Time Immortal

Most of the media coverage of the Pope’s visit to the U.S. seems to focus on his addressing the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Church. And I for one am not going to complain that Pope Benedict XVI has chosen to address this issue as thoroughly as he has — it needed to be done, and Benedict himself is a great person to have in charge of handling the situation.

The folks at GetReligion, however, point out that the Pope also took time to speak out against the dangers of secularism and relativism — this, it seems, has been woefully underreported.

Pope Benedict XVI visited the White House on Wednesday, his 81st birthday, and praised America as a nation where strong religious belief can coexist with secular society.

But he later warned, in a speech to American bishops, of the “subtle influence of secularism” that can co-opt religious people and lead even Catholics to accept abortion, divorce and co-habitation outside of marriage.

“Is it consistent to profess our beliefs in church on Sunday and then during the week to promote business practices or medical procedures contrary to those beliefs?” he asked in a lengthy address to the bishops. “Is it consistent for practicing Catholics to ignore or exploit the poor and the marginalized, to promote sexual behavior contrary to Catholic moral teaching or to adopt positions that contradict the right to life of every human being from conception to natural death?”

“Any tendency to treat Religion as a private matter must be resisted,” he said.

What’s interesting is that the Pope approaches the issue from two directions; he confronts secularism directly and opposes it directly, but he also confronts and opposes the creeping influence of secularism — including the spread of moral relativism — that afflicts members of the body of the Church. He reminds us all that if one yokes oneself to the Catholic Church, one necessarily accepts Catholic teaching in matters pertaining to, among many other things, sex, marriage and abortion. And he then follows that up with an admonishment to the non-religious: religion cannot kept out of view.

I’ve always been offended by those who insist that religion is merely a private matter, because…well…because it isn’t. After all, if there is any truth to the religion I am a member of (Catholicism, natch), then what is at stake is not merely some temporary thing, but an immortal soul that resides within my being. If in fact we Catholics have it right, then it can only follow that the most important thing in our lives, above all other considerations (including family and friends, jobs and leisure activities) is our faith.

Simply put, we can no more be expected to set that aside than we can be expected to set aside our skin colour, because our religion is even more important than the biological realities at work in our bodies. Especially for Catholics — who experience Christ both directly, in the Eucharist, and in the context of community — religion cannot be relegated to the realm of “the private.”

And to suggest that it should be thusly relegated is laughable.

John C. Wright, science fiction author and Catholic convert, always makes for an interesting read, especially when dismantling someone of opposite opinion:

“Morals are not objective.”

If so, then it is not wrong for me to say that Morals are objective.

If morals are not objective, you have no moral grounds on which to utter even the least objection to anything I say.

Indeed, I could be lying and lying with malice aforethought when I say ‘Morals are Objective’, and you still could utter no rational counter-argument.

You can perhaps report, as a matter of your personal opinion, that it runs counter to your personal taste for someone to lie maliciously and say ‘Morals are objective’; but then again, I prefer pie to cake. So what? Your preferences, being personal, are of no consequence.

Your statement, if true, means your statement is inconsequential. You have shot yourself in the foot.

On the other hand, if your statement is false, and there are objective moral rules, then I am allowed to think (even if courtesy will not let me say) that someone who says ‘Morals are not objective’ is a damned liar; that lies are wrong; and that such a someone offends the moral order of the universe, the Golden Rule, common sense, not to mention the rules of logic, by uttering so foolhardy, vile and ignoble a sentiment. In other words, if the statement is false, it also is evil.

I hope you will forgive my harsh language. I do not mean to insult you, because I like you just fine. But what is coming out of your mouth is defiling you.

I’ve argued along much the same lines with moral relativists before, and always to the same effect; such people can be very easily impaled upon the spear of their own faulty logic, and usually become increasingly angry and resentful as the fanciful lies they cling to are unwound. The only relativist I ever debated who stuck to his guns and attempted to remain logically consistent in his arguments wound up becoming a pariah in the student club we were both members of after I challenged him (and he accepted the challenge) to define under what circumstances it could be said that rape is morally permissible, according to his framework. Two female colleagues, present at the time, were not impressed at his attempt to do so.

The fact that one cannot be a moral relativist without speaking in absolutes should give the intelligent person pause, and reveal that fundamentally, relativism is but a lie. That it does not do so speaks volumes, I think, about how deluded by sin our society has become of late.

Seems pretty straightforward — the DVD apparently chronicles diminishing birthrates world-wide, although its principal focus seems to be on Europe, where no nation has a birthrate at (or even near) “replacement level” — 2.1 live births per woman. This replacement rate is the absolute minimum necessary birthrate for “zero population growth” to be a reality.

Most European nations have birthrates approaching half of replacement rate. There is no parallel in history for the kind of demographic implosion that is now imminent in places like Russia and Spain. Not that any of this comes as a surprise, of course. A replacement level birthrate basically requires a Catholic moral approach to marriage and childbearing, and every European nation (even once-strong Catholic bastions like Italy and Spain) have largely given themselves over to secularism, progressivism, and moral relativism — abortion and casual sex are now almost the rule, rather than the much-derided exception.

Funnily, that transformation in the soul of the nation has turned out to be destructive for the nation. Who ever could have seen that coming?

Besides the Church, that is?

(In Soviet Russia, hat tips you: Mark Shea)

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

…here’s a long-winded and meandering example. Or perhaps multiple examples. I really can’t tell.

My aunt and uncle, and their three children, recently stopped attending services at their Catholic Church, in quiet protest over the Catholic Church of Canada’s response to Bill C-38, the recently-passed legislation that allows for same-sex couples to obtain a marriage license in Canada, and the Church’s ‘bias towards homosexuals’ in general. Well and good, and as free people in a free society, given the freedom to choose their own actions by God Himself, they are completely within their rights and power to do so. But as G.K. Chesterton once remarked, to possess a right is by no means the same thing as to be right in exercising it. This is as true for abortion as it is for ceasing to attend Church services in protest over the Church drawing a line in the sand over another morally contentious issue. Were I a little more strict in mind, I’d even go so far to say that it might qualify one for excommunication. But as conservative as I seem to be getting these days, I’m not that harsh.

In an increasingly secular society, it’s more and more common for people to leave the Church, or to leave any Religion really, because they disagree with some aspect of the Church’s moral teaching. This is not a new phenomenon, though — many have left the Church over moral, or other, disagreements. The various early heresies, and the Protestant Reformation, came about for these reasons. What is different in this day and age is the acceptance that goes along with such a separation, acceptance and even praise that is, in most respects, completely undeserved.

I am reminded of a passage written in the National Post — by an atheist — that basically began as a letter to Pope Benedict XVI. It’s no longer in their 7-day archive, but for the interested it was written by , and appeared in the June(??) 13th issue of the Post.

In it, he mentioned Benedict’s desire to see the ‘lapsed’ of the Church (some 20 million people) return to the fold, and the columnist’s response to that was ‘do you really want them back?’. It’s a valid question.

In reading some of posts on Angry’s blog that have been left in reply to one of his articles, it seems clear to me that the vast majority of people who have a beef with the Catholic Church disagree with the Church’s stance on birth control, abortion, sexuality prior to marriage, or homosexuality. In short…sex, sex, sex, and sex. Personally believing these things — all or just some of them — to be valid and not in any way immoral choices to make, the lapsed have taken to calling the Church to task for its incorrect stance on these issues (their stance obviously being the correct one!). It’s really quite a delicious arrogance, is it not?

So it goes in the age of moral relativism, really the ultimate in selfish ideologies: “I don’t agree with this teaching, but I think that this behaviour is right. I don’t have to be told how to live my life, and the Bible is just a book written by a bunch of old men, which means it has no relevance to my life. I think the Church is wrong on this issue.” And it goes even further than that. In many respects, it isn’t just the liberal attitudes of the lapsed coming through, but instead the completion of the pendulum-swing of society into the realm of moral relativism.

I had the opportunity to engage in a debate of moral absolutism vs. moral relativism with a young compatriot of mine recently. At the time, I was discussing morality with a friend, also a Christian, in the Computer Engineering ‘Club’ (read: Students’ Association) at my University. Another ‘CompE’ walked in during our conversation, just when I was getting into talking about moral absolutism with my friend. This unfortunate young man, whom we will call Josh, challenged me on this, asking how I could believe in moral absolutism. I asked if he believed in moral relativism, and his reply was a scoff and a “yes, doesn’t everybody?”.

Implication: I’m an under-educated, misguided neophyte.

“Okay“, I think to myself, “you’re on, buddy.“

At the time, there were two males (myself and Josh) and two females (my friend and her study partner) in the Club office, so I decided to fire with both barrels and chose a suitably relevant question. I asked Josh first if he’d be willing to engage in a little “outside the box” thinking and argue from a morally relativistic standpoint as to under what circumstances a certain action or sin I would name would be morally justifiable. When he agreed, I said one word: rape.

To his credit, he stuck to his guns* and tried valiantly to explain a situation in which rape would be morally justifiable:

JOSH: Well, if the person who…ah…got raped learned an important lesson from it.
ME: Yeah, we gotta learn them uppity womenfolk good, teach ‘em that they belong in the kitchen, right?
JOSH: No, not saying that. But if, you know, a person thought they were on top of the world, and the rape brought them down a notch…
ME: So…like…like it happens in some Middle Eastern nations, where a woman tries to, I don’t know…get an education? Or sleeps with a man outside of marriage…and then the local tribunal sends eight guys to rape her senseless for acting up?
JOSH: No, not like that at all!

And so on. In the end, having made a near-complete fool of himself and forever offended (and probably frightened) the two women I had previously been talking with, he hung his head and switched topics — still convinced his relativism was right. But I kept on. And he said something interesting then. I asked him: if he believed that people can decide their own morality and there is no overall arbiter thereof, whether or not it would be hypocritical for him to judge my actions as right or wrong if I did something…like rape someone. And his answer was that yes, he was allowed to judge me.

And therein lies the rub, as ol’ Bill might’ve said. The crux of the morally relative argument is just that: I am allowed to define my own morality, and I am allowed to judge the actions of others as moral or immoral according to the morality I define for myself. If there was ever a case of having your cake and eating it too, this is it. The ultimate selfish Philosophy. And this example above is no different…the supposed advocates of personal freedom of choice and action and morality are only too quick to impose judgment and restriction on those they disagree with.

* and no, I don’t think it’s right to rape someone. I think it’s a terrible violation of a person on all levels of their being. I credit Josh with sticking to his guns, as it were, because he didn’t back down from his relativism in the face of a difficult question. Other people I have so challenged have, in the past, defaulted to a selective absolutism when asked about rape, saying that in that case, it is never right. Josh did not stray into such hypocrisy.

It’s like Angry said in a recent post: “Me, me, me. It’s always about “Me” with these people.” And ultimately, it is folly, for it stacks the presumptuous moral posing of an individual angry at being told that the way in which they live their life is (dare I say it?) ‘wrong’ in some capacity against the long-established, age-and-persecution-tested, 2000-year evolved belief system and understanding of the Church. Who’s gonna win with that one?

O’Neill goes so far as to say that he, an atheist, would prefer to be seated next to an born-again evangelical Christian than to be seated next to a ‘recovering Catholic’ such as Marg, because while the former might provide some interesting conversation or a reasonably thought-out debate about the nature of religion…the latter will usually only whine about how the Church ‘done them wrong’ (to use the Southern vernacular).

How apt.

And so it is with my relatives. My cousin was only too happy to correct my understanding and curtly inform me that her family would no longer be attending Church services because of the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality and same-sex marriage. All well and good, but it is hypocritical to criticize the Church as having the ‘wrong’ stance on the issue. Marriage, within the understanding of the Catholic Church, is an institution not solely designed to provide a forum for the consummation of passion between two people, nor is it solely about the two people getting married.

A priest whom I respect likened the divine nature of marriage to the divine nature of the Trinity, and I think his point is relevant. The Trinity is the ultimate embodiment of love, being that it is God, and within the human context marriage is the ultimate embodiment of love that a human being can experience in their mortal life on Earth. That is because marriage is a three-part arrangement as well. Certainly it involves, as is quoted in numerous places in Scripture, the unification of a man and a woman into a lifelong, monogamous relationship. But though marriage unifies, it does not complete. The completion of marriage, the culmination of the joining of two people, is in the fruits of their love, and the fruitfulness of their love. It is in children, the coming together to create a new life.

Adoption is wonderful, but even adoption does not cover this base. marriage is fully realized only when the couple that is married can partake of both its unitive aspect and the procreation that results from their sexual union. That is not something that is possible in a homosexual marriage. Two gay men cannot between them produce a baby, for neither has the necessary physical hardware to carry the child to term and deliver it. Likewise, two gay women cannot between then produce a baby, for though either one would be able to get pregnant, the child would not be the product of the sexual union of the two of them. That is not to say that either couple would not find some manner of fulfillment in adopting, artificially conceiving, or surrogating a child, but it IS to say that whatever fulfillment they might find, it is not a fulfillment that would justify the use of the term ‘marriage’.

This is the Church’s stance, and for all I can see it is the correct one. Marriage exists to provide the MOST STABLE framework possible for the rearing of children, because it is designed as a framework in which a man and a woman pledge monogamy to each other so as to facilitate the furthering of the species through natural procreative methods and the bringing of children into a household that is most ideal for raising a properly balanced (emotionally, mentally, spiritually…) child to adulthood. Anything that deviates from that should not be called marriage, for it does not contribute to the good of all humankind in the same manner. Call it something else.