OF POLLS AND PEWS: THE DANGERS OF "TOGETHER FOR LIFE"

Over the course of several columns we have documented the bewildering trend of Catholics increasingly accepting behaviors, acts, and lifestyles that are either condemned or strongly disapproved of by the church they say they belong to.

The trend is not rooted in an ignorance of church teaching - most Catholics appear to know where their church stands on abortion, contraception, and homosexual relations; rather, it seems to stem from a belief that they are wholly free to accept or reject such teachings and remain Catholics in good standing.

Many minds in Catholic leadership have puzzled over this trend, and the church has spilled over with documents and initiatives attempting to address it. One priest, Monsignor William Smith (now deceased) fingers an unlikely suspect.

Smith was a moral theologian who wrote for theological journals as well as a monthly column in Homiletic and Pastoral Review. In a1994 column he challenged a booklet widely used in marriage preparation, “Together for Life” (TL) by Msgr. Joseph Champlin, which was first published in 1970.

In TL (at least the editions used through 1994), Monsignor Smith exposes a pattern of teaching that, given its audience (pre-Cana couples), and its wide usage since 1970, may well explain why so many Catholics feel they are free to fashion their own moral code as well as pick and choose their religious obligations.

In addressing the regulation of births, Champlin quotes the relevant sections of the Catechism and Vatican II’s Guadium et Spes, but then, Smith observes, subjects the moral applicability of the teaching to the intentions and motives of the couple, and in so doing, sets the couple up to decide what is right and wrong “for them”.

Smith notes that this is something the Council expressly said NOT to do: “....with the responsible transmission of life, the moral aspects of any procedure does not depend solely on sincere intentions or on an evaluation of motives, but must be determined by objective standards....spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed arbitrarily...” (GS 50-51)

The subjective relativization of an objective moral position, demonstrated in TL, is not an uncommon practice. It is common to many contemporary Catholic authors. It goes like this: 1) Catholic teaching is cited, 2) the reader is made aware of dissenting positions, 3) the reader is asked how he “feels” about it, 4) the reader is told that a mature Catholic will need to make his own decisions, 5) the reader is encouraged to pray and “listen to the heart”.

In short, its nothing more than a high school exercise in values-clarification with Catholic truth often only serving as a conversation starter, or as doctrinal cover so that an imprimatur, which TL has, will not be denied (and so that pastors in seeing the imprimatur will feel soothed).

But let’s back up. Many of us are so familiar with this process that we fail to see what is wrong with it. After all, isn’t this what freedom of conscience and religious liberty is all about? Ultimately, don’t we have to make our own decisions?

Yes and No. Yes, we are free to choose BETWEEN right and wrong. No, we are NOT free to choose what IS right and wrong (at least not in matters that are intrinsically wrong). “Conscience”, (literally: “with knowledge), assumes that one proceeds with the knowledge of what IS right and wrong as well as that of the temporal and eternal consequences of one’s choice.

In TL, Champlin leads the couple to decide what IS right and wrong...“for them”. And lest the couple shirk from the imposed dilemma, he assures them: “At those times we purify our hearts, search for God’s light in this special circumstance, then decide what is the best course to follow. And follow it without any fear or anxiety.”

Coming as it does in the section on birth regulation there is no denying what is the matter to be “decided.” So the couple, about to embrace Holy Matrimony, and with the help of their pre-Cana class, is thus freed to contracept “without fear or anxiety” so long as they have “searched for God’s light” in this “special circumstance.”

But Champlin doesn’t stop there. Wisely assuming that some couples might be yet pained by that “still small voice”, Champlin advises them to seek out a priest, BUT not just any priest, but an “understanding priest”, or in the words of Msgr. Smith: “shop around for an affirmative cleric.”

While Smith is primarily concerned with the damage done by TL in marriage preparation, it’s easy to see how its method of moral manipulation might later induce Catholics to feel authorized to arbitrate on everything from abortion to the Sunday obligation: a fact evidenced in both polls and pews - increasingly empty ones.

(Monsignor William Smith’s commentary can be found in the book “Modern Moral Problems”, published by Ignatius Press, and available at the Cathedral Gift Shop.)

WHY IS JERRY SANDUSKY IN JAIL?

This question ("Why is Jerry Sandusky in jail?") was posed recently by columnist Benjamin Wilker in Catholic World Report.

It’s easy to think we know the answer. But not too long ago, sodomy and abortion were viewed with similar disgust and were imprisonable offenses.

But now, not only have both been elevated to a constitutional right, sodomy has been institutionalized through the legalization of same-sex unions; and abortion - we are told - is a “healthy choice.”

Over the last fifty years our society has increasingly deemed laws against adultery, contraception, fornication, pornography, abortion, sodomy, etc., as the puritanical remnants of an uptight past and we have enthusiastically discarded them. Yet we get rabidly righteous about an older man soliciting sexual favors from young boys and demand his head. Why?

Pederasty (man-boy sex) has a significant historical and cultural pedigree and has enjoyed more social acceptance throughout history than any other form of sexual relationship other than traditional marriage.

The keeping of boys for sexual favors was a well-documented practice in ancient civilizations. The historian, Edward Gibbons, tells us pederasty was practiced from the earliest days of the Roman Republic, and of the first fifteen Emperors, only Claudius had a “correct taste” in love.

In ancient Greece, young boys were often given to older men for the purpose of providing sexual favors by their own fathers in return for promises to see to the boy’s education and social advancement.

Pederasty did not go away with the passing of those ancient civilizations. It has found many incarnations and degrees of social acceptance in a variety of cultures and times. C.S. Lewis even notes (in Surprised by Joy) its commonplace practice at the boarding school he attended as a boy in England.

Apparently, if Jerry Sandusky had been a Roman noble or a teacher at an English boarding school instead of a football coach in America, he not only would have not gone to jail, he would probably have been envied and imitated.

At the very worst, Sandusky might have been a citizen of modern Greece where pedophilia is deemed a disability, and its diagnosis qualifies one for a government pension.

But no such luck for Sandusky. To our nation’s righteous delight, he will rot in jail. But why?

To what standard do we appeal when we revile pedophilia and its practitioners?

Make no mistake, we are right to be repulsed and outraged. But the roots of our revulsion are to be found in the very thing we seem determined to uproot: a Judeo-Christian view of the human person, his inherent dignity, and the right ordering of sexual passions.

In the days of the Edomites, the Jebusites, the Canaanites, and all the other “ites”, the descendants of Abraham stood quite alone in their opposition to the orgiastic cultures with which they were surrounded.

John the Baptist’s severed head ended up on a platter not because he heralded a Messiah, but because he condemned Herod’s perversions. And early Christians were put to death not just because of their unwillingness to worship roman gods, but because their regard for the sacrality of sex was a living condemnation of roman sexual norms.

It’s hard to imagine that pederasty too won’t one day again be normalized by a culture which has already put Christianity to death, and is even now rushing to elevate the ancient perversions to “the new normal”.

For now, the only thing that stands in the way is a skewed sense of human dignity that sees no issue with slaughtering 4000 infants in the womb, but still gets up in arms over a guy who showers with children. At least it shows that our society still maintains some remnant of sexual decency not yet destroyed by our frenzied rush to pleasure ourselves.

In 2011, Guam's Office Office of the Attorney General reported that 434 children were sexually abused on Guam over the previous year, a figure the AG rightly called a “staggering amount”. Predictably, certain community leaders expressed horror and the need for more laws, more controls, more enforcement, and frankly, more government.

Wonderful. But some of those community leaders are the same people who are bent on legislatively legitimating the morally permissive culture which, at its fringes, unravels into the sexual exploitation of children which they claim to abhor!

What don’t they get? The attack on Christian moral norms, which traditionally have safeguarded the sacrality of sex for the intimate fruitful bonds of marriage, is the direct cause for the increasing social sanction of sexual depravities of every kind including pedophilia.

So why are we surprised - having already stomped most of sexual decency into puritanical dust - that a man like Sandusky would help himself to the bodies of boys?

In light of our society’s wholesale destruction of our Christian moral roots, it appears Jerry’s only crime is that he “jumped the gun” in our culture’s mad race to Gomorrah.

Conscience and the Catholic Voter??

A friend of mine recently forward to me an article from America Magazine entitled Conscience and the Catholic Voter, written by Mary Ann Walsh, R.S.M., director of media relations for the USCCB.

I've been reading quite a few articles like this lately and I can't help but notice a trend, or even a "template".

It goes like this:

1. Clear statement of authentic Catholic moral teaching (i.e. "Not all issues are equal")

2. Followed by words, more words, more and more words, words, words, and more words…(i.e. the rest of the article)

3. Along the way, a plethora of issues are mentioned that by the time you get to the end the initial statement is so diluted and blurred that either the average reader just gives up and votes his/her gut (as item 6 even suggests), or the Catholic, looking for justification to vote for a pro-abortion candidate, finds what he/she is looking for.

Actually this article doesn't wait long to reveal it's pro-Obama bent. It gets right to it in item #1.

Item 1 begins with the lofty "Not all issues are equal" and identifies "life" issues as paramount. But then opts for singling out Embryonic Stem Cell Research as an example of a life issue.

It's not a coincidence (in my opinion) that ESCR is selected and isolated. This is the only issue that McCain is at odds with Church teaching on.

The author's intention is clearly suspect in selecting ESCR as the demonstrable issue. Here's why:

The debate over ESCR is divided between:
1. Harvesting new embryos for research
2. Using existing embryos for research that would otherwise be destroyed. (McCain ONLY supports this option)

Also in the moral gradation of Life Issues, procured abortion would trump ESCR because abortion involves another intrinsic evil: torture. (That abortion is NOT EVEN mentioned in the article is EXTREMELY ODD especially coming from an office within the USCCB.)

While neither option a nor b is morally acceptable to a Catholic, a non-Catholic, like McCain, may not have the moral foundation to clearly understand the nuance (most Catholics don't either). The author makes no attempt to define the debate.

As for point 2 above, the fetal spine and brain (and thus sensitivity to pain) are usually developed between 5-9 weeks. About ½ of all abortions happen after the 9th week. Almost all abortions after the 9th week involve surgical dismemberment, crushing of the skull, burning the child in the womb, or some form of mutilation of a living, feeling human being. Obviously we are speaking of torture here- something that wouldn't apply to ESCR.

The author then descends into the normal litany of issues such as health care, poverty, right to a job, just wage, immigration, discrimination, etc.

All of these are important issues in themselves and must be dealt with but the author's design seems an obvious attempt to scurry away as quickly as possible from the the Life Issue.

There is also the requisite back handed slap at the Bush administration, most evident in the health care and economic issues.

What's sad is that traditionally the Church did not wait for the government to provide health care, She provided it. She invented the medical missionaries, the hospital, the orphanage, the soup kitchen. This is the way the Church USED to work for justice and human rights.

Taking care of the poor, the stranger, the downtrodden ourselves was our FIRST order of business. Campaigning for legislative change was secondary. We now (not all of course) excuse ourselves from doing this dirty work because the "grant didn't come through" or "the Republicans took away the funding".

I could go on point by point but it just gets thicker.