Getting our priorities straight

Over the last hundred years, under the malign influence of Madison Avenue, we’ve managed to corrupt the concept of “need” almost beyond repair.

Take a look at the Bowflex doing duty as a coat rack in your rumpus room. You don’t have the discipline to do free sit-ups every day for six weeks; what made you think you had the discipline to do the dozen or so exercises on that thousand-dollar machine for the same length of time? But it looks cool, the pitchperson promised “fast results”, so you said not “I want this” but “I need this!” Now you have a household traffic obstruction and a beer-keg belly.

(I’m not blaming pitchpersons; my cousin by marriage, Laura Kristi, has done a few commercial shoots herself.)

Welcome to the wonderful world of social engineering, where various enterprises of dubious morality routinely screw up our priorities by transforming our desires into psychologically completing must-haves. We never knew how empty and unfulfilling our lives were until we learned about the Sham-Wow. Just how did we manage to survive so long as a species without the ability to surf the Web and video chat from the most barren spots in the US?

Forgiving the Unforgiveable

I’ve been robbed at gunpoint twice in my life. In both cases, the perpetrators were black men. Some months after the second episode, I learned that one (white) friend had told another, “Well if he doesn’t hate black people now, he never will.”

I never will.

One of the things I’ve learned in my life is that I own my reactions. I don’t have to yell back when I’m yelled at; I don’t have to insult when I’ve been insulted; I don’t have to be hurtful when I’ve been hurt. My control isn’t complete; my temper still occasionally gets the best of me … but not nearly as often as when I was ten years old. The “serenity prayer” helps.

I don’t believe in a “victim discount”. Anger doesn’t justify an unjust dislike of a whole class of people. Being hurt by Person A doesn’t make an automatic distrust of Person B rational simply because the two share some accidental commonality. My having been a victim doesn’t excuse me from exercising my share of the seven virtues to the best of my ability … or praying to God for assistance when that “best” falls short.

I bring this up not to boast—“See what a wonderful person I am!”—because I’m still very much a “work in progress”. Rather, I’m trying to explain why I get impatient with some of the public actions and words of SNAP and their counterparts.

Save the heathens!

In response to “A house divided”, BetternBefore writes:

This probably is all over my head. Is it wrong for me to question why Catholics (or Mormons for that matter) would want to legally force non-Catholics like me to produce unwanted children? Did I misunderstand when I was thinking the objective was for the number of Catholics to grow? With the overpopulation of this planet continuing, you can’t possibly want more of us heathens around.

I actually welcome the question, because it provides me the opportunity to bring together some threads of thought from earlier posts. It also gives me an opportunity to practice charitable responding, because BetternBefore is a friend of mine, whom I cherish and respect.

To recapitulate: “A house divided” noted that most successes of we call (pace Ven. John Paul II) the “culture of death” have come from a divide-and-conquer strategy of pushing different agenda items at different times. The Pill made it possible to finally disconnect three human activities—sex, reproduction and marriage—which need to remain connected, even when looked at from purely non-religious anthropological grounds.

Lies and Lila: Constructing a "just lie doctrine"—UPDATED

I have what I hope will be my final thoughts on the issue here. But, as Harry S. Truman said, "Never say 'never', 'cause never's a helluva long time."

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The law falls silent in the midst of arms.
—CiceroThe mere fact that war has broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties.
—Gaudium et Spes, 79 § 3 (cf. CCC 2312)

For the last two weeks, the Catholic blogosphere has been rather turbulent with the burning question: Were Lila Rose and LiveAction justified in securing the videos exposing some of Planned Parenthood’s corrupt activities through pretense? Is lying justified in the fight against abortion? Is it ever justified?

A quick survey of the answers:

• Reginaldus, New Theological Movement: It’s a sin to lie, even to Planned Parenthood. (Note to self: never embed your conclusion in your title.)
• Carolyn Moynihan, Mercatornet: Entrapment is too much of a sticky wicket; even MSM journalists are backing away from it.
• Richard Collins, Linen on the Hedgerow: Of course you may lie; you can be a saint and lie. (See the note under Reginaldus.)
• Christopher Tollefson, Public Discourse: A movement built on truth shouldn’t win its victories by lies.

Why does a good God allow suffering?

In an email I received just today, a non-Catholic friend of mine reported, “A very good friend of mine, her dad’s a rancher, & he fell off a flatbed truck & broke his neck & is mostly paralyzed now & in terrible pain constantly now, next week moving from rehab to the VA. It’s heartbreaking. Very hard on my friend. What can prayer do for that, huh?”

Before you get huffy, let me tell you that the question wasn’t meant to be sarcastic. I don’t know, and won’t presume to guess, where she is on her spiritual journey. But she is respectful of other religions, even as she struggles with the tough questions … as do we all, if we possess sufficient reflection.

The problem of suffering is one such question: “How can a benevolent God allow people to suffer?” In fact, if you equate suffering with evil, you can see it ties into the logical problem of evil. At some point, every philosophical and religious system must directly deal with suffering and give some answer to it; otherwise, it’s not worth holding.

What shall we do with the bishops?

What’s the point in having a “church”?

Well, part of it is to enable community worship of God. But only part. The other part is fully expressed in Jesus’ words to the Eleven: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations …, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19-20) ….

That’s “teaching them”, not “telling them to figure it out for themselves”. Jesus taught one gospel message, not six or seven billion.

Right from the Pentecost, the followers of “the Way” split into two separate groups: disciples and apostles. “Disciple” comes from the Latin for “student”; the student’s role is to learn. To execute that role faithfully, the disciple learns what is taught … not what he wants to learn, not what he thinks the teaching ought to be.

“Apostle” comes from the Greek for “one who is sent forth as a messenger”; the messenger’s role is to pass on the message. To execute that role faithfully, the messenger must transmit the message sent … not what he thinks it ought to be, not what suits the audience’s preferences.

Hoping without reason

Officially, Lent doesn’t begin this year until March 9. But for Catholics in America, especially in Philadelphia, it’s already started.

The release on Thursday of the grand jury’s findings in re the investigation into the handling of sexually abusive priests has the usual gang of idiots shouting the usual irrelevant “solutions”: end celibacy, throw away the Novus Ordo Mass, ordain married/women/gay priests, jettison Vatican II … yadda, yadda, yadda. No doubt that ambulance chaser Jeff Anderson and his journalistic sock puppet Laurie Goodstein will reveal that Pope Benedict XVI was behind the whole thing, their conspiracy theory based on some innocuous letter that mentions him in passing. We also have the über-Evangelicals crying that the whole mess proves the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, atheists chortling over another bit of evidence towards religious hypocrisy, the professional victims of SNAP spending more time venting their righteous rage than actually helping anyone recover … in sum, a lot of people talking to hear their heads roar, as my father (God rest his soul) used to say.

Meanwhile, the decent, churchgoing faithful in the City of Brotherly Love stumble around, frightened, fearful, anguished, angry—betrayed. Dear God, please wrap them in Your loving embrace, and give them healing with Your Spirit.

I’m angry, too. Again. I’m especially disappointed at Cdl. Justin Rigali, whom I had thought was one of the new breed of bishops we’ve needed for so many years, but who placed too much trust in a Secretary of the Clergy who was too damned dumb to realize the game has changed. (+Rigali turns seventy-five this year, and will be required to submit his resignation as Archbishop … just one more bishop leaving under a cloud.)

Dear Lord, forgive my impatience; for in railing against fools, I become a fool myself.

On time mismanagement

If you’re between the ages of eighteen and forty, the chances are that you haven’t gotten your priorities straight. Why? Because you think you still have time.

Yes, I know that in general we’re living much longer today. I know that researchers have hopes of turning off the “aging gene” so we can look at eighty the same as we do at eighteen. (Of course, this will be an option only for the rich … assuming we’ll still have the research dollars to make this a reality after this year.)

But there’s no turning off the mortality gene. For you, tomorrow may never come; you may be shot to death in a convenience store robbery, or killed in an auto accident, or be the one in X percent of cancer patients for whom chemotherapy fails. That we’re living into our late seventies is not even the beginning of a promise that you’ll get to thirty-nine. This very night, your soul may be required of you (Lk 12:20).

In consideration of the day—St. Valentine’s—I direct this specifically to young singles “playing the field”. You think you’re actively looking for Mr./Ms. Right; the fact is, you’re distractedly browsing the racks while idly dreaming of the tailor-made mate. You think there’s plenty of time to settle down, get married and have a family … but you don’t really know that for a fact. And so you’re frittering away the ages best suited for parenthood in order to do—what?

A house divided

Are we ramping up towards another civil war?

In the last three weeks, the pro-life movement has been handed gifts, first in the revelation of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his little shop of horrors, then in the most recent undercover videos released by LiveAction, which in turn has prompted several state governments to begin inquiries into Planned Barrenhood’s activities. We’ve also learned that Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) plans to call HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius to testify before the House on taxpayer funding of Planned Barrenhood in light of the videos … not to mention a $1.3 billion dollar discrepancy between public funds received and spent.

All this has taken place as HR 358, the Protect Life Act, makes its move to a full committee vote. PLA is part of a package of House bills aimed at the abortion industry and the pro-aborts’ efforts to frog-march the rest of America into participation. Naturally, the pro-aborts are feeling the pressure and are promising to fight back … in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s words, “make this issue too hot to handle”.

But Pelosi has said other things that should give us pause for consideration:

Of dragons, unicorns and boggart-Gods

Image source: clipartpanda.com.

Your next door neighbor appears in your doorway. His clothes are burnt to a crisp, his eyebrows and eyelashes are singed off, his hair and face are carbonized, and he is oddly enough close to hysterical panic. “There’s an invisible dragon in my garage!”

No. There can’t be. Dragons don’t exist. But he’s clearly not himself, so you say soothingly, “What did it look like? How tall was it?”

“It was invisible,” he reminds you.

“Then how do you know it was a dragon?” you persist reasonably.

He rolls his eyes. “Take a look at me. Does this look like a cat scratch?”

You try again: “But you must realize what this looks like to me. For all I know, you could have been playing with a stick of dynamite, or fooling around with your blowtorch, or you could have tripped and fallen face-first into a fire ….”

He interrupts you shortly. “But I wasn’t playing with dynamite; I don’t have a blowtorch or a fireplace; there were no F-16s backed tailpipe-first into my garage or any other dumb thing you want to drag in. I was attacked by a fire-breathing dragon.”

 You try one more time. “But if you didn’t see the wretched thing, how do you know it was an invisible dragon?”

“He told me.”

So you try to keep him calm while you try to figure out a way to call the men in white. He’s obviously delusional because it’s so unlike him to play such an elaborate practical joke; of course, he must have somehow set himself on fire, then convinced himself that he heard and spoke to ….

Your mind yammers a thousand different explanations for your neighbor’s extraordinary behavior. But how would you respond if he suddenly demanded of you, “How do you know there’s no such thing as an invisible dragon?”