Root Causes, Root Remedies

In the past decades, we have seen plenty of evidence on the streets and squares of our cities of how pacifism can be perverted into a destructive anarchism or, indeed, into terrorism. The political moralism of the 1970s, the roots of which are far from dead, was a moralism that succeeded in fascinating even young people who were full of ideals.

But it was a moralism that took the wrong direction, since it lacked the serenity born of rationality; in the last analysis, it attached a higher value to the political utopia than to the dignity of the individual, and it showed itself capable of despising man in the name of great objectives.

Joseph Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures

Reflection – I can’t exactly write my usual Saturday post on ‘this week in Madonna House’ for the simple reason that I was away all week and have no idea what happened around here. So I thought I would do a little throwback to the original blog format, dedicated to exploring the writings of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI. I still firmly believe him to be one of the greatest if not the greatest theologians of the 20^th century, and his writings deserve a wide audience.

Ratzinger lived through the waves of extremist politics and violence that gripped Europe in the late 60s and 70s—the generation of the soixante-huitards were his university students, and he had ample opportunity to study the phenomenon at close quarters.

This  is a great question of our time, the perversion of idealism into terrorism, and it is one we all have to grapple with. There have been numerous examples in the media in recent months of ‘good, normal boys’ who have been radicalized and become servants of the violent apocalyptic agenda of ISIS. There is a real need to account for how this group, which to most people seems frankly insane, can attract at least some young men, not even Muslim to begin with, to itself.

There are those who would say, “Who cares? If they’re with the terrorists, let’s kill them!” Others would say, “You see! It proves that religion is inherently dangerous! End religion and the problem goes away.” Others are… well, just perplexed by it all.

I would argue, as Ratzinger does here, that the problem is not religion or high ideals, but religion and ideals not moderated by reason and solid first principles. And this is precisely what we have failed to give our children, dating back to at least my own childhood, but certainly more so in the subsequent decades.

The human person is inherently idealistic, and I would argue that there is no demographic more in need of, and hungry for, real idealism than the young human male. Young men need a vision of life to which they can commit their youthful energy and drive, lest it be directed to destructive and wasteful channels.

We have not given young men this vision of life; we have given them video games and internet filth. And we are then baffled when at least some of the young men who are not satisfied with this diet of distraction and debauchery are easy prey for the violent ideologues of the Middle East.

The solution is not to stamp out the idealism of the human person, but to provide an idealism that both extends to the heights of heaven (and so meets the need for transcendence that is embedded in our souls) and yet is intensely humanistic, intensely committed to the irreducible value of the human person. We need to present a vision of life that is inherently heroic, but that calls forth a heroism that is essentially non-violent, directed at all times towards the care of the individual.

My own firm conviction is that Catholic Christianity does provide ample heroic scope for life, setting forth the essential call to love as Christ loves us, to be servants of the kingdom of love in this world and to lay down one’s life for the sake of that kingdom. At the same time, Catholicism has a rich intellectual tradition that undergirds and supports its heroic visionary core, and a mystical heart—the sacramental life of the Church—that is accessible to all and makes this heroic scope of life possible for everyone, not just for the privileged elite few.

We cannot fight bad religion with no religion, bad ideals with no ideals, radicalism with nihilism. The remedy for the new wave of political and religious terrorism in our times is not to stuff everyone with lots of goodies and diversions, but to present an alternative that is compelling and beautiful.

Come to think of it, that is exactly what happened ‘this week at Madonna House’, and every week at MH for that matter. That’s exactly what our whole mandate and mission is here—to shine forth the radiant vision of life and love that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has given us, and that the Person of Jesus Christ has sustained in us by his grace. That’s what we do here; that’s why MH exists. 

So… come one, come all, especially come all you young people seeking to find and deepen and live a vision of life that is worthy of your greatness. There is such a vision, and it flows from the heart of Jesus Christ eternally to the world and to every human being alive in it.

Living As If God Exists

The attempt, carried to extremes, to shape human affairs to the total exclusion of God leads us more and more to the brink of the abyss, toward the utter annihilation of man.

We must therefore reverse the axiom of the Enlightenment [to live by only those truths that would be true even if God did not exist] and say: even the one who does not succeed in finding the path to accepting the existence of God ought nevertheless to try to live and to direct his life veluti si Deus daretur, as if God did indeed exist. This is the advice Pascal gave to his non-believing friends, and it is the advice that I should like to give to our friends today who do not believe.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures

Reflection – I am back from holidays, nicely rested up thank you, and ready to roll for another year of blogging (among other things). I thought I would start off this round with a return to some vintage ‘Ratzinger blogging’. Those who have discovered my blog more recently may not know that it used to be called ‘Life with a German Shepherd’ and was dedicated exclusively to the writings of Pope Benedict. I did my licentiate thesis on his thought, and have a wealth of references from him in my files.

I always recommend the book quoted here as a good starting point for those who want to read something by Ratzinger. It is short, topical, lively, provocative. Today’s quote is a good example. Fashioning a social world without reference to God seems to many to be the path of freedom and tolerance. Let everyone think what they wish, privately, about religious matters, but let our public life together be officially agnostic, if not atheistic. This has been advanced, and continues to be advanced, as the most peaceful way to live together.

It is illusory, though. We cannot, individually or communally, avoid ultimate questions. If there in fact is no God, or if we at least live our lives as if there is no God, the ultimate questions about truth and meaning and what is good do not simply wither away on the vine. Human beings are made for meaning—we cannot stop looking for meaningfulness in life. And if that meaning is not given, it must be fashioned. If it is not something to discover, it is something to make. It cannot be, and never is, something we just forget about. We’re not really built that way.

And so we have, in this seemingly tolerant agnostic/atheist approach to social life, the transference of questions of ultimate meaning, truth, and goodness to the sphere of political and sociological transformation of the world. When there is no God in heaven to which we can refer the matter of ultimate happiness and the consummation of human striving for perfection, then we must labor to create a heavenly life (or some poor facsimile of same) on earth.

And if this does not take place in the sphere of political ideologies or moral crusades (some people, after all, are genuinely apolitical by temperament), then it will take place in the naked pursuit of wealth, pleasure, power, or some potent combination of these. But all of this—ideological agendae and self-seeking gratification—are in fact matters that occur in public that affect all of us. The religious impulse, the sense of God and of ultimate reality that is outside of us, is forced into a private expression that is more and more hemmed in, while all of the other efforts to force meaning upon a meaningless reality rampage publicly and increasingly intrude upon us all.

And so we have the seemingly mild and irenic advice given by Cardinal Ratzinger. Act as if God exists, even if you can’t see your way to really believe that. Act as if the questions of ultimate meaning and happiness are in fact given and not made, as if there is a hope for human fulfillment that lies outside our own striving and violent effort. Act as if we do not have to press so hard to make this life on earth a heaven for ourselves, as if there might just be a heaven awaiting us.

It seems like a very mild and simple prescription for what is truly a complex and very serious problem, but I believe he is pointing the way to a real remedy for our post-modern ills. If God does not exist, we are plunged into an abyss of meaninglessness which forces us into a terrible strife and clash with one another and with a cold and lifeless cosmos. 

If we but grant the existence of God, leaving aside for the moment the specific questions of His nature and revelation to us, we find ourselves on solid ground, able to simply work with a measure of peace to make this world a more kindly and lovely place, since at the bottom of the abyss lies not black nothingness but a Living Presence that sustains and supports us and gives us hope that all is not lost, that all, in fact, shall be well in the end, well not by our own efforts and virtues but by a mercy that comes to us from the One who made all that is. And that is what we have, if we decide to live ‘as if God exists’.

The Custodian of Human Dignity

The look I freely direct to the other is decisive for my own dignity, too. I can acquiesce in reducing the other to a thing that I use and destroy; but by the same token, I must accept the consequences of the way I use my eyes here.

These consequences will fall on my own head: “You will be measured by the measure with which you measure.” The way I look at the other is decisive for my own humanity. I can treat him quite simply like a thing, forgetting my dignity and his, that both he and I are made in the image and likeness of God. The other is the custodian of my own dignity…

How is it possible for a man to use his eyes in such a way that he perceives and respects the dignity of the other person and guarantees his own dignity? The drama of our times consists precisely in our incapacity to look at ourselves like this – and that is why we find it threatening to look at the other and must protect ourselves against this.

In reality, morality is always embedded in a wider religious context in which it ‘breathes’ and finds its proper environment. Outside this environment, morality cannot breathe: it weakens and then dies.

Joseph Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 69-70

Reflection – I was musing just the other day that it is a bit odd that I went from the first year and half of my blog being exclusively dedicated to the writings of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, to almost never having anything by the man on it. A careless reader would think I had grown tired or disenchanted of the man, which is anything but true.

So I thought I would remedy that with at least a couple of days of good old school ‘German Shepherd’ blogging. I have always recommended this book in particular as a good ‘starter’ book for anyone interested in the thought of Pope Benedict. It is topical, timely, weighty without being overly ponderous, and (best of all!) short.

This passage speaks to the heart of our alienation from one another today, the fracturing and fragmenting of humanity into at best little tribal alliances, at worst into sheer atomized units. To look at the other, to see that the other person is just that—a person—endowed with dignity, rights, humanity, someone with whom I can at least potentially enter into communion with—this is increasingly difficult in our secular, polarized world.

It has been the consistent argument of Ratzinger that to really maintain and live out the dignity of the human person, and indeed our own dignity, we have to locate this dignity in something greater than humanity itself. In other words, in a religious context. We are creatures worthy of being treated with dignity, with inalienable rights, because our being is from God, in the image of God, and destined for God.

It is no accident of history that the theory of intrinsic and inalienable human rights emerged in 16^th century Europe and was first posited by Dominican friars. They were motivated to draft this theory by the discovery of the New World and the dawning of the age of colonialism, the discovery of vast numbers of human beings who were outside the social order of Christendom, which prior to this had been seen as the necessary matrix of mutual obligation and just treatment.

De las Casas and others developed the theory of human rights directly from Christian theological principles. Sadly, the subsequent colonial history marked so tragically by exploitation, enslavement, and brutality shows that their theories were not adopted as principles of action, which speaks more to the weakness of Christian faith and practice in that era than anything else.

It is nonetheless the case that human dignity, human freedom, and human rights are best held firm, made intellectually viable and given vitality and freshness from a lively faith in a Creator God who is the author of life, and who has endowed human life in particular with a divine significance, vocation, and destiny.

Without this faith—and I believe this is what we are seeing happening in our society now—we see a gradual erosion of the very notion of rights in favor of the exercise of power in service of this or that agenda, lip service paid to rights such as the right to life, to assembly, to religious freedom or freedom of speech, which are quickly trampled if the person in question is inconvenient, costly, or is saying or doing something opposed to the prevailing mores.

Unless civil society is held in being and grounded by something Bigger than civil society, something that holds all human society and culture to judgment, something that makes possible the question ‘Is justice being administered justly?’ (this very question is meaningless in a strictly secular and materialistic world, where there is nothing higher than the law of the land), then the threat of tyranny and ultimately anomic anarchy is always upon us, as I believe it to be in our time.

But - and this where Ratzinger is very strong - the remedy is as near and immediate as how I treat you today, and how you treat me today, and the 'look' towards the other in which the dignity and worth of each person is fully and freely acknowledged. The problem is not 'out there' or 'up there' in places of power and influence, but is right and squarely with you and me and the choice to respect and reverence the other person in his or her otherness.

A Fatal Blow to Democracy

[Today] one single value seems not to be the subject of discussion, since it is indisputable and has therefore become a filter through which every other ‘value’ is passed, namely, the right of the individual to express himself freely, without any impositions from outside himself, at least so long as his freedom does not infringe on the rights of others.

This is how the right to abortion is invoked as a constitutive element in the right to liberty on the part of the woman, the man, and society itself. The woman has a right to her professional work… the man has to the right to decide about his lifestyle… society has the right to control the numerical level of the population… nevertheless, it is a fact that this claim to exercise real rights is demanded to the detriment of the life of an innocent human being whose rights are not even taken into consideration…

A state that claims the prerogative of defining who is and who is not the subject of rights, and that consequently accepts that some persons have the right to violate the fundamental right to life of other persons, contradicts the democratic ideal, although it continues to appeal to this claim. Such a state imperils the very basis on which it governs. For when it accepts that the rights of the weakest may be violated, it also accepts that the law of the jungle prevails over the rule of law.

Joseph Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures,

Reflection – Well, we did it again. As I said in the previous post, we went to Ottawa, listened to some speeches, walked around downtown, got screamed at by counter-protestors (they did keep their clothes on this year, deo gratias), listened to some more speeches, and came home. The March for Life happened, once again a beautiful celebration of life and love, and a witness to the tragedy of abortion and its corrosive impact on our society.

This is highlighted in the quote from Ratzinger here. Truly, a nation that enshrines abortion as not only an evil to be tolerated but a fundamental right of women is a nation that has quietly abandoned its claim to be a democracy. The very basis of democracy – the everyone counts, that every human being has some part to play in the life of the nation, and therefore has a claim to certain rights and protections in law – is explicitly denied by legal abortion.

Democracy is dealt a fatal blow in this. Now I’m going to wade into immediate political controversy here, which I don’t generally do on this blog (well, not usually, anyhow). But this needs to be said.

I got back late last night and went straight to bed, but did hear from various people about the CBC’s coverage of the March (for you non-Canadians, think NPR or BBC or whatever state-run media you have).

Their entire focus of coverage, since the March has grown so big that they can no longer just ignore it, was the ‘scandal’ that publicly funded Catholic high schools sent busloads of students to Ottawa to protest abortion. Government money used to advance the sinister Catholic agenda! Surely this is an outrage not to be tolerated! And this of course was the entire story for them. Not the theme of the March, which was to protest the growing practice of sex-selective abortion, female gendercide. Or the theme of many of the speeches, which is the Canadian government’s increasing habit of silencing elected officials from bringing up abortion-related matters in Parliament, truly subverting every democratic principle in the service of short-term political gain.

No – none of that is relevant. It’s those nefarious Catholic schools using ‘our’ (i.e. the government’s) money to protest ‘our’ rights to abortion.

Now this needs to be said clearly, something that seems to be almost wholly forgotten today. The government does not have money. I will say it again: the government does not have any of its own money.

What the government has is your money and my money and all of our money, which is forcibly takes from us through a system of taxation. Nothing wrong with that: governments have a right to tax their citizens. But it remains our money. And in a democracy, the citizens of a country have a right to direct the flow of that money through the democratic process.

In Ontario, there is a Catholic school system, publicly funded. The story of why that is and how it is the case is a long one. But Catholic tax-payers pay their school taxes into the Catholic school system so that their children can receive a Catholic education. And part of that Catholic education is that social engagement requires advocating and working for justice for all in whatever area of society that justice is denied. And the unborn are denied basic justice in Canada.

In short, it is our money, given to the government in the democratically-achieved understanding that it will fund Catholic schools who in turn are doing the job they are paid for by the Canadian citizen tax-payer by sending their students to the March for Life.

OK, end of controversy-driven rant. But seriously, this government-funded (ahem) media attack on the March highlights the perilous state of democracy in Canada like nothing else I can think of. Sorry for boring my non-Canadian readers, but there we are – I have to stand on guard for my native land here.

So… that’s it for this subject for now – talk to you tomorrow about something completely different. God bless you!

It Begins With the Eyes

Once the decision is taken in favor of abortion, there is necessarily a moment at which one agrees to shut one’s eyes to the right to life of the little one who has just been conceived. The moral drama, the decision for good or evil, begins with our eyes, when we choose whether or not to look at the face of the other…

The moral truth, in this case the truth of the unique and unrepeatable value of this person made in the image of God, is a truth that makes demands of my liberty. When I decide to look him in the face, I am deciding on conversion, I am resolving to let the other address his appeal to me, to go beyond the confines of my own self and to make space for him.

This is why even the evidential character of this moral value depends to a large extent on a secret decision by my liberty to agree to look at the other and thus be provoked to change my life.

Joseph Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures

Reflection – The March for Life in Canada is tomorrow, and I will be in attendance as I try to be each year. It will be a long day, leaving Combermere early in the morning and not returning until late, so no blog tomorrow.

I try to write something about abortion around this time of year, as well as around the January March for Life in Washington DC. It is a hard topic to write about, always, mostly because the reality of it is so deeply ugly. How do we find a decent, moderate way of talking about embryonic humans being suctioned out of their mothers’ wombs, dismembered and discarded as if they are nothing but unwanted tissue?

It is difficult, and then of course those on ‘the other side’ of the argument simply are not looking (will not look, really) at the human being who is killed here, but look entirely upon the woman or young girl who is genuinely in distress and needs help. For them, pro-lifers are heartless misogynists, religious fanatics ready to sacrifice the life, health, and happiness of countless women for the sake of some abstract principle or perhaps as a covert way of maintaining patriarchal control over them.

It really is a question of the eyes and what we allow, decide, our eyes to look upon. Is there a human being there? Is there a human life at stake? There is no real medical or scientific doubt about the answer to that. From conception onwards we are a living organism with a unique human genetic makeup. We are a being; we are alive; we are human in our DNA. Therefore, we are a live human being, and abortion ends that life. The normal verb in English for the process of ending the life of another is ‘to kill’; abortion is the killing of a human being.

There is absolutely no way around that logic. It is unassailable. The advocates of abortion either simply ignore it (that’s what the Supreme Court of Canada chose to do in its decision, simply bracketing the question from its deliberations) or worse, if pressed not to do so, decide that abortion is indeed the killing of a human being… and that’s just fine with them.

More and more of course, with 3D ultrasounds and ever expanding medical knowledge, it is impossible to ignore the humanity of the fetus. More and more, then, there is a deliberate hardening of the heart, I am afraid, to accept the killing of a human being whose only crime is to be conceived when unwanted. To come into existence where her very existence, her life is inconvenient or painful or distressing to another.

The implications of this are deep and wide. Soon, with the demographic crunch of the aging Baby Boomers, many lives of the elderly will be inconvenient, painful, or distressing to others, straining health care and personal resources to the breaking point. I fear we will decide on further ‘acceptable killings’, since we have already allowed the logic with abortion.

But even if that doesn’t happen – even if the slippery slope turns out to have enough rough patches to slow us down and stop us from the wholesale slaughter of the elderly and disabled – abortion is a monstrous evil, folks. And so a few of us from Madonna House are trotting off to Ottawa tomorrow, to Parliament Hill, to listen to some speeches, march around downtown Ottawa, be screamed at by half-naked counter-protestors, listen to more speeches, and come home.

And pray. And pray. And pray. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. Amen.