Let us begin.

One of the puzzles of our existence, as a race, is how we are distinguished from every other beast and creature.  This is not something that takes a lot of thought:  It is evident to a child that he is not a dog.  Indeed, there is no other animal which appears at all congruous with human nature, so that that animal could be confused for a person.

Now, think of it:  Why is that?  Why is it that we never think a dog has the inherent dignity of a human being?  (Ok, PETA notwithstanding…)  Why do we never ask of a slug or a pig its thoughts, as though we might learn something?

For one thing, they do not ask such questions, or any questions at all.

For another, we keep them as pets, or as subjects of study, and not the other way around.

One more thing:  No pig keeps a blog.  They do nothing, not even remotely, of the kind.

Of course, this is so obvious as to be discarded or ignored.  But before one reduces man to the stature of a beast, she must respond to such queries.  She must answer, but lo:  The answers betray her.

The Jews, by contrast, give us an answer which has survived the ages:

“God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”    Gen. 1:25-27

See:  “Let us make man in Our image…”

This is known widely by the Latin rendering Imago Dei, the “image of God.”  The distinctive thing about humans, according to this teaching, is that they reflect the nature of God in their very being.

Let us see the two views in contrast, and decide for yourself.  On the one hand, man is just another beast, albeit it a highly evolved animal; on the other, man is different in kind than the other animals.  He is still, clearly, an animal (and in this sense there is no conflict with our biological history, no conflict with evolution) and yet something more.

In thinking about that evolutionary history, in fact, it is the appearance of sophisticated tools and burial practices and other such innovations which marks the advent of humanity.*  Anthropologists notice something different in kind from all preceding, human-like effects.

Now, if that seems like splitting hairs (splitting wood?  On the evolutionary tree?), no problem.  Consider that, given thousands of years, no animal has kept pace with our technological development.  If it ever was near to equal in kind, any further argument is null and void.

For good and for ill:  We have developed language and writing – then poetry, prose, law, declarations, scriptures, lyrics, novels, fantasies – even blogs.

We had tools and weapons made of stone – then swords and spears, plows and picks, arrows, catapults, the printing press, telescopes, watches, guns and cannons, cameras, computers, satellites, missiles and bombs, even the first run of an invisibility cloak.

We were on foot, then on animal back, in carts and wagons, on boat, on bike, over tracks, over road, through the air, and into space.

And you want to say dolphins are persons?  Where’s my Willy Wonka meme…

*A related page makes my point for me.  It assumes that only a human being could be reading it.

It is an old request, but a friend has asked if I would say something on the dignity of the single life.  I don’t suppose myself an authority over anyone else, quite the contrary:  I’d welcome hearing dispatches from other outposts.  But as I have the impetus and the means…

This friend asks, I think, from a position of struggle.  And she has seen her share of personal trials, but I mean of a more general struggle, to be single in an age obsessed with coupling, and even more obsessed with sex, which formerly (and some would say naturally) implied coupling.

The saying among men was that the marriage ring was a shackle, and the wife was a ball and chain; now the notion is that being single implies living with unrequited love, and whether one is laden with this burden or absent its fulfillment, it is cause for sadness.

We are afraid of loneliness, perhaps, more than of Hell.

But if the single life is truly a shame, the very first thing that occurs to me contradicts this:  That is, we were all single once.  And if you go back far enough, coupling was the least of our concerns.

If being single is a shame, do we really think children ought to be ashamed of it?  Certainly not.  So it cannot be singleness, qua singleness, that is the issue.

Moreover, there is a kind of dignity in children, which accompanies their singleness – they are permitted to develop, their growth is celebrated (sometimes even at trivial intervals), and it is at the outset of maturity that we expect them to truly seek their fulfillment.

Now, it is often taken for granted that this fulfillment will take the form of a committed relationship, the formation of a family, and a productive life.  What I think my friend refers to is the result of failing (or declining) to participate in the committed relationship and in the formation of a family.  If all that is left is a productive life – say, a career suited to one’s talents, good friends, maybe some hobbies and other interests – somehow, that individual is fundamentally lacking something.

I confess that, to some extent, I cannot understand this.  After all, I once thought I might become a priest.  And while I did know that being celibate cost something – namely, everything that I now strive for and enjoy as a father and husband – I also recognized that it paid extraordinarily well in other ways, none of them financial.

But few of us so lack empathy as to think that being single with a vocation like priesthood or the religious life is the same thing as being single as a layperson.  There is no institutional or social support for that; nor is there a white-collared or veiled target on your head, either.

The single woman and the priest can both understand what a priest once told me:  When you’re visiting a married couple, and they end up in a fight, somehow you feel a little better about climbing into an empty bed that night.

Be that as it may, we have an outline of the single life which is marked more by absence than an abundance of good things.  Yet, when you put it like that, I think we may have a way out of this…

That is, when I’ve heard people extol the single life, they are largely pointing to their sense of freedom and self-determination.  They are NOT accountable to anyone else, they are NOT compelled to wake at all hours of the night for the sake of their children.  Rather, they fill these hours with delights, with stillness or activity, but always with what they themselves decide.

Or at least, that is considered the norm.  What my friend faces – nay, embraces – is a life lived in virtue, which means rejecting illicit pleasures and balancing licit ones, which means striving toward holiness through loneliness – and before long, one sees how the latter may assist the former.

Indeed, St. Paul thought it was married men and women who were at a disadvantage:

“But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.”*

And again, he thought it was the single, the celibate, who lived in a preferred state:

“32 I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. 33 But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34 and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. 35 I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.”

In other words, it is only in the natural order that married people seem to have the advantage, seem to have the utmost fulfillment that this life can provide.  As St. Paul says, they are indeed concerned with the affairs of this world (since they must care for the physical and emotional needs of their families).

But if we consider the supernatural order – if we truly believe in an immanent God – then it becomes clear, spiritually, that it is better to be single, to be unencumbered by the affairs of this world.  Else, how will you dedicate yourself to the affairs of God?

So yes – if we are just meat machines walking around, seeking the best this world has to offer, it may be that marriage and progeny are the height of human fulfillment.  It may be that dying as a old man or woman, with many productive and loving children, is the height of the human experience.  If so, and no more, then being single would be (and was) mournful.

If, on the other hand, all this world is a mere prelude to a greater reality; if, while critical in so many ways, marriage is not the penultimate sacrament; if, while children are born all around us, it is not imperative for each to bear their own; if, too, God has imprinted on certain hearts a calling to be undivided in their love, and fully dedicated to Him; well, then, it may be that being single is a blessing, something to be preferred.

But one must have eyes to see, and ears to hear.

*1 Corinthians 7:28.  Second quotation is from the same chapter, verses marked.

A final objection is sometimes thrown up, which challenges the coherence of God as morally good.  This is known as the Euthyphro dilemma, and it goes like this:

Is God good because his commands are aligned with the Good?  Or are God’s commands good because He commands them?

Now if you’ve been following along, you might detect some redundancy here.  In fact, we have built our argument in such a way that this dilemma isn’t one.  But for clarity, let’s break it down.

These questions are seeking the standard by which things are judged to be good.  The first asks if we can judge God to be good because His commands are good?  That is, the Good resides apart from God, so that He must be informed by something apart from Himself in order to command good things.

And let’s say the answer is “no.”  The second question suggests (implicitly) that there is only one other option, which is that the commands are good because they are issued by God.  In other words, God might say anything, and whatever He says, it’s good – because God said it.

Which is it?

In fact, this is a false dilemma, because it leaves out a third option:  God issues the commands that He does because He is good!  He Himself is the ground of objective morality, against which we compare all words and deeds.

(It is a bit astonishing to think what all has happened in the last five months, but I will try to pick up where I left off, so as to finish out this series).

Last time we had a brief Q&A regarding moral epistemology and ontology, and over the course of the series we have dismissed with alternative answers to the question of “What is The Good by which our moral actions are judged good or evil?”

It is not simply “whatever promotes the survival of human beings” or anything evolution can deliver; it is not whatever one feels very strongly about, as this can change and others may disagree; it is not anything subject to time, matter, space, or energy, or else the standard itself would be subject to change and decay; and while it might be Plato’s form of The Good, this seems to be more a shadow of the truth than the whole truth itself.

Then, unceremoniously, I suggested that only God could qualify as The Good.  Of course, this is the entire point of the argument.

Here it is, formulated by Dr. William Lane Craig:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.

2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

We have seen how #1 is true as all other candidates for moral ontology have been found lacking.  #2 is true on the basis that it is self-evident, and that attempts to deny it lead to monstrous absurdities.  If both premises are true, and the argument is valid, then the conclusion commends itself to rational minds:  God exists.

To the earliest days of my memory, I remember my mother telling me never to swear.  And with one or two exceptions in 33 34 years, I haven’t.

But I have often thought about the impact of swearing and whether there was ever a just occasion for strong language.  Mom, I found it.

My wife works at a children’s hospital, and in the not-too-distant past, she received a patient who had been in a car accident.

He was a 13-year-old boy and both of his parents died in the accident.

The boy was in serious condition, unconscious for an extended period of time, and then he finally came to.  Of course, he did not know or remember what had happened.

Eventually, someone had to tell him what happened.  So they did, and the boy grieved.

Think of that.  Think of a 13-year-old boy, who is trying to establish himself as a man.  It may have been just that week that he said something like – I can take care of myself – or, I don’t need you to tell me what to do – or, why won’t you leave me alone?

And then he was alone.   Marcy says he wailed, and he moaned, and he cried all through the night.  He could not be consoled, so great was his loss.

Let us pause, because even as Marcy told the story, I thought of the cynical spirit which is at work in our age.  I thought of that spirit which says that God cannot account for the evil and suffering that we see.  That spirit which drowns hope because life can only be seen – bravely – through the prism of despair.

The cynic would nod solemnly as this boy found his world shattered.  “See, how can there be a loving God?  Is this love, what you are feeling now?  There is no explanation for this tragedy, and if God is all-powerful, He could have prevented it.”

This, itself, is an explanation:  The boy – anyone in his position – feels such great emptiness that an explanation is wanting.  The cynic has nothing positive to say.  He only answers in the negative, affirming the sorrow by noting what appears to be absent.  He encourages the boy to cast off any notion of God, and the boy is thus cut off from life, meaning, purpose.

Well, this boy had older siblings, and these siblings had children.  The next day, his niece and nephew – aged 5 and 6 – came to visit him in the hospital after his night of mourning.

And they seized upon him with great joy.  The leapt at him, climbed all over him, kissed and hugged him.  Though he was in great pain, and though he might have preferred, in his flesh, to have these children off of him, he did not resist them.  He welcomed their kisses, he embraced their joy.

Let us not take that for granted, even if it is natural.  After a night of profound sorrow, of abysmal despair, this young man smiled.  He laughed.  He suffered willingly for the affection of his niece and nephew.

What will the cynic say now?  Let him be silent; I will speak.

Fuck you, cynic.  Go to Hell, and send back the soul you have possessed.

For you know nothing about the unrelenting joy of love, the resilience of souls; you preach the heat death of the Universe but know nothing about the white-hot light of God Almighty, who will raise from the dead everything which you have declared lost.

You – most pitiable and depraved of spirits – would have closed the book on that night of wailing and secretly relished a boy’s true expression of despair.  You would have said that this is all there is to life, and no more.  This one, too, you would have expected to harvest.

But here are two other children – and the very same grieving boy, becoming a man – who live and love in defiance of your lies.  They are Job, and you are Satan – God boasts of their faithfulness, and puts you to shame.

Put away your sickle.  This one is a child of the Most High, and he will not be deceived by your damnable cunning.  He will live, and you will perish.

The exact wording escapes me, but my eldest daughter wanted to tell me about the way she will do things when she’s a mama, and said something like:

“Papa, one day, when I’m a mama, if you’re not gone yet, I’m gonna hold my kids in a carrier just like this.”

The carrier, of course, is a baby carrier, that backpack looking thing which allows a parent to wear their child while pushing two other children in swings and keeping an eye on the fourth and fifth children climbing on the playground.  We were just returning from (or leaving for?) the playground when my daughter thought to say this.

It’s more or less ordinary, actually.  We’ve been very straightforward about death, not bringing it up very much, but talking about it honestly when it does come up.

Everyone dies.  We’ve had friends and family who have died, and you’ll know people who will die, too.  I have probably gone so far as to say that, in all likelihood, I will die before you (my child).  But when you die, you go to be with God.

Somehow it caught my ear, this time.  We weren’t already talking about death, and we didn’t proceed to talk about death, either.  It was just a casual comment, a context for understanding that this event was in the future, and it was perfectly natural for her to add that I may or may not be alive when this happened.  Of course, I hope I will be.

And it may be that, after one death or another, things aren’t so casual for her.  Maybe it will be a friend or a relative; maybe it will be a victim of senseless violence, or a martyr in a foreign land.  I think sometimes of the absolute tragedy of confirming that, yes, abortion is real.  Some babies are killed, then removed surgically from the womb.

Just imagine telling a child about that, when she has seen her mother’s belly grow, and she has seen an infant at one day old.

Now look at my original explanation.  If you are an atheist, you cannot say anything like, “Then you go to be with God.”  You must say, “And that’s it.”

But for Christians, there is the Resurrection.  It is the final note, the only true comfort for the mourning, the only way a child can speak with ease about death.  Death, in fact, has been overcome.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot swallow it.

Indeed, she spoke like one on a well-lit path, one unafraid of that which terrifies grown men.  What else can do this, but faith?  Who else can give such confidence, but God?

NB:  For a meditation on death, consider this.

Estelle Patrice was born at 8:19pm on Sunday, and a few hours later, landed in the NICU.

These are unsettling words for a parent.  I admit, they’re even a bit gratuitous here, because of their gravity in most other circumstances.

This is our fifth child, and Marcy delivered her through a water birth.  It was about as close to perfect as it could get, and I remarked during the labor that we had really perfected this whole process, going from the worst (Amelia’s labor and delivery) to the best (Estelle’s, which was at times almost sublime).

Let there be no mistake – it was still labor, and it was still excruciating.  The water simply provides some buoyancy to the experience, but does not change it in any fundamental way.  More can be said, but perhaps one pun is enough.

Now, I’ve seen four of these types before, and Estelle looked as good as any of them have.  She showed no signs of distress, had a great heart rate and was of a healthy weight.  We had her back in our room, and this was to be the shortest hospital stay of all our birthing experiences.

That’s when a nurse – “Nurse Jumpy” – commented on Estelle’s cheeks.  Namely, that they looked bruised.

Now, before anyone wants to disparage me for disparaging a nurse, please note two things:  One, not all nurses are perfect.  My grandmother was, my wife is, my aunt is, and heck, even my mother-in-law is.  Most are, it must be admitted; but not all.  Two:  At the risk of narrative power, I tell you that by the end, I will have to be ambivalent at best with respect to Nurse Jumpy.

So I think to myself, of course her cheeks look bruised.  They ARE bruised – she was born like 90 minutes ago.  All of my kids came out bruised.

Still, Nurse Jumpy wants to investigate this further, and while doing Stella’s assessments, she puts her on the oxygen sensor.  Her levels bob from the mid 80’s to low 90’s.

If you’re in the medical field, this probably seems like a no-brainer:  Her “sats” are too low, and they have to come up to 95+.  If you’re not:  “Sats” refers to the percentage of oxygen saturation in the blood.  100% is ideal, naturally.  Healthy starts at 95% and goes up.  It was told to me that the levels needed to be above 90%, at least, in order to allay concern.

The whole ordeal is over, and I still say:  I’m about 95% sure that one or more of my other kids were “satting” below 90% when they were born.  It’s just that no one ever checked, and they came home, and they were fine.

Anyway, Nurse Jumpy wanted a second opinion, and a NICU nurse came over and noted the low sats.  She also thought it strange that Estelle should look so comfortable and be utterly free of distress, but nevertheless felt we should investigate the sats.

And that’s how we landed in the NICU.  Marcy was highly emotional about this, and rightly so.  She works in a PICU, and kids don’t land there for any old reason.  They either were sick and are sicker, or they looked healthy and got sicker.

There was a chest X-ray, there were antibiotics.  There was talk of cardiac issues and an Echo.  There were any number of guesses, and no answers.

For my part, I kept my mouth shut.  As I later told my mother:  I felt nothing but contempt over this, and had nothing nice to say, so I followed her instructions and said nothing at all.

I did wonder, couldn’t they just put Estelle on oxygen and see what happens?  There was no sense in which her condition was acute – what exactly was going to happen in the NICU that couldn’t be done in a nursery?  Moreover:  On one of my trips to see Stella in the NICU, I walked past a young man on the phone.  This is what he said –

“Yeah, she’s a little fighter.  (Pause)  Yeah, they’re saying it could be three months, just gotta wait and see.”

THAT is what the NICU is for, not for an otherwise healthy kid whose lungs are still transitioning to outside air.

Well, it turns out that the hospital simply had no other way to put Estelle on oxygen except in the NICU.   Given the medical, administrative, and business concerns involved in structuring a hospital, I decided this was not an issue anyone would look to me to correct.  (Fools!)

And so, on Day 2 of the whole ordeal, I expected Estelle to make great gains, reach a healthy O2 level, and get sent home promptly.  We could all agree, couldn’t we, that this NICU bed was going to be more urgently needed by some other kid?

But she didn’t make any gains.  In fact, between Days 2-3, she seemed to lose some ground.  She became congested, she had to be stepped back up on the oxygen tank, and she wasn’t feeding well.  As our nurse noted, one problem could quickly become 3-4 problems if something didn’t change.

Unfortunately for us, she had a more demanding patient, and so not much changed on Day 3.  It seemed Estelle’s situation was ideally formulated to fall through the cracks. * Marcy and I deliberated and disputed on the best way to handle this, with no clear direction.  What rays of hope we uncovered were quickly darkened and diminished.

Even in a situation like this, we are never about only one thing at a time.  And so, between this and whatever else I was about, I felt a peculiar impulse as I led my mom, who drove my two oldest daughters, to the hospital on Day 3.

It was first only a thought – drive into the guard rail, jump off a bridge.  The rest laid itself out quickly – jump where there is land, head first.  The life insurance will cover the hospital visit, and the house, and everything else will work itself out.  My absence would be felt, sure, but there were other good men who could be fathers out there, and plenty of family to step in.  And what was I, anyway?

The thought may be fairly common, in one form or another.  I have no idea how common – I have only clues to work with, not many people have confessed thinking through a spontaneous suicide.  Nor do I think there is any special virtue or honor owed to such an experience.  It is simply ugly, inviting of grave sin, and to be avoided at great cost.

It transformed from thought to impulse.  I speak metaphorically, if not literally – it was an impulse initiated in my brain, which failed to engage my body.  It simply passed through me, glided across the muscles that would have jerked the car off to the side, and did not take.**

Anyway, I give you an impression of my psychological state.  There is more, but this will do.

We had a lively visit with my parents and daughters, and after they left, Marcy and I discussed the situation again.  I expressed my distrust of the situation, of the governing protocols where – I felt – a common-sense medical professional would see things differently.  But I saw that all of this troubled her greatly, that it created unrelenting tension for her.  And we both simply wanted Estelle to be healthy and home.

I resigned myself simply to accept the situation, to let the doctors and nurses do what they would, and to let Marcy work from the outside of a system she knew so well on the inside.  It was maddening, but I suppressed my anger.

On my drive home to get supplies for Marcy, I sought God.  I reflected on the prospect of Stella getting worse as a direct result of a situation I was sure she didn’t belong in.  I thought, too, of the texture of my spirit, of what could instigate the impulse to jump off a bridge, of what else I had been wrestling with in life.  I wondered whether Stella might really get worse – was it inevitable now? – and, God forbid, whether there really was some mysterious and foreboding illness which no one could see coming.

God had given her, He could take her away.  I felt no indignation about this, only sadness that it might occur.

So, I did what a father is supposed to do when there is nothing left he can do:  I begged for her life.  If you had been in the car, you would have looked to see with whom I was speaking.  I was cognizant of the ability to speak directly to God, and so I did.

You have to remember how silly the prideful me would have felt.  This prayer was unnecessary.  It’s not that I wouldn’t do it, it’s that I didn’t have to – there was no problem!  Yet from Nurse Jumpy’s obvious observation to here, there suddenly was a problem with no end in sight.

And think further with me:  If there is a God, and He was to answer this prayer, to hear my plea and grant it to me, what would that look like?  Would I – should I? – expect to see an angel descending from Heaven, taking Stella into its arms, and kissing her clean?  Should I expect to return to the hospital and have a vision of the Virgin Mary holding Stella in the rocking chair at her bedside, assuring me that all would be well?

But I arrived at home, and received a message that Stella’s congestion had cleared, and she was eating well again.  And again on Day 4, that she was off oxygen several hours ahead of schedule, and ready to come home shortly after that.  And a picture came of her sleeping face with cheeks reddened where the tape had held the oxygen tubes.

And I finally arrived to pick her up, almost a full day earlier than expected, with no wires or tubes attached, and her eyes open.  It was exactly the scene I had originally expected, just two days later than I originally expected.

Did she really need to be in the NICU, or would she have recovered on her own?  For all I know, it could have been either.

Was she headed for worse, and then God heard my prayer and answered?  All I know is that the prognosis was bleak and aimless, and then suddenly she recovered.  Shall I argue with God that He has not provided sufficient evidence of His intervention?

I am not that foolish.  All I know is that every time I pray like that, He answers.

*I’m reminded of the time I was choking on a multivitamin in West Virginia, and in the process of gagging, I found a position which allowed me to breathe, even as the vitamin was stuck in my throat.  When the ambulance arrived, my friend asked if they could help me.  They said no, unless I would resume a natural position and allow the pill to block my airway again; then they could perform the Heimlich maneuver.  Bent over and resisting my gag reflex, I could not believe how stupid an idea this was.

**The enemy does not play nice, he does not wait for you to catch your breath or to pull on your armor.  He is a seducer, not a lover.  He is a tempter, not a redeemer.  But Lewis was right:  The strength of a temptation is seen by the one who resists it, not by the one who gives in.

When you notice Satan stalking you, when you hear his footfalls behind you – resist, and pray.  And best not to let your guard down.

Priest & People:
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,

And, striking their breast, they say:

through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;

Then they continue:

therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.

They strike their breast

and first, a tremble.

Then the fault lines appear.

Then the ego is shattered.

The soul is ready for grace.

In an interview with Antonio Spardaro, SJ, Pope Francis addressed the question of “irregular or somewhat complex” situations, in which some Christians “live with open wounds.”  His answer was (in)famously reported as a rebuke to those Christians who are “obsessed” with the issues of abortion, same-sex marriage, and contraception.

Among those amplifying this version of events, I found none who had actually read the excerpt, let alone the whole interview.  Here’s what Francis said:

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

“The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”

It would be unseemly to obsess even about this – as Francis says, we ought to emphasize the essentials – but one might note:  the Holy Father is not saying that we can not or should not talk about these issues.  He is not even downplaying them as issues Christians should be passionate about (contra NARAL, et al).

Rather, by implication, he is saying the whole discussion is a bit warped.  That many, on both sides, have emphasized abortion as a single issue, and not as a reality which is treated comprehensively by a right ordering of one’s principles.  Any organization focused on a single issue is missing the point even as they try to make it.  Francis simply acknowledges that Catholics, by their faith, ought to know better.

Indeed, the well-catechized Catholic rests upon an expansive understanding of moral issues, which confidently takes up the cause of the unborn among many others.  One thinks of euthanasia, and the death penalty, and war, and sex, and poverty quite readily for their strong, tensile connections to the unborn.

It’s even more impressive than that:  One realizes, when he examines the moral edifice of the Church, that the significance of all moral issues is brought to bear on each moral issue.  Failing to do otherwise is like drawing a human face with only one eye, or spanning a river then cutting the rope bridge anyplace along the way.  Something is missing, and it turns out to be integral to the whole.

When you have a complete human face, you realize the entire beauty of that face is somehow embedded even in a single eye; when you have a complete web, you realize the strength of the whole web lies at every point.  Even the furthest flung end is lending strength to it.

Such is context.  So let us begin:  I aim, primarily, to give you a sense of that moral edifice which guides and supports the Church’s teaching on the unborn.  I hope, furthermore, that you will be persuaded of its truth, elegance, and breadth.

At bottom, I plead – I beg you – to spare the life of the most vulnerable.

http://www.thecordialcatholic.com/sucks-catholic-church/

Saw this posted by a priest friend, then by a 2 year old convert friend for whom I had a small role in her journey to the Church.  Let’s get into it.

First – and this is truly most important – one must remember what the Catholic Church claims to be.  The Church claims to be the bearer of the Truth, the vessel of God’s grace through the Sacraments, and the communion of God’s pilgrim people on Earth.

The Church aims to shepherd you into eternal life, not (necessarily) to make you feel happy and fulfilled in this life.  I’m not aware that anyone does guarantee such a thing.  Moreover, that’s the whole point, isn’t it?  You can’t be totally fulfilled in this life.

This is critical, because the temptation – aided and abetted by the very well-meaning Protestant ministries which are legion on this point – is to think we can have Heaven on earth, somehow manifest it here and now.

We really, really can’t.  Anyway, visually, that would look like a pulling down of the sky upon the earth, and if the dinosaurs teach us anything, it’s that the Cosmos should stay “up there.”

Second – there is no serious Catholic who is surprised to hear that there are flaws in the Church Militant.  If you wake up tomorrow and you find there are no flaws – blessed are you, for you have died and gone to Heaven!

The author, to his credit, answers his own lament:

I’ve come to an ultimate conclusion though, and it’s one that many Protestant converts before me have come to as well. The Church is us. As a Protestant convert to Catholicism I bring certain gifts, talents, and insights. If there’s a need for better catechesis in my parish my role isn’t to lament the church’s failure, it’s to start a Bible study. If RCIA sometimes seems like a chore for those leading it then maybe I need to volunteer next year. If not enough laypeople are devoted to keeping the church open during Eucharistic Adoration than maybe I can help arrange a schedule. Do you see what I mean?

The default attitude for us Protestant converts needs to shift—my attitude needs to shift—from seeing what sucks about the Catholic Church to doing something about it. After all, when Jesus gave his most difficult teaching on the Eucharist—his very own blood and body given to His Church—He asked his closest disciples, “Are you going to leave, too?”

St. Peter replied, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”

See that?

You and I, we’re the ones at fault.  We’re to blame for these complaints and thousands more.  The Church that you can see is made up of 1.5 billion of us.

Something “sucks” about the Catholic Church?  It’s us.

 UPDATE:  I should have added – see how I suck? – what the author obviously implies.  That is:  If you can bless the Church, if you can create community or better educate catechumens or minister to the poor?  Do it.  That’s why you’re Catholic – because works matter.