Hard Truths about Newtown

The truth about what really happened in Newtown Connecticut is hard.  To be completely honest I don't really think most of our country is really ready or willing to hear it, let alone accept it.  It is easier to just advocate gun control or blame video games then to face the truth. Regardless, I want to share with you the truth about the cause of the Newtown shooting, the truth about Christmas, and the truth about the human soul.

     One of the most surprising things about the Newtown shooting is how everyone seems so shocked that it actually happened. How could someone do such a terrible and cruel thing? For the love of all that is holy, they were just little kids.  They had their entire lives ahead of them, but those lives, hopes, dreams, and everything else were snuffed out in an instant by some sick killer who just didn't care.  Here is what else was strangely absent from the outraged news reports that came crashing in around the world during the hour of terror at Sandy Brook Elementary, the other 137 children who died. Do you know what the difference between the children at Sandy Brook Elementary School and the other 137 is? One word, wanted.  Nobody wanted the other 137, so it was ok to let a killer loose on them in some back alley abortion clinic.  Nobody wanted them, so their parents were encouraged to have them killed instead of putting them up for adoption. It tears my heart out and makes we want to scream I LOVE YOU!!! from the mountain tops, because those babies ARE wanted.  I think the problem actually lies even deeper than the murder of innocent children.  I think the problem lies in the fact that our society has forgotten how to truly love and instead just treats other human beings like they are just some kind of cheap imported commodity. If you are not wanted, go away and die.  When we protect this insensitive attitude and try to make it look hip and cool by calling it the right to choose, we have failed our families, our country, and ultimately our God. 

This idea of no one caring because you aren’t wanted isn’t just an abortion issue either.  How many young people were killed as a result of Gang violence in the streets of Chicago or New York or Los Angeles?  Was our nation outraged over their deaths or did we some how believe that they deserved to die because of the choices they made?  Did they deserve to die because they weren’t like us?  Do they deserve to die because they are not wanted in our society?

How about the young children (and adults) who die out in the desert trying to sneak across the border and build a better life for their families?   When they die from lack of food or water do they deserve it?  Do they deserve to be packed like sheep into the back of a truck with no sanitation and smuggled across the border?  When we hear about these things do we feel outrage, or do we treat them like they deserve it because they too are unwanted?

That’s the funny thing about human dignity, we don’t really get to pick who has it and who doesn’t.  It is a gift given by God based on who we are, not what we have done. It doesn't matter one bit what you can give to society. In the eyes of God and His Church, you are a human person and that is all that matters.  You are wanted.  Sometimes  it is easy to forget that we don’t get to pick and choose who is wanted and who isn’t in the eyes of God.  I think the Catechism put it best when it said in paragraph 457-458,  

 "Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again. We had lost the possession of the good; it was necessary for it to be given back to us. Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior; prisoners, help; slaves, a liberator. Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state? 

     The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God's love: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him." "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” ”

When Christ took on our human nature, a lot of people thought he didn’t really have anything to offer either.  In fact, when it came to not being wanted He led the pack.  They even crucified Him because He wasn’t wanted by certain parts of society.  The Truth is, God wants us.  Not just some of us, but everyone single one of us.

This is the truth about Newtown.  This is the truth about human dignity. This is the Truth about Christmas.

Once Upon an Election

Over the past several days I have been giving a lot of thought to our recent elections and the voting process in general and I have come to a few conclusions that I wanted to throw out so that others could roll them around in their minds and discuss them on cool fall evenings over a cup of steaming hot cocoa.  The first is that presidential elections are in many ways very anti-Catholic.  Let me be clear that I do not mean this in a policy or legal way (though some have already stopped reading), but rather in a practical and spiritual way.  For example, over the last 2 months how many conversations have most of us had with friends and family members about something political, either a ballot measure or a candidate or the evils of of one political party vs. the other? Now compare it with how many conversations you have had and the amount of time you have spent talking to people, friends, and family members about your faith or about how God is working in your life?  How many billions of dollars and thousands of hours were spent on political campaigns that could have been spent spreading the Gospel?  How many of us were absolutely glued to our television/radio/computer for all three presidential debates, but have never bothered to tune in and watch a general audience from the Holy Father or even listen to Catholic radio?  How many Catholics put a sign in their yard or a sticker on their car proudly proclaiming their political allegiance, yet would never consider proclaiming their faith in any such way because someone might find it "offensive"?  My point is not that the political process is bad and that we shouldn't care, my point is simply one of priorities. When the first Commandment says that we should have no other gods before God, where do we really stand?  The amount of time, energy, and resources that we spend on politics reveals that many people in our world are still desperately hungry for a savior.  The problem is that they are looking to the wrong man.  The President of the United States is not our savior, and it doesn't matter if he is a Republican or a Democrat. Christ is our savior.  He transcends political, social, and racial boundaries.  Christ doesn't care if you are part of the 1% or the 99%, He cares if you are following Him. It may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, but how many people even know what these words of Christ even really mean? We have been commanded by our savior to go out and make disciples of ALL the nations.  The work of spreading the Gospel is not something reserved for the priests, youth ministers, and professional evangelists; it is the work of all of us, the faithful in the trenches of the world.  Now this isn’t to say that elections are not important.  After all, our president and elected leaders can either make it much easier to follow the will of God, or they can pass laws that directly attack Gods people and His Church.  In the end, however, God will triumph. Cardinal George remarked upon the election of Pope Benedict about where was the successor to the Roman emperors? 

Where was the successor to Julius Caesar or Marcus Aurelius?  They were long gone and no one really cares about them anymore, but the successor of Peter was standing right next to him.  Long after this election and all the others are over, the Church and Peter will endure.  Let’s keep our eyes and our hearts in that direction.

All Saints Day

Within the 2000 year history of the Catholic Church we have been privileged to have some absolutely amazing Saints.  There have been many who have gone to great lengths to lay down their lives and their bodies for their God and their Church.  With the exception of St. John, all of the other Apostles were martyred for their faith.  Their love for God and their fellow man was so great that no persecution was too great and no price was to high that they would not willingly and gladly pay it.  St. Peter was crucified upside down and St. Agatha was forced into a brothel and then had her breasts cut off.  St. Lucy gauged out her own eyes because men found them so attractive and she wanted to live her life for God alone and Saint Lawrence was grilled to death because Emperor Valerian demanded all the riches of the Church and Lawrence brought him the poor and the sick.  Saints Thomas More and John Fisher were accused of treason and killed for refusing to betray their Catholic faith and recognize the authority of the King of England as the head of the new English Church.  These are just some of the great men and women and women that we celebrate this week On All Saints Day.  One of the things that all of these Saints have in common is the way they put their faith in God above absolutely everything also in their lives.  While some of them had taken religious vows or were single when Thomas More went to the headsman he did so knowing that he was leaving behind his family to fend for  themselves. His wife would no longer have her husband and his daughter no longer her father, but he went anyway because of his love for God and his faith in the Catholic Church. I am inspired by the faith of these and so many other Saints who chose to live out their faith in the face of adversity.  One of the things that helped these Saints and all the other saints fight the good fight and make it to heaven was how they formed their conscience.  We hear a lot in the media these days about people who do whatever they want and justify it by saying that they were taught in Catholic school and the Catechism to always follow their conscience and do what they believe is right.  While this is true, it doesn’t tell the full story.  While we are supposed to follow our conscience, we are also obligated to make sure that our conscience is correctly formed to the will of God.  So if our conscience starts telling us to do something that God has asked us not to do, then we know there is a problem with our conscience and we need to work on it.  During the Year of Faith, which began this month, the Pope has asked all of us to please read and study the Catechism.  If we do this we will come to know God in a deeper way and it will help us to form our will to His, rather than asking him to form His will to ours. If we don’t form our Conscience to the will of God, then we will never have the strength to walk to the headsman’s block with Thomas More, be crucified with Peter, or gauge our eyes out like Lucy. We will be doomed to lives of quiet desperation, forever blown about by popular opinion and unjust laws.  Only with God and His Church can we stand strong and run the race to the finish.

The Entertainment and the Conscience

As most of my friends are aware, I am a gamer.  I make no effort to hide it and I am, in fact, quite proud of the fact.  I am not just a video gamer either; I have a decent collection of board games as well and enjoy playing them with whomever I can lure into donating a couple of hours to join me in amusement and camaraderie.  One of my favorite genera's of game is the RPG, or Roll Playing Game.  I enjoy these games because in many ways it is like making choices in a good book.  You take on the roll of the main character in  a story and play through the game making a variety of choices that can have an affect (both good and bad) on the overall outcome and ending.  I have noticed a growing trend among modern video game RPGs that in many ways I find rather disturbing, and that is the growing presence of evil choices.  I am not talking about the choice to save a random man who is drowning and who later turns out to be a mass murdering psychopath who slaughters an entire village.  No, I am talking about the conscious choice to become that mass murdering psychopath and go slaughter as many villages as you can and loot their possessions.  In the name of freedom and choice we offer the option to truly take on an evil persona and live it out to the end, often conquering the world or becoming a famous bandit, outlaw, or assassin.  Such choices are frequently rewarded with extremely powerful in game weapons or other rewards that are attainable no other way.for many of my fellow gamers this is not only not a problem, but a good thing.  They look at it as a chance to live out their darker fantasies and do things that in the real world would land them in prison at the very least.  For me, however, it is different.  I would never read a book glorifying evil for the sake of evil or where the main character was an evil person.  When I read a book I want to believe that I could make the same tough good choices that the main character makes.  I don't mind if the main character is unrealistically wholesome or a better person than I currently am. It inspires me onwards to keep my standards high in real life.  When it comes to playing an RPG it is even more true.  I don't want to practice making choices that hurt other people.  I don't want to build a fantasy world in my mind where I live an immoral lifestyle or am a truly evil person.  A big part of this is because it can never truly be completely contained in a fantasy world.  When we condition our minds and hearts to be ok with evil in a fantasy world, we shouldn't be surprised when we quickly start to become ok with evil in the real world.  I know it can be easy to write this whole thing off as the rankings of a crazy gamer, but any English or Literature major (and most liberal arts majors as well) can tell you that books and magazines can have an equally, if not more potent effect on the culture.  

While I realize that most people are not gamers, the majority of us do read books and magazines at least on occasion.  When you look at some of the recent books to hit the New York Times best sellers list, there have recently been some very disturbing pieces. For example 50 Shades of Gray is not really a morally uplifting piece of literature.  In fact it is quite the opposite.  Many people have even put it on the same level as pornography, just without the pictures and designed more to entice women rather than men.  Regardless, the point is still the same or at the very least remarkably similar the effect of making an evil or immoral character in a video game.  You escape to a fantasy world where you can live out a dark fantasy that you would be ashamed of or find unacceptable in real life.  Our leisure time helps to form the innermost core and has a major effect on our soul.  I am sure that just about everyone has heard the saying to “practice what you preach” but in the long run we will all end up preaching what we practice.  If we chose to throw ourselves into pornography, we should not be surprised to find that we struggle with appreciating true feminine and tend to see women as mere objects rather than children of God.  If we choose to live in a fantasy world where instead of fighting for truth and justice we instead choose to relish hurting or killing the innocent and taking what we want from who we want, we shouldn’t be surprised if we find ourselves increasingly desensitized to the plight of our fellow man and simply see them as “too weak.”  I don’t see anything wrong with enjoying fiction or fantasy literature, or even playing RPGs.  What I see as dangerous is feeding dark and sinful passions within ourselves and not even realizing that we are doing it.  Our Catholic faith doesn’t take a break when we sit down and play games or read a book. It keeps right on going.  We are called to live our entire lives for Christ, not just when we are at Church or out in public.  There are video games that I have gotten rid of or refused to play, even though I really enjoyed them because they were supporting and promoting a lifestyle or a choice that was contrary to my faith. As a friend once told me, “you are who you are when no one is watching.”  When no one is watching or when we think it doesn’t affect anyone else, do we still live for Christ?

A new pantheon for a new era: 6 new gods for post-Christian America

Saint Augustine once famously said, "You have made us for yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee." In all actuality he said it in Latin, but his point remains the same no matter what language it is spoken in. We will find our true meaning only in God. God is our creator and He is constantly drawing us back to Himself, no matter how far we wander astray.  Unfortunately it has become increasingly difficult to hear the voice of God calling us back to himself.  In today's post Christian world, we have been presented with a pantheon of new, secular gods that demand our attention, loyalty, and in some cases worship if we are to fit in with society.  Here are the top six that I have met and am forced to wrestle with on a daily basis.  They are Money, Power, Science, Sex, Sports, and humor.  Now some of these may come as no surprise at all, and others may be causing some head scratching around the kitchen table. I want to go into each of the new gods in some detail later, but for right now I want to do just a brief overview on why I think these 6 qualify as our modern deities. The first and foremost reason is this. You are not allowed to question money, power, science, sex, sports or humor.  To questions them, or their inherent goodness is to commit modern day blasphemy and lose your job, social standing, friends, or even find yourself in a lawsuit. Our world is convinced that these six gods hold not only the meaning to life, but the essence of happiness as well.   

     We are all told how if we want to be happy we need to grow up and go to college so we can have a good job and gain lots of money and power. This also results in lots of late nights at the office and frequently working weekends as well. If you question it, you are a slacker and a lazy no-good bum.

     If you question how science is supposed to save the world by killing babies to harvest their stem cells, then you obviously hate all the sick people who MIGHT one day be cured through that research. 

     If you question sex or bring up any kind of old fashioned ideas like “purity” or “chastity” than you are labeled a puritan and a freak. If you say that you want to save sex for marriage everyone smiles and nods, but in the back of their minds most think that you are insane, especially if you are a guy.   

     With sports it is a little easier to see.  If you ask the average American how much time they spent playing or watching sports versus the amount of time they spent praying to God in any given week there would barely be a contest. People even skip Mass to watch the pre-game of the Super Bowl. Humor is the final deity of the new pantheon and in many ways still the most insecure amongst hi brethren.   

     Humor could be lumped in with entertainment in general, but I prefer to leave it out on its own for now. The problem with humor is how we use it to rationalize sin or create a smokescreen for bad behavior. We watch movies filled that mock the things we hold as sacred and important, but instead of becoming outraged we just say “yeah, but it was funny.”  If you dare to criticize a movie for this sort of comedy, your friends will frequently (and usually violently) tell you how wrong you are.  These six new deities are now where mankind seeks to find its meaning, and the restlessness of our hearts goes on.

Was Same-Sex marriage a Christian Rite?

If you have been lurking around on the internet recently, you may have come across a link to an article titled When Same-Sex marriage was a Christian Rite. The article is based on the research of the late Prof. John Boswell of Yale University on Adelphopoiesis and the icon of two 4^th century martyrs, Sts. Sergius and Bacchus. Later documents talk of the love between Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, which has led many to believe that these Saints were married under an ancient liturgical rite of same-sex unions called Adelphopoiesis. The article is reasonably convincing and throws around enough big words and acronyms to make the reader think that this is sound scholarship and begin to suspect some sort of conspiracy on the part of Rome to cover it up and ruin people’s lives.  It of course isn’t a giant conspiracy, nor is it even particularly fine (or even unbiased and honest) scholarship.  The first thing to take into account is our use of the word “love.”  As modern day Americans our culture is absolutely saturated with sex and the idea that love and sex are somehow interchangeable words.  If two people go “make love” there is no doubt in our minds what is actually going on. The writings in question, however, are not modern. They are from hundreds of years ago and they are Church writings. Church writings frequently use the word “love” to mean something completely different from mere carnal union (sex). The idea that two Saints must be gay just because they were best friends seems to be a bit of a stretch. This is where an appropriate and accurate understanding of the word Adelphopoiesis is so important.  Prof. Boswell chose to translate the rite of Adelphopoiesis as the Rite of Same-Sex Union.  Adelphopoiesis is a compound of two other Greek words, Adelphos, meaning “brother” and Poiein meaning “to make.”  So rather than being a Rite of Same-Sex Union, it is really a Rite of Brother Making.  The Rite itself even states that the union is spiritual, not carnal. To insist otherwise is completely dishonest.  Interestingly enough this Rite is still used by some Christians in parts of the Middle East. It is something more like the idea of becoming blood brothers than anything sexual.  Even when Prof. Boswell wrote his book promoting his view of the translation of Adelphopoiesis back in the early 1990’s, it received very unfavorable reviews from his peers for its poor scholarship. All in all this article serves as a warning for us to be careful about what we read and believe on the internet. Just because someone with the letters PHD after their name said something, that doesn’t make it true.  The Church has never had some super-secret Rite of Same-Sex Unions, and it never will. We have always believed that God made marriage to be between one man and one woman. Above all, we are all called to chastity, no matter who we are attracted to.  Jesus commanded us to “love one another as I have loved you” and we all know he wasn’t talking about sex.

Jimmy Akin has a video interview here where he does an excellent job of breaking down the whole debate

Lent and Freedom

As  we continue our march through the desert of what frequently feels (at least to me) like the longest liturgical season known to mankind, I am reminded to look back to the book of Exodus and to remember what this whole thing is all about.  In many ways it is about religious freedom. When Moses went to Pharaoh he didn't ask him to let the Israelites move out of Egypt. No, he asked that the Israelites be allowed to go out into the desert and worship God the way God had asked them to.  I couldn’t help but notice some of the similarities to the way things are currently steering in our modern world, even here in the United States. In Europe studies have shown that 85% of hate crimes are directed towards Christians, here in the US we are increasingly told that our Catholic ideas and beliefs are outdated or unattainable and should therefore be “modernized.”  When I say “unattainable” I am referring in general to the area of chastity and purity.  In one internet forum that I was on last week someone was making fun of the idea that any Catholic man could enter into the Sacrament of marriage as a virgin.  The person online made it sound like having such a standard was the dumbest and most ridiculous idea anyone could ever have.  

When people say that we need to “modernize our beliefs” what they really mean is we need a new god.  We need to throw out the God of the Bible and embrace the secular gods of sex, money, and power.  Laws are being written, and have already been approved that will make this ideal increasingly difficult to resist.  Laws that require Catholics to go against their religion and begin start financially supporting practices that we have held for over 2000 years to be sinful. We will be required to support the secular worship of sexual pleasure. Catholics will be required to pay for men to mutilate their bodies and for a woman to take drugs that halt her natural functions or kill her unborn child.  Good, God fearing men and women across the country who believe this is morally reprehensible behavior will be forced against their will to fund these actions with their hard earned money.  They will not be free to say no. They will be in bondage to a culture of death, supporting the worship of gods they do not know and do not want. 

As I read the Exodus account in scripture this year I do so with a new level of understanding and empathy towards God’s chosen people.  I do not know what it means to be a physical slave.  I do not know what it is like to have my body beaten and my will broken by a whip in the hot desert sun. I do, however, know what it is like to be told that I may not worship the God of my Father’s in the way He has commanded me.  I do not know what it is like to have the government (Pharaoh) tell me to kill all my sons, because the population of slaves is getting out of hand. I do know what it is like to be told that no one cares if I am against abortion; I am still going to be forced to pay for the drugs that will help a mother kill her child.  I know what it is like when I tell people I plan to have 7 or 8 kids (true story) and they look at me like I am an idiot (let alone the sneers they offer my wife for going along with me). I know what it is like to live in a culture that hates children and tries to kill them.

I hate it when people tell me that what my Catholic faith calls holiness is unattainable and that I need to lower my standards and have some fun.  Those people are wrong. What our faith asks is NOT unattainable. It is not some impossible task or trick.  It merely requires faith and love. It requires that we believe in a God who loves us so much that He died a gruesome and humiliating death on a cross for our sins. Why would He die for an unattainable ideal?  I do not think so.  My wife and I were both virgins when we got married and she had never even kissed another man.  I shared her first kiss on the altar on our wedding day.  It was far from easy, but it was even further from unattainable.

Our God has not abandoned us, He never does.  He has given us priests, bishops and our Pope as a Moses to lead us out of slavery and into the Promised Land.  Will it be an easy journey? I doubt it, a journey of faith never is.  Did Pharaoh let Moses and the Israelites go the first time they asked, not hardly; but in the end he did let them go.  Remember that next time someone tells you that you are trying to live up to an impossible standard or that you believe in an old and outdated belief system. Take comfort in knowing that the reason our beliefs are so old is because the key to happiness has not changed.  We are all still broken and still trying to do our best to figure it all out.  I would rather have a high standard that I know is based on truth than a low standard that constantly shifts and changes because it is based on other people.  Lent is about freedom and the cost of that freedom.  We need look no further than the Cross to know that.