The two days I was in the hospital included this last Sunday, which particularly upset me because it meant I’d miss Sunday Mass.  But, because I still wanted to receive the Sacrament if possible, I called up our rectory and left a message on the “priest emergency” line.  The next thing I knew, our pastor was at the hospital, bringing me the Eucharist so that I could partake.  It was his day to be “on call.”  He conducted a short liturgy, at the end of which I received Holy Communion.  He then said, “I also have oil with me and can administer anointing as well.”  So, with that, and after another short liturgy, I received the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick for the first time in my life.

Two things really struck me about this experience.  First, it was yet another occasion (there have been many others) on which I was thankful for a celibate priesthood.  Whenever I’d need to call one of my Protestant ministers some time other than during “work hours,” I’d always feel a twinge of guilt that I was pulling them away from their families.  And I mean this with absolutely NO disrespect to them.  They were always there for me and my family when we needed them in times of crisis.  But it was nice this last Sunday not to have to feel in any way like I was pulling my pastor away from some other important earthly duty.

Second, my pastor was able to offer me something “real” when he came to the hospital—not just sympathy or nice words.  With the Anointing of the Sick, I could be confident I’d received true grace and spiritual and physical strengthening.[1]  It gave me great comfort, and I must confess that the question of “How can anyone possibly have an issue with this?” did cross my mind.  I mean, come on:  the teaching regarding the Anointing of the Sick (just like it is with regard to the other sacraments) basically boils down to this:  these things really matter; they really convey grace; they really help.  Why wouldn’t a good and loving God leave us with tangible helps like this?  It’s so much better than the never-ending headgame of just telling myself how much God loves me that I played my whole Protestant life.

Now, I have no way of knowing how much of a role the sacrament played in my getting out of the hospital the next day.  I’m convinced, though, that it played a role in my deciding to download onto Nikki’s Kindle (which she insisted I take with me to the hospital) Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, which I then read from cover-to-cover before being discharged.  Stick around, and you’ll be hearing more from me about this book.  I choose to think that’s the result of God’s grace, but you, dear reader, will of course be entitled to draw your own conclusions.

There’s a lot out in the blogosphere right now about the HHS mandate regarding abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception, and we want to add to the buzz and urge you, whether Catholic or Protestant, to make your voice heard in support of the ability of Catholic institutions to provide health care and other social services without violating the law or their consciences.  As Edmund Burke, a Protestant, said:  “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Click here to view Cardinal-designate Dolan’s message and to send an email to your Congressional Representative and Senators.

You can also click here to sign a petition to President Obama directly.

Schuyler’s a very different person from her brother.  Where Charlie is intuitive, Schuyler is analytical.  Numerous times in the last few months, Nikki and I both have been struck by the number of times Schuyler has said how happy she is to be Catholic now because it just “makes so much more sense.”  Even 10-year-olds don’t like cognitive dissonance.

Schuyler’s happiness with the reasonableness of Catholicism isn’t what prompted this post, however.  Rather, it was her reaction last Sunday to being unable to go to Mass with us.  As I mentioned in a prior post, Schuyler got a concussion from a fall at school (for which we’d ask continued prayers–her head is still bothering her).  After that, when Sunday came around, she was dizzy and nauseated enough that taking her to Mass was out of the question.  As I told her she’d need to stay home, she asked me (without any prompting, I promise!):  “Dad, will there be a Mass on TV I could watch today?”

I was not prepared for her question but was thankful to be able to tell her that, yes, there would be a Mass on EWTN she could watch.  But, beyond that, I was just thrilled that our daughter wanted, on her own and despite her aching head, to do the best she could to participate in Sunday Mass.  She even used her little “Magnifikid” missal to follow along with the readings for the day.

This wouldn’t have happened in our family before we came into the Church.  First, I don’t think any of our kids, in general, would have thought it mattered all that much to miss a Sunday–and certainly not to miss one when they were sick.  I know I wouldn’t have felt that way.  And, on top of that, who would they have watched?  Charles Stanley, the old-fashioned Southern Baptist; Benny Hinn, the flamboyant faith healer; Robert Schuller, the Crystal Cathedral “power-of-positive-thinking” preacher; or one of the multitude of others?  How would I have made sure that any of these were “orthodox” enough for my kids?

No, this was an entirely new experience, and I feel it can be attributed to only one thing:  the reality of the Mass.  Nikki and I are doing our best to catechize our kids and help them understand and embrace the totality of the Catholic faith.  But I am convinced that there’s no possible way we could have created the desire in Schuyler to get as close to Mass as she was able to that day.  That desire came from deep within her–from her own sense that the Mass is different from everything else in the week (indeed, that it’s different from everything else on Earth):  it is where Jesus Himself comes to meet our little girl, and us, and all others willing to come, in a unique and real way.  Quite literally, it is Heaven on earth.  And that is why Schuyler wanted at least to see it that day.  Looked at that way, as she would say, “it just makes sense.”

At that first Eucharist before You died,
O Lord, You prayed that all be one in You;
At this our Eucharist again preside,
And in our hearts Your law of love renew;
O may we all one bread, one body be,
Through this blest sacrament of Unity.

For all Thy Church, O Lord, we intercede;
Make Thou our sad divisions soon to cease;
Draw us the nearer each to each, we plead,
By drawing all to Thee, O Prince of Peace;
Thus may we all one bread, one body be,
Through this blest sacrament of Unity.

We pray Thee too for wand’rers from Thy fold;
O bring them back, good Shepherd of the sheep,
Back to the faith which saints believed of old,
Back to the Church which still that faith doth keep;
Soon may we all one bread, one body be,
Through this blest sacrament of Unity.

So, Lord, at length when sacraments shall cease,
May we be one with all Thy Church above,
One with Thy saints in one unbroken peace,
One with Thy saints in one unbounded love;
More blessèd still, in peace and love to be
One with the Trinity in Unity.

I’m practically getting goosebumps just reading that over again, but that’s not my point for posting it here.  Rather, I wanted to pose a question to our Protestant readers:  Have you ever, even once in your life, sung a song like or prayed a prayer like that in a worship service, asking God to bring about unity by bringing everyone back to the type of church you attended?  If you have, I’d very much like to hear about in the comboxes.

For myself, as the title of this post suggests, I sure never sang a song or prayed a prayer like this before becoming Catholic.  And I think there are at least two reasons this was so:  (1) the congregations I was in acted as if visible Christian unity was hopeless; and (2) over time, it seemed to me that Protestant evangelicalism increasingly bought into an “I’m OK/you’re OK” approach to anything even vaguely Christian.

On this first point, the standard Protestant story I heard about divisions among Christians went as follows:  “Sure, it’s sad that there are all these denominations and church splits.  But that’s just how it is in a ‘fallen world.’  Not much we can really do about it.  People are people, y’know.”  For a long time, I bought this story entirely, it being of course true that we live in a “fallen world.”  The fallenness of this world, however, is NOT the end of the story (and how sad to think it is).  There is something (no, actually someone) missing from the Protestant take on Christian disunity–and that is Jesus Himself.  It is Jesus, of course, who prayed (as the hymn above indicates) that His followers would be one, as He and the Father are one.

As a Protestant, I acted as if the fact that Jesus had asked His Father to unite His followers meant that we humans had no responsibility in the matter.  I also believed that, since Christianity appeared to be such a disunited mess, the Father must not have done anything in response to the Son’s prayer.  I was wrong in both respects.  The mere fact that God is involved in a given activity (let’s say the salvation of an individual soul) doesn’t mean that person can sit back and do nothing (perhaps by not even “accepting” God’s gift in the first place) and then blame it on God later for not making it to Heaven.  The same is true of divisions among Christians–we bear responsibility for them.  God has done what He needed to do to make visible unity a possibility–I was wrong that the Father had ignored His Son’s prayer for unity.  Rather, in answer to that prayer, He has preserved, throughout 2000 years, the Papacy as the visible, human head of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.  (I’ve discussed this further here.)

That leads me back to the second reason I never sang or prayed that everyone would become a Baptist–I always knew, deep down, that the Baptist ecclesial community was not the same thing as the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.  As a consequence, I didn’t have the guts to ask God to lead everyone to be Baptist.  Rather, I engaged in what I’ll call the “Christian relativism” that is so hot these days in movements like the “emergent church,” in which church history is viewed as a kind of smorgasbord of equally-valid doctrinal and devotional options.[1]  In such a view, all of the doctrinal fights of the past are brushed off as the product of a “modernist” mindset obsessed with “being right” and “propositional truth.”  Now, (according to this view), we’re beyond all that and are in a “post-modern” age in which all that seems to matter is “respectful dialogue.”

Hogwash.  To the extent the “emergent” folks are pointing out that we need to be careful not to get trapped in false dichotomies, they’re 100% right.  But to the extent they’re saying that it doesn’t matter which of two truly mutually exclusive propositions is actually true, they’re obviously wrong.  For example, it is either OK or not OK to baptize infants.  That is truly a yes-no proposition, and no amount of dialogue is going to change that.  No amount of dialogue is going to change the fact that God cares about the right answer to a question like that, either.  To conclude otherwise is to conclude that God Himself doesn’t care about truth.  Jesus, however, was Truth incarnate.  So to determine that God doesn’t care about truth is to determine that God doesn’t care about Jesus–a nonsensical, self-contradictory notion.  Since that’s off the table, then, it’s not possible to brush all doctrinal disputes under the rug and put on a smiley face and pretend like they don’t exist.  That brings God no glory, because there is no search for truth.  And, since God made human beings to be truth-seekers, we’re also demeaning ourselves when we give up the search.

The Catholic response to this sad state of affairs is to take the call to unity seriously and to do something about it–like praying and singing the beautiful hymn at the top of this post.  The Church also is deeply involved in ecumenical dialogue with many Christian communities, as there are other Christians who do care about these issues as well.  (I’m not trying to claim Catholics have a corner on interest in ecumenism.)

At the same time, though, while grieving at the divisions among Christians and reaching out whenever and however it can, the Church does not simply pretend like the differences don’t matter.  That’s why only Catholics can receive certain of the Church’s sacraments, like Reconciliation and the Eucharist.  To open those sacraments up to people who are unwilling to accept that the Church is what she claims to be–the one Church Christ established when He was on earth–and perhaps who are not even willing to accept that those sacraments are what the Church claims them they are–would be to pretend like the various issues that divide non-Catholic Christians from the Church don’t matter.  And that would be an empty unity.

Blessed John Paul II addressed this issue beautifully at the dawn of the millennium in a lengthy encyclical entitled Ut Unum Sint (which is Latin for “may they be one”).  The entirety of the encyclical is well worth reading (including the discussion of the role of the Papacy in the quest for Christian unity), but here I’ll quote only the following, which summarizes Blessed JPII’s thoughts on the path forward:

The power of God’s Spirit gives growth and builds up the Church down the centuries.  As the Church turns her gaze to the new millennium, she asks the Spirit for the grace to strengthen her own unity and to make it grow towards full communion with other Christians.

How is the Church to obtain this grace? In the first place, through prayer.  Prayer should always concern itself with the longing for unity, and as such is one of the basic forms of our love for Christ and for the Father who is rich in mercy.  In this journey which we are undertaking with other Christians towards the new millennium prayer must occupy the first place.

How is she to obtain this grace?  Through giving thanks, so that we do not present ourselves empty-handed at the appointed time: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness … ” intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8:26), disposing us to ask God for what we need.

How is she to obtain this grace?  Through hope in the Spirit, who can banish from us the painful memories of our separation.  The Spirit is able to grant us clear-sightedness, strength and courage to take whatever steps are necessary, that our commitment may be ever more authentic.

And should we ask if all this is possible, the answer will always be yes.  It is the same answer which Mary of Nazareth heard:  with God nothing is impossible.

I am reminded of the words of Saint Cyprian’s commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer of every Christian:  ”God does not accept the sacrifice of a sower of disunion, but commands that he depart from the altar so that he may first be reconciled with his brother.  For God can be appeased only by prayers that make peace.  To God, the better offering is peace, brotherly concord and a people made one in the unity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.

At the dawn of the new millennium, how can we not implore from the Lord, with renewed enthusiasm and a deeper awareness, the grace to prepare ourselves, together, to offer this sacrifice of unity?

I, John Paul, servus servorum Dei, venture to make my own the words of the Apostle Paul, whose martyrdom, together with that of the Apostle Peter, has bequeathed to this See of Rome the splendour of its witness, and I say to you, the faithful of the Catholic Church, and to you, my brothers and sisters of the other Churches and Ecclesial Communities:  “Mend your ways, encourage one another, live in harmony, and the God of love and peace will be with you … The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:11,13).

No, I want to take a different route in my approach to the lie about women being objects. Bear with me as I wind my way ever so meanderingly to the objectification of women.

Quite a few years ago, before we were seriously on the path to Catholicism, I was listening to a popular Christian radio show that was, ahem, focused on talking about ways women can strengthen their marriages. The guest speaker said in no uncertain terms that women who don’t shell out the goods to their husbands whenever they want it are putting themselves in serious danger of cheating and/or divorce. I remember this clearly, even the intersection I was driving through at the time because I think I had a small stroke.

Then there were all the marriage books I read that invariably implied that women should always be on the cutting edge of fashion if they wanted to keep their husbands happy. I encountered the suggestion that being some kind of amped-up sex kitten was the best way to live out one’s role as a Christian wife quite often, and there is really no end to that kind of junk; in fact, business- savvy pastors of mega-churches are finding out this is a really good angle to take if they want to draw media attention to themselves. The most recent offering by (fill in the blank with your adjective of choice) pastor Mark  Driscoll, Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship and Life Together really has blood pressures skyrocketing in many quarters. For interesting discussions by Catholics and non-Catholics on this most recent abomination book look here, here and here.

As much as I can try to make light of it now, these were the kinds of things that really made me want to wretch. It felt demeaning to know that according to Protestant culture, my worth as a Christian wife was found in what I looked like and how happy I was keeping my husband in the bedroom. What the heck?

Not that there’s not a *small* element of truth in these sentiments. Should a woman be frigid and withholding? I’m not a psychiatrist but I’m going to hazard a guess and say “no”. Should a woman make some effort to look halfway put-together? Sure. (Confession: Anyone who knows me personally has probably fallen out of their chair laughing because I would marry my hoodie collection if I could.)  Should a woman have regard for her husband and like him? Of course. And do men have their own responsibilities to live up to in regard to their wives? Absolutely. These all seem like common-sense things to most married people who actually want to have a pleasant marriage. Got problems with these things? Then go get some help, for crying out loud.  My problem with the advice from evangelical authors and teachers was that it hovered on this very surface level subject matter of “physicality,” avoiding the spiritual, for the most part. (I suppose this could branch into a dissertation on Gnosticism and Protestantism, but I’m going to try to keep this simple. No doubt this dividing of the physical from the spiritual is a very complicated issue.)

Anyway, fast-forward a couple of years to the point where Jason and I were starting to read Catholic writings like Humanae Vitae , JPII’s Theology of the Body, and Christopher West’s  Theology of the Body for Beginners. Finally it started to make sense to my why the “wisdom” I’d previously been exposed to was really kind of warped and the blanks began to be filled in for me. The most missing-of-all word being “dignity.” I had never in my Protestant life heard the word dignity used in the context of marriage or much else, for that matter, and so it was somewhat novel to consider this word in the context of human relationships.

Take, for example, the words of Blessed John Paul II in his Apostolic letter on the Dignity and Vocation of Women:

The biblical description in the Book of Genesis outlines the truth about the consequences of man’s sin, as it is shown by the disturbance of that original relationship between man and woman which corresponds to their individual dignity as persons. A human being, whether male or female, is a person, and therefore, “the only creature on earth which God willed for its own sake”; and at the same time this unique and unrepeatable creature “cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of self”. Here begins the relationship of “communion” in which the “unity of the two” and the personal dignity of both man and woman find expression. Therefore when we read in the biblical description the words addressed to the woman: “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16), we discover a break and a constant threat precisely in regard to this “unity of the two” which corresponds to the dignity of the image and likeness of God in both of them. But this threat is more serious for the woman, since domination takes the place of “being a sincere gift” and therefore living “for” the other: “he shall rule over you”. This “domination” indicates the disturbance and loss of the stability of that fundamental equality which the man and the woman possess in the “unity of the two”: and this is especially to the disadvantage of the woman, whereas only the equality resulting from their dignity as persons can give to their mutual relationship the character of an authentic “communio personarum”. While the violation of this equality, which is both a gift and a right deriving from God the Creator, involves an element to the disadvantage of the woman, at the same time it also diminishes the true dignity of the man. Here we touch upon an extremely sensitive point in the dimension of that “ethos” which was originally inscribed by the Creator in the very creation of both of them in his own image and likeness.

This statement in Genesis 3:16 is of great significance. It implies a reference to the mutual relationship of man and woman in marriage. It refers to the desire born in the atmosphere of spousal love whereby the woman’s “sincere gift of self” is responded to and matched by a corresponding “gift” on the part of the husband. Only on the basis of this principle can both of them, and in particular the woman, “discover themselves” as a true “unity of the two” according to the dignity of the person. The matrimonial union requires respect for and a perfecting of the true personal subjectivity of both of them. The woman cannot become the “object” of “domination” and male “possession”. But the words of the biblical text directly concern original sin and its lasting consequences in man and woman. Burdened by hereditary sinfulness, they bear within themselves the constant “inclination to sin”, the tendency to go against the moral order which corresponds to the rational nature and dignity of man and woman as persons. This tendency is expressed in a threefold concupiscence, which Saint John defines as the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life (cf. 1 Jn 2:16). The words of the Book of Genesis quoted previously (3: 16) show how this threefold concupiscence, the “inclination to sin”, will burden the mutual relationship of man and woman.

…

The personal resources of femininity are certainly no less than the resources of masculinity: they are merely different. Hence a woman, as well as a man, must understand her “fulfillment” as a person, her dignity and vocation, on the basis of these resources, according to the richness of the femininity which she received on the day of creation and which she inherits as an expression of the “image and likeness of God” that is specifically hers. The inheritance of sin suggested by the words of the Bible – “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” – can be conquered only by following this path. The overcoming of this evil inheritance is, generation after generation, the task of every human being, whether woman or man. For whenever man is responsible for offending a woman’s personal dignity and vocation, he acts contrary to his own personal dignity and his own vocation. –Mulieris Dignitatum

What began to strike me in reading various Church documents on gender and sexuality is that the Church is concerned with preserving the dignity that is innate to each of God’s children.  Anything that threatens that dignity should therefore be off-limits.

One of the biggest threats to dignity today is society’s wholesale acceptance of birth control- and I’m talking about both Protestants and Catholics here. It is tragic that so many Catholics reject the Church’s teaching on contraception. Obviously, many, many Catholics don’t practice what the Church preaches but I don’t think that negates the truth, as I’ve heard some people suggest. Jesus also told us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves and Christians don’t always do a stellar job on that one either.

If you don’t agree with or “get” the whole thing about the Catholic Church being down on artificial contraception, allow me to continue to beat this dead horse until, well, it’s a little deader. But first, I implore you, dear, fabulous, extremely good-looking reader, to read Humanae Vitae. That way you can at least get a taste of where I’m coming from. It’s not fair to protest the “unfairness” of the Church’s stance if you don’t know what her stance is or more importantly why she maintains it, despite the rest of the modern world being so hip and cool and enlightened.

I’m going to give you my abbreviated version here. I’m not going to get into a huge apologetic about the theology of the body, about which you should also read.  This is a very complex issue and I must admit it takes some time to wrap one’s mind around it, especially when the norm is to view fertility as something that can be managed like a bad case of tonsillitis. In short though, the problem with artificial contraception is that, in eliminating the procreative aspect of sexual expression, the tendency is for the focus to be solely on recreation. And here is where the equilibrium between the sexes, which JPII  maintained as the only standard for a “unity of two”, is thrown off.  Who ends up at a disadvantage? Women.

With fertility being shelved, there is a sexual marketplace in which women must compete to be the best and most desirable. A husband may be constrained by his morals not to cheat but he certainly knows what’s out there and that puts his wife in the position of constantly having to be on her toes, since the sexual aspect of their relationship is unfettered from the chains of a possible pregnancy and is only for physical gratification. No doubt, either party is capable of objectifying the other, but let’s be quite honest: it is most often the woman who will end up in that boat. When is the last time you saw a guy fretting over whether he can encase his thighs in a pair of size 0 skinny jeans? Yeah, didn’t think so.

And where does that even leave virtuous single women who have no interest in swimming in the shallow pool that dating has become? Competing in a social scene where plenty of other women are willing to engage in commitment-free relationships, using others and being used. Dignity? No, just disgusting.

Blessed Paul VI predicted the consequences we are seeing as a result of widespread acceptance of contraception:

Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection. – Humanae Vitae

The sad result of contraception is that everyone gets objectified. Spouses can easily objectify each other, which you may say is a victimless crime (I’d disagree) but think about children. Birth control creates what I like to call a “spreadsheet mentality.” Does the kid look good on paper? Are there more checks in the “yes” column than the “no” column as to whether we should have a baby? Is it feasible mentally, emotionally, career-wise, financially, meteorologically, astrologically? Ok, let’s have a kid. Talk about being an object. (Does it seem to you like more children are dying these days at the hands of a parent? I haven’t looked up statistics, but it seems like every other week, a little child goes missing, parent delivers impassioned plea for said child’s return, and then a while later it turns out the parent took the life of their own child. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re seeing this kind of thing more as we get further out from the Lambeth Conference of 1930 and then Roe v. Wade 43 years later. What we are seeing play out is the falling value of the human person. After all, if I had the option of deciding when and how to engineer you or of eliminating you altogether in the womb, what’s to say you have any more value now?)

So what is the flip-side of this prohibition on contraception? Well, a more holistic view of the person is maintained. Fertility is not viewed as something that should be chopped off or cut out of a person like a cancerous growth. What the Church is suggesting is that God made people the way they are because that’s the way they are intended to be. To take a person for everything they are means to accept everything about them, fertility included. To treat fertility as a something that needs to be eliminated for the sake of convenience is to reduce that other person to a tool for only one purpose. Who wants to be seen merely as a tool or an object? Well, people with very low self-esteem, I suppose, but that’s not how God intended us to be seen by anyone.

When spouses choose the option of accepting each other for everything, fertility included, that holistic view really does tend to eliminate the need to be some kind of foofy dancing poodle, and instead allows people to be themselves without fear. It makes it a lot harder (not impossible, since we’re all prone to sin) to see one’s spouse as a means for personal gratification. What the Church is saying is that a wife should never have to be constantly looking over her shoulder for constant threats to her prized position as a cherished and accepted spouse, and a husband should never assume that he can selfishly put his sexual agenda at the center of the marriage.

I am so glad that the Catholic Church has continued to be the beacon of truth in this matter. As long as this earth is populated, people need to know that as God’s children we all possess a dignity that deserves proper respect. To lead them to believe otherwise is simply to reject a gift from God, and the consequences are pretty ugly.

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them — every day begin the task anew.

The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying, not “What a lovely sermon” but, ”I will do something!”

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.

We must never undervalue any person.  The workman loves not that his work should be despised in his presence.  Now God is present everywhere, and every person is His work.

Happy feast day, St. Francis de Sales!  Pray for us!!

Thousands upon thousands of people were there–making up the only group of protesters ever to descend on Washington to act against their own self-interest (as P.J. O’Rourke once said).  Folks, we’re going to win this war.  I don’t know when, but it’s going to happen.  The culture of death is doing exactly what you’d expect–dying.

Here are pics:

Today is the 39^th March for Life in Washington, DC, and the third that Jason will be going to.  Our son is attending his first Youth Mass at the Verizon Center with the youth group from our parish, before heading down to the March on the Mall.  Unfortunately, Nikki can’t make it as our daughter Schuyler was diagnosed with a concussion last night (for which we’d ask your prayers as well).  So she’ll be doing her part by taking care of our own children, praying, and following along with the coverage of the March on EWTN.

Please join us in praying for an end to the scourge of abortion in this country and around the world–so that all human life is valued, and protected by law, from conception to natural death.  With God, all things are possible–so let’s ask our God together that this will be the last March for Life we’ll ever need:

O heavenly Father, strengthen us against the mounting forces of anti-life; enlighten those who walk in this deadly way that they may see the enormity of their sin and return to the generous observance of the divine law.  We pray, too, for mothers, that they may prize the great privilege of motherhood; and that they may bring up their children in the holy love and fear of God, thus saving their own immortal souls and furthering the honor and glory of their Maker.  Through Christ, our Lord.  Amen.

The priest’s message to the young people of his parish was dramatically different from what I got as a kid.  For me at least, being told that I was the “future” meant that my “present” really didn’t matter all that much.  And the effect of this, I think, is similar to the effect Nikki discussed in her last post of telling mothers that they simply have to endure the “present” of motherhood to get back to “real life” again at some point in the future:  it’s demoralizing and corrosive.  It’s demoralizing because telling a kid they’re “the future” means there’s something incomplete about them right now and implies that they’re somehow less than full people worthy of respect at this moment.  It’s corrosive because the teenage years are difficult ones, full of all sorts of nasty temptations that can set a kid going down the wrong road, and telling them they’re the “future” makes it sound like they don’t have to worry about the call to holiness until they’re grown-up “real” people.

Now, I certainly can’t claim that there aren’t any Catholics who talk of kids as “the future.”  There may very well be lots of Catholics who use that silly language.  But Catholicism does not lend itself to talking of children in this manner as easily as Protestantism does.  I believe there are several reasons for this, but here I’m just going to talk about one:  the Church’s teaching on artificial contraception.

Keeping artificial contraception on the table as a morally acceptable choice necessarily means that a fertile couple is in complete, 100% control of if and when they conceive children, just like they’re in complete, 100% control of if and when they buy a new dog or a new car.  Speaking from my own experience as having at one time believed it was OK to use artificial contraception, I can now see that this belief of mine very much bled into how I viewed children.  And it meant that it was easy for me to see a new child as more like a new dog or a new car than like me.  Certainly, they weren’t “full” people.  If they were “full” people with value independent of whether I “wanted” them or not at a particular moment, that would suggest there was something wrong with using artificial contraception to begin with.  So, once a child was born, it was easy to relegate their significance to the “future”—when they would be like me and could “control” things themselves.

When it comes down to it, the contraceptive mindset is all about control, and it’s based on the premise that the very essence of being an adult or being a “full” person (as I’ve been using that term here) is the ability to control things—such as your own fertility, your own bank account, your own car, etc.  And isn’t that what all the talk of the “future” church is about, too?  When people say things like that, what they really mean is, “You young people will get to run this someday.  Isn’t that exciting?”  That, of course, rests on the notion that there’s something really, really, really special (and superior)about getting to control stuff.  We know where that notion comes from, though, (don’t we?), and it’s not good:  “But the snake said to the woman, . . . ‘[Y]ou will be like gods.’”

It is teachings like these that Protestants tend to find repulsive.  And, in that reaction, they are joined by pretty much everyone else on the planet.  But, unlike everyone else on the planet, Protestants feel compelled to justify their rejection of the Church’s teachings on Biblical grounds.  They’re not in a position to say that they reject everything the Catholic Church teaches, because that would mean rejecting things like the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection as well.  So what do they do with these teachings?  Well, for myself as a Protestant, I labeled all Catholic teachings with which I disagreed the “tradition of men,”  added on to the “pure Gospel” by a power-hungry Church intent on lording it over the common people, just like the Pharisees of Jesus’ day.  And, since Jesus quite obviously didn’t like the Pharisaism of His time, He must not like Catholicism either.

Underlying my position as a Protestant was some vague sense that one of the main reasons Jesus came to Earth was to abolish the very idea of religious hierarchy and all of the silly rules that went along with it.  As a consequence, I’d ask:  “Don’t those Catholics get that Christians are under grace now, not under law?”  I can now see, though, that my position was inconsistent with some pretty basic aspects of New Testament Christianity.

First, if Jesus was opposed to religious authority per se, why in the world did He choose twelve Apostles who obviously had some special role to play in the establishment of the Church–beyond simply being its first 12 members?  And why did this Church, early in its history, convene the Council of Jerusalem, made up only of the leaders of the Church (and not everyone calling themselves Christians), to address the issue of the Judaizers who wanted to require Christians to keep the Jewish dietary and circumcision laws?  If there was necessarily a problem with a religious hierarchy defining the exact contours of the faith (i.e., the rules), then the early Church should have taken a democratic vote on these questions.  It didn’t.[1] 

Second, it’s simply not true that the New Testament message is 100% about grace and 0% about law.  The Sermon on the Mount makes at least two things quite clear:  (1) that Jesus had no intention of abolishing the concept of a law that governs human behavior; and (2) that the rules Jesus’ followers would be expected to live by would be stricter–not more lax–than those of the Jews of old (which included an intricate system of religious rituals, the observance of numerous holy days like Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles, Yom Kippur, etc., and a comprehensive moral code).  There’s also, of course, Jesus’ instruction that His followers must take up their crosses daily and follow Him.  That doesn’t sound like it’s exactly a walk in the park. 

Paul’s writings later on are completely consistent with this.  Protestants–especially Calvinists –tend to present Paul as a preacher of nothing but grace, particularly in the book of Romans.[2]  And it is certainly true that Paul taught the primacy of God’s grace in the process of salvation, in passages such as Ephesians 2:8-9.  That’s not all he taught, though.  For example, in Galatians 6, Paul refers to the “law of Christ,” which he says we are to fulfill by bearing one another’s burdens.  His use of this phrase makes no sense if he thought that the entirety of the Gospel could be reduced to the teaching that we’re under grace now and not under any law whatsoever.  His statement in 1 Corinthians 9 about how he drives and trains his body so that he will not be “disqualified” from winning an “imperishable crown” (i.e., making it to Heaven) also is nonsensical if Paul thought his eternal destiny depended upon God’s grace alone. 

If Jesus’ and Paul’s actions and teachings do not support the contention that all rules are bad, simply because they’re rules or simply because they’re issued by a religious hierarchy, then the Protestant “traditions-of-men” argument (at least as I used it when I was a Protestant) pretty much falls apart.  That meant I had to grapple with the reasons the Catholic Church gave for all of those rules that didn’t make any sense to me as a Protestant and which didn’t leap off the page on a cursory reading of the New Testament.  And that’s when I discovered something truly amazing, something that completely surprised me–the Catholic Church hadn’t simply made up the rules on artificial contraception, Mass attendance, etc., so it could impress its power on people–which was one of the problems with the Pharisaism that Jesus confronted.  No, in each and every case, the Church established these rules to help her children live fuller, better, holier lives that increased their chances of making it to Heaven, and the rules were just as hard, if not harder, for those in the Church hierarchy. 

Take, for example, the prohibition on the use of artificial contraception.  This teaching is articulated by a hierarchy consisting entirely of men who have pledged themselves to celibacy for the rest of their lives.  Consequently, I found it difficult to muster up a lot of righteous indignation about the “severity” of the Church’s teaching when those responsible for defining it have embraced an even stricter standard for their own lives.

In the end, I concluded that brushing off those Church teachings with which I disagreed as mere “traditions of men” was just a way of avoiding listening to the Church’s reasons for teachings I simply didn’t like.  And, as with artificial contraception, I discovered that the reason behind each and every teaching I had at one time questioned wasn’t to oppress me but was to help me live a life best suited for joy in this life and in the life-to-come.  As Chesterton put it, when discussing the doctrine of original sin (another wildly unpopular doctrine): 

All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true.  Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive . . . .  Theosophists for instance will preach an obviously attractive idea like re-incarnation; but if we wait for its logical results, they are spiritual superciliousness and the cruelty of caste.  For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal sins, people will tend to despise the beggar.  But Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin we can at once pity the beggar and distrust the king.  Men of science offer us health, an obvious benefit; it is only afterwards that we discover that by health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual tedium.  Orthodoxy makes us jump by the sudden brink of hell; it is only afterwards that we realize that jumping was an athletic exercise highly beneficial to our health.  It is only afterwards that we realise that this danger is the root of all drama and romance.  The strongest argument for the divine grace is simply its ungraciousness.  The unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props of the people.