Sunday’s first reading includes this prophecy about the
Messiah: “I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach
to the ends of the earth.” (Isaiah
49:6)
Light has always been associated with good and darkness
with evil. Last week we saw the second
installment of the Hobbit movie and it contained very clear references to
darkness pervading the world. As we
watched the movie, it became increasingly clear that Tolkien’s numerous
warnings about the spread of evil are still pertinent in the 21st
century. At one point, Gandalf states
that while everyone was asleep, evil spread throughout middle earth. Unlike the evil we confronted in the early 20th
century which asserted itself boldly through Communism, Fascism, and Nazism,
and resulted in two world wars, the spread of evil is now being accomplished
through deception and seduction. Rather
than attempting to destroy the good overtly, evil takes things that are good
and perverts them by appealing to humanity’s selfish instincts. The virtue of love is reduced to lust;
justice becomes revenge; mercy becomes an excuse to violate the truth of
nature; and truth itself is contorted into untruth.
Words like “equality” sound fair and reasonable, but are
used to deny the truth about life, and to promote an agenda that condones and increases
inequality. I’m going to address two
mistaken notions: Income equality and
gender equality, starting with income. Consider
this quote from our President last month: "The combined trends of
increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the
American dream, our way of life and what we stand for around the globe." Sounds good on the surface, but when he and
our government attempt to force equality, the result is just the opposite. Entitlement programs such as welfare, food
stamps, and unemployment discourage people from working and earning an
income. The “welfare trap” has been
well-known and well-documented for decades.
Once people are receiving the equivalent of $40,000 a year or more in
free benefits, why would they give that up to begin a career at wages that are
less than half their existing benefits? The truth is that entitlement programs, as
they exist today, promote inequality because they encourage people to have less
income and fewer assets. Welfare moms have
an incentive to have more children out of wedlock, in order to increase their
benefits. Entitlement programs will never
lift people out of poverty. The real
solution is for people to go to school and stay in school; to get married and
stay married; and to work for a living. Pope Francis, who is on a mission to eradicate
poverty, recently commented on the dangers of the welfare state, and said, “Man
gains his dignity by earning his bread.”
The idea of equality is a widely misunderstood. God created the universe and human beings
with an abundance of diversity. In short,
we are all different; no two people are the same (except perhaps, identical
twins). Diversity is a good thing; it
makes us stronger and better as a society.
Some people are smarter than others, some work harder and everyone has
different interests. Skills, effort,
creativity, and the willingness to take risk, vary greatly among people. Many of the world’s greatest accomplishments
came from people who were in the top 2% of IQs. What if Einstein, Edison, or the scientists who
discovered the secrets of molecular biology had only average intelligence? What if there were no great entrepreneurs to
start and run successful businesses? How
would jobs be created? The idea of
income equality discourages job creation and the willingness to invest in
business. During his 17 day, $4 million
vacation, President Obama called for “Promise Zones” where business taxes would
be reduced and additional tax credits granted for capital investments by
businesses, in order to stimulate job growth.
What’s amazing about this is that the president and his advisors are
acknowledging for the first time, that lower business taxes will lead to job
creation. If so, why limit it to small
geographic zones, when the entire country could benefit from the same tactic? Conversely, the new mayor of New York has
publicly announced his intention to jack up taxes on the wealthy, in order to
expand entitlement programs. The effect
is likely to be the same as it was in France when many of the country’s wealthy
business owners simply relocated out of the country.
As for gender equality, God did not create man and woman
equal. Both are equally deserving of
respect and dignity, but only women can bear children. This amazing gift of fertility is something
to be cherished and respected, but instead it is treated as an illness to be
prevented (contraception) or thwarted (abortion), as if doing so makes women
equal to men. Nature reveals the beauty
and depth of God’s love for humanity, in that He made men and women
complementary, not only in our biology, but in our hormonal instincts,
strengths, and weaknesses. The
attraction and love between a man and woman is not just about sensation and
personal satisfaction, it is about passion of mind and soul that brings men and
women together as “one flesh,” not merely consumed by desire, but by the power
of love that brought everything in the universe into existence, so that together,
the man and woman too can create new life.
This is what Pope John Paul II called “nuptial love,” an extraordinary
privilege and the greatest miracle in life.
Sadly, this desire has been perverted and reduced to mere
lust which is selfish, and ultimately destructive. In his great work, Theology of the Body, Blessed John Paul II warned that “the human
heart has become a battlefield between love and lust.” He observed that, “the nuptial meaning of the
body… has become suffocated by concupiscence.”
Our nation is rapidly moving towards this suffocation by
concupiscence. We mistakenly think that
if two people of the same sex love one another, the merciful thing to do is
approve their marriage. But mercy cannot
violate God’s truth as revealed in the very nature of our bodies. St. Thomas Aquinas warned that, “Mercy
without justice is the mother of dissolution.”
The virtue of mercy cannot contradict the virtue of justice which is
rooted in Truth. Our nation is slipping
into darkness because mercy without adherence to Truth is no justice at all.
In his book, Dreams
of My Father, President Obama denies the existence of absolute truth,
stating that truth is different for each person. In making this statement, he contradicts the
U.S. Constitution which states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights…” The equality envisioned by our founding fathers
is “endowed by their Creator,” not granted by a government that creates
inequality when it ignores moral truth in its misguided attempt to redistribute
wealth or redefine marriage. These
actions will lead to the dissolution of our country, as they did to past
cultures that fell into darkness when they abandoned Truth. Only
the Light of Christ, which is the way, the truth, and the life, can pull us
back from the brink of darkness.
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