With the rising importance of the HHS mandate, which all Catholics should be aware of at this point, I am amazed at two things: the preoccupation today's Catholics have with politics, and the difference between believers and nonbelievers in the modern West.
Unlike the opposition of the Church (and by Church I mean Catholics in general) to abortion, the dissidence to the HHS mandate seems to be more focused on the issue of religious liberty than on protesting the immorality of the specific items of this mandate - namely, contraception, sterilization and abortion drugs. Naturally, it is the implied immorality of these things that makes our participation in this mandate wrong, but the issue being raised most often by Catholics is the fact that this mandate would force Catholic business owners to pay part of the co-pay for their employees' insurance which, under this mandate, would now have to cover contraception, sterilization and abortion drugs. Cleverly, the Obama administration has already passed legislation to force business over a small amount of employees to give their workers company insurance, and so now, businesses are also being told what kind of practices their insurance must cover. It was quite an ingenious tactic on Obama's part, I must say, but wickedness is always ingenious. (See Romans chapter 1 and 2)
Many Catholics have expressed the question that other religious groups, like the Amish, have been given exemption from this mandate, while Catholics and other Abrahamic religions have not. And, as I said before, our main issue with this mandate seems to be that Catholics are being forced to financially contribute to the coverage of immoral practices in insurance. While I completely agree that we should not be forced to do this, it makes me wonder: if Catholics were exempted, or if we did not have to pay for coverage of those specific practices but the government still made them available on company insurance, would this be as big of an issue?
Our opposition to this mandate is more focused on the government's violation of our religious freedom than on the specific immorality of the practices themselves, a different stance than we have towards abortion (except when they try to force Catholic medical personnel to assist in or perform abortions). Actually, I think it is more similar to the issue currently going on in England, where the government is threatening legislation that would force religious institutions to perform gay marriages, whether they want to or not.
Catholics are claiming that this is a violation of our right to religious liberty. But I think this event brings to light a very important point, one that many Catholics seem to ignore: our beliefs are directly connected to and dependent upon our faith, that is, the knowledge we have received directly from God through Revelation and Tradition. This knowledge cannot be inferred purely through reason. Thus, without this faith, many of our beliefs would be unfounded or at least questionable.
For example, our main opposition to abortion in all circumstances is the proposition that human life has inalienable value and dignity from the moment of conception. Simply by virtue of being of the human species, an attribute inherited at the moment of conception (something no one denies), we have this worth and meaning. But why is being human so important? What makes the human species, and thus anyone of that species, so special and deserving of special treatment? Because, Catholics would say, we have an immortal soul created in the image of God and given to every human being at the moment we become human, that is, at conception. This belief cannot be proven simply by reason or science - it is an article of faith, revealed to us by God and transmitted as an infallible truth by the Church.
So what happens when we no longer have this faith, this revelation that cannot be attained by human effort alone? When we lost faith, even just part of our faith, we lose some or all of the attached beliefs which depend on that faith. When we no longer believe in the soul, or even a soul made in the image of God, our belief in inalienable dignity of the human species subsequently (though sometimes gradually) dissolves, as it has for atheists. This is why some people (even, tragically, some Christians) are capable of dismissing the worth of an unborn child by the fact that it has not fully developed, or doesn't look entirely human, or can't yet feel pain (at certain stages of development), or can't live or breathe on its own, etc. To them, the worth of a human depends on something other than their soul, than the fact that they are an individual human person. This change derives from a lack of the faith all Catholics (should) have - that is, faith in the soul made in the image of God.
Despite this fact, many modern Catholics seem to expect nonbelievers (including some heretical Catholics, i.e. Pelosi and Biden) to follow all of our beliefs without the faith upon which those beliefs are based. We seem to be taking natural law too far, as though it contains in itself all the truths of Revelation. This is not so. Natural law is meant to lead us to Christ, not to be Christ Himself. Reason can only get us so far; without Christ, it is ultimately limited and prone to frequent error without a definitive standard of correction. How can we expect nonbelievers to see the terrible immorality of abortion in all circumstances when they lack our belief in the inalienable dignity of the human soul made in the image of God?
Accordingly, with this HHS mandate, the government seems to view it this way: abortion and contraception are legal; they are considered by most doctors, social and health professionals to be an integral part of a complete program of health and well-being; and most people in America use them regularly. Thus, why should any insurance program, even those funded by Catholics, not cover these practices? It is an agenda, yes, but I doubt it is quite as much a conspiracy as it appears. Most people are not as intelligent as Satan, nor do they have his awareness of truth. Most nonbelievers genuinely misunderstand or disbelief the Faith and even think their rebellion is the more conscientious stance. Thus, they think they are doing the right thing by securing abortion and contraception for anyone who wants it, and they view Catholics and others like us as harmful to society.
Have other atheistic regimes, like the Nazis and communists, also shared this stance towards Catholics? Yes. But the major difference is that the Nazis and communists were relatively small regimes trying to force themselves onto other peoples. In modern times, however, this worldview is popular by general preference of the people, not the tyrannical command of some external dictator. Today, the Church is not defending the general public but, rather, we're telling them that they are, for the most part, gravely wrong in their beliefs. It is much harder to convince the hearts of people than to defend them from an unwanted common enemy.
As for the connection between the HHS mandate and religious liberty, I think it shows two things: that Catholics are too involved and too dependent upon the secular; and that the modern conception of justice is led by a non-Christian ideology. For the first point, I have heard so many Catholics discussing this mandate refer to the Founding Fathers of America and their supposed insistence on religious freedom. I find this a difficult idea to base our claims upon. The Founding Fathers were primarily deists, slave owners, supporters of the massacre of Native Americans, criminals against the English Crown, and restricted freedom only to white male land owners. Furthermore, Catholics were persecuted in early America, marginalized if nothing else. We have never been a majority in this country, nor has this country ever been inspired by Catholic teachings except through the distant and blurred patrimony of the Protestant influence on colonial America. The government they founded is the same government that has legalized abortion, pornography and, now, is instituting the HHS mandate, the first two never being revoked since their legalization, even during the presidencies of supposed Christians presidents such as Reagan and Bush.
We seem to forget that the land we use, the money we use, and the government we participate in belongs to the federal government, not to us. "We the people" is an oxymoron, as it was written by wealthy, white, male politicians with little input from "the people". When the government has made something legal, like abortion and contraception, why are we surprised when they try to force us to use their money to pay for such things? Any money we have is loaned to us from the government. Attempts to desecrate or misrepresent money will prove this by their vengeance. We talk as though our money belongs to us - does it not belong to Caesar first?
We are foreigners, aliens in a strange land, no matter how Christians its citizens supposedly are. Even the "Christian" kingdoms of the Middle Ages did not entirely follow our teachings, and no secular government ever will. And, with the majority of modern Western populations not being Catholic, their democratic representation will naturally result in a non-Catholic government and law. As I said above, how we can expect anything else from nonbelievers? Truly, it is a wonder our religious liberty has been secured this long.
But, for the second point, I think this HHS mandate issue is also indicative of another trait of the modern West. This issue is not, on the most fundamental level, an issue of religious liberty. Rather, it is a difference in our perception of justice. The modern West does not have the same idea of justice as the Catholic Church. Their idea of justice derives from the fundamental atheism and pragmatism of the secular worldview that is the standard of governments and even cultures today, at least in how they deal with national issues. For them, justice lies in the protection of people's health and freedom. If these two are protected, they believe, people will be happy and justice will be fully served.
Their idea of health is affected by their extreme view of freedom, and vice versa. Health is seen as power over the body, both to defeat attacks and to make it operate as we wish. This naturally leads into the idea of "reproductive rights", where women are "empowered" to rule their bodies and command them however they wish. To the government, this power is apart of a full and complete health bill, and so abortion and contraception are necessary. This applies both to men and women, but especially to the latter, as most people today see men as already empowered since we are not "burdened" by pregnancy and motherhood which so severely affects women's pursuit of their careers, reputations and love lives.
Responsibility has become a vice, something that restricts freedom. To Catholics, it is the exact opposite. Responsibilities are opportunities to give of ourselves, to love, and thus to grow spiritually in likeness to God and in fellowship with humanity. But we are willing to endure some pain and inconvenience for the sake of love and virtue. To modern people, any pain and/or inconvenience incurs on their freedom (aka power) and happiness (aka contentment/pleasure) and so becomes an injustice. Abortion and contraception are seen as weapons in the fight against injustice.
For Catholics, this logic seems incredibly senseless and immoral, which it is, but we must understand that they lack the Faith that enlightens our understanding of truth. Without it, we would be as erroneous as they are. We merely have to examine the moral state of Europe before the spread of Catholicism to see this.
We can no longer just expect Western nations to cater to Christians and our Faith-based lifestyles. For so many centuries, it has been a given that every Western country would accomodate us, at least respecting our beliefs. But in this secular age, the direct product of the extreme atheism of the 20th century, we must shed our comfortable presumptions and remember the fact that as Christians, especially as Catholics, we are foreigners in a strange land, living as exiles, trying to merely live a quiet and peaceful life practicing our Faith and working for the common good and evangelization of all. When (not if) we are persecuted, we must rejoice as Christ taught. He was persecuted first, even unto death, and when we are persecuted for His sake, we illuminate His love and His truth and show the real glory of God. We must unite our sufferings to His and life lives of exemplary virtue, religiosity and prayer.
Furthermore, the Church must start focusing more on purifying the Church itself, internally, rather than judging nonbelievers be a standard they do not recognize. We cannot tolerate such heresies as are prevalent today. We must immediately and blatantly reject all heresy and all sin by Catholics, whether perpetrated by political leaders (Pelosi and Biden, for example), priests (such as those involved in the sex abuse), or a member of your own family, and we must work ever harder towards full Christian unity within the one, holy and apostolic Catholic Church of Rome. God bless and amen.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Resident Aliens and Unholy Vessels
"[Christians] reside in their own nations, but as resident aliens. They participate in all things as citizens and endure all things as foreigners.... They obey the established laws and their way of life surpasses the laws.... So noble is the position to which God has assigned them that they are not allowed to desert it."
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2240
Living as a Christian in a democratic society can be a source of both opportunity and confusion. We have the ability, as citizens equal before the law and equal in government participation, to bring about peace, justice and the promotion of human dignity and well-being without having to appeal to the arbitrary whim of a ruling despot. And we share the ideals of equality and liberty that form the philosophical basis of democracy itself. However, at the same time, it is quite possible for a country’s laws and politics to become definitively anti-Christian without using any unfair political processes. Simply by having a majority vote, people in a democracy can change their nation from one that promotes Christian values to one that openly denies any Christian influence in their history and even considers many Christian teachings, such as our views on homosexuality, to be a human rights violation.
When this occurs, as it has in modern Europe and in America to a lesser extent, Christians feel perplexed and even shocked. How can a society, we think, that has been Christian for so long so abruptly become anti-Christian? Moreover, it was not the edict of some conquering force, as was often the case with fascist and communist empires in the 20th century. No - the secularization and immorality of modern Western nations is entirely due to the popular majority consensus of the people, precisely because those nations are democratic. We Christians cannot seem to understand this.
In response to our feeling of shock, we actively campaign to change the laws of our countries in the hope of returning them to a state guided by Christian teachings. We seem to be under the impression that the Christian influence on Western law and public policy before the 1960s was due to a fundamentally different quality in the government itself. We cannot see that Western democratic governments have always been secular; that has been a defining quality of their democratic status since their inception, particularly as inspired by the American and French Revolutions and their political philosophies. Western government was more Christian at that time not because of the government, but because the people themselves were more Christian and thus they voted according to Christian teachings. The truly alarming condition of the modern West, and indeed any other democracies throughout the world, is that their people are voting in politicians who authorize and legalize various immoral practices, including abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, drug abuse, etc. - and then the people go out and use these so-called "public services". If absolutely no one in the country ever chose to have an abortion, would its legality really be an issue? Truly, would it even be legal if such were the case?
Even a cursory glance at worldwide abortion statistics today should show every true Christian that it is not the legality of abortion but its widespread practice that is truly tragic - its legality simply reflects its public acceptance and proliferation. As we live in democratic countries, Christians feel as though the only efforts we can make to combat such rampant immorality are political and legal actions, trying to make it illegal. We must come to see that our true concern as Christians should be the hearts and souls of those who practice abortion, whether doctors, nurses, mothers, indifferent or even complicit fathers, and anyone else who uses or advocates abortion. This applies to any other immoral practice, including abortion, contraception, pornography, premarital sex, or anything else. Whether something should be legal or illegal is a completely different and, I believe, inferior topic, precisely because it is the result, not the cause, of the moral state of a society.
In all nations, the power that governments have is given by God, but with that power comes the responsibility to use it to promote and defend the life and dignity of all people in that nation. This truth takes a slightly different form in democracy than in other political systems. In medieval monarchies, for example, the royalty were definitively and officially Christian. The people and the Church expected them to be good Christians and held them up to that standard. If they failed to follow it, the only ones who deserved blame were the royalty themselves, and the people could blame all signs of corruption in their society on its non-elected government. But in a democracy, we are a nation "of the people". In democracy, the power and responsibility given to governments in effectively distributed to all the people. We are all responsible for the present and future of our society. Even the actions of elected officials ultimately depends and can be blamed on the people who voted them in, since those officials would have no power unless we voted to give it to them.
Because of this attribute of democracy, Christians should indeed work to secure justice and peace through direct governmental action, especially through voting. However, even this can be confusing for Christians. When we look at the legal systems of Islamic theocracies in the world today, their religious law is completely inseparable from their national law. Thus, Islamic moral law and Islamic criminal law are synonymous.
Is this really what Christians want? Should everything we consider sinful be also criminal, such as blasphemy, lust, hate, greed, lack of religious observance, etc.? Indeed, is that even possible? If a Christian accepts the fundamental principles of democracy, namely, equality, pluralism and freedom, we cannot possibly believe that criminal law should mirror Christian moral teaching in its entirety. So, to add yet another layer of confusion to Christian participation in a democracy, we must also decide which of our moral teachings should be reflected in secular law and which should not. This can be very difficult, primarily because the judge of Christian law is God, not man. Even Catholic priests do not administer punishment, only penance - justice is God's. While the state is given the power to administer God's justice on Earth, this cannot be complete. Only God can judge man's interior life and only God is Divine; thus, human justice will always be incomplete and imperfect.
For too long, Christians living in modern democratic societies have let politics misdirect our attention onto it rather than people, law rather than morality, and the government rather than the Church. We vehemently judge and criticize non-Christians and their secular societies while at the same time permitting our fellow Christians to teach false and even malicious doctrines, to lead immoral lives without repentance, and to abandon the Church and God Himself, still calling themselves and accepted as Christians all the way. We allow adoption to be expensive and risky while zealously pushing for abortion to be criminalized. We say pornography is immoral while using contraception and giving it to our children as a "safe and responsible" means of avoiding the "inconvenience" of "unwanted" pregnancies. Priests molest children, teach false doctrines, and hold heretical beliefs about the Church, the Eucharist and God Himself, as all the while Christians are judging atheists for their beliefs and immorality. It is as though we hold a higher standard for nonbelievers than we do our fellow Christians, as though merely saying "I'm Christian" is enough to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This is ludicrous and completely contrary to the teachings of both Christ and the apostles, as well as all the saints throughout history.
Does this mean we should completely sever ties with all Christians who do not follow everything that Christ taught? No - their dissociation from the Church is sufficient distance between us. Ecumenism is an honorable and necessary practice, but when a true Christian sacrifices truth or goodness for the sake of ecumenical agreement, for compromise, we are truly squandering and betraying the Faith that Christ gave us, allowing His one true Church to be fractured into a thousand pieces and corrupted into something other than the Body of Christ.
I firmly believe that the primary causes of the extreme rise in irreligion in modern times is not atheism. Truly, most Western people are still spiritual in some form, and many of them even believe in Christ. It is the complete abandonment of religion that characterizes the modern world, not atheism or even materialism per se. I believe the greatest cause of this abandonment of religion is religion itself, particularly in the case of Christianity. By compromising our truths, fracturing our Church into thousands of brittle, distorted pieces, and violating the very moral virtues we profess, we become stumbling blocks to those outside the Faith, as well as those who are contemplating it.
When they see our weak faith, our embarrassment at our own beliefs and teachings, and our acceptance of impurity in the Church Herself, how can we expect nonbelievers to share our faith and moral values? Out of fear and a desire for political correctness, modern Christians have almost completely lost the strength, the passion, the devotion and the genuine religious faith that was so prominent in the Middle Ages and even through to the 1970s. Many used the Second Vatican Council as an excuse to indulge their weaknesses, but the Council itself was the Church's attempt to reaffirm the Faith. They tried to inspire the same depth of devotion and piety that we had been gradually losing since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, when people throughout the West began to think we truly no longer need God.
If Christians today truly want to turn the tide of modern secular humanism and irreligion, and to reunite the various denominations of Christianity back into communion with the one true Church, we cannot focus so singularly on politics or even on apologetics, especially towards nonbelievers. No, we must focus on a much more difficult task - making ourselves and the Church as a whole more holy. As long as we remain hypocrites, willfully abandoning the pursuit of holiness while simultaneously criticizing nonbelievers as though they should be holy without any reason to be, our efforts will crumble. Nothing can guarantee conversions in those we evangelize, but our primary focus must be the holiness of the Church. The greatest form of evangelization is not criticism or works of apologetics, but a living example of holiness expressed in religious devotion and piety, charity, faith and purity. As long as we continue using politics and apologetics as scapegoats to avoid fixing the Church Herself and making ourselves more holy, nonbelievers will continue ignoring our teachings, ignoring our Church, and ignoring our God. I pray that all Christians, especially Catholics, may rediscover the sense of mystery, compassion, humility and contrition that are the true foundations of holiness and thus become Christs to the world. Amen.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2240
Living as a Christian in a democratic society can be a source of both opportunity and confusion. We have the ability, as citizens equal before the law and equal in government participation, to bring about peace, justice and the promotion of human dignity and well-being without having to appeal to the arbitrary whim of a ruling despot. And we share the ideals of equality and liberty that form the philosophical basis of democracy itself. However, at the same time, it is quite possible for a country’s laws and politics to become definitively anti-Christian without using any unfair political processes. Simply by having a majority vote, people in a democracy can change their nation from one that promotes Christian values to one that openly denies any Christian influence in their history and even considers many Christian teachings, such as our views on homosexuality, to be a human rights violation.
When this occurs, as it has in modern Europe and in America to a lesser extent, Christians feel perplexed and even shocked. How can a society, we think, that has been Christian for so long so abruptly become anti-Christian? Moreover, it was not the edict of some conquering force, as was often the case with fascist and communist empires in the 20th century. No - the secularization and immorality of modern Western nations is entirely due to the popular majority consensus of the people, precisely because those nations are democratic. We Christians cannot seem to understand this.
In response to our feeling of shock, we actively campaign to change the laws of our countries in the hope of returning them to a state guided by Christian teachings. We seem to be under the impression that the Christian influence on Western law and public policy before the 1960s was due to a fundamentally different quality in the government itself. We cannot see that Western democratic governments have always been secular; that has been a defining quality of their democratic status since their inception, particularly as inspired by the American and French Revolutions and their political philosophies. Western government was more Christian at that time not because of the government, but because the people themselves were more Christian and thus they voted according to Christian teachings. The truly alarming condition of the modern West, and indeed any other democracies throughout the world, is that their people are voting in politicians who authorize and legalize various immoral practices, including abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, drug abuse, etc. - and then the people go out and use these so-called "public services". If absolutely no one in the country ever chose to have an abortion, would its legality really be an issue? Truly, would it even be legal if such were the case?
Even a cursory glance at worldwide abortion statistics today should show every true Christian that it is not the legality of abortion but its widespread practice that is truly tragic - its legality simply reflects its public acceptance and proliferation. As we live in democratic countries, Christians feel as though the only efforts we can make to combat such rampant immorality are political and legal actions, trying to make it illegal. We must come to see that our true concern as Christians should be the hearts and souls of those who practice abortion, whether doctors, nurses, mothers, indifferent or even complicit fathers, and anyone else who uses or advocates abortion. This applies to any other immoral practice, including abortion, contraception, pornography, premarital sex, or anything else. Whether something should be legal or illegal is a completely different and, I believe, inferior topic, precisely because it is the result, not the cause, of the moral state of a society.
In all nations, the power that governments have is given by God, but with that power comes the responsibility to use it to promote and defend the life and dignity of all people in that nation. This truth takes a slightly different form in democracy than in other political systems. In medieval monarchies, for example, the royalty were definitively and officially Christian. The people and the Church expected them to be good Christians and held them up to that standard. If they failed to follow it, the only ones who deserved blame were the royalty themselves, and the people could blame all signs of corruption in their society on its non-elected government. But in a democracy, we are a nation "of the people". In democracy, the power and responsibility given to governments in effectively distributed to all the people. We are all responsible for the present and future of our society. Even the actions of elected officials ultimately depends and can be blamed on the people who voted them in, since those officials would have no power unless we voted to give it to them.
Because of this attribute of democracy, Christians should indeed work to secure justice and peace through direct governmental action, especially through voting. However, even this can be confusing for Christians. When we look at the legal systems of Islamic theocracies in the world today, their religious law is completely inseparable from their national law. Thus, Islamic moral law and Islamic criminal law are synonymous.
Is this really what Christians want? Should everything we consider sinful be also criminal, such as blasphemy, lust, hate, greed, lack of religious observance, etc.? Indeed, is that even possible? If a Christian accepts the fundamental principles of democracy, namely, equality, pluralism and freedom, we cannot possibly believe that criminal law should mirror Christian moral teaching in its entirety. So, to add yet another layer of confusion to Christian participation in a democracy, we must also decide which of our moral teachings should be reflected in secular law and which should not. This can be very difficult, primarily because the judge of Christian law is God, not man. Even Catholic priests do not administer punishment, only penance - justice is God's. While the state is given the power to administer God's justice on Earth, this cannot be complete. Only God can judge man's interior life and only God is Divine; thus, human justice will always be incomplete and imperfect.
For too long, Christians living in modern democratic societies have let politics misdirect our attention onto it rather than people, law rather than morality, and the government rather than the Church. We vehemently judge and criticize non-Christians and their secular societies while at the same time permitting our fellow Christians to teach false and even malicious doctrines, to lead immoral lives without repentance, and to abandon the Church and God Himself, still calling themselves and accepted as Christians all the way. We allow adoption to be expensive and risky while zealously pushing for abortion to be criminalized. We say pornography is immoral while using contraception and giving it to our children as a "safe and responsible" means of avoiding the "inconvenience" of "unwanted" pregnancies. Priests molest children, teach false doctrines, and hold heretical beliefs about the Church, the Eucharist and God Himself, as all the while Christians are judging atheists for their beliefs and immorality. It is as though we hold a higher standard for nonbelievers than we do our fellow Christians, as though merely saying "I'm Christian" is enough to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This is ludicrous and completely contrary to the teachings of both Christ and the apostles, as well as all the saints throughout history.
Does this mean we should completely sever ties with all Christians who do not follow everything that Christ taught? No - their dissociation from the Church is sufficient distance between us. Ecumenism is an honorable and necessary practice, but when a true Christian sacrifices truth or goodness for the sake of ecumenical agreement, for compromise, we are truly squandering and betraying the Faith that Christ gave us, allowing His one true Church to be fractured into a thousand pieces and corrupted into something other than the Body of Christ.
I firmly believe that the primary causes of the extreme rise in irreligion in modern times is not atheism. Truly, most Western people are still spiritual in some form, and many of them even believe in Christ. It is the complete abandonment of religion that characterizes the modern world, not atheism or even materialism per se. I believe the greatest cause of this abandonment of religion is religion itself, particularly in the case of Christianity. By compromising our truths, fracturing our Church into thousands of brittle, distorted pieces, and violating the very moral virtues we profess, we become stumbling blocks to those outside the Faith, as well as those who are contemplating it.
When they see our weak faith, our embarrassment at our own beliefs and teachings, and our acceptance of impurity in the Church Herself, how can we expect nonbelievers to share our faith and moral values? Out of fear and a desire for political correctness, modern Christians have almost completely lost the strength, the passion, the devotion and the genuine religious faith that was so prominent in the Middle Ages and even through to the 1970s. Many used the Second Vatican Council as an excuse to indulge their weaknesses, but the Council itself was the Church's attempt to reaffirm the Faith. They tried to inspire the same depth of devotion and piety that we had been gradually losing since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, when people throughout the West began to think we truly no longer need God.
If Christians today truly want to turn the tide of modern secular humanism and irreligion, and to reunite the various denominations of Christianity back into communion with the one true Church, we cannot focus so singularly on politics or even on apologetics, especially towards nonbelievers. No, we must focus on a much more difficult task - making ourselves and the Church as a whole more holy. As long as we remain hypocrites, willfully abandoning the pursuit of holiness while simultaneously criticizing nonbelievers as though they should be holy without any reason to be, our efforts will crumble. Nothing can guarantee conversions in those we evangelize, but our primary focus must be the holiness of the Church. The greatest form of evangelization is not criticism or works of apologetics, but a living example of holiness expressed in religious devotion and piety, charity, faith and purity. As long as we continue using politics and apologetics as scapegoats to avoid fixing the Church Herself and making ourselves more holy, nonbelievers will continue ignoring our teachings, ignoring our Church, and ignoring our God. I pray that all Christians, especially Catholics, may rediscover the sense of mystery, compassion, humility and contrition that are the true foundations of holiness and thus become Christs to the world. Amen.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
The Valley of Shadows
Despite the popularity of many moral nihilists now and in the past, such as Nietzsche, the vast majority of people throughout history have believed in some form of morality. It is a deeply human trait to instinctively classify our experiences, whether our choices or anything else, as good, bad, evil, immoral, charitable, loving, positive, negative, just, unjust, etc. Even before the nihilist can stop himself, those moral sentiments have already appeared, and even the most immoral people usually believe their bad actions are justified, or they simply ignore their conscience until it builds to the point of personal ruination.
With this innate moral compass that all people share, everyone is also capable of having their own attitudes and intellectual beliefs about morality. These primarily derive from the way we understand and interpret the moral sentiments our conscience gives us, and the way we decide to act on them. Through reason, we can expand our morality by implications, religious belief and what we know about human behavior to include things such as culpability, imputability, concupiscence, law, and myriad other concepts. However, reason also gives us the ability to "rationalize" our choices - meaning, we can think up seemingly-reasonable reasons to excuse or justify our choices even though those excuses defy conscience and/or the rational moral framework we believe in. Often, this moral framework is influenced by the excuses we build up over time, a filter through which we experience the world and by which we make choices. This creates an attitude, a way of looking at the world and ourselves that usually determines (though not beyond free will) our moral compass.
One of the most common attitudes that every person is susceptible to is what I call "justification by utility", or to use the philosophical term, utilitarianism. A fundamental principle of objective morality, of a morality independent of the arbitrary preference of the individual person, a morality attested to by the essential logic of philosophy and lived (even if refuted intellectually) by almost every person, is that an action which is objectively moral or immoral is so regardless of the situation or condition of the person. Now, this only involves the moral quality of the action or thing itself, involving the inherent philosophical morality of them; the guilt of the individual is determined by their internal consent and knowledge. But regardless of the person's internal condition, an immoral act is immoral - regardless. Theft, the stealing of one person's private property by another person, is immoral, violating the fundamental human right to private property. But if a severely impoverished or ignorant person steals food, is it still immoral? Yes, the theft itself is still wrong - but the individual's guilt is lessened.
This is an essential principle of morality which utilitarianism rejects. Utilitarianism is the attitude that the morality of an action, separate from the culpability of the actor, is determined by its practical result. Now, the standard by which the practical result is judged to be good or bad is arbitrary, and depends on the placement of another moral belief system atop utilitarianism (such as the affixation of liberal consensus relativism to it featured in the philosophy of desire utilitarianism). But regardless, with this attitude, only the utility of an action determines its morality.
Usually, proponents of utilitarianism would say that actions such as lying, stealing or killing are wrong, since they most often lead to more negative results than positive. Lying creates an unsustainable fantasy, endangers one's reputation and is essentially uncreative, never leading to productive results for the common good. But, what if doing something wrong, such as lying, stealing or killing, does in fact lead to great positive result? This is the true loophole within the attitude (as it is not truly a rational philosophy due to its rejection of constant objective morality) of utilitarianism, and it was the excuse used to justify the Holocaust, the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, stem cell research, contraception - the list is almost infinite.
The opposite of the utilitarian attitude is an attitude of integrity. This, as a virtue, is naturally difficult, the main reason few people have it. Integrity is adhering to what is right and true regardless of one's situation, one's difficulty, or even the possibility of better results by using an immoral means. Justifying the ends by the means derives from a lack of integrity, a weakness of character where one chooses to succumb to the temptation to sin - the immoral means - and justifies it with the possibility of positive ends. It is a test of the heart: what do you love - ease, productivity and pleasure, or truth, goodness and hope? For without the light of hope, and the faithful life of the hopeful person, willing to undergo the trials of suffering - without the certainty that, in the end, no end is worth a wrong means, no result attained by immoral means will last, and salvation will come - there is only darkness.
With this innate moral compass that all people share, everyone is also capable of having their own attitudes and intellectual beliefs about morality. These primarily derive from the way we understand and interpret the moral sentiments our conscience gives us, and the way we decide to act on them. Through reason, we can expand our morality by implications, religious belief and what we know about human behavior to include things such as culpability, imputability, concupiscence, law, and myriad other concepts. However, reason also gives us the ability to "rationalize" our choices - meaning, we can think up seemingly-reasonable reasons to excuse or justify our choices even though those excuses defy conscience and/or the rational moral framework we believe in. Often, this moral framework is influenced by the excuses we build up over time, a filter through which we experience the world and by which we make choices. This creates an attitude, a way of looking at the world and ourselves that usually determines (though not beyond free will) our moral compass.
One of the most common attitudes that every person is susceptible to is what I call "justification by utility", or to use the philosophical term, utilitarianism. A fundamental principle of objective morality, of a morality independent of the arbitrary preference of the individual person, a morality attested to by the essential logic of philosophy and lived (even if refuted intellectually) by almost every person, is that an action which is objectively moral or immoral is so regardless of the situation or condition of the person. Now, this only involves the moral quality of the action or thing itself, involving the inherent philosophical morality of them; the guilt of the individual is determined by their internal consent and knowledge. But regardless of the person's internal condition, an immoral act is immoral - regardless. Theft, the stealing of one person's private property by another person, is immoral, violating the fundamental human right to private property. But if a severely impoverished or ignorant person steals food, is it still immoral? Yes, the theft itself is still wrong - but the individual's guilt is lessened.
This is an essential principle of morality which utilitarianism rejects. Utilitarianism is the attitude that the morality of an action, separate from the culpability of the actor, is determined by its practical result. Now, the standard by which the practical result is judged to be good or bad is arbitrary, and depends on the placement of another moral belief system atop utilitarianism (such as the affixation of liberal consensus relativism to it featured in the philosophy of desire utilitarianism). But regardless, with this attitude, only the utility of an action determines its morality.
Usually, proponents of utilitarianism would say that actions such as lying, stealing or killing are wrong, since they most often lead to more negative results than positive. Lying creates an unsustainable fantasy, endangers one's reputation and is essentially uncreative, never leading to productive results for the common good. But, what if doing something wrong, such as lying, stealing or killing, does in fact lead to great positive result? This is the true loophole within the attitude (as it is not truly a rational philosophy due to its rejection of constant objective morality) of utilitarianism, and it was the excuse used to justify the Holocaust, the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, stem cell research, contraception - the list is almost infinite.
The opposite of the utilitarian attitude is an attitude of integrity. This, as a virtue, is naturally difficult, the main reason few people have it. Integrity is adhering to what is right and true regardless of one's situation, one's difficulty, or even the possibility of better results by using an immoral means. Justifying the ends by the means derives from a lack of integrity, a weakness of character where one chooses to succumb to the temptation to sin - the immoral means - and justifies it with the possibility of positive ends. It is a test of the heart: what do you love - ease, productivity and pleasure, or truth, goodness and hope? For without the light of hope, and the faithful life of the hopeful person, willing to undergo the trials of suffering - without the certainty that, in the end, no end is worth a wrong means, no result attained by immoral means will last, and salvation will come - there is only darkness.
The Birth of Modernity Part 1
For nearly four centuries before the fall of the Roman Empire, Christianity had become a popular and, when it was made the official Roman religion by Emperor Constantine in c. 313, influential religious movement. The Roman pagan deities had been in decline for centuries, giving way first to worship of Caesar, then to a relativist hedonism very similar to the worldview currently popular in the West. Most Roman citizens spent their days concerned only with the things of the world, the daily trials, duties and pleasures. They abandoned virtue - even as Christianity flourished, the common Roman had already lost all integrity, patriotism, patience and compassion. In fact, Christianity was ridiculed as a "woman's religion" due to the influential roles and high regard women held in the Church, a concept completely foreign to Roman paganism, and the charity of Christians visiting battlefields, tending to victims of both sides, was given a confused response of disgust and appreciation by Roman observers. The legions had forgotten their long-held national pride, military vigor and dignity, giving way to laziness and continual complaining to higher officers and on up to the Caesars who for the most part, before Constantine, were the epitome of the Roman decline.
Because of the heavy, if sporadic, persecutions Christians faced in the Roman Empire, their ability to evangelize outside Rome was very limited. After the Empire was split into the Western Roman and Eastern Byzantine Empires, and particularly after the conquest of Rome by the Goths, Christianity was opened up to the world. Despite the majesty of Byzantium, it reserved much of its splendor and power to the east, leaving the Roman Catholic Church as the torch of civilization, morality and truth in the West. Without borders, Catholic missionaries spread as far and wide as they could, risking (and often suffering) death in the quest to convert the Germanic, Gothic, Celtic, Britannic, Slavic and many other ethnicities of pagan peoples in Europe. At the advent of monasticism in the 500s, developing from Eastern desert hermitage and heralded by the Rule of St. Benedict, communities developed purely to prayer, holiness, charity service and especially to study spread across Europe, carrying Roman culture and Catholic religion to every part of the continent.
As can be seen by the example of Rome, European cultures have a general tendency as regards religious conversion, peculiar to itself: regardless of the popularity of a religion with the people, the whole conversion of a society depended heavily on the conversion of its leader. Christianity had been popular for centuries before Constantine, but only when he converted and made it the official Roman religion did it truly flourish. This was even more so true for other peoples in Europe over the centuries. Almost without exception, the religious allegiance of a society depended inextricably on the religion of their chieftain, king, emperor, etc. Catholic missionaries used many different methods to convert Europe, especially "sanctifying" the native religions by showing their people its similarity to and fulfillment in Catholicism, exemplified by St. Patrick, but the crowning act of European Catholic Christendom was the conversion of Charlemagne and his coronation on Christmas 800 by Pope Leo III. As King of the Franks and the first Holy Roman Emperor, he heralded a massive spread of art, culture, religiosity, morality and the advent of feudalism during what scholars call the Carolingian Renaissance. Under his Catholic leadership, Europe quickly became Christendom, with citizens, who had been leaning towards Catholicism for some time or had been leaning between it and their native paganism, following their leaders who took Charlemagne's cue.
As the religion of the kings and nobility, the Church was voluntarily given important and powerful roles in national politics during the Middle Ages. Cardinals and bishops often acted as chancellors, royal advisors and many other positions, while monasteries were the center of medieval society, representing their hospitals, hostels, colleges, documenters, historians and preservers of language, literacy and academia, particularly the remnants of antiquity. Many popes began in monasteries, and anyone seriously interested in academic studies became a monk. Nuns were equally important, being the primary physicians and caretakers of society. Over time, Catholic clergy and monastic officials with important roles in government and society received heavy financial endorsement of many kinds, including both real coin and goods such as land, livestock or other products, in the form of regular religious tithes and extraneous tokens of appreciation. These gifts usually had one of two motivations: genuine religious obedience and gratitude, or for political position due to these officials' importance in society and government. Often, tithing a cardinal with close ties to the king meant receiving favor and benefits from the king in return. As always happens, as Church officials became wealthy and powerful, being treated as almost supernatural themselves by the people, abuses crept up and spread corruption. This corruption has been largely overestimated over time, largely due to the propaganda of Protestants and others which, as propaganda always does, exaggerated to persuade and emphasize. But it did exist.
One of the main events which carried the Middle Ages into the Renaissance was the Black Plague. Primarily occurring in the 1300s and cropping up sporadically afterwards, it wiped out between 30-60% of the European population, reducing entire regions to vacancy. In the Middle Ages, life was difficult, turbulent and volatile, particularly due to war or other social causes such as poverty or corruption, but the people put their hope and faith in the Catholic Church and in its theology of God, believing that whatever hardships they faced, even death, Heaven awaited the obedient faithful. This worldview created a continent-wide devotion and deep religiosity that formed the center of people's lives. As the Black Plague began, this hope was punctured. For centuries the Church and the national monarchs had delivered the people from invaders, social problems and sin; but now, life seemed doomed to destruction with no end in sight, no cure, no salvation. Desperate, many began using pagan practices such as witchcraft and other superstitions, or the little medicine they knew, trying anything in their power. Many Catholics died in charity to help those inflicted with the Plague, but this did little to relieve the doubt on people's minds.
In the Middle Ages, the minds of people were always turned towards Heaven, even as the sweat of daily toil and pain weighed them down continually. Weekly, or even daily, Mass was the chance to get a preview of Heaven, with the wonderful art, music, bells, smoke, Bible readings, inspiring homilies and, finally, the jewel of the Eucharist, the true Life of Christ before and subsequently within them. But the Plague tore away people's focus from the Heavenly to the earthly, from the spiritual things of God to the physical things of man and nature. The unrelenting environment of death and horrible pain made people doubt and largely reject the hope they had once placed in the Church and her God. In desperation, they began to believe that the only viable, practical and truly moral focus was man and his world, to use it for his benefit - that only we could save ourselves, through power over nature.
This new worldview led into the Renaissance, expressed in its religion, philosophy and culture. Replacing the medieval art which depicted saints, angels and Heavenly things with man and nature; replacing the salvation of Christ through His Church with the industrious power of science; stealing goodness and holiness from God and giving it to a vague concept of "humanity" bound within us by political and religious tyrannies; and replacing egalitarian feudal economy with the mercantile which would lead to capitalism, the Renaissance had begun, and so the modern world.
Because of the heavy, if sporadic, persecutions Christians faced in the Roman Empire, their ability to evangelize outside Rome was very limited. After the Empire was split into the Western Roman and Eastern Byzantine Empires, and particularly after the conquest of Rome by the Goths, Christianity was opened up to the world. Despite the majesty of Byzantium, it reserved much of its splendor and power to the east, leaving the Roman Catholic Church as the torch of civilization, morality and truth in the West. Without borders, Catholic missionaries spread as far and wide as they could, risking (and often suffering) death in the quest to convert the Germanic, Gothic, Celtic, Britannic, Slavic and many other ethnicities of pagan peoples in Europe. At the advent of monasticism in the 500s, developing from Eastern desert hermitage and heralded by the Rule of St. Benedict, communities developed purely to prayer, holiness, charity service and especially to study spread across Europe, carrying Roman culture and Catholic religion to every part of the continent.
As can be seen by the example of Rome, European cultures have a general tendency as regards religious conversion, peculiar to itself: regardless of the popularity of a religion with the people, the whole conversion of a society depended heavily on the conversion of its leader. Christianity had been popular for centuries before Constantine, but only when he converted and made it the official Roman religion did it truly flourish. This was even more so true for other peoples in Europe over the centuries. Almost without exception, the religious allegiance of a society depended inextricably on the religion of their chieftain, king, emperor, etc. Catholic missionaries used many different methods to convert Europe, especially "sanctifying" the native religions by showing their people its similarity to and fulfillment in Catholicism, exemplified by St. Patrick, but the crowning act of European Catholic Christendom was the conversion of Charlemagne and his coronation on Christmas 800 by Pope Leo III. As King of the Franks and the first Holy Roman Emperor, he heralded a massive spread of art, culture, religiosity, morality and the advent of feudalism during what scholars call the Carolingian Renaissance. Under his Catholic leadership, Europe quickly became Christendom, with citizens, who had been leaning towards Catholicism for some time or had been leaning between it and their native paganism, following their leaders who took Charlemagne's cue.
As the religion of the kings and nobility, the Church was voluntarily given important and powerful roles in national politics during the Middle Ages. Cardinals and bishops often acted as chancellors, royal advisors and many other positions, while monasteries were the center of medieval society, representing their hospitals, hostels, colleges, documenters, historians and preservers of language, literacy and academia, particularly the remnants of antiquity. Many popes began in monasteries, and anyone seriously interested in academic studies became a monk. Nuns were equally important, being the primary physicians and caretakers of society. Over time, Catholic clergy and monastic officials with important roles in government and society received heavy financial endorsement of many kinds, including both real coin and goods such as land, livestock or other products, in the form of regular religious tithes and extraneous tokens of appreciation. These gifts usually had one of two motivations: genuine religious obedience and gratitude, or for political position due to these officials' importance in society and government. Often, tithing a cardinal with close ties to the king meant receiving favor and benefits from the king in return. As always happens, as Church officials became wealthy and powerful, being treated as almost supernatural themselves by the people, abuses crept up and spread corruption. This corruption has been largely overestimated over time, largely due to the propaganda of Protestants and others which, as propaganda always does, exaggerated to persuade and emphasize. But it did exist.
One of the main events which carried the Middle Ages into the Renaissance was the Black Plague. Primarily occurring in the 1300s and cropping up sporadically afterwards, it wiped out between 30-60% of the European population, reducing entire regions to vacancy. In the Middle Ages, life was difficult, turbulent and volatile, particularly due to war or other social causes such as poverty or corruption, but the people put their hope and faith in the Catholic Church and in its theology of God, believing that whatever hardships they faced, even death, Heaven awaited the obedient faithful. This worldview created a continent-wide devotion and deep religiosity that formed the center of people's lives. As the Black Plague began, this hope was punctured. For centuries the Church and the national monarchs had delivered the people from invaders, social problems and sin; but now, life seemed doomed to destruction with no end in sight, no cure, no salvation. Desperate, many began using pagan practices such as witchcraft and other superstitions, or the little medicine they knew, trying anything in their power. Many Catholics died in charity to help those inflicted with the Plague, but this did little to relieve the doubt on people's minds.
In the Middle Ages, the minds of people were always turned towards Heaven, even as the sweat of daily toil and pain weighed them down continually. Weekly, or even daily, Mass was the chance to get a preview of Heaven, with the wonderful art, music, bells, smoke, Bible readings, inspiring homilies and, finally, the jewel of the Eucharist, the true Life of Christ before and subsequently within them. But the Plague tore away people's focus from the Heavenly to the earthly, from the spiritual things of God to the physical things of man and nature. The unrelenting environment of death and horrible pain made people doubt and largely reject the hope they had once placed in the Church and her God. In desperation, they began to believe that the only viable, practical and truly moral focus was man and his world, to use it for his benefit - that only we could save ourselves, through power over nature.
This new worldview led into the Renaissance, expressed in its religion, philosophy and culture. Replacing the medieval art which depicted saints, angels and Heavenly things with man and nature; replacing the salvation of Christ through His Church with the industrious power of science; stealing goodness and holiness from God and giving it to a vague concept of "humanity" bound within us by political and religious tyrannies; and replacing egalitarian feudal economy with the mercantile which would lead to capitalism, the Renaissance had begun, and so the modern world.
The Death of Hippocrates
Although it is not as much of a staple of the modern initiation of physicians as it was in the past, the Hippocratic Oath exemplifies the purpose of medicine. Central to this purpose is the upholding, preservation and health of life of all kinds. As Margaret Mead once said: "For the first time in our tradition there was a complete separation between killing and curing. Throughout the primitive world, the doctor and the sorcerer tended to be the same person. He with the power to kill had power to cure, including specially the undoing of his own killing activities. He who had the power to cure would necessarily also be able to kill... With the Greeks the distinction was made clear. One profession, the followers of Asclepius, were to be dedicated completely to life under all circumstances, regardless of rank, age or intellect – the life of a slave, the life of the Emperor, the life of a foreign man, the life of a defective child…" (quoted in a BBC online article about the Oath)
This is the most fundamental purpose of medicine. Yet, in modern times, it is used more as a tool for business, vanity and personal convenience, prioritized over life itself. Befitting the modern trend of individualism, the "iUniverse", where any means necessary are employed to customize life and bend it to one's personal pleasure and profit, the essential value of life is left behind, even from medicine. The taking of an unborn life by a medical physician is the deepest betrayal and taint upon medicine and care giving in general that a physician could perpetrate, aside the horror of a mother choosing to murder their own baby and go against the most fundamental instincts and responsibilities of motherhood. Abortion is done for only one reason; all the excuses pro-abortionists employ are simply thin veils to conceal this deepest attitude: for power. All other desires that go into abortion, such as convenience, emotional relief, avoiding social shame, financial concerns, etc., derive from this essential thirst for power, to rip the maturation of life from God's hands into their own, to triumph over the "chains" of nature which God "imposes" - to be gods themselves. Indeed, this is the mentality of abortion doctors and the mothers who use them, and it is the primary reason used by advocates of abortion such as Christopher Hitchens, Barack Obama and Planned Parenthood. "A woman's choice" is simply a gentler term for power, in the same way, as G.K. Chesterton said, "birth control" means less birth and no control.
Created in the image of God, the human person is the crown jewel of God's Creation. In order to fully adhere to the call to love and responsibility involved in this essential human dignity, and in reciprocation of God's love for us, human activities should always be oriented toward the betterment of mankind. Does this mean always giving people convenience, pleasure, power, ease and even always being nice? No. As any parent can attest, love is not always gentle or easy, but it is always the best thing for everyone - age does not revoke this fundamental truth of human life. Does this mean completely neglecting our pleasures, convenience, basic needs or the condition of the natural environment and its creatures? God forbid. They are all His creatures, stamped with His divine thumbprint, and this innate goodness can only be responded to with reverence, care and prudence in our use of it. But we should always prioritize in truth and love, with God as our highest concern, followed by humanity and afterwards all that which God Himself loves and cares for. By acting as stewards of Creation, we are tasked both with renewing nature to its just vision, without the stain of sin, and orienting it towards the simultaneous affirmation of God and the betterment of mankind. Abortion is the most horrid and tragic wound against this most essential Christian - and indeed human - concept, and the only true remedy is love.
"Can a mother forget her infant,
be without tenderness for the child of her womb?
Even should she forget,
I will never forget you." (Isaiah 49:14-15)
This is the most fundamental purpose of medicine. Yet, in modern times, it is used more as a tool for business, vanity and personal convenience, prioritized over life itself. Befitting the modern trend of individualism, the "iUniverse", where any means necessary are employed to customize life and bend it to one's personal pleasure and profit, the essential value of life is left behind, even from medicine. The taking of an unborn life by a medical physician is the deepest betrayal and taint upon medicine and care giving in general that a physician could perpetrate, aside the horror of a mother choosing to murder their own baby and go against the most fundamental instincts and responsibilities of motherhood. Abortion is done for only one reason; all the excuses pro-abortionists employ are simply thin veils to conceal this deepest attitude: for power. All other desires that go into abortion, such as convenience, emotional relief, avoiding social shame, financial concerns, etc., derive from this essential thirst for power, to rip the maturation of life from God's hands into their own, to triumph over the "chains" of nature which God "imposes" - to be gods themselves. Indeed, this is the mentality of abortion doctors and the mothers who use them, and it is the primary reason used by advocates of abortion such as Christopher Hitchens, Barack Obama and Planned Parenthood. "A woman's choice" is simply a gentler term for power, in the same way, as G.K. Chesterton said, "birth control" means less birth and no control.
Created in the image of God, the human person is the crown jewel of God's Creation. In order to fully adhere to the call to love and responsibility involved in this essential human dignity, and in reciprocation of God's love for us, human activities should always be oriented toward the betterment of mankind. Does this mean always giving people convenience, pleasure, power, ease and even always being nice? No. As any parent can attest, love is not always gentle or easy, but it is always the best thing for everyone - age does not revoke this fundamental truth of human life. Does this mean completely neglecting our pleasures, convenience, basic needs or the condition of the natural environment and its creatures? God forbid. They are all His creatures, stamped with His divine thumbprint, and this innate goodness can only be responded to with reverence, care and prudence in our use of it. But we should always prioritize in truth and love, with God as our highest concern, followed by humanity and afterwards all that which God Himself loves and cares for. By acting as stewards of Creation, we are tasked both with renewing nature to its just vision, without the stain of sin, and orienting it towards the simultaneous affirmation of God and the betterment of mankind. Abortion is the most horrid and tragic wound against this most essential Christian - and indeed human - concept, and the only true remedy is love.
"Can a mother forget her infant,
be without tenderness for the child of her womb?
Even should she forget,
I will never forget you." (Isaiah 49:14-15)
The Birth of Modernity 2
The advent of the Renaissance led to a steady rise in the relative safety of the general population throughout Europe. Mercantile brought exotic resources retrieved by explorers, such as silk, spices and tea, leading to an economic boon that essentially began the middle class, neither peasant nor nobility. This growing merchant economy and the rapid expansion of science and technology created more jobs, a wider variety of career paths, and an explosion of literacy across the continent after the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg around 1400. Customization was made available in the lives of the common people; rather than one outfit, the same material as all other peasants, one could have several, each based on one's personal preferences and style. The individual became the new center of society and life itself, fitting the world to himself.
Having already experienced the deep loss of faith and hope in feudal government and the Catholic Church, nobility was no longer enough in and of itself to possess leadership - politics became the new standard. Replacing the standard of hereditary birth with the combination of new wealth and political requirements, Renaissance leadership developed into a widespread European aristocracy. Castle-centered fiefdoms were slowly replaced with towns governed by politicians and businessmen. As firearm technology developed, expensive and well-trained knights were no longer needed, replaced by conscripted mass forces of commoners with little training or expense to the politicians. Although many remnants of the Middle Ages remained through the Renaissance, in the minds of the people, "medieval" died in the Plague.
With the decline of feudalism, countries once defined by their heritage and ruler became defined by the qualities valued by the common people - ethnicity, national identity, wealth, language, military power, etc. This was the beginning of the modern nation-state, the conception of countries as political entities, separated from other nations only by the general values of the people rather than objective and historical differentiation. Monarchs became merely symbols of the nation itself, not truly above or beyond it, and whenever a monarch attempted to possess ultimate power as they had often held in the Middle Ages, rebellion quickly followed. However, this did not stop them from attempting to gain as much power as possible, far surpassing the power of monarchs in the Middle Ages.
As described in Part One, the conversion of Europe to Catholicism was inextricably linked to its cultural reliance on the decision of its leaders. The philosophical advent of self-reliance, life customization and nationalism which developed in the Renaissance also influenced religion. While in the Middle Ages common people valued sacramental religion, heritage, and living the "heaven on earth" of Catholic Mass in every part of their lives with order and regularity, Renaissance commoners came to value physical health and security, mental pleasure and happiness, individual identity, power and expression, and a religious sentiment reminiscent of the ancient Jewish Sadducees popular in the time of Christ, viewing morality as a means of making this life easier and more pleasant. God and the afterlife became both more personal and distant in the minds of Renaissance people. Despite their emphasis on physical health, happiness and security, they believed God should be absolutely separate from the world, a Platonic spiritual divinity whose perfection lied precisely in His separation from this world and the activities of man which, people came to believe, were completely beneath God's concern. Our salvation, performed entirely by God, was simply done for His glory, and the pursuits of man ranged from meaningless to actual hindrances to the life of faith, only being relevant to our life here.
Equally, the general populace began associating the Catholic Church with the royalty they resented so much. With these changes in values, the wealth and power of the royalty was both despised and envied, being insurance of physical security and the power to attain happiness. As I have said, the Church was deeply involved with national government, especially to the royalty, and due to variously-motivated tithes over the centuries the Church had accumulated great wealth and political influence in Europe. Though the corruption this caused in the Church was greatly exaggerated, its existence was a popular focus of the general population, associated with their mutual distaste for royalty. The symbolic meaning of the Church's liturgical gold and the wealth freely given to it over time was transformed from a religious symbol to one of pomp and greed, with the corruption present in the Church's human members emphasized and highlighted over all else.
The Protestant Reformation was the culmination of these seeds of doubt that had existed since the Plague. Protestant theologians, though often different in their theology, uniformly professed a rejection of the Church, citing its wealth, splendor and holes of corruption as proof that it was not the same Church Christ founded. Already in the mind of the people, this movement became very popular, even in its different forms. Allowed to place nation over church, to localize parishes into distinct churches themselves, to customize one's beliefs and morality based on personal preference and opinion, and replacing the pope with kings, Protestantism was widely accepted. Catholicism came to represent an antiquated ornamentation, making it completely inaccessible and irrelevant to the common people and accordingly unfair, unjust and immoral. In popular middle class culture, going against the traditions and morals of the Church was a personal sign of maturity and independence, feeling that their actions were justified by the unfairness and corruption they perceived in the Church - thus were clerical celibacy, religious authority, iconography and many other Church teachings rejected increasingly over time.
The vast growth of wealth, political power and religious diversity in the Renaissance led to many subsequent historical developments. The revival of superstition and magic in the Black Plague period led to the witch-hunts of the 16th century, the popularity of alchemy which stunted the growth in academic chemistry pursued during the Middle Ages, and the eventual trend of favoring ancient paganism to Christianity exemplified by modern Wicca and neo-paganism. While opposing aristocratic wealth and Church authority was intended by the general populace to decrease their power and corruption, removing the authoritative conscience and charitable service the Church provided gave permission for national leaders to pursue power to the furthest extent they could. Unfortunately, even many in the Church, including popes and cardinals, gave in to this temptation, becoming corrupt and providing a negative example which partially inspired the Protestant movement.
While many negative developments occurred because of the Black Plague and Renaissance, many good things also came about, both in the Catholic Church and secular society. Opposing the Reformation gave unity of doctrine and purpose to the Church, purified its conscience, illuminated its theology, and encouraged acts of charity and self-sacrifice that has been a beacon of inspiration ever since, most exemplified by the English martyrs who were murdered by the English government after King Henry VIII's creation of Anglicanism. Although the Church had been studying, preserving and promulgating Greek and Roman knowledge for a millennium by the time of the Renaissance, focusing on it once again reminded Catholics of their Roman character, especially the Church Fathers and the ideal of civilization. Art, science and democracy flourished, largely from Catholic funding and the innovation of groups such as the Jesuits, and the general tyranny of feudalism was somewhat mitigated. However, it has had negative consequences which have led to terrors, genocides, mass irreligion and immorality ever since, and the ideas that inspired these events cannot be forgotten - even their subliminal traces in ourselves.
In truth, it was not primarily what the Renaissance added to European culture, but what had been left behind in the wake of the Plague, the abandoned legacy of the Middle Ages. This created a hole in the spirit of Europe that many have tried to fill with alternative religions, philosophies that proclaim science, politics or economics as the savior of mankind, and simply an indifferent agnosticism that prefers to let the world unfold around them with comfortable neutrality. None have succeeded, and as long as Europe and all its Western-influenced progeny across the globe continue in futility to replace the universal faith, hope and charity of the Catholic Church, the horrors of the 20th century - even that perpetrated in the privacy of a doctor's office - will continue.
Having already experienced the deep loss of faith and hope in feudal government and the Catholic Church, nobility was no longer enough in and of itself to possess leadership - politics became the new standard. Replacing the standard of hereditary birth with the combination of new wealth and political requirements, Renaissance leadership developed into a widespread European aristocracy. Castle-centered fiefdoms were slowly replaced with towns governed by politicians and businessmen. As firearm technology developed, expensive and well-trained knights were no longer needed, replaced by conscripted mass forces of commoners with little training or expense to the politicians. Although many remnants of the Middle Ages remained through the Renaissance, in the minds of the people, "medieval" died in the Plague.
With the decline of feudalism, countries once defined by their heritage and ruler became defined by the qualities valued by the common people - ethnicity, national identity, wealth, language, military power, etc. This was the beginning of the modern nation-state, the conception of countries as political entities, separated from other nations only by the general values of the people rather than objective and historical differentiation. Monarchs became merely symbols of the nation itself, not truly above or beyond it, and whenever a monarch attempted to possess ultimate power as they had often held in the Middle Ages, rebellion quickly followed. However, this did not stop them from attempting to gain as much power as possible, far surpassing the power of monarchs in the Middle Ages.
As described in Part One, the conversion of Europe to Catholicism was inextricably linked to its cultural reliance on the decision of its leaders. The philosophical advent of self-reliance, life customization and nationalism which developed in the Renaissance also influenced religion. While in the Middle Ages common people valued sacramental religion, heritage, and living the "heaven on earth" of Catholic Mass in every part of their lives with order and regularity, Renaissance commoners came to value physical health and security, mental pleasure and happiness, individual identity, power and expression, and a religious sentiment reminiscent of the ancient Jewish Sadducees popular in the time of Christ, viewing morality as a means of making this life easier and more pleasant. God and the afterlife became both more personal and distant in the minds of Renaissance people. Despite their emphasis on physical health, happiness and security, they believed God should be absolutely separate from the world, a Platonic spiritual divinity whose perfection lied precisely in His separation from this world and the activities of man which, people came to believe, were completely beneath God's concern. Our salvation, performed entirely by God, was simply done for His glory, and the pursuits of man ranged from meaningless to actual hindrances to the life of faith, only being relevant to our life here.
Equally, the general populace began associating the Catholic Church with the royalty they resented so much. With these changes in values, the wealth and power of the royalty was both despised and envied, being insurance of physical security and the power to attain happiness. As I have said, the Church was deeply involved with national government, especially to the royalty, and due to variously-motivated tithes over the centuries the Church had accumulated great wealth and political influence in Europe. Though the corruption this caused in the Church was greatly exaggerated, its existence was a popular focus of the general population, associated with their mutual distaste for royalty. The symbolic meaning of the Church's liturgical gold and the wealth freely given to it over time was transformed from a religious symbol to one of pomp and greed, with the corruption present in the Church's human members emphasized and highlighted over all else.
The Protestant Reformation was the culmination of these seeds of doubt that had existed since the Plague. Protestant theologians, though often different in their theology, uniformly professed a rejection of the Church, citing its wealth, splendor and holes of corruption as proof that it was not the same Church Christ founded. Already in the mind of the people, this movement became very popular, even in its different forms. Allowed to place nation over church, to localize parishes into distinct churches themselves, to customize one's beliefs and morality based on personal preference and opinion, and replacing the pope with kings, Protestantism was widely accepted. Catholicism came to represent an antiquated ornamentation, making it completely inaccessible and irrelevant to the common people and accordingly unfair, unjust and immoral. In popular middle class culture, going against the traditions and morals of the Church was a personal sign of maturity and independence, feeling that their actions were justified by the unfairness and corruption they perceived in the Church - thus were clerical celibacy, religious authority, iconography and many other Church teachings rejected increasingly over time.
The vast growth of wealth, political power and religious diversity in the Renaissance led to many subsequent historical developments. The revival of superstition and magic in the Black Plague period led to the witch-hunts of the 16th century, the popularity of alchemy which stunted the growth in academic chemistry pursued during the Middle Ages, and the eventual trend of favoring ancient paganism to Christianity exemplified by modern Wicca and neo-paganism. While opposing aristocratic wealth and Church authority was intended by the general populace to decrease their power and corruption, removing the authoritative conscience and charitable service the Church provided gave permission for national leaders to pursue power to the furthest extent they could. Unfortunately, even many in the Church, including popes and cardinals, gave in to this temptation, becoming corrupt and providing a negative example which partially inspired the Protestant movement.
While many negative developments occurred because of the Black Plague and Renaissance, many good things also came about, both in the Catholic Church and secular society. Opposing the Reformation gave unity of doctrine and purpose to the Church, purified its conscience, illuminated its theology, and encouraged acts of charity and self-sacrifice that has been a beacon of inspiration ever since, most exemplified by the English martyrs who were murdered by the English government after King Henry VIII's creation of Anglicanism. Although the Church had been studying, preserving and promulgating Greek and Roman knowledge for a millennium by the time of the Renaissance, focusing on it once again reminded Catholics of their Roman character, especially the Church Fathers and the ideal of civilization. Art, science and democracy flourished, largely from Catholic funding and the innovation of groups such as the Jesuits, and the general tyranny of feudalism was somewhat mitigated. However, it has had negative consequences which have led to terrors, genocides, mass irreligion and immorality ever since, and the ideas that inspired these events cannot be forgotten - even their subliminal traces in ourselves.
In truth, it was not primarily what the Renaissance added to European culture, but what had been left behind in the wake of the Plague, the abandoned legacy of the Middle Ages. This created a hole in the spirit of Europe that many have tried to fill with alternative religions, philosophies that proclaim science, politics or economics as the savior of mankind, and simply an indifferent agnosticism that prefers to let the world unfold around them with comfortable neutrality. None have succeeded, and as long as Europe and all its Western-influenced progeny across the globe continue in futility to replace the universal faith, hope and charity of the Catholic Church, the horrors of the 20th century - even that perpetrated in the privacy of a doctor's office - will continue.
True Pro-Choice
In the debates about the morality of abortion, there are usually two self-titled "sides": pro-choice and pro-life. I believe these are, for the most part, misnomers, but also signifying something deeper about each side of the argument and the constituent belief systems supporting them.
Christianity is the primary proponent of pro-life, particularly the Catholic Church, one of the few groups in the world that is opposed to abortion in absolutely all circumstances. The Church's stance on abortion is merely an extension of its fundamental affirmation of life itself, exemplified morally by its stance on birth control, homosexuality, premarital sex, murder, etc. Pro-life for Catholicism is not simply a political movement - it is the expression of a fundamental and necessary worldview within the Church and her Tradition, upholding the inherent value of Creation apart from suffering and sin, and upholding objective morality apart from justification by pain, convenience or perceived "fairness". No difficulty, "cause" or excuse can justify sin.
Most adherents of the pro-choice movement use that term to signify that espoused view that abortion is morally permissible (or at least justified) because the mother has the right to choose for herself with "her own body", as they often say. This is an extension and mirror of the Supreme Court's decision to legalize abortion, itself founded on the argument of the mother's privacy. But in truth, the term pro-choice evidences an attribute of abortion itself.
In reality, the relationship between a mother and her unborn baby is a "pro-choice" arrangement. As a bond between a guardian and a dependant, with the dependant entirely relying on the guardian for life, health and wellness, the mother has the option and power to sever that bond. This applies to all guardian-dependant relationships, exemplified by other actions such as adoption, where the parents completely break their role as provider of the helpless child. But abortion being a pro-choice situation does not give equal validity to both choices of whether to provide for and sustain the dependant unborn baby, or break that connection. Like all situations involving human free will, abortion is pro-choice - but as in all other situations, one choice is wrong, and the other is right.
Having an individual be fully dependant on another person calls that person to love, responsibility, suffering and self-sacrifice for their wellbeing. Even more than in any other kind of relationship, this dependant bond brings to the forefront the centrality of interpersonal, communal responsibility, being "my brother's keeper", even when it inconveniences and even hurts us. The bond of mother and child is the highest expression of this.
If a pregnancy results from a sinful act, such as rape or incest; if it endangers the health or life of mother or baby; if it could involve future suffering of the mother from emotional, financial or social problems, or suffering for a deformed, retarded or unplanned-for baby - nothing can remove the inherent dignity and inalienable value of human life. We can be confused - very easily, in fact. Our culpability can be lessened. But abortion is wrong, and as St. Paul said, we are "without excuse" (Romans 2:1). The law of God is written in our hearts - all have a conscience. How can we not know that murdering an unborn child is wrong?
Or, perhaps a better question would be: how can anything make that murder permissible? The cure for pain, sin and evil is love - we must fight evil with good, not evil. Murder will not remove the taint of rape or incest, poverty or deformity, and there will never be a time when a parent feels absolutely, certainly comfortable with their situation to have a baby. Different excuses have been employed throughout history by to either avoid having children or to terminate those children after conception. But they are just that - excuses. Making abortion illegal is important, yes. But legality does not force abortion - it is chosen from the heart. Only a changed heart can change the world.
Christianity is the primary proponent of pro-life, particularly the Catholic Church, one of the few groups in the world that is opposed to abortion in absolutely all circumstances. The Church's stance on abortion is merely an extension of its fundamental affirmation of life itself, exemplified morally by its stance on birth control, homosexuality, premarital sex, murder, etc. Pro-life for Catholicism is not simply a political movement - it is the expression of a fundamental and necessary worldview within the Church and her Tradition, upholding the inherent value of Creation apart from suffering and sin, and upholding objective morality apart from justification by pain, convenience or perceived "fairness". No difficulty, "cause" or excuse can justify sin.
Most adherents of the pro-choice movement use that term to signify that espoused view that abortion is morally permissible (or at least justified) because the mother has the right to choose for herself with "her own body", as they often say. This is an extension and mirror of the Supreme Court's decision to legalize abortion, itself founded on the argument of the mother's privacy. But in truth, the term pro-choice evidences an attribute of abortion itself.
In reality, the relationship between a mother and her unborn baby is a "pro-choice" arrangement. As a bond between a guardian and a dependant, with the dependant entirely relying on the guardian for life, health and wellness, the mother has the option and power to sever that bond. This applies to all guardian-dependant relationships, exemplified by other actions such as adoption, where the parents completely break their role as provider of the helpless child. But abortion being a pro-choice situation does not give equal validity to both choices of whether to provide for and sustain the dependant unborn baby, or break that connection. Like all situations involving human free will, abortion is pro-choice - but as in all other situations, one choice is wrong, and the other is right.
Having an individual be fully dependant on another person calls that person to love, responsibility, suffering and self-sacrifice for their wellbeing. Even more than in any other kind of relationship, this dependant bond brings to the forefront the centrality of interpersonal, communal responsibility, being "my brother's keeper", even when it inconveniences and even hurts us. The bond of mother and child is the highest expression of this.
If a pregnancy results from a sinful act, such as rape or incest; if it endangers the health or life of mother or baby; if it could involve future suffering of the mother from emotional, financial or social problems, or suffering for a deformed, retarded or unplanned-for baby - nothing can remove the inherent dignity and inalienable value of human life. We can be confused - very easily, in fact. Our culpability can be lessened. But abortion is wrong, and as St. Paul said, we are "without excuse" (Romans 2:1). The law of God is written in our hearts - all have a conscience. How can we not know that murdering an unborn child is wrong?
Or, perhaps a better question would be: how can anything make that murder permissible? The cure for pain, sin and evil is love - we must fight evil with good, not evil. Murder will not remove the taint of rape or incest, poverty or deformity, and there will never be a time when a parent feels absolutely, certainly comfortable with their situation to have a baby. Different excuses have been employed throughout history by to either avoid having children or to terminate those children after conception. But they are just that - excuses. Making abortion illegal is important, yes. But legality does not force abortion - it is chosen from the heart. Only a changed heart can change the world.
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