True or False?

Today’s second reading from Romans struck a chord with me: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you many discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.”  (Romans 12:2)  The message is timeless and as meaningful today as it was 2000 years ago when Paul wrote it to the fledgling Christian community in Rome.  First century Europe was dominated by the Roman culture which was deteriorating fast, as their Republic devolved into a dictatorship after Julius Caesar successfully waged civil war against the Republic and seized power as emperor and god.  His next four successors were increasingly vile, controlling the Roman Empire by dint of force, while themselves, practicing all forms of debauchery, devoid of any virtue.  It’s no wonder that within a few centuries the empire would crumble and be overrun first by invaders from the north, then Moors from the East.

Sound familiar?  While our government is often referred to as a democracy, it is by law, a Republic, set up in the constitution with checks and balances to prevent any of the three branches of government from seizing power.  In a true Republic, power is vested in the people, whose will is supposed to be carried out by their congressional representatives.   Unfortunately, our legislators in both parties have become professional politicians, more dedicated to wielding power and prestige than serving the common good.  In their effort to get elected and remain in office, our legislators pass laws they think will be popular with voters, appealing not to the virtues our founding fathers espoused, but rather the moral relativism that puts self-interest ahead of virtue.  In doing so, they have created a nanny state that deprives millions of the dignity of self-sufficiency.  This is no exaggeration: more than 100 million Americans now receive some form of assistance from our government, and this does not include Social Security or Medicare.  If a single mother of two on welfare receives the equivalent of $55,000 in benefits, why in the world would she consider taking a job where she would have to earn approximately $75,000 before taxes, just to breakeven?  This is the very real, “welfare trap.”

This is the age in which we live.  Modern science and technology have improved vastly over that of ancient Rome, but we have abandoned the values upon which our nation was founded, and which made us the most powerful economy the world has ever known.   Instead of promoting personal responsibility, we have legalized excuses for it, and in many cases, immoral solutions to the problems we create for ourselves.  Legalized abortion is offered as a solution to “crisis pregnancies,” (as if a baby is a crisis, or as our president has said, the ‘punishment for a mistake’).  In addition, our government helps pay for many of these abortions with direct funding  to Planned Parenthood, or by requiring abortion coverage in the Obamacare plans, many of which are subsidized with federal tax dollars.  

Rather than enforce existing immigration law, and strengthen it so that we can welcome law-abiding, well-intentioned immigrants in larger numbers, we make it difficult to immigrate legally.  Instead, we encourage illegal immigrants to come here with the hope of scoring not just jobs, but free health care, free education, and very likely, welfare benefits.  Our politicians make it sound like enforcing immigration law is cruel, but their real motivation is to attract new voters who will keep them in office, as long as there is no voter-ID law to requiring proof of identity or legal status.

In today’s gospel, Jesus rebukes Peter who is mortified that Jesus might have to suffer and die.  Like all of us, Peter wants to avoid pain, suffering, and death, and would prefer a safer, easier route to salvation.  But Jesus tells him:

“You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”  Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  (Matthew 16:23-25)

Jesus is right, we tend to think like mortal humans, wanting ways out of our problems that avoid pain and preclude suffering (“saving ourselves”).  In doing so, we invite false solutions and we rationalize answers to our problems, thinking we’ve dodged the bullet, but in reality, only making matters worse.  For example, refusing to confront emotional problems and choosing to self-medicate with alcohol, food, or drugs; or refusing to take responsibility for a pregnancy, then living with a lifetime of regret.  Whenever we make excuses for ourselves and refuse to work through the inconvenience and pain of our problems, we are engaging in “moral relativism,” (trying to save our life).  When we do this collectively as a society, we create a culture of death.   Not only are human lives sacrificed, so are personal dignity, self-respect, and the common good.

When Jesus speaks of taking up our cross and following Him, He invites us to adhere to the Truth as revealed by God.  There is no avoiding the fact that our life on this earth is short, and every single one of us will endure pain, suffering, and death.  If we believe that this is all there is to life, we are likely to avoid pain at all cost, choosing easy (false) answers to our problems, even if they involve immoral actions.  The result is that we end up only hurting ourselves and others around us.  This is the false promise of moral relativism.  But the Truth reveals that there is more to life than our human bodies and life on earth.  God has promised us eternal life through His Son Jesus Christ who, like us, suffered and died.  During His short life on earth, Jesus revealed the depth of God’s love for us, even to the point of great suffering and a horrific death, in order to make it possible for us to share eternal life with God our Father.  The path to this eternal life is “through Him, with Him, and in Him,” as we say at every Catholic Mass before receiving the Eucharist.  It is through Him we receive salvation; it is with Him we find the courage to live a life of Truth, even if it means carrying a cross once in a while; and it is in Him that we discover the magnificent beauty of God’s Truth:  We are loved beyond imagination, and we are called to live with Him for all eternity… if we are willing to lose our life and embrace the Truth.

A 46th Wedding Anniversary Reflection

Today marks our 46^th wedding anniversary.  Rose and I were married in Chicago at St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church on the feast of St. Bartholomew.  Since then, we’ve lived in 6 different states, owned and lived in nine homes (not including the condos we live in now), raised 4 kids, and experienced the joy of welcoming 11 grandchildren into the world.  In short, we’ve had a full life and our marriage has been filled with happiness and laughter as well as worry and sorrow, but most of all, it has been a journey of love.  By that, I don’t mean uninterrupted marital bliss, but rather, an ongoing experience of learning and growing in our understanding of the nature and fullness of Love.

At twenty-one years old, neither of us could have imagined the richness and evolution of our love over the years. We were undoubtedly naïve and idealistic, but underneath that young love was an understanding that our marriage was a sacred vow, a sacrament imbued with the love and grace of God.  It has always been God to whom we turned in difficult times, and when facing important decisions.   Our faith has played a pivotal role in our marriage, giving us strength and perseverance during our darkest times, and filling us with joy over and over again. 

Barely adults when we married, I realize now how shallow I must have been.  I was consumed with finishing my education, fulfilling my military commitment, starting a career, managing our finances, and being a good provider.  In retrospect I realize now that for decades I allowed these worldly pursuits to interfere with our marriage and family.  I let pride direct my life in subtle ways that resulted in my rationalizing what I was doing, or feeling sorry for myself when I didn’t get my way.  Nevertheless, God blessed us with children, the product of our love and His grace.  I had always wanted to be a father, and the love I felt for Rose and the kids helped me grow in many ways.  Children have a way of bringing out the best in parents, for example, making sacrifices out of love for the kids.  Wanting to be a good role model also helped me engage in activities that were family oriented.  In short, marriage and family helped me grow up, as God tried to teach me to put the welfare and happiness of others first.  I’m not saying I’ve succeeded in this respect, but I know for sure that without Rose and our kids, I would be a totally different person, one I’m afraid I would not be very proud of.   I cannot believe how blessed I have been by my marriage to Rose. 

The point of all this is that the power of love is transformational.  I believe it is true that “God is Love,” and that all love is from God.  That being the case, I feel the love of God in the intimate embrace of love, I see the love of God in the eyes of my spouse and in the lives of our children and grandchildren.  God created us male and female, each with our own strengths and weaknesses.  More importantly, He created us for one another, as the means by which His love is shared and miraculously, children are born into the world.  His glorious plan is for each of us to be born into a loving family environment with both father and mother who are our first and most important teachers.  As such, marriage is the basic unit of society.  Not only is it the only natural means by which children are conceived, it is the place we grow in love as spouses, as parents, and as children.  Marriage has a civilizing effect on both spouses and creates a stable environment for children to be nurtured. 

It has long been documented that spouses who share their faith and actively practice it are much less likely to divorce and much more likely to report happiness.  Despite these well-documented outcomes, marriage has been under attack for decades.  The very definition of marriage has been re-written to accommodate sexual freedom, with no regard for the effect it has on children.  Not only are children devastated by divorce, they are all too often thought of as property of the parents, not unique human beings with a right to life, and the right to be raised by both of their biological parents.

Not everyone is called to heterosexual marriage, and that’s fine.  But redefining marriage to include no-fault divorce and homosexual relationships is simply a lie about the biological truth of our existence, and it is devastating to children.  As evidenced by that fact that birthrates are now well-below replacement levels in the Western world, we are quite literally destroying our future by handing down unprecedented deficits to a declining population, many of whom have not had the benefit of growing up in families with both father and mother.

The latest blow to marriage was struck last month by our president.  In an executive order signed July 17^th, he single-handedly decided that any employer or agency with federal contracts or grants must comply with new requirements that prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.   The president purposely omitted any exemptions for religious organizations, despite his own director of faith outreach pleading for it.  This means that churches, social service agencies, hospitals, and schools, may lose their federal contracts and grants if they refuse to hire or promote people whose sexual activities are at odds with the moral belief and teaching of that employer.  While the Catholic Church has long taught that homosexuals should be respected for their personal dignity, it cannot condone homosexual and transgender activity, any more that it would condone a libertine lifestyle that included promiscuity. 

A bit of history:  Thirty-eight years ago Sen. Ted Kennedy tried to pass a bill that would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.  He failed, but the bill was rewritten in 1994 and called the Employment Non Discrimination Act (ENDA).   ENDA has been proposed to ten different congresses, and failed every time.  Even though every Democrat who supports ENDA also agrees that it should include exceptions for religious-based employers, the president wrote his executive without any exemptions for religious organizations.   Remember, this is the president whose Justice Department pursued a case all the way to the Supreme Court to force a church to employ a homosexual, and lost that case 9-0.  So if he can’t get his way in Congress or the Supreme Court, he simply writes an executive order that subverts congress and imposes his personal morals on religious employers.

Of course, most religious employers will give up government contracts rather than comply, but this will have a horrendous impact on the poor and the sick who have been served by religious-based schools, hospitals, and social service agencies.   Already, Catholic adoption agencies in San Francisco, New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois have been forced to go out of business rather than change their moral position on marriage and family.  Other Catholic Agencies have lost government funding for refusal to provide abortion counselling, despite being the best-qualified organization to provide the assistance they were giving their communities.   Clearly, our president and his devotees want to punish and re-educate employers who hold traditional sexual values.  In his mind there is no room for religious beliefs that are contrary to his personal ideology and political agenda, even it means dealing another blow to marriage, families, and children, the very heart and soul of civil society.

The Importance of Free Will

A couple lines from this Sunday’s scripture stood out for me. “Observe what is right, do what is just; for my salvation is about to come, my justice about to be revealed.”  (Isaiah 56:1)  And, “For God delivered all to disobedience, that He might have mercy upon all.” (Romans 11:32)  It seems God knows we will abuse our free will and make poor choices from time to time.  And yet, He showers His mercy upon us unfailingly.  This begs the question, why allow us to hurt ourselves by making bad choices in the first place?

Last Friday Rose and I took two of our granddaughters to see the new movie, “The Giver” which is based on the Newbery award winning novel of the same name.  In the book/movie the government has effectively removed everyone’s free will.  The result is a gray world with no conflict, no emotional outbursts, and no pain.  But is also a world devoid of love and therefore also absent of faith and hope.  People have no memory of their collective past, no history of the joy of love, nor pain and suffering, and no recollection of the horrors of war.  Their absence of emotion renders them capable of euthanizing infants without a thought, merely because they are slightly below average for their age.  It seems they have no conscience whatsoever. 

At one point in the movie, the head of government, played by Meryl Streep, makes that statement that freedom of choice had to be removed because invariably people always chose poorly.  Hence, the government making everyone’s choices for them, while medicating the populace daily to ensure the absence of emotion and compliance with governmental dictates.  Nobody questions anything, no muss, no fuss, just absolute control from the master planners. 

I read a few reviews about the movie and most of them downplayed it as a “wannabe” sci-fi tale,  maybe because it hits a little to close to home where our government seems to be steadily encroaching on our freedom.  Personally, I thought it was an outstanding portrayal of what happens when personal freedom is taken away in the name of saving us from ourselves, making us less than fully human.  The essence of our humanity is that we have both intellect to think for ourselves, and free will to make choices for good or bad.  God knows we will make mistakes and yet He forgives us, even to the point of dying on a cross for the salvation of sinners like us.  Jesus suffering and death is fresh in my mind, from having just finished reading “Killing Jesus” by O’Reilly and Dugard.  The pain and suffering inflicted on Jesus must have been unbearable, and yet He endured it out of love and mercy for all of us despite our unworthiness of His love.

Much of the pain and suffering we experience in this world is self-inflicted by the poor choices we make, often hurting those we live with and love the most.  Even the greatest love is accompanied by the pain of disappointment and regret, from time to time.   But unless we take the risks associated with love, unless we are willing to make ourselves vulnerable to our beloved, there can be no deep and abiding love.  Consider the emotional pain Jesus’ mother must have endured when she witnessed his torture and death.  Last Friday the Catholic Church celebrated Mary’s assumption into heaven.  Whether you believe this doctrine or not, you have to admit, Mary was special.  She was chosen to hold the life of Jesus within her womb, and to be his earthly mother, always there to care for her son, even at the foot of the cross.  One of the titles of honor the Church bestows on Mary is “Ark of the New Covenant.”  Just as the old Ark of the Covenant held within it the word of God (the tablets received by Moses), as well as manna from the desert,  and the rod of Aaron, these items portended the Word of God who became flesh, He who was the Bread of Life, the Good Shepard Himself.  Jesus, whose earthly life started in Mary’s womb, was all these things and more.  He instituted the new and eternal covenant upon which our salvation depends.

So as summer winds down, school starts up, football and volleyball resume, and life becomes more hectic once again, take a few moments to consider the importance of our free will and the many choices we are privileged to make.  The fact that we still live in a free country is a great blessing, one which we must work to preserve in the face of an encroaching government.  We are bound to make mistakes in our choices, but we have God’s promise that we can be forgiven, no matter how badly or how far we fall from His grace.

What is Peace?

Sunday’s readings include several references to storms, wind, and even earthquakes.  Elijah was seeking the voice of God in the tumultuous wind, quakes and fire, but did not find Him until he heard a small, peaceful whisper.  Jesus walked across the roiling sea and commanded the sea to become calm and peaceful.  His authority was so great, He was able to calm the seas and He did it with a few simple words, not a show of power.   Jesus brought peace to the seas because He is the Son of God who reconciles heaven and earth.  The peace of Christ is received not through power and might, but by acceptance of the Word of God which is just and merciful.

Now, more than ever, our world needs to find a way to achieve peace.  Amidst the bluster of international politics that carries on with attempts to assuage the anger of Islamic aggressors, no one seems to understand the most basic elements that are necessary if there is ever to be peaceful coexistence among nations, and within sovereign countries.

Here’s how the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines peace:

“Peace is the consequence of justice and the sign of love put into action. Where there is peace, "every creature can come to rest in good order" (Thomas Aquinas). Earthly peace is the image of the peace of Christ, who reconciled heaven and earth. Peace is more than the absence of war, more than a carefully maintained balance of powers ("balance of terror"). In a state of peace, people can live securely with their legitimately earned property and freely exchange goods with one another. In peace the dignity and the right of self-determination of individuals and of peoples are respected. In peace human coexistence is characterized by brotherly solidarity.”  (CCC: 2302-2305)

“Peace is the consequence of justice.”  Clearly, radical Islamists fail to comprehend this, as they attempt to force people to adopt their religion or face death.  They will even kill other Muslims if they disagree with their radical ideology.  How does one reason with such injustice?  The current efforts of ISIS are a throwback to the 7^th century when Mohammed himself went from town to town killing or enslaving anyone who refused to accept his brand of religious belief.  This is how the Crusades began, as an effort to defend against radical Islam and to reclaim what had been lost.  Mohammed and his successors took possession of the cradle of Christianity, modern day Turkey, Syria, and Jerusalem, then moved west to take nearly all of North Africa and Spain.  They were on the verge of conquering Italy when a freak storm destroyed their fleet, and before they could rebuild, the Renaissance took place, giving Central Europe the economic power to successfully defend themselves, and defeat the Moslems in Spain.

Jimmy Carter advocated peace as a one term president who believed that Communism was here to stay and he advocated that we just had to accept it and move on.  Thank God, Ronald Reagan did not agree, and called out Russia for the evil empire that it was (is?).  Because of Ronald Reagan, tens of millions of people were released from the “Iron Curtain,” and the Communist empire was shattered.  Under our current president, tens of millions of people are coming under the control of another new evil empire.  If ISIS succeeds, they will establish a worldwide caliphate, hell-bent on obliterating Israel than setting their sights in the Western Europe and the Americas.  At the same time, Russia is on the move, expanding its territory in direct violation of the 1994 treaty it signed to honor the sovereignty of its neighboring countries.   Despite our agreement in that same treaty, to defend against such aggression, we stand idly by as Crimea is being taken by force.

Part of the above definition of peace includes “the freedom to live securely with legitimately earned property.”  ISIS has evicted more than a half million Christians from Iraq in just the past 2 months, taking away their homes and valuables in the process.  The Muslim Brotherhood had burned dozens of Churches and more than a million Christians have fled Egypt, Syria, and a host of small mid-eastern countries where the terrorism of radical Islam is advancing.  In the meanwhile, the focus of the press and our president has been on the Israeli war with Hamas.  He seems to be more concerned with preventing Israel from winning the war against the Hamas aggressors, than with the larger issue of the rapid spread of terrorism.  By abandoning Iraq, our president created the vacuum in which ISIS has taken control, using US military equipment we gave them in Syria and which they have appropriated in their recent Iraqi conquests.  All the while, our president has been insisting that it was up to the Iraqi to work out their differences among themselves.  He made no mention of his persistent denial of help to the Kurds who have been our allies for over a decade, as they face the growing threat from ISIS.   Only after being pressured by his own party to address the genocide in Iraq did our president finally agree to airstrikes.

Although I do not know the statistics, I am hopeful that there are many more peace-abiding Moslems who acknowledge the right to freedom of religion and decry the radical Islamists and their brutish tactics.  It is time for them and the rest of the world to call out injustice and defend freedom by whatever means is necessary.  As Pope Benedict XVI said in his Regensburg address 5 years ago, until all Moslems acknowledge the right to freedom of religion, there can never be peace in the world.

The third part of the definition of peace has to do with allowing people to “live with dignity and the right of self-determination.”  The greatest of these rights is the very right to life and the freedom to practice religion, both of which our president has repeatedly ignored and violated by spending federal funds on abortion and mandating that employers pay for contraception services, including abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization.  This injustice and violation of religious freedom has exacerbated the polarization of political parties.  For all the bluster and angst created by these injustices on both sides of the debate, no one seems to have an understanding that we can never be at peace unless we respect and acknowledge that small, still voice of God that whispers the truth of Natural Law to us in our quiet moments, if only we will silence ourselves and listen.  George Washington referred to it as “the Divine spark of Providence,” and we call it our conscience. 

It’s time to step back from all the rhetoric and finger-jabbing debate and listen carefully to what God defines as justice.  Justice demands that we stand up for freedom and defend it.  Edmond Burke famously said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing.” Unless we speak out and act decisively to defend freedom, there can never be peace in the world, or in our country.

What is a child?

Sunday’s gospel recounts the story of Jesus feeding 5000 with just a few loaves and fishes.  When a large throng of people followed them to a deserted place,  Jesus' disciples saw this as a problem and encouraged Jesus to dismiss the crowd because there was nothing to eat and no where to obtain food.  But Jesus saw not a problem, but an opportunity.  Whereas the disciples saw only the cost and the impossibility of the situation, Jesus recognized  a teaching moment in which He could demonstrate the love and compassion of God.  

Lately there has been much talk about the need for compassion with respect to the 60,000 children who have illegally crossed our Southern border in recent months.  Giving them amnesty will only further encourage desperate parents to send their children on the perilous journey in the care of criminals.  Our legislators seem to think this is an intractable problem, citing problems with enforcing our borders and contrasting that with the need for compassion, as if there are only two mutually exclusive alternatives, each with its own downside.  But isn't it possible to do both: enforce our borders and see that these children are safely returned home, but with the opportunity at a later date to enter our country safely and legally?  Instead of either/or, why not both/and?  If we had secure borders and were not overrun with illegal entrants (more than 200,000 adults have also crossed our border illegally in the past 9 months), we could afford to ease up the entrance requirements so that honest, good-intentioned people could immigrate legally. 

Ironically, we feel compassion for the immigrant children, but what do we really understand about our own children, the children conceived legally in our country?  What kind of world they will be inheriting from our generation?  Not only will our children and grandchildren be saddled with incredible debt, but they will be fewer in number, even as the number of elderly who depend on social security and Medicare continue to expand.  The birthrate in America has been steadily declining for the past forty years and is at an all-time low of 1.87 per adult woman.  Keep in mind that in order to replace the existing population, the birthrate needs to be 2.1 per woman, and we passed below that mark 7 years ago.

 While environmentalists may celebrate this decline in carbon-producing humans, there are many ominous consequences, not the least of which is a steady shrinkage in the size of the labor force at a time when more and more tax dollars will be needed to keep pace with rising costs for supporting the elderly.  Japan and China are beginning to face this problem in earnest since their birth rates have been below replacement levels for more than three decades.  Europe is not far behind, and if not for immigration, would be facing the prospect of cities hollowing out and quite literally shutting them down, as has already been the case in a number of cities in East Germany and the former Soviet Russia.

There are many causes for this worldwide decline in birthrates.   First and foremost is the decline in marriage.  Fewer people are getting married and staying married, and the average age for marriage is higher.  Some blame the economy for people putting off starting a family and for limiting family size.   But I think it goes much deeper than this.  The concept of marriage has changed from one that had been characterized as a sacred institution, sealed with permanent vows and dedicated to starting a family, to one that is focused on individual happiness and can be modified or nullified if it is not fulfilling one or both parties perceived needs.  This flawed notion about marriage, coupled with the understanding that sex is completely separated from procreation, has led to a change in the perception of what a child is.  Too often, a child is seen as a burden to be avoided or discarded if necessary.  Children are associated with “lost freedom” i.e., lost wages, lost privacy, lost opportunities to travel, lost independence, even lost sex.  With procreation now separated from sex, people delay or forgo children altogether to accommodate their timing, their budget, and their convenience.  A child is no longer a gift from God, and the product of a loving relationship, but rather, simply a choice.

Moreover, children are often treated as if they were property, not people.  People feel “entitled” to a baby, even if it means the use of donor sperm, eggs and/or a surrogate mom, and whether or not that child will have both a father and mother.  Frozen embryos have been the subject of legal battles, and they are too often used for stem cell research.  Gay couples feel entitled to a child, without regard to the child’s right to know and be raised by their both their biological mother and father. 

Recently, Pope Francis criticized the “culture of comfort” that pushes men and women to avoid having children so as not to interfere with vacations, prosperity, or independence.   His two predecessors warned about the “dictatorship of relativism” in which religious freedom would be violated.  These two warnings have now become reality.  We have a government that mandates every employer pay for free contraception (the word means "against life").  The Hobby Lobby case and others like it have temporarily made it possible for employers to refuse to pay for at least abortificient drugs if it violates their religious belief.  But these two cultural shifts, comfort and relativism, have combined to change our national demographics for the worse, and they’ve also had a devastating effect on marriage itself.  We no longer think of the family as the basic unit of society, but rather, the individual. 

In a very real sense, we are committing national suicide.  We are so focused on ourselves that we are unwilling or unable to perceive the great gift and miracle of children who are the embodiment of God’s love.  Incidentally, I believe that is why we find all babies to be so adorable, they are the embodiment of God's Love.   To prevent or abort a child, is to prevent and destroy Love itself.   A child is not a problem, or a choice, it is an opportunity to experience an incomparable gift of love.