Y I AM CATHOLIC - PART 4: The evidence for Christ

Before we proceed...a quick review. First, our objective here is to provide a path to Catholicism which begins with nothing. In other words, belief in God is not assumed and the authority of traditional Christian sources - such as Scripture and the writings of the early Church Fathers - are not immediately relied upon.

Such an approach is made increasingly necessary today as a careless atheism and a general apathy towards religious truth progressively dominates our culture. And whereas in the past we might have engaged fallen away family members over the "Sunday obligation", we are more likely today to find ourselves in debates over the very existence of God.

Traditional apologetics begins with “proofs” - proofs of God through evidence from nature, motion, cause and effect, and other matters requiring reason. 

However, we begin our inquiry with something that requires no reason: death. Death is the one constant, the one common denominator for us all. Death is a great place to begin because it is the one thing upon which we cannot disagree: we will die.

In Part 1 of this series we begin with death and explored the 50/50 possibility of the afterlife. In Part 2, we determined that the Christian proposition of the afterlife demands serious examination due to the fact that it presents us with the most horrific of post-death possibilities: eternal damnation. In Part 3 we examined the undeniable evidence for the existence of the early Christian church through the accounts of their Roman oppressors.

Here, in Part 4, the Roman accounts will once again assist us as we examine the historical existence of Jesus Christ.

As already mentioned, there is little extra-biblical documentation for the historical existence of Jesus. And of what there is, much has largely been discredited as the fabrication of later Christian copyists. So, for the skeptic, the atheist, how best to prove Jesus?

The best record is not found in ink, but blood, martyrs’ blood, and lots of it. For nearly three centuries thousands voluntarily accepted the most unimaginable tortures rather than change their story, which was: 

1. Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God, 
2. He was born of the Virgin Mary, 
3. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified died and was buried, and 
4. On the third day he rose from the dead and has ascended into Heaven

There are three things to consider in the matter of the Christian persecution at the hands of Rome: 

1. its brutality,  
2. its length, and 
3. its uniqueness

Brutality: The Romans had made a science of torture. They had perfected it to the point of art and placed it at the service of entertainment and spectacle. Few societies have ever devised crueler ways to kill a man - crucifixion being the ultimate installment in humanity’s excursion into inhumanity.

Length: The Roman persecution stretched through six full generations. Consider that the Christians were subjected to Roman brutalities for a period longer than the United States has been a nation. Using Nero (64 AD) as a starting point and the Edict of Milan (313 AD) as the end, Christians suffered unimaginable cruelties for 249 years. 

Uniqueness: Martyrdom is not unique to the early Christians, but their willingness to be killed in the most cruel ways is. Compare this to the "martyrdom" of Islam, where one dies (often quickly) while killing others. Compare also the “martyrdom” of the Jonestown, Guyana cult where 800 people committed suicide. Imagine, instead of swallowing cyanide, those people lining up to be boiled in oil, gnawed by wild beasts, grilled on fire hot racks, or left to die over days nailed to a cross... probably not a lot of volunteers in that scenario.

No, the martyrdom of the early Christians is unique not just because of their willingness to suffer the most unimaginable torments, but because many of them could have avoided it altogether by making some nominal gesture to a Roman deity

There is simply nothing like the persecution of the early Christians in history, and it forces us to examine what and who they died for.

Go here for Part 5.

TIM ROHR TESTIMONY RELATIVE TO BILL 415-31

TIMOTHY J ROHR
PO BOX 9001, AGAT, GU 96928
timrohr.guam@gmail.com

February 27, 2012

Honorable Vicente C. Pangelinan
Suite 101 Quan Building
324 W. Soledad Ave.
Hagåtña, Guam  96910
Ph.: (671) 473-4236/7
Fax: (671) 473-4238
e-mail: senbenp@guam.net
Chairperson: Committee on Appropriations, Taxation, Public Debt, Banking, Insurance, Retirement, and Land

RE: TESTIMONY IN SUPPORT OF BILL 415-31 - ACTO PARA MA SAPOTTE I FAMA’LAO’AN YAN PARA MA SATBA I FAMAGU’ON

Greetings Senator Pangelinan:

I write in support of the intent of Bill 415-31. I concur with the author of the bill as per the Findings and Intent that “more must be done to reduce the abortion rate by helping and supporting pregnant women.” I support the intent of the bill and would ask that your committee consider the following concerns.

ARTICLE 1: ESTABLISHING A FOUNDATION

The bill proposes the establishment of a new foundation to oversee and coordinate this effort. Before proceeding, may I recommend a thorough study and evaluation of existing services which already address or could address the needs of pregnant mothers as expressed in Bill 415-31.

It may be that such needs could be more easily addressed through the private organizations that already do this work than the establishment of a wholly separate entity that could put existing services in competition for charitable dollars with the newly proposed entity.

If said private organizations do not address the concerns to the satisfaction of the intent of Bill 415, the possibility of assisting these organizations to expand their services should first be explored. It may be that they are fundamentally better positioned, staffed, and equipped to address said concerns but are not yet able to fully address them due to lack of funding or the legal and social recognition which proper legislation might confer.

I understand that Vice-Speaker Cruz stated on a local radio show that he had already approached several of these private organizations with the ideas proposed in Bill 415-31 but did not receive their support. If so, I would ask Vice-Speaker Cruz to identify these organizations so that they can be re-approached. They may be more willing to entertain the idea if there is a greater source of assistance and significant legislative sanction.

ARTICLE 2: PREGNANCY PREVENTION

As regards the prevention of unintended pregnancies, I detect a presumption in the bill that most unintended pregnancies occur among teens. As you can see from the abortion reports provided by Guam Medical Records, teens are the least likely demographic to seek an abortion. At the same time, out-of-wedlock births are very high among teens. I believe the figure is 1.5 times the national average.

Interestingly, It has been proposed that the reason for the phenomenon is not a lack of education or access to birth control, but that these days teens intentionally get pregnant, i.e. they want a baby. As a former high school teacher I can vouch for that theory.

What once invoked a social stigma (teen pregnancy) seems to have been inverted and now invokes the opposite. A pregnant teen seems to be envied by her peers, at least many of them. And of course our system of “rewarding” an out of wedlock pregnancy with government assistance does little to discourage more out-of-wedlock pregnancy. In fact, as you are aware, for many unwed mothers, another child is the only way to increase their income.

Given this phenomenon, simply providing more knowledge about how not to get pregnant will be of little effect, and before we pass legislation to promote it, we should first examine the phenomenon of intended unwed pregnancy and seek to understand why it is growing.

Nationally, the phenomenon is so widespread that it has moved beyond the moral debate and has been taken up by economists due to the enormous economic impact of out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Out-of-wedlock births are now estimated to be 40% of all births despite easier and cheaper access to birth control and abortion. In fact, notwithstanding particular instances to the contrary, there is a direct corollary between increased access to birth control and abortion and an increase in out-of-wedlock pregnancy in spite of its illogic.

Nobel prize winning economist George A. Akerlof thoroughly examines the phenomenon  in a study published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics (May 1996) entitled “An Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States.” (I can send the report to you if you so desire.)

Akerlof essentially traces the root of the phenomenon to the destigmatization of out-of-wedlock pregnancy and its subsequent effect on male behavior given that marriage to the female, whom the male impregnates, is no longer expected.

In short, Akerlof proposes that access to contraception and abortion have, by default, in making pregnancy and birth the absolute choice of the mother, has consequently liberated the male from any sense of traditional responsibility. And indeed, as you know, should the male assume that responsibility by marrying the woman he impregnated, it is likely that government assistance to the mother would be diminished or withdrawn - a clear disincentive.

All this is to say that we should look before we shoot. It’s not that attempts at deterring pregnancy have not already been tried, they have. Contraception, abortion, sex education have been increasingly liberalized and made available for decades and at earlier and earlier educational stages. And we now have a 40% out-of-wedlock birth rate to show for it. Simply mandating greater education without further study is not only a questionable solution, it may effect the opposite of its intent.

ARTICLE 3: SAFE HAVEN

I am wholly in support of the Safe Haven portion of the bill with the exception of limiting such Safe Haven for infants 30 days old or less. I believe expert input from the fields of psychology and medicine and perhaps law enforcement is needed to determine an age limit.

I also wholly support the enhancement to the existing Abortion Report Law in Section 2 requiring “Reason(s) the mother intends to abort the pregnancy...”


ADOPTION

And finally, I urge the Legislature to examine the bureaucratic and legal aspects of the adoption procedure. I am told by those engaged in assisting those who are desirous to adopt that the procedure is lengthy, costly, and often leads to disappointment amongst prospective adoptive parents, many of whom have waited as much as five years to adopt a child.

ONE LAST NOTE

While there is nothing in the abortion reports from Guam Medical Records to definitively substantiate this hypothesis, there is much from an historical perspective of abortion to support the belief that the overwhelming reason for abortion is not poverty or a lack of education, but to cover for illicit affairs.

Marvin Olasky in “Abortion Rites in America” traces the history of abortion from the landing of the Mayflower forward. And during times when adultery could invoke the death penalty it was natural why many would desperately want to cover their sexual tracks.  Of course the death penalty for adultery is no longer an obstacle to adulterous affairs, but the public stigma is still very much present, not to mention the prospect of a vengeful spouse.

If one examines the abortion reports from Guam Medical Records one can easily see that the majority of abortions are procured by persons “old enough to know better”, 43% of whom were married.

Today, the infidelities don’t even have to be between married people, they often occur between sexual partners who have no expressed legal commitment. A personal friend, and adoptive father of a child that survived an abortion, recounted how his adopted daughter was aborted by the mother to avoid discovery of her pregnancy as her boyfriend, who was not the father of the child, was returning home from a military deployment earlier than expected.

I don’t think we need any official studies to verify that infidelities of various degrees are the cause of a significant number of abortions. I mention this not because we can do anything about this legislatively, but to bring this fact to mind before we expend resources on programs that not only do not address the real problem, but may, unwittingly, exacerbate it.

In any event, Bill 415 provides us an opportunity to engage these matters and corporately seek real solutions.

Thank you for your consideration of my concerns. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at the above contact information.



Timothy J. Rohr
Resident of Agat

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT

Dear Mr. President,

In a recent speech in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, you said the following:

"If you're willing to put in the work, the idea is that you should be able to raise a family and own a home; not go bankrupt because you got sick, because you've got some health insurance that helps you deal with those difficult times; that you can send your kids to college; that you can put some money away for retirement. That's all most people want. Folks don't have unrealistic ambitions. They do believe that if they work hard they should be able to achieve that small measure of an American Dream."

Mr. President, if I may, I would respectfully differ with your vision about “most people”. You see, Mr. President,  my wife and I DO have "unrealistic ambitions" for our family. We are NOT willing to settle for some "small measure of the American Dream". We want the FULL MEASURE of the American Dream for our family. This is why we do what many others are not willing to do. This is why we force ourselves to do what we don't feel like doing. We believe that America was built by people like us who wanted more for themselves and their families, people who had NO interest in some “small measure of the American Dream”, as you say.

Mr. President, my wife and I began our marriage in a pickup truck and a tent living in a Florida campground. We know what its like to be down to our last $2.00. We didn't turn to you, to the government. We turned to each other and to ourselves, and to God, and to the belief that if we "put in the work", as you say, that with God's grace, we could have more, be more, that "hope and change" which you promised everybody was ours if we were not willing to settle, if we were willing to persevere, if we were willing to do more.

No, Mr. President, we are not going to settle. We want our family to be able to go on vacations to places like Hawaii, Spain, France, Martha's Vinyard and Aspen...AS YOURS DOES. Except Mr. President, we won’t be asking the taxpayers to pay for our trips. We will pay for our own as just about every other American has to do.

Mr. President, I do not want my children to know about the limited vision you have for their futures. Their vision is unlimited. Their belief in themselves and their abilities is unlimited. They know that they were created "that they might have life and have it to the full." Stay away from my children, Mr. President. And stay away from their dreams. They are destined for greatness, not for one of your programs.

No, Mr. President, that's NOT "all most people want", not your vision of a little family with just enough to get by and retire. And if it is, THEN MY FAMILY AND I ARE NOT "MOST PEOPLE". And we don't believe that your idea of "most people" is the real "most people". We believe that "most people" want what we want: a better life, a great life, an unlimited life, a beautiful life for our families. And we believe that they and we will find a way if you just get out of it!

Respectfully,

Timothy J. Rohr and Family

THUS SPAKE KARL MARX

A few days ago I came across a challenging post by an old friend on Facebook claiming a woman’s right to free birth control. I engaged the issue with her for a bit and ended up in the middle of a female comment-ambush from her other friends (if you know how Facebook works). My only support came from a guy who clicked “like” on one of my comments and then disappeared.

Defending the Church’s teaching on contraception can be a lonely venture given that the Church herself is alone amongst other Christian religions in this regard, and within the Church, opposition and rejection of the doctrine is so endemic that the faithful remnant who adhere to it are regularly forced to creatively respond to ridicule, e.g. “Don’t you know what causes that?” (A common slur, albeit usually friendly, whenever it is learned that one has more than two or three children, or you are expecting...“Again!”)

Perhaps Exhibit A of just how leprous this issue is, is the current insistence that the opposition to the Obama mandate is not about contraception but about religious liberty and rights of conscience. Hmmm. Perhaps this is why the episcopal roar sounds no louder than a squeak to the otherwise-occupied Obama. The fact is that the only thing that makes this an issue of religious liberty, is not THAT the government is telling us what to do, but WHAT the government is telling us to do.

Churches are forced to obey civil mandates all the time on such things as building, safety, and health regulations. We don’t complain that our religious liberty is being violated because our church is forced to comply with these things, so why are we complaining about the contraceptive mandate? Answer:  Because either through payment for health insurance or the fine that would be levied in the absence of insurance IT FORCES US TO MATERIALLY PARTICIPATE IN AN INTRINSICALLY EVIL ACT!

No, not just something morally objectionable, morally problematic, or against our beliefs - milquetoast terms which have been used to characterize the dilemma. No, the term is “intrinsic evil”. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2370: "...every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil...”

The only thing that justifies our complaint against Obama’s assault on religious liberty is the objective fact that contraceptive acts are intrinsically evil and not just intrinsically evil for Catholics, but intrinsically evil for everyone. The Catholic Church possesses the fullness of truth and if the Catholic Church teaches that an act is intrinsically evil then it is always evil for all people in all times and all places, period. And we need to say so.

If we don’t believe that then we might as well turn in our missalettes and head down the street to the First Church of What’s Happening Now where if we don’t like what Pastor Billy Joe Jim Bob is preachin’ we can fire him and hire Pastor Feelgood and contracept in peace. (Forgive my brief flight into metaphor.)

Intrinsic evil is a 10 on the 1 to 10 scale of evil. Not even homosexual acts rate a 10 as the Catechism categorizes those as only “intrinsically disordered” (CCC 2357), presumably a notch or two below a 10. Intrinsic evil puts any act that intentionally renders procreation impossible in the same category as procured abortion: always and everywhere GRAVE SIN and under no circumstance can be ever justified. With such clear teaching, one wonders how so many Catholics seem to either not know about it or not care.

Ironically, the very issues the bishops are arguing with Obama about, religious freedom and conscience rights, are the very concepts many Catholics use (albeit mistakenly) to justify their disregard for the very doctrine the bishops appear to be desirous of protecting: many Catholics simply feel that as matter of “freedom of conscience” and “religious liberty”, they are free to make up their own minds about birth control. In fact, some of us are even told to do so (as I was).

How this errant idea of conscience came to dominate the modern Catholic mind is a question we seriously need to engage given its ubiquity and the institutionalized debauchery (as predicted by Paul VI) it has wrought, not to mention the mockery it makes of the marriage vow and the consequent desecration of sacramental family life! We once again have to ask: “How did we get here?”

Father John O’Malley gives us a clue in “What Happened at Vatican II” wherein he recounts the titanic struggle at the Council over the unleashing of the idea of religious liberty, something actually previously condemned by the Church.  

Many bishops warned that despite the caveat noting that religious liberty, as put forth in the document Dignitas Humanae, applied ONLY to religious immunity from governmental coercion, the very notion of religious freedom, untethered from its very narrow traditional moorings, would lead to the privatization of conscience where one would perceive a license to pick and choose one’s doctrines and eventually one’s church, or even no church at all. Sound familiar?

So while the document’s authors attempted to take great care in not letting the noble idea of religious liberty devolve into personal license, and while its defenders continue to sincerely insist that the idea of religious liberty as put forth by the Council brooked no rupture with the past, we simply have what we have: Catholics who see no problem with abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage, and a take it or leave it attitude about the sacraments, all of whom yet believe they are going straight to heaven because Jesus loves them “just the way they are.”

From the moment Dignitas Humanae was propagated, a defense of the document was needed. Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI have all attempted to show that the misapplication of religious liberty was due to a problem with its interpretation, not the teaching itself.

Benedict XVI, seeing clearly the rent in the church, both in the consequent abdication of moral teaching and the split with certain traditionalists (SSPX) with whom he is attempting to reconcile, has admitted that there is “some kind of discontinuity” in the religious liberty of Vatican II versus the religious liberty of Pius IX, but believes that the key to continuity lies in the application of the the proper hermeneutic. And of course he is correct. But meanwhile, we have a problem. A big one. And Obama has socked us right between the hermeneutic.

So what now? We are at the precipice of where forty plus years of an errant and mostly-tolerated idea of religious liberty has brought us. To win this one the bishops need their troops, but the troops are depleted, ironically by the very thing they are trying to protect: religious liberty. Religious liberty, or more correctly, the perceived idea of it, has led to both a radical depletion in family size and a mass exodus from the one, true Church. The pews are more than half empty, and the few who are left have probably never heard the words “intrinsic evil”, at least not in the same sentence with birth control.

A loss for our church leadership on this one is more than just the loss of a religious exemption. It will be a malignant manifestation of the very thing Dignitias Humanae was supposed to prevent: coercion of religion by the state. And once the state can coerce religion, then history shows that the tyrannical repression of religious people themselves is only a few short steps away.

Make no mistake, the crippling of church, and the Catholic Church in particular, is always the first step towards totalitarianism. Thus spake Karl Marx: “The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.” And we have already seen how that has worked out.

In a recent interview with Vatican Radio, Bishop Robert Morlino of Wisconsin said of the Obama administration’s assault on religious liberty: “If they can do it to Catholics, they can do it to anybody.” Morlino’s warning was reminiscent of the famous statement attributed to Martin Niemoller about the unchallenged Nazi rise to power, which is here, paraphrased:

First they came for the Catholicsand I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Catholic.Then the came for the (next target group)and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a (member of said target group)Then they came for the (next target group)and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a (member of said target group)Then they came for meand there was no one left to speak out for me.

Don’t think it can happen in America? Then consider the ominous prediction of the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Francis George, in response to the growing viciousness against the Catholic Church in America: “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”

Depending on what happens in November of 2012, it may not even take that long.

THE HYANNISPORT PRESCRIPTION

I get this question so often that I might as well write a column about it: “How can they (politicians) be Catholic and support abortion?”

As we know, some of the most obstinate public proponents of abortion over the last few decades have been Catholics. The current crop of influential Catholic pro-aborts include names like Pelosi, Biden, Kerry, and Sibelius. But the “godfather” of Catholic pro-aborts was Ted Kennedy. For decades Kennedy prowled the Senate like a roaring lion looking to devour anything that even smelled like a pro-life bill.

Kennedy even opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion wherein a nearly fully delivered child, legs and arms flailing about, is stabbed in the back of the head and has its brains sucked out. We have laws against killing dogs that way! With Catholics like that, who needs atheists?

How did we get here? How did prominent and even celebrated Catholics come to be such enemies of life in the womb despite Church teaching? And further, how do they yet speak and act as upstanding Catholics with a seemingly clear conscience?

Anne Henderschott in “The Politics of Abortion” explores this phenomenon and traces its origins to a secret meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport in 1964 between Robert and Ted Kennedy and three well-known theologians (you can find their names in the book).

The objective of the meeting was to find a way in which the Kennedy’s, sensing the political shift towards abortion rights, might support abortion and yet remain Catholics with a clear conscience.

One of the theologians -and coincidentally the architect of the most controversial document of Vatican II - came up with the answer and it reads like this:

“Catholic politicians in a democratic polity might advocate legal restrictions on abortion, but in so doing might tolerate legislation that would permit abortion under certain circumstances if political efforts to repress this moral error led to greater perils to social peace and order.”

In other words a Catholic politician (according to Father X) could in good conscience support abortion if there was sufficient reason.

Of course, that is not true. The Church considers direct abortion to be “intrinsically evil”. That means that it is always evil regardless of the circumstances and there is NO “greater peril” that would ever justify it.

But, coming as it did from an influential priest-theologian, and in the presence of two other priests, and even a bishop - which gave it the air of an imprimatur , the Kennedy’s had what they wanted.

While Robert was soon to die, and several years would pass before Ted would speak openly as a hardened pro-abort, the cancerous idea worked its way deep into the Catholic social and political circles which were heavily influenced by the Kennedy’s and gave birth to a whole generation of Catholic politicians who openly support abortion with a good conscience as per the Hyannisport prescription of Father X.

But while the Kennedy connection engendered the liberal license needed for Catholic politicians to support abortion, something more was needed to extend that license to the  average Catholic whose vote was needed to put and keep these guys in office.

Some critics believe that this license was provided by the “seamless garment” concept put forth by a prominent U.S. cardinal in 1983. In a speech at an influential Catholic university, the cardinal essentially criticized pro-lifers for not being as equally opposed to other social ills such as poverty and the plight of undocumented immigrants.

Intentional or not, the “seamless garment” idea relativized abortion, reducing it to one issue among many and granted Catholic voters the license to support pro-abortion candidates so long as they cared about poverty, illegal immigrants, or whatever pet social issue one cared about.

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) carefully slammed this idea in a letter to the U.S. bishops during the 2004 presidential campaign which pitted pro-abortion (and Catholic) John Kerry against pro-life (but pro-Iraq war) George Bush.

Ratzinger stated that not all issues carry the same “moral weight” and that abortion and euthanasia were to be considered “grave sin” in contrast to general social evils such as poverty and war.

Nevertheless, the USCCB employed the “seamless garment” approach to moral issues in its 2008 document “Faithful Citizenship”. And even after intense criticism for “handing Obama the election”, the USCCB has rereleased it with few changes for the 2012 campaign, effectively permitting, once again, Catholics to vote for pro-abortion candidates like Barack Obama because he cares about unemployment.

Perhaps now that Obama has stiffed the USCCB by refusing to compromise on the contraceptive mandate, the bishops may want to trade in that seamless garment for sackcloth and ashes, or at least start using words like “grave sin”.


For further reading:
How support for abortion became a Kennedy dogma