AWAY  WITH  WORDS

Daniel Boland Ph. D.

 

AWAY  WITH  WORDS

 

Daniel Boland Ph. D.

Photo by Robert Phelps

 

Archives-2020

 

 

4 December 2020



At  War  With  Ourselves:
Before  Covid  And  Beyond



History’s truths are humanity’s greatest teacher. History’s unblinking record of our past and present deeds is - or should be - our most beneficial (if painful) resource for defining our goals, understanding our mistakes, correcting our errors and choosing how we shall live.

This is true for individuals; this is true for nations.

Some people choose to stifle history’s truths. The weight of truth is sometimes too ego-bruising for them. Instead, they choose distortion, denial, avoidance and other means to willfully deceive themselves and others.

This selective personal blindness is self-defeating when an individual does this to himself. But it becomes extensive - and tragic - when deceptive leaders exert unrefined power over others. Yet this happens because of our human tendency to accept fatal compromises.

Too often we give our fealty to errant “leaders,” even when they deceive us, even when they disregard lawful boundaries or moral limits, even when they promote evil. Humanity can be vulnerably naïve.

Nonetheless, history does offer us a doorway to reality and a spur to truth. To our benefit, history also tells us we need not be passive creatures, subject to an impersonal Fate or beholden to tyrants.

Freedom, once compromised, is still attainable … but with effort which begins only when we face the truth - and that can be costly, especially when unrefined, ego-centric power is in charge.


Wisdom:  Human  Nature  At  Our  Best


We possess the ability to think and to choose, to actively change the course of our lives, to pursue facts, to control our behavior, to direct our Fate, to pursue truth and act on it, to accept responsibility and not plead victimhood or blame others.

We have been given the uniquely human gifts of reason and choice, of thought and will. With sufficient knowledge, we can make intelligent, humane, effective choices for ourselves and for our neighbors, near and far.

In addition, we have the ability to pursue wisdom. Wisdom starts when we embrace the profound centrality of truth in all human affairs – in family and marriage, in education and faith, in politics and media, in history and culture, in the cultivation of our own souls, in our search for justice and goodness.

Wisdom is inseparable from truth … but wisdom is also hard-won. It necessitates courage to live truthfully, with fidelity and empathy, with generosity and self-restraint and, often, sheer grit.

Wisdom (personal and societal) builds on truth and uses common sense. Wisdom matures only through painful experience; there are no short-cuts.

Wisdom is common sense which has been:


  • hallowed by experience and insight into the consequences (known and unintended) of our behavior;
  • infused with the virtues of humility by which we know and respect our limits and self-restraint to keep our ego in check;
  • enlightened with the virtue of prudence which moderates our arrogance, stems our haughtiness, weighs the risks we face and guides our actions.

Wisdom’s  Demands


Wisdom insists that we heed the truths revealed by history’s cautionary messages. Wisdom attends unblinkingly to the facts. It does not deny the truth of our actions and the outcomes of our choices - both as persons and as nations.

Wisdom tells us with insistent candor to listen to history’s warnings. We cannot substitute brief, often fallible, authority for wisdom’s clear revelations. If we fool ourselves, dangerous orthodoxies inevitably arise, both for individuals and for nations.

Harmful orthodoxies become punitive as they exert unrefined power. And power which exists for itself soon becomes totalitarian. It breeds intolerance and threat, and despises truth and common sense.

Wisdom also tells us that raw, unrefined power seeks perpetuity. To that end, unrefined power demands unquestioning loyalty from a passive citizenry. Unrefined power destroys wisdom’s inherent candor, and thrives on pragmatic nihilism and morality forsaken.

This occurs slowly at first, but unrefined power artfully normalizes hypocrisy. Lies become dogma, deception becomes doctrinaire. Dissenters are ostracized, often with violence supported by authority. The intolerable and inhumane become customary and accepted. Just laws are unenforced; intolerance presides while officials erase moral boundaries and shield their eyes from abuse.


Truth  And  Consequences


Wise persons recognize deception and abuse when they see it - even when others succumb to indifference or fear or (as we see today) politically correct, highly contrived rants of victimhood.

When unwise leaders exercise unrefined power, they abandon the restraints of law and the stability of established tradition. They erase the boundaries of morality and ignore common sense. Truth is deliberately obscured. Unwise leaders rely on unilateral mandates and half-truths, on deception, avoidance and denial. Citizens who follow are often lost in a wasteland of lies and threats and the abiding aura of intimidation.


Pre - Covid  Problems


In normal times, wise leaders set realistic guidelines, supply factual information to those affected, clarify benefits and risks, then let individuals interpret and enforce guidelines, based on good will, common sense, adequate feedback from those impacted and knowledge of local situations.

But we do not live in normal times. Today, truth is not readily available and facts are not honored.

For years - long before Covid’s debut - our public discourse has been on a downward arc. Courtesy is replaced by overt hostility, rhetoric is “weaponized.” Even casual rhetoric regularly oversteps boundaries of fundamental civility.

For years, students have been schooled to believe that America is a racist, oppressor nation. American exceptionalism is denigrated even by a recent President. Our flag is now trashed, our national anthem publicly despised. Sanctuary cities encourage lawlessness. The rule of law is ignored. Illegality is rewarded.

Street rioters destroy and maim with impunity, yet public officials do not enforce the law. Some famous public figures are not held accountable for well-documented abuses of office, abuses for which the “average citizen” would spend a lifetime in prison.

Many thoughtful Americans now realize that these years of militant, radical secularism have eroded America’s historic moral values and legal limits. The breakdown of American traditions (such as patriotism and public prayer) has weakened our country deeply … and prepared the way for even more excessive and often senseless intrusions by officials who disregard reason and logic.

… and into our shaky national scenario, along comes Covid.

Covid supplies further excuse for a number of imprudent but punitive decisions. These decisions offend common sense, polarize politics even further, feed myths of victimhood and prompt aggrieved retaliation ... all of which displace restrained and reasonable governance of earlier times.

So, it is no surprise that many thoughtful American citizens are now skeptical. They wonder whether the ongoing Covid crisis arouses authentically informed responses from our leaders, or whether Covid stimulates the primitive political juices and the urge-to-power of many heavy-handed State and local officials who now favor The Great Reset, i.e., the latest plan to undermine American exceptionalism.


A  Basketful  Of  Deplorable  Examples


Covid requires certain restrictions which are, we are told, necessary for public safety. But over these many months, an excess of supposed caution has inaugurated countless incautious actions.

Offensive pronunciamentos send the message that We, the People - including our pastors and our children’s educators, our business persons and private citizens - are incapable of making sound judgments for ourselves and those for whom we are accountable.

The conclusion seems to be that, given our collective weaknesses and our inclinations to reckless tomfoolery, We, The People, must be overseen by State mandate.

For example, certain elected officials now tell us to report one another for recalcitrance, i.e., for daring to assemble in family groups. In some States, children are encouraged to report their parents to police. Even singing has become a no-no.

Rather than relying on neighborly benevolence or family concern, we are urged to report miscreants who reside - mask-less - in their own homes. British physician and social critic, Dr. Theodore Dalrymple observes: “As the Soviets and the Nazis found, private denunciation was one of the pleasures of totalitarianism…”

Thus, we mandated by some of our elected “leaders” to affirm the arbitrary, intrusive and excessive power of the State and of those officials who are (as Shakespeare puts it) “dressed in a little brief authority…”


And  More  To  Ponder


More examples:  After many months of warnings and threats, countless schools and businesses are closed whilst abortion clinics remain open. Restaurant dining is forbidden in many locales. One-third of all small businesses in Manhattan will soon be gone. Travel is vociferously discouraged. Gyms remain locked. Bankruptcies increase.

Despite the First Amendment safeguard, many churches and synagogues remain closed or tightly restricted. The Supreme Court did recently intervene in a case challenging New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's shutdown of churches and synagogues. In the 5-to-4 decision, the Court issued an injunction against Cuomo's order.

In that majority opinion, Justice Gorsuch wrote:  “It is time -- past time -- to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques."

Another example:  New York City is setting up quarantine stations at key entry points along main bridges and tunnels into the city. Bus stops screen incoming passengers from more than thirty States. “Travelers coming in from those states will be quarantined for two weeks. They will be reminded that quarantine is required, not optional,” Mayor de Blasio announces at a press briefing.

And here is a true head-scratcher: Millions of Americans are out of work, yet - incredibly - our newly-elected leaders announce their intention to open our borders to an influx of untested and unemployed non-citizens who clearly present incalculable medical concern and economic threat to our nation.


Dangerous  Outcomes


Many Covid mandates not only divide us, they also unleash the darker traits, repressed fears and aggressive urges - the inner fascist - of some citizens.

We behold creeping governmental expansion into the private lives and rights of American citizens. Historians are now calling this “soft totalitarianism.” The Russian author Aleksander Solzhenitsyn warned that the great mistake democracies make is to think totalitarianism cannot overtake them. Take a look at this article/

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/survivors-of-soviet-communism-are-warning-the-west-is-becoming-totalitarian-heres-a-manual-for-resisting

We are also inundated with conflicting information. Many medical dissenters convincingly insist the pandemic is over. They vehemently resist the claim that a vaccine is essential. Here, for example, are the comments of just one qualified contrarian.

Dr. Mark McDonald is an experienced California psychiatrist. He believes America is on the verge of being “lost.” Many citizens are suffering from a “delusional psychosis.” They’re so fearful that they turn on each other to enforce “nonsensical” restrictions.

Moreover, Dr. McDonald adds this provocative statement:

Americans “who are either afraid, or who have been fed lies and misinformation for months now, have grown to not only feel afraid, but also to believe that what they are being told is true, which is primarily that all of us are at equal risk of catching a virus and dying from it. This is demonstrably untrue. It is a lie, in fact. And we’ve known that it’s a lie for about six months, and yet people have come to believe it.”

He repeats the data which certifies that Covid has produced “very, very little death or hospitalization outside of very specific populations. Less than one percent of the population accounts for over 90 percent of all the deaths.” Those deaths occur in elders over the age of 70, and mostly over 80, with at least two and a half to three comorbidities, according to the CDC.


Whom  To  Believe


Other researchers testify that, while Covid-reported deaths have risen, the total number of deaths nationally has not risen, indicating that the numbers are conveniently – and erroneously – skewed or mis-reported.

Dr. McDonald adds: “Other than that group of people, we really are not at risk of hospitalization or death in any meaningful way from this virus, certainly less than we are of standard influenza.”

The lurking danger in all of this lies beyond mass hysteria to the widespread control of thought and behavior. America is deeply wounded by the manipulation of facts and disdain for truth, and by the already-widespread silencing of opposing views by media and social networks.

Covid will pass. The deceptions and manipulations by mass media and educational systems are now deeply ingrained in our culture. These results of these abuses will not pass.

The emotional fragility and psychological vulnerability of many persons is evident in reactions to Covid and the continuing ambiguity of America’s future.

The potential subjugation of our citizenry is also furthered by deliberate imbalances in information and by our willingness to acquiesce to those “experts” who possess a little brief authority. The impact on our society is - and will continue to be – profoundly disturbing.

These factors cumulatively create the ideal setting for massive GroupThink, i.e., the unquestioned obedience and dependence of followers on their leaders who may – or may not – honor fact and truth.


A  Final  Comment


The extensive government control across the country reminds me of history’s chilling, vivid and oft-repeated messages that similar tactical directives were successfully promulgated in the 1930s by the National Socialist Party in Germany. We witness the same tactics today in Communist North Korea and China and Cuba and Venezuela.

With antagonistic spokespersons for Socialism in our very midst, I am reminded of what I observed in Communist Poland in 1989 and what I witnessed when I visited the extermination camp at Auschwitz … places populated by persons who, in their own times, said: “…it could not - would not – happen here …”

I say, let us look at history.

Some persons scoff at the idea that our elected and appointed officials would ever distort facts, manipulate events, censor anyone, control the truth, intrude upon the moral beliefs of anyone or deliberately deny a Constitutional right to an American citizen.

Look around you right now. Read about the ways in which the Bill of Rights is already compromised in our day.

Read, for example, about the repeated attempts to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to deny their moral beliefs.

Read about the Human Right Campaign’s attempts to strip religious schools of their accreditation because of their credal beliefs.

Read about the upcoming implementation of unrestricted abortions at home and abroad, to be paid for by taxpayers.

Recognize the dangers which history thrusts upon us.

Dates and places change, but many good people remain vulnerable and gullible and passive.

Scoffers may say, “It can’t happen here… This is America … it can’t happen here…”

I would point out that the techniques and goals of unrefined power are much the same everywhere; perhaps benign on the surface for a time, but no less lethal in substance and outcome, made easier by the historical naivete of many citizens.

Distrust your neighbor. Obey your leaders, Trust government and the media to tell you what is truth. Babies in the womb have no rights. Shame those who dissent. Shame those who cling to traditional, outmoded notions of freedom and morality. America has always been a racist nation run by white supremacists who hide behind religion. America needs fixing. Believe what we tell you when we say that we will change this nation at its core and re-define the archaic Bill of Rights … and much more.

As Shakespeare once again reminds us, the past is prologue -- and Wisdom urges us to attend to history’s warnings … now.

 

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28 October 2020



I  Speak  For  The  Child … And  For  Her  Mother
An  Elder’s  Personal  Reflection



As we know, abortion is the deliberate taking of a child’s life before, during and (in our “woke” era) even after a child is born.


The Abortion-Industrial Complex has vastly expanded the notion that abortion is a human “right.” Some argue that even healthy newborn babies should be left, without care, to die. The newborn should be kept comfortable while her new life slips away. Let her die unattended - but comfortable - while medical staff go about their routines. This is, after all, a “reproductive right.”


A “reproductive right.”


Think about that for a moment. Some people in our society believe it is moral and reasonable, even desirable, that a healthy newborn baby be ignored until she dies. Do not attend to her needs nor heed her cries. Let her die … but comfortably.


This, in our country … in America … in our lifetimes.


The  Price  Of  Regret


On the other hand, countless women have undergone abortion but later express authentic grief and lasting recrimination. One woman expresses her post-abortion regret this way:


“… My unwise decision has not relieved me of unwanted pain. Rather, my loss has negatively impacted my life. At the time of my pregnancy I was very emotionally immature, as are so many women who find themselves in this position. Planned Parenthood is more than willing to step in with their pro-choice stance and encourage abortion as a desirable option…”
We are moved by the sincere regret of a vulnerable women who became pregnant and was later overwhelmed by the gravity of a decision so often made in an unstable or abusive relationship.


We are also moved by the remorse of a teen, bombarded by our society’s encouragement to recklessness, pregnant through an act of trust betrayed, now deeply depressed by a bleak and frightening future.


And we are moved by the emotionally deluded, profoundly gullible young woman who is wounded by her own naivete.


We are moved by the regret which weighs heavily on all their hearts. And we wonder what our society can do to ease their sincere remorse and support their search for virtue.


Most of all, we hope their regret gives birth to respect for children born and unborn; children whom we choose to defend and sustain at all costs … or is it too late in our nation’s history for such a hope to occur?


The  Abortion – Industrial  Complex


Many young women and men are encouraged to ignore the risks and responsibilities of sexual behavior. Be free, they are told. No matter your age, you have the right to experiment sexually - or so they are now taught … even in many grammar and high schools, and by endless media.


It’s obvious that youngsters (and many grown-ups, too) are psychologically immature, without a moral compass, lacking the guidance of attentive, intelligent adults in our sexually confused, morally adrift society.


As a result, pregnancy after fleeting moments of cavalier excess is all-too-common. Many learn the hard way that passionate indulgence has nothing to do with true love’s enduring, often costly, commitment.


Many men and women pay a price for their naivete – or their indifference. But it is the woman and her child who are isolated, often without moral clarity or support, simply overwhelmed.


Instead of respecting her vulnerability and honoring her child, Planned Parenthood and other profit-oriented purveyors of abortion say: “Let us take the life of your child; it is your quick-and-easy way out. After all, the Supreme Court and much of our society say, ‘Do it…be done with that intrusive child.'”


The  Abortion-Industrial  Deception


Abortion is the monied font by which the multi-billion-dollar Abortion-Industrial Complex thrives, often with government assistance (which exceeds a half-billion dollars annually).
The fact is that the 1973 Roe v Wade is the result of judicial usurpation, i.e., the Supreme Court’s making new law, not interpreting and applying existing law. Moreover, the Roe decision rests on admitted manipulation of the plaintiff, Norma McCorvey (alias Jane Roe) by her attorneys.
The Roe decision eclipses common sense, obliterates the Constitution’s right to life clause, violates fundamental moral traditions, shreds rationality and internally weakens America immeasurably.
But in 1992, the Planned Parenthood v Casey decision upheld the “essential holding of Roe.” The Casey decision also prompted Justice Kennedy to state that each individual person has a constitutional “right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” relegating scientific evidence, legal principles and moral traditions to profound decline.
Despite all this, Roe, Casey and other court decisions have made abortion an American standard. Abortion is now so deeply rooted in American culture that it is available to any woman, for any reason - to the shame of our nation.


Yet one must ask:  Is it not self-evident that God has given every human being the unalienable right to life? Is this Constitutional right to life not basic to our nation’s very existence? How, then, can “reproductive rights” displace this most fundamental God-given right - unless one dismisses both the existence of God and our inherent responsibilities to one another.


The  Medical  Argument


Abortion advocates adamantly insist (during the recent Barrett hearings, for example) that without abortion, suffering might be inflicted on a woman who has an extreme, even fatal, medical condition. Abortion is necessary to save the mother’s life, they say. Such cases are referred to as the “hard cases.”


They claim a “hard case” woman may develop a serious medical problem. Therefore, all women must have access to abortion 1) to save their lives, or 2) to preserve their health or psychological stability, or 3) for any reason, or 4) for no reason at all.


This “hard case” argument has been extended so broadly that it is now used as justification for killing millions of healthy babies whose mothers are also healthy. The argument is, of course, aimed at the shallowest of emotions: who would be so mean and nasty as to deny a woman an abortion if she has a medical problem – or if she might have a problem someday … or does not want to be bothered with a baby for any reason?


From this singularly irresponsible argument, a general principle is promulgated:  A woman might suffer. Therefore, all women must have the same deadly choice - and all children thereby placed in mortal jeopardy. A woman’s choice – her “reproductive right” - takes precedence over the God-given life of her child. No questions asked….


This argument is central to the credibility and legitimacy of the Abortion-Industrial Complex. Given the extreme gravity of the outcome, it is absolutely essential that we inquire:


How often does such a medical “hard case” actually arise and require termination of a pregnancy to save a mother’s life or protect her physical or psychological health?


Research makes it immediately evident that the frequency of potentially “hard cases” is less than 4-5% - at most. The main reasons given by the vast majority of women are 1) for their own convenience, 2) for the sake of their careers, 3) they are unready to be mothers, or 4) to avoid embarrassment. 


Additional statistics from abortion clinics, medical journals and government surveys show “hard cases” are rare. In self-reports of abortion clinics, less than 2 % of abortions occur in “hard cases.” Even the Guttmacher Institute (Planned Parenthood’s research affiliate) estimates the percentage well below 8%.


To  Save  The  Children


The medical argument is a self-evident fallacy. It cannotstand as a credible justification for universal abortion-on-demand. It cannot rationally support the killing of millions of healthy babies by their healthy mothers. Yet it is promoted by pro-abortion advocates to militantly facilitate abortion throughout America and in other nations across the world.


Common sense tells us the Abortion-Industrial Complex rests on lies and on an extraordinary denial of facts and reason. Thus, the success of the abortion industry among America’s courts, legislators, educators, religious adherents and much of the general public is simply mind-boggling.


America’s astonishing allegiance to, and tolerance of, abortion is testament to 1) the power of GroupThink over facts of science and medicine, 2) the persuasive toxicity of peer pressure even among so-called adults, 3) the collapse of public morality in favor of the manipulative tenets of “victimhood,” 4) denial of the Commandment to love God and our neighbor, 5) rejection of legal restraint, and 6) the dismissal empathy and mercy toward the most innocent amongst us.


The  Example  Of  Poland


One nation has not succumbed to the Abortion-Industrial Complex. Poland’s Constitutional Court just struck down a discriminatory abortion law which had allowed unborn babies with disabilities to be aborted. The Court agreed with pro-life challengers that this deadly exception violates constitutionally-protected human rights and was “incompatible” with the Polish constitution.


Babies with “disabilities” will not be killed….. Poland’s pro-lifers successfully argued that killing children with “disabilities” actually discriminates against them as human beings. The pro-life petition is worth our consideration:


“Since the attribute of human dignity belongs to man from the moment of the inception of human life, and the protection of the right to life is a direct consequence of the protection of human dignity, … the Constitution of the Republic of Poland leads to the conclusion that the right to life is a human right in every stage of development, at which the child is also entitled to the protection of human dignity, and therefore also in the prenatal period.”


Then they added: “… Since life begins at conception, from the first day of pregnancy, constitutional protection applies to human life in every phase of it.”


For  Mother  And  Child


Alternatives to abortion are many, including adoption. But no solution is healthier in every way for mother, father and child than traditional marriage and a loving family environment.


This family solution is Nature’s invitation to a mother (a woman) and a father (a male) to commit themselves to one another in marriage. Their children are the thoughtful overflow of married love between husband and wife. Their child is deliberately conceived and fully welcomed into the embrace of their mutual parental decision.


This sort of marriage is a transformative union requiring candid communication, humility, self-sacrifice and mutual respect. Both persons willingly give of themselves for the Beloved and for their children whom they mutually agree to bring forth into family life.


It is within this setting that a child is intended by God and Nature to be lovingly conceived, born, raised and nurtured.


Abortion contradicts all of this in the name of “reproductive rights.” But what constitutes “reproductive rights”?


Reproductive  Rights


What exactly does “reproductive rights” mean in practice?


Most people do not know - and few speak of - the extreme violence of an abortion. Human reason and civility, simple decency and common sense abhor the violence exerted against a helpless child - except when “reproductive rights” are at stake.


Moreover, moral common sense should move us to be appalled at the number of abortions in America since Roe in 1973 - well over 61 million childrenand counting. But even if the total were one child, the same moral issues of right-and-wrong and the same challenges to cultural sanity would still plague our country over “reproductive rights.”


Our nation’s willingness to kill our healthy children - our youngest citizens - for the sake of “reproductive rights” has become the keystone issue in the growing historical evidence that America is in serious moral and social decline.


Abortion is a self-inflicted wound which empowers our enemies within and abroad. Why? Because when facts are denied, as they are in the abortion credo of “rights without responsibilities,” our moral insight is deeply injured. Truth is, as we see daily, rendered meaningless.


Final  Reality  Check


Despite Roe v Wade, the Abortion-Industrial Complex cannot erase scientific evidence and medical facts over “reproductive rights.” The facts cannot be negated by emotional reasoning, denial or avoidance. Science and human reason affirm that, from conception, a living human child grows and matures in the womb of her mother. A person - a human being - is there. No appeal to “reproductive rights” can change that.


Despite “rights without responsibilities” promulgated by the Abortion-Industrial Complex, there is (and always will be) the truth of human dignity and the abiding mystery of human life, beginning at conception. Thin about it:


  • We have all held a newborn baby in our arms.
  • We see her move and grow and change and blossom from the instant of her conception.
  • From the first awe-inspiring moment of her sonogram, we know she is a living person.
  • We watch her as she matures and we marvel as her features emerge and her body changes - just like we did …just as each one of us did.
  • And we know she is a distinct person, blessed with her own unique identity, granted life by God and her parents.

These facts we know. They are obvious to every person of good will. Our minds and hearts and souls know these truths, and our emotions are rightly moved by the irreplaceable beauty of every child’s innocence.

To deny these obvious realities is to deny one’s own experience.


Given all this, let us ask God to assist every mother and every father and every child to grow and prosper. May the love and kindness and self-sacrifice of a stable family be always present and sustaining to each and to all ….


May this hope be realized someday. May it someday be so.

 

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13 October 2020



I  Speak  For  The  Child
Part  Two



Pro-abortion convictions rest on the belief that we can do as we wish where human life is concerned. Abortion proponents hold that we are not obligated to God or any person. We - and only we - decide. The norm is this: “I will do it because I have a right to do it - so I will.”

This specious doctrine of unlimited “rights” was given impetus in 1992 when Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.”

The pro-abortion community now focuses solely on a woman’s right to control her own body, on her right to control her decision to have a family … on her “right” to kill her child when that child intrudes on the woman’s other rights.

Notice – the abortion culture never speaks about a woman’s responsibility to control her body, her responsibility to have a family without killing her child, her responsibility to honor the mystery and gravity of her power over human life.


Rights  Without  Responsibilities


Abortion proponents say nothing about the child’s right to live and the responsibility of mothers to protect and nurture their children. This responsibility seems so obvious to right-thinking persons that it is astonishing it has to be said aloud and is, even then, denied.

The consequences of pro-abortion rhetoric are deadly. Moral considerations are eliminated. The survivor’s mantra of “Me-First” is brought into grim focus - and labeled woman’s “right.”
Abortion promoters consider the religious and ethical beliefs of pro-lifers to be delusionary, repressive superstitions. Moral objections are archaic tools of dominance by male elites, denials of women’s “contraceptive rights.”

These adherents insist that the findings of medicine and science, tenets of tradition and morality, the ageless suasions of religion and the lessons of history are irrelevant to the “rights” of women to abort. Abortion’s lethal message to women and to our entire culture is that natural law, divine revelation, fundamental biology, empathy, mercy, concern for children born and unborn, even the urgings of incipient motherhood intrude upon women’s “rights.”

In fact, Planned Parenthood, NARAL and their allies vehemently deny that a "fetus" is even a human being. The baby is not a living baby, not a growing and already-maturing child. She is not entitled – has no “right” - to her own God-given life.


Abortion  Rights ?


Let’s be clear about basics.

Pro-abortion dogma stems from 1) what proponents believe about human nature, 2) and the doctrine of “rights-without-responsibility.”

The abortion community proposes dreary assumptions about what it means to be human and about life’s purpose. They minimize both our moral obligations to one another and the innate dignity of every individual, at every age and condition. They dismiss built-in limits of human nature and our status as creatures of a Personal God. Dismissing God-as-Creator is essential.

Abortion thrives because our “woke” culture (including some religionists) pursues an array of specious “freedoms.” Abortion’s virtue-signaling adherents are enamored of the endless parade of cavalier “rights” which have arisen in the last fifty years - except the rights of a child.

To maintain belief in abortion as a woman’s right, adherents must:


  • Dismiss the cautions and restraints of scientific evidence.
  • Disregard well-aged traditions and sage affirmations of good old common sense which God and Nature put daily before us and patiently reinforce throughout our history of uneven allegiance.
  • Deny that God-given limits to our choices actually do exist.
  • Refuse to accept that we are subject to God’s Law of Love for our neighbor and must do no harm to anyone.
  • Separate rights from pre-existing and inseparable responsibilities. Responsibility always precedes a right!

False  “Freedoms”


Abortion culture is also spurred on by its deeply flawed notion of human nature. As Dr. Leon Kass writes, “faulty anthropology makes for faulty law, especially when the subject is human life itself.”

Instead of reverence for life, our nation has chosen to destroy it. Our Supreme Court (NOT our Constitution) says, “Go ahead, kill the innocent child; it is your Constitutional right to do so.”

This colossal lie nudges America into accelerating self-destruction and casts us ever deeper into barbarism as a culture --- as profound moral changes and the rise of godless Marxism in our nation now tell us.

Clearly, then, abortion supporters pursue a false “freedom” which is hostile to human welfare in so many ways.

Hostile? Why?

Because in God’s good time, we are by our nature, meant to love and to be loved; meant to share ourselves in trust and hope and kindness, always honoring our divinely-established human limits.

We open our national borders to millions of outsiders. We say to the world, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ...  and yet we fatally reject our neediest citizens even as they are being born or, incredibly, after a successful birth - when they are left alone to die.


Vulnerability  Is  Normal


The truth of human life is this:


  • We are meant to set an example of goodness for one another, to love and welcome our most vulnerable neighbors.
  • We are meant to embrace sacrifice, even at personal cost, especially when we are responsible for another person’s existence.
  • We are meant to teach our children by word and virtuous example how to live in goodness - starting with Nature’s irreplaceable bond between a child and her loving mother.
  • We are meant to honor our God-given purpose, to become humbly aware of our mutual limits.
  • We are meant to accept, not run from, our vulnerabilities and our reasonable dependence on others – from conception, all through life, into adulthood and beyond.
  • We are meant to realize the redeeming truth that we are all vulnerable – all of us, even in our maturity.
  • We are meant to run Nature’s course, vulnerable from conception into childhood, then into elderhood’s eventual dependencies – in short, to be humbly human.

The  Courage  To  Be  Human


To admit that we are this human is to admit our vulnerability and our human weaknesses. But when we are weak, then (as Paul of Tarsus says) are we strong - as the gifts of insight and humility reveal our utter dependence on our Creator, Who sustains us.
And, in the course of facing life’s inevitable urgencies, wisdom should eventually teach us (if we are open) that we are not autonomous beings with unlimited “rights.”

True, we may achieve what we want (often at considerable cost to self and others). But wisdom teaches that, by ourselves, we do not possess the power to get what we truly need.

Wisdom will eventually expose us to our excessive individualism and tell us: “Grow up; accept the limits of God’s creation. Be grateful that you are alive to give honor to your Creator; grateful that you were not aborted to suit the wayward wants of another.”  

This grateful vision of human nature will never abuse nor assault a vulnerable and dependent person, especially a child, a disabled neighbor or an elderly person.


Legal  Deception  And  Social  Conditioning


Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute rightly points out that nowhere in the text of the U. S. Constitution can the “right” to abortion be found. She adds this observation:

John Hart Ely, former dean of Stanford Law School, former Yale and Harvard law school professor, and former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, wrote, “What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the U. S. Constitution, the framers’ thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation’s governmental structure … It is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”

Despite Roe v Wade’s contrived origins in judicial activism, the abortion culture has heavyweight support for its denial of a child’s right to life.

One example: In the Supreme Court decision of Box v Planned Parenthood (May 2019), Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticized Justice Clarence Thomas for his use of the word “mother” in regard to pregnancy. Ginsburg held that any woman who exercises her constitutionally protected right to terminate a pregnancy is not a “mother.” There is no “mother” and no “child” in any pregnancy, she contended.

In addition, Justice Ginsburg’s denial of the child’s rights was revealed in her comments in Gonzalez v Carhart (2007). She wrote that any restriction on partial-birth abortion was an “alarming” interference with a woman’s “control over her destiny” and obstructed the woman’s (not the mother’s) right to “participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation.”

The message to women: Let not the child interfere with your routines. In this view, “economic and social life” are the participatory goals of American womanhood; more so than God’s creative gift of motherhood and the giving of life to a child.

The truth, once again, is that a massive lie has been foisted upon our nation -- in the guise of a “right.”

Let that idea sink in ……  


Moral  Challenges  To  Mind  And  Heart


Surely there must be instances of medical crises where abortion is honestly considered … right?


Such instances are very rare, but they do arise … or so we are told. Yet some physicians hold that abortion is never necessary to save a mother’s life.


Occasionally we read of a child born with little expectation of survival – yet that baby does survive, much to the astonishment of physicians and the joy of parents. Here is a link to a rewarding story of twins whose survival chances were about 10%:


https://www.liveaction.org/news/miracle-preemie-twins-home-10-chance/


But supposing a newborn survives only a short while and does die soon after birth. Sadness will befall her parents. But what parent would abort their child to prevent, rather than compound, their sadness?


Some women find pregnancy frightening, especially women who feel emotionally weak and vulnerable, unready for single motherhood. But one might ask, how many women (and men) feel truly prepared for the sacrifices and changes of life which every child demands?


What of the rape victim, the victim of violence forced upon her? Is not abortion then understandably justified? Many people would say yes, abortion is certainly justified. In such an instance, one must still seriously wonder if one act of violence favors a second, far worse, act of violence - terminal violence - resulting in death to the innocent child?


Does one unjust action justify an even more serious reaction - a lethal reaction - by the survivor? Are there no life-giving options? Is death to the child the only response? Does the enwombed - and innocent - child deserve to die, even if she is unwanted?


Content  Of  Our  National  Character


Forty-four years ago, Representative Henry Hyde said to his Congressional colleagues, "Enough." Abortion destroys not only an innocent child but "the moral foundation of our democracy." "We risk our souls," he warned. "We risk our humanity."


For every Catholic, the Month of October is “Respect Life” Month.  Catholics are called to cherish, defend, and protect our most vulnerable persons. The Church asks us all to reflect deeply on the dignity of every human person, from the beginning of our lives to our natural end, and every point in between.


Dedication to the lives of innocents is especially concerning when we realize that the number of abortions in our nation since Roe v Wade in 1973 now exceeds 60 million innocent children … and rising hourly.


To  Be  For  The  Child


Motherhood and fatherhood demand sacrifice. Right? Of course.
Raising children is a challenge. Right? Of course.


To pro-life persons, the choice to love and raise a child is natural. Abortion is unthinkable, especially to persons:


  • who make sacrifices, accept challenges, and face their own inadequacies so they may love and raise a child;
  • who suffer inevitable self-doubt … and yet persevere to love and raise a child;
  • who sustain their faith and hope as they love and raise a child;
  • who grapple with disappointment and weariness as they love and raise their child, a child whose reciprocal love one day overwhelms all fear and doubt;
  • who unite themselves with God, participate in His mystery of Creation and enhance the beauty of human life … as they love and raise their child.

Sacrifice? Of course - but what is life for, if not to be shared together in delight and confusion, in pain and hope, in seasons of light and times of ambiguity - as we seek to love and to be loved?


But . . .  no matter what we say in defense of the child, it’s quite evident that some persons will vehemently insist that abortion is a “civil right” which no one should criticize, challenge or judge.


They will insist abortion is solely between a woman and her physician - even though abortion drugs can be ordered on the internet and abortions can be procured without medical intervention. But, as one adherent angrily told me, it’s none of a man’s business; it’s a woman’s prerogative, a woman’s right !!


After all the rhetoric is said, we cannot escape the truth that loving and living are never without some sacrifice. Sacrifice is of life’s essence, even when it is painful and unexpected.


So, to save a human life, at what point do we say “No, I will not”?


Finally, being a truly loving person means we give from our hearts for the good of others. Sacrifice is the essential cost of loving and being loved, the true test of our character, a test which is never more blessed than when we love a child.


Thus do I speak for the child, as many others also do … as I wish every man and woman would do. I pray we would all speak … speak for the child ….


 

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6 October 2020



I  Speak  For  The  Child
Part  One  Of  Two



Let me pose a few questions for your consideration:

  • Who amongst us deserves to live?
  • How do we earn the right to live?
  • How do we justify our value, and to whom?  
  • What qualities of ours guarantee we deserve to exist?

 

  • Conversely, who deserves to be put to death?
  • What grave offenses have these disposables committed?
  • In what ways is our society improved by their being killed?

Some people act as if they possess definitive answers to these questions … as if they have dominion over the lives of countless others. They proceed accordingly to take the lives of children born and unborn.

Obviously, I do not refer to advocates of the death penalty for convicted felons. No, my wonderment centers on how certain people gratuitously grant unto themselves the “right” to condemn millions of innocent children to death by abortion?


Giving  Life


Consider these facts:  

At conception, the fusion of sperm and egg instantly creates a new human being who, thenceforward, goes through a remarkable journey of self-initiated change, of measurable, visible growth and astonishing physical development - all within her mother’s womb, where she is nurtured and protected until she comes forth to noisily announce her timely debut.

Think of it:  This little child spends months growing and preparing for birth, guided all the way by the genetic code bestowed upon her by her Creator.


Her bodily appearances change remarkably, fueled by her soul, i.e., the divinely-designed engine of her life’s energies. Her soul defines her as a specific person. Her body and mind follow, as her identity miraculously unfolds through a universal pattern which, in every person, is completely distinct yet reliably parallel.


She is conceived as one-of-a-kind: a human being and an individual person. She is one of us, yet she is solely and particularly herself.


From the sacred instant of her conception, this baby is a unique and developing human being, a life-long child of God, totally dependent now and for years to come. She is filled with as-yet-unknown potential and, in varying ways, she is ever-vulnerable … as, in truth, are we all.


And - if we do not interfere with this stunning process - she will be born as all babies are born; not as a tree nor a bird, but as a still-forming human being. Like us, she exists on a living continuum of self-initiated change. She moves and grows from conception onward, into the variety of stages and ages, physical alterations and inevitable ailments which characterize the endless mysteries of all human existence.


A  Lifetime  Of  Change


Abortion proponents object: “She does not look like us adults, so she is not human. Period.” But science and medical knowledge (and common sense) tell us that all human beings go through the same process of growth and change and development. Change is constant.

So, just as we have done - and continue to do all our lives - she also goes through various stages of growth, development and change, always human and, therefore, always to be revered.


For all of us, this encoded process begins instantly at conception and lasts a lifetime:


  • Her size and mobility gradually increase as her features and functions develop.
  • Each of her organs unfolds and assumes their rightful place on and within her body – as ultrasounds of her marvelous changes clearly shows us.
  • Her intelligence and talent blossom throughout her lifetime.
  • Her character and personality gradually shine forth and she soon laughs with us as she learns she is loved.

 

From that sacred instant of her conception, her individuality as a person is established, and her genetic commands are instantly at work. Time is on her side. The details of her unique identity will - as they always do - slowly emerge.


As we celebrate her exquisite, divinely-given presence amongst us, our obligation is clear. We (family, friends, community, nation) are here to assist her in her miraculous process of living and loving and learning.

We are not here to terminate her life nor to interfere with her life-long journey with God, her journey into goodness and kindness, into Life and Light.


If you doubt the self-initiating power of every newly conceived child to grow and develop according to her unique genetic make-up, then study the stunning evidence at this link:


https://www.justthefacts.org/get-the-facts/the-amazing-facts/

Language  Of  Deception


Given the abundant evidence of science and history, of millennia of life-affirming traditions, of wisdom and common sense, and (for some of us) the insights of Scripture and Revelation, then it is incredible that self-assured people choose to eliminate - to abort - an “unwanted” child (whatever that word can possibly mean in this context) before the infant is born – or when she lives.


Incredibly, many people these days also argue for the death penalty during the birth process … or even after the baby is born, with the perverse admonition to make the newborn child “comfortable” while she is left alone by medical “healers” until she finally dies … with the barbaric indifference of physicians and nurses.


The abortion community energetically enjoins these lethal procedures. They insist every woman (not mother) has “legal” right to put her child to death.


Their use of terms such as “freedom of choice” or “women’s health care” or other sanitized phrases and deceptively soothing language is meant to camouflage the fact that an innocent human being - a living child, a unique and defenseless person - is killed.


Abortion culture abounds in the language of “rights.” They cosmeticize the violent truth that they routinely eliminate innocent, defenseless, vulnerable children. The abortion community deliberately normalizes the unthinkable.


Denying  What  Is  Undeniable


To ease the weight of this grim truth, the pro-choice world has created its own medically-sterile, morally-cleansed vocabulary. For example, advocates for “women’s health” demand that every woman has the right to dispose of what they call the "fetus.” The individual child is no longer a child; it is merely a fetus.


The abortion culture insists that the “fetus” is not a child, not a person, not a human being -- like us. That “fetus” is an intrusive parasite, a clump of bothersome cells. The woman is no longer the mother of this disposable invader No, she has become its victim.


There is no longer a child within the mother. There is no mother. Scientific facts are dismissed, censored out. The natural language of loving motherhood is eliminated, as are all vestiges of empathy, good will and moral consideration.


This is a particularly dreadful manipulation of a woman’s heart and mind and nature … especially when she is naïve or immature, ignorant about her options, emotionally quite vulnerable, under great stress and fear, deeply confused, perhaps the victim of tragic events.

Once a newly-conceived child is sufficiently depersonalized into an intrusive, parasitic “fetus,” that “fetus” becomes unwanted material, a nuisance, a “thing.” And if disposal of that “thing” is encouraged, who is to say it’s wrong? In fact, there’s plenty of support from Planned Parenthood and NARAL urging women - mothers - to exercise “reproductive rights” by aborting.

Thus, abortion advocates disregard the child’s humanity and normalize the “right” of women to dispose of a “fetus” as they wish. In this way, organizations such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL facilitate the killing of millions of babies. As NARAL says on its website, it exists to promote abortion and “to protect and expand this fundamental human right.”

Abortion is, they say, a “fundamental human right….” It is a fundamental human right for a mother to take the life of her child.


A fundamental human right … so they insist.

Fundamental  Human  Rights  Of  The  Child ?


Given this deliberate strategy of child disposal, unsettling questions deeply trouble heart and soul … and compel us to ask: 


  • Does this child – a human being, already a unique individual, alive and developing within the body of her mother - does she have no fundamental human right to live?
  • Why should she be aborted? Tell me why?
  • From what source does any adult anywhere on this Earth derive the “authority” to destroy that child?

  • Explain to me how we have the “fundamental human right” to take the lives of the most innocent amongst us.
  • Explain to me how taking the life of any innocent child is a fundamental human right……... 

The abortion culture argues (often with vehemence) that we have an obligation - a moral obligation - to the child to protect her from bad outcomes in life. For babies who may find life difficult, abortion is really a merciful intervention. We protect her from illness or pain or bad parents … and so forth.


These concerned folk insist, for example, that social conditions in slums are not good for a child … or living conditions in jungle settings do not provide balanced, nutritious living … or diseases and lack of sanitation are threats to health … or the drug-abusing mother is not worthy to raise a child … or the father is absent … or what if the mother is just a teenager or a rape victim … or suppose the child will be a burden to the mother  … or suppose the child will be an inconvenience for the woman’s career …

The conclusion to all these “reasons” is this:  We adults cannot allow any child to be born under these conditions; it’s inhumane. Therefore, we really do the child a “favor” by aborting her. She is better off dead … so they believe.


The  Truth  Is  Still  True


The truth of abortion is always the same: adults kill innocent children – and our culture says, “OK by us…”  Whether we admit it or whether we avert our eyes, the truth of abortion is this: abortion kills innocent children … millions of them.


If this sounds harsh, look at the evidence! The overwhelming, ongoing evidence is truly harsh. The facts are truly harsh.


This calculated process of de-personalization seeks to eradicate the moral and physical bond - the loving maternal bond - between mother-and-child. The gravity of abortion is obscured benignly, discreetly … but with the intent to normalize killing the child, while alerting and offending no one with the grim truth.


The intent and result of this deceptive strategy perpetuate a colossal lie.


This dismissal of facts is, to be sure, utterly irrational, contrary to science, biology and genetics, wholly untenable in the face of medical evidence, antithetical to the received wisdom of human experience, a violation of the moral law and a grave distortion of our U. S. Constitution.


The truth is, of course, that the child’s life is entrusted to her mother by our Creator. The child’s life is linked to her mother’s own life in such a manner that nothing in Creation rivals the measure of dependency, intimacy and nurturance which exist between that developing human being and her mother.


So, when the facts of science, the evidence of medical research, the basics of religious belief, and the testimony of morality are rationally considered, abortion’s calculated downplay of a baby’s humanity is revealed as massive duplicity.


Thus do I speak for the child, as I know many others do --- as I wish every adult would also do.

 

*            *                 *                 *                 *


How has all this come about? In the next part, upcoming, we will discuss further questions about the role of abortion in the American story.


Thank you for reading these words and considering these thoughts. More to come….

 

 

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30 September 2020



How  Shall  We  Love  Our  Children ?



T’is a troubling world in which we live and move and have our being. Each blessed day, the sun rises to brighten Creation for us. Ofttimes, however, the challenges of the hour escalate beyond logic and comprehension … and life moves ever forward, bringing inevitable change.

Perhaps, in my elder years, I am too often swept up by the ardor of nostalgia. I still recall a time in America when our moral values united us as a nation. I recall an earlier time when violence was rare; a time when people spoke kindly to-and-about one another, and conversations were ever-respectful. Even gossip was whispered not idly nor with meanness of intent, but with empathy and the benefit of every doubt given.

Doors were seldom locked because everyone knew stealing was evil. We prayed before meals, even in restaurants. Our elected leaders spoke openly of God and gratefully acknowledged the Lord’s blessings upon our nation without ridicule or threats of law suits. We trusted the media to report, not create, news. Drugs were distributed only by prescription; physicians even made house calls.


Ah,  Yes … 


In those days, schools taught reading, writing and arithmetic; daily homework was the norm. School days began with the Pledge of Allegiance - one nation under God - honoring our Creator’s dominion over America as we attested to our patriotism. How many children today have even heard of that Pledge, I wonder, or believe in American exceptionalism?

Teachers were respected for their knowledge, not their political clout. Parents were quickly notified if a child was lazy or slovenly. Sex education was a parental duty; schools did not push explicit agendas and repugnant techniques into as-yet-unsullied third-grade minds.

Recalcitrant children were quickly disciplined. No coddling, no hand-wringing over bruised “feelings,” no accommodation for self-absorbed “snowflakes.” Children were expected to “grow up” and behave and do their duty …  period …….

The innocence of young minds was honored by everyone in the community. Adults were clear about the need for moral goodness and the boundaries of moral evil, so people did not hesitate to correct a neighbor’s child when “tough love” was called for.

If, perchance, a child did sass an adult, his parents would later be told … and they’d thank their neighbor for whumping their errant, smart-alecky youngster. The child thereby learned - the hard way - that respect for one another was the civilizing glue which united us as Americans and held our culture together.


Disciplined  Love


Adults had no illusions about the fact that the best way to love and educate children was not always pleasant. Respect between children and adults did not equate with equality of status; a child never used an adult’s first name with familiarity or flippancy.

Loving and educating a difficult child could be a tough proposition but adult authority was tangible even when voices were raised. Children were treated as children should be treated. Adults were mature enough to comprehend exactly what that meant, what example they must give, and what limits were needed to develop the immature child’s sense of decency, courtesy, civility and moral citizenship.

The fundamental principle was clear: “You are the child; I am the adult.”  Pleasant? Not always. Effective? Indeed so. Healthy and essential? Definitely … because Nature’s intent was obvious to everyone. And if a child’s “feelings” were hurt when he was corrected for his errant behavior … tough ….


Questions


It is a different world today; that’s obvious. Much has changed, of course … but have the basic needs of our children changed?

How, I wonder, can adults - especially parents – most effectively express our love to-and-for our children in our morally-hostile, child-unfriendly culture?


  • Do we exercise our parental authority promptly, prudently, firmly and consistently?
  • Do we coddle our children and avoid discipline because we might bruise their “feelings” or incur their dislike?
  • Do we make proper demands of them and explain to them the necessity of self-restraint, discipline and sacrifice?
  • What moral beliefs, attitudes and values are they learning from our words and actions?
  • Are we specific about the religious and moral virtues they must learn as they grow up?
  • In what ways have we made sacrifices to be better parents?
  • Beneath it all, do we laugh with them and tell them how much we love them and value them?

The  End  Game


Financial and economic pressures often obscure the fact that each person is born to be a moral agent, to know and choose what’s morally right, and to reject moral evil, even when it’s difficult. Our moral beliefs and behavior are famously called the “content of our character.”

For some people, life simply doesn’t always work out that way. Nevertheless, God does not grant us the gift of life so we may do avoidable harm to others. We always have a choice. Even when we miss the moral mark, we still have a choice.

Our maturity is defined by our choice to accept our responsibilities to God and to others, starting with family. But maturity and character do not come naturally. Every child must be taught to accept responsibility for his/her choices, behavior and consequences.

         The contrary principle is also true: Our un-willingness to act    responsibly and to be accountable for our behavior is the   surest sign of immaturity.

Learning to be a responsible, accountable person begins in the family. This is the essence of parenting. Parents are the child’s first teachers and most influential educators.


Bonding  Is  Learning


Exhaustive research in Psychology over decades affirms that the most significant factors in human development are the stability and the quality of early attachments children form with parents. Early attachments between parents and children have life-long impact on the what we believe and who we become - on the content of our character.

Safe, secure parental attachments are indispensable for psychological health and moral clarity -- and, sooner or later, for the stability of our culture. Every culture is a direct result of what people believe, value and allow.

By the same token, faulty or fractured attachments (e.g., angry, passive, emotionally distant or absent parents, to name a few) create adverse conditions for the child’s adaptability, coping skills, sound emotional development, and how the child “sees” and interprets the world. Even brain chemistry is affected.

For better or worse, then, parent-child attachments are central to our maturity, our personality formation and the content of our character.

But … everyone does grow up. Although age is not guarantee of maturity, the time does eventually come when every person is adjudged a moral agent, accountable for his own actions, held responsible for his choices and behavior.

At that point, even the “best” parent cannot take responsibility or blame for the child’s behavior. Sooner or later, we are all responsible moral agents, accountable for the consequences of our choices and our actions, even if maturity still eludes us.

At least, that’s the way it should be.


Practical  Steps


Given today’s culture of deep conflict, common sense tells us:


  • we must teach children objective moral standards by which to recognize the consequences of their actions;
  • we must teach them to respect moral restraints and sacrifice, and not satisfy their urges and feelings at the expense of others;
  • as religious faith declines in America, we must teach our children the value of religious principles and how to seek God’s will;
  • we must teach them that unjustified violence in word and action is true evil - there is no other word for it.

Parents must also recognize that the ongoing sexual exploitation of children is well established in our culture - and is advancing.

Even young children are exposed to sexually graphic images and explicit lyrics. If you doubt this, see the following article:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/09/the-next-frontier-in-the-sexual-revolution


Cultural  Wounds


The traditional family has been humankind’s fundamental moral and psychological anchor for countless centuries. BUT fully 40% of all children are now born “out of wedlock” to single-parent households, not to married couples nor stable families.

Many children are morally adrift at an early age because marriage and family life have been greatly weakened, In the last fifty years. No-fault divorce, contraceptives, open “marriage,” the aggressive feminist movement, live-in/uncommitted couples, removal of “husband” and ”wife” from marriage documents, gay “marriage,” easy abortions, the hook-up culture, the waning of religious influences, subsidies for single-parents, gang culture replacing family bonds, the proliferation of multi-gender choice, rejection of science and reason  – all have coalesced into the demise of traditional marriage of man-and-woman, and the loss of stable, two-parent family life.

Some people insist that these factors are desirable examples of personal “freedom.” But the undeniable outcome is that the traditional family has been severely undermined, parenthood increasingly dishonored, sacrifice, love and honor disparaged, the role of traditional parents demeaned, and the innocence of our children increasingly jeopardized.

Worst of all, our society now militantly kills unborn and being-born children -- and calls abortion a “civil right” or “health care” or “a woman’s right….” And the number of aborted children is staggering, as it increases every hour well into the millions …..


Now  What ?


Jefferson said that we become a moral nation only as “the result of habit and long training.” The truth is that America’s identity as a moral nation is determined by the forces for good – or for evil – which we continue to bring forth upon ourselves and our children.

History is never static; our world is ever-changing – or, to state it accurately, we are changing our world, our nation, our culture. We determine how we relate to one another as family and as neighbors. We choose the moral standards which our children learn.

So, at this perilous period in our history, as significant changes occur, what do you say to your children - no matter what their ages?

Finally, we are left with the fundamental question which common sense and moral sanity cannot avoid:  How shall we best love our children ….. and one another?

 

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9 September 2020



An Elder Ponders Beauty


We have all had moments of free-floating reverie - those brief, quiet, spontaneous, unexpected mind-spaces when our concentration meanders and we become as if in a trance.

This usually happens when we are doing routines which require nothing of us: brushing our teeth or leisurely watching a child at play or maybe taking a deep breath while we unpack groceries (or, in my case, idly petting my badly-spoiled cat, Pookie). This activity is so ordinary, so insignificant, so commonplace that we do it with absent-minded inattention.

But, unexpectedly, inexplicably, we are taken out of ourselves. Our mind drifts beyond the fleeting picadilloes of routine … and, in the next instant, we find ourselves mysteriously ushered to a level of interior tranquility, infused with (what I may call) a sense of ease and contemplation, an instance of calm insight in which our worries seem utterly unimportant, even alien, to the peace which now infuses us.

Then are we made aware of the underlying simplicity of our lives ….. and we are suddenly filled with a sense of awe and wonder,

  • possessed by a measure of gratitude for the gift of life;
  • awakened to simplicity and beauty all around us;
  • free of cluttering distractions and draining anxiety;
  • filled with a rare and reassuring peace.

Be  Still …  And  Know


At such times, we are brought effortlessly to a place of stillness in heart and mind; immersed with astonishing clarity into awareness of how precious is the gift of time, and how blessed we are to receive this wholly unexpected glimpse into our life’s value.

Then do we recognize that our existence is not a series of fleeting irrelevancies but, rather, a gift freely given, a gift we surely did not earn by any merit of our own.

Then are we made aware of the fragility which underpins our days; made aware of the exquisite complexity of the world in which we live; made aware of the incomprehensible patterns in the created universe, of which we are part.

Then are we made aware of the Mystery of Goodness and Order and Benevolence which sustains our life, enriches us and showers us with so many gifts unearned – gifts such as:

  • the gift of sight to behold creation’s marvels;
  • the gift of speech, that we may express our love for our Beloved and give thanks for the kindnesses of the day;
  • the gift of hearing, that we may listen to the breath of our Creator whispering to us through the leaves or rewarding us with the sound of children’s laughter;
  • the gift of tasting ice cream and relishing the textures of endless delights;
  • the gift of touching the face of our Beloved and the joy of being held in our Beloved’s enfolding embrace;
  • the irreplaceable gift of our child’s hands in ours.

Then do our souls and hearts and minds and emotions silently meld and journey effortlessly into the realm of time transcendent, leaving behind the demands of our practical, make-work world, as the anxieties and pain which we may bear fade gently away.


Beauty  Surrounds


Then, in this moment of surcease and wonderment, are we also made aware of Beauty all around us … and within us. We are drawn into an experience of inner peace and joy and solace, as we behold the presence of God’s inherent Beauty and His Goodness and Order and Benevolence which exist right in front of us, in the ordinary things of life all around us. We are immersed in the presence of Beauty, aware of the Order and Goodness and Benevolence of God … revealed to us in-and-through His Creation, which is everywhere around us – as is He.

Then are we made aware - and duly humbled to realize - that nothing in this life is irrelevant, not other human beings and certainly not ourselves; not the frustrations we face nor the countless array of life’s delights, nor the smallest sacrifice we make for others, nor the hesitant prayer we offer our Creator.

Then are we are made aware of life’s endless gifts … gifts we may ignore or deny or dismiss because we fail to see, fail to seek, fail to understand that to live is to be enfolded in God’s own Mystery. Mystery is clarity. Mystery is the revelation of His Benevolence, the language of His Goodness and Order … of His Personal Love for us.


The  Stillness  Of  Time


Then, in this moment of blessed reverie, we also recognize that every second of our lives is a precious opportunity to embrace the astonishing Mystery of it all, to embrace our Creator whose Benevolence sustains us.

And (if only for these few transcendent moments) our hearts are touched by a sense of God’s Divine Beauty. We are given an acute awareness that Goodness and Benevolence and Order are truly everywhere around us, even when hidden from our vision.

And we become aware that - were we to behold God in all His Goodness and Benevolence and Order as they truly exist - we would be blinded by The Light.

And then we are moved by the presence of Beauty and Goodness and Order to a state of deep gratitude to God for our dependence; moved to grateful, abiding thanks simply to be alive.


Beauty’s  Essence


The Divine Beauty which we may behold in heart and mind is not the beauty of visual coherence found in the decorous symmetry of fine art or impressive architecture. It is not the sonorous synchronicity of a Haydn concerto, nor does it captivate us with the relentless logic of a Bach toccata.

These forms of human beauty surely afford us revelations of goodness and order, since artistic excellence can be an avenue to moments of transcendence. But the touch of Divine Beauty of which I speak is an even more fundamental form of Beauty which does not depend on human creativity.

It is not of sensual origin; it is not sought nor granted merely to please the eye nor satisfy the palate. It does not involve our five senses, nor is it the fictive, piecemeal spirituality of the avid pantheist who deifies inanimate rocks and worships the odds-and-ends of Creation.

No, this form of Divine Beauty emanates from our Personal God. He is The Person who engages our heart and soul and gently exposes us to our utter dependence on Him as our Creator.

God’s Divine Beauty is a revelation which perforce moves us to awe and reverence and gratitude for the privilege of being alive. His Beauty is the first and final font of all that we call “beautiful.”

The power of such Beauty is beyond human art because it is not made by man or women. We discover Divine Beauty as it arises from our awareness of simply “being” alive. It is a revelation freely given, an insight, a gift of discerning grace by which Divine Beauty touches us; a gift for which we can claim no ownership; a gift by which our Creator upholds us and reassures us that we are loved and wanted, that our dignity as creatures is honored in the simple fact of our being.


The  First  Truth


If we are truly honest with ourselves, we will acknowledge that this benevolent “touch” of Divine Beauty is a deeply humbling experience. Why?

Because that “touch” grants us a certainty-of-soul about the simple grandeur of being alive. The “touch” of Divine Beauty deepens our comprehension of the role and primacy - the radical necessity - of Goodness and Order in our lives, and reminds us that our status as created beings is a gift of Benevolence beyond our own merit.

This revelation of Divine Beauty and Goodness and Order also reminds us that we are created beings, endowed with a profound (and, hopefully, loving) debt to our Creator. Thus, we are obligated by boundaries and restraints which are proper to our created nature. For some of us, this is a bothersome truth. But there’s more: we are also obliged to honor other people who share life with us. This truth can - for many who doubt and deny God’s primacy - be even more aggravating and confining.

Nonetheless, Benevolence - wishing others well - is the model we are to follow, the God-given model by which we are ourselves sustained.


Life’s  Puzzling  Essence


Let me propose an analogy to enlighten my point.

Our apprehension of Divine Beauty and Goodness and Order of which I speak is akin to our looking at a very large, intact jigsaw puzzle. We see its final pattern. We see its “aha.” We see its intended completion, its essential rationale, its complex patterns, its inherent beauty, its disjointed parts united by the finality of its internal order.

The puzzle’s final reveal gives us clear insight into its form and shape and purpose as a puzzle. We see the whole picture; we get it. Now the puzzle makes sense to us, even as its pieces frustrate our need for mastery, defy our intelligence and test our resolve.

Now, if you tell me to dis-assemble the puzzle into its many separate pieces (i.e., into life’s constituent parts, into days and nights, years and decades, joys and sorrows) and you tell me to connect each piece and complete the puzzle, I’ll need time and patience (yours and mine) to get there with you … just as we are now doing.

But as we struggle to see it through, we do have a sense of its fullness, a sense of its intended final form, of where it’s designed to go and what it’s supposed to look like. It does make sense to us, even though some of the pieces are confounding and frustrating as we work at it attentively.


Our  Life  Follows


And so it is with the touch of Divine Beauty and our relationship with our Creator as we work at life attentively … in Faith and Hope and the cost of Benevolence, rising time after time from losses great and small, trusting in God’s Goodness and Order to see us through.

We are given the gift of seeing the Big Picture. We see the point of our lives, the point of loving and giving ourselves to others, of frustration and pain and disappointment along the way, of bewilderment and loss, of successes and achievements which ease us along. Beyond each challenging piece of our puzzle, our life does indeed make sense to us -- and we know it.

We may doubt ourselves, but we need never doubt Divine Beauty Who truly is the Goodness and the Order we seek in life … Who faithfully sustains us in His unwavering Benevolence.

We now know the purpose and goal of life’s disjointed pieces, the end-point which rests beneath our frustrations. We know the value of solace, the necessity of trust and fidelity, the joy of love given-and-received. And once we realize that these pieces of life do indeed fit together, life’s Mystery and God’s Divine Beauty are - ever more clearly, ever more endearingly - benevolent gifts beyond measure.

The Mystery reveals to us the sure and certain hope, the encouragement to keep our intentions focused, our minds clear about our purpose, our hearts resistant to despair and our souls stronger than doubt.

It is this revelation of the ultimate meaning and desired end of our being, the revelation of Benevolence, which sets our lives aright especially with other people who share Creation with us.


Finally . . .


This is the message of Divine Beauty – the point of our Creator’s revelation to us. Goodness and Order (which are of the essence of Benevolent Love) await us, not only at some future date … but right now, every instant of our lives … if we will but answer His unending, munificent call.

And … for those who wonder where we begin, a humble “Yes” to these gifts of Benevolence and Goodness and Order - a generous ”Yes” to God’s Loving Mystery - is a very fine start.

 

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1 September 2020



Our Deepest Need


Intimacy. True intimacy ….. Above any other human experience, our souls yearn for a relationship based on enduring intimacy.

BUT …..  that relationship must afford us true intimacy. And true intimacy is not found in the chatty sharing of confidential secrets whispered over a glass of wine … nor in the gossipy work tidbits exchanged with colleagues … nor in regrettable episodes of unguarded emotions occasioned by bouts of shallow affection or moments of casual lust.

True intimacy is composite of hard-earned virtues – i.e., personal attributes and behavioral traits found only in a relationship of singular candor, quality and endurance. Intimacy of this depth and stability embraces mutual benevolence, which emerges only slowly, as we overcome and discard our needless defense mechanisms and accept the responsibilities of adulthood. It’s what we mean by moral character and psychological maturity.

As the relationship deepens beyond mere attraction, we realize that our defenses are increasingly unnecessary until, finally, we recognize they have become actual barriers to intimacy, obstacles to that state of fearless vulnerability which real love provides. And in time, that relationship becomes a state of soul which is rare in this life; a state of life achieved when we know (our faith in the other reveals this to us) that rejection, betrayal and infidelity are now out of the question.


Hope  And  Purpose


This relationship of true intimacy is the end-point of hope, the heart’s deepest yearning, the created soul’s raison d’etre. But what’s the price? What’s involved in attaining and sustaining such a relationship? The following qualities apply . . . for starters:


  1. Trust comes first. Trust is the first requirement: we cannot possibly love anyone whom we do not trust. But this kind of trust is a two-way reality which proves itself, over years, to be unshakeable, inviolate and steadfast. It is not the hopeful but ever-apprehensive craving of an emotionally needy child, nor the brittle, cosmetic “trust” which must be verified.

  2. True intimacy requires mutually selfless generosity and authentic benevolence. Benevolence is not merely good wishes or social accommodation. It is a commitment to the best interests of the other person without reservation or hesitation. It is the generous, self-sacrificing love: “agape,” the highest form of love which theologians describe as the essence of the Christian experience.
  3.  

    It is deliberate generosity … giving of oneself for the benefit of the other person with unquenchable altruism, whilst quieting the demands of one’s own selfishness and the cravings of one’s needs and urges. This is not feudal servility nor thankless subservience, nor grudging acquiescence to overbearing whims of another. Nor is it a matter of acquiring power of one over the other. It is a choice - a conscious, mutual choice - to honor the Beloved with consistency and predictability, no matter what. 


  4. True intimacy also necessitates humility. But the idea of humility rubs many people the wrong way. Why? Because most people misunderstand what humility really is.
  5.  

    Humility is not humiliation or self-degradation. Humility actually means accepting the truth about ourselves with thoughtful calm and no pretense. It means maintaining self-respect and not denying our achievements, but it also means admitting our status as creatures - warts and all – without deception, denial or evasion.

    Humility means we have our feet on the ground and our heads rooted in reality, in the truths of our created nature, especially in the facts of our own lives. We are not intent on impressing others nor are we dedicated to publicizing our own superiority.


    In short, we come to know ourselves and realize the truth about who we are and what we are. We are aware of our strengths and our failings, aware that we are as capable of certain error as anyone. We do not hide from reality and we do not build our defenses nor live in denial nor pursue, with childish uncertainty, the hundred paths of self-deception.


    We are open to the observations of others as they see us. It is true that the judgment of others is often emotionally painful and risky to the ego. The ego is a tenaciously insistent force. It’s our inner engine of willful egocentrism, always churning and chugging. It never ceases to elevate our tinseled self-worth and it adorns our self-image with dogged resolve, sometimes to a highly unrealistic and excessive degree.


    Left unattended, our insistent ego will have its churlish way, often at significant cost to others or in a zero-sum context (which means I make sure I win, but at your expense).


    Humility also reminds us - when all is said and done – that nobody can, or will, trust a person whose ego is unrestrained and who is, thus, emotionally immature and hardly worthy of one’s trust?


    The  Grounded  Soul


    There are times when our ego is exposed and our defenses don’t work. We are psychologically vulnerable and deeply wounded. That’s why we develop an arsenal of defenses and avoidance techniques and denial strategies and protective devices. We learn to buffer our emotions and guard our hearts from the truth of how we are seen by others. In fact, many of us create a false, fictitious persona - a theatrical mask - behind which we crouch for cover, sometimes for decades.

    After we settle into this persona, it’s difficult for many of us to admit to ourselves that we really do have faults and failings. It becomes difficult to admit to ourselves who we really are. And in some lives, the processes of pretense, self-deception and alienation become second nature.

    Humility asks us to look into that personal mirror, to see beyond that distorted inner vision which has been darkened by ego’s restless vigilance. Humility peers with honesty and courage into the self - from whom we may have become estranged - so that we may be united within ourselves.

    Even our secular successes and our festooned facades of self-adulation cannot protect us from the vagaries of time and the inevitable revelations of character which aging often reveals.

    Relationships built on true intimacy see beyond subterfuge and reconcile all that is needlessly hidden with all that is hoped for. It is in our struggle to attain true intimacy that we find the beginnings of wisdom and enduring peace, which inspire us to halt our needless flight from self.

    All of this, of course, may not be true of each one of us. No, it is always possible, I suppose, that some of us are exceptions to the uncertainties of our humanity. We may consider ourselves filled with clarity of heart, a’brim with wisdom of soul which humility imparts. If so, then one question must be asked (with kindly intent, to be sure): How did we ever do it?


    Fear  And  Reconciliation


    Intimacy. True intimacy….. We all desire such a relationship. In fact, we all have a profound need for - and yet a deep fear of - a relationship in which intimacy is the paramount experience.

    Fear? Yes, Fear.

    We fear intimacy, just as we yearn for it. We long for the emotional safety and solace of a truly intimate relationship, yet we dread the price we must pay for it … and the deeply unsettling prospect that we may err or, worse, be found out and rejected - even as we seek to become vulnerable.

    We soon learn how difficult it is to find anyone with whom we may find true - and lasting - intimacy. The price is sometimes too high for troubled souls who, because of fear or pain or loss of control, spend a lifetime protecting themselves from the challenge of true intimacy. As a result, they miss the sublime possibility of finding ... and being found by … the Beloved.

    And when we finally recognize that, yes, we, too, wish to be loved and embraced solely for who we are, the first fear we encounter is … the fear of ourselves, of our appetites, of our uncertainties and how far away seems our desire to possess all that we yearn for.


    Universal  Uncertainty


    We face our fear of loneliness and abandonment, our fear of isolation and rejection, of judgment and exclusion. We wish for that relationship of love and acceptance, of embrace and solace, of understanding and forgiveness … yet we fear we shall never find that union of profound intimacy in which life becomes a quietly jubilant, everlasting moment of peace and surcease and acceptance. We fear we shall never find our Beloved who will say to us, “You I love … it is you I shall always love.”

    Finding our Beloved and being accepted by our Beloved is the consummate experience of intimacy in life. It is called love, true love, the transcendent relationship which is a human absolute, the experience “which ennobles and delights our life.”

    Our hearts and souls yearn for the kind of intimacy which only a unique personal relationship can offer; that special relationship of profound intimacy in which we are understood by the Beloved and can then, fearlessly, be ourselves.

    Whatever we seek, whatever we hunger for in life, whatever our heart and soul yearn for, true intimacy with our Beloved is at the core of it all.


    Need  And  Want


    Trust, generosity, benevolence, humility – these are the seeds which blossom into true, mutual intimacy and its inevitable offspring, love. The next question which arises is how best to demonstrate that love.

    Intimacy and love are needs which we cannot extinguish; needs which many of us pursue, even as we thwart our pursuit. In fact, many of us frustrate our own best interests by confusing our true needs with our ephemeral “wants.” Many of us spend years and much effort chasing after “wants” in life, seeking avidly what we do not truly need, coveting what others may hold, immune to the folly of our rootless pursuits, “featured (as Shakespeare says) like him, like him with friends possessed, desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, with what I most enjoy, contented least…” 

    The passing of our years eventually brings us to the realization that our deepest yearnings do truly make sense; that our “wants” will fade … but our true needs will remain.

    Still, doubters amongst us will continue to deny that much of what they pursue returns small reward to the unloving soul. Too often in this life do we witness the jaded indifference and dismissive derision of disappointed cynics who never learns to ”sing hymns at heaven’s gate.”

    The longer we pursue the distractions of ego’s errant “wants,” the longer it takes to recognize and embrace true needs which our hearts and souls are born to pursue. The longer it takes for us to see and to be seen, to find and to be found, to love and to be loved by that Beloved person who is, like us, waiting.


    Finally . . .


    A long time ago, St. Augustine uttered, with enviable simplicity, a truth which is still - and always - available to all of us when he reminds us that “our hearts are made for you, O God, and we shall not rest until we rest in You…”

    Whomever we seek, Whomever we hunger for in life and in death, Whomever our hearts desire and our souls yearn for, the need for true intimacy with our Beloved is at the root of it all.

    For many of us, hope sustains us through the wonderment and uncertainty of creation and the anxious ambiguities of life. Hope gives us patience. Hope nourishes faith and quickens our striving for quiet virtue, so we may become and remain a loving person for others and be worthy of intimacy with the Beloved.

     

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    16 August 2020



    America  In  Search  Of  It’s  Self


    The history of America is a chronicle of our unfolding beliefs about human nature and our uneven moral struggle to attain liberty and justice for all.

    We have had many worthy movements and moral leaders … and we have also undergone periods of regress and moral conflict. Yet we persevere in our struggle to discover the brighter lights of moral truth.

    Certainly we have much to learn about respecting human dignity. For example, we are still resistant to embrace the meaning of “person-hood” and respect the sanctity of human life at every stage of our existence.

    Yet we persevere…. Americans continue to seek the “better angels of our nature.” Yes, we are ofttimes slow learners, especially when managing true freedom, which always demands self-sacrifice and a generous spirit. Yet we do persevere….

    Our nation’s stability has - at least up to now - been sustained by Constitutional principles (e.g., the restraints and freedoms in our Bill of Rights) and the influence of Christian principles, which are regularly enlivened by exceptional leaders with whom our nation is sometimes blessed.

    But today, these Constitutional principles and Christian traditions are increasingly denigrated and the foundations of American identity are under attack. Innocent citizens are assaulted, even murdered. Countless businesses are destroyed, but, incredibly, lawbreakers are celebrated, extremists walk free, deluded officials blithely weaken law enforcement and corporate leaders fund organizations which openly seek to destroy our nation.

    The ascendance of aggressive revolution in America is upon us. Evidence is found not only in the wreckage of our cities but also in the moral and legal collapse we see around the country.


    Ideology  Of  Conflict


    Since the non-violent days of Martin Luther King in the1960s, a variety of militant causes have arisen. Some are morally just and humanely persuasive. Others are violently opposed to America’s ideals and employ ruthless tactics of Marxist ideology to further the destruction of our nation.

    We must distinguish between 1) peaceful demonstrators whose cause is moral, just and beneficial, and 2) those individuals and groups who verbally insult and violently attack American identity, customs, history, tradition, businesses and public property.

    Violent individuals and groups are united in their hostility to Constitutional restraints, their inflammatory rhetoric and their disregard for the rights of others. Their aggression springs from duplicitous arrogance. They substitute “feelings” for logic, groupthink for conscience and irrationality for critical thinking.

    Some go so far as to condemn “toxic masculinity” and berate men for being men - especially white men, who are the progenitors of “white supremacy.” Black Lives Matter seeks the end of traditional family and “the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”


    Reality  Check:  Change  And  Freedom


    Social change in pursuit of “human rights” can either be 1) stable and beneficial or 2) chaotic and rebellious.

    The crucial difference between these two rests with the vision of human nature which inspires those who seek change. The beliefs we hold about human nature determine the moral and legal responsibilities and “human rights” which social change pursues and governments enforce.

    Let’s be clear about what “human rights” allows.

    Free societies are not defined by unrestrained freedoms and unrestricted “human rights.” In fact, without restraints which are both voluntary and legally enforceable when necessary, freedom is always stretched to excess. When that happens, “rights” become unilateral weapons, tools of tyrannical governance.

    Stable, healthy social change occurs only with the test of time, the critical gaze of history, wise leaders (intelligence is not enough), adherence to just laws and lengthy attention to due process. Healthy change is not achieved by violence or cynical demands for immediate results.

    Individuals and nations are not - and cannot be - entirely free from realistic restraints and moral limits, from laws which are just and regulations which are humane.

    True freedom (and human nature itself) always requires restraints. It is folly to say we have a “human right” to do whatever we want. Legitimate human rights are never without reasonable moral and legal restraints in both the social world and in the divine economy.

    Truly free societies and truly free individuals are governed by just laws which further the best interests of the “common good.” The “common good” is, before all else, a moral reality. But …

    … the “common good” - rightly understood - does not always equate with majority preference, statutory precedent or political expedience. This is especially true when moral suasion is silenced by hostile, morally empty ideologies.


    Freedom  And  Restraint


    Just laws are not always convenient. That’s why freedom means the absence of undue coercion, so that people are free to do what they should do in the first place; free to do what law and conscience require of them.

    It’s often inconvenient and difficult to be truly free - free to do what you are supposed to do, especially when you are alone, with no one watching over your shoulder.

    Human laws - when they’re fair and just - are (as our Declaration of Independence states) extensions of divine law which regulates all of Creation, including us. Try as we might, we cannot take credit for (nor rationally deny the existence of) Creation … nor can we escape our role in it.

    That‘s one (of many) reasons why the separation of church and state does not mean the separation of church from state. We need more than ourselves for inspiration to virtue and fidelity.

    Our Founders knew this. They acknowledged our dependence on God as central to our nation’s identity and to the nature of true freedom. They spoke of virtue as essential to our government.

    What’s more, history and experience teach us that the virtues of Justice and Prudence, Self-Restraint and Fortitude – keys to practical Wisdom – are not innate to human nature.

    Thus, just laws and regulations – divine and human, moral and legal – should influence all that we do as individuals and all that we are as a nation.


    The  Post - Modern  Eruption


    Today, America wrestles with the demands of the “post-modern” generation, i.e., groups and individuals who are intolerant of laws and limits, restraints and regulations which the individual does not devise and control.

    Let’s look briefly at the post-modern world view.

    “Post-modernism” is the historian’s umbrella phrase describing today’s arrogant, brooding sub-culture which rebels against laws, truths and values (including civility and good manners) which society enshrines and honors.

    Post-modernism is characterized by moral and legal relativism and the rejection of authority other than the self. Post-modernists marshal specious arguments to validate their exercise of radical individualism. They dismiss objective norms and believe morality and law have no meaning other than what I decide for myself.

    They ignore history and believe humanity has devised a realm of its own making; the world is no longer the realm of our Creator. Tradition is passé and language has no fixed meaning or basis in common usage. Truth is what each person says it is, so cultural traditions are of no use to post-modernists who re-create society on their own terms.

    They bristle at restraints of reason, law, logic, accountability and delayed gratification. They believe feelings and urges justify behavior which must be unhampered even by traditional family values and Christian ideals. They believe no moral code nor canon of civic virtue, no religious teaching nor legal sanction should stand between impulse and action, no matter how verbally uncivil or physically destructive their actions may be.

    In effect, they usurp the role of God and clothe themselves in the raiment of creators of their own cosmos.

    Among today’s most vigorous post-modern practitioners are the “Woke Generation,” relentless critics of America who inhabit the “Cancel Culture.”


    Behold  Our  “Woke”  Citizenry


    Until recently, the word “woke” meant not being asleep. If I said, “I woke early” this used to mean I did not sleep late. Simple, right?

    Nope. These days, the word “woke” is one of the loaded trigger-words in the censorious lexicon of “social justice warriors.”

    “Woke” now serves as the dividing line between self-righteous, virtue-signaling, in-the-know elites and 2) insensitive, racist, homophobic, trans-phobic, misogynistic, non-inclusive, intersectionally-ignorant, hetero-normative, two-sex-oriented, micro-aggressive white supremacists.

    The “woke” folks are politically-correct arbiters of judgmental non-judgmentalism, facile lexicologists of Marxist Critical Theory who find nothing of merit in the American Experience and function as militant, self-appointed critics of lesser folk.

    As we study events of our day, it becomes evident that many “woke” pretenders are histrionic misfits whose sole talent is inflicting ruination and chaos. Whether they’re in education or religion, business or civic life, they act with infantile impulsivity, often under the guise of intellectual sophistication.

    Their immaturity, naïveté and lack of common sense renders them empathically empty, useful as pawns, but little else.


    Hard  Core  Folks


    On the other hand, the hard-core “woke” disciples are the True Believers, aggressive ideologues who pursue violent overthrow of our country. They invoke a litany of abuses about race, gender and identity, inclusion and diversity and such. They can instantly sniff out bunches of victimizing “non-woke” racists, sexists, haters, homophobes and white supremacists.

    These “woke” militants gain public favor (and corporate dollars) by seeming to befriend a “victimized” minority, then creating noble slogans to solidify their claim to moral superiority. They use a mixture of guilt, shame and subtle sentimentality to subdue resistance and wheedle individuals and businesses into weak-willed acquiescence.

    A recent strategy is to condemn “whiteness.” White people are racists by birth. America is inherently evil because it was founded by white supremacists, intent on enslaving indigenous peoples. So, some “social justice warriors” push for reparations for non-slaves from white non-slave owners. Leaders of Chicago’s Black Lives Matter even claim that recent raids on department stores are justified as “acts of racial reparation.” Go figure…….

    Other “woke” folk want an end to teaching history in schools because it is “too racist.” Some “woke” folks indict the film “Kindergarten Cop” because “…cops transform schools, and in an extremely detrimental way...” The foolishness has no end,,,


    But  Enough !!


    America has problems, no surprise there. Solutions are a constant challenge, and that’s what history conveys to us - what works and what doesn’t. But the moral emptiness and ponderous irrationality of “woke-ness” and “cancel culture” are wearying and tedious. So here are a few observations to wrap this up.

    1. Before all other considerations, human behavior and choice are moral responsibilities. Relationships involve communication and consequences, motives, responsibilities, a search for maturity, wisdom, civility and the common good, all of which coalesce in virtues such as Charity and Justice.

    2. Moral norms apply to all of us and are not decided by each person for himself. Our moral obligations to one another are not determined by individual whim or fluctuating feelings.

    3. Vincible ignorance (the kind we can overcome) and physical and psychological pain lessen accountability for our behavior. However, they do not negate or invalidate objective moral standards. Morality requires objective standards of right-and-wrong which come to us from God and bind every one of us.

    4. We exist in a zone of choice between the Ideal and the Real. It is our calling to balance our real urges with moral ideals such as  goodness, kindness, empathy and altruism. That’s what an educated - a rightly educated - conscience is for.

    5. Despite our moral inadequacy and our often-brutal failures to acknowledge each other’s innate dignity, Americans have created a nation which (so far) outpaces every other nation in its historic striving for equality, freedom, justice and goodness. The question is, how long can we sustain this America?

    6. The duplicity and violence of “social justice warriors” now threatens the stability of America at its foundations. The evidence from history and from their own sources is simply too obvious to ignore and too fractious to deny.

    7. This danger is magnified by the naivete of rebellious “woke” persons and their cohorts who - knowingly or not - abet the growth of anti-American energies.

    8. The true motives of any other person’s behavior are always difficult to accurately ascertain or correctly attribute. But sometimes human behavior is so consistent and obvious that a person’s true motives are unmistakably evident.

    9. With this in mind, it is apparent that today’s hard-core “woke” disciples are moved by rage, not by measured, justifiable anger, which can sometimes be an appropriate response to outrage. Their pathology hurts countless innocent people and deepens the lawless spirit which tramps upon our land.

    10. Therefore, the duplicitous claim of many demonstrators that they stand for “human rights” serves only as veneer for self-serving violence unrelated to any worthy cause.

    In Christian terms, such willful violence is unquestionably sinful and deeply immoral. Sadly, such terms– sin and morality and the responsible behavior they demand of us all -- have faded from America’s discourse. And, with their demise, our conscience as a nation and as individuals has also been denied the essential realization that morality and respect for human dignity are the heart and soul of our lives, both as persons and as citizens.

    Finally, we must wonder (as this following brief video tell us) that as we remove religion from public life and dissolve the moral authority of traditional family life, what institutions remain which instill in our young the absolutely essential moral lessons underpinning democracy and personal decency?

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/YjntXYDPw44

     

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    31 July 2020


    Another  Man  Died  For  Me:
    In  Praise  Of  America


    Many years ago, July 12, 1953, a schoolmate of mine was killed during the Korean War while on combat patrol in enemy territory. He was twenty-one years old.

    His name was Private First-Class James Francis Morrison. He was a proud United States Marine – Company G, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. Jimmy never became a loving husband nor a proud father; he died too soon. Now, many years after his death, a photo of his smiling face is still daily before me.


    The  Warrior’s  Dignity


    Jimmy was a front-line Marine, one of those brave persons who do the dirty, dangerous work which is absolutely essential for the protection of Americans from our enemies, both foreign and domestic. Jimmy went willingly into combat against atheistic Communism and Marxist Socialism, ideologies which have killed millions of people, including Jimmy Morrison.

    Jimmy came from a family of limited means. His mother worked each day in a tedious, wearying job. Jimmy lived with his mother and his Irish grandmother in a tiny, low-ceilinged home no larger than a garage. Jimmy’s father was never mentioned.

    Jimmy died in a war which, to this day, is un-won; the Korean War is technically still active, a sad and lingering shadow in American history. The Korean War is but one of many chapters in our nation’s constant struggle as a free people to protect and defend the freedom of other human beings, even at the cost of our own children. It is America’s belief in freedom which still defines our nation to this moment and gives extra dignity to persons such a Jimmy Morrison, who lived - and died - protecting us all.


    Freedom’s   Dilemmas


    America is not a perfect Eden. We are not a nation of faultless persons who do no wrong. No nation - nor person - is perfect. In fact, our sins and imperfections are part of our being. We are all sinners, even those who deny sin exists. Propensity to sin is of our nature, as is the search for, and the promise of, redemption.

    Our good intentions do not erase the imperfections which plague us … and always will. We create racism and conflict, not because we are systemic racists but because we are morally weak humans who have yet to comprehend the potential beauty and goodness to which our humanity is called.

    Yes, we often fail in our relationships and ofttimes treat one another badly. Yes, we are capable of dishonesty, incivility, and a variety of harms which o’erflow our thoughtless ego-centrism.

    Clearly, then, the results of our deliberate sins and avoidable failings plague our nation. But we do know better and we are capable of wonderous goodness, persistence in virtue and a generous heart in our search for moral clarity and justice under law – the “better angels of our nature.”

    From our founding, America (more than any nation in history) has sought remedies for our imperfections and solutions to our conflicts by the rule of law and the principles of our Constitution.

    We pursue equal justice under law and redemption of our national character. This is who we strive to be. This is what our country stands for, even today, as we again endure the painful costs of our grand and Godly aspirations.


    Our  Wake-Up  Call


    Some amongst us have now come to despise the freedoms, responsibilities and rights for which Jimmy Morrison died.

    Some amongst do not respect the reservations of the moral life or the ideals of our Judeo-Christian heritage.

    Some amongst us hate our nation, even as they exploit our tolerance to destroy us.

    And some amongst us seek the annihilation of our America as we have known it. They disregard the dictates of Right Reason. They betray our good will and disdain the limits of conscience. They sully the moral traditions which are the foundation of our rule of law … traditions which dignify persons like Jimmy Morrison and make them worthy of memory and tribute.


    The  Dilemma  Of  Our  Moral  Vision


    Jimmy’s death has always been to me a particularly poignant sacrifice. Jimmy died so young, defending all of us against an enemy whose hateful vision is, to this day, profoundly antithetical to the moral and legal freedoms of America.

    Americans are heirs of the Western heritage of equality, law and fair play. The history of our Western moral traditions is lengthy and discerning.

    • We embrace patience and mutual camaraderie.
    • We seek a level playing field.
    • We value the Christian ideal of forgiveness with amendment.
    • We struggle to avoid deliberate lies and overt deception and blatant treachery, and we tell ourselves that most people are – or could be – good persons.
    • But we can also be naïve and slow to recognize the disturbing fact that inhumane evil exists in our nation.
    • And often – perhaps too often – we excuse arrogance and prejudice and their deceptive facades, even in our own lives when we are huffy and defensive rather than humbly receptive, abrasive and demanding rather than grateful and genuinely civil.

    Violence is brutally before us today. We cannot avoid the corrosive displays of hostility, arrogance and soul-curdling hatred for America which ascends against us.

    We are foolish to deny the duplicity of today’s moral anarchists (and their allies in governance, education and media) who destroy our cities with regularity and impunity.

    For survival’s sake, we cannot deny our responsibility to face the moral excesses - the evils of violence and irresponsibility - which threaten our nation … and us.

    Our naïveté has been breached. We must look unblinkingly at the moral excesses - the deceptions and treachery and exploitive abuses of law - which some amongst us inflict upon us. It is time that we invoke the arsenal of the Church Militant.


    Sacrifice  Remembered


    I am moved every day by the memory of Jimmy’s generous death, but I am much troubled that many people know nothing of the ideals for which Jimmy Morrison gave his very existence.

    Many people know nothing of the sacrifices made by patriots like Jimmy to protect and preserve our freedoms, our true freedoms, not the counterfeit excesses many Americans now thoughtlessly embrace as they seek the overthrow of the rule of law.

    I am stunned that so many of our so-called “leaders” seek to replace our freedoms with the false gods of socialist ideology.

    I am stunned that many Americans are utterly ignorant of the evidence that socialism brings cultural decay and moral death.

    I am stunned by the blatant irresponsibility (is it hypocrisy or ignorance or flabby backbone?) of so many elected officials who eliminate police protection for the very citizens they are pledged to protect and for the businesses which sustain their cities.  

    I am again stunned and angered when certain legislators seek to disable our armed forces when overtly hostile nations are uniting against America in so many different ways.  

    I am more and more concerned for America, as we struggle to preserve all that makes our nation such an extraordinary reality.

    Each day, as I study Jimmy’s smiling face, I am moved to wonder how long our nation will be able to remain a place which the world has admired and has, for centuries, sought as a safe refuge?

    And I am saddened to admit that my country (of which I am a proud elder citizen) is a vastly different nation than the America for which Jimmy Morrison gave his life at such a young age.

    How long, I wonder, will our America remain (despite our weaknesses) the finest model of responsibility and rights and human freedoms and respect for law which mankind has yet devised? How long?


    Freedom’s  True  Meaning


    Our nation was founded by people who sought - as we do - the freedom to live as we determine. BUT our Founders realized - as we must - that true freedom means living within boundaries of laws made, first and foremost, by God, then encoded in Justice by the wisest amongst us.

    • True freedom does not - does not - mean we are free to do as we wish, even if we mistakenly claim no one is harmed. Even when we are alone, we are never separated from our Creator, nor from His stated expectations for each one of us. In sum, we are not free to do as we please.
    • True freedom is always a delicate balance between our responsibilities and, only then, our limited rights.
    • True freedom means we are able to fulfill our responsibilities without the coercion or interference of an outside agency.
    • True freedom means responsibility, not license. Freedom is not, as some people say, unlimited or wide open.  
    • That’s why true freedom is a quality of soul, a condition granted to us as creatures of God. It is not merely arbitrary permission from a secular agency, such as the “freedom” to vote or drive or own a home.

    Freedom  Requires  Law


    Our human inclination to self-deception and egotism is universal. We need divine remedies and moral boundaries, guidelines and sanctions, as well as civil laws, rules and regulations which apply for the common good of all.

    That’s why we have both divine law and human law – to define for us those responsibilities we must accept before we exercise our limited rights.

    Without our individual and collective attention to law - both divine and human law - we are adrift as persons and as nations, as our Founders well stated.

    Without struggling to be moral persons who honor the natural law of God and the human law of society, we create chaos.

    Many Americans today forget - or deny - that we are moral beings who are subject to God’s plan. We are also dependent beings, born to be guided by the moral laws and limits of our created human nature.

    So, before all else, we are moral creatures in search of God. Our moral nature gives us 1) our ability to build relationships by which we relate to God and to one another; and, 2) our underlying need to properly revere God, ourselves and our neighbor.

    At the very core of our humanity are the moral laws which bind us to our Creator God, and then to one another. When we forget or ignore this First Principle of human existence, trouble and chaos inevitably ensue, as we see around us today.


    Finally . . .


    The extraordinary Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote and spoke passionately and often about the absolute necessity of a moral society, governed by moral leaders, populated by moral citizens. His words echo the same message of America’s Founding Fathers and their insistence on morality as the basis of life.

    Solzhenitsyn also worried about the failure of democracy, particularly the “democracy of small spaces,” i.e., a nation’s regard for morality at the local level where, today, statues are toppled, churches burned, businesses looted, critics silenced and people murdered in our streets.

    At the time of his death, Solzhenitsyn was writing about human estrangement from the spiritual patrimony that bequeaths to mankind our faith in God, a faith which, in practice, illuminates and inspires “traditions of home and business life.”

    Some cynics will say this “spiritual patrimony” of which Solzhenitsyn speaks is a fiction; that even our prayers are a waste of time, are acts of hypocrisy or are simply a fool’s mutterings.

    I would tell such a benighted person that

    • prayer is my/our way of turning back to our Creator.
    • prayer is my/our way of paying my respects to our Creator and - more to the point
    • prayer is my/our way of keeping hold of the precarious, but most precious, gift of all, the gift of my own life … and soul.

    Prayer, I would tell the skeptic, is my way to re-focus myself on the fact that my life (and yours and his and all life) is such a marvelous, mysterious and complex reality that only my Faith in my Creator and my gratitude to my Creator can put my life in proper light, even as we are all enfolded each instant in mystery abounding.

    I’d also tell the doubter that I believe God listens to our prayers in His mysterious way. I would tell the doubter that I believe God is kind and loving to Jimmy Morrison and to all those patriots - those men and women of immeasurable courage - who give their lives with overwhelming generosity, so that you and I may live in the freedom which brings us ever-closer to our Creator … even as we strive to comprehend the exceptionalism of America’s existence.

    And, in my heart of hearts, I know my friend Jimmy understands exactly what I mean …  and smiles.

     

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    21 July 2020


    Prejudice, Violence And Our Precarious Future


    Violence recurs regularly throughout America, nourished by the abounding irrationalities and voracious pettiness of the “cancel culture” and its “woke” adherents.

    Weeks ago, when all this started, demonstrators seemed (for a brief time) on a righteous track, motivated by good will, concerned for justice, acting within our Constitutional right of freedom of assembly. Soon, however, those noble passions morphed into senseless violence.

    Now, we see repetitive attempts to eradicate American history, destroy cities and raze significant symbols our nation’s endlessly painful struggle for a just society, for civility and decency, for religious worship and civic virtue.

    By today’s intolerant standards, even churches and religious statues are targets. Yet the murder of Captain David Dorn or the ongoing slaughter of countless black children barely merits passing note.

    This wide-spread violence could not happen without the aid of irresponsible mayors and reckless citizens, who support the accusations that America is an “evil, racist, white supremacist” nation, charges which are specious, puerile smokescreens.

    The real motives and goals of violent militants are now clear. They wish to overthrow America. They use words such as “prejudice” and “racism” as deceitful fuses.

    These words - “prejudice” and “racism” - were once calls to America’s collective conscience for justice and non-violence. Historic Americans such as Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and Bobby Kennedy anointed these words with a sense of our shared humanity; they moved our nation. Today, these words have been sullied by the unfathomable insensitivity of many so-called “social justice warriors” who seek to topple our Republic and demean the idealism expressed in America’s mandate.

    So, it is timely for us to ask two questions: 1) What is prejudice really all about, and 2) Who are these dangerous and violent deceivers in our midst?


    Prejudice:  Some  Basics


    The word “prejudice” literally means “pre-judgment.”

    Prejudice is a rash pre-judgment made before we know anything substantial about a person’s values and history, hopes and ideals strengths and personality, character and family.

    Here’s how it works:

    • We identify something different about the person which is “not us,” such as his color or his mannerisms, his hair, his address or car, his style of speech … or even his name.
    • We exaggerate that difference, then assign a stereotype - a label - to the person (usually negative), ignoring his dignity, character, intelligence, and so on.
    • We use that negative label for sarcastic, often malicious, name-calling. We put him down and think we are somehow better than, superior to, the person (in some perverse way).
    • Once we establish our “superiority,” we grant ourselves power to behave in ways which degrade and demean others.
    • To reassure ourselves and avoid responsibility, we link up with like-minded folks who share our distorted views. The group supports us.
    • We’re now united in our prejudice. GroupThink then sets in. A “We-They” distinction is enforced. The outsider’s inferior status is confirmed by our group’s mutual ignorance, and we lose our critical sense.
    • Our children see our example and learn -- and the cycle continues … and we wonder where they learned it (certainly not from us, the thinking goes. We’re not prejudiced simply because we dislike certain kinds of people. Right?).

    The  Attributes  Of  Prejudice


    We are born to notice human differences. It is a healthy and normal ability … but we are not – not -- born with prejudice.

    Negatively pre-judging other persons is learned early in life from our parents, family, even our church and school, then reinforced by playmates and, in later life, by colleagues and friends who share the same mindset.

    How we learn, when we learn and what we learn --- these are the keys to:

    • understanding how truly deep our awareness of differences goes .. many of which are natural and beneficial;
    • understanding how our negative stereotypes and demeaning judgments about others begins, and how our prejudice is a distortion of reality;
    • recognizing the irrationality of pre-judgments and the potential harm in callous stereotypes;
    • consciously changing our behavior -- our words and our deeds -- to prevent destructive outcomes;
    • realizing that awareness of prejudice offers a personal choice to do harm or to resolve conflict.

    The  Ubiquity  Of  Prejudice


    The dynamics of prejudice have plagued humans throughout history -- Mexicans and Latin Americans, Irish and Italians, Poles and Slavs, Nigerians and Eskimos, Sunnis and Shiites, lawyers and used car salesmen, Jews and Catholics, whippersnappers and old codgers, even that meat-eating tribe of barbarians over the hill. The list is as endless as it is universal.

    It is important to note that sometimes stereotypes (a Greek term for “firm impression”) are hilarious. We laugh at comedians who expose us to the haughty, pretentious inanities of prejudicial stereotypes. Celebrity roasts thrive on such jocularity. Certain stereotypes reveal patterns allowing us to predict movement in the universe or gaze in wonder at the flight of a hummingbird.

    But outcomes of prejudicial stereotypes can be deadly. Nations indulge in “ethnic cleansing” and racial profiling. And prejudice which is reinforced by peers and leaders sinks deeply into our attitudes, then into the culture. Social and individual insanity – cultural madness – ensues.

    Clearly, then, the management of human differences requires facts, insight and ingenuity, prudence and accountability, good taste, common sense and humility to listen and learn.


    Prejudice  Is  Universal


    Prejudice is also a universal human problem, not merely an American problem. It is NOT the result of “white supremacy.” It will NOT be solved by reparations to persons who were never slaves by persons who never owned slaves.

    Pre-judgments abound in every culture and age, but when prejudice gets personal, people suffer. In our own lifetime, certain ethnic groups -- entire nationalities – have been targets for annihilation. Many people find unborn children unworthy of life. And who can forget the horror of 9/11, motivated by prejudicial hatred for everything American?

    On a personal level, few of us go through life without an instance of humiliation or belittlement because we are somehow “different.” In my own family, my father and uncle were nearly lynched for admitting they were Catholics. And when my ancestors sought work on their arrival in America, they were rebuffed time and again by signs which said “No Irish Need Apply.”


    Moral  Maturity  Rejects  Prejudice


    Pre-judging is based lack of knowledge so, inevitably it leads to mistakes. Some mistakes are normal except when we stubbornly refuse to look at facts or take responsibility for the harm we do. 

    When we’re adults, we’re supposed to be mature. That means we are supposed to be smart enough, even wise enough, to respect truth, to seek facts and prefer evidence over emotion, impulse and superficial judgments. Denial is not a mature choice.

    If we are mature, we’re supposed to be morally intelligent enough to know the difference between right and wrong. We’re supposed to be morally strong enough to admit our mistakes, be held accountable, and change our attitudes and our behavior.

    Let’s be clear:  true maturity rests on moral intelligence, on the content of our character and on our rightly-educated conscience which determines our attitudes, influences our choices and guides our behavior. Without morality, there’s no maturity. This is true for individuals and for nations.

    The crucial element in becoming a mature person or nation is practical wisdom, which is revealed in:

    • the positive values we firmly hold, including respect for life;
    • the generous, altruistic spirit we extend to others;
    • the regard we show people … even when we’re weary;
    • the moral virtues we invest into our relationships;
    • the morally right decisions we make, even when alone;
    • the ways we handle sorrow and achievement, how we accept responsibility, avoid self-pity and express gratitude;
    • in short, the sort of human being we choose to be.

    Maturity means we accept the fact that we are moral beings who have responsibility to one another – and to God. Is there a better principle for managing life’s blessed vagaries?

    If we accept this principle, if we learn anything from history, if we honor the founding hopes of our nation, then we know that the elimination of harmful prejudices and the achievement of justice will never be furthered by the violence we see today. Hurting others unjustly compounds the problem.

    We must, therefore, ask ourselves:  If violence is not the answer, how can we speed the elimination of prejudice? If violence does not ennoble humankind or assist our quest for justice and stability and goodness, what will? What hurdles must we face?


    Deceivers  In  Our  Midst  -- Threats  To  Our  Nation


    It is eminently clear that, over decades, Marxist Socialism has been adapted to undermine, distort and eventually eradicate the America idiom of freedom and justice for all.

    It is eminently clear that Marxist principles now underpin today’s chaos … which is not going away.

    It is eminently clear that Marxism inflicts upon us (among other major problems) 1. the insufferable dictates of political correctness; 2. the pernicious impact of groups such as Black Lives Matter; and, 3. the dangerous tenets of Democratic Socialism which seek economic, moral and cultural anarchy.

    Marxism and its updated variants deliberately stifle logic and Right Reason. Religious freedom and free speech are assaulted. Marriage and family are targeted. Sex in its bizarre expressions are weaponized under the guise of “free expression.” Intolerance is the new norm in the name of “tolerance” and “inclusion.”

    This calculated pattern of deceit is abetted by some elected leaders who support huckstering anarchists. They, in turn, manipulate the fervent gullibility of misguided activists, i.e., those Americans who fail to recognize the twisted sloganeering which masks lawless efforts to de-stabilize America at its roots.


    The  Reality  Behind  The  Mask


    Unfortunately, many well-intentioned persons still refuse to see that violent passions and seductive sentiments will not substitute for history or science, rule of law or centuries of Christian tradition or Constitutional principles – all of which truly define America.

    • These are the moral and legal means by which we Americans are meant to curb our collective faults.
    • These are the precedents which provide moral and legal boundaries for the common good of all citizens.
    • These are the standards of American exceptionalism.
    • These are our guidelines as we wend our way through time and history, seeking “the better angels of our nature.”

    Where  Does  All  This  Take  Us ?

    • We can willingly change prejudicial behavior, but only if we choose to do so with conscious effort.
    • The content of our character truly defines us, and character is revealed in what we do, not only what we say.
    • If we are to be morally and socially consistent, then we must acknowledge that an entire category of persons -- unborn children -- has been pre-judged as disposable, not worthy of life. True “freedom” is never furthered by destroying innocent persons, including unborn persons ….
    • The ultimate solution to all of these problems begins, of course, in each human heart and rightly-formed conscience.
    • That’s why resolving (not solving) prejudice is, first of all, a moral quest. It is NOT political in origin. It is a personal reality which will always challenge human beings.
    • The Commandment to “love your neighbor” is surely the clearest expression of a solution.
    • The virtuous art of loving our neighbor rests on the formation of a civilized heart and an educated conscience.
    • The art of loving one’s neighbor demands at least two major factors: 1. good family upbringing (including moral example and religious principles) and, 2. strong formal education in civic virtue and respect for authority, both of which reinforce the family as the center of culture – but neither of which are any longer supplied by public education.
    • History tells us that legislation will change nothing. Despite decades of government programs, escalating violence in Chicago reveals the collapse of civility, the demise of the traditional family, the abandonment of fatherhood, the massive increase in out-of-wedlock births and the even greater number of black abortions – for starters . . .  

    America  In  Denial:  The  Moral  Truth


    We must recognize that prejudice and racism are actually ingredients in the much larger problem of our abandonment of moral acuity and our rejection of true freedom and self-restraint.

    Of all pre-judgments, abortion -- not racism -- remains the keystone moral and cultural (as well as legal) issue of our age.

    Why? Because a nation which kills millions of its youngest citizens is a nation in sure decline.

    It is rationally impossible to legitimize the daily abortion of thousands of unborn children with appeals to “women’s health care” or “freedom of choice” or any other form of reasoning.

    Disrespect for the lives of our unborn facilitates disregard for all lives, telling us that no lives really matter except those with power to take the lives of others.

    In black communities, the abortion rate is astounding: more black babies are aborted than born alive; thirty million since Roe v Wade, a number which (according to United Nations figures) exceeds the populations of 180 separate nations.

    Throughout our culture, stable family life is being eradicated, fatherhood denigrated, motherhood weakened, manhood feminized, education politicized, violence normalized. Traditional respect for truth in education and media is gone. Moral limits and scientific values are regularly shredded. And sex? Take your pick.

    Thus, America desperately needs: 1. restoration of stable two-parent (married man-woman) families, 2. the return of fatherhood and respect for the unique role of mothers; and, 3. restoration of sound moral and intellectual education which public schools no longer offer. Read Thomas Sowell’s opinion.

    https://gellerreport.com/2020/07/thomas-sowell-usa-point-of-no-return.html/

    Solving prejudice involves far more than combatting “racism by white supremacists.” It involves citizens who pursue moral limits, family stability, disciplined education, religious insight, and strong exemplars in the nitty-gritty virtues of candor and humility, kindness, self-restraint and empathy. These virtues are what true love for our neighbor – born and unborn -- looks like.

    Finally . . .


    As an elder, I have watched America become a morally rootless country where facts and history are now squelched in favor of radical individualism. Our deluded, indulgent dalliances with false freedoms have created a climate of self-destruction which so many nations have brought upon themselves. We forget that authentic freedom always demands immeasurable sacrifices. Ever since our founding days, our history insistently tells us so.

    Does this not tell us that we have lost the single most significant ingredient in what America stands for in this world – or used to?

    Does this not tell us that the moral demands of mutual respect, self-restraint and love of God and neighbor are absolutely essential not only for racial equality but for our nation’s survival?

    In 1798, John Adams summed it up: "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

    Could it be any clearer?

     

    Top of Page


     

    28 June 2020


    Reflections  On  America  In  Moral  Disarray:
    Beyond  Angry  Rhetoric


    Violence and destruction continue … but something has changed since the initial demonstrations against police. Today’s violence goes far beyond the initial calls for racial justice.

    So, we must ask:  What are the real goals of militants such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa? What do these so-called “social justice warriors” really want?

    The evidence of their own words and actions gives us the answer:  they seek the destruction of America.

    As unlikely as this may sound to doubters, the agenda of militant anti-American Socialists emerges in their threats and their ready violence, as many city leaders stay idle and mute.

    Socialism’s godless agenda is active in our midst, its Marxist roots violently intact and spreading by any means necessary. Its morally-vacant disciples are heavily funded. Its rhetoric is equipped with deceptive word-games which appeal to the unwary and seduce the uninformed.

    Let’s be clear:  these militants seek the overthrow of the rule of law and moral stability. They are clever in their deceptive manipulation of human tragedy, and not without some success.


    The  Moral  Truth  About  Socialism


    Many “woke” Americans haven’t an inkling about Socialism’s true goals, about its ruthless skill in adapting to cultural vulnerabilities or its malicious exploitation of events and people.

    To a worrisome degree, Socialist sloganeering captivates many persons in this country – as it has around the world in ways disastrous to people and to nations.

    Despite its promises and its chameleon-like facades, Socialism is a deadly societal and spiritual disease. I witnessed first-hand the dreadful price which Socialism inflicts on human beings and entire countries. I saw for myself the awful human cost … and it is devastating.

    In 1989 I presented a professional paper in Communist Poland (which was then a Marxist Socialist country). After the conference in Warsaw, I traveled on my own (without the usual Communist escort) for several weeks, seeing for myself the stunning physical and moral wreckage which Socialist policies inflict on people and property, on hearts and minds, on tradition and freedom.

    I spoke with many Polish citizens who explained the dreadful extent to which Socialism controlled every aspect of their lives (including, as absurd as this sounds, the distribution of toilet paper, for which people stood in line for several city blocks).

    The Socialist mindset is tenaciously dedicated only to hierarchical power. Its advocates will say and do anything without reserve to secure control, because Socialism is atheistic to its core. It has no moral center or concern for the rights of any person. Its inhumane philosophy is the inspiration behind much of today’s self-righteous violence, and has been the spur to the murder of millions of persons.

    Those who contend that Marxist Socialism is a remnant of the past are woefully in error. Marxist theory and practice are alive and well throughout the world -- and, now, also in America.

    It should be of grave concern to Americans that Socialism’s influence infests our country through its contradictory tenets of political correctness, judgmental intolerance and rejection of Reason in politics, media, education and religion.

    Many Americans are naively drawn to Socialism’s benign-sounding, share-the-wealth rhetoric, its promises of rosy economics and debt relief, its energetic dislike of millionaires and billionaires, and the cornucopia of free stuff it promises to ladle out to all takers (but at whose expense, one must ask?).

    Listen carefully, and you will hear Socialism praised by Americans whose knowledge of historical facts and insight into human nature can only be deemed (at best) immature and dangerously shallow.

    Therefore, let us beware; be very aware. Socialist rhetoric is utterly duplicitous rhetoric, shrewdly adapted to needs and wants of every society in which it detects moral weariness among people and finds cultural wounds and political opportunities.


    Socialism’s  De-Humanizing  Impact 


    Truth be told, Socialism inflicts depressing brutality upon the human soul and psyche. With power in the hands of a cadre of loyalists, Socialism nullifies private ownership of property and businesses. Self-regulation is taken from the people, not given to the people. The freedoms we know in America disappear.

    Socialism stifles creativity and punishes the entrepreneurial spirit. Its nihilistic view of human nature represses whole populations.

    It imposes desperation and economic ruin on entire nations (Venezuela’s inflation rate reached one million percent). Its de-humanizing principles turn people into wards of the state.

    Ruthless uniformity and, at times, state-sanctioned violence, are part of Socialism’s formula for the conquest of people.

    All of this is, of course, utterly antithetical to our Western way of life and, at an even deeper level, to our traditional Christian beliefs in free will and in the decency of government which is of the people, by the people and for the people.


    America’s  Christian  Ethos


    Our American heritage rests on our Declaration of Independence, on our Constitution with its Bill of Rights, and on the rule of law. But even more fundamentally, since our founding as a nation, our American character has been profoundly influenced by Christian principles of right-and-wrong, of responsibilities before rights, of equal justice and the moral means by which justice is pursued and sustained.

    Despite the glaring imperfections to which we are heir, America has -- more than any society in history -- maintained adherence to the rule of law as an essential tenet of its existence.

    No philosophy or political theory, no party or person, has had the irreplaceable role which America’s Christian origins have played in defining our heritage, our cultural ethos, our regard for legitimate authority and the rule of law, and our moral identity as individual persons and as a nation.

    America can be understood only in terms of our relationship to our Christian traditions. But these traditions are in grave jeopardy in many parts of our Republic  -- in politics and education, in law and medicine, in business and religion, and in the breakdown of marriage and family life.


    The  Naivete  Of  Good Intentions


    Many well-meaning people have been swayed by passionate groups such as Black Lives Matter (BLM). It’s a great slogan, but the reality is that BLM proclaims a Socialist/Marxist program with an agenda which is deadly to America’s political, moral, economic and cultural future.

    In fact, many well-meaning advocates of “civil rights” do not realize that groups such as BLM and Antifa work for the Socialist ideal of eradicating America and its Christian origins.

    Think not? Then look behind the convenient façade of “racism,” and see for yourself what their goals really are. Here’s a few:

    • End traditional man-woman marriage and family;
    • Eliminate police, close prisons;
    • Spread wealth by heavier taxes on all earners, not just millionaires and billionaires;
    • Total government control of health care and other professions, such as public education, with the elimination of private schools;
    • Open America’s borders to all comers and eliminate immigration policies to eventually erase American identity;
    • Tear down statues of white people including images of Washington, Jesus Christ and His “white” mother, and erase religious freedom;
    • Burn the American flag, emblem of white colonialism;
    • Smash stained-glass windows in Christian (i.e., white) churches;
    • Promote gay and transgender agendas and punish resisters;
    • Get rid of man-woman sexual dualism and deny biology;
    • On and on … the Socialist litany goes absurdly on.

    If you doubt, read the commentaries of Dr. Carol Swain on her website: https://carolmswain.com/.

    If you doubt, go to the following link to read the Socialist/Marxist declarations of the BLM founders:

     https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/12/why-supporting-black-lives-matter-is-anti-christian-and-anti-life/?utm_source=Legatus+Insider&utm_campaign=211c26df62-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_11_12_08_51_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b4c5d7b538-211c26df62-72725667

    or go here:

    https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-black-lives-matter-founder-admits-far-left-political-activist-trained-marxists/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=patriotupdate&utm_campaign=dailypm&utm_content=libertyalliance

    or here:

    https://mail.yahoo.com/b/folders/1/messages/ADFZZDwpZl_EXvHI2Q8PeKNOYVA?.src=ym&amp%3Bamp%3Breason=myc&amp%3Bamp%3BfolderType=INBOX&amp%3BfolderType=INBOX&folderType=INBOX&showImages=true&offset=0

    or here:

    https://mail.yahoo.com/b/folders/1/messages/ACbAwZh3-2mxXvMvNQwtMEMTz28?.src=ym&amp%3Bamp%3Breason=myc&amp%3Bamp%3BfolderType=INBOX&amp%3BfolderType=INBOX&folderType=INBOX&showImages=true&offset=0


    The  Collusion  Of  Politicians


    Mayors and governors take oaths - solemn promises to God and their constituents - to uphold the duties of their office, the first of which is public safety. Yet violence to public spaces and private businesses escalates. Indeed, people die … only because elected officials allow, and even support it.

    Many elected officials in major cities abandon their oath of office for perverse forms of “diversity” and “inclusion.” They banish individual rights for lawless “equality” masquerading as empathy. One governor even said that “love” motivates mobs to tear down historic monuments. The mayor of Seattle termed the violent occupation of her city a “summer of love.”

    A prime example of abnegation of duty by public officials is the “sanctuary city” policy. This idea originated in Berkeley for conscientious objectors during the Vietnam Era. Today, five decades later, it is used by public officials in several States to announce their intention not to enforce the law of the land.

    In a gesture of counterfeit humanitarianism, these political leaders assist illegal aliens (a term offensive to adherents) to violate just laws. In so doing, they jeopardize the safety of citizens’ lives.

    When any public official openly refuses to honor his/her oath of office and rejects his obligation to enforce just laws, s/he encourages disdain for all legitimate authority and abets anarchy.

    When a just law is ignored by officials elected to enforce it, chaos will ensue --- as we now see in our streets.


    Disdain   For  The  Rule  Of  Law


    Elected officials do not act alone. They’re joined by many educators, by “woke” celebrities, by media ideologues and by religious figureheads who speak of law and order as products of “white supremacy,” adding that America has always been an evil country from its founding.

    Today’s violence is funded by countless corporations and abetted by business leaders, many of whom have no idea what policies or practices they are actually funding.

    Americans give the benefit of a doubt when we can, so it is fair to say that the motives of these corporate contributors may be pure … but they are badly in need of facts – unless they wish our nation to be torn apart.

    The cumulative impact of all this well-meaning but uninformed support of Socialist goals results in America breaking itself into two opposing entities. America morphs into a nation where an aggravated “feeling” or a perceived slight or a tinge of “hate speech” becomes a violation of someone’s “civil rights.” Any petty claim or bruised ego rouses the ire of “social justice” warriors who voice reckless accusations of racism and sexism and countless other “isms” which litter our culture and divide us.

    Passion, not Reason, is used as justification for spouting mindless charges of “white supremacy” and a slew of inane “phobias.” But it must be obvious that the triumph of “feelings” over Reason and over the rule of law is puerile behavior which tries mightily to justify moral and psychological violence. It is irrational – but it’s also commonplace.


    The  Rejection  of  Science


    What’s worse is the rejection of scientific facts. Many people accept a panoply of created “genders” titles over the basics of human biology. Man or women? It’s irrelevant; pick your own “gender” from any of fifty sub-categories.

    But worst of all, our culture no longer reveres the moral innocence and emotional dependence of our young. There are many who support the insane idea that children have a ”right” to transsexual surgery -- children, whose innocence we should shepherd with our very lives.

    When the protection of our children’s innocence no longer rouses our deepest moral concern, we may be sure that America is changing in the most worrisome manner. If we do not resolutely give them moral guidance and mature example, the future is bleak indeed.


    The  Hard  Lessons


    What does all this tell us?

    As legal “freedom” expands, many Americans reveal an inability to manage the moral freedom essential to cultural stability and personal accountability. The erosion of Right Reason, moral values, intellectual maturity and virtues such as self-restraint has become a plague upon our land.

    The rise of radical secularism, moral relativism and Socialist atheism, all of which employ politically correct dicta, is a direct threat to the innate influence and stabilizing power of traditional Christianity which has been at the core of American identity.

    This is not mere opinion. It is historical fact.

    Moral concerns and religious freedom have always been at the forefront of our nation’s priorities since the earliest days of our founding. But solid research tells us that today moral relativism reigns and religious vitality ebbs. Regard for law – divine as well as civil law -- is clearly on the decline, as is our national reverence for shared values.


    Hopeful  Resources


    Faith and Right Reason, history and tradition, a well-formed conscience, fidelity to our Constitution and a host of moral exemplars whose prayerful humility and steely courage have gone before us – these positive factors in our American story are available to all of us during our present conflict.

    Without these, we are a people adrift.

    With these safeguards guiding us, we are a nation of great stamina and historic worth; a nation fully capable of legal and moral self-correction, able to sustain our American exceptionalism as history’s enduring example of the better angels of human nature.

    Let us not forget that today’s violence and those who feed it do not work for America’s perennial goal of one nation under God. Rather, they further the erosion of our national identity.

    We cannot long tolerate the ongoing destruction of our moral and cultural cohesion. We must again be neighbors at peace with one another; neighbors who respect the necessary restrictions and beneficial boundaries of moral freedom which underpins our rule of law.

    We must again seek to be neighbors who can trust one another and embrace moral restraints … because the content of our character demands nothing less of us.

    To these ideals are we called, each and all. Let us pray God we may make it so.

     

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    10 June 2020


    Some  Musings  On
    Riotous  Disarray  And  Human  Nature


    It is desirable to speak of good news first, so let’s begin with the positive side of today’s worrisome events.

    Countless people demonstrate throughout America with admirable restraint as they confront “racism” in our culture. Like you, I watch these earnest citizens calling for justice. At the same instant, I’m reminded of demonstrations fifty years ago when the same themes -- racial justice and peace – preoccupied our nation and provoked endless demonstrations.

    Now, the bad news. Violence and chaos erupt. Calculated evil contaminates our streets. Lives are lost (most poignantly, 77-year-old David Dorn). The works of lifetimes are viciously destroyed.

    As I watch all this, I wonder when we will learn that “racism” - and other social ills - are symptoms of a deeper moral need in human nature.

    Every person and every society need a moral structure. Why? Because human beings are created as moral persons, born into the moral universe of human community.


    Our  Moral  Origins


    What does this mean? Here’s an analogy.

    We do not create the laws of gravity. Gravity exists outside us and within us, independent of us, yet we are constantly influenced by it, born into the realm of its power, forever under its influence, always and everywhere affected by its ubiquitous energy.

    So also are we born into a moral realm in which we inherit personal responsibilities and obligations to others -- and they to us. These responsibilities give birth to mutual rights and freedoms. But we are supposed to exercise these rights and freedoms according to boundaries and guidelines set by God through various virtues and moral principles.

    Evidence of the power, value and necessity of the virtues as guides for moral living is found 1) in the consequences of how we treat others, 2) how they treat us, and 3) in our relationship with God.

    Obligations, responsibility, limited rights and freedoms and accountability for the consequences of our actions: these define the essence of our identity as moral agents, as persons. When we stray from the moral path, the consequences are dire – like now.


    The  Eternal  Struggle


    I am older than most people who may read these words and am, perhaps, a bit wiser than some. I am saddened when violence is deliberately inflicted on anyone; saddened that our world is still fraught with conflict … and so I ponder the paradox of human nature’s capability for grand goodness and incalculable evil.

    I am also reminded that in our society, violence in deed AND in word is far more common today than fifty years ago. I find violence prevalent not only in the vicious physicality of street conflicts but also in the denigrating sentiments which mark so much of today’s public rhetoric and daily media-speak.

    So many of our leaders, especially in politics and media, do not seem to realize -- or to care -- that their sarcastic jibes, hostile half-truths and antagonistic accusations are the fertile soil in which disdain and violence are nurtured.

    Our public discourse overflows with gratuitous distortions and weaponized exaggerations. Twisted facts and altered contexts are common. We are daily subjected to self-righteous posturing, baseless accusations and a barrage of hateful rhetoric befitting hostile tribalism rather than a society of civilized persons.

    I find these distortions appalling. They reveal our loss of respect for Truth and our loss of reverence for the meaning of words. That is a tragic state which leads to national self-destruction, as history clearly records, time and time again.

    I also recall that, for many years, we have eliminated God from our national dialogue. We continue to teach generations of our young that God and His moral principles of right-and-wrong (i.e., the virtues which should guide human behavior) have no place in learning or in the formation of the consciences of America’s youth.

    Now, after decades of denying God’s precepts their proper role in our national identity, our culture flounders, plagued by disrespect for one another to the point of rage and murder. This, too, is tragic … and, sadly, it is also avoidable.


    But  Wait  … There’s  More


    In response to violence in our streets, some bewildering ideas surface and dystopian schemes unfold. For example, some people push “Defund The Police,” a movement popular amongst some peripheral “celebrities” and mainstream politicos. Mayors of several major cities withdraw support from their own police, who serve as the first line of defense against violence.

    Another example:  increasingly I hear ululations from deluded, breast-beating Caucasians who fatuously castigate themselves for “white privilege.” Their calculated self-loathing promotes the inane notion that “whiteness is a naturally-occurring evil.” This rancid cliché is larded with the absurdly discordant theme of “Guilt by Color,” a further step into cultural anarchy.

    You get my point. I need not further detail other tidbits now touted as thoughtful responses to “racism.” The litany is tedious, often fatuous, but it nourishes frivolous flirtations with chaos.


    The  Inescapable  Reality


    So, human nature is capable of both good and evil. In Christian terms, we are a fallen people, subject to sinful, fractious attitudes and acts, including racism. We often forget - or deliberately ignore – morality’s restraints and the cleansing power of virtue.  

    When stressed, many of us become mean-spirited, tempted to imprudent actions which are NOT in our best interests as individuals or as a society.

    What are our options?

    Christian virtues such as justice and altruism, fortitude and empathy, temperance and self-restraint, prudence and humility are our healthiest moral options. This would be obvious … IF we understand their true meanings and honor their true intent.

    But our morally confused, often law-less, culture, regularly discards these virtues for secular tenets of unrestricted inclusion, diversity without accountability, self-determined biological contradictions, unchallenged individualism, irresponsible moral relativism and radical non-judgmentalism.

    Contemporary history makes it clear that when we reject traditional moral principles in favor of radically secular ideas, we de-humanize ourselves and deface our nation’s history.

    When we banish God from the public square and from our personal lives, we pay a heavy price for recklessly derailing our moral calling. We create conditions which foster evils such as racism and the intellectual ghettoes from which its destructive principles ascend.

    It is within this de-humanizing moral vacuum that racism and the loss of human dignity emerge throughout human history.


    The  Necessity  Of  Moral  Clarity


    To repeat:  Human beings are not merely “social animals.” We are moral persons, given life by God, born into a community. We are born for one another. We do not exist only for ourselves.

    Thus, morality rests on our obligation to act responsibly and accountably with God, ourselves and one another.

    Our moral status arises from the interactive nature of human life, from the fact that relationships define us, from the ultimate end of each life which, in the last analysis, rests on our potential to be trustworthy persons.

    Human nature, in its very creation, is a moral reality because we cannot -- and should not – deny or denigrate one another’s dignity. We are born to respect God and one another. We are born to develop unique, often lasting, relationships – especially with ourselves; relationships which foster virtue and character, and which endure in time and memory, in mind, heart and soul.

    We touch one another in ways which highlight the mystery of life itself. That is why, above all else, we are moral beings.


    Moral  Awareness  And  Character


    Our character is determined by how we embrace virtue or deny it; how we observe moral order in our lives … or how we scoff at virtue and reject it as intrusive or irrelevant.

    The cumulative outcome of our embrace -- or our rejection -- of our moral duties defines our character. Our character is revealed in our habits, our words and deeds, our attitudes and dispositions, our choice to honor virtue or extinguish it, and in the way we treat others. Character is the quality of our moral personhood which we develop, step-by-step, during a lifetime of becoming.

    Our moral responsibilities connect us to our higher human goals by connecting us to one another in a mutual search for goodness, kindness and virtue. Thus, we are bound to one another, each and all, in a shared moral universe.

    It is because of this moral context, because of this mandate to respect human dignity, that we may rightly determine that “racism” and its corollaries are moral evils.

    Morality always has consequences, some personal and private, others social and public. Morality infuses our physical, cognitive, emotional, spiritual and psychological worlds wherein we live and breathe and have our being.


    Virtue  Is  Dull Stuff !


    So, we are born to be moral beings, but we can act immorally. We can push morality aside and embrace evil. It is always possible for us to choose NOT to honor moral principles. It is possible for us:

    • not to honor our moral mandate,
    • not to respond to the spiritual gravity of the moral bond which defines our nature;
    • not to care about the consequences of our actions,
    • not to attend to the boundaries which delimit our freedoms,
    • not to observe road signs which point the way to goodness,
    • not to honor God, other persons and, of course, ourselves.

    BUT … if we disregard our moral call from God, then racism and violence, looting and murder become acceptable means to an end. Morality be damned; the end justifies the means by which we achieve it. Who is to say otherwise? And, at this sorry stage of life, indifference disfigures the soul and curdles the heart.


    Private  Systems


    Some persons contend that ignoring our God-given call to virtue is really a neutral act. Morality, they say, is a private affair. Morals are up to each person to define for him/herself. If no one gets hurt, what’s the problem? In private, I can do whatever I want.

    Such moral relativism is self-deluding. Why? First of all, it denies our dependent relationship with God. Second, it seeks to cancel our personal accountability to God, whose laws extend into every heart as well as into every community. Third, it denies us our role and responsibility to serve as moral exemplars in a culture bereft of the “better angels of our nature…”

    Fourth, God, not mankind, creates us as moral beings - and we are not God. Denial of personal accountability and dependence on God (read the Ten Commandments) is abandonment of responsibility and rejection of His reality. Even in our private lives, we are accountable to Our Creator for our side of the relationship.

    Fifth, moral relativism begets dangerous laxity and selfishness. It is only a matter of 1) degree, 2) time and 3) opportunity until our arrogance becomes habitual and the results of our egocentric self-deification and our narcissism are apparent … even to us. 


    Our  Universal  Call  To  Goodness


    So, yes, we can choose to avoid our obligations and deny our responsibilities and reject our moral calling and betake ourselves into self-styled cynicism and moral darkness.

    Yes, we can violate God’s gift of freedom by separating ourselves from the Author of our souls. However, by doing so, we frustrate our ability to fulfill the very purpose for which we are given life. By such impudence, we tarnish our essential reason for living.

    What does that mean?

    It means, once again, we are born to be morally alert and morally responsible 1) to God, 2) to our own informed conscience (note that word informed), and 3) to each other.

    These principles are not merely pious piffle or compulsive guilt. Aristotle and countless other thinkers studied the purpose and end of human existence. Indeed, every civilization has devised moral codes and developed restraining laws, behavioral customs and practical virtues. All have been designed for one purpose – to live in peace with one another, to seek the good life.

    Happily, our Christian principles go even farther. They clarify the moral terms and specify the essential paths for virtuous behavior. The Christian model offers practical steps by which to fulfill our human calling. The Christian model also reveals beneficial moral truths which would otherwise be hidden from us.


    The  Human  Experience


    We all experience goodness and love, sorrow and sadness, yearning and delight, temptation and evil … all of which prompt every one of us to ask at some point in our lives, “Is there a better way to live, a better way to treat one another?”

    The answer is, of course, a universal “Yes …”

    We can find evidence and learn Truth. We can find the Light and become truly humane. In fact, our God-given destiny is:

    • to improve, not diminish, our human condition;
    • to comprehend and live by the redeeming logic of virtue;
    • to embrace the persuasive gravity of reason;
    • to recognize that destruction and harm, unkindness and disdain, sin and evil are degrading and painful to everyone, beginning with those who choose them.

    We put ourselves in grave danger when we choose distortion over truth, rumor over evidence, exaggeration over fact, prejudice over empathy, indulgence over restraint, racism over kindness, excess over temperance, cynicism over hope, self over God.

    We sink into empty nihilism when we belittle moral acuity, self-restraint and humility. We lose – big time -- when we do not heed the lessons of history and we rebuff the guidance of Our Creator.


    Finally . . .


    Even though our world is rife with conflict and evil, there is truly much good in life and many good people to show us the way.

    To seek goodness is to hold the Hand of God. To love and be loved is to be blessed with God’s grandest grace.

    To reject the simplicity inherent in surrender to God’s patience is to miss a very great gift in one’s life.

    It is an inspiring moment when Truth (always a threatening variable) is honored, goodness is celebrated and humility grants us grateful peace of heart and serenity of soul.

    Some persons in our fractured culture (white people and black people and brown people, men and women, Europeans and Asians … “people” ad infinitum) hold a moral vision which begins only with themselves and ends in a vacuum. They refuse to admit that kindness and civility, truth and humility, temperance and the array of Christian virtues keeps life healthy, spirits hopeful and societies just.

    Still, we are all human. No matter how hard we try, sometimes our faith will falter, our hopes will dim, our charity will fade. We will wonder what life is truly all about. What are we supposed to accomplish during these all-too-brief years on this earth? How should we handle the pain and loneliness which life inevitably brings? How do we sustain the spirit of gratitude which the miracle of life deserves? What do we do when we feel alone in the vast and soundless universe?

    Elie Weisel, the author who survived Auschwitz, puts it this way:  

    “I belong to a generation who has often felt abandoned by God and betrayed by mankind. And yet, I believe that we must not give up on either.”

    Let us never give up on God or on mankind – and certainly not on ourselves.

    Let us never forget that we, each and all, are called by Our Creator to follow the moral path of Truth and virtue and kindness.

    Let us always remember that we are called to be moral exemplars to that portion of the world in which God has placed us … and, in that place, let us do -- with virtue and joy -- whatever He asks of us, no matter what it may cost, no matter how small it may seem, at first.

    When these Truths come alive in our minds and hearts, motivating our days, inspiring our courage, prompting us to Truth, moving us to gratitude for life and breath, whilst easing our soul’s journey … are we not then assured that all else in our lives will surely follow … just as God intends?

    Given this Christian vision in action, could racism long survive?

     

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    27 May, 2020


    Honoring  Truth,  Wisdom’s  Price


    I once consulted with a corporate executive who was a technical whiz and a shrewd decision-maker, but - alas - she was a wretched communicator, disliked by her associates, distrusted by her employees.

    Why?

    Because once she found a person’s vulnerable spot, she belittled and demeaned with scalding one-liners, scathing tirades and humorless put-downs.

    Her technical “smarts” did not compensate for her intemperate communication, her lack of empathy for the human condition and for the missing qualities-of-character which Wisdom grants.

    Yes, she was intelligent, but her mind was tightly closed, her heart embittered and unmoved – and others paid a painful price.


    What’s  It  For ?


    She did not understand that we are given the beneficial gift of communication so we may strive for three benevolent outcomes: 1) to clarify our intentions and facilitate degrees of mutual transparency; 2) to seek and share the best means to achieve worthy ends; 3) to bolster respect for each person’s dignity, even in strife and disagreement.

    I realize this sounds idealistic. But when Wisdom prevails, these outcomes actually are human nature’s proper goals, the ultimate ends for which we are created.

    Often (not always, but often) these qualities are most evident in a solid family, a marriage of mutual commitment and the balanced raising of children. In a loving family we are most likely to find appropriate expressions of mutual love and intimacy, collective friendship and fidelity, and respect for everyone’s dignity as hallmarks … even in strife and disagreement.

    Other communication goals exist, of course: getting a job done well, the delights of civil conversation, emotional relief afforded by wit and humor, factual reportage, learning in a variety of contexts, defending ourselves against injustice, sharing secrets with our Beloved … on and on.

    But above all else, not only in family but in all reaches of society, the gift of communication is given to us for clarity and understanding with one another, to reduce confusion and to reveal each person’s individuality.

    Effective communication guides us through a plethora of relationships, with everyone’s dignity intact. And, once in a great while, precious intimacy may be shared with those rare few we come to trust as “true friends.”


    The  Gift  Of  Communication


    Some communication is fleeting because the encounter is superficial and ephemeral, soon forgotten. But some relationships are so significant and so life-giving that they define us.

    Some communication is stressful, even abrasive. No life is without crises and injuries; pain is inevitable. But some communication brings peace to the soul and joy to the heart, sometimes without a word being said, sometimes by the simple touch of hands or the glimpse of smiling eyes.

    Whatever the circumstances, our gift of communication is not meant to be abused or “weaponized” nor meant to harm or demean others while elevating ourselves.

    But beyond social and moral reasons for using our gift of communication with virtuous consistency, the proper goal of communication is Truth.

    We are born to seek Truth and we are restless to know Truth about God, about ourselves and about life.

    That’s why lies are offensive to us and deception is so disconcerting to the soul and psyche:  they violate the deepest value which defines human nature, namely, our unquenchable need for Truth.

    The power of Truth is magnetic to the soul.

    So, when we say that we must monitor our own communication, this really means we must moderate ourselves. Why is this so essential? In the eyes of others, what we say (in our tone and our gestures, as well as in our words) is who we are and what we are. We cannot forever conceal the Truth about ourselves.  

    That’s why is it most unwise to violate boundaries of mutual respect or to demean human dignity (which underscore the moral responsibilities we have to one another, even to strangers).


    Standards


    And how do we monitor ourselves?

    By honoring objective standards of self-control, prudence, good judgment, empathy --- and a host of other attitudes and skills which are called virtues (from “virtus” which in Latin means “strength”).

    These virtues - these “strengths” - are the contents of our character which guide us (or should) throughout life. These virtues come alive in the way we think and how we act. They regulate our thoughts and behavior.

    But these standards - these virtues - are not merely subjective principles or merely personal; we do not make them up. They are universal standards; they apply to everyone. Cultural variations appear, of course, but the underlying principles are based on human nature’s innate need for Truth.

    Of course, some people have their own personal versions of “the truth.” Indeed, we all see and interpret “reality” according to our own mode of receiving and processing information. But in the last analysis, Truth is not merely a personal “reality” filtered through our five senses.

    Truth is instilled into human nature by God and is, therefore, available for our comprehension and reverence provided we seek Truth humbly, with good will and an open heart, ready to go beyond the distracting illusions of resistant ego.

    Truth carries profound weight in human affairs, even though it is so often stretched and mangled in the barrage of unsavory accusations and shallow harangue which constitute much of today’s public discourse.

    What’s involved in honoring Truth? Let’s look at some basics.


    Truth  Has  Consequences


    For starters, Truth tells us that the world does not exist solely for us; other people matter. Truth reminds us that we share this world with others, like them or not.

    Truth often requires us to make difficult decisions and endure suffering in ways which afford us little consolation or logic. And when we are thrust into painful circumstances, Truth tells us that gratitude rather than self-pitying victimhood is the wiser course.

    Truth does not indulge in posturing or pretense. Simplicity of spirit is easier on the soul … and on the sensibilities of others.

    Truth resists abusive language inspired by sophistic ideology or a preening ego. It abhors “virtue signaling,” i.e., that prissy, addictive rush of smug self-righteousness which alibis the offensive use of false accusations and foppish rhetoric.

    Truth requires humility, with its abiding distaste for falsehood, manipulation and deception. Some self-absorbed persons find Truth an alienating burden. Nonetheless, Truth necessitates acceptance of our limitations and our strengths – and that sort of candor takes humility.


    Dignity  And  Responsibility


    Even more testily, Truth demands that we do our best to respect the dignity of others. But such respect does not mean we ignore or excuse the irresponsible actions of others. We do not adapt moral laxity. We do not overlook our own responsibility to speak up when avoidable harm is done and deliberate pain is inflicted.

    Respect for others does not mean we are morally neutral. It does not mean we subscribe to the moral fallacy that we can do anything we please, as long as no harm comes to others.

    We do not accept the principle of moral anarchy, which says, “I can do what I please in private….”

    For example, some critics argue for “unlimited freedom.” They contend that watching pornography or taking drugs is a private matter. No one is harmed, so what’s the big deal?

    The Truth is that extraordinary harm is directly associated with the production and distribution of porn. In addition, the destruction of countless lives and unspeakable violence is inherent in the production and distribution of so-called “recreational” drugs.

    The Truth is that even remote support for these evils is still support for evil and for its indefensible outcomes -- no matter how strenuously one argues for specious “personal freedoms” or for so-called “civil rights” which are, so often, “uncivil wrongs.”


    Moral  Mutuality


    The Truth is that we do not exist in a moral vacuum. First, we are given a relationship with God, then born into a human community in which reasonable laws and expectations already exist.

    The Truth is that we are bound, first of all, by our responsibilities to God and to one another. Rights come later, after we learn to be responsible persons, who uphold our part of those relationships.

    But Truth also recognizes that we are fallible creatures, capable of grave error under the banners of false “freedoms.” Some of our mistakes can be fatal, which emphasizes the fact that we cannot live solely for ourselves, carelessly strewing insult and imposing injury as we pass.

    We are all responsible to others for what we say and do. This mutual dependence is the foundation of our moral life and of our responsibilities to God and to other persons.

    The Truth is that we are bound - first and foremost - by laws God has given us. These laws coalesce in the greatest of all Truths, the command to do what often seems impossible:  to (gulp) love one another (including children unborn and being-born) as we are loved … and that can be quite a chore.

    We can ignore these Truths and deny these standards and reject these virtues … and, in the process, severely mis-manage our freedoms. We can abuse others - even fatally - with righteous anger or acidic cynicism or delusional appeals to non-existing “rights.” But we thereby risk enabling cultural dis-eases and extending the umbra of moral darkness throughout our culture.

    Moral darkness fuels hostility and chaos, futility and depression, revenge and schadenfreude, as it unleashes the fallen angels of our nature, whose power should never be underestimated.


    The  Wages  Of  Moral  Darkness


    Moral darkness banishes God and stiff-arms moral acuity. It extinguishes our respect for one another, and for life itself. Truth is eradicated. Rhetoric becomes “weaponized.” Evidence is ridiculed. Accusations, exaggerations and deceptions abound. Facts are blithely dismissed. Moral darkness spawns the denial of science. It rejects solid tradition and fosters deliberate lies.

    Common sense and our own experience surely tell us that unbridled urges and itchy egos must be brought into sync with standards of Truth. Maturity demands virtue from all of us, as individuals and as a nation. No matter how righteously we try, we cannot sanitize bad behavior nor ennoble harmful choices. 

    Wisdom is chastened by history’s hardest lessons … but it is also aware of the high price human nature continues to pay for our repetitive propensity to ignore those lessons. That is why our cultural, moral and historical traditions matter. They are crucial to our nation’s survival.

    Today, more than ever, caution is essential, especially in public discourse, because so many people thoughtlessly jettison the moral foundations of our national identity. God forbid we should lose (as Reagan called it) “the will and moral courage” to keep us a free people.


    A  Word  To  The  Wise


    Fidelity to Truth eventually begets Wisdom beyond intelligence. In turn, Wisdom embraces both worldly knowledge and spiritual discernment, both Faith and Reason.

    Wisdom is seasoned by humility and prudence, earned through painful exposure of one’s strengths and weaknesses, and by acceptance of one’s vulnerabilities. And Wisdom is always alert to the unintended consequences of its own inclinations and choices.

    Wisdom eschews shallow excuses, fatuous fads and trendy superficiality. But Wisdom is not quickly nor painlessly gained, because it demands internal discipline from us to do the right thing – and the impulse to the contrary is ofttimes unquenchable.

    Wisdom distrusts artificial displays of frothy emotionality and feigned sentimentality. Wisdom attends to the stability of our souls and the consistency of our intentions. It weighs the long-term outcomes of our actions because it knows that an undisciplined ego leads immature persons (of any age) into avoidable error.

    Wisdom eventually imparts to us a sense of wonderment which is far more than curiosity. It is a sense of awe, acknowledgement of creation’s mysteries which are beyond human understanding or control in their origin and outcome.

    This sense of wonderment eventually blossoms into reverence, which is the foundation upon which God’s revelation rests.


    Wisdom,  Rights  And  Responsibilities


    Because fallen human nature can get pushy and ego-flated, the exercise of our rights is always limited, codified first by God, Our Creator, then by the State, the family, our culture and society.

    Thus, as we age (and, hopefully, mature) we are expected to gradually assume certain responsibilities. As stated above, only then may we legitimately exercise limited rights. Responsibilities come first; then rights … and never one without the other.

    Furthermore, Wisdom insists we do not possess unrestricted rights or wide-open personal freedom. Our rights unfold only when we first accept prior responsibilities and obligations. But even then, our rights are never unlimited or without restrictions, boundaries and moral consequences.

    To demand one’s rights without honoring one’s responsibilities is to live only for oneself. This is the nadir of immaturity. It speeds destruction of family, culture and society.


    Responsibilities  And  Rights  Are  Inseparable


    The Truth is that our rights cannot be separated from our responsibilities. Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same hand; they are inseparable … but responsibilities come first.

    Thus, Wisdom tell us that we are NOT given freedom to do as we please. We are given freedom so we may first fulfill our responsibilities to God and to others in our community.

    This principle of mutual concern is the basis of community life. It’s fundamental to healthy parenting, to a secure family, to a healthy and lawful society. And (as our Founding Fathers knew when they risked their lives for this principle) it is essential to the health of our nation which, as John Adams said, relies on a moral citizenry for survival.


    The  Practical  Value  Of  Truth


    To sum up, Truth and Wisdom require of us and bestow upon us:

    1. intellectual clarity (i.e., learned ability to reason factually, correctly and logically) and the humility to admit our ignorance;
    2. emotional stability (i.e., prudence, self-knowledge and self-restraint) and the strength to delay personal gratification;
    3. the moral strength to speak and act according to various principles which we call “virtues,” both civic and spiritual.
    4. The gift of wonderment and hopeful awe, which open the heart, move the spirit and calm the soul … even in adversity and travail, trusting that God is both “out there somewhere” and yet deeply within our needy selves.

    Truth neither denies evidence nor exaggerates reality. Rather, Truth understands that all knowledge and virtue, all hope and love, begin with our humble admission of how little we really know about life … and about ourselves and, therefore, how much sense it truly does make when we honor the Reality of God’s Presence in our world.

    Truth looks life’s mysteries directly in the eye and recognizes the folly of denial and self-adulation -- and gladly says “Yes” to Faith and “Yes” the reassurance of belief.

    Truth brings us to the threshold of Wisdom, which is, after all, the threshold of God’s own grace-filled embrace.

    Finally, then, let us pray kindly for one another -- that our desire for Truth and our sense of wonderment and our respect for one another will continue to move our hearts and abide within each of us and all of us … all the days of our lives …

     

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    27 April 2020


    Remembrance:  Loving   Nancy


    May 1 is the second anniversary of my Beloved Nancy’s death. There is much … ever so much … I miss about her, the woman I have esteemed for decades, and for good reasons.

    I admired her tenacity and her resilience, her fidelity and her gumption. I admired her courage especially in adversity during her last years, when pain accompanied her every moment, even to our final days together.

    I admired her constantly-emerging humanity, her warmth and sincerity … for the giddy hours we laughed at private jokes, shared our secrets and relished whispered, gossipy tidbits.

    I admired her candor and her feisty readiness to have her own way when she decided to have her own way. And I was often inspired by her tenaciously-loving mother-self and her unquenchable desire to see that those she loved received her fullest affection and attention, even as her ailments took their heavy toll.


    Beginnings


    In our younger days many years ago, my work took me away for a week at a time. On one occasion, I arrived home from a cross-country trip quite late. She was sleeping … but I noticed a pair of crutches leaning against the wall. She had fallen that day even as I was in-flight homeward. I saw those crutches and, instantly alarmed, I ran through a litany of maladies which might now plague my sleeping Beloved. And as my anxiety mounted for her well-being, I realized with overwhelming clarity why she meant so very much to me -- and why I wanted, with everything which defined me, to love her and care for her beyond my own limits.

    In the beginning years of our marriage, we would both fall into occasional periods of ego-centric isolation, into sulky, self-gratifying artifice; into those protective postures which were, we came to realize, needless and puerile, inspired only by our shaky defensiveness and the uncertainties which plague amateur lovers, once the glow of mutual superficiality erodes and the true costs of really loving remain.

    We realized we were both prone to childish fragility: our “feelings” were too easily-bruised. We were, we finally admitted, still mired in the dramatic, over-stylized selfishness which so many people believe -- incorrectly --  is essential to preserve their independence or declare their individuality or protect their identity.

    We were, in short, still struggling to comprehend the deepest realities which a loving marriage proposes: self-abnegation and total, uncompromising commitment to the other – to the Beloved.


    Dawning


    Back to those crutches.  

    Nancy had broken her foot and sprained every muscle in her right leg. She was in unrelenting pain. Next day, she started physiotherapy. I drove her to those sessions and watched from the corner of the room as she started to re-learn what we all take for granted:  how to stand and walk and turn without excruciating pain blurring every movement.

    With the constant aid of those crutches and the gentle urging of her therapist, she started to re-learn how to step to one side, then to the other, then to move forward one step, then back. Occasionally, she teetered precariously, then recovered and, standing straight -- and smiling, always smiling --  she readied herself to start again, to do over again with great effort and intense concentration what Nature allows all of us to do without thinking.

    She demonstrated abounding courage as she took her tiny steps in ceaseless pain. Merely to put one foot forward, then to take it back safely, with growing confidence, was most costly for her, fraught with risk of falling again. Failure and fatigue and the threat of seizure were fearsome and ever-present. Yet she persevered – smiling throughout. One foot out-front, then back, repeat …a thousand times and more, over and over. And between the grimaces of unrelieved agony, she smiled with palpable tranquility which was, to me, utterly epiphanic.

    And onward she went, with her ever-smiling courage; on, into the days and years we shared together. Into life … into our lives; courageously, again and yet again; sometimes hesitant for a time, then steady, and then without hesitation, pushing life ahead of her, sometimes with uncertainty and wonder, always with courage, always smiling with a quiet confidence which, to this day, still moves and still inspires those of us who love her still and admire her so.


    Marriage’s  Treasures


    And as I watched my Beloved struggle through her pain to find her bearings once more, I realized what an abiding treasure she was in my life … and our life together, our marriage, began to evolve.

    I was utterly disarmed by her honesty and her uncomplaining acceptance of great pain and disruption. As we were more honest with each other, the nature and depth of our relationship began, quietly, to emphasize trust and accentuate mutuality in our married life. And in those days of increasing clarity about how to love one another, she would reach for my hand … and I was there with her; at last, always there -- and the simple goodness of all this was a revelation to us both.

    Our lives became brighter with hope and trust and understanding of one another. The walls of our needless cautions fell. The doors to one another’s inner worlds opened … and the revelation of one to the other was both remarkable and an incalculable relief. If joy is to be found in this life, it is, we both understood, on this path of trusting together, of being honestly together, of giving more and seeking less.

    It became clear to us that our marriage would flourish -- and we would flourish -- when we revealed our deepest selves to one another without fear or rancor or bitterness or threat. We took time to speak to one another in ways only married people may speak … but too often do not.

    We learned the true meaning of intimacy -- and we were enriched as we learned to love one another with simplicity and candor, with and without words. We were enriched in our marriage when we took the opportunity to express, with gratitude and fidelity, our loving hopes and our desires and our fears – all with the one person, our spouse, who is (and will always be) our Beloved.

    It also became clear to us that the deepest pain in life is when our love is not allowed to pour forth freely and unguardedly to the Beloved. The greatest pain is when our love has to remain unstated, silent, stymied and stifled within us, wanting in trust and without the certainty of safety. We learned that to be unloving is to be unloved.

    We learned that the mere thought of the other and the knowledge of the Beloved’s love for us saves and uplifts us both in so many ways. I was – I am -- free to love, knowing that I was – I am -- loved. And she was free to love, knowing how greatly she was -- and is -- loved.

    Life surely offers no greater grace and no deeper purpose than to love and to be loved by one’s Beloved.


    Everlasting


    And we both knew that in our hearts we were blessed for our lifetimes by our love of one another, together … for this is what our marriage was meant to be. Indeed, this is what marriage itself is meant to be as, together, we find our mutual salvation.

    It is with this person, with my Beloved, that I am, at last, free to love, free to be saved from my fears of loneliness and my dread of being unloved, my yearning for intimacy beyond all other needs. And I am free to love myself and to love others………

    And, as we grew together, we found that God was with us constantly to guard and to guide and to save us, one with the other.

    The actual grace of loving another soul and being loved was – is -- an astonishing, yet daily, awareness for me. With such thoughts and memories of so grand a woman and so enriching a marriage, it is no wonder to me that love for the Beloved does not cease, but seems to abide ever more deeply. I daily remind myself how blessed my life continues to be because of her ... and daily do I think of her and thank her for the goodness she yet instills:

    Once more, say again what you said to me that day;

    Say again those words which bind us still.

    Once more, remind me of what we share -- and always will,

    Of what is ours alone.

    For in those words, given one to the other,

    Do we find life’s blessed purpose.

    Though we are, in God’s good time, apart,

    In those words do we, again, discover that surpassing truth

    which makes all else in this life blessed.

    In those loving words do we find ourselves,

    together in heart and soul, always one, never alone.

    And through the grace of God

    We are, both, in grateful peace.


    God’s  Ever-Goodness


    Nancy and I grew older side by side. In those passing years, she and I became wiser, more patient, kinder to one another, and we were --  are -- grateful to God for our being together … and our marriage became our way to God -- and we yet go Godward together.

    Finally, our Catholic Church teaches that marriage is a Sacrament, a sacred and holy union sanctified by our mutual choice. As a sacred union, this Sacrament, through our willing union together, 1) signifies our union with God and God’s union with us, and 2) accomplishes, brings about, what it signifies.

    As God entered our relationship, we were -- are -- immersed in His Loving Self, just as we are immersed with one another in our marriage.  And all of life -- the delights and the sorrows of it  --  all make sense at last, and we were -- are -- ever so grateful to be married in God’s good time, one to the other, Nancy and I …

     

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    13 April 2020


    An  Easter  Reminder


    As our viral stand-off goes on and on, people sicken and many die … while evidence mounts that this tragic event could have been prevented.

    Everyone is affected. Businesses shut down. Schools close. Industries cut back drastically, jobs vanish, travel ceases, churches lock their doors. Daily routines are stymied, lives interrupted, freedoms blunted, hopes curtailed. Hygiene keeps us yards apart; gingerly do we embrace loved ones. We dare not socialize nor hobnob, except at a sanitized distance.

    We feel stranded in a fog of isolation and ambiguity … all because of a critter we knew nothing about a month ago.


    But  Wait, There’s  More…..


    In the midst of our chaos and loss of control, one fact remains unchanged:


    Even before the corona-bug took center stage, we have    never been in control of anything in this world except    the choices we make and the way we act.


    We do not control Nature nor govern the universe. We struggle at the edges of knowledge, exploring the mysteries of Creation, seeking to understand the vagaries of life. But we control very little … except our own choices and our own behavior, and even then, we often falter . . . .

    So … beneath corona-driven taboos, beyond off-putting restrictions, a serendipitous awareness awaits, offering us insight by which we may better understand our role in the reality of Creation and the fundamental mandate of our lives.

    Command  And  Control


    People need clarity and control, predictability and routine. We do not welcome confusion or incoherence. Uncertainty and ambiguity discombobulate us. We resent anything which renders us powerless and vulnerable.

    Once we lose control, we face chaos. Understandably, we seek our comfort zone, i.e., that cozy inner place where we are in control, safe and secure; that zone in which life is predictable, the angels are on our side and our ego is unthreatened.

    Nonetheless, even in our comfort zone, we still live in a universe characterized by two distinct states which seem contradictory, but which are also complementary.

    The first state is chaos. The second state is order.

    And it is wondrously reassuring that chaos and order are two sides of the same Hand.

    For example, certain sectors of the universe reveal chaotic movement … and yet order is clearly there.

    Our cosmos is filled with billions of galaxies, each with millions of planets and stars and entities undefined … and order is there.

    Our human brains are filled with a billion cells which, somehow, come together and make sense … .and order is there.

    Obviously -- and miraculously -- order is always and everywhere evident throughout our cosmos … and within us.

    When chaos occurs, we find exquisitely-regulated order. Indeed, both the universe and our human nature obey laws and patterns which are evident to those who know what to look for, those who comprehend what we all perceive, those who get the message.

    And what is the message?

    The honest observer soon recognizes that an Unseen Power constantly guides the stunning panoply of Creation, including us. We are (as Carl Sagan used to say) made of “the stuff of the stars” -- and a whole lot more.


    It’s  All  Some  Sort  Of  Accident … Right ?


    How should we interpret that message? What does it say to us?

    Skeptics hold that the universe - and human beings -- are “accidents,” mere random results which evolved from that Big Bang awhile back.

    Where did that Big Bang originate? What caused it?

    Skeptics add, “It just happened; the universe just happened; people just happened; that’s that!! Move on...”

    But the mysteries of Creation - around us and within us - cannot be so readily discounted. Evading the question never satisfies reason or logic, faith or science.

    Still, many folks habitually avoid the fact that the evidence demands a Creator – Our Creator.

    Abundant evidence of His Presence is all about us. Evidence floods our minds and fills our senses and tugs at the soul each instant of our lives.

    Anyone with common sense (which is another word for humility) eventually admits that the universe is a created reality and we are part of it.

    We cannot escape the obvious: Creation includes us….. we are God’s creation or, more accurately, God’s children, endowed with the gifts of knowing and choosing, gifts of insight and decision-making; gifts given freely to human nature.

    Given all this, it is reasonable to wonder:  Why do so many people refuse to acknowledge our Creator, our God?


    Avoiding  The  Obvious


    To say “Yes” to God is to admit that we are children of God and that we are, therefore, dependent on Him. But if we admit that we depend on God for our very lives, this acknowledges a bond between God and us, a bond which deserves our deepest affection and fullest attention. It is a bond which obliges us to pay heed to what God asks of us.

    And what does God ask of us?

    To bring order – moral order – where chaos reigns.

    We are born into a moral universe consisting of families and societies and cultural associations and a multiplicity of people and collectives. The distinguishing feature of our human nature within these human associations is that we are, by God’s design, born to be His moral agents upon this earth, born to bring peace and stability into the human community, wherever we may find it.

    If we admit all this, then we can no longer deny that our humanity functions in terms of laws and guidelines aimed at our bringing moral order to human affairs.

    If we admit all this, then we cannot evade the truth about ourselves.

    If we admit all this, then we cannot live solely on our own terms.

    If we admit all this, then we are subject to the guidelines God sets for us, so that we may infuse our world with the order and the regularity which flow from our moral influence.

     

    To  See  The  Right  Course


    If we admit all this, then the truth stares us in the face:  our humanity demands that we exert moral control over ourselves, our attitudes, our choices and our behavior.

    Inherent laws codes of conduct flow from our status as children of God and as moral exemplars. As we come to know and honor what’s right and what’s wrong in human affairs, we mature and accept certain responsibilities. For example,

    • we know lies and exaggerations are wrong;
    • we know deliberately harming others is wrong;
    • we know self-restraint is our constant need;
    • we know revenge, hatred and violence are wrong;
    • we know false accusations, defaming and demeaning others are wrong;
    • we know selfishness and disdain for others are wrong

    …  but how soon we lose our focus, and forget . . . .


    Despite our failings and faults, our calling remains. We are born to bring moral order, right reason and goodness into this world. Even as chaos ofttimes swirls around us, resilience renews us. We persevere.

    This is what our maturity demands. This is why we are here.

    This is what adults do – seek and maintain moral order.

    The virtues we model, the choices we make, the example we give to young and old, all determine how much chaos -- or how much order and goodness -- we inject into our world.

    It matters not whether we are CEOs or new parents coping with the infantile chaos of a hungry newborn. Our vocation is to bring and to maintain moral order, to make sense where chaos hovers.


    Our  Choice  Is  Evident  … Isn’t  it?


    The rules are clear; our choices are two:

    • We can think and act as moral exemplars, seeking goodness and virtue as our maturity requires … or …
    • We can create and foster chaos and indifference in our own hearts and souls, in our families, in the young entrusted to us and in the world we inhabit.

    Where do we begin?

    Our benign influence begins within our own family whom we are blessed to understand most fully and to love most faithfully.

    From there, our impact extends into this needy, lonely world, to those who wait - hopefully - for solace or generosity or a moment of kindly recognition and the touch of another soul, so rarely given.

    This is our mandate, our path to the full measure of our humanity: to build and exemplify the moral order in our lives and in the lives of those around us – even if our efforts are thankless and lonely.


    Finally …


    We witness the gravity of our mandate in its absence, e. g., when violence – physical or mental, psychological or spiritual, cultural or societal, in marriage or family – is allowed, even regularized.

    When moral restraint is blurred, when self-control is lost, when others are demeaned and punished in society or in family, then do we realize (sometimes too late) the absolute necessity of these norms and guidelines, these God-given moral mandates and social imperatives. To this day, history reveals the peril which results when our fidelity wanes and our commitment fades.

    The need for order – moral order – is essential for the health of our souls as much as food and sustenance are essential for our bodies.

    This is true for individuals. This is true for whole nations.

    This is a tiring and stressful task, especially in a world which has forgotten so many basics. So, where do we find strength and renewal to carry on with fidelity and courage?

    For starters, the reassurances we need come – at long last, after much effort and many errors -- from simplicity of soul which seeks respite in God; respite which finds faith and hope and peace in one’s heart as a result.

    Some people object. “This is really a lot to ask of me. After all, I’m only human …”

    Of course it is ….. but what else is God’s gift of life truly for?

     

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    18 March 2020


    …. Reflections On That Nasty Bug ….


    This coronavirus has us by the throat. Media inundate us with opinions from experts who instruct us how to stay healthy. We are told to stay home, avoid crowds, sneeze into our elbow (why not Kleenex?), use alcohol-based stuff, don’t touch common surfaces, wash our hands for at least twenty seconds, avoid sick folks and be extra-cautious -- especially us elders, a high-risk category.

    After several weeks of escalating inundation, I often wonder what is factual and what is hype, what advice is medically sound and what is media overkill. But the World Health Organization has declared a pandemic, and the virus seems to spread with tenacious ubiquity, taking lives around the world. Moreover, the number of reported cases increases daily, while progress in diagnosis and prevention seems slow, ever so slow. But we do indeed see progress – and this is encouraging.

    This virus is tiny, but it creates an extensive ripple effect in our world, in our nation and in our economy. People are fearfully alert. The Federal Reserve lowers interest rates as the market drops precipitously. Schools and theaters and public places close. Rubber gloves, face masks and sterile wipes are everywhere.

    At such times, science seems brought to a crawl. Fears of the unknown surface dramatically. Our best laid plans quake and rattle in the face of an alien foe. The familiar is threatened; our routines no longer sustain us. Our vulnerabilities are exposed, both as individuals and as a nation. 


    The  Upside  Of  Challenge


    Such times at this create universal distress throughout our society. Uncertainty tests us all. But realistic anxiety can – and should – usher us into the deeper corners of the human heart, into recesses within ourselves which many of us muzzle and rarely explore, lest we uncover vulnerabilities within ourselves which we deem too severe -- and too revealing -- to manage.

    The realistic threat of illness, reports of death and the stark aura of hovering danger moves many of us to reflect on these challenges with religious wonderment. But, contrarily, there are persons who remain unmoved, entrenched inside themselves; persons who mock prayerful soul-searching and ignore the responsibilities we have to one another, to our children and our loved ones, to strangers next door … and a world away.

    Skeptics dismiss prayer entirely and express nihilistic resignation and disdain for faith. Yet dismissive denial does not lessen the reality of a world held hostage by a foe so small, yet so powerful, as to threaten us all.

    So, some of us are moved – and rightly so -- to ask fundamental questions about the gift of life and the manner in which we live; about who we are, and what sort of person we have become, what we value, what we believe our lives are all about, who we love and who loves us … about the opportunities which still remain to us, about our future and what we choose to do with its hopeful possibilities.


    A  Personal  Moment


    These questions remind me again of how precious life truly is, mine and yours.

    These questions remind me again how marvelous it is to be consciously aware of the world around me -- and within me.

    These questions remind me of how extraordinary are the ordinary experiences of every minute’s sights and sounds and tastes; how engaging are the people around me, how grandly beautiful the color of sunlight on the grass – all of this comes into clearer focus for me, especially when I realize that we are threatened – or more honestly, that I am threatened -- and that all I take for granted may soon be changed, even taken from me.

    My thoughts push me ever-further into that tender area of my life’s mysterious path ... and I am once again filled with wonder at the intricacies of the simplest events, filled with equal wonder at the ordered simplicity of the most intricate events.

    I look up at the sky and I see the very edge of infinity - in living color. The sun is one of a billion stars in our galaxy; this reminds me that there are a billion galaxies beyond my gaze … and I shake my head and smile at the mystery and wonder of it all.

    I look at my own hands and realize the miraculous texture and flexibility of skin and bone and sinew of which my hand is made. I recognize anew that my fingernails somehow grow all by themselves. I cannot order them to cease their growth, for their regulation is beyond my control, as are so many miraculous functions and elegant processes which sustain my health and support my very existence. And my body brings back to me the fact that I am, as are we all, a mystery of astonishing dimension.


    The  Wonderment  Of  Soul


    Once again, I am moved to wonder about who I really am, and what is my place in this world? And I ask myself some questions which echo with the heart’s deepest wonder:

    “Who am I, really?” I ask myself. “What is my identity?” It’s a trite, yet complex, question, I know. But to understand myself, I realize I must finally look to where I invest my heart’s dearest values … for, after my length of years and my decades of work and wonder and hope and striving, I have become only what I most love.

    I recall the gifts of goodness and gentility I have received, sometimes from loved ones, sometimes from strangers, always in the sight of my Creator. I happily recall the face and voice and touch of my Beloved. I recall our living close by the sea, watching the fog roll in from the ocean as it sidled slyly through the forests with silent assurance. I recall our visits to the herd of elk in fields nearby, stately and grand in their silent graze and sturdy mien.

    And in the same questing manner, I ask myself what I fear most in my life? Is it illness or becoming dependent or missing the few loved ones who have faithfully stayed the course with me in my life? I ask myself if I will be well-remembered when I am gone? And who, I ponder hopefully, will remember me with gracious, forgiving memory?

    Then I ask myself: What -- or who -- gives me greatest joy? In what ways can I spend the rest of my days in shared gratitude and delight, with candor and a humble heart, as I am brought to the gentle realization that I am in the Hands of God, and I am safe and beloved beyond any conceivable measure.

    Then, I ask myself, “If I love -- truly love -- someone, have I done all I can do to be worthy of love in return? If not, why not? With the time I have left in my life, when will I start to be the loving person I was born to be? What can I do more -- not from fear of illness nor anxiety about the unknown – but simply because loving is what I have been put here on this good earth to do … all along?

    Finally, because I do believe in God, I thank God for all that He has given and does give, for all that we behold, for all that is yet to come. And, with gratitude for my life -- and for life itself -- for love and goodness abounding, I pray to God to love and bless you and me … and to be kind to us, each and all.

    May it be so. May it ever be so.

     

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    20 February 2020


    No  One  Tells  Me  What  To  Do  !!


    When I was a youngster decades ago, I had a grammar school classmate named Joey. Joey was possessed by a precociously wicked world-view, with a flippant, dismissive attitude toward all authority and a prodigal’s distaste for anything which challenged his version of “freedom.”

    Joey cheated on tests, snuck food into class and gobbled Twinkies under his desk. He’d steal candy bars and comic books from the drug store. He’d tell straight-faced lies to his parents. He even lied to The Good Nuns (a sure ticket to perdition).

    I once asked Joey why he did stuff we all knew was wrong and (to us Catholic kids) sinful. His answer: “It’s a free country, isn’t it? I can do what I want; it’s a free country…”  

    In his primitive manner, Joey twisted authentic “freedom” into a fallacious “right” to do anything he pleased. He lived as if he were subject to no laws or restrictions. His moral vision admitted no personal wrongdoing. His superficial charm and persuasive duplicity revealed no remorse for his misdeeds, no regret or concern for the consequences of his wayward deeds.

    Joey was deaf to the moral voice of conscience, numb to human nature’s innate tug of decency and altruism. Anything he wanted to do – any urge or impulse – was a “right,” no matter what harm ensued. No restrictions. No restraints. He was addicted to irresponsibility.

    In effect, his motto was: “I have the right to do wrong.” He had only one caution: “Don’t Get Caught . . .”


    The  Quandary


    Now, many decades later, countless people accept Joey’s specious idea that a person is subject to no laws other than those he decides for himself. Freedom and liberty, morality and conscience have no binding force other than what each individual decides. Freedom means we say and do anything we wish. We can lie without guilt, offend and demean and name-call with impunity. We can pursue harmful ends with harmful means. We are righteously “free” to do what we choose.

    The social and moral consequences of this outlook are frightening for individuals and for a society which uncritically accommodates such radical, ethically unsound ideas. In this view,


    • Traditional morality and conscience are archaic and civility is irrelevant.
    • Freedom and liberty are severed from their proper purpose, namely, to seek Goodness and choose what it requires.
    • Liberty and freedom are used to do harm, to offend and to manipulate, as we choose.
    • Culture is polarized; communication is self-righteously accusatory and hostile.
    • Morality and law mean only what each individual decides.
    • No common standards of behavior bind us as citizens, and we have no moral center to our culture.
    • Conflict and hostility replace courtesy and empathy. Fact-less accusations are tossed wildly about.
    • The Commandments are passé. Scripture’s admonitions? Tiresome! Respect for centuries-old customs of Western culture? Boring! The Christian virtues? Fuhgeddaboudit!

    Constitutional guarantees and limits, legal restraints and even common-sense are rejected. Law, religion, history - even scientific evidence from biology and genetics - are the detritus of a repressive era, of no worth whatever. They’re diktats of outdated elites. Even aborting children is a “civil right” or a “woman’s health concern” or a “social justice issue.”


    The  Costly  Consequences


    This view defines the moral order as an offensive intrusion on radical individualism. Morality is imposed by an un-woke, power-yielding collective of homophobic, xenophobic, racist, misogynistic, hate-speaking, toothless, white-privileged men.

    Everyone in our culture today is affected by such thinking. Why? Because (among other outcomes) these distorted concepts have profoundly diminished the value of human life and the validity of traditional marriage and family, which are the historic foundations of every stable culture … and this is only for starters.

    So, we must ask: How can morality survive in such a radically selfish culture?

    More than that, how can a morally-conscientious person survive?

    What happens to individual conscience and the larger culture when each person is guided only by their aggrieved feelings and their errant urges?


    Morality  And  Conscience


    What does “conscience” truly mean? Why does morality count?

    The basic meaning of “conscience” is “knowledge with others.” Conscience compels us to move out of our self-centeredness and pursue knowledge of right behavior -- not only for ourselves but for the benefit of others with whom we share this earth. In this context, “others” refers not only to loved ones but to strangers up-close and half-a-world away.

    The moral content of the educated conscience not merely a set of arbitrary rules, imposed by a distant, power-sated deity. Morality is a reflection of God’s design for us all. Morality proposes a set of practical rules and admonitions based on the fact that we share this earth with countless others. We are accountable to one other, as well as to God.

    Morality is God’s way of telling us how to get along with others, how to find the right way to behave so we can live in peace with one another. Conscience tells us that morality is not arbitrary or peripheral to life. Morality is essential if we are to treat one another with dignity and consideration, so that we might all be better human beings, able to love and to give of ourselves generously to one another, in peace and kindness, respectful of one another, grateful for the gift of life God has bestowed.


    Embracing  Goodness


    Conscience - rightly understood - is our well-formed, morally educated awareness which informs us about Goodness and then inspires our will power to choose to proper action.

    Our moral education is a life-long learning process which gradually empowers mind and will, heart and soul. Our educated conscience then becomes the center of genuine freedom … religious and civil, personal and cultural.

    The educated conscience comprehends the value of goodness and the harm of evil. Like any human skill, conscience also grows and deepens its knowledge over time, as we learn more about the true nature of life and the responsibilities of being a person.

    Conscience increases our moral intelligence and refines our grasp of what is expected of us, of what Goodness truly requires of us, of what “justice for all” really means to us, of what charity demands of us, of what love for neighbor costs us, of what self-respect and self-restraint require of each of us, of what more we can do to extend virtue and Goodness in this world.

    The well-formed conscience is not naïve or passive, not willfully ignorant nor evasive. It does not avoid hard reality nor alibi away its responsibilities.

    As our educated conscience matures, we also mature -- and we understand the dignity and necessity of our becoming a truly accountable person. That’s why liberty -- true liberty -- is always directed to a morally good end. True freedom is never separated from moral truth. Why?

    Because we do not create ourselves or the moral laws which oblige us. Neither do we create the inner voice of our conscience, that universal voice which, always and everywhere, whispers (sometimes vociferously) to us about right-doing and wrong-doing.


    True  Freedom  Seeks  Good


    The natural goal of our choices and our behavior is a perceived good. Our behavior seeks a good end … or at least what we define as good. How we correctly determine what is truly Good is the key issue in our development as persons.

    Some people knowingly – and errantly -- assume the authority to define evil as good, thus engendering a dangerously selfish life-style. To do this, they must blunt their moral responsibilities, silence conscience’s inner voice, rid themselves of altruism and empathy, and risk the loss of their ability to love and be loved.

    Nonetheless, some people become so perniciously self-centered that goodness eventually means nothing to them, as their conscience is muted. The chronically selfish person learns to dismiss moral truths, to reject conscience’s inner voice and to studiously ignore the storehouse of moral knowledge which defines us as persons and dignifies human nature.

    Such selfishness is contrary to Nature’s intent. Even those who learn evil at an early age, or those burdened with severe neuroses come, sooner or later, to know right from wrong, good from evil. They know what they are doing.


    From  Good  To  Better


    A well-formed conscience is more than knowledge. It’s also a power which, as we mature, inspires us to choose what we know is right and good over what is wrong and evil.

    A well-educated conscience energizes us, spurs us to action as well as to refection and contemplation.

    But more ---  as our conscience matures, Good will inevitably ask more of us. We will learn to be ever-more grateful and generous. Our growth in moral maturity will reveal to us the value and dignity in even the smallest human actions.

    We will recognize the Godly power of good will and loving intention which inspires us to perform even small gestures of kindness and care; those acts of acknowledgment and civility and honor by which we extend gentility and dignity quietly to others … in ways which give them a moment’s revelation of Goodness Itself.

    A reassuring smile to a fearful stranger is an example: a tiny gesture of value immeasurable .. a reminder that “I see you, and I recognize you. You are here, and you are not alone …”

    In the sight of God, nothing small is truly small.

    Maturity is the union of knowledge and will – the union of thought and behavior, of knowing and doing, of seeing and choosing, of insight and action, of intention and recognition, of generously giving of oneself – a union which grows and deepens throughout our lives.

    It is this union which defines us as moral persons aa we move from doing to becoming.

    It is charity -- love of others -- in action.

    This is the heart of what we mean by moral choice, the generous act of our giving more than we are asked to give, of taking less than we are allowed to take.

    It is the quality of the Divine to which we are called.


    As  Always, It  Is  Our  Choice


    Our human growth and development as mature persons depend on how open we are to hearing and to heeding these truths which conscience reveals to us.

    Moral truths come to us through formal education and from learning of all sorts. We learn from others, from our reflections on our experience, and we learn from God, Who is behind all of this.

    Even those who deny God’s existence or those who ignore the promptings of God’s echo cannot escape the inner voice of their own conscience, a voice which, many believe, is the whisper of God.


    • Thus does God communicate His creation to us in our own created hearts.
    • Thus does our conscience become the gift of His largess in our personal lives.
    • Thus does He appeal to our humanity and usher us toward Goodness by revealing to us our own special path to His Goodness – with-and-through the “others” in our lives.
    • Thus does He call personally to each - and to all - of us.
    • Thus does God ask us to love and serve Him … with-and-through the other human beings all around us.

    These truths were once widely accepted in our society. Once we shared a common awareness of right and wrong. We did not hesitate for an instant to allow our children to pray in school. We did not question the faith of our neighbors, nor did we indict them as “haters” for their traditions. We certainly did not entertain the madness of surgically mutilating our children or feeding them hormone-killing drugs. We were not ashamed to publicly express our gratitude to God for blessing our nation with liberty and justice for all -- even if our struggle to attain these ideals was sometimes hampered by our moral blindness.


    Finally . . .


    At the conclusion of his “Inferno,” as Dante ends his travels through Hell, he emerges from the depths, and tells us that he again sees “…those beauteous things which Heaven does bear; thence I came forth to re-behold the stars.”  

    In our struggles to do what is right and good, let us “re-behold” Goodness. Surely, as we struggle, we err and fail, fall and rise again. But to find meaning in our struggles, we cannot escape the fact that our hearts and souls are made for Goodness, no matter how long we evade this truth or how much we deny it.

    Goodness awaits … often, despite our ploys to avoid.

    In the last analysis, it is humility which unites us to Goodness. Humility urges us to admit and accept truth – truth about ourselves, about creation and our place in it, about our neediness as created beings to believe and to hope, about the fact that God, Who is Goodness, patiently awaits.

    In the last analysis humility obligates us all. Humility obliges us all to see and hear the truth, and to speak truth, as well. We are obliged -- all of us -- to recognize truths beyond ourselves … truths within ourselves … truths which bind us all; truths which God has given us, truths which define us as His children.

    In the last analysis, then, it is always God’s gift of humility which allows us to see that …. 

    There is a time when anguish and doubt
    must give rise to hope.  
    Then strength and grace are to be found
    in the silence between our soul's dark night
    and the Light and Life which enliven.
    Then does our hope move us to God,
    despite ourselves,
    and our search for His goodness
    leaves us stranded in Him;
    there, at last, with the gift of His vision,
    to behold Him anew…
    God Who, alone, is the Loving Cause of life
    And the reason for it all.

     

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    5 February 2020


    Choosing  Legacy:  For  What
    Shall  I  Be  Remembered


    When I was a very young child, my ever-loving parents would occasionally take me to various of their social events. Invariably, my mother would caution me beforehand not to pester, not to romp nor cavort like the child I was. “Sit. Sit still and listen,” she would sternly command. “Listen… Just listen...”

    On one occasion, as we entered the home of a new neighbor, the husband greeted my parents, then greeted me … by name! He knew my name. He welcomed me … and his sincerity was -- to my child-self -- overwhelming.

    The power of his acknowledgment was overwhelming to me. It was stunning that an adult knew my name. He knew who I was. He remembered me … and he treated me with goodness and dignity and genuine warmth which I remember to this day. (He later assumed a role in my life which greatly enhanced his credibility and caring -- but that is another tale, for another time.)

    Now, so many decades later, I recall with affection and admiration that Good Man … and the power of his presence in my life. By my memory of his goodness, I celebrate his still-blessed legacy. And, many decades later, I still honor him, for he is well-remembered.

    The power of his presence remains, and his legacy of goodness still touches my heart … for goodness is never out of season, even if, in these latter days, the power of human presence is rarely noted or goodness seldom revered.


    The  Power  Of  Presence


    In quiet moments, with these reverent memories ascending, I am reminded, once again, of what goodness is like in human affairs; reminded that even the smallest gift of kindness elevates the listless soul and relieves the dark wonderment of life’s endless, unanswered questions.

    I am also reminded that no human interaction is neutral. Even glances exchanged between strangers has an impact -- subtle but discernible -- on the mind and heart and emotions. Memory may not linger on these brief encounters but an impact, an awareness and, often, a reaction to the presence of the other, does invariably occur. Somehow, in some mysterious manner, we register the presence of one another.

    Despite a plethora of contrary evidence, human beings possess a sacred potential which is a reflection of the divine. A sacred factor hovers at the threshold of every encounter between people. In fact, we possess the potential to reveal the divine in each of us … if we but look and see what is to be seen … then choose to make it so.

    The power of human presence offers us a vision of Creation but it is a vision we must seek, a vision which we must enliven by our free choice. However, for many people, it is a vision often obscured by the vagaries of personality, de-sensitizing distractions, endless mind-cluttering detours and errant feelings which our lonely, rootless culture spawns.

    Still, despite the snarky put-downs of skeptics and the all-too-abundant weaknesses of the flesh, some of us hold tenaciously to our belief that a sacred factor exists in each person, even if many people rarely advert to it or are oblivious to our innate human dignity.

    Many of us believe that the reality of the divine is embedded in human nature and resides close to the surface in every human encounter, there to be found and brought to life. Moreover, that divine quality enlightens our spirit whenever we act upon the belief that:

    • kindness is preferable to disdain,
    • that care is preferable to indifference,
    • that forgiveness is preferable to revenge,
    • that patience is preferable to intemperate emotion,
    • that we are, each and all, children of our Common Creator.  

    The  Point  Of  It  All


    Goodness and forgiveness and all those “better angels of our nature” do not appear haphazardly in our behavior. Goodness does not result by accident or chance. Goodness is not a bloodlessly ethereal quality, not a phantom wandering aimlessly through the ethers. Nor do we create Goodness merely by dropping money into the poor box.

    Goodness is, above all else, a divine reality, a quality which is sacred in its origins -- and sacred, too, in its human realization when it is revealed by the power of presence.

    In human affairs, goodness revealed is a gift given to us by God; a gift freely given which we must not squander on selfish wants or foppish excess. Goodness is a means and an end, a path and a goal. It is meant to inspire us to choose freely to become what God intends by His act of Creation.  

    When we introduce goodness into any relationship, it is always the result of a free choice we make, of an action we choose. Goodness is then as real as pain we experience or rejection we feel or doubt we harbor or cynicism which sours the heart -- or the sustaining, unquenchable love we experience for our Beloved.

    When we choose goodness and kindness and the panoply of our nature’s better angels, they become human realities with specific characteristics, discernible qualities and tangible human traits which we know as virtue. Yes, virtue exists. Virtue is real.

    Then does Goodness have a face and a name. And our motive for our choice is not to promote our own ego, nor to role-play for the gullible, nor to wallow in the “feel-good” shallows of our dreadful Culture of Nice.

    Our choice (as cliched as it may sound to some) is to do what is humanely sacred, to do what is divinely right – to do the morally right thing, to choose Goodness, to respond to that inherent spark of divinity which is ever within our choosing.


    No  Human  Encounter  Is  Neutral …. BUT ….


    “Nonsense,” some critics are quick to say. “These ideas are the ravings of someone unfamiliar with the struggle to get ahead, to get what’s mine, to succeed in this grubby rat-race, to do unto others before they do it unto me, yo………”

    It’s true; some encounters are hostile, loaded with conflict and aggression. Rage and anger seem de rigueur in our culture. You gotta be hard, tough. Trust no one.

    Most encounters are fleeting, seemingly irrelevant, superficial at best, with no apparent point or purpose. For example, we pass dozens of people dozens of times each day, but rarely do we advert to their presence, or they to ours. We rarely greet them nor are we greeted by them. We are busied with distracting cell phone chit-chat and a litany of obsessive irrelevancies. People are often last in our priorities. We listen to others with an eye on our screens and an ear attuned to our apps.

    On the other hand, overly-friendly people are often assumed to be a bit balmy or simply tasteless boors. Social restraints forbid incursions into another person’s private space. Moreover, the discomforting truth for many of us is that our interest in others is very often stimulated only by a “what’s-in-it-for-me” outlook.

    Yes, we can be a caring race -- but selectively. Why?

    Because we are a vulnerable race, drawn instinctively to self-interest in its various forms and fashions, some heathy and essential, some indulgent and intentionally distant.

    Happily, however, we are entirely capable of learning from our mistakes and recovering from our sins (if, that is, we any longer accept “sin” as a moral reality in human affairs).

    • We are certainly able to grow beyond our hapless immaturity and choose wiser ways to live than estrangement and division … if we so choose.
    • We are certainly able to rise above the lingering allure and assorted seductions to which we are heir … if we so choose.
    • We are certainly able to give voice to that sacred gift within us -- that gift which animates the soul and taps at the conscience of every person … if we so choose.

    The  Real  Meaning  Of  Choice


    Self-encapsulated individuals often choose the pursuit of power as their life-style, savoring the two-edged pleasures of control over others. Some people even choose evil, and do so with unrepentant, repetitive clarity and full knowledge that their actions hurt others. Yet they proceed knowingly, and thereby taint their souls, sometimes beyond redemption --- but always by choice.

    The truth is that we always have a free choice about what we shall do – here and now. We have a free choice about who we will become, about what legacy we bequeath.

    But let us be clear: freedom of choice is intended for the pursuit of Goodness, not evil. Our freedom to choose is NOT about doing whatever we wish to do, not about living a life with no moral boundaries nor concern for personal accountability. And we are certainly not given freedom of choice so we can injure or demean others.

    True freedom of choice actually means the freedom of each individual to choose the path of Goodness, no matter what the cost. The choice of Goodness makes us most human.


    Finally . . . . .


    We live in a zone of choice between the Ideal and the Real, with advocates and persuasions tugging at us both ways throughout our years. We are tempted as we struggle between the divine and the human. We can choose evil, BUT we are born to choose Goodness. We are not born to celebrate the worst of which we are capable, as individuals or as a race.

    Thus, true freedom is the response-ability to choose Goodness, not evil. The choice we make is the defining response-ability which determines who-and-what we truly are. And in choosing, we determine our own legacy.

    It is our power to choose and our power to think which radically define us as persons, as individuals, as human beings, as participants in the sacredness of Creation.

    So, we can choose what sort of person we wish to become. Our choice reveals who we truly are and determines the legacy we intend to bequeath.

    So, let us consider:

    • If we but look at -- and see -- the beauty of life all around us;
    • If we but look and see the gift of life which abounds all around us;
    • If we but look and accept the Goodness which Creation constantly reveals all around us…
    • we cannot but gratefully realize that Goodness is everywhere to be found, all around us.

    Then will we also recognize that the point and purpose of one's life – i.e., the burden and the glory of our personhood --  is to freely choose the path of Goodness, to look and see that Goodness is also God’s gift within us – if we choose it and embrace it, no matter what the cost.

    It is that free choice which answers the query: "Who Am I?"

    It is that free choice which determines the values (or lack thereof) we possess, the patterns of life which we follow, the goals which mean most to us, the person we choose freely to be, the legacy we shall finally leave, the way we shall be remembered.

    But our legacy is always the result of our free choice … always our choice … and always ours alone …………

     

     

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    18 January 2020


    Mystery And Wisdom:
    Life’s Abiding Realities


    As years go by, the process of growing older has a way of nudging us toward the (sometimes painful but healthy) realization of how little we know about our own lives and about our own specific role in the vastness of Creation. And, if we are wise, we will listen to our sense of Wonder.

    We are, of course, easily distracted in our individual search for clarity. We do stumble and deny and avoid certain fundamental questions. We may still argue needlessly or defend ourselves for no solid reason. Some of us even become chronically angry and jealous in ways which are unworthy and unreasonable.

    But some people realize that getting older can actually help us traverse the maze of options (some good, others way off-course) which life affords. If we listen humbly to our wonderment and to the call to Goodness at its heart, we may realize the aging process is actually a grand gift, a doorway to the path of innocence regained … an invitation to personal Wisdom.

    We all know that, as we age, our “successes” (such as they are) surely fall behind. No more ticker-tape parades or pursuits by eager autograph hounds. No more feature stories in Fortune Magazine. Our lesser tendencies – to exaggerate, perhaps, or to back-slap with too heavy a hand or to worry about appearances or to seek approval all too readily – these all fade away, in favor of a less grandiose vision of who we really are … and, hopefully, a far more honest, humbler, giving sense of self.

    As we age, we are better – and wiser -- when we are deliberately less self-centered, more openly probing, more candid, more empathic to the needs of others, more ready to listen than to ignore, more truly forgiving of our own stumbles, more grateful for friendships which last, quicker to respond to altruism without reward, blessed with a Spouse who loves us still…...

    As we age, we also begin earnestly to question whether we spent our years worthily. In so many ways, our accomplishments are still unknown by so many people; people who are enmeshed in their own reverie, pondering the nagging wonderment of what life and living are all about.  

    To some of us elders who ponder thusly, the words of Isabella (in “Measure for Measure”) make much sense: “…but man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he's most assured.”


    The  Lingering  Why


    As we age, some elders do a profit-and-loss study. They come to realize that their great loss over many years has nothing to do with market quotes or estate planning or insurance costs. No, they see their great loss is their inability - or unwillingness - to embrace the inescapable presence of Mystery in their lives. They come to realize that Mystery rests at the heart of our struggle to seek and find Wisdom, whose first mandate to us is that we admit we really know so very little.

    As elderhood pushes our aging envelope, our health gradually begins to fail us. Our “friends” are fewer, our children grow up, aloneness edges in .. and eventually, inevitably, we all recognize we are not the center of the galaxy.

    Age will surely have its way with us. We will be moved one day to admit that we possess no power to fully control anything in our world. But Wisdom wisely reveals to us that all of this -- and more -- is to be accepted not with curmudgeonly spite or outdated pride or hopeless resignation, but with profound gratitude and quiet, abiding dignity and a statement to the world that it is a wondrous gift simply to be alive, to yet pursue Wisdom.

    Wisdom further teaches us to greet the Unknown not with rage and complaints, but with the ageless grace of grateful Wonder. Wonder enlightens us sufficiently so that we admit our lives are precious, divinely-given gifts. Our lives are gifts beyond all other gifts. They are gifts beyond all our understanding …. gifts which have been given -- to each and all -- freely. For this gift, may our gratitude be ever forthcoming.


    Adversarial  Voices


    Some dissenters find the concept of Mystery unacceptable and intrusive. They find Wisdom’s insistence on gratitude unwelcome, discomforting, offensive, intellectually off-base. “I am,” they say, accountable only to myself. I am my own master, my sole creator,” goes their tinny mantra.

    Some of these dissidents look to Science for all the answers we need in this life. Science studies the Mysteries around us and within us, then reports its findings. “What else is there, for God’s sake,” the dissidents ask…..

    Indeed, science reveals ever so much about our universe that is riveting in its stunning reality. Some examples:


    • Cygnus X1, the first identified Black Hole, is a hefty 6000 light years away from Earth.
    • The speed of light is agreed upon as 186,000 miles per second (give-or-take a mile or two);
    • A Black Hole four million times the mass of our sun lies at the center of our Milky Way;
    • Billions of galaxies exist in the universe (yes, that’s billions);
    • Dark matter and dark energy comprise better than 90% of the observable universe … but what is it?
    • There is a vast range of electromagnetic radiation, of which our area of vision is but a quite smallish fraction.

    These and other beguiling Mysteries -- such as the fluctuating vagaries of gravity and quasars and quarks, and an array of inexplicable realities -- continue to confound us as “Out-There Mysteries” of Creation. They have existed for billions of years, but they remain entirely beyond our comprehension, beyond our making --- yet we are part of that Creation, part of that “star stuff,” as Carl Sagan used to say. 

    More than that . . . in addition to these “Out-There Mysteries,” we are also confronted with the “In-Here Mysteries,” the list of personal wonderments summed up in the question, “Who Am I?”

    In truth, we stand before Creation and before our Creator as the weakest of creatures, dependent totally for our bodies which give us breath, dependent utterly for our souls which give us our lives and the energy which sustains us all our years.


    Bonhoeffer’s  Moral  Exemplar


    Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Methodist Pastor imprisoned by the Nazis, wrote his poetic response to that perennial question of “Who Am I” days before he was murdered in prison. He was just 39 years old, killed weeks before the end of World War II:

    "Who am I?  They often tell me
    I stepped from my cell's confinement
    Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
    Like a Squire from his country house.
    Who am I? They often tell me
    I used to speak to my warders 
    freely and friendly and clearly,
    as through it were mine to command.

    Who am I? They also tell me
    I bore the days of misfortune
    equably, smilingly, proudly,
    like one accustomed to win.


    Am I then really that which other men tell of?
    Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
    Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
    Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing
    My throat, yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
    thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
    tossing in expectation of great events,
    powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
    weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
    faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.


    Who am I? This or the Other?
    Am I one person to-day and to-morrow another?
    Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
    And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
    Or is something within me like a beaten army
    Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
    Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine,
    Whoever I am, Thou Knowest, O God, I am thine."


    To be sure, Bonhoeffer based his life -- and his death -- on the example of Jesus Christ, Whose name and ideas are today so blithely attacked, so readily trashed. But He, and Bonhoeffer in His stead, offered incarnate witness to Goodness, and to the belief that one cannot speak of moral values unless one is living these values in one’s own life. Christ as Moral Exemplar.


    Finding  The  Path


    Living a virtuous life as prescribed by Wisdom is difficult. But doing so is also a noble standard, really the only reliable standard for our credibility as persons who are true to our word … true to the highest traits of Human Nature, true to the Mystery, the Wisdom and the Wonder of our creation.

    Indeed, we do not bestow dignity upon ourselves. Our task in life is to recognize, honor and nurture the inherent dignity we already possess as creatures of God, then to assist one another to find and follow -- together -- the paths which God’s Wisdom opens to us.

    The message and the ground rules – the “In-Here Mysteries” – are clear. There is no mystery whatever about what is expected of us … as individuals and as a race of created beings in search of our Creator.

    And, as we learn to search our hearts with honesty and humility, the answers to our wonderment about “Who We Are” and why we are here become clear, and so does the price of Goodness which we must pay … for our victory already achieved.

     

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    7 January 2020


    Denial And Its Corollaries:
    America’s  Flourishing  Addiction


    Life’s  Little  Tyrannies


    Remember when you were a kid, and a playmate said to you, “Bet’cha can’t climb that tree…” and you emphatically replied, “Can too!!” Then up that tree you went, scraping your knees and cutting your fingers … just to prove you were a fearless tree-climber.

    We all have stories like that. Even as kids, we learned that our egos were -- and are -- powerful, feisty, vulnerable, easily aroused, ready to respond to challenge or threat by fighting or fleeing. And our most immediate ego-response is Denial: we deny the validity and gravity of the threat -- no matter how true it may actually be.

    I first felt Denial’s feisty compulsion to defend my ego when I was an eight-year-old, pretending to be a tree-climbing hot-shot. One of my classmates called my bluff and, foolishly, I took up his challenge … even though I was fearful of heart, stubborn of mind and weak of will. I knew I was definitely not an adroit climber-of-trees. Not me. No sir. No ma’am. Not me. No way!!! But Denial still had its way with me.

    Why? Because I cared too much what others thought of me. The threat of my sullied notoriety amongst my taunting playmates was too much for my ego to bear. It pushed me hastily into a state of blind, stupid Denial. So … up, up that daunting tree I went – only to fall from a reckless height, injuring my back, requiring hospitalization and weeks of slow recovery.

    And, to add to my self-styled humiliation, my attempts at Denial were infamously related to other classmates, and greeted by a barrage of whispered giggles occasioned by my self-inflicted dishonesty. How my weak ego did betray me … and, thus, did I painfully thud my way into grade school ignominy – a wretched state for a third-grader.


    Learning  The  Hard  Way


    On the bright side, my act of Denial taught me a life-lesson:  Denial may work for a while, but it becomes the eventual doorway to other falls from grace, some of which cause much avoidable hurt for many people.

    I realized that Denial requires us, knowingly and willingly, to practice self-deception. That’s a heavy load to bear for anyone with a conscience. Yet even as adults, some people use Denial and deception with ease and aplomb, sometimes for decades.

    But why do we use Denial? Because (so we believe) the opinion of others -- what they say and think about us -- deeply affects our ego, our self-image, our emotional safety, our reputation, our social status.

    And why is that? Because we gotta look good to others  -- at least that’s what our fragile ego says. So, we deceive ourselves and others, and follow the bad advice of our wayward ego … and are lessened for it.

    Let’s look at three aspects of Denial and ponder its cost to us, to our families and to our culture.


    Personal  Terms  And  Outcomes


    First of all, Denial is our personal attempt to avoid unpleasant truth and justify falsehood. We distort reality, stifle facts and deflate evidence. We try to convince ourselves that our problems are not real, that truth is only what we say it is, that language means only what we decide, that right is wrong, that wrong is normal and more desirable than honesty.

    Denial is a handy cover-up, a manipulation of logic which replaces truth with fiction. Its perverse utility seems effective when something we value is challenged, even if what we value is morally wrong, medically risky, physically harmful and blatantly untrue.

    Denial buffers us (however superficially) from the contradictions in our bootless pursuit of ego-centric superiority. It’s our way (often embarrassingly ineffective) of dismissing anything which might make us seem less admirable, intelligent, courageous, superior, sober or enviable. It’s a psychological Potemkin Village, camouflage for our fragile ego, a surrender to deception -- and a horrid example to others.

    Clearly, some personal truths do indeed chafe our egos and make us look foolish, weak or needy – often, because we truly are. But, in truth, we are all foolish, weak and needy at times. But Denial deflects such embarrassing truths as it tries to sanitize our personal lives, choices and behavior -- our tree-climbing facility.

    IN addition, there’s more – much more – to consider beyond personal issues. There’s also the social and cultural impact we must ponder …..


    Social  Consequences


    Second, some people have a need to be seen as confrontive cultural warriors, aggressive agents for social change. They dread the slightest suggestion that they’re unconcerned about social causes. They use Denial as a weapon, often with hostile vigor and an arsenal of baseless, condemnatory accusations of others, voiced with reckless intolerance.

    In this context, Denial in recent years has been used by social militants with frothy righteousness. But their abuse of logic and language contorts traditional moral guidelines, religious beliefs, legal rights and accepted restraints of civility, courtesy and the common good.

    Many of their “causes” are framed in the angry argot of “victimhood” and “civil rights,” mis-labeling their causes as “moral issues.” They employ frivolous accusations of “male domination and toxic masculinity,” “white privilege,” “heteronormativity” and other invented categories, including dozens of self-defined pseudo-sexual labels which burst the boundaries of risibility.

    For example, a biological male claiming to be a “woman” contradicts scientific evidence, medical fact, history, morality, tradition and common sense. The claim is indefensible … yet much of our culture accepts it as fact and denies the evidence, with grave harm even to young children.

    The public misuse of Denial has undeniably profound social impact with grave medical, religious, educational, familial and moral consequences. This misuse causes incalculable suffering.


    The   Addictive  Element


    Third, Denial has an addictive potential. Some people become hooked on Denial; it can become an unhealthy, addictive habit.

    Denial may start small, with seemingly insignificant little lies and evasions -- but the Denial Process is thereby energized. And, as we know, the ego-fueled thoughts, feelings and behavior ignited by Denial are quite powerful, even in childhood and well beyond

    Addiction, by definition, involves closed-minded defensiveness which very often spawns protective avoidance, haughty cynicism, flippant and sarcastic dismissal of other views and, when pushed, an aggressive, retaliatory response.

    Reliance on Denial gradually nurtures true addiction as it deepens with repetition. Our character and moral vision are compromised. Our flight from reality and our avoidance of accountability become a life-style. Antagonism comes easily but it’s often muted behind caustic pseudo-humor or silent, stubborn avoidance of even benign confrontation.  

    In fact, some people become so addicted to Denial that they brusquely avoid anyone who disagrees with their self-protective scripts, including close family. And, in the process, Denial’s habitual avoidance of truth prolongs immaturity and undermines psychological stability.


    Maturity’s  Traits


    Why mention maturity and psychological stability?

    Because maturity and stability, not power or prestige or adroit Denial, define healthy adulthood. The following traits of mental, emotional and moral stability indicate healthy growth in maturity. Maturity is properly fostered when:

    • we outgrow reliance on the need to shave the truth, tell lies and deceive ourselves and others;
    • we do not unduly deny or needlessly hide anything about ourselves which is true; we “man-up,” even if it hurts;
    • we grow beyond the childish compulsion to portray ourselves as anything other than as we truly are;
    • we overcome the need to hold grudges, control others, seek revenge or punish those who confront or threaten us;
    • we stop kidding ourselves about the limits of our talents;
    • we are no longer intimidated by our own vulnerabilities;
    • we honor the dignity and shared humanity of others in family and society, even strangers whose pain and need are unknown to us;
    • we no longer resent people who offend us, nor do we harbor memories of conflict nor dream of revenge;
    • we admit we can learn from many persons, so we listen with humility rather than attacking or dismissing their views;
    • we do not seek perverse delight in demeaning others;
    • we respect truth and evidence, even when it hurts.

    These traits indicate a healthy soul in possession of itself, a heart in sync with the arc of the moral life. But people addicted to Denial are adversely controlled by their need to look good, to impress, to live a delusion of superiority. In fact, their pretense at independence is actually a form of dependence, since delusions start with one’s self.

    Addicted persons become “fixated,” which means they stop growing emotionally. They get stuck -- fixed -- at a dysfunctional level of development. They may be singularly proficient in a specific area, not unlike the savant who excels (often spectacularly) in one arena of behavior but cannot maintain candid, stable relationships, even in marriage and family.  


    Addiction’s  Enablers


    Furthermore, Denial also reinforces the erroneous belief that nothing is amiss. There’s no need to change, no need to listen to others, no need to rely on anyone. Emotions and loving self-disclosure, given-and-received, are avoided. Humility is weakness. Love and intimacy are kept at arm’s length.

    As addiction settles in, the person believes he has no character flaws or unsightly wrinkles, no hormones out-of-place. He can control his needs and makes no bad decisions. His self-image, flawless and unmarred, lurks in pristine focus, providing unsullied energy for his mythically faultless life. Praise and adulation are his due. The rest of the world flaps and falters -- but says nothing, as enablers are expected to do.

    In this scenario, he is the main character (often, the only character), deserving attention, reward and applause; always ready for his close-up, with the expectation that others will recognize his stardom and be silent -- as intimidated enablers are expected to do.

    He hides from himself, covers his eyes and numbs his soul to the truth.  His self-delusion is bad enough. What’s worse is his inflicting it on family and concerned friends in the community, who stay silent -- as exhausted enablers are always expected to do.


    The  Value  Of  Community


    “Community” always means human beings -- people -- united by a hallowed sense of kinship and mutuality, with care for one another, even for strangers a world away, as well as family close by.

    “Community” is radically defined and universally circumscribed by our God-given responsibilities and rights with one another. These mutually-binding, God-given responsibilities and rights are the bases of all morality. They originate beyond us and exist in our DNA.

    We are born to be members of a morally-inspired community……….

    • Our moral nature is our God-given road map to making right choices.
    • Our moral selves are the core of our identity as persons and members of the human community.
    • Our freedoms exist only in the context of responsibility before rights, duty before privilege. The reverse is pandemonium.
    • We are free to do what is morally responsible and necessary, not what our selfish urges and raw instincts push us to do.
    • Our rights come from our Creator, the Divine Origin of all rights.
    • Our human dignity comes from respecting the limits of our shared human nature, not from exploiting or disregarding them.

    We exist within a variety of “communities” where we interact with others who seek specific, if temporary, goals. The needs of community often overrule individual urges and personal desires … and rightly so. This is even more essential in the family, which is the original community for all human learning and development.

    The lesson is obvious:  some goals are larger than any individual. Therefore, we must all give something to the community before we have any right to expect or demand anything.

    To deny this principle is to deny logic, human nature, common sense, history, Revelation, experience and reason – sources of evidence which Denial simply cannot erase, even as it struggles to obscure the truth.


    Affirming  The  Point  Of  It  All


    Denial in our culture now runs deep in education, religion, family, school. It is no longer applicable only to the areas of substance abuse (which clutters our country and costs billions).

    Responsibilities come before rights – but our culture now turns that natural law on its head. We now celebrate “civil rights” without responsibility. The meaning of “freedom” has been derailed. Rampant individualism and moral relativism reign.

    The point is this:  none of us is ever free to do as we wish. We cannot act any way we desire. Furthermore, we cannot fall back on Denial to avoid our God-given responsibilities to one another.

    We are born into “community” which, by the laws of God’s nature as well as human society, demands limits, sets restrictions, applies restraints and metes out punishment for irresponsible behavior -- or used to.

    History reveals that rights without responsibilities results in moral chaos and disaster. Closed-minded individualism always spawns relativism and promotes conflict, polarization and the aggressive eradication of opponents by law … or, in time, by violence.

    And, of course, the less we believe in God and honor the guidelines of His Revelation, the less all this matters. Without God as the Origin of our rights and responsibilities, life is indeed chaotic.

    Finally . . . . .

    Personal freedom is never without mutual limits. Denial would have it otherwise.

    Human community demands personal and social truth. Denial would have it otherwise.

    Individual maturity is defined by our readiness to love and to be loved. Denial would have it otherwise.

    Human flourishing relies on self-restraint … not for fear of punishment but for the dignity and rights of others. Denial would reject that truth.

    As human beings, we are a conflicted breed. Denial cannot alter that.

    Yet we are given our lives as a gift, born to pursue the noble mission of investing our lives with kindness and goodness, even if it means self-sacrifice. Denial cannot erase that.

    We are also born into frailty and error. As Solzhenitsyn reminds us, the thin line between good and evil runs thorough the human heart. Denial cannot obscure that truth.

    We all fall into the Denial trap and run from truth … more than we want to admit – and that’s precisely what Denial is all about:

    • avoiding the fact that God does indeed exist,
    • finding ways to numb the yearnings of our hearts,
    • ignoring the deepest needs of our souls, i. e., the truth of who we are, and what our lives are really for – why we’re here.

    The encouraging fact is that we always have a choice about acting with generosity. Since this is so, I often wonder what our lives would be like if we adhered to the marvelous notion that homage and fidelity and our very personhood might be at their strongest if we choose to respect the God-given truths of our moral heritage and humbly honor our duties to God and to one another.

    I cannot help but wonder …. and hope.

     

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