade their freedom, because, lacking the necessary virtue to govern themselves, they must have security.
If you wanted to create a populace that willingly made this tradeoff, you would start by attacking the legitimate exercise of paternal authority. Paint the paterfamilias as a dufus and ensure that he acts irresponsibly. Break up the school of freedom the family by making divorce easy. Separate children from their parents as much as and as early as possible. Teach them “values”, mostly economic and political, and not virtues. Mock virtue as repression and substitute license for true liberty. Once license replaces liberty, there appears to be no tradeoff between security and liberty (which is really license) because those in power still, to use Tocqueville’s terms, “facilitate their pleasures.”
All of this might have a libertarian ring to it, but that it to miss the fact that freedom is wedded to virtue. Libertarians tend to treat freedom as an end rather than a means. They demand liberty to do what pleases them provided they do not infringe upon others. This too becomes license and the trap is laid in reverse. Lacking the virtue necessary for self-control, they must look elsewhere for security. We cannot turn a blind eye to vice nor can we enthrone it as a “right”. There may be times when we tolerate it, but it can never seen as a true exercise of freedom.
Tocqueville the Prophet
Tocqueville’s words are particularly relevant today because they illumine the path we are currently on towards totalitarianism. In the midst of a plague, the government has taken away the natural rights of its citizens all in the name of security. Notice that the “liberties of vice” are still available as “essential businesses”, a literal bread and ciruses approach in which Liquor stores, recreational marijuana dispensaries, unlimited and free access to Pornhub, and so forth. Heck, even the occasional encounter facilitated by Tinder is, according to Health Czar Anthony Fauci, an option “if you want to take the risk.” But you can’t take the risk to go to Mass, the one place where both security and freedom grow.
By creating an atmosphere of fear, we have been sold the bill of security. We are living on the cusp of tyranny, even if we believe it to be a “benevolent” tyranny. Those are the worst kind because they admit of no limits. As CS Lewis put it, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
We would be wise to listen to both Lewis’ words and Tocqueville’s. Trading freedom for security is the surest path to tyranny and results in the loss of both freedom and security.
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