Catholic Absolutes for Our Interior and Exterior Life -Part 2

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at fundamental principles for our interior life.

Our relationship with God is rooted in the time spent with Him in mental prayer.  It is sustained by grace from the Sacraments and worship.  And we pour that grace out into the world through the practice of virtue and asceticism.   The better we cultivate our interior life in this way, the better equipped we are to enter into the messiness of the world.

This brings us to the “messiness of the world.”  The world is fallen in a similar way as each of us.   We are a mishmash of sacred and fallen.  God dwells in us (if we’re in a state of grace) – sacred.   St. Paul teaches that we have “a principle” in us that drives us to do what we shouldn’t and not do what we should – fallen.

Same for the world.  God created the world and called it good – sacred.  Because of the fall, the world is subject to decay and filled with all of us fallen creatures who tend to come together and hatch stupendously bad ideas that do far more harm as a collective than we could ever accomplish individually – fallen.

Principles For Our Exterior Life

The following are a shortlist of fundamental Catholic teachings, relevant to engaging current issues in the world.   None of these positions should be scandalous for any Catholic to proclaim, for any Catholic to hear or for any Catholic to act on.

Put differently, if two strangers meet and find out they are both Catholic they ought to be able to take it for granted they have this world view in common.

Catholic Social Teaching

We are call called to bring Christ to a fallen world.  This is our practice of virtue in the corporeal and spiritual works of mercy as guided by Catholic Social Teaching.  In fact, if we don’t, we leave a void that will be filled by secular ideologies and institutions that are often counter to the Gospel.  Here we can think of Mother Teresa as the archetype for our time.

Pope St. John Paul II stated,

By her social doctrine the Church makes an effective contribution to the issues presented by the current globalized economy. Her moral vision in this area rests on the threefold cornerstone of human dignity, solidarity, and subsidiarity’ … the Church’s social doctrine is a moral vision which aims to encourage governments, institutions and private organizations to shape a future consonant with the dignity of every person (Ecclesia in America).

Pope Benedict defined human dignity this way,

Human dignity is the intrinsic value of a person created in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by Christ.”  He connects human dignity with two non-negotiable priorities for intervention in the public arena: protection of life and the integrity of the family (Address to European Parliamentary Group, 2006).

Solidarity recognizes we are all connected as a human family united in the Body of Christ.  It is in solidarity that Pope Saint Gregory the Great stated,

The rich man is only an administrator of what he possesses; giving what is required to the needy is a task that is to be performed with humility because the goods do not belong to the one who distributes them. He who retains riches only for himself is not innocent; giving to those in need means paying a debt.

A man’s wealth isn’t actually his own, in solidarity, it belongs to his neighbor (because it really all belongs to God, anyway).

Subsidiarity shows us the path forward.  It holds that problems are best solved at the most local level possible.  Subsidiarity encourages human interactivity and the direct practice of Christian charity and virtue.  It also guards against government tyranny thinly veiled as welfare, as pithily warned by Alex de Tocqueville:

For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Protection of Life

Pope Benedict states,

the Catholic Church … is consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these, the following emerge clearly today:  protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death…(To The Members of the European People’s Party, 2006).

Abortion is intrinsically evil.  This is a moral absolute.  There is no circumstance under which abortion is licit.

Since the first century, the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion.  This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.  Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense (CCC 2270 and 2271).

Euthanasia is likewise, intrinsically evil.

And the Catholic Church is always clear that the ends never justify the means.  In the context of abortion, we cannot “tolerate” abortion so that we can advance other lesser goals.  Those goals may be noble, but most are a matter of prudential judgment – they are no moral absolutes.

Family Integrity

In the same address, Pope Benedict identifies the other moral “non-negotiables” for our time as the integrity of the family structure and proper education of children:

…recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage and its defense from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role (and) the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.

Truth

There is an ongoing war against truth.  It started in the Garden, with that slippery purveyor of lies.  And it shows up in one of the stand-out lines from Christ’s passion.  As Fulton Sheen puts it, “Pilate asked ‘What is truth?’, and then crucified it.”

In our time the war is led by Postmodernism (there is no truth) and Relativism (we create our own truth).  Both, in their own way, deny that there is an absolute, objective, transcendent truth.  Both fail to recognize that not only does Truth exist, but it is actually freeing – “the truth shall set you free.”  Truth provides focus and direction to our lives.  Without truth, as Pope Benedict says, we fall under the  “dictatorship of relativism”.   We are at the mercy of an ever-changing brew of thoughts, preferences, and emotions that push us one way today, another way tomorrow.  Like a petty little twerp of a dictator.

These two ideologies, relativism, and postmodernism provide the intellectual framework (actually, an anti-intellectual anti-framework) for most of the evils of our time.  They are like fertilizer that only grows weeds.  They also pave the way to religious persecution (freedom of religion being close behind life and family issues as a non-negotiable).

Scientism

Continuing the war on Truth, Scientism holds that the only truth is scientific truth.  You see this in the militant determination that all must be “data-driven” and “evidence-based”.  Certainly, there is nothing wrong with data or evidence.  But there is a misplaced reverence for these terms.  Data and evidence are often distorted by human error and bias.  It takes tremendous time and effort to purge such sources of error.  More importantly, there is a deeper truth than scientific truth – for example, the truth of the Natural Law.  And then there is Truth itself, divinely revealed.  True science will never conflict with Natural Law or Divine Revelation.

Communism

Communism (and Socialism) are based on the Marxist idea that life always boils down to the struggle of oppressed vs oppressor.  The goal of communism is to attain political power to once-and-for-all end the struggle of oppression and create utopia on earth.  Communism denies the reality that the true battle is one of good vs evil, and that the only solution to that problem is found in God, not man.  Communism is evil through and through and has consistently been condemned by the Church.  This applies to Communism in all its forms – including the latest rebranding as “Democratic Socialism”.  This is because Communism supplants God’s vision for a society with a society of man – we create our own utopia.  There will be no good fruit from that rotten seed no matter what new name it is given.

Transgenderism

Transgenderism has become an aggressive ideology, particularly in the targeting of pre-pubescent children.  Here is a concise definition from the Vatican:

Gender theory (especially in its most radical forms) speaks of a gradual process of denaturalization, that is a move away from nature and towards an absolute option for the decision of the feelings of the human subject. In this understanding of things, the view of both sexual identity and the family become subject to the same ‘liquidity’ and ‘fluidity’ that characterize other aspects of post-modern culture, often founded on nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants, or momentary desires provoked by emotional impulses and the will of the individual, as opposed to anything based on the truths of existence (Male and Female He Created Them, Congregation for Catholic Education).

Related to transgender ideology and relativism is same-sex marriage.  For manifold reasons, based both on Natural Law and Divine Revelation, the Church simply cannot recognize a same-sex partnership as Sacramental marriage.

Climate

This is ecology and climatology as a radical ideology, rather than valid scientific and social inquiry as part of our God-given responsibility to care for creation.  Here is how Pope Francis’ Laudato Si puts it:

Certainly, these issues require constant attention and a concern for their ethical implications. A broad, responsible scientific and social debate needs to take place, one capable of considering all the available information and of calling things by their name. It sometimes happens that complete information is not put on the table; a selection is made on the basis of particular interests, be they politico-economic or ideological. This makes it difficult to reach a balanced and prudent judgement on different questions, one which takes into account all the pertinent variables.

Closing

In Part 1 we reviewed fundamental principles of growing our Interior Life (our relationship with God):

1. Mental prayer
2. Sacramental grace and worship
3. Conforming ourselves to Christ through virtue and asceticism

In Part 2 we looked at fundamental principles of bringing Christ to the world:

1. Catholic Social Teaching highlights the dignity of each person, that we are all connected in solidarity and that we lift one another up through subsidiarity (solving problems as locally as possible).
2. Moral non-negotiables are the sanctity of life (abortion and euthanasia are grave sins in all cases) and the integrity of the family (marriage between man and woman and their irreplaceable role to raise and educate their children.
3. All other social endeavors must be predicated on Truth if they are to bring light into the world. Conversely, whatever denies the Natural Law and Divine Revelation must be rejected.

So, let us endeavor to remain close to the Lord and His truth!  As He Himself instructs us, “Those who trust in Him shall understand the truth, and the faithful shall abide with Him in love”  (Wis 3:9)