Lent and the reality of evil

As lent begins, we are reminded of our mortality and the inevitability of death. Lent is that special time of year when we are encouraged to reflect on our lives, their meaning and direction. We’re so busy all year long, that there is seldom time to step back and think about what we believe and how that belief is directing our lives. When things are going well, we tend to credit ourselves and the effort we’ve made to achieve a modicum of success and security. When things go badly and we strugglr to understand why bad things happen, we are more likely to turn to God for answers.
This special liturgical season provides an important reminder about the very nature of life and our existence. It begins with the Ash Wednesday reminder that eventually we will all suffer the same fate in death. But lent ends in the hope of eternal life, as promised by Jesus in His own resurrection. In between, scripture reminds us that Jesus Himself came to reveal the Truth of life that leads to love, happiness and eternal life. The first of these truths is revealed in the gospel from the first Sunday in Lent when Jesus goes out into the desert and is tempted by Satan. He confronts evil and resists the temptations set before Him. The lesson here is that evil exists, it is not a figment of some ancient imagination or superstitious cult. During the first week of lent we hear Jesus teaching us how to pray by giving us the Our Father which concludes with, “… and deliver us from evil. Amen.”
I believe it was Pope Leo XIII who warned that Satan’s greatest accomplishment is in making people believe he does not exist. His encyclical, Rerum Novarum, written in 1891, expressed grave concern for the poor and for workers who were being exploited by unscrupulous governments and employers. He called on government to protect the rights of workers but also defended personal property rights and freedom of action to individuals and families, asserting that it was NOT the government’s job to care for children, and that private property should be regarded as sacred. He was speaking out against totalitarianism, communism, and the evils that were likely to result from the godless governments emerging in Russia and China. He foresaw the prospect of evil penetrating capitalism as well if unbridled power combined with greed. Before dying Pope Leo left us this prayer to St. Michael the Archangel:
“St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.” When people stop believing in the reality of evil, they let down their guard and are more easily deceived by perversions of the truth. Over the past 100 years, Western society has increasingly shed its belief in the existence of evil and replaced it by a more secular world view in which religion is considered archaic and no longer relevant. In this state of mind we are less likely to form our conscience, and more likely to rationalize things that gradually lead us away from God and toward a greater belief in ourselves as the center of our existence. As we gradually distance ourselves from God, there is the potential for a crescendo of evil to permeate our lives without our being aware. We slowly become blinded by our secular worldview and eventually lose sight of the very truth of our existence. We begin to think we are entitled to absolute freedom, to unlimited access to life’s pleasures and rewards, and we no longer see anything wrong with the avoidance of inconveniences that interfere with our immediate comfort and pleasure. In this mode, children can be seen as inconveniences to be avoided and perhaps even the sick and the poor. If they cannot be avoided, we may even rationalize eliminating them.
This scenario may sound like a giant leap, or rather, a ‘descent’ into the darkness of evil and sin, but look around at the world. We’ve not only rationalized the right to destroy unborn children, many European nations have legalized assisted suicide as have three States in our own country. In China where the one-child policy has resulted in a lop-sided ratio of men to woman (in some provinces 7 to 1), sex crimes and human trafficking have increased by 30% in just the last 8 years. What else can that be called but evil?
It may be easy to criticize those who uphold abortion rights, but each of us is subject to temptation and deceptions about the truth of life. How easy it is to allow pride to make us haughty or intolerant of others. How simple it is allow greed to stifle our generosity, or to take advantage of others when opportune. Or how effortless it becomes to avoid speaking the truth in order to keep the peace and to avoid unpleasant discussions.
Lent is the time of year we are called to revisit our beliefs and reinforce our convictions about the truth of life and the direction of our own lives. In the gospel from the first Monday in lent, Jesus reveals what will happen at the end of our lives when we face God. In Matthew 25:31-46 Jesus explains that we are all called to care for one another, feeding the poor, visiting the sick and the imprisoned and so on. When we do this for our brothers and sisters, we do it for Christ Himself and we will be rewarded in heaven. But if we focus instead on ourselves, we may spend eternity alone and separated from God and from everyone else as well, or perhaps with those who are most like us.
Take the opportunity this lent to examine your beliefs and form a moral conscience based not on what’s convenient for you, but what God Himself has taught us about truth. Failure to form your conscience can have disastrous results because your words and actions are the product of your beliefs. Without a well-formed conscience, informed by the Truth about life, as revealed by God, you may be inclined to create your own truths that center around yourself and your selfish desires. This is not the path to eternal life, and it will not serve you well in your human relationships either. Thank God for His revelation about the path to eternal life because this is also the path to human happiness and fulfillment. It is also the path to life-giving love

Clash of Cultures

Over the past several weeks the Culture of Death and the Culture of Life have faced off in a battle of wills and determination.  The Obama administration is determined to require every employer to provide access to contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs (the morning after-pill), and surgical sterilization.   Having reneged on the executive order to provide a strong “conscience clause,” the president refuses to broaden the religious exemption to include Catholic schools, hospitals, and other social service organizations.   After a firestorm of protests from the US Catholic Bishops and many other religious organizations concerned that our First Amendment rights are being abrogated, the president has now come up with the idea that every insurer must provide these services free of charge so that religious organizations can say they are not paying for things they find morally abhorrent. 

What the president doesn’t seem to realize (where are his advisors?) is that almost every employer in the country who has more than a couple hundred employees, does not purchase health insurance, they self-fund their health plans.  Self-Funded Insurance Plans (SFIPs) have been common practice for decades as a means of giving the employer more control over benefit plan design, and for lowering cost by avoiding insurance charges and premium taxes.  Most people are unaware of this practice because third party administrators (TPAs) and insurance companies administer these plans on behalf of the employer.  Under these arrangements, it is the employers’ money paying for the health care, not an insurer.  When a check is issued to pay for health services, the name of the check is the employer’s, not the insurer.   More often than not, the money comes from the employer’s bank account not the insurer or third party administrator.

So despite what the president and the secretary of HHS have said, the ruling will now result in Catholic employers cutting checks to pay for contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and surgical sterilizations.  If a woman obtains these services from Planned Parenthood, a check from the Catholic employer’s account will be cut to pay for it.   So you can see why the Catholic Bishops are outraged and adamantly refuse to comply with this order. 

What we’re seeing here is the Culture of Life refusing to be bullied by the Culture of Death.  In his announcement last week, President Obama used the word “discrimination” to describe the Church’s decision to refuse to provide “preventive health care service for women.”   Ironic isn’t it that the Culture of Death views the Culture of Life as discriminatory when the former endorses and funds the willful and brutal murder of unborn children, and the latter is motivated by an ardent belief in the inherent dignity of every human being, including the unborn?

The line has been drawn.  Bishops have issued letters read at most churches these past two weeks, denouncing the decision by the Obama administration as a clear violation of the First Amendment.  Pastors are urging parishioners to call or write their elected representatives, and ask them to support the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act in Congress.  Many Republicans have already signed on as co-sponsors of the bill, and it will probably come down to a party line vote, unless enough pro-life Democrats cross the party line. 

The outcome of this clash of cultures will be very telling.  If the ruling is not reversed, keep in mind that HHS still has to write hundreds more regulations in order to fully implement Obamacare.   There are lots more opportunities for the current administration to mandate things like physician-assisted suicide, death with dignity guidelines, mandatory inoculation for STDs, and guidelines for how much healthcare can be afforded when spent on the elderly.   Stay tuned.  It’s getting interesting

World Marriage Day 2012

Each year in mid-February the Catholic Church celebrates World Marriage Day.  The casual observer might think this is just a passing nod to Valentine’s Day or perhaps a promo for Worldwide Marriage Encounter.   In fact the Church is one of the few organizations that still recognizes the extreme importance of marriage, and has taken a strong position in defense of marriage, while most of the rest of the world fails to recognize the global efforts to undermine and ultimately destroy this most sacred institution. 

This is no exaggeration, and although it may sound a bit like paranoia, the truth is that decades of subtle attacks on marriage have recently escalated to the level of outright assault.  Consider the fact that the Obama administration has announced its intent to revoke the Defense of Marriage Act while numerous state governments and courts have attempted to redefine marriage to include homosexual relationships.  Liberal judges and courts are even preventing implementation of referendums passed by a majority of voters which defines marriage as between one man and one woman.   Apparently they only believe in democracy when it suits them. 

These assaults on the institution of marriage are being disguised as “civil rights” issues, claiming that gay couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexuals.  These same proponents of gay marriage see no civil rights problem with the intentional and violent murder of millions of unborn children.  Gay couples already have legal rights similar to married couples, in that they can own property in common, assign one another as beneficiaries of their insurance policies, grant legal authority to manage health care decisions, obtain health insurance for partners, and even adopt children.  These are all rights that can be and have been granted by government, but homosexual relationships are not and never will be a sacred institution for the purpose of conceiving children for the continuation of humanity. 

When God created us in His great wisdom and love, He made us men and women.  Our two sexes are complementary in every way, designed in accord with nature for the purpose of conceiving children and raising them in a family characterized by fidelity and lifelong commitment.  God created man and women in His image, so that in our physical, emotional and spiritual unity we would share in the inner life of God’s love as creator and as Love itself.  Our love as man and women is a reflection of the love and unity of God in the Holy Trinity.  This love is characterized by a unity of purpose and commitment that is eternal in nature and infinite in its scope, even to the point of self-sacrifice for the beloved.  This is the love of God as demonstrated by Jesus who described Himself as a bridegroom (humanity being His bride) and referred to heaven as a wedding feast.  His very first public miracle occurred at a wedding feast and His final human act was to sacrifice Himself for the love of all humanity.  This mature and perfect love is the ideal that we aspire to in marriage, and which makes it possible for us to live out our commitments to spouse and children.

Long before becoming Pope, Father Karl Wyjtola wrote a wonderful book entitled, Love and Responsibility in which he described the difference between mature and immature relationships.  Here’s what he wrote, as cited recently in the National Catholic Register:

 In relationships marked by immaturity, “the person is constantly looking inward absorbed in his own feelings.” These relationships demonstrate the typical vagaries observed when individuals allow “sensual and emotional reactions” to control the relationship. In essence, a “subjective aspect of love reigns supreme” and the relationship suffers “unstable and constantly changing” emotions.

Contrary to the inwardness of immature relationships, there is a “mature love” and “is one that looks outward.” As expected, this love is “based not on [the individual’s] feelings, but on the honest truth of the other person” and the “commitment to the other person in self-giving love.” This of course is not a cold rational approach to relationships, but rather the lover can look upon the beloved without any “idealization of that person,” and offer them an authentic love formed by the true identity of the beloved.  A mature outward-looking relation has a developed “serene and confident” character that ceases to look at the beloved as an object and sees them as a person, a person that the lover “actively seeks what is best for the beloved.”                   (National Catholic Register on-line edition, 2/6/2012)

This is the kind of love that is meant to characterize marriage and parenthood.  Unfortunately it is lacking in too many marriages, as evidenced by the high rate of divorce and historic low percentage of married couples (now only 52% of all adults).  How and why has marriage devolved to the point that so many people fear the lifetime commitment of marriage, and seek relationships in which their own desires are more important than the good of their spouse and family?  The answer lies in the fact that our culture has changed and continues to change in ways that distort the notion of freedom, holding up personal and individual freedom as the most important value, to the detriment of marriage and families.  In other words, too many of us are willing to settle for immature love which tends to be self-centered.  This culture change began decades ago when contraception became accepted as the norm and as an entitlement.  Even Sigmund Freud warned that separating sex from the responsibility for children would have disastrous effects on society.  When Pope Paul VI wrote his prophetic encyclical, Human Vitae, he was widely denounced as being out of touch with modern reality for predicting the demise of marriage, the increase in divorces and abortions. He even predicted the economic crisis that ensues when birthrates fall below replacement level as they are now in Europe. However, every one of his predictions has come true, and now the world suffers the effects of millions of broken families, tens of millions of abortions and birth rates so low that we are no longer having enough babies to replace ourselves.  This contraceptive mentality led to what Pope John Paul II described as the “culture of death.”   Although the popes have been described as befuddled old men who are anti-feminists, they have been right about the consequences of putting personal freedom ahead to mature love and commitment, and society is now paying the price for gradually changing our culture to one in which individual rights and freedom are more important than mature love and commitment.

Homosexual relationships tend to be based on the notion of personal freedom in which each person is entitled to obtain whatever pleasures or impulses they believe will make them happy, even to the point of using another person, despite the many risks and consequences it entails. Many gay marriage advocates endorse “open” relationships and some even want to legalize “man-boy” sexual relations.  As bad as the heterosexual divorce rate is, homosexual relationships tend to be even more temporary in nature, making it a tenuous environment for raising children.  Moreover, it is a well-documented fact that children need both father and mother to learn what life and love are really all about.  

The family is the basic unit of society, not the individual, as so many people mistakenly believe.  Families do best when they have a father and mother who love each other, the way God loves us: maturely, completely, unconditionally, and infinitely.  Marriage is not merely a legal contract as so many have come to believe, it is a sacred institution intended by God for the procreation of humanity and for each of us to grow in love and maturity to the point that we learn to act more like God by making sacrifices for those we love and for whom we are responsible.  Within the bonds of a monogamous, permanent union, there are many benefits that far surpass the momentary pleasures of relationships based on lust or convenience.  Married monogamous couples suffer no STDs, are more likely to be happy, financially independent, and emotionally healthy than couples who live together, using their partners to fulfill their desires, only as long as it is convenient to do so.  The consequences of uncommitted sexual partners are almost too numerous to list, but at a minimum include many forms of STDs, unwanted pregnancy, and emotional stress which often leads to depression and its many consequences.

Married love, when it is mature, brings fulfillment, gives meaning to life, and brings with it the many rewards of family life, and most importantly, children who are a blessing beyond compare.  In contrast, relationships characterized by immature love, view children as a burden to be avoided, and when that fails, destroyed.  Marriage is at the very heart of what it means to be fully human, fully alive, and capable of life-giving love.  Our sexuality and fertility is a wonderful gift that not only defines us, but completes us in the holy union of marriage, preparing us for the incomparable joy of parenthood.

Like so many good things created by God, our sexuality can be perverted and abused out of selfish interests.  Left to their own urges, men can become sexual predators who view women not as beautiful children of God, to be respected for their inherent dignity, but as objects for their own selfish desires.   True manhood is achieved only through the disciplines of mature love and self-sacrifice.  True womanhood celebrates fertility and the awesome privilege of bearing children; it does not suppress the most feminine aspect of womanhood, the ability to bear children.   Contraception robs women of their fertility, debases their sexuality and makes them vulnerable to all the negative consequences of immature love. 

Marriage has been severely damaged by the contraceptive mentality our culture has adopted, and billions of women have been victimized by the culture of death which robs them of their sexuality and their unborn children. This is NOT what God intended for men and women.  The God who is love means for us to participate in His love and the love of one another in a culture of life, in which the inherent dignity of every person is honored and respected; in which we make a gift of ourselves to those we love as God loves us.  This is what marriage is all about.  This is the teaching of the Catholic Church.  This is what God wants for us: to love one another as He loves us.  Don’t settle for anything less.   Don’t fall victim to the liberal and progressive idea that marriage is an archaic vestige of our ill-informed past, or that marriage is merely a civil agreement.  Marriage is a Sacrament because it is a visible sign of the invisible reality of God’s love.  Marriage is our opportunity to perfect ourselves in our efforts to love our spouse and our children as God loves us: unconditionally, sacrificially, infinitely, and for all eternity.  Don’t settle for anything less.  Stand up for marriage and for the culture of life.  Nothing less than the future of humanity depends on it.