Christ The King vs.The Emperor's New Clothes

Today is the last Sunday in the liturgical year and the day on which we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King.  This got me thinking about what kind of king Jesus is, compared to worldly kings and leaders.  The bible is full of stories about kings who were chosen to lead their people, but failed in one way or another, leading to the downfall of the kingdom.  Perhaps the power that goes along with kingship corrupts people or detaches them from an understanding of what is really best for everyone.  The attributes of Christ, Our King, are quite different from the trappings of royalty as we know it in the worldly realm.   Jesus was the most powerful person to have ever walked the earth, but He lived a simple, humble life and never used His power to benefit Himself.  He was so meek that He accepted torture and death without complaint, but rather with a prayer that His captors be forgiven for not knowing what they were doing. 

The hallmarks of Jesus Kingship were truth, mercy, forgiveness, and love, always in the service of others.  Christ, our king, came to reveal the truth about God Our Father and almost everything He said and did was countercultural.  He forgave sinners, rather than repudiating, banishing, or punishing them.  His parable of the prodigal son and His treatment of the woman caught in adultery, reveal a King with the mercy and courage to put love and forgiveness ahead of convention and retribution. 

Compare this to the motives and actions of worldly kings and leaders who never seem to be satisfied with what they have.  They tend to want more and more power and authority, whether they lived in ancient times or more recently with titles like Premier, Prime Minister, or President.   After the Czar was overthrown in Russia, Communist leaders invaded and imprisoned one country after another, creating the USSR.  Not satisfied with the Communist Bloc in Europe, they set their sights on Central and South America where they would have surely taken over that continent, if it had not been for President Kennedy standing up to them over the Cuban missile crisis, and Ronald Reagan boldly supporting anti-communist forces in South America.

Throughout Europe, many counties have now elected leaders who are proponents of Socialism.  The notion of the benevolent king has given way to the false promises of the welfare state.  Having shed all attachments to its Christian heritage, Europe is consciously attempting to become a secular state, advocating equality, even if it means abandoning morality and redistributing wealth.  In doing so, it has devalued and in some cases abandoned the virtues that led to Europe’s greatest successes in the past.  In the process, Europe is creating a nanny state in which people believe they are entitled to economic security, regardless of their personal effort and without the necessity of acquiring the virtues that in the past, led to success.

This past week, we all heard and saw recordings of President Kennedy’s many speeches, including his inaugural when he famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”   He advocated personal effort and responsibility, not government-imposed equality.  In another speech on the economy, JFK called for personal and government budget cuts, coupled with tax reductions for corporations and individuals, in order to create more jobs and ultimately more revenue for the federal government.  He was clearly NOT a tax-and-spend Democrat.  But of course, people have selective memory and they don’t seem to realize that JFK’s brother Teddy was just about opposite in his views, taking a much more liberal and progressive approach to equality through health and welfare benefits, funded by ever-increasing taxes.

So here we are approaching the end of 2013 and the beginning of President (king?) Obama’s 6^th year in office.  One of the hallmarks of his reign seems to be untruth.   He signed several Executive Orders which he subsequently ignored and violated, having promised no federal funding for abortion, and strong conscience clauses to protect religious freedom.   He changed his views on gay marriage to the extent of working to overturn (rather than uphold) the Defense of Marriage Act.  He “refused to negotiate with a gun to his head,” when Republicans asked for modest changes in the Affordable Care Act, knowing full well that the promises he had made about “keeping your coverage” and “saving $2500 a year on your healthcare costs,” were outright lies.  But perhaps the most disturbing thing about our current President’s leadership is that he is doing his very best to “fundamentally change America.”  Like the European leaders who are driving toward a secular state and socialism, President Obama is now attempting to use his power to enforce his own brand of secularism on everyone, whether they agree with him or not on the issues of abortion, contraception and gay marriage.  He has taken dead aim at the moral underpinnings of American society, the very morals and values that made us a great nation, and he wants them banished, claiming that those who oppose him “are on the wrong side of history.”

Ten or fifteen years ago I ran across a little book titled simple, Jesus, CEO.  It was a book about the leadership attributes of Jesus and how to use them as a guide for leading a business organization with love and compassion.  Although not a great book, I kept it in my office as a reminder that the most valuable asset in our organization was the people we worked with, and the more we could help people grow and succeed in their own right, the more successful our company would be.  I have no doubt that President Obama means well, but rather than helping Americans cultivate virtues and success in their lives, he seems to be pandering to people’s desire for absolute freedom from any moral restraint.  Democracy simply does not work unless society has a common understanding and commitment to objective Truth and agreement on the difference between Right and Wrong.  For example, instead of advocating human dignity, we debase and devalue it.  The new Common Core curriculum undermines parental guidance and advocates sexual freedom (more on that in a future blog).  Obamacare forces people to violate their religious convictions under penalty of law, and contains an explosion of new government funding for abortion.  Even the Obamacare ads aimed at young people, are an affront to morality, encouraging promiscuity: “Lets Get Physical, OMG he’s hot… all I have to worry about is getting him between the sheets.” Another ad boldly states that “If you break your arm doing a keg stand, you’re covered.”  Think I’m making this up? Just google “Obamacare ads.”  

So what I’m hoping is going on here is a case of what Hans Christian Anderson described in his classic tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes.  The emperor thought he had these wonderful new clothes that were invisible to the “hopelessly stupid” and the incompetent, when in reality, the Emperor had been swindled.  Obamacare is no magical solution to our nation’s healthcare problems and the people opposing it are neither stupid nor incompetent.  Moreover, our country is headed in the wrong direction and hopefully we will wake up in time to put ourselves back on the right track.  Electing leaders who respect and emulate Christ the King will be a start.

The Dictatorship of Relativism and the Truth about Obamacare

Before retiring, I had the opportunity to serve on Nationwide’s Diversity and Inclusion Executive Council.  It was a great experience and I learned quite a bit, much to my surprise, because I never thought of myself as prejudiced.  I discovered that although I had always thought of myself as “colorblind,” when it came to race, I was also ignorant of what it was like to live in a society where you are perceived as different and treated differently because of the color of your skin, or other aspects of appearance.  Nor did I realize how much racial and ethnic tension continues in our society, even when expressed merely by a glance, or a snub.   Nationwide set up diversity councils throughout the company, and established intercultural groups to address the concerns of all minorities, including the handicapped, gay, elderly, and every imaginable race and ethnicity. 

One thing that concerned me about all this however, was the notion of “tolerance.”  The very term connotes the idea that we perceive a difference between ourselves and others, and perhaps have divergent views about the world, but we must “tolerate” everyone.  Gradually I began to realize that I was expected to “tolerate” views that were morally at odds with my own beliefs.  It was not enough to simply work alongside people with whom I disagreed, I was expected to accept and even endorse their lifestyle choices, rather than simply agree to disagree.  When I expressed my religious belief in the workplace, that gay marriage was wrong, I was considered intolerant and inappropriate.  Clearly, the gay members of the diversity council expected more than mere acceptance, they demanded endorsement.  They succeeded in squelching any discussion about dissenting views, labeling them as hateful and a denial of their civil rights. 

The same thing has happened to society in general.   Any discussion about morality and religious belief is now expected to be restricted to private discussion, confined to church and family, but never discussed publicly.  Public policy has now shifted in the direction of dictating a set of non-Christian morals that have been codified in law and are being enforced by the government.  This is exactly what Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI both warned about, calling it the “dictatorship of relativism.”  Wikipedia defines relativism as, “the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration.”   In Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth) John Paul II warned that once the idea of universal truth about what constitutes good is lost, the individual conscience becomes the sole arbiter of what is good.  He went on to explain that this freedom destroys itself by detaching from all forms of tradition and authority, including even the most obvious evidence of objective and universal truth.  Benedict XVI warned that this radical individualism is propelling society, “towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.” 

We are now at the point that much of Western civilization embraces this mistaken notion of absolute freedom (relativism) and is consciously attempting to establish a secular society which disavows Christian belief, substituting instead, Relativism as the law of the land.  For example, citizens who object to abortion on moral grounds are never the less required to fund it, not only with tax dollars, but insurance premiums.   Catholic hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, universities, and social service agencies are required to do the same or face massive fines. Parents have no right under the law to object to school curriculum that teaches that homosexuality is normal and healthy.  Florists and photographers have been taken to court for refusing to participate in gay marriage ceremonies.  It is no longer enough to merely “tolerate” homosexuality, we are forced by law to accept it as normal and have it taught to our children.  Ironically, those who just a few years ago demanded “tolerance” are completely intolerant of Christian beliefs.

Besides the abortion and gay marriage issues, our federal government also wants to dictate every aspect of our health care.  They have deemed that every person in the country must have insurance that includes a broad range of services, whether we want them or not.  The 5 million people whose insurance has been cancelled because it did not meet the new, much broader standards, are just the first victims of Obamacare.  The replacement coverage they need, will cost far more than what they had been paying because it includes a lot more coverage for things they don’t want and will never need.  Couples who are too old to have children, or who are sterile by choice, are forced to pay for coverage for maternity, infertility treatment, birth control, and abortion services which are all required coverages in the new plans.  Rather than allow people to purchase affordable coverage with limits, the government now demands everyone have broad unlimited coverage and goes even further in demanding that younger, healthier people pay higher than necessary premiums in order to offset the cost for sicker and older people.

What’s been going on the last couple weeks with Obamacare is only the tip of the iceberg.   The 5 million who’ve lost their coverage thus far, are mostly from the individual insurance market.  Only about 20 million people buy their insurance directly.  The vast majority of Americans get their coverage through their employment.  If you’ll recall, President Obama delayed implementation of the employer-mandate for another year, probably so that the fall-out will occur after the 2014 mid-term elections.  More than 100 million people get their health insurance from their employer and a great many of those employers will be forced to expand or cancel their coverage in January 2015.  Next year, millions will lose their employer-sponsored coverage, and/or be forced to pay much higher premiums.   The president’s suggestion that individuals be allowed to keep their current (inferior?) coverage another year, does nothing to change the underlying problem, it merely delays the inevitable.  

There are many things I find troubling about all this, but perhaps the worst is that the president thinks he can simply change the duly-passed law without involving Congress to amend the existing legislation.  This is the 3^rd or 4^th time he has unilaterally amended the Affordable Care Act, based on political necessity.    This past week, in addition to his apology, the president met with the nation’s top health insurance executives, in a display of effort to address the problems which have “caused problems for the Democrats” (the president’s own admission).   He apparently offered the Insurers government funding to help offset the tremendous costs associated with Obamacare because already, pundits are talking about a $1 trillion “bail-out” for the health insurance industry.   What the president seems to be doing is suckering in the Insurers by waving money in front of them, and then he’ll turn the tables and blame them for the cancellations, the higher costs, and the need for yet another government bailout.  Of course none of this would have happened if the health insurance marketplace had not been turned upside down by Obamacare.

All this is part of the dictatorship of relativism in which the government dictates what everyone must do, whether they want it or not, rather than allowing people the freedom to choose what they want and need from a free market.

Why We Need Hope

Sunday’s scripture readings all point to the importance of hope.   When challenged by the Sadducees about the resurrection of the dead, Jesus explains that those who rise from death will be like children of God, and can no longer die.  Hope is more than just optimism or a positive attitude, it is the result of faith in the Word of God and belief in the Truth as revealed by Jesus.  “The three Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope and Love dispose us to live in relationship with the Holy Trinity.  These three virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity, enabling us to act as Children of God.  They are the pledge of presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being.”(Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) - #1812-1813).  “Hope is the virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promise, not relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit .” (CCC #1817)

In other words, hope is the virtue by which we place our trust in God, not ourselves. This coming week the liturgical calendar calls for reading the Book of Wisdom in which we will hear how foolish it is to place our hope in ourselves and in worldly rulers.  We will be reminded that “God formed man to be imperishable; and in the image of God’s own nature.” (Wis 2:23)  This is our destiny and our final destination.  What happens here and now in this world is of little consequence, as long as we remain faithful to God.  We will also hear that, “All men were by nature foolish who were in ignorance of God, and who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing Him who is, and from studying the works, did not discern the artisan;” (Wis 13:1-2)

When we place our hopes in earthly things, we are easily led astray from God.  Worse yet, when our earthly possessions and sources of happiness fail us, we are prone to depression or worse.  Perhaps this is why more than 20% of all Americans take medication to treat depression, and millions more probably should be.   Don’t misunderstand my meaning here, I’m not minimizing the horrible impact depression has on people, or the fact that it is very, very real.  I also know that it can be caused by many things and that the human mind is an incredibly complex organ, capable of producing a wide variety of chemical compounds that can alter moods and affect behavior.  But the things we do can also cause our minds to produce many powerful chemicals, for example:  exercise releases endorphins and sexual encounters cause the release of oxycotin, to cite just a couple of the thousands of compounds our brains can conjure up. 

The treatment of behavioral health illness in America is deplorable.  Most of the prescriptions for anti-depressants are written, not by mental health professionals, but by primary care doctors, most of whom are neither trained nor willing to be the patient’s counselor.  In most other countries, the administration of these drugs is limited to mental health professionals, and renewal of prescriptions is attached to the requirement that the patient be attending counseling.   Here in the USA, patients take these powerful drugs for years, even decades, without ever receiving mental health treatment, perhaps avoiding or simply unaware of the underlying causal of their condition. 

This past week the federal government announced that it will now require all insurance plans to treat all mental health treatment the same as any other illness.  While this may sound wonderful because so many people are in need, it is fraught with problems.  There are already numerous state and federal laws requiring insurers to cover mental illness similar to the way it treats other health benefits, but these statutes also define what constitutes mental illness according to careful guidelines.  The problem with the new announcement is that it covers behavioral health in general, with no limits on coverage.  Unlike the cognitive impairment of serious mental illness, or biologically based mental illnesses, behavioral health illness includes a broad spectrum of conditions from mild to extreme, based not necessarily on measureable medical fact, but opinion.   There are of course many behavioral health diagnoses, but the degree of illness is difficult to ascertain, and therefore easily misdiagnosed and subject to fraud and abuse.   For example, when is a person so incapacitated by depression, anxiety, or grief that they should be hospitalized?   With unlimited coverage for inpatient behavioral health treatment, how long will people be cared for, based on the “opinion” of the provider (who by the way makes their living caring for these patients)?   In the past, even with limited coverage for behavioral health care, we had a very difficult time monitoring, detecting, and dealing with fraud and abuse.  With unlimited coverage, this holds the potential to be phenomenally expensive, at a time when healthcare costs are already skyrocketing to the point of being not only unaffordable, but clearly unsustainable.

At a time when health care is such a hot button topic, with so many intractable problems to be addressed, we need hope in something better, something everlasting.  Pray for Faith, Hope and Love.

Are We Living in George Orwell's 1984?

This past week we celebrated All Saints Day, followed by All Souls day, acknowledging the saints who have gone before us and praying for the souls of our departed friends and family.  The readings for these wonderful feast days remind us that dying is not the end of our existence and that those who have died are more fortunate than us because they are enjoying eternal life in the presence of God. 

“The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them.
They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace.”  (Wis 3:1-3)

While the faithfully departed enjoy the Beatific Vision, we continue the struggle to practice our faith and discern the truth.  We take religious freedom for granted in America, but increasingly, Christians are being marginalized, penalized, and even prosecuted for living our faith in the public realm.  Our president makes reference to the “freedom to worship,” but he and his administration insist that we may not assert our belief in the course earning our living.   It is as if we are expected to check our religious beliefs at the door, before entering the workplace.  There are now over 200 lawsuits filed by organizations and corporations who object to the HHS mandate, and not all of them are religious organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor who will face millions of dollars in fines next year for operating their 50 nursing homes in the USA.  They do not qualify for a religious exemption because they do not care exclusively for Catholics, nor do they require all their employees to be Catholic.  ­There are 30 private, for-profit, employers who believe that abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization are intrinsically evil, and they refuse to pay for it in their health plans.

How did we get to the point that our government is forcing compliance with rules that violate the moral convictions of so many Christians?  I believe it is because we have gradually descended into a situation very similar to what George Orwell described in his dystopian novel, 1984.  In this literary classic, the government controls what people think by using newspeak, a method of controlling thought through language.  The form of government in the novel is English Socialism (Ingsoc in newspeak) and they maintain power by altering everyday thought through language.  The party in control of government persecutes independent thinking as thoughtcrimes, and justifies their actions in the name of supposed greater good.  They employ a tactic called doublethink to brainwash people into believing almost anything.  Here’s how Orwell describes doublethink:

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again…”

What makes me think we’re living this Orwellian nightmare?  Consider the fact that prominent politicians claim to be faithful Catholics, but at the same time support abortion, not only by advocating for it, but funding it with ever more tax dollars.  Our president repeatedly campaigned for Obamacare with the twofold promise that, “everyone who likes his health insurance can keep it,” and “the average family will save $2500 a year on the cost of their health insurance.”  He promised over and over again that there would be no federal funding of abortions (even signing an Executive Order to this effect) and that the new law would include a strong conscious clause so that no one would be forced to violate their religious convictions.   Now we know for certain that all of these promises were boldfaced lies.  The new law made millions of health insurance policies illegal, forcing people to adopt new policies with almost unlimited coverage and much higher costs.  Millions of people are now losing their health insurance and are forced to replace it with much more expensive coverage.  Health insurance costs were bound to increase substantially when the new restrictions on underwriting and the new unlimited coverage took effect.  If this isn’t doublethink, what is it?  By Orwell’s definition, was the president “conscious of the truth but telling carefully constructed lies?”  Will he now, “forget whatever is necessary to forget…?”  Will the American public do the same?

The president and his minions want to convince us all that this doublethink is in the best interest of our society.   This process doesn’t just apply to the new health care law.  Over the weekend the president went on the air with a new assault of doublethink.  He asserted that our economy is strong and vibrant, claiming that he’s “cut the deficit,” when in fact all he’s done is slow down the growth of the deficit.  He also said we’ve created over 7 million new jobs in the past 5 years, when in fact the worker participation rate has never been lower, and 65% of the new jobs created in the past several years have been part time.   Our economy is capable of creating twice that number of full-time jobs, and did exactly that during the Reagan recovery.  We are told that buying up $85 billion of our own bonds each month (effectively printing money), is good for the economy.  Anyone with any common sense knows that when this artificial puffing up of the economy comes to its inevitable end, there’s going to be economic chaos, not to mention the mountain of debt our children and grandchildren will inherit.  Never the less, the public seem to have bought in, because the stock market is at all- time highs, despite the terrible economic fundamentals that show no signs of improving. 

Things will undoubtedly get even worse as the full effects of Obamacare kick in.  Employers are cutting people back to part-time to avoid health insurance expenses and penalties.  Despite the 20,000+ pages of new regulations that have already been printed regarding Obamacare, we still don’t know all the consequences.  One of the more nefarious side effects is yet another assault on marriage.   The new law provides for income-based subsidies for low income people purchasing their health insurance from of the new State Exchanges (if they ever get the website working).   In a real life case, a couple in Michigan lost their health insurance because their employers had to drop their coverage which was no longer compliant, and could not afford the new, more expensive policy.   They are a married couple whose combined income is $60,000 but they DO NOT qualify for a subsidy. When the couple went to the Michigan Exchange, they were shocked to learn that even if they purchase a “bronze” policy with a $6000 deductible (for each person), their monthly premium would be $1000.   However, if that same couple were to divorce and live together, each earning $30,000 a year, they could each purchase a policy with a $1500 deductible and pay only $150 each per month, using the federal subsidy to offset the rest of the cost.

Lest I end on a sour note, let’s return to the first reading from All Souls Day, and pray for the ability to discern Truth while reminding ourselves that all this is temporary, and our ultimate destination is heaven:

“Those who trust in him shall understand truth, and the faithful shall abide with him in love:
because grace and mercy are with his holy ones, and his care is with his elect.”  (Wisdom 3:9)