iacobusm Faith and Culture

Truth is “a Thing” – St. Athanasius in the 21st Century

St. Athanasius, Otto Bitschnau, 1883

 Truth is a Thing 

     Truth is “a thing,” to use the current jargon.  Today’s memorial of St. Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, commemorates a man who suffered greatly to safeguard the Truth of Jesus Christ. The 4th century theologian and Bishop of Alexandria dedicated his life to fighting the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ. The Arians were tenacious and unforgiving in their attacks on Athanasius. He “was banished five times and spent 17 years of his life in exile for the defense of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity” (St. Athanasius, catholic.org). At times he was opposed by a wide array of bishops, as well as the Roman emperor himself.  He appeared to be standing alone in defense of orthodox Chrstian belief. His lonely stance earned him the nickname Athanasius Contra Mundum (Athanasius Against the World).

 

     The battle for Truth continues today.  The modern day descendants of the Arians are still with us.  There are still those, even bishops, who would turn the Church of Jesus Christ into something more worldly.  We still need Catholic Christians to stand up and proclaim, as St. Athanasius did, that Truth is a Thing.

 A Grim Trajectory 

   In honor of today’s Memorial of St. Athanasius I’m revisiting a piece I first published on November 21st, 2014.  Much has changed since then: I no longer teach in a Catholic school, for instance.  Anthony Esolen likewise no longer teaches in the nominally Catholic college he has sometimes referred to as “St. Eustaby” (pronounced “Saint Used-To-Be”, as in used to be Catholic). By all reports he’s finding the environment and student body at Magdalen College in Warner, NH, much more attuned to the traditional Catholic understanding of God and His universe.

     In the world outside, however, things have travelled even further along the same grim trajectory.  Just as ecclesiastical and temporal  powers joined forces against Athanasius, powerful institutions of our day are uniting to impose an alternative “truth.”  Today, they deny even such basic natural truths as the difference between the two sexes. Read on to see why, more than ever, we need to assert that Truth is a Thing.

 Athanasius Against the World 

St. Athanasius and the Nicene Fathers with the Nicene Creed

   Let’s go back in time to the fall of 2014.  I’ll share just a couple of the highlights, or better yet lowlights.  There was the Sunday when I found myself berated from the pulpit.  Not me personally, but me and people like me.  We were bad Catholics because we expected Catholic clergy to speak out in support of the Church’s moral teaching on issues such as abortion, marriage, serial adultery, etc.  We were told we should be more like the Pope, welcoming everyone with a wink and nod. We should just stick to talking about Jesus (too bad Pope Francis didn’t get the memo: see here).

       Then there was a Friday afternoon. This time I found myself trying to explain the Church’s teaching on human sexuality to a classroom full of fourteen-year-olds. My young theology students found my assertion that one need not indulge any and every sexual desire to be novel and inexplicably bizarre. I began to feel a little bit like Athanasius Contra Mundum.  Shouldn’t these kids have heard this somewhere before, or from someone, anyone, beyond their 9th grade religion teacher?  Even students from church-going families seemed unfamiliar with the idea that there is a real alternative to the self-righteous libertinism of the popular culture.  This particular group was not unique. I had been seeing it more and more over the years.

The Good Professor Says His Piece 

     Coincidentally (perhaps?), when I arrived home that same day my lovely bride wanted to share an article with me. Anthony Esolen had just published a piece in Crisis (“Who Will Rescue the Lost Sheep of the Lonely Revolution?”).  Apparently, Dr. Esolen was also getting rather frustrated with trying to reach students who have grown up immersed in the grim propaganda of the sexual revolution. In his article he addressed himself, not to the students themselves, but to the adults responsible for their moral formation:

Let me speak up for the young people who see the beauty of the moral law and the teachings of the Church, and who are blessed with noble aspirations, but who are given no help, none, from their listless parents, their listless churches, their crude and cynical classmates, their corrupted schools.

      These youths and maidens in a healthier time would be youths and maidens indeed, and when they married they would become the heart of any parish. Do we expect heroic sanctity from them? Their very friendliness will work against them. They will fall. Do you care? Many of these will eventually “shack up,” and some will leave dead children in the wake of their friendliness.

     Where are you? You say that they should not kill the children they have begotten, and you are right about that. So why are you shrugging and turning aside from the very habits that bring children into the world outside of the haven of marriage?

 The Self-Help Guy Agrees 

Esolen makes a number of important points. First, that our culture is toxic. Next, that its moral corruption has very real material consequences. Finally, and most damning, that we have largely abandoned our young people to it.  

     Some years ago the late self-help author Stephen Covey made a similar argument:

In the past, it was easier to successfully raise a family ‘out-side-in’ because society was an ally, a resource.  People were surrounded by role models, examples, media reinforcement, and family-friendly laws and support systems that sustained marriage and helped create strong families. Even when there were problems within the family, there was still this powerful reinforcement of the whole idea of successful marriage and family life . . . (Stephen Covey, The7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, p. 15). 

 After the Revolution 

That is no longer the case. In fact, society now actively subverts parents’ efforts to raise their children: it is, as Covey puts it, “family-fatal”. He marshals an impressive array of statistics (he cites sources for all of these in his book) to support his assertion:  

  • Illegitimate birth rates have increased more than 400 percent.
  • The percentage of families headed by a single parent has more than tripled.
  • The divorce rate has more than doubled. Many project that about half of all new marriages will end in divorce.
  • Teenage suicide has increased almost 300 percent.
  • Scholastic Aptitude Test scores among all students have dropped 73 points.
  • The number one health problem for American women today is domestic violence, four million women are beaten each year by their partners.
  • One fourth of all adolescents contract a sexually transmitted disease before they graduate from high school.
  • Since 1940 the top disciplinary problems in public schools have changed from chewing gum and running in the halls to teen pregnancy, rape, and assault. (Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, p. 16)

     Covey’s book was published in 1997. I guarantee that these statistics have not changed for the better in the intervening 25 years.  And these are only some of the more obvious bad consequences of what Esolen calls the “Lonely Revolution.”

 Who Needs Those Goofy Rules Anyway? 

     But don’t take my word for it. Almost two decades later, the Catholic News Agency brought us “Agree to Disagree: Why Young Catholics Pose a Unique Challenge For the Church.”  The U.S. bishops had commissioned a study of young Catholics. Even those who considered themselves devout felt free to ignore “’goofy’ rules” that they did’t like:

If any Church teachings conflict with their own perceptions, young people simply “tune out” the teachings.

“They agree to disagree with the Church,” [Archbishop Thomas Wenski] said.

Furthermore, young Catholics are sensitive to language that could imply judgment. “For them, language like ‘hate the sin love the sinner’ means ‘hate the sinner’,” Archbishop Wenski said.

     The last sentence gives the game away, even if the article does not explicitly say which particular “goofy” rules are at issue. The conflation of the sin with the sinner is a preferred tactic that the storm troopers of the Sexual Revolution. They often employ it in conjunction with the damning charge of “judgmentalism” to lead good Christians into error. Truth is not a thing for the revolutionaries.

 Qui Bene Distinguit, Bene Docet 

The Church, on the other hand, follows the old legal maxim Qui bene distinguit, bene docet. In English, “he who distinguishes well, teaches well.” She has always understood that “hating the sin” is not the same as “hating the sinner.” In fact, if we love the sinner we must hate the sin, because sin poisons the soul of the sinner. Notice, by the way, the Latin word docet, “teach.” It comes from the same root as doctrine. Doctrine is the sacred teaching of the Church.  

     If those responsible for teaching doctrine don’t teach, then those under their tutelage will be left to the teaching of the World.  We have seen that the World “does not distinguish,” non distinguit.  In fact, it intentionally fails to do so, in order to deceive. Is it any wonder, then, that our young people also non distinguunt? The Church is supposed to be a Sign of Contradiction (Luke 2:34). If all she offers in the face of sin is a Nod and a Wink, however, what is she teaching? How is any distinction possible between her teaching and what the Conventional Wisdom has on offer?  Do we not then give tacit assent?

Where’s That in The Bible? 

     The underlying problem is not a new one.  Let’s go back a little further into the past, to the Book of the Prophet Ezekial:

If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you will have saved your life.  (Ezekial 3:18-19)

But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you will have saved your life.  (Ezekial 3:18-19)

Ezekial, by Michelangelo, 1508-1512

 A Prophetic Office 

All of us baptized Christians have a prophetic office, and the warning addressed to Ezekial above applies to all of us, as the Letter of James tells us:

My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and some one brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20)

When it comes to guiding the young, our Lord himself puts the matter even more starkly:

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)

Avoiding unpleasant truths, it seems, is not an option.

 The Truth That is The Thing

     Let’s return briefly to the scolding homilist I mentioned above. He’s correct that we need to model the love of Jesus. We do that, however, when we speak the Truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).  When we distinguish between the sin and the sinner, we can show that we hate the sin because of our love for the sinner, because we understand the harm it is doing him.  

     I once heard a Catholic radio host wrap up his show with a nice summation of this truth.  “The worst thing you can do for somebody” he said, “is to allow him to wallow in sin.”  That’s exactly right. It is more loving to warn a person about sin, with all its painful consequences, than to leave them ignorant of something that’s destroying them.  That’s the truth, and truth is indeed a thing. Yes, we should talk about Jesus, by all means. And didn’t he suffer and die for the express purpose of saving us from sin?

 Go and Sin No More 

     I’m not saying we should be mean, or accusatory, or call people names.  We do, however,  need to recognize, as Anthony Esolen points out, that the currently popular sexual sins are not simply harmless “peccadilloes.” Sexual sin destroys families and ruins lives. It puts people in danger of being lost . . . forever.  Jesus saved the woman caught in adultery from stoning, but he also told her: “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11).  We all, and particularly those of us who are parents, teachers, and leaders, should be prepared to say the same.

 

 

iacobusm Faith and Culture, Pro-Life

Random Selection Favors Religion, or, What Would Darwin Do?

I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

Spes in Domino
               The Marriage, by Pietro Longhi, c. 1755

An Angry God

Random selection appears to have doomed its most enthusiastic promoters to extinction.

     I want to be clear that I am not taking issue in this post with the theory of evolution per se, or even with Darwin’s specific take on it in particular. Just as there is a “Spirit of Vatican II” that doesn’t concern itself overmuch with what the Second Vatican Council actually decreed, there is a Spirit of Darwinian Evolution that invokes evolutionary theory as a sort of charm that wards off the need for a Creator, but doesn’t feel the need to explain how. It’s that totemic use of evolution, with a quasi-mythical Darwin as its high priest, that I’m referring to here.  My whole point, in fact, is that if materialist atheists were actually to apply evolutionary theory to themselves, they would have to admit that unbelieving humanity is doomed.

Charles Darwin: Prophet of an angry god

   Let’s start with atheism itself. Atheism and the related materialist philosophy are often described as religions, or as quasi-religions.  There’s something to that.  For unbelievers, a dogmatic adherence to the tenets of their ideology often seems to play the role that religion and devotion to God fulfills in other people’s lives.  It certainly is the case that many of those who reject religious belief treat Darwinian evolutionary theory with almost religious awe, and have turned the man himself into something of a god (Darwin Fish, anyone?), or at least a prophet.  If he is a prophet, however, he’s a prophet in the mold of the mythological Greek prophetess Cassandra, whose prophecies were never believed.  The evidence is pretty clear: random selection likes religion, but is not a fan of atheism.
     Before I look into the matter more directly, I should provide a little context. In my years teaching in Catholic schools I often engaged in dialogue with young unbelievers who were enamored of proselytizing atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris (if a messenger of good news is an evangelist, what’s the messenger of bad news? A cacangelist? Just a thought.).  In the course of these discussions, I came to an interesting realization: in Darwinian terms, atheism is a negative trait.  In strictly materialist terms, that is, based on the clear, straightforward evidence, if we all became atheists, humanity would cease to exist in short order.

Believe the Science


      I soon discovered that I was not at all the first person to come to this conclusion: I found a report on a site called Scilogs* about the work of German researcher Michael Blume, who says that

It is a great irony but evolution appears to discriminate against atheists and favor those with religious beliefs . . . Most societies or communities that have espoused atheistic beliefs have not survived more than a century.

     Blume’s research shows that not just atheist societies, but unbelieving individuals consistently undermine their own posterity:

Blume took data from 82 countries measuring frequency of worship against the number of children.  He found that those who worship more than once a week average 2.5 children [2.1 children per woman is the “replacement rate”, the minimum necessary to maintain a population at its current level] while those who never worship only 1.7 – again below replacement rate.  There was also considerable variation in religious groups . . . Those without a religion, however, consistently averaged less than two per woman below the replacement , whereas those with the strongest and most fundamental religious beliefs had the most children.

Other researchers come to similar conclusions, and not only on the replacement of populations.  On the most basic level, their own individual existence, unbelievers fall short of believers: statistically, those who are actively religious live four years longer.

Viruses of the Mind

What would Charles Darwin say?  It would appear that Evolution is an angry and capricious god indeed, as it has clearly selected its most ardent adherents for extinction.

Endangered species?

    The curious hostility of the process of evolution to the materialist worldview casts a bright light on a contradiction that lies at the heart of the project of atheist proselytization: even if you believe it, why would you want to convince other people? The Dawkinses of the world will reply, as the Blume post says, “that religions are like viruses of the mind which infect people and impose great costs in terms of money, time and health risks.”  This, it seems to me, actually defies reason:  as I ask my unbelieving interlocutors, is it logical to conclude that a world populated by those who think we are nothing but matter created by meaningless, random natural forces will be a better, kinder place than a world that is the home of people who believe we have been created intentionally by a loving God? Can we reasonably expect that those who believe that we are answerable to nobody and morality is just a social construct will be more loving and generous than men and women who are convinced that we have been commanded by a benevolent Creator to love one another?  It just doesn’t make sense.

God is Love (1 John 4:8)

    And not surprisingly, the empirical evidence agrees.  In addition to the demographic data above, anyone who has studied the history of Rome before and after the Christianization of the Empire, can attest to the humanizing effect of Christianity, and that it was that same Christian Church that civilized the barbarians who eventually overwhelmed the Roman state.  Modern day sociological evidence shows the same thing: religious believers (especially Christians) report higher levels of personal happiness (see here, for instance), are more likely to join community and voluntary associations (even non-religious ones), and are more likely to vote. As is the case with the data cited by Blume, the more devout the believer, the stronger the effect.  Arthur C. Brooks copiously documents the same results with a wealth of statistical evidence in his book Who Really Cares: believing Christians are much more involved in donating their time and talents for building up their societies, and are much more willing to spare their personal wealth to help others.   The Catholic Church alone has founded and runs thousands of hospitals, schools, and countless other charitable projects around the world. Is there any organization founded or run by atheists that even comes close? I submit that the reasonable view is the one that fits the evidence, not the one that contradicts both the empirical data and common sense.

     A final point involves getting beyond narrow materialist ideas of what constitutes reason and taking a more expansive (and more traditional) view.  Is The Truth about humanity more likely to be something that diminishes humanity, that tears down our societies, makes our lives meaner, and maybe even leads to our annihilation?  Or does it lift us up, does it promote flourishing societies and happy productive people?  Jesus Christ says “I am The Way, The Truth, and The Life” (John 14:6): doesn’t the evidence bear him out?

 

*The article to which I refer has since been removed.  You can find the same information, and more, on Blume’s own website: http://www.blume-religionswissenschaft.de/english/index_english.html

iacobusm Faith and Politics

I Show You The Times: The Truth v. The Narrative

Sir Thomas More and Family, by Rowland Lackey, c. 1594

O, the Times!

 

     We live in interesting times. We have a United States Senator, who is also a licensed doctor, temporarily banned from social media for spreading “misinformation”about face masks, even though the CDC has admitted that his offending claim is true. The President’s press secretary has boldly admitted that the administration is coordinating with large, powerful media entities such as Facebook to censor people who contradict the politically correct narrative concerning COVID. The totalitarian squelching of dissenting voices even goes beyond the reach of the media behemoths: a doctor in Maine has had her license suspended for prescribing ivermectin to COVID sufferers.  Ivermectin has a decades-long safety record, and dozens of studies around the world have proven it to an extremely effective treatment for COVID, but it contradicts the favored narrative that only the barely year-old mRNA vaccine is an effective treatment for the Dread Disease from Wuhan (and if you dare to present any evidence casting doubt on the safety or efficacy of said vaccine, expect equally harsh consequences).  One more thing: not only was the doctor’s license pulled: she was ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation . . . just as they used to do to dissidents in the old Soviet Union.  Apparently, only an insane person would believe the documented evidence and the evidence of her own eyes instead of the Official Narrative. Oh the times, oh the customs!

     And what times they are.  I find myself thinking of a scene from Robert Bolt’s dramatization of the life of St. Thomas More, A Man For All Seasons. More has just resigned the Office of Chancellor of England because he can’t in good conscience promote King Henry VIII’s efforts to procure an annulment for his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Ann Boleyn.  At the same time, More is trying to protect himself and his family by not publicly opposing the king’s scheme.  When his friend the Duke of Norfolk tries to pin down the former Chancellor about his real position on Henry’s marriage, the following scene ensues:

 

 

MORE (Looks at him, takes him aside; in a lowered voice) Have I your word that what we say here is between us two?

 

NORFOLK (Impatient) Very well.

 

MORE (Almost whispering) And if the King should command you to repeat what I may say?

 

NORFOLK I should keep my word to you!

 

MORE Then what has become of your oath of obedience to the King?

 

NORFOLK (Indignant) You lay traps for me!

 

MORE (Now grown calm) No, I show you the times.

The Truth v.  The Narrative

     St. Thomas More lived in a time when men and women had to choose between the Official Narrative and the Truth.  Of course, the choice was starker in More’s day: St. Thomas was ultimately put to death for his refusal to give his public blessing to the King’s new marriage (and also the King’s new role as Pope of England).  There are no beheadings so far in the current War on Reality, and pray God we never reach that point, but losing one’s livelihood and reputation is nevertheless a significant price to pay for the refusal to assent to a lie.

2019 March for Life outside U.S. Supreme Court building

     The current COVID regime is just an example, by the way, just one of the absurdities to which that the Keepers of The Narrative are demanding that we give our “amen!”  And there were many more examples before our day. We might say that the whole thing goes back before the creation of this world to the rebellion of the Prince of Lies and his hench angels in Heaven, and to his sly promise to our first father and mother: “when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5).

     The recent American version goes back at least thirty-eight years, to January 22nd 1973, when the United States Supreme Court imposed an unrestricted abortion regime on this country. In its decision the court intoned that “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” But the question of when life begins was not difficult at all: no serious biologist would have asserted then, and would not now, that the human embryo was not alive. The question before the court was whether all human life is worthy of protection, or only some human lives, to which the court replied, in essence: the only worthy lives are those that The Narrative chooses to protect.


Disengaging From the Tech Tyrants

    The creeping tyranny of The All Mighty Narrative is nothing new, then, but it has grown in alarming ways in recent years. The social media companies that have acquired a stranglehold over the transmission of information have become bolder in using their power, in conjunction with other financial and political interests, to shut down any dissent from The Narrative. That’s why I started this blog, one year ago today (January 19th, 2021).  As I said in my introductory post:

This new blog grew out of my efforts to disengage from the giant communications companies that seem increasingly intent on squashing any voices that don’t submit to a certain secular and, increasingly, totalitarian social and political perspective (needless to say, traditional Christian belief and morality lie very much outside of that perspective).

I had two main ideas in mind: the first was to promote independent, dissenting voices outside the domain of the Tech Tyrants.  The other was to stop feeding The Beast by avoiding its products whenever possible. Ideally, this could be done without any added expense. To that end my new blog was not on the Google acquisition Blogger (where I had published previously) but on WordPress.com, which provides a free blogging platform.  I set out to post sacred music clips, one every week if possible, and none of them from the Google-acquired YouTube.  Since I had forsworn Facebook and Twitter (and all their works and promises) I shared my posts on other social media outlets that did not consider themselves part of the Vanguard of the Woke Revolution (chiefly Gab and Mewe).

One Year Later

     I’m still at it one year later.  There have been some snags along the way.  Wordpress.com places ads on free websites.  I was under the impression that the ads were only for the hosting service itself.  When I discovered otherwise, I checked in on my blog from a computer at work.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Spes In Domino, my faithful Catholic web site, was advertising contraceptives.  I decided that as soon as possible I would move to a self-owned website, which I did as soon as another family member acquired a hosting package for an ecommerce site.  It was well worth the $20 annual fee for the domain name.

Samizdat from Soviet Russia

Those are minor inconveniences, of course, and a small price to pay for the ability to speak the truth.  Under the totalitarian communist regime in the Soviet Union dissidents intent on telling the truth used to evade the censorship and the distortions of the official press by distributing samizdat, which was no more than mimeographed pamphlets passed from hand to hand. We need to be as resourceful in fighting the creeping totalitarianism in our world today.

     Granted, nobody in the United States is being sent to the Gulag just for opposing the favored Narrative . . . at least not yet. On the other hand, a recent Rasmussen Reports poll has found that “Nearly half (48%) of Democratic voters think federal and state governments should be able to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.”  That’s a frighteningly large chunk of the population who favor the security state over the free exchange of ideas. The Narrative is a jealous god indeed.

     Ultimately, it comes down to a matter of truth. Our Lord tells us “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” (Luke 16:10) How can we hope to be faithful to Him Who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6) if we’re not faithful to the ordinary everyday truths?  Christ further tells us that “the Truth will set you free”(John 8:32).  There is no freedom without truth.  Lord, give us the courage to face and to speak the truth!  

iacobusm Faith and Culture

Don’t Be So Judgmental!

My, how times have changed.  We used to have the Seven Deadly Sins and the Sins That Cry Out to Heaven For Vengeance. Most of these don’t seem of much concern to most people any more, even in many institutions that claim to be Catholic; some are even treated almost as virtues. In their place is a larger and ever enlarging Index of Forbiddden -isms: transphobism, climate denialism, islamophobism, etc., with the Granddaddy of All, the Wickedest Capital Sin, being Judgmentalism  (unless you’re judging someone you’re accusing of judgmentalism . . . or one of the other isms . . . in which case it is positively a virtue).

“The Granddaddy of All, the Wickedest Capital Sin today, is Judgmentalism“

     I first published the Throwback piece below on November 21st, 2014.  Much has changed since then: I no longer teach in a Catholic school, for instance.  Anthony Esolen* likewise no longer teaches in the nominally Catholic college he has sometimes referred to as “St. Eustaby” (pronounced “Saint Used-To-Be”, as in used to be Catholic). By all reports he’s finding the environment and student body at Magdalen College in Warner, NH, much more attuned to the traditional Catholic understanding of God and His universe.  In the world outside, however,  things have travelled even further along the same grim trajectory . . .  

Athanasius Against the World

   I hesitate to use the now overworked term “perfect storm”, but the past few weeks I have felt like my world has been the nexus of a whole collection of angry weather systems.  I’ll share just a couple of the highlights, or better yet lowlights.  There was the recent Sunday when I found myself (not me individually, but me and people like me) berated from the pulpit for having the temerity to expect Catholic clergy to speak out in support of the Church’s moral teaching on issues such as abortion, marriage, serial adultery, etc.  We were told we should be more like the Pope, and welcome everyone with a wink and nod and just stick to talking about Jesus (too bad Pope Francis didn’t get the memo: see here).  Then there was a recent Friday afternoon, when I found myself trying to explain the Church’s teaching on human sexuality to a classroom full of fourteen-year-olds, to whom the idea that one need not indulge any and every sexual desire seemed novel and inexplicably bizarre. I began to feel a little bit like Athanasius Contra Mundum**, “Athanasius Against the World”.  Shouldn’t these kids have heard this somewhere before, or from someone, anyone, beyond their 9th grade religion teacher?  Even students from church-going families seemed unfamiliar with the idea that there is a real alternative to the self-righteous libertinism of the popular culture.  This particular group was not unique: I’ve been seeing it more and more over the years.

Athanasius Contra Mundum (Otto Bitschnau)

The Good Professor Says His Piece

     Coincidentally (perhaps?), when I arrived home that same day my lovely bride was eager to share with me an article by Anthony Esolen that had just come up on the Crisis Magazine website (“Who Will Rescue the Lost Sheep of the Lonely Revolution?”).  Apparently, Professor Esolen is also getting rather frustrated with trying to reach students who have grown up immersed in the grim propaganda of the sexual revolution. These young people either simply don’t know that there is another (more excellent) way, or they have heard the truth, but seeing no examples of anyone celebrating this truth or living it out, simply discount it.  He makes an impassioned plea to all purportedly Catholic adults, including, emphatically, those with teaching authority in the Church, to “man up”, as it were (my term, not his), and speak boldly for the sake our young people who are being left to wither on the vine:

Let me speak up for the young people who see the beauty of the moral law and the teachings of the Church, and who are blessed with noble aspirations, but who are given no help, none, from their listless parents, their listless churches, their crude and cynical classmates, their corrupted schools. These youths and maidens in a healthier time would be youths and maidens indeed, and when they married they would become the heart of any parish. Do we expect heroic sanctity from them? Their very friendliness will work against them. They will fall. Do you care? Many of these will eventually “shack up,” and some will leave dead children in the wake of their friendliness. Where are you? You say that they should not kill the children they have begotten, and you are right about that. So why are you shrugging and turning aside from the very habits that bring children into the world outside of the haven of marriage?

The Self-Help Guy Agrees

Esolen makes a number of important points, particularly that our culture is toxic, that its moral corruption has very real material consequences, and, most damning, that we have largely abandoned our young people to it.  Some years ago the late self-help author Stephen Covey pointed out (in only somewhat less emotional language) that raising morally sound and emotionally healthy children has become much more difficult in our current environment:

In the past, it was easier to successfully raise a family ‘out-side-in’ because society was an ally, a resource.  People were surrounded by role models, examples, media reinforcement, and family-friendly laws and support systems that sustained marriage and helped create strong families. Even when there were problems within the family, there was still this powerful reinforcement of the whole idea of successful marriage and family life . . .  

(Stephen Covey, The7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, p. 15)

That is no longer the case. In fact, society now actively subverts parents’ efforts to raise their children: it is, as Covey puts it, “family-fatal”. He marshals an impressive array of statistics (he cites sources for all of these in his book) to support his assertion:  

  • Illegitimate birth rates have increased more than 400 percent.
  • The percentage of families headed by a single parent has more than tripled.
  • The divorce rate has more than doubled. Many project that about half of all new marriages will end in divorce.
  • Teenage suicide has increased almost 300 percent.
  • Scholastic Aptitude Test scores among all students have dropped 73 points.
  • The number one health problem for American women today is domestic violence, four million women are beaten each year by their partners.
  • One fourth of all adolescents contract a sexually transmitted disease before they graduate from high school.
  • Since 1940 the top disciplinary problems in public schools have changed from chewing gum and running in the halls to teen pregnancy, rape, and assault. (Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, p. 16)

     Covey’s book was published in 1997; I guarantee that these statistics have not changed for the better in the intervening 17 years [now 24 years].  And these are only some of the more obvious bad consequences of what Esolen calls the “Lonely Revolution”.

Who Needs Those Goofy Rules Anyway?

     If you’d like something more recent, here’s an item from last week, an article from the Catholic News Agency called “Agree to Disagree: Why Young Catholics Pose a Unique Challenge For the Church.”  It seems that a recent study commissioned by the U.S. bishops has found that young Catholics, even those who consider themselves devout, feel free to ignore “’goofy’ rules” that they don’t like:

If any Church teachings conflict with their own perceptions, young people simply “tune out” the teachings.

“They agree to disagree with the Church,” [Archbishop Thoma Wenski] said.

Furthermore, young Catholics are sensitive to language that could imply judgment. “For them, language like ‘hate the sin love the sinner’ means ‘hate the sinner’,” Archbishop Wenski said.

     The last sentence gives the game away, even if the article does not explicitly say which particular “goofy” rules are at issue: the conflation of the sin with the sinner, in conjunction with the damning charge of “judgmentalism”, is a preferred tactic that the storm troopers of the Sexual Revolution often employ to lead good Christians into error.  The Church, on the other hand, guided by the old legal maxim Qui bene distinguit, bene docet, “he who distinguishes well, teaches well”, has always understood that not only is “hating the sin” not the same as “hating the sinner”, but in fact that if we love the sinner we must hate the sin. Notice, by the way, that docet, “teach”, comes from the same root as doctrine: doctrine is the sacred teaching of the Church.  If those responsible for teaching doctrine don’t teach, then those under their tutelage will be left to the teaching of the World, which, as we have seen, non distinguit, “does not distinguish”, and in fact intentionally fails to do so in order to deceive. Is it any wonder, then, that our young people also non distinguunt? The Church is supposed to be a Sign of Contradiction (Luke 2:34), but if all she offers is a Nod and a Wink, then how is any distinction possible between her teaching and what the Conventional Wisdom has on offer?  Do we not then give tacit assent?

     Where’s That in The Bible?

     The underlying problem is not a new one.  Let’s go back a little into the past, to the Book of the Prophet Ezekial:

If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but you will have saved your life.  (Ezekial 3:18-19)

“. . . that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood I will require at your hand.” -Ezekial 3:18

Ezekial, by Michelangelo

All of us baptized Christians have a prophetic office, and the warning addressed to Ezekial above applies to all of us, as the Letter of James tells us:

My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and some one brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20)

When it comes to guiding the young, our Lord himself puts the matter even more starkly:

Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)

Avoiding unpleasant Truths, it seems, is not an option.

Go And Sin No More

     To return to the homilist with whom I began this little excursus, he’s correct that we need to model the love of Jesus, but we do that when we speak the Truth in love (Ephesians 4:15).  When we distinguish between the sin and the sinner, we can show that we hate the sin because of our love for the sinner, because we understand the harm it is doing him.  I recently tuned in to a Catholic radio station just in time to hear a host ending his show by saying: “The worst thing you can do for somebody is to allow him to wallow in sin.”  That’s exactly right: it is more loving to warn a person about sin, with all its painful consequences, than to leave them ignorant of something that’s destroying them.  And if we’re going to talk about Jesus, should we not mention that he suffered and died for the express purpose of saving us from sin?

     I’m not saying we should be mean, or accusatory, or call people names.  We do, however,  need to recognize, as Anthony Esolen points out, that the currently popular sexual sins are not simply harmless “peccadilloes”: they destroy families and ruin people’s lives, and put people in danger of being lost forever.  Jesus saved the woman caught in adultery from stoning, but he also told her: “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11).  We all, and particularly those of us appointed as teachers, should be prepared to say the same.

*Dr. Esolen, by the way, has another excellent article in Crisis Magazine today: “The Church and the Barbarians“

**St. Athanasius of Alexandria (AD 296-373) was known as Athanasius Contra Mundum, “Athanasius Against the World” because he vigorously defended orthodox Trinitarian belief against the Arian heresy, in opposition to most of his fellow bishops and a series of Roman emperors.

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“The Way” To Where, Exactly?

     Beware of anyone whose key concept is power.

     Some years ago I worked in a Catholic school which decided to assign summer reading to the entire school community, including both staff and students. The idea was to have a school wide discussion of the book in September focusing on some key component of our Catholic Identity.  The book chosen for the first year was a dystopian science fiction novel set in a future where water is a scarce commodity, and our “Catholic” theme seems to have been Climate Change (unfortunately, this was about the time of Laudato Si’). When I first saw the prepared questions we were given to guide the discussion with our students I was immediately struck with the fact that every single question was about “power”: who had the power in this situation, what did so-and-so do with his power here, what sort of power could such-and-such a person apply there, etc.  

‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ -2 Cor 12:19

(Martyrdom of St. Paul, by Mattia Preti, 1656-1659)

     It all seemed very foreign to the Christian, Biblical worldview.  That’s not the way St. Paul talks. In his Second Letter to the Corinthians he says, “but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9) Another example of the Biblical take on power is the magnificent Psalm 119, the longest of the psalms, in which the theme is the Will of God.  It contains 176 verses, and every single one of them contains a term denoting God’s Will. I’ve put the key words in the first eight verses below into bold type:

1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless,

     who walk in the law of the LORD!

2 Blessed are those who keep his testimonies,

     who seek him with their whole heart,

3 who also do no wrong,

     but walk in his ways!

4 Thou hast commanded thy precepts 

     to be kept diligently.

5 O that my ways may be steadfast

      in keeping thy statutes!

6 Then I shall not be put to shame,

     having my eyes fixed on all thy commandments.

7 I will praise thee with an upright heart,

     when I learn thy righteous ordinances.

 8 I will observe thy statutes;

     O forsake me not utterly!

And so it goes on for another 168 verses. There’s no question here who “has the power”, and it’s not me, you, or anyone else on this Earth, but God Almighty alone. The two biblical citations above are not outliers:  look for the scriptural support for the idea of “empowerment” all you like, you won’t find it.  The obsession with power comes from a worldly, and very often from a Marxist, orientation. It has nothing in common with the Jesus Christ who said:

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:44-45)

     I immediately thought of my summer reading experience when I read a certain article this week on The Catholic Thing website. The article, written by Fr. Gerald E. Murray, is called “Germany’s Schismatic Synodal Way.” The “Synodal Way” is a project jointly created by the German bishops and a lay group called The Central Committee of German Catholics (bonus points if you can name another well-known organization whose governing body was called the “Central Committee”). You might have guessed from the title of his article that Fr. Murray is not a fan of the Synodal Way, but he does quote extensively from the initiative’s Fundamental Text to support his critique.  One doesn’t need to look far to see problems; really, one needn’t look further than the first word in the document’s title.  It’s called: “Power and separation of powers in the Church – Common participation and sharing in the mission“. And power, in fact, is precisely what it’s all about.

     My purpose is here not to present a thorough discussion about the errors inherent in the Synodal Way; Fr. Murray does an excellent job of that in his article.  I’m just going to highlight a few points from the Fundamental Text to show how The Synodal Way’s obsession with power is the Wrong Way. The “Power” document, for instance, foresees

. . . a new council, in which believers within and outside of ordained ministry deliberate and decide together on questions of theology and pastoral care as well as on the constitution and structure of the Church.

Notice how the text takes for granted that “questions of theology” and other critical matters are not matters of truth, but of who has the power to decide. Then there’s this:

ecclesiastical decision-makers should also be elected and regularly face elections in which the powers granted to them can be confirmed or delegated to others.

How telling that the text speaks of powers granted by electors, rather than episcopal authority conferred by Christ.  Not surprisingly, it turns out that the Synodal Way doesn’t put a whole lot of weight on the traditional understanding of the meaning of the episcopacy:

The faithful often accepted them as authorities whose assessments and decisions could not be questioned, as ‘shepherds’ by virtue of divine legitimacy whom they had to obey like ‘sheep.’

The sneer quotes tell us precisely what they think of the office of bishop; a word, by the way, that comes from episcopus,  ἐπίσκοπος in Greek, the “overseer” who watches over the sheep. “Bishop” means “shepherd”. One last quote:

No one has the competence to decide single-handedly on the content of faith and principles of morality; no one has the right to interpret the teachings of faith and morals with the intention of urging others to actions that serve only his interest or correspond to his ideas, but not the convictions of others.

This is an explicit rejection of the ancient understanding of the bishops and the pope not as “deciders” of faith and morals, but simply as conduits whose job is to pass on the faith as handed down by the apostles, who had received it from Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd himself.  The bishops are understood to be both servants to the truth handed on to them from above, and to the people, yes, the “flock” that has been put into their care. If a bishop is in fact “urging others to actions that serve only his interest or correspond to his ideas” then he is abusing his office, and will need to answer for it before God. Those who composed this document don’t see bishops as heirs to the Apostles, but as bureaucrats just like any others. They propose to discard the Church of Jesus Christ for a worldly bureaucracy in which certain people exercise “power”.  

“You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5)
Adam and Eve, by Wolfgang Krodel, 1543

     Clearly, the Church in Germany is in big trouble.  If they adopt this program they will cease to be Catholic in any meaningful sense. One might say that if it has reached the point where such a text is even being seriously considered, then they already have at least one foot out the door.  But this is not just a German or a modern problem: it goes back to the Garden of Eden, when Satan promised Adam and Eve that if they ate the forbidden fruit “You will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5)  You can find people who share the perspective of the Synodal Way in the offices of the USCCB, your local chancery, the Catholic schools, and anyplace else that seems to be a locus of “power”. This same tendency is the spark that has kindled every heresy in the history of the Church.

     It’s not a problem just for “other people”.  Each one of us has our own little “Synodal Way” inside of us.  We all have a desire to make our judgments the final word in questions of theology, church governance, and most especially, morals.  We want to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: we think we can be like God.

     That is a big reason for fasting and sacrifice during Lent.  One reader of last week’s post on whether or not to give up chocolate during Lent emphasized the importance of giving up something that we’re really going to miss.  The idea is that if we truly feel something missing, something we want, we are made to face the fact, over and over again, that our desires (along with our “ideas” and “convictions”) are not the most important thing.  The privations of Lent are a constant reminder that, as Christ said in the Garden of Gethsemane, “not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 22:42) Our Lenten sacrifices may seem like small things, but they are meant orient us to self-denial, because “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10).

“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6)

Today’s non-scriptural reading in the Office of Readings deals with some of these same issues. It comes from  Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World), which observes out that

Some look for complete and genuine liberation for man from man’s efforts alone. They are convinced that the coming kingdom of man on earth will satisfy all the desires of his heart.

Those who do so are bound to be disappointed:

Christ died and rose for all, and can give man light and strength through his Spirit to fulfil his highest calling; his is the only name under heaven in which men can be saved.

As one of those shepherds scorned by the devisers of the Synodal Way put it many centuries ago, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” (St. Augustine, Confessions)

Faithfulness, that is fidelity, not power, is the key word for a Christian.  Being a Christian means being faithful to Christ, not to our own “ideas” or “convictions”.  In case there is any doubt about the “way” we are to follow, Jesus himself tells us: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” (John, 14:6)