Offenses Against the Truth

In what appears to be a misguided effort to make Catholicism seem more appealing, some clergy avoid preaching about sin – at least sins regarding human sexuality and marriage/family.  It is nearly four decades ago that the future Pope Benedict XVI reminded bishops that “Only what is true can ultimately be pastoral” (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1/1/1986).

My own ears can recall few homilies addressing the sinfulness of contraception, homosexual acts, masturbation, pornography, or sex outside of marriage. Are any Catholics secretly or silently gladdened by that, or by the dramatic increase in declarations of marital nullity? (Catholic Stand, 1/2/24).

I have rarely – if ever – heard clergy discuss God’s great “social program” for rearing children and for the well being of humanity.  It is largely ignored that God calls husbands and wives to be united in permanent, monogamous marriage, and open to kids.

If You Don’t Eat Your Meat, You Can’t Have Any Pudding (Pink Floyd).

When it comes to morality, adult behavior can be like children resisting their dinner and just wanting dessert!  God knows what is best for us, and our clergy have the profound responsibility to act on His behalf.  Clergy downplaying the truth are missing that He inerrantly knows best and loves each of us beyond our imaginings.

Catholic truth, heroism and God’s grace are indispensable for Catholics to live out their vocations.  Ignoring this will just make Christian life seem ho hum and boring!  Living the truth is a mortal challenge.  In 2025, many Catholics in Nigeria and elsewhere are paying for their faith with their lives!  Our Faith calls us to courageously stand for Jesus’ truth.

Truth and Untruth

The Compendium of the Catechism presents the truths from our Catechism in clear and concise language.  It is a roadmap for authentic happiness and salvation.  This masterpiece from Pope Benedict XVI’s era deserves our attention!  I will focus on what it says about the eighth commandment.

You Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Your Neighbor

The truth about our origins, purpose, morality and ultimate destiny is real and completely available to us in Jesus.  We are responsible to seek truth and live according to it (cf, Compendium, # 521).

We cannot keep truth to ourselves.  We must witness to the truth always and in all situations, even foregoing our earthly lives if necessary (cf, Compendium, # 522).  The media does not adequately report on how  many of our Catholic contemporaries are being martyred!

We are called to radical truthfulness.  No matter what people say or excuse, false witness, perjury, lying, slander, rash judgment, defamation, and calumny are unacceptable and are sins.  We must not flatter (i.e., insincere praise), give undue compliments, provide adulation, or be complaisant.  If we have harmed others, we must repair the damage (cf, Compendium, # 523).

We are not called to be cruel in our honesty.  Our respect for truth must be accompanied by charity in communicating and providing information.  There is a proper role for discretion and keeping secrets (cf, Compendium, # 524).

Social communication must be true, complete, honest, just, and charitable.  It must serve the common good, respecting people and laws (cf, Compendium, # 525).

Through God-given talent and human cooperation, truth should also be expressed in art.  Sacred art should lead us to God (cf, Compendium, # 526).

Among Saint Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” talks, I will add that several focus on the human body in art:

• The Human Body, Subject of Works of Art
• Reflections on the Ethos of the Human Body in Works of Artistic Culture
• Art Must Not Violate the Right to Privacy
• Ethical Responsibilities in Art

No right minded person.would argue that we should utilize any work from the late, pathetic musician Ozzy Osbourne to convey the Faith.  Similarly, our church needs to correct past mistakes and completely disassociate itself from low quality and scandalous art:

Most people with normal minds look at…[Father Marko Rupnik’s] mosaics and have a vague sense of wrongness and unease. They are clearly intended to look like ancient Byzantine art, but it’s off, anti-true, somehow….[Rupnik’s art] takes the extreme precision and rationality of Byzantine Christian art and creates chaos with it, visual gibberish. Its style, by imitating children’s scribbles, implies that the Christian things it depicts are silly, imprecise and ultimately irrelevant nonsense, stories fit only for children. Rupnik’s art is deliberately subversive of its source material, anti-rational and anti-mathematical (Hillary White, 8/9/23)

Conclusion

….For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” (John 18: 37, 38).

Like Pilate, so many of our contemporaries parrot his thought and pretend that truth is not knowable!  Sin may cloud our thinking, and we certainly need guidance from the Magisterium.  Yet, truth is always and everywhere knowable, even to those not viewed as scholarly:

….although You have hidden these things from the wise and the learned You have revealed them to the childlike…. (Matthew 11:25)