A lot has happened this past week: the 10th
anniversary of the death of St. John Paul II; Pope Benedict’s announcement of ‘A
Jubilee Year of Mercy’; President Obama scolded Christians again (at an Easter
prayer breakfast, no less); and the week
culminated on Divine Mercy Sunday.
Celebration of the 10th anniversary of St. John Paul II’s
death brings to mind how closely his successors have been following through on
his many significant contributions to modern Catholic doctrine. Pope Francis is getting a lot of attention
for his focus on mercy, the poor, economics, and the family, but many don’t
realize that the current pope’s agenda is taken almost directly from the
encyclicals and teaching of St. John Paul II.
Twenty years ago St. John Paul II released The Gospel of Life which warned us about
the “rising culture of death in which what was once called evil is now
considered a social good, and when that happens, people drift away from their
faith. This is the sinister result of
relativism which reigns unopposed. In
this way, democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves
towards a form of totalitarianism. The
state is no longer the ‘common home’ where all can live together on the basis
of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant state.”
When John Paul wrote this two decades ago, it
seemed like an exaggeration, but look at what is happening to our culture. All over Europe and more recently in North
America, governments decry long-standing Christian beliefs to be intolerant,
prejudicial, and even criminal. Pope
Benedict XVI referred to this as “the
dictatorship of relativism.” St.
John Paul II cited the rise of legal abortion and gay marriage as a symptom of
moral confusion: people losing the ability to distinguish between good and evil
in modern life. Pope Francis often
refers to this as ‘a throw-away culture’ in which marriage, the unborn, and the
elderly, are cast aside for the sake of convenience and absolute personal
freedom without regard to morality.
Pope Francis will be publishing an encyclical later this
year on the environment. This may seem
an odd and novel move, coming from a pope, but in fact popes have a long
history of commenting on both the environment and economics. Over the past 100 years popes have issued numerous
encyclicals about the modern world, including the primacy of property rights,
the dangers of socialism leading to a ‘nanny state,’ the value of the dignity
of work and self-support, the principle
of subsidiarity (making decisions at the lowest possible level of government),
and of course, responsible family planning.
When Pope Francis releases his encyclical on the environment, it is very
likely to be to ensure that the moral voice of the Church be included,
otherwise the dialogue is very likely to focus on population control with an
emphasis on more funding for abortion, sterilization, and birth control.
One of the most troubling trends we face as Christians is
the growing belief that religious convictions have no place in political debate
or discussion. President Obama and the
progressive movement speak frequently about “freedom of worship” as long as our
religiously inspired principles are confined within the walls of our places of
worship. Governor Cuomo recently stated
that people who oppose abortion and gay marriage “are no longer welcome in New
York.” Corporate CEOs now routinely take
it upon themselves to weigh in on gay marriage, threatening to pull their
business from states where religious freedom is protected, as seen last week
when the governors of Indiana and Kansas caved in to corporate threats and
modified their states’ Religious Freedom Restoration Act, despite the fact that
it was modeled on federal legislation signed into law during the Clinton
administration.
Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia observed last week
that, “The religious vision and convictions that once animated American life
are no longer welcome at the table.” He
cited ‘marriage equality’ as a term
that is widely used as a euphemism for same-sex marriage, as an example of ‘dishonest
political language’ that blurs rather than clarifies the subject at hand. When Christians, with a fundamental belief in
God’s Natural Law, raise objections to gay marriage or abortion, they are
accused of intolerance and violation of people’s civil rights. The confusion here is that Christian
doctrine has always and will always demand respect for the dignity and freedom
of every individual, including homosexuals, who are to be loved and
respected. However there is a difference
between loving a person and agreeing with their doctrine. The New York Times routinely runs scathing
articles about the Catholic Church’s intolerance of heresy, accusing anyone who
opposes women’s ‘right to choose’ or ‘marriage equality’ of bigotry. But this ignores that fact that every Church
is based on the definition of its doctrine.
If the doctrine of the Church were to be discarded, what exactly would
the Church stand for?
When Barack Obama gave the commencement address at Notre
Dame and was awarded an honorary law degree, the most disturbing aspect of this
was the Catholic University president’s introduction in which he rationalized the
president’s appearance as ‘inviting open dialogue.’ But when someone openly opposes what the
Church believes to be moral truth, there is no room for compromise. Image the former president of Notre Dame, Fr.Ted
Hesburgh, who marched at Selma with Martin Luther King Jr., inviting George
Wallace, then governor of Alabama, to speak on the virtues of racial
discrimination, and awarding him an honorary law degree. It never would have happened! When moral truth is obfuscated or denied,
there is no room for compromise. People
complain that we must not impose our morals on others, but this is not to say
that religiously motivated dialogue should be shut down. That’s pretty much what Lenin, Stalin, and
Hitler did when they decided to attack, destroy, and eliminate religion and any
religiously motivated debate.
God’s amazing mercy and forgiveness are at the central
core of our faith. But faith without
reason is sterile. God created us with
reason which informs, clarifies, and enhances our faith. Reason enables us to use our rational minds
to assert the FACT that God exists, not just the hope that He does. We conclude this from rational thought. For example, the fact that reason itself
exists, although it is intangible, is proof that there is a greater reality
than that which we can observe and measure in a laboratory. Reason is much more than the evolved thinking
of our human brains, it had to have its source in something even greater,
otherwise why would there be consensus on so many ethical issues? The very fact of existence begs the question
of where the universe came from, because common sense dictates that something
cannot come from nothing. Human reason
demands that we answer the question of whether or not our existence and the
miraculous complexity of our bodies and minds, is the product of random chance,
or had its source in something much greater.
We use reason to assess the ‘common good’ and the consequences of our
personal and political choices.
Tolerance, a form of reason, becomes unreasonable when it is used as an
excuse to bash those with whom we disagree, as the President did again at the
Easter prayer breakfast. Reason enables
us to distinguish between respecting the dignity of every person, (no matter
their race, age, or gender preferences), and their beliefs, when moral clarity
has been lost. The old adage, ‘Love the
sinner, hate the sin’ comes to mind.
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