Cultural Hypocrisy

President Obama's speech from Sandy Hook on Sunday night exposes the fundamental hypocrisy of our culture.  Here's a salient quote:

It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize, no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself.  That this job of keeping our children safe, and teaching them well, is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community, and the help of a nation.  And in that way, we come to realize that we bear a responsibility for every child because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we’re all parents; that they’re all our children.  This is our first task — caring for our children.  It’s our first job.  If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right.  That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.  And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations?  Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm? [emphasis added]


This is, of course, a fundamental truth.  The whole point of "culture" is to raise children into virtuous, competent adults, and to reinforce by the continuous formation of adults the same virtues being passed on, in a manner consistent enough across time and space to be a shared and unifying vision of the Good.  Successful cultures are successful, stable, and enduring exactly in these terms.  People come to share this commitment to the Good that is envisioned, because it is demonstrably a Good, and because it tests positively against human experience.

But in this speech, Obama moves too easily from truth to truism, and thence to misdirection.

The truism is that threats of violence against our children come from outside, from disordered elements of the culture (like mental illness, or the apparent randomness of many forms of violence):

We gather here in memory of twenty beautiful children and six remarkable adults.  They lost their lives in a school that could have been any school; in a quiet town full of good and decent people that could be any town in America....  As these difficult days have unfolded, you’ve also inspired us with stories of strength and resolve and sacrifice.  We know that when danger arrived in the halls of Sandy Hook Elementary, the school’s staff did not flinch, they did not hesitate....

This dichotomy is partly true, at the level of personal experience, and yet wholly false, morally.  Obama alludes to this falsity when he says:

[T]his job of keeping our children safe, and teaching them well, is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community, and the help of a nation.  And in that way, we come to realize that we bear a responsibility for every child because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we’re all parents; that they’re all our children.

But if that's true, then there's not an "us" who try to protect children from violence and raise them in virtue, and a "them" who try the opposite.  Those who harm our more vulnerable members are also "us."  But from  the ambiguity of the superficial truism, the speech is able to misdirect:

In the coming weeks, I will use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens — from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators — in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this.  Because what choice do we have?  We can’t accept events like this as routine.  Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?  Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

The misdirection here is actually three-fold.

First, there is the straw man of opposing "freedom" with "preventing more tragedies like this."  Politically, this is a false dichotomy because freedom - true freedom, virtuous freedom, not license (as "freedom" is often cast) - is what makes a culture strong and resilient.  Only a society characterized by humility, fortitude, and prudence is capable of reining in the impulses to violent brutality, without resorting to strict tyranny.  Morally, this is a straw man because moral freedom is essential to love, and to the meaningfulness.  Without moral freedom, life just is; neither good nor evil, but simply to be endured.

Second, there is the implied "big government" thinking, that only (or perhaps, best) the federal government is equipped to deal effectively with this problem.  This is typical of this president's work (bailouts, Obamacare, etc).  This is misdirection in this context to the extent that it belies the need for vigorous subsidiarity in making and enforcing good laws, and so forth.  (The whole question of proper care for the mentally ill can be hooked onto this point.)

Third, and most blatantly, there is the elephant in the room of abortion, and indeed of the whole contraceptive mentality of behavior without natural consequence.  Mr. Obama said, "Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children — all of them — safe from harm?"  Abortion is the most grievous form of violence visited upon our children - in scale (roughly 3000 children murdered daily), in social damage (emotional consequences, lives and relationships gravely harmed, etc), and in moral damage (abortion justifies other grave evils, because if this person's humanity can be denied, then so too can this one's).  Abortion is a fatal cancer at the heart of our culture.

A society that teaches people that actions don't have natural consequences is doomed.  Likewise, a society that teaches that some people aren't really human.  A healthy society, by contrast, teaches natural virtue, respect for human dignity regardless of "utility" or circumstances, and the truth that love requires self-sacrifice.  A society that doesn't "accept events like this as routine" is one that also condemns abortion, adultery, promiscuity, infidelity; that also upholds chastity, the sanctity of marriage, and the high dignity of the vocation to parenthood.  Hence my opening comment about fundamental hypocrisy.  It is viciously hypocritical to condemn violence against children in a school, and to propose sweeping societal changes to counter it, while also promoting systematic, devastating violence against children in the womb, and resisting efforts to counter it.

Archbishop Chaput nails it

Archbishop Chaput gave this address to a pro-life conference in Philadelphia on Sunday. Do read the whole thing, it's outstanding. Here's a taste of his zeal:

Catholics need to wake up from the illusion that the America we now live in – not the America of our nostalgia or imagination or best ideals, but the real America we live in here and now – is somehow friendly to our faith. What we’re watching emerge in this country is a new kind of paganism, an atheism with air-conditioning and digital TV. And it is neither tolerant nor morally neutral.

As the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb observed more than a decade ago, “What was once stigmatized as deviant behavior is now tolerated and even sanctioned; what was once regarded as abnormal has been normalized.” But even more importantly, she added, “As deviancy is normalized, so what was once normal becomes deviant. The kind of family that has been regarded for centuries as natural and moral – the ‘bourgeois’ family as it is invidiously called – is now seen as pathological” and exclusionary, concealing the worst forms of psychic and physical oppression.(6)

My point is this: Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be. And America has no special immunity to becoming an enemy of its own founding beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, the limited power of the state, and the sovereignty of God.

Therefore we need the martyrs' zeal, to live our faith and our hope publicly and fearlessly and consistently.

Archbishop Chaput: "Politics and the Devil"

Archbishop Chaput gave a keynote lecture for a student Right to Life organization at the University of Notre Dame earlier this year, which is now published online by the Witherspoon Institute. Here's a taste:

Jacques Maritain and Leszek Kolakowski came from very different backgrounds. Maritain was deeply Catholic. Kolakowski was in no sense an orthodox religious thinker. But they would have agreed that good and evil, God and the devil, are very real — and that history is the stage where that struggle is played out, both in our personal choices and in our public actions; where human souls choose their sides and create their futures. In Kolakowski’s own words, “we are not passive observers or victims of this contest, but participants as well, and therefore our destiny is decided on the field on which we run.”

Politics is the exercise of power; and power — as Jesus himself saw when Satan tempted him in the desert — can very easily pervert itself by doing evil in the name of pursuing good ends. But this fact is never an excuse for cowardice or paralysis. Christ never absolved us from defending the weak, or resisting evil in the world, or from solidarity with people who suffer. Our fidelity as Christians is finally to God, but it implies a faithfulness to the needs of God’s creation. That means we’re involved — intimately — in the life of the world, and that we need to act on what we believe: always with humility, always with charity, and always with prudence — but also always with courage. We need to fight for what we believe. As Kolakowski wrote, “Our destiny is decided on the field on which we run.”

The whole essay is worth reading.

Maniple wave to Dcn. Rick R. for passing the link my way.

Homily - Respect Life Sunday

Here's the homily I preached at the Cathedral this weekend:

On this Respect Life Sunday, I invite you to consider how many ways the devil tempts us to devalue human life. We probably think first of truly grave evils, like abortion and euthanasia; and rightly so. These are diabolical things. The devil certainly uses fear or anger or despair as weapons to keep a mother from loving the new life in her womb. He uses greed or even misplaced compassion to prevent the terminally ill, and their families, from choosing to love the suffering Christ shares with them.

But the devil also works in more subtle ways. Every day, he tries to convince us that other goods, other divine gifts, are more valuable than a human life. If we think like this, that the ends justify the means, we won’t easily recognize some of our own sins. We will be unprofitable servants, unable to ask God to forgive our much smaller attacks on the dignity of life, such as taking God’s name in vain, cursing at the driver who cuts us off, or taking our loved ones for granted.

Since this is Respect Life Sunday, let’s think about this more deeply. First of all, let’s hold firmly to the truth that the divine gift of life is a fundamental good. Consider that God cannot give us any other good, even the greatest possible good of final salvation, unless He’s already given us life in this world. This is why we say that each human life is sacred. From the moment of conception, each person is unique and irreplaceable in God’s love, and in His plan of salvation.

But, if life itself were not a great gift, then it would be right to sacrifice precious lives for these other goods, both literally and metaphorically. Not only would the appalling crimes of abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem cell research be justified. But also, in the same way, to justify the means is to justify many other crimes against human dignity. Respect for the sanctity of human life is slowly eroded, until eventually, it has no value at all. In the end, this diabolical lie always leads, not only to murder and slavery, but also to every kind of callous and hard-hearted contempt for others every day.

In our first reading, the prophet Habakkuk denounces these consequences – both the great and the small – as intolerable violence. This denunciation is God’s own word, which God gives to Habakkuk for Israel, and for the whole world. From the beginning, God wills life and hope together. Violence against human dignity therefore attacks not only life, but also hope.

But without hope, what becomes of our faith? If other gifts were more valuable than life, would God become man for us? If our lives were such paltry and contemptible things, would God be willing to die for us? The more we believe this lie, the less we can believe in the Incarnation or the Cross or the Resurrection. If we disregard the sanctity of life, we reject both hope and faith.

We heard the echo of this confusion in our responsorial psalm. Psalm 95 says, “Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did in the wilderness, when at Meriba and Massah they challenged me and provoked me, although they had seen all of my works.” The greatest of all God’s works in the Old Testament – namely, the Passover in Egypt, and the parting of the Red Sea – happened only three days before the Israelites reached Meriba. Only three days!! And already they were grumbling about what they had left behind.

But God responds to His people’s sins with generous grace. At Meriba, He gave Moses the miracle of using a piece of wood to freshen the salt water for them to drink. This foreshadows the Cross. At Massah, He first provided quail and manna. This foreshadows the Eucharist. He also brought forth water from solid rock. This foreshadows baptism. Every time we turn against God, He calls us back to hope and faith.

In the light of faith, no lie can hide. We know that life is good, even given the reality of sin and suffering. We know that life is a divine gift, and that we must treasure this gift by treating every human being with the same respect, regardless of their age, their productivity, or the functioning of their mind. From natural conception to natural death, God wills only our good, and provides all the good things of His creation to strengthen and nourish us. And spiritually, we know that God wills not the death of the sinner, and provides us in His Church every means of grace, and every opportunity to repent of our sins, so that we may receive the eternal life He wants to give us.

To have strong faith, then, means both to know and love Jesus Christ, and to live publicly according to His promises. We are still imperfect, still sinners in this life, but we come to this Holy Mass to become more perfect, to receive His healing. We want to give ourselves more fully to Christ, and to help satisfy His thirst for souls. We hope and believe in the power of grace to overcome our sins. We trust that following Jesus with living faith will make our lives, and the lives of others, more joyful. We believe enough to act for that longed-for perfection.

Acting for that perfection means respecting the dignity and sanctity of every human life – not only on the most grievous and urgent issues of our day, but also on the daily sins of anger, spite, and contempt. When we succumb to temptation in little things, we make ourselves less trustworthy in great things. Therefore we seek forgiveness and conversion. We strive to respect life even in little ways, so that we can change the world’s more fundamental disrespect for life.

In the second reading, St. Paul tells us not to believe like cowards. He says, “Do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord…; but bear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God.” Our Lord Jesus Christ entrusted His testimony to sinners and tax collectors. We don’t have to be perfect in order to stand with Him in defense of life and dignity. He takes us as we are, and He heals us with His grace.

But we do have to have courage. It takes courage, for example, to join 40 Days for Life, or Right to Life, or even in private to pray the Rosary for an end to abortion. It takes courage to refuse that extra dose of morphine, which might end a loved one’s suffering a few days before God wills it. It takes courage to unite our suffering with the suffering of Christ crucified. But it also takes courage to ask our neighbor for forgiveness when we’ve wronged them. It takes great courage to go to Confession, and ask God to forgive us.

Fidelity to the Gospel will cost us in this life. But listen to Moses and Habakkuk and Paul, and to all the saints, who say: “Christ has already paid that cost for us!” This is the strength of our faith. This is why we can hope, despite suffering and death, and even despite our own sins. This is why we have the courage to imagine a world without the intolerable violence of abortion or euthanasia; and the still greater courage to imagine ourselves without sin. “For what is seen is still distant, it will appear in the end and will not lie. If it delays, hope for it. What is coming is coming, and it will not be late.”