A culture that combines radical notions of individual autonomy with a Gnostic rejection of the built-in meaning of material (and, therefore, bodily) reality is a culture in need of conversion, not indulgence. Such a culture, like the one that dominates the West today, is not simply corrosive of the moral life; it’s a culture inoculated against the reality of the Incarnation.
I fell into the trap that ensnares many souls today: believing that if a person has a pleasing personality, is affable, attentive, and “accepting” (whatever that means), then the person is good. Somewhere along the line, Catholics began making crucial judgments based on feelings rather than reason. We are lulled by a hearty laugh, a twinkling eye, a hug with a knowing smile. We get sucked in by a sense that someone loves us, even though we are being led down a garden path.
The modern cultural habit is to doubt his existence. Some, who deny the “personal devil” as a ridiculous exile from the Dark Ages, may nevertheless acknowledge there is such a thing as evil in the world. But having no autonomous existence, it cannot organize itself. Certainly, it cannot invade anybody (as a few of the authorities of the Catholic Church might still dispute).
In other words, the full antidote to the toxic sexuality of the sexual revolution isn’t just to return it to the safety of the fireplace. The sexual morality we rightly talk about from Scripture isn’t the whole story of this beautiful gift. Keeping sex within the confines of a lifelong marriage between one man and one woman is a moral good, but just as loving our neighbors is much more than not actively hating them, respecting God’s design for sex is much more than not transgressing certain boundaries.
Catholic churches throughout the U.S. have been targeted, spray-painted with depictions of rape and phrases like “Abort the church.” Ruth Sent Us, one of the anarchist groups responsible for many of the attacks, promised to burn the Eucharist to protest “the abuse Catholic Churches have condoned for centuries.”
It may be the case that a vision of Hell, such as Our Lady of Fátima showed the three children, may be more effective in convincing somebody to turn to God, but it’s very unlikely that it will be given to any of us. Besides, it is immeasurably better to live for love than by fear. And anybody who studies Scripture must surely note that no one spoke more about Hell than Christ, and that no one spoke more about Heaven.
Intact families are a catalyst for poverty eradication. Studies show that children in one parent families are more likely to drop out of high school, have children young, and work less compared to two parent families. It is harder for one parent to provide the proper attention and nurturing that a child needs to flourish. And if children grow up in financially responsible families, they are less likely to be deceived by the leftist lure of “free” college education, housing, healthcare, UBI, and the other goodies of modern serfdom that the regime dangles before the disaffected.
In contrast, the Christian position on abortion has been clear from day one. In the Didache, the earliest non-New Testament Christian work to survive, Christians are instructed “you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.” Similarly, the late first or early second century Epistle of Barnabas, a manual of ethics in this early period, says “you shall not murder a child by abortion, nor again kill it when it is born.” In “A Plea for Christians,” written in 177, Athenagoras of Athens wrote, “[w]e say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder …”
“Local, state, and federal government policies are imposing ideologies that divide children by race and promote the falsehood that a boy can become a girl or vice-versa. Some schools are treating children as if they are the opposite sex without the permission of parents. Medical professionals are performing harmful experiments on children who are emotionally distressed about their bodies. To protect children, parents need laws that protect their rights.”
What course of action will you commit to taking that will help us determine the fate of this cause—the greatest human rights struggle in the history of our life? Tonight, I implore you. Make a decision. Church, make a decision for a positive peace—to stand for innocent children and their mothers. Get to work to ensure that no woman stands alone in a post-Roe America.”
“Sheen nailed it back in 1941, when he said that the essence of today’s conflict was between three philosophies of life,” Howard told the Register. “These philosophies revolved around the question of whether man is a useful tool of the state, as totalitarians believe; whether man is only an animal, as the materialists and secularists believe; or whether man is made in the image of God, as the Christians believe.”