Thoughts After Nine Years Blogging

Apparently I’ve kept this blog going for 9 years (though the Xanga years are lost). It’s hard to believe it’s been running that long. When I started, I thought I would dabble a bit and move on. For a few years I would say on an anniversary that I didn’t know how long I would keep it up. Now it feels like a part of my life that I don’t foresee dumping without a serious reason.

While the attacks against the Church have shifted over the years, and so have the topics, the consistent theme seems to be the importance of knowing what the Catholic Church actually teaches and why. For those outside of the Church, that meant encouraging them to learn what we believe instead of accepting lies about us. For those within the Church, this meant urging them not to separate from the teaching authority of the Church.

In both cases it was about writing to ask people not to assume that what heard knew was true—especially if they heard it second- or third-hand—but to ask whether a claim accurately portrayed what the Church taught. That was true whether it was dealing with fundamentalist anti-Catholics or the “New Atheism” 9 years ago, or whether it is dealing with the anti-Francis Catholics today. I believe that when we separate hostility towards what the Church teaches from people hurt by “Catholics behaving shamefully,” it’s clear that hostility towards the Church in the first case mostly comes from three origins:

1. Ignorance over what we believe and hating the Church over that ignorance.
2. Resentment that a favorite sin is condemned as against God
3. Belief that a sinful Catholic is sinful because of, and not in spite of, Church teaching past or present.

Those motives have been present in most of the attacks against the Church I’ve seen.

In response to these attacks, I’ve always held that the Catholic Church is the Church established by Christ, and that He protects His Church from teaching error in matters of faith and morals. Because I see it this way (which I hold to be a blessing from God) I’ve always thought that, when someone presents what looks like a smoking gun against the claims of the Church, there’s more to the story that exonerates her if we take the time to look. So, whether people think I’ve succeeded or failed in defending the Church, these were the beliefs I started with.

Whether they are from the outside or inside; whether from secular or religious sources, I expect attacks to continue. I don’t know what the attacks will be next year, five years from now or another ten years, but I trust God will protect His Church like He promised. (Matthew 28:20) I just pray that my role with this blog will be a help and not a stumbling block to those people seeking the truth.

May God bless you.

Because Sin Is Real: The Truth America Forgot

If you read the works of the saints, or their biographies, you can see that they were aware of a truth that America has forgotten—sin is real and it alienates us from God. Instead, America (or, rather the whole of Western civilization) has a bad habit of presuming that God “doesn’t care” about the action we do that falls under the category of sin. As a result, we have an understanding about sin that is both self-contradictory and has nothing to do with the reality:

• When others do something we dislike, we have no qualms about acknowledging it as a sin.
• When we do something that is a sin, we refuse to acknowledge it as a sin and call it an arbitrary decision made by human beings that doesn’t matter to God.

In other words, while people are perfectly willing to denounce others, the fact is that, instead of thinking rationally about the good or evil of our actions we contemplate doing, we rationalize the things we already do to avoid thinking about whether they are good or evil or rationalize a reason not to do what we ought to do.

This mindset actually convicts the person before God—because we call the actions of others “sin” or “wrongdoing,” we acknowledge that there is a good which must be lived and an evil which must be avoided. But because we refuse to apply this knowledge to ourselves, we show ourselves to be hypocrites and evildoers.

When we think of it this way, the proper way to interpret Matthew 7:1-5 suddenly becomes a whole lot clearer:

¹ “Stop judging, that you may not be judged. ² For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. ³ Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? ⁴ How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’ while the wooden beam is in your eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.

If we refuse to acknowledge our own sinfulness, we become unfit guides for helping others avoid sin—having that beam in the eye. Unfortunately, because everyone seems to think that sin is affiliated with those we disagree with, but not ourselves, that is in essence a refusal to repent. If we get angry at the Church for saying that it is sinful to commit fornication, adultery, homosexual acts, contraception, abortion, etc., and claiming it is not a sin to do these things then, by refusing to stop doing them, we show to God our refusal to repent and turn back to Him.

In other words, the sin of the pharisee is not limited to the religious zealot. It is committed by every person who refuses to say ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’ (Luke 18:13b).

Unfortunately, people like to misinterpret Matthew 7:1-5 to mean that any person who says “X is a sin” is disobeying Jesus. But if that were a true interpretation, then it would certainly be disobeying Jesus to accuse them of being judgmental. But anyone who takes the time to read Chapter 7 of Matthew can see that Jesus certainly does not forbid us to say that actions are evil. In fact, near the end of the chapter, Jesus also says:

²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,* but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. ²² Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ ²³ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you.* Depart from me, you evildoers.’ (Luke 7:21-23)

Indeed, elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt 18:15-17), Jesus tells us about admonishing sinners:

¹⁵ “If your brother* sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. ¹⁶  If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ¹⁷ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church.* If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.

These teachings of Jesus show that “Don’t say X is a sin” is a false interpretation. In fact, if we love Christ, we keep His commandments (Luke 14:15) and if we reject the Apostles and their successors we reject Him and His Father (Luke 10:16). That is a message which is widely forgotten today by a people which thinks that the only moral obligation is being nice to those we think deserve our being nice to.

Our nation has forgotten the reality of sin as something that rejects God and harms our neighbor. In replacing it with “be nice to each other,” it has perverted the Christian message to the point that it accuses actual Christians of behaving in an “unchristian” manner. Not for bad behavior (which unfortunately does exist among who profess a belief in Christ) but for following their faith and saying “X is wrong!"

Until America recognizes the difference between rejecting evil and actual intolerance it will continue to justify evil while praising itself for “being nice."

They Will Hate Us

(The Stoning of Zechariah)

 

The Supreme Court has ruled today legalizing “same sex marriage” in a very poorly reasoned decision. This is something a Christian cannot support in good faith. Of course we believe that we are called to treat each individual with all the love and respect that is due a human person. But that love we are called to does not mean that we are required to recognize a morally bad act as if it were good. Therefore we deny that our actions are motivated by hatred when we say that homosexual acts are wrong. However, people will accuse us of hatred anyway. 

Because those political and cultural elites have decided that the only moral wrong is “hatred,” and because they decide that any action or belief they dislike is “hatred,” it stands to reason that we will become social pariahs in society. I fully expect that families will be divided as Our Lord warned in Matthew:

³⁴ “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. ³⁵ For I have come to set 

a man ‘against his father, 

a daughter against her mother, 

and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; 

³⁶ and one’s enemies will be those of his household.’  (Matthew 10:34-36)

So, when those of us who believe that marriage can only exist between one man and one woman encounter those who believe that any sexual relationship can become a “marriage,” they will accuse us of bigotry, hatred, homophobia and so on. They will falsely compare themselves with the Civil Rights movement and equate us with being Klansmen. To bolster their claim, they will trot out every extremist who comes along and equate them with being the “typical” example of Christian opposition.

This is false of course. The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes quite clear that, despite moral opposition to same sex sexual acts, we are not to treat people with such an inclination with hatred or do harm to them:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (2333)

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection. (2347) [Emphasis added]

Of course this hostility in the face of rejecting society’s values in favor of Our Lord’s values. Is nothing new. The pagan Romans viewed the early Christians as “enemies of humanity” and a danger to society because we rejected the vicious (in the sense of “vice filled”) practices they accepted as normal. Any government which finds our moral stance to be a barrier to what they want to do will find a way to label us as an enemy of the state, being cheered along by the crowds.

Of course, we must make sure our behavior as Christians is worthy of Our Lord. We have to love and bless those who hate us, and rebuke those extremists who confuse the teaching of what is right with the hatred of those who do wrong. And there will be extremists out there. When something offensive is done, there will always be a small percentage among the offended who think an unjust response is acceptable—and the greater the offense, the larger the amount offended and a corresponding larger number of extremists. We must urge them to remember that we may not do evil to those who wrong us.

So, we will no do evil, but, we will not surrender doing what is right before God either, because we must obey God, rather than men. We cannot "burn the pinch of incense” that society demands to get along. So, just as we did after Roe v. Wade, we will refuse to accept the validity of the Supreme Court decision. We will work to bring a fallen society back to Christ. In doing so, we will reject the charge of “hatred” towards those who hate us. We may be fired, fined, sued or imprisoned. We may find the Supreme Court will invent a “workaround” to evade the First Amendment and justify direct attacks on denominations they despise. But despite that, we will continue to love those we are called to teach the truth about how God calls us to live.

Thoughts On the Growing Injustice Against Christianity In America

We’re told that judges have no right to refuse to impose laws they feel to be unjust, civil servants have no right to refuse to participate in a state sanctioned activity they feel is unjust, pharmacists and doctors are denied conscience protection and businesses have no right to refuse to do something which goes against the moral convictions of the owners. But, they do not apply this to themselves. Thus, we’ve seen governors and attorney generals who refused to defend/enforce the laws defending the traditional concept of marriage.

Americans seem to be so blind to the fact that the these arguments are only applied in one direction, denying religious freedom to Christians with a moral conviction that a law is wrong, while giving license to any other group (ethnic, gender, religion, sexual preference). What we have is the replacing the rule of law with diktats aimed at favoring the allies of politically approved ideas and harming those opposed to these ideas. The sad thing is, in the past we have lionized people who stood up to the state and said, “I will not comply with an unjust law.” These heroes in American history recognized when a judicial ruling or a law was unjust because it forbade them doing what they felt morally obligated to do.

The common tactic to justify this injustice is to try to link their cause to the Civil Rights Movement. For example, proponents of “same sex marriage” try to point to segregation laws in the 19th and 20th centuries and claim that the belief that marriage can only exist between one man and one woman is the same thing as oppressing African Americans. But that is a false analogy. The two sides are not equivalent. One can affirm that a person has rights as a human being without indulging a moral behavior believed wrong. But the Civil Rights movement existed because the laws of the time denied the fact that African Americans had certain rights as human beings.

In fact, the banning of interracial marriage (so often equated with the defense of traditional marriage) was a legal invention that invented an artificial barrier between male and female on the basis of determining that one ethnicity was inferior to another. That intention to discriminate is not present in the defense of traditional marriage. The defense of marriage recognizes that male and female runs across all national, ethnic and religious lines and those categories do not change what marriage is. 

But “same sex marriage” does change what marriage is, by denying the complementarity of the genders as what marriage is intended to accomplish. The concept of “same sex marriage” reduces marriage to a legally recognized sexual relationship—something we do not accept as a valid definition of marriage, and something we will not cooperate with.

However, rather than actually try to discuss our concerns, the tactics today are very much similar to the attacks on Christianity in the times of Pagan Rome…making false accusations about what Christians believe in our opposition to what is morally wrong. Then, like now, Christians were charged with “hatred.” In that case, the charge was “hatred of the human race.” Here, it is “hatred” of the people who benefit from something we call morally wrong. The fact that we deny the charge is ignored—just as it was ignored in Roman times. If we will not do what those in authority want, we can expect to suffer whatever people can get away with inflicting on us (even when the Imperial government of Rome did not persecute Christians, many times governors and mob rule did).

Christians were accused of false crimes like cannibalism and incest in the times of Pagan Rome. We are accused of hating women and people with same sex attraction. Then and now, we deny these charges are a part of our belief. If anyone who professes Christianity committed such crimes, they would be acting against what the Church teaches. The fact is, while loving a person means treating them with all the dignity which belongs to being a person, this love does not require us to do for them what we believe is morally wrong.

Note this distinction. Contrary to accusations, we reject the claim that we support the mistreatment of people because of their actions and reject the claim that our refusing to support what we believe is morally wrong is rooted in hatred. We also reject the antics of extremists who invoke the name of Christian while actively doing things our religion forbids against those we believe do moral wrong.

America has a choice to make. Either our nation can act like the Roman Empire (except using lawsuits, fines and prison instead of lions) unjustly persecuting us because we refuse to do what we think is morally wrong, or it can act like what our Founding Fathers intended in limiting the government—forbidding it to interfere with our moral obligations to do good and avoid evil.

Dark Times: Reflections on Anti-Religious Propaganda

¹² The wicked plot against the righteous 

and gnash their teeth at them; 

¹³ But my Lord laughs at them, 

because he sees that their day is coming. 

¹⁴ The wicked unsheath their swords; 

they string their bows 

To fell the poor and oppressed, 

to slaughter those whose way is upright. 

¹⁵ Their swords will pierce their own hearts; 

their bows will be broken. [Psalm 37:12-15]

Reading the news, it seems that the foes of the Church have largely abandoned the pretense of trying to separate Pope Francis from the teaching of the Church. Because they believe that victory is imminent, they now write as if the Church is defeated and needs to change and get with the program if she would survive. However, we refuse to roll over and submit, and this angers those who hate us. The thing is, people who oppose the teaching of the Church are not satisfied with having usurped the legal power to implement what they desire. Rather, they want everyone to accept their desires as morally good. But as long as we’re here to remind them that God exists and their behavior separates them from Him, we are a stumbling block to their plans. So, they hope that they can drive us into irrelevancy by silencing us and persuading people to come over to their side. 

They do this through both overt attacks to drive us out of the public square and through persuading individuals that it is better to follow them than to follow the Church. But they can’t do this by giving their position and letting each person decide what is true. They have to misrepresent our beliefs to make them seem dangerous and malicious. They have to make it appear as if it is the Church who is trying to force changes, when the Church is simply insisting that the truth remains true, regardless of culture or era.

Dr. Peter Kreeft shows the problem in one of his Socratic Dialogue books:

Libby: It sounds like sour grapes to me. You’re complaining because we’re winning.

‘Isa: No, I’m complaining because you’re lying. For a whole generation now you small minority of relativistic elitists who somehow gained control of the media have been relentlessly imposing your elitist relativism on popular opinion by accusing popular opinion—I mean traditional morality—of elitism, and of imposing their morality! It’s like the Nazi propaganda saying Germany was victimized by Poland.

[Peter Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999), 141.]

The political and cultural elites of our nation have portrayed the situation as if a group of antisocial misfits suddenly appeared in society with the intention to persecute people who think differently than they do. They portray it as if “enlightened” people are finally throwing off the shackles of these misfits and benefitting society in doing so. So they tell the world that Christians “condemn” because we hate—that we hate and fear anyone who will not submit to what we say. They dredge up the behavior of the worst history has to offer and portray it as if this was the norm for what we would do if they let us get away from it. Basically, the lie they use is to say that the world was as enlightened as the 21st century until religion—especially Judaeo-Christian religion—came into being, and sought to control human thought through fear and superstition.

This is, of course, false. But it is quite effective. Look at modern programs on TV. Look at how they portray religion. Practitioners of religion fall into two groups. Either they are cold, hostile people who are bigoted and hostile to anyone who thinks differently, or they are willing to compromise their beliefs to get along with the world. The former are villains and the latter are heroes.

They tried to fit Pope Francis into this mindset. They took his words out of context and tried to make it seem as if he was “heroically struggling” to bring the Church into an “enlightened” view. But he had too much to say in defense of the family and Catholic teaching to spin. Now they either ignore him or lump him in with those who they once contrasted him against. Now the media has to look to individual Catholics who rebel against the authority which Christ gave His Church and portray them as the enlightened ones. The ultimate result of this distortion of the Pope was not the changing of Church teaching, but deceiving many hitherto faithful Catholics into questioning or rejecting his authority as the successor to St. Peter, wrongly thinking that the Pope is in the camp of the compromisers.

At this time, the elites of our nation seem to think they have won. The Church is on the defensive while the courts seem willing to give them everything they ask for, ignoring the fact that these rulings violate the beliefs that our nation was founded on—that the government does not have the right to compel a person to do what their religious belief forbids them to do.

So, it is indeed a dark time. But we need to remember we cannot give up in despair or simply hunkering down in a bunker, deciding to survive while the whole world goes to hell. There have been dark times before, where the state wrongfully sought to usurp authority by making laws it had no authority to make. Yes, things can indeed get worse. We can indeed be personally targeted by unjust laws or even physical persecution. But we have to remember that this is not the first time such dark times have happened. In every other time, the Church continued to stand up and perform the mission Christ gave us.

People may hate us for telling them the truth, showing them that their chosen actions are not compatible with the love of God. But they are not our enemies, but our patients. God doesn’t want them damned, but wants them to turn back to Him. Our task is to cooperate with that great commission, regardless of whether the world wants to hear it or not.

Don't Panic

The situation of the religious freedom in America is certainly as bleak as it has ever been in our history. The three branches of government take it as a given that they have the authority to rule on matters that involve religious obligation and to dictate to believers which of their beliefs are valid and which are not. The general trend here is to force religion out of the public square under the assumption that anything with a religious motivation cannot be used to set policy. (That’s the Genetic fallacy by the way). Between the government and the influential shapers of public opinion, people are being led to the view that unpopular religious teaching is based on intolerance (poisoning the well fallacy) and any religious opposition to an issue is portrayed as the equivalent of the racist opposition to civil rights in the 1960s (false analogy fallacy).

The result is, we are now in a situation where religion can be restricted outside of the most narrow redefinitions. The rights of people who profess belief in the Christian moral teachings and the institutions or businesses they establish is denied on the grounds that their belief is merely a repugnant intolerance (Begging the Question fallacy). We could soon see an even more overt attack where Christian individuals and institutions affiliated with churches have no right to refuse to do something their religious beliefs condemn, and thus suffer lawsuits, fines and prosecutions. It’s the kind of behavior we hitherto associated with Communist governments and long said “It can’t happen here—our Constitution prevents it."

The world may end up unjustly oppressing the Church in ways we can’t even guess at right now (Who would have thought, eight years ago, we’d be where we are today?), and individuals need to consider the strong possibility that persecution will afflict them personally, as opposed to something that only happens to people far away. But, as bleak as things are, we must avoid the attitudes of panicking and assuming that the world will defeat the Church. We must certainly avoid the attitude of “if only the bishops had done something, this wouldn’t have happened!” (Hypothesis contrary to fact fallacy).

(Don’t Act Like This)

We Christians may end up losing this battle. But God will win this war. The thing to remember is that if the government here decides to interfere with our seeking to be true to Our Lord, this is not a defeat for God. This has happened before, when persecutions lasted hundreds of years. Reading Butler’s unabridged Lives of the Saints, shows us the persecutions of the Roman Empire, the Persian Empire, Islam and Reformation England where being a member of the Church was a punishable offense—often by death. There are many records of saints who were unjustly hauled before the courts and given the choice between going along with the unjust demands of the state and suffering for putting God first.

We, individually, cannot change the state. All we can do is to bear witness to our faith in God, and show we would rather suffer evil at the hands of men than do evil in the sight of God. Tertullian once said The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians. When we show our determination to follow God, and show love for those who hate us, God uses that to bring more people of good will to Him.

So while we may be angry at the injustices done to us and the slanders directed against what we believe, we must make sure that how we live in Christ bears witness. We cannot hate our persecutors. Our task is to love and to continue to teach the world of Christ—even when the world hates and persecutes us for it.

So let us continue to pray for the conversion of our nation, and pray that we may live as God calls us, regardless of what may come. Let us continue to bear witness so people may see the love of Christ in us.

On the San Francisco Homeless Scandal and Rash Response to News Reports

Introduction

Yesterday, a scandal was alleged in terms of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. The issue is the existence of a sprinkler system that was installed two years ago. The allegation made is that the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption was attempting to drive away the homeless by installing a sprinkler system near doorways, that were scheduled to go off at night. The story has an extremely wide reach—I’ve seen reports in British news sites for example. Unfortunately, the general assumption is that the Church did deliberately set out to harass the homeless, and that assumption has been adopted uncritically by some Catholic news sites and even some Catholic bloggers who should know better.

Preliminary Considerations

Before we begin, I would like to lay out a few principles of consideration. First of all, the idea that harassing the homeless is a good idea is not compatible with the Catholic teaching on concern for the poor. So, if the intent was to harass, then the intent can be judged morally wrong. However, before the intent can be called morally wrong, it needs to be established that this was the motive.

Knowing and Not Knowing

The problem is the secular stories are based on a nameless "cathedral staff member” who is quoted as saying, that the sprinkler system had been installed “to keep the homeless from sleeping in the cathedral’s doorways.” Is it true? Does this member have an axe to grind? Is he/she highly placed enough to know? We don’t know, and not knowing makes it difficult to know how much weight to give the testimony.

But we do know that auxiliary Bishop William Justice has described the intent of the system as, “The idea was not to remove those persons, but to encourage them to relocate to other areas of the cathedral, which are protected and safer.” He tells us that the archdiocese informed the people dwelling there that the system was being installed and “The idea was not to remove those persons, but to encourage them to relocate to other areas of the cathedral, which are protected and safer.” The described purpose of the system was to deal with needles and feces being left in the cathedral’s hidden doorways (they are considered high risk sources of blood borne pathogens). We are told that his predecessor was told by the SFPD that installation was recommended.

We are also told that it turned out to be ineffective, and was installed without the proper permits. Bishop Justice said the system would be removed by the end of the day.

The Issues of Concern

The issue of concern here is the question of rash judgment. The Church is accused of intending this system to drive away the homeless. Bishop Justice explicitly denies that this was the intent of the archdiocese. So the question is over whether the allegation is true or not.

As is often the case, I think Aristotle’s definition of truth fits here: To say of what is that it is and to say of what is not that it is not. So the question is, whether what is alleged happens to be true or not. Is there any evidence for it? Is there any reason that the veracity of Bishop Justice is to be doubted? Are there other explanations that fit the facts other than “bad will” that fit the facts?

That is where the Catechism’s discussion of Rash Judgment is important:

2477 Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:

— of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;

— of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another’s faults and failings to persons who did not know them;

— of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.

2478 To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way:

Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favorable interpretation to another’s statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.

I also find St. Thomas Aquinas to have some very valuable distinctions on the topic:

I answer that, Judgment is lawful in so far as it is an act of justice. Now it follows from what has been stated above (A. 1, ad 1, 3) that three conditions are requisite for a judgment to be an act of justice: first, that it proceed from the inclination of justice; secondly, that it come from one who is in authority; thirdly, that it be pronounced according to the right ruling of prudence. If any one of these be lacking, the judgment will be faulty and unlawful. First, when it is contrary to the rectitude of justice, and then it is called perverted or unjust: secondly, when a man judges about matters wherein he has no authority, and this is called judgment by usurpation: thirdly, when the reason lacks certainty, as when a man, without any solid motive, forms a judgment on some doubtful or hidden matter, and then it is called judgment by suspicion or rash judgment.

 

Reply Obj. 1. In these words Our Lord forbids rash judgment which is about the inward intention, or other uncertain things, as Augustine states (De Serm. Dom. in Monte ii. 18). Or else He forbids judgment about Divine things, which we ought not to judge, but simply believe, since they are above us, as Hilary declares in his commentary on Matth. 5. Or again according to Chrysostom* He forbids the judgment which proceeds not from benevolence but from bitterness of heart. (Summa Theologica, II-II q.60 a.2 resp.–ad 1)

So, to have a just act of judgment it must proceed from an inclination of judgment, be made by on who is in authority (which in this case can mean, someone who knows what they are talking about) and is based on a prudent judgment of the facts. If it lacks these things, it is an unjust judgment. So, if the judgment does not have a solid motive, or is formed based on things we don’t or can’t know, then the judgment is rash, and thus condemnable.

Assessing the Charges

Looking at the news articles and blog allegations, it seems to me that the condemnation of the Archdiocese is based on something that is merely alleged and not proven, where a just judgment presumes knowledge of the inward intention. Could Bishop Justice be lying? It’s technically possible, but the onus of proof is on the accuser. The account of the bishop is that the system was installed with good faith but was done badly. To say his account is untrue is to claim knowledge of his inward intention—something that would require a reliable and trustworthy witness who knows his intention was otherwise. A person who tries to argue that the intention must have been bad because of the bad effect is assuming something as true that has to be proven true.

My question to the scandalized Catholic is this: Where is your readiness to give a favorable interpretation rather than a condemnation? If you could not find a favorable interpretation, did you ask how the archdiocese understood it before judging? These things are required before one can correct—with love.

I can only speak for myself, of course. But my conscience forbids me to take part in the bashing of the archdiocese. As I see it, to do so is to require information impossible for us to have.

Conclusion—The Need for Prudence

We need to distinguish between the concept of willing to do evil and having a good will, but having something unintentionally cause harm. The fact that some homeless were soaked was not good. But, if it was the latter (good will), then the accusation that it was intended to harass the homeless is unjust. One can certainly ask for a change in policy to better serve the homeless. But in doing so we need to be both respectful and prudent.

I say respectful because if we take the attitude that “Bishop So-and-so is a jerk because he didn’t do what I wanted,” we’re being judges of the Church, not “laborers in the Lord’s vineyard."

I say prudent because it’s easy to come up with a wonderful theory that helps every person in the world. But whatever we propose to do must be within the capacity of a group to achieve. If we don’t have the funds or the manpower to carry out a wonderful theory, it will come to nothing (see Luke 14:28-30). We need to trust God of course. But prudence is about asking how do we best do what God wants us to do. As the Catechism says:

1806 Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it; “the prudent man looks where he is going.” “Keep sane and sober for your prayers.”⁶⁶ Prudence is “right reason in action,” writes St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle. It is not to be confused with timidity or fear, nor with duplicity or dissimulation. It is called auriga virtutum (the charioteer of the virtues); it guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure. It is prudence that immediately guides the judgment of conscience. The prudent man determines and directs his conduct in accordance with this judgment. With the help of this virtue we apply moral principles to particular cases without error and overcome doubts about the good to achieve and the evil to avoid.

Prudence keeps us from being either too reckless or too timid in our serving God. It’s easy to promise the moon and then fall short. It’s also easy to be overwhelmed by the seeming obstacles in our path.

So here’s my thought as I read this. It’s clear that the Archdiocese does a lot in helping the people in need in San Francisco. But there is always need for more workers and more donations. So people who look at these news stories about the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption and feel their sense of justice tell them that something needs to be done have the right sense of course. The question is, what are these people going to do about it? Tomorrow the sprinkler system will be gone. The homeless and the health hazards will still be there, and the archdiocese has a finite set of resources.

Many may feel compelled to speak out against the wrongs done. But fewer actually do more than that. It’s like the political humorist PJ O’Rourke once said, “Everybody wants to save the world but nobody wants to help mom with the dishes.”

Just something to consider.

Some Sources to Consider as a Counterpart to the Secular Reports:

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/san-francisco-responds-to-sprinkler-situation-purpose-was-safety-of-homeles

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/san-francisco-cathedral-sprinkler-aimed-for-safety-not-homeless-51992/

Marked

America prides itself on being a tolerant nation. When Americans see news reports of ethnic or religious hatred in another region of the world, or high handed government oppression, the general thought we have is that it is something that can’t happen here. Unfortunately, America tends to have a huge blind spot in this area and tends to think that because we don’t behave like ISIS or the Soviet Union in dealing with the people who disagree it means we are tolerant and don’t harass anyone at all.

That’s rubbish of course. America does have sanctioned tolerance of hatred of unpopular groups and tolerated behaviors of government high-handedness. The difference between here and the regions of the world that make the news is that in America they deal with their unpopular groups in a (usually) non-violent manner. But America still has her blind spots—the groups mistreated are not seen as mistreated because the targets are either not seen as being important enough to worry about or are considered to deserve the treatment they receive. Because this treatment is not brutal violence, it is argued that this treatment is not harassment at all.

Unpopular Groups are Targeted For Discrimination in America

In America today, the unpopular groups are those Christians who stand up for the traditional Christian sexual mores, especially belief in what makes a marriage—one man and one woman in a lifelong relationship accepting whatever children may come and raising them with the same values. In a world that increasingly rejects all aspects of that belief, reducing such a relationship to whatever may be sexually satisfying, a Christian who takes such a stand is seen as judgmental and intolerant towards those who live in any other way.

This is more serious than the detractors of Christianity realize, because labelling something as “intolerant” is the secular society’s version of the medieval concept of making someone an outlaw—that is, a person deprived of the benefit and protection of the law. In medieval times, the outlaw had no rights and could be targeted by anyone—the person doing the targeting not being subject to legal penalties for doing so.

Holding Christian Beliefs Unpopular Among American Elites Can Deprive One of Protection of the Law

In modern America, a Christian who is willing to compromise and accept the state’s view on abortion, contraception or “same sex marriage” can get along in America just fine. Whatever else they may believe is generally no threat. But the Christian who will not accept the state’s views on these subjects can expect trouble when they publicly state their views. We have had people who funded propositions defending traditional marriage lose their job. We have had people who refuse to provide business services that require them to treat same sex “marriage” as being morally acceptable wind up being sued or prosecuted. We’ve had Church schools successfully sued for enforcing rules that require employees to publicly live in keeping with Church teaching on morality. Catholic schools and hospitals are fighting for their right of religious freedom when it comes to the contraception against unsympathetic courts.

Basically, the situation is one where these behaviors would cause outrage if any other group was involved. Think this is rhetoric? OK, how about if a bakery owned by an African American was successfully sued for refusing to make a cake for a Ku Klux Klan event? Yet the principle would be the same—the business owner being required to do something they found offensive and sued if they would not cooperate.

The False Charge and It’s Refutation

People who try to defend this situation argue that the difference is that race is not changeable while religious beliefs are changeable. In contrast, they argue, that the religious beliefs are based on bigotry. They then equate the defense of these immoral actions with the civil rights movement in opposing racism in America. But that is to introduce a false analogy. The issue is not race. The issue is: shall a person be coerced to do something they think is morally wrong? The entire history of racism in America was not based on the belief that it was immoral to interact with people of other ethnicities. It was based on the fact that proponents of racist systems believed that non-whites were inferior to whites and had to be kept from achieving the same level as whites.

So, the Church teaching that contraception or abortion is wrong or that same-sex acts are wrong does not come from the belief that women or people with same sex attraction are inferior to males or heterosexual people and need to be kept from achieving the same level as males or heterosexual orientation (indeed the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that discrimination or mistreatment of a person with same sex attraction is not to be done). It comes from the belief that certain actions—which one can decide to do or not do—are contrary to God’s will for us and therefore may never be done. A person cannot control his ethnicity and may not be able to control his sexual orientation. But a person can control what actions he chooses to do regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

The Charge of Bigotry is No More Than An Excuse To Silence an Opponent

So the “bigotry” or “sexism” or “homophobia” charges are false, and the proponents of abortion, contraception and same sex marriage are not the stalwart defenders of America against racism. They are ideologues who have a hatred of religious beliefs that call their behavior wrong and want to silence the opponents of what they want to legitimize. Christianity says “You must not do this!” The proponents want the right to do these things. So they must demonize their opponents to make their views seem invalid. Nobody wants to accommodate bigotry (not even Christians). So if they can make this label stick in the minds of people, we will see the defense of Christian belief distorted into appearing to be “hate speech."

In logic, we call this tactic Poisoning The Well. It attempts to turn the audience against a person before he or she can even begin a defense. It works this way: An unfavorable claim is made about a person or group. Therefore, any claim made by that group is not to be trusted. That’s what’s happening here. When Christians are labeled as anti-women and “homophobes,” anything they say is discounted as a defense of bigotry. The more we say in defense of a Christian moral teaching, the more they paint us as being bigoted because we defend this position.

Conclusion 

So in this day and age, Christians who refuse to go along with the diktats of the state and the cultural elites are marked for harassment and de facto made outlaws in the sense that they are deprived of the protection of the law. The tactic is to silence us or to make us so hated that we will be ignored and written off as people who hate. Such tactics, however, are only effective to the extent that the listener accepts the claims without asking whether they are actually true. 

Missing the Point: Church Teaching or non-Teachings?

Today I ran across a claim on the internet that the Church could change Church teachings on moral issues, because she had made changes in the past. When pressed on the question, one individual pointed to the Church changing the rules on eating meat on Friday and the “extermination” of those who refused to convert to Catholicism as proof of changed teachings. The person went so far as to claim Papal bulls sanctioned this extermination—though when pressed was unwilling or unable to name any.

That wasn’t unexpected of course. When one does not understand how the teaching of the Church works or does not know of the doctrines and history of the Church, it’s easy to believe all sorts of claims about the Church without actually looking for evidence for the claim. Thus, there’s a lot of cases going around where there is common knowledge—where the response is “everybody knows THAT,” but when one tries to find evidence for what “everybody knows,” it turns out that nobody actually knows of any...

I find that people tend to make one or more of four errors when it comes to the Catholic Church and what she teaches. These are:

1. Confusing a discipline or other decree with the official teaching of the Church.
2. Missing the Point about the actual Church teaching.
3. Misunderstanding a term used in a Church document, thinking it means something more than it actually does.
4. Wrongly believing that an abuse which is done by a Catholic is the intended teaching of the Catholic Church.

I’ll take a look at these things, and see where they go wrong.

Confusing Discipline/Decree With a Church Teaching

Church teaching is not everything a member of the Church says—even if the person speaking is a bishop or the Pope. The Teaching of the Church is what the Church formally intends to teach as being binding on all the faithful as a matter of the faith or morals of the Church. So when the Church says that same sex marriage, contraception and abortion are intrinsically (that is, always wrong regardless of motives or circumstances) evil, this is a Church teaching. This is not something that is optional, or that the changing circumstances of the times will let the Church decide to do things differently.

However, when the Church decides that members of the Church need to practice a discipline for their spiritual good—for example, Friday abstinence from meat, permitting or withholding the chalice for the laity, whether the Mass be said in Latin or the Vernacular, or even whether or not the clergy must be celibate—these things can be changed if the Church deems it to be for a greater good. So now, we can choose another Friday sacrifice instead of giving up meat. The Church has at different times decreed that the laity may or may not receive the chalice. And, if the Church truly sees a need for it, she can change the discipline of whether the Church ordains married men (as she does in the Eastern Rites) or only ordains celibate men (as she does in the Latin rite). Making a change in these matters is not a case of “the Church was wrong then but right now” (or vice versa for traditionalists). These are situations where the Church makes a decree based on certain conditions.

Missing the Point About the Church Teaching

This brings us to the next issue, which is keeping in mind what Church teaching is actually under consideration. Consider the common canard that the Church changed her teaching on “eating meat on Friday means you will go to Hell.” This is to miss the point. In this case, the Church teaching is not that eating meat on Fridays is evil. The Catholic belief is that the Church has Christ’s authority and that what the Church binds or looses on Earth will be bound or loosed in Heaven. If a person willfully rejects a discipline mandated by the Church for the good of the people that person is rejecting something bound in Heaven.

Another common accusation made about Church teaching being changed is the issue of loans. The argument is that formerly the Church forbade lending at interest, but is now OK with it. Therefore, the Church can change her other teachings. But it wasn’t interest that was the problem. It was the problem of usury (the practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest). In different economic systems during the Roman era, the Dark Ages, the Medieval period and the Enlightenment, what was an unreasonably high rate of interest was different from one period to the next. So the Catechism of the Council of Trent could condemn any interest on a loan while over 200 years later, Pope Pius VII could say some returns on investments were acceptable, but profits that were made based on harmful methods of lending were not. (I imagine the modern practice of Payday loans would meet the criteria for condemnation).

When the only means of exchange were coins and barter, and when every person was paid a fixed amount a day, then charging interest on a loan could mean extreme hardship for the person in debt. But when money could be exchanged with notes, deposited in banks and used to bring in profits, it became possible for people to pay off certain loans. In the first instance any charging of interest would be usury. In the second, some charging of interest would not be usury. So, we can see that the Church did not go from saying “usury is wrong” to “usury is OK.” She merely updated the understanding of what was and was not allowed.

But we have to avoid the fallacy of irrelevant comparisons. One cannot argue that the change in economic conditions changing what met the definition of usury means that the Church can change her teaching on sexual morality. Economic systems can change. The genders and the nature of the sexual act do not change.

Misunderstanding a Term Used In Church Teaching

So, where does the idea come that the Church permitted the extermination of people who would not convert? It comes from applying a limited meaning of a word in modern English which actually has a much broader meaning in different times. The modern meaning of exterminate is "destroy completely; eradicate.” But, when you look at the Latin word, exterminare, we find that it has a different meaning:  lesser banish, expel; dismiss. So, while some people may point to the Lateran IV Council (AD 1215) and quote the following from canon 3:

Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath. But if a temporal ruler, after having been requested and admonished by the Church, should neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical foulness, let him be excommunicated by the metropolitan and the other bishops of the province. If he refuses to make satisfaction within a year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare the ruler’s vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled by Catholics, who on the extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief ruler is to be respected so long as he offers no obstacle in this matter and permits freedom of action. The same law is to be observed in regard to those who have no chief rulers (that is, are independent). Catholics who have girded themselves with the cross for the extermination of the heretics, shall enjoy the indulgences and privileges granted to those who go in defense of the Holy Land.

 

[Schroeder, H. J. (1937). Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation, and Commentary (pp. 242–243). St. Louis, MO; London: B. Herder Book Co.]

I imagine people might be shocked on reading this. Isn’t it genocide? Well, no. If you look a couple of paragraphs down, you’ll see an admonishment for the people who interact with the exterminated heretics...

If any refuse to avoid such after they have been ostracized by the Church, let them be excommunicated till they have made suitable satisfaction. Clerics shall not give the sacraments of the Church to such pestilential people, nor shall they presume to give them Christian burial, or to receive their alms or offerings; otherwise they shall be deprived of their office, to which they may not be restored without a special indult of the Apostolic See. Similarly, all regulars, on whom also this punishment may be imposed, let their privileges be nullified in that diocese in which they have presumed to perpetrate such excesses.

We can see that the heretics are not exterminated in the sense of “The Final Solution.” They’re exterminated in the sense of being ostracized. We see in other documents the calling for bishops to use the penalty of interdict to exterminate heresy. Interdict was the refusal of Mass, Sacraments and Christian Burial. In modern times, interdict is applied only to a person, but in the past, the Church did apply it to regions. The point was to bring heretics to their senses by denying them the ministry of the Church until they repented (and see 1 Corinthians 5:5 if you think this is an unbiblical behavior), showing them how serious this was.

Wrongly Believing That an Abuse is the Actual Teaching of the Church

There’s no sense in denying that some people in history who professed to be Christian did behave in a way which was wrong. Not just wrong by the 21st century standards and sensitivities. I mean things that even back then, should have been obvious to people. So the mess that was the Spanish Inquisition, the wrongdoing by some in the Crusades—these things were wrong. The problem for the accusers is the fact that the Church condemned the evils done at the time. They didn’t always speak out effectively, and they weren’t always heeded. But they spoke out.

Here’s something to think about. Consider the Catholics who present themselves as being pro-abortion. They act publicly and ignore the teaching of the Church. is their disobedience the fault of the Church? No, because the Church does have a clear teaching that is being ignored. Sure, a person may wish that the Church was more forceful in certain times, but one can’t say that the Church supported these things.

The fact is, many of the events people point to as proof of the wickedness of the Church (the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the sacking of Constantinople by Crusaders and the cruelties of the Spanish against the Native Americans are popular accusations) were actually denounced by the Church. But, like today, there were many Catholics who chose to ignore the teaching of the Church, and like today, many got away with it. There is only so much the Church can do against the willfully defiant. That doesn’t mean the men who led the Church always did enough or responded perfectly. Sometimes they even used their office to do wrong. However, these failings were not a part of the binding teaching of the Church.

So What is a Teaching of the Church?

So, now that I have said what the teaching of the Church is not, one might ask what a teaching of the Church is. The first step is to look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church #888-892. The teaching of the Church is based in preserving the teachings of Christ as passed on through the Apostles. It is "to preserve God’s people from deviations and defections and to guarantee them the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error” (CCC #890). When the Church intends to teach in a way which "they propose in the exercise of the ordinary Magisterium a teaching that leads to better understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals" (CCC #892) or when the Pope “when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful—who confirms his brethren in the faith—he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals” (CCC #891).

So, many things which people point at, in an attempt to deny that the Church is protected from error, were never considered teachings of the Church in the sense she intends to be understood as teaching. Many others were not teaching what her enemies accused her of teaching.

When one wants to critique the Church, the first step is to determine whether the Church was teaching something as doctrine, and if so, what the Church intended to teach when binding the faithful. The Church can certainly make certain disciplines binding that are not teachings of the Church, but disciplines can be changed if the need requires it without contradicting Church teaching. Criticisms which fail to take into account what the Church intended to teach are doing nothing more than creating a Straw Man fallacy, condemning us for something which is either false or taken out of context.

Bellwether of Persecution

bellwether |ˈbelˌweT͟Hər| nounthe leading sheep of a flock, with a bell on its neck.• an indicator or predictor of something: college campuses are often the bellwether of change

I remember my youth in school and what was taught to us about America. How we were a free country and that the government couldn’t do, or force us to do, bad things. We were told how people came to America to escape places that treated them unjustly. As I grew older, I realized that this was a “rose colored glasses” view of things. That our country could and did wrong over the past 200 years. But throughout my transition from growth to adulthood, it was still recognized that the Declaration of Independence was still meaningful when it said:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

We were told that the Bill of Rights were essential rights to all people and that our Founding Fathers were determined to protect the people from the abuses from a government, acknowledging that there were certain things that the government had no right to do.

Right now, America has a system where laws which were based on this understanding are subject to being reviewed by courts that are free to throw out those laws which the judges happen to disagree with. The term used is “finding the law unconstitutional,” but too often, this is a code word for an arbitrary decision that reflects the political views of the judges without concern with actual concern for justice or law. This is the case when a few judges have ruled that the understanding of marriage as being between one man and one woman is “unconstitutional.” Based on these rulings, people with religious beliefs that forbid them from participating in what they think is morally wrong can be forced to choose between their business and their beliefs—something the government had previously been seen as having no right to do.

Take a recent case of a Washington florist. The judge ruled that the florist’s religious beliefs, which forbade her from providing flowers to a same sex “wedding,” was illegal from the time that Washington legalized it. Think I’m using unreasonable rhetoric? Think again. Look at what the judge (Alexander C. Ekstrom) said:

"Stutzman is not a minister, nor is Arlene’s Flowers a religious organization when they sell flowers to the general public,” Ekstrom wrote. “Stutzman cannot comply with both the law and her faith if she continues to provide flowers for weddings as part of her duly licensed business.”

The judge has baldly stated what we have been warning of for years—that a person with religious convictions can be forced to choose between business and faith (Stultzman has decided to stop doing any weddings).  Basically, what we have is this: if a law is passed defending our religious freedoms, it is ruled as unconstitutional. When a law is passed which infringes on our religious liberties, it is seen as acceptable and those who invoke their first amendment freedoms are told that it doesn’t apply—the courts continually reducing who has religious freedom to the point that a church itself can (thus far) be protected from government interference, but the institutions that church runs or the individual practitioner is not.

Decisions like this make much more chilling a recent event where lawmakers urged Archbishop Cordileone to change his policy insisting that teachers in Catholic institutions actually act—Catholic. With legal precedence like this, we can expect the judges to be more likely to side with the laws infringing on our religious freedoms. 

While such things are more benign than in other countries and other times in how they try to coerce compliance with religious beliefs they oppose, these rulings are in the same spirit as the persecutions of the past. Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints describes for us the case of St. Sadoth:

The second year of the persecution, king Sapor coming to Seleucia, Sadoth was apprehended, with several of his clergy, some ecclesiastics of the neighborhood, and certain monks and nuns belonging to his church, to the amount of one hundred and twenty-eight persons. They were thrown into dungeons, where, during five months’ confinement, they suffered incredible misery and torments. They were thrice called out, and put to the rack or question; their legs were straight bound with cords, which were drawn with so much violence, that their bones breaking, were heard to crack like sticks in a fagot. Amidst these tortures the officers cried out to them: “Adore the sun, and obey the king, if you would save your lives.” Sadoth answered in the name of all, that the sun was but a creature, the work of God, made for the use of mankind; that they would pay supreme adoration to none but the Creator of heaven and earth, and never be unfaithful to him; that it was indeed in their power to take away their lives, but that this would be the greatest favor they could do them; wherefore he conjured them not to spare them, or delay their execution. The officers said: “Obey! or know that your death is certain, and immediate.” The martyrs all cried out with one voice: “We shall not die, but live and reign eternally with God and his Son Jesus Christ. Wherefore inflict death as soon as you please; for we repeat it to you that we will not adore the sun, nor obey the unjust edicts.”

Whether the governments would have us worship the sun, burn incense to the emperor or give our acceptance of “same sex marriage,” we must not obey what is unjust or forces us to go against what God commands. It may only cause us overt persecution or it may cause us hardship, perhaps legal action, but we need to be prepared for being called on to make the choice—for God, or against God. It might not happen to you or personally, but Our Lord did warn us that we must accept this:

The World’s Hatred. ¹⁸ If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. ¹⁹ If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you. ²⁰ Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. ²¹ And they will do all these things to you on account of my name,* because they do not know the one who sent me. ²² If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin; but as it is they have no excuse for their sin. ²³ Whoever hates me also hates my Father. ²⁴ If I had not done works among them that no one else ever did, they would not have sin; but as it is, they have seen and hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ But in order that the word written in their law might be fulfilled, ‘They hated me without cause.’ (John 15:18-25)

And so, we must prepare for darker times, which continue to come faster than I expect. We must prepare to continue to carry out our mission. As Cardinal George said, "I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.” None of us want to die in prison, let alone the public square for the faith. But if it does happen by death or by lawsuit or by imprisonment, we must respond in love, blessing and praying for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44) and seeking to convert them. This is true, whether persecution comes from unjust judges interpreting unjust laws or whether it comes at the hands of fanatics like ISIS.

TFTD: Well Said Holy Father

Full transcript of Pope's interview in-flight to Manila :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

The Holy Father has spoken about the Charlie Hebdo murders in a way that makes a lot of sense, but will probably not win him support from those who believe there can be no restrictions on speech and press. He makes a two prong statement that addresses both issues:

1. Using violence in the name of God can never be done.
2. The freedom of speech is not an absolute that can justify saying anything offensive.

Basically, the Pope said that people have the right and obligation to speak the truth, but freedom is not absolute. One cannot be grossly offensive, especially when it comes to people’s religious beliefs. Even when people are grossly offensive, others don’t have the right to turn to violence in response. However, anger at having something important being attacked is not wrong in itself. (Which is a very useful point—too many try to twist Christians being offended by attacks as if it was “unchristian.”)

Unfortunately, some are beginning to accuse the Pope of supporting the terrorists—never mind the fact that he has continually condemned terrorism and clarified any possible ambiguities in what he said. They look at it as Either-Or, ignoring the fact that condemning both is a legitimate option.

But what he said makes perfect sense. Even if a non-Christian does not share our values, his words can be understood in terms of respect for others. When we make use of the freedom of speech or the press, we have to be respectful of others. When we speak about things we believe to be wrong, we do so with charity. If someone with a large audience does something grossly offensive and millions are offended, there will probably be a small group among them who would be willing to make an extreme response. It would be wrong of them to do so, but they may be motivated to act in spite of the their moral obligations not to murder.

Ultimately, that’s what happened with Charlie Hebdo. Millions of Muslims were angry, and they had a right to be angry by the offensive antics of this magazine. Tragically, some of these Muslims believed it was acceptable to murder. They were wrong to murder, regardless of what offensive garbage the magazine chose to publish. We believe that Charlie Hebdo did not have the right to be grossly offensive, regardless of their convictions.

So, as I see the Pope’s statement, he sees two wrongs: The wrong of people murdering those they disagree with and the wrong of being deliberately offensive. Both of these are condemnable. The Pope is not siding with the terrorists, but he is not Charlie either.

Thoughts on Charlie Hebdo, Freedoms of Speech, Press and Their Abuse

Preliminary Note: The terrorism case in France involves two separate elements—the murder of people who said things that others found offensive on one hand and the inconsistent outrage over the abuse of freedom of the press and speech on the other. To avoid any confusion in the article below, I want to make clear that I denounce these murders as evil. Even though I find the antics of the Charlie Hebdo magazine to be offensive, that offensive behavior does not justify murder as a response. Please keep this in mind that I do not seek to make any excuses for this act of terrorism.

The Situation

The attack in France against a satirical magazine is indeed a terrible thing, but reading the news reports and blogs about it, I can’t help but think that some people have missed the point as to why it was a terrible thing. The catalyst for the attack was the comics published by the magazine Charlie Hebdo which mocked the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Some extremists reacted to the offense by killing twelve people at the magazine offices. The Vatican was quick to respond with a condemnation, and had the right idea of what to condemn, saying it was a “double act of violence, abominable because it is both an attack against people as well as against freedom of the press”. That is the truth—the extremists decided they had the right to commit murder in response to people expressing a view which offended them. In response, we are seeing hashtags going around—#IamCharlieHebdo or #JeSuisCharlie aimed at showing solidarity with the murder victims as martyrs as freedom of speech and press.

(The creator of the Asterix comics came out of retirement to publish a protest)

It’s right to be appalled at the use of terrorism as a response to something one finds offensive. But the question is, are we being properly appalled? Or are we merely being appalled in a partisan manner?

Thoughts on Murder as a Tactic vs. Legitimate Tactics in Opposing Evil

First of all, regardless of what is said, no matter how offensive it is, murder is never a justified response. There is a lot of anti-Christian mockery and blasphemy out there. But if some Catholic took it on himself to murder Bill Maher or one of the New Atheists, I would condemn it—not out of sympathy for their speech, but because one may never do evil so that good may come of it. As the Catechism says:

1756 It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.

Blasphemy is evil by its very nature, but I may not murder to stop it because murder is also wrong by its very nature. So even when people abuse the freedoms of speech and the press to deliberately be offensive, even when the West has a hypocritical double standard on what they will tolerate, no person may use an evil means to stop it. Before I move on to my reflections on the use and abuse of freedoms of expression, I want to make this clear. There are both evil and good ways to oppose something evil. When the way chosen is evil, it must be condemned. But when the way chosen is not evil, people are free to pursue it. For example, if these murderers had instead organized a peaceful protest or a non violent boycott of Charlie Hebdo, then there would have been nothing to condemn.

I make the above point because I want to make clear that nothing I say below on the use and abuse of freedoms of the press and speech should be seen as a justification of terrorism. If you think you see that as a reader, you’ve misunderstood my point.

Thoughts on Freedom of Speech and Press and Their Abuse

The freedom of speech and the press are very important rights. They protect us so we can speak the truth publicly without being silenced by people who don’t want to have that truth challenge their preferred way of living. Unfortunately, these rights are very precariously perched. It is extremely difficult to protect the legitimate rights of speaking the truth without enabling those who would abuse these rights to publish false or offensive material, and some governments have simply given up trying to find the proper balancing point between the freedom to speak the truth and the “freedom” to say whatever the hell you want.” Pornography, for example, has gone from being recognized as a crime to be considered free speech with very few boundaries (child pornography and necrophilia seem to be the only real barriers left—at least I pray they are still barriers).

Now the ideal of these freedoms would be to recognize that a person has the right to express the truth while excluding the abuse of such freedoms. But since governments have a bad habit of defining what they dislike as an abuse, it is generally recognized that it is better that the abuse be tolerated so as not to restrict the legitimate use of these freedoms. Unfortunately, it really doesn’t work that way in practice.

The fact is, when it comes to the abuse of these freedoms, we have people who slander/libel those they dislike, publicly insulting or harassing certain groups. So long as the targets treated this way are unpopular with the media or the government, the harassers will get away with it. The Double Standard is, a person or group publicizing something attacking a group which is favored by the media can expect either being ignored or being publicized for vilification. But a person or group publicizing something attacking a group which is opposed by the media will generally be supported (For example, Bill Maher’s career of insulting religion).

Thus we have a situation where people are actually behaving like hypocrites. It’s OK to mock or slander/libel Christianity and suffer no consequences. But speak out against something like same sex “marriage” an suddenly, you have no freedom. You can lose your job or be sued or prosecuted. Something is clearly not right here. Either one tolerates both or rejects both if he or she wants to be consistent. Yet we have people who say #IamCharlieHebdo in support of a magazine which openly attacks religion in an offensive way, who won’t stand up for the right of a Christian Fire Chief in Atlanta to express his right in print a book which says homosexual acts are evil. The head of Facebook announces he won’t let extremism silence freedom of speech on Facebook, but Facebook has a history of silencing articles it deems as “offensive.” In fact, it’s in the policy page:

Facebook does not permit hate speech, but distinguishes between serious and humorous speech. While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events, and practices, we do not permit individuals or groups to attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition.

Pretend it’s a joke and you can bash religion to your heart’s content (Facebook pages like “The Virgin Mary Should Have Aborted” are allowed even though it exists to attack religion). Post a serious article on why homosexuality is wrong and it can get blocked or removed.

(It took a lot of fighting on Facebook to get an article posted)

So, the question arises—if a person hashtags  #IamCharlie Hebdo, as a protest against the assault on freedom of speech and press, then why are they willing to accept other censorship? If the freedom of speech and press is an absolute, then the unpopular teachings of Christianity needs to be given the same rights to publish and be seen as those who bash Christianity already have.

Conclusion

It seems to me that the current outrage has missed the point. Yes, it is right to condemn these murders. Yes it is right to condemn the idea that a person or group can use violence to strike against those who say things that are offensive. But unless one is prepared to ask whether there is a double standard in play—such as tolerating hatred of groups one dislikes (like Christianity) and only getting outraged when it affects those one agrees with—it makes no sense to hashtag #IamCharlieHebdo. Why? Because such a protest is not a protest for justice. Rather it is a protest that an ally was attacked.

There is a civil way to oppose intolerance, but it requires us to remember truth and the obligation to treat the one we disagree with in a just manner, even when we believe we must oppose that person or group. That civil way is not really found in the West anymore. It is demanded that Christians give this civility, but it is not given to Christians.

So yes, be outraged that terrorists murdered over a dozen people on account of their being offended. But while doing that, why not ask if your own behavior is intolerant as well in what you accept being done to those you dislike?

Thoughts on Religious Freedom in America For the New Year

Not the country I grew up in...

 Introduction

I think we’re now at the point where there are enough people out there who believe that whatever harms their enemy is good that we can expect to see popular support for whatever violation of religious freedom is directed at the Catholic Church—especially if this violation can be cast as defending the “rights” of a group portrayed as a victim. Let’s face it. When a Church affiliated institution (like a school or hospital) can establish a policy making clear that all potential employees are called to live publicly and privately in accordance with Church teaching, and the employee willingly signs said agreement and then is fired for violating it, and successfully sues the institution involved, we are seeing the establishment of rule of law being replaced by arbitrary judgment. When a business is established by a Christian who wants to run his or her business in accordance with Christian moral principles can be sued or prosecuted when the business refuses to do something against those principles, we’re seeing the rule of law being replaced by arbitrary judgment.

It’s kind of alarming seeing the comments of people online who have no problem with self-contradiction. Champions of freedom say that they just want the freedom to do what they want without interference, but when we try to claim the same rights for doing what we ought, suddenly freedom is nowhere to be found. No, we can’t say same sex “marriage” is wrong without risk of legal action. No, we can’t refuse to distribute contraceptives against our conscience without risk of legal action. No, we can’t hold people accountable for breaking a signed agreement without risk of legal action—even if they’re directly working for the Church.

It Will Be a Different From The Totalitarian Version

Now America prides itself as being a land of freedom, so I doubt we’ll directly see it move to overt persecution of Christianity of the type seen in Communist nations unless we fall much further into the rule by decree mindset. What I expect that we’ll see is government misusing the rule of law to portray Christian moral teaching as a violation of the rule of law. Then, by changing the meaning of things, the Church is suddenly portrayed as violating the law by standing by her fidelity to Christ. Marriage is redefined, and suddenly we’re accused of violating the civil rights of people with same sex attraction. Abortion and contraception are redefined from a crime to a right and suddenly we’re accused of violating the rights of women.

The Accusations Used To Justify It Are Not Rational

The usual tactic is to make use of the question begging analogy fallacy and point to the real racism of American history, alleging that the opposition to certain things as being sinful is based on intolerance, just as whites were intolerant of blacks in the past (and tragically, some still hold today). This attack tries to link two things with an alleged (but not proven) motive, failing twice as the comparison is not true and the alleged motive used to link the two is not proven. So opponents point to the real evil of racism, allege our motives for Christian moral teaching as being equally intolerant and declare that the government must oppose this “intolerance” just as they opposed the ethnic racism of American history.

But the problem is, there is no material advantage to being a Catholic, as opposed to being an atheist or a Protestant. Nor is one’s membership in a religion the same unchangeable thing as being a member of an ethnic group. People are not (and never were, contrary to popular belief) forcibly converted to Catholicism. One is free to join the Church if they accept what we believe is true. If they reject that what we believe is true, then it makes very little sense to want to join, remain in or work for the Church that says, if you would follow Christ, you are called to avoid sin to live rightly.

Because of this reality, it is unjust to attempt to legally harass us for being true to what we believe is part of following Christ. We do not seek to violate the laws of this nation (but we may be forced to choose between our faith and the state when the state tries to put itself above God), though we use our constitutional rights to try to change laws we believe are unjust. We don’t use the tactics of those who hate us because they strike us as unjust (Matt 7:12). Yes, some individuals among us may do evil, but they do evil against the teachings of the Church, not because of the teachings of the Church.

There are basically two issues in the debate on religious freedom. The first is making laws which reflect what is right and just. The second is insisting on the freedoms which others try to deny us while demanding it for themselves. Because there are two issues, we need to keep track of which one applies where. When we call for laws to be passed which have the proper understanding on the nature of humanity and what is good for it, we are making reference to the first issue. When we oppose attempts to restrict our freedoms to practice what we believe is right, we are making reference to the second issue.

Freedoms Now Applied Only to Favored Views Despite Claims of “Tolerance"

 

The response to these two issues makes me wonder what happened to the country I grew up in. The prevalent attitude by those cultural and media elites is that these freedoms are only applicable to certain types of freedoms—the freedoms they approve of. The beliefs of people they disagree with are not considered protected and what they would consider unjust if it were applied to them is considered perfectly acceptable when applied to those they dislike. That’s why it is considered perfectly acceptable to have a person forced out of his job for supporting a position such as traditional marriage (such as Brendan Eich), but intolerance if a person was forced from his job for supporting same sex “marriage."

See, the first issue is an issue of what is true and how we should behave on account of what is true. Yes, there will be conflicts in these beliefs of what is true. But if one person says “X is morally wrong,” and the other person says “X is not morally wrong,” the proper response is the seeking of truth. On what basis do you make your claim? The response of accusing people of homophobia or a “war on women," is not an exchange of ideas. That’s an attempt to bully, vilifying the person who dares disagree. If a Christian believes that the good of society means one has to protect the building block of society (the traditional family), he can do so peacefully, operating within the law, with the right to peacefully try to convince people willing to listen that this is worthy of a law.

The second issue is the issue of allowing a person to live as they believe their conscience commands them to do—which is quite different from the person who says they “don’t see anything wrong with it.” The person who believes contraception is morally acceptable is not having their rights imposed on if she works for an employer who refuses to pay for it out of moral obligation, but the person who believes contraception is morally wrong is having their rights imposed on if the courts decree he or she must pay for these contraceptives. In other words, the person whose conscience is lax enough to see contraception as morally OK is not being forced to do something evil when the employer says, “Fine, but I’m not paying for it.” But forcing people to pay for what they think is evil is a violation of conscience.

Counter-Accusations Do Not Actually Fit Our Behavior, Except in Extremists That We Disavow

So, this is why religious believers must be more and more active in defending what they believe, while seeking to reach out to others in showing them why Christian beliefs are true. We are being told both that we have no right to seek laws which make the society live in a way that is just and true and that our beliefs are not covered under the freedoms all citizens claim. Objectively, we must say that some things are always wrong, while still treating our opponents with human dignity. On the other hand, we must say that even if our opponents disagree with our claims to truth, that doesn’t mean that they have the right to strip us of our human dignity.

This is the issue that is being ignored. The elites are actually behaving in a corrupt way, where consideration of rights and right don’t figure into things. Self-Contradiction is apparently acceptable so long as it helps them and harms us. But if we insist that they apply the same standards to themselves as they apply to ourself, it’s suddenly unfair.

Now, it some people do accuse us of holding a double standard. Either they point to the infamous Christian groups which are a good bogeyman to unjustly tar all Christians with to make the Christian teaching look bad (most Christians who oppose same sex acts don’t support the unjust treatment for those with that inclination), or they accuse us of being motivated by hatred when we say, “Hey, practice what you preach.” Yes, unfortunately, you will find Christians who don’t practice what they preach. But they are not the majority of Christians, and most of us recognize that those who act in this way are doing wrong even if they agree with us that X is wrong. So, it’s unjust to blame us for the actions of people we repudiate and it is wrong to accuse us of bad will because we disagree the popular views.

Conclusion

But people tend to accept the accusations of “guilt by association” and bald assertions of intolerance that we deny. That’s basically why religious freedom and the ability to do right is looking bleaker for 2015. Is there a remedy? Sure. It requires men and women of good will to stand up against the governments, the courts and even in places of business and point out that what is being alleged of us is unjust. It requires people to distinguish between what is alleged about Christian belief and the motive for it and the truth of Christian belief and why we hold it. In other words, religious freedom is in danger so long as people are willing to tolerate (or approve of) attacks on other people.