The Obligation of Truth

The social media being what it is, I tend to see a lot of political emails, Facebook posts etc go by. A lot of them make claims that certain politicians or groups do or say horrific things that every decent person should be disgusted by.

I don't pass them on without investigating them first. I may, for example, find Obama's policies reprehensible while seeking to live in accordance with what I believe.  However that does not allow me to pass on false information as a means of opposing those things he does that I must call evil.

There are some issues that we must be aware of:
■ We may never knowingly choose to do an evil act so good may come of it.
■ To pass on statements without investigating whether or not it is true is negligence.
■ We must understand the context of words and actions that seem so shocking before using them to judge.

These are things that I wish people would apply to the information passed on about the Catholic Church. There is a lot of outright lies being passed on concerning what the Church has allegedly taught or done that horrify people.   There is also a lot of stories going on about individuals who are Catholic and did terrible things... and these things are portrayed as if they were part of Church teaching instead of as the aberrations they are.

Here's the problem. To pass on statements you know are false is to be guilty of slander/libel. To pass on false statements you could investigate but don't makes you guilty of libel/slander through negligence.  The same applies to knowing or negligent passing on of out of context information.

This is not something theoretical. It's not relegated to the crude and cartoonish libel of Jack Chick. Today, we have people who make false statements about what we believe and our motivation for holding our beliefs. We're homophobic in our teaching about marriage, we're anti-woman about our beliefs on contraception and abortion.  False history and out of context examples are given as "proof."

It's funny how people will immediately look to Snopes.com when a politician they favor is maligned but can't be bothered to try and find out the truth behind anti-Catholic statements. Or, if they "research," they look at sites they ideologically agree with -- which is like asking the Tea Party for objective information on Obamacare or NARAL about Operation Rescue.

Regardless of who is the target, whether or not we like them, the obligation is to learn what is true, and only pass on what is true.

Think about it...

The Obligation of Truth

The social media being what it is, I tend to see a lot of political emails, Facebook posts etc go by. A lot of them make claims that certain politicians or groups do or say horrific things that every decent person should be disgusted by.

I don't pass them on without investigating them first. I may, for example, find Obama's policies reprehensible while seeking to live in accordance with what I believe.  However that does not allow me to pass on false information as a means of opposing those things he does that I must call evil.

There are some issues that we must be aware of:
■ We may never knowingly choose to do an evil act so good may come of it.
■ To pass on statements without investigating whether or not it is true is negligence.
■ We must understand the context of words and actions that seem so shocking before using them to judge.

These are things that I wish people would apply to the information passed on about the Catholic Church. There is a lot of outright lies being passed on concerning what the Church has allegedly taught or done that horrify people.   There is also a lot of stories going on about individuals who are Catholic and did terrible things... and these things are portrayed as if they were part of Church teaching instead of as the aberrations they are.

Here's the problem. To pass on statements you know are false is to be guilty of slander/libel. To pass on false statements you could investigate but don't makes you guilty of libel/slander through negligence.  The same applies to knowing or negligent passing on of out of context information.

This is not something theoretical. It's not relegated to the crude and cartoonish libel of Jack Chick. Today, we have people who make false statements about what we believe and our motivation for holding our beliefs. We're homophobic in our teaching about marriage, we're anti-woman about our beliefs on contraception and abortion.  False history and out of context examples are given as "proof."

It's funny how people will immediately look to Snopes.com when a politician they favor is maligned but can't be bothered to try and find out the truth behind anti-Catholic statements. Or, if they "research," they look at sites they ideologically agree with -- which is like asking the Tea Party for objective information on Obamacare or NARAL about Operation Rescue.

Regardless of who is the target, whether or not we like them, the obligation is to learn what is true, and only pass on what is true.

Think about it...

Thoughts on the Latest Papal Media Tempest

If you haven't already heard, there's some media coverage on the Pope allegedly saying in a private phone call that a woman married to a divorced man could receive the Eucharist. Given the hearsay nature of who reported things, I'm operating under the assumption that as a faithful son of the Church, whatever the Pope said, it didn't involve violations of Church teaching... Hell, if the Pope wanted to make sure that the woman received the Eucharist, I'm sure that he would have contacted the Pastor.

One thing I see from the Catholic blogging is a number of people claiming that the Pope needs to be more careful in what he says.

Personally, I think everyone should remember that every person is obligated to find out what was meant by a speaker before judging him or her. The media fails to do their research, whether through negligence or choice. We should be aware of this failure. Every time the Pope made headlines from something he said, the final result was the discovery that the media got it wrong.

When the media presents the Pope as radically changing Church teaching, we need to recognize their deficiency and their consistency in getting it wrong.

Otherwise, we're guilty of rash judgment.

Thoughts on the Latest Papal Media Tempest

If you haven't already heard, there's some media coverage on the Pope allegedly saying in a private phone call that a woman married to a divorced man could receive the Eucharist. Given the hearsay nature of who reported things, I'm operating under the assumption that as a faithful son of the Church, whatever the Pope said, it didn't involve violations of Church teaching... Hell, if the Pope wanted to make sure that the woman received the Eucharist, I'm sure that he would have contacted the Pastor.

One thing I see from the Catholic blogging is a number of people claiming that the Pope needs to be more careful in what he says.

Personally, I think everyone should remember that every person is obligated to find out what was meant by a speaker before judging him or her. The media fails to do their research, whether through negligence or choice. We should be aware of this failure. Every time the Pope made headlines from something he said, the final result was the discovery that the media got it wrong.

When the media presents the Pope as radically changing Church teaching, we need to recognize their deficiency and their consistency in getting it wrong.

Otherwise, we're guilty of rash judgment.

Loving Christ Requires Change

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. Then Jesus approached and said to them, “It's ok to go on living as you did before. Just be nice to people and don't make judgments on whether behavior is right or wrong." Then he led them [out] as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are being victimized by your intolerance."

As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Matthew went back to collecting taxes. Peter and Andrew went back to fishing. The woman caught in adultery went back to her lover, telling the Pharisees not to push their morality on her. The Samaritan woman moved back in with the guy she was living with, working on making him husband number six. It was all okay because all that Jesus wanted was for us to be nice to each other and not judge.

--The Gospel according to... absolutely NOBODY.

The above passage is of course a perversion of Matthew 28, John 20 and Luke 24. It runs entirely against what Jesus actually said. But this is the Jesus the modern world seems to think exists. The world takes two passages from the Bible: Matthew 7:1-5 ("Judge not") and 1 John 4:8 ("God is love") and uses them to justify their own behavior, rejecting the concept that they are sinners who need to respond to God's love and gift of grace.

Thus, when the Church speaks about the moral obligations that come from God's love, like John 14:15 ("If you love me, you will keep my commandments"), the response is to condemn the Church for being judgmental, homophobic, anti-woman... basically to accuse the Church of being in opposition to Christ.

That's a mindset that puts souls at risk of eternal damnation. Jesus didn't come to tell people "be nice to each other." He came to save us from our sins.

But that action tells us a couple of things:
■ There are actions we do that are sins.
■ We are to respond to this by amending our lives, turning from evil and seeking to live as God commands (both with the seeking and depending on His grace).

Indeed, the modern world makes a mockery of His actions when they reduce His teaching to the Wiccan  'An it harm none, do what ye will.' It presumes other people are the problem because WE don't harm anybody (at least not anyone that matters), but THEY are trying to keep us from doing what we want.

But Jesus wasn't a "nice guy." He spoke very clearly about sin and Hell and the need to repent. Salvation comes to the penitent who knows his sin and is sorry for it. Not to the arrogant who believe they have nothing to be sorry for (Luke 18:9-14).

The arrogant aren't only the Pharisees. They can be found wherever the person refuses to consider his or her own behavior as being in conflict with God.

Think about it...

Loving Christ Requires Change

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. Then Jesus approached and said to them, “It's ok to go on living as you did before. Just be nice to people and don't make judgments on whether behavior is right or wrong." Then he led them [out] as far as Bethany, raised his hands, and blessed them. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are being victimized by your intolerance."

As he blessed them he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy. Matthew went back to collecting taxes. Peter and Andrew went back to fishing. The woman caught in adultery went back to her lover, telling the Pharisees not to push their morality on her. The Samaritan woman moved back in with the guy she was living with, working on making him husband number six. It was all okay because all that Jesus wanted was for us to be nice to each other and not judge.

--The Gospel according to... absolutely NOBODY.

The above passage is of course a perversion of Matthew 28, John 20 and Luke 24. It runs entirely against what Jesus actually said. But this is the Jesus the modern world seems to think exists. The world takes two passages from the Bible: Matthew 7:1-5 ("Judge not") and 1 John 4:8 ("God is love") and uses them to justify their own behavior, rejecting the concept that they are sinners who need to respond to God's love and gift of grace.

Thus, when the Church speaks about the moral obligations that come from God's love, like John 14:15 ("If you love me, you will keep my commandments"), the response is to condemn the Church for being judgmental, homophobic, anti-woman... basically to accuse the Church of being in opposition to Christ.

That's a mindset that puts souls at risk of eternal damnation. Jesus didn't come to tell people "be nice to each other." He came to save us from our sins.

But that action tells us a couple of things:
■ There are actions we do that are sins.
■ We are to respond to this by amending our lives, turning from evil and seeking to live as God commands (both with the seeking and depending on His grace).

Indeed, the modern world makes a mockery of His actions when they reduce His teaching to the Wiccan  'An it harm none, do what ye will.' It presumes other people are the problem because WE don't harm anybody (at least not anyone that matters), but THEY are trying to keep us from doing what we want.

But Jesus wasn't a "nice guy." He spoke very clearly about sin and Hell and the need to repent. Salvation comes to the penitent who knows his sin and is sorry for it. Not to the arrogant who believe they have nothing to be sorry for (Luke 18:9-14).

The arrogant aren't only the Pharisees. They can be found wherever the person refuses to consider his or her own behavior as being in conflict with God.

Think about it...

Asking the Wrong Question: A Reflection

The Wrong Question

I came across a headline which asked if Christians were out of step with the mainstream. I found that question to be very saddening. It indicates that for a certain portion of the population and the elites think that going along with the preferred position is more important than determining the truth of a position... because the two are not the same thing.

As I have cited many times in the past in my blog, Aristotle once defined truth as saying of what is, that it is and saying of what is not, that it is not. In other words, we need to explore the nature of a thing before accepting the mainstream view of it.

Why? Because the mainstream of a country can go very far astray in what it favors. The extreme example, of course, is the example of Nazi Germany. The Nazi Party came to power legally and achieved things that were popular -- righting perceived wrongs that came from the Treaty of Versailles. While the party did some things that made people uncomfortable, these tended to be dismissed as being less important than the perceived good. The opponents of the regime tended to be dismissed or attacked.

The point here is not to equate America with Nazi Germany (so spare me the flames). The point is to show that what the mainstream accepts is not necessarily good. Whether it is the acceptance of National Socialism or whether it is the acceptance of modern sexual morality in the West, the acceptance of things by the mainstream of a society is NOT an indication that the thing is good.

The Right Questions

So what are we to do about this? We have to start by asking the right questions. We don't start by asking whether Christians are outside of the mainstream. We start by asking whether the assumptions held by the mainstream are true. Truth must be the criterion for accepting or rejecting values.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what people fail to consider. When the cultural elites assert that those who champion the traditional understanding of marriage are "homophobic," they are making an assertion that needs to be proven and not assumed to be true. Very few Christians who understand the obligations of their faith properly actually hate the people who live in opposition to what God commands.  But instead of investigating what they believe, it's easier to attribute a motivation that makes the opponent look bad.

What Reason Tells Us

The result is a slew of logical fallacies which don't prove the point. It provides spurious reasoning to claim that boils down to, "anyone who doesn't agree with me is a bigot."

I find it ironic that the definition of bigot, "a person who is prejudiced in their views and intolerant of the opinions of others," fits the champions of tolerance much better than it fits the people who believe some behaviors are wrong.

As GK Chesterton pointed out, "It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong." In other words, the bigotry doesn't exist in believing right and wrong. The bigotry comes from refusing to question whether you properly understand what you oppose.

The Dilemma

Now, if one believes in the existence of objective good and evil, it is not bigotry to refuse to accept a view deemed evil as valid -- provided that you understand the nature of the issue you reject. Nor are you hypocritical to say that a sin is wrong while still loving the person who sins.

The same cannot be said for the one who takes the position that there is no objective good and evil.  If you insist others must tolerate views they disagree with, then you must also tolerate views you disagree with. If you refuse to accept the views of those you disagree with, you are guilty of what you accuse your opponents of being: bigoted (refusing to accept different views) and hypocritical (denying there are moral absolutes while holding moral absolutes). But if you actually follow what you claim to champion, you have to tolerate people who support views you believe to be wrong. If the persecutors of Brendan Eich were truly tolerant, they would have left him to his own views and not sought to oust him.

But, on the other hand, if one sees the acceptance of abortion or homosexual acts as objectively good and believes others are morally obligated to accept this, then he or she is under the same onus of proof that he or she demands from opponents. After all, if opposing abortion is "imposing values," then so is promoting it!

Conclusion

Asking if someone as being "outside the mainstream" ultimately ignores the more pertinent question: Is it good to be part of the mainstream? History tells us that oftentimes it is not.