FAITH AND THE CULT OF PLEASANTNESS

SLOAN FROST is a diabetic living in Virginia. He complained in a letter to USA Today: 

THE (STEM cell) bill President Bush vetoed should never have been debated with morality in mind. Research funding should not be concerned with whether fetuses are living or whether diseased people deserve help. [July 13, 2007 8a]

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN is a freelance web writer in NYC. He credits gay activism for the reform of the protestant reformation:

LIKELY NO one could have - or would have dared - predicted that in the early 21st Century homosexuality would become a tipping point initiating a Second Protestant Reformation. [http://blogcritics.org/ Dec 12, 2006] 

MARY ZEISS Stange is a college professor in Saratoga Springs, New York. She answered the question, What would Marty do?:

A 21st century (Martin) Luther would surely recognize that the few biblical proscriptions against sodomy…should not bar the loving union of two gay or lesbian persons. Equally, A 21st century Luther would affirm the ordination of such persons, as in line with his theology of the “priesthood of all believers.” [USA Today July 09, 2007, p. 11a]

KATHERINE JEFFORTS-Schori is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA. She favors a theology of lay empowerment and its corresponding constructive deconstruction of the Christian faith:

THE REALITY is that we have changed our scriptural understandings about all sorts of things, including sexual ethics. We teach something different about contraception than we did 50 years ago. We permit remarriage after divorce, despite what Jesus said about it. Homosexuality is the most recent in a long series of challenges.” [Austin American-Statesman May 19, 2007]

CONSIDER THIS last quote. We’ll call it the reality quote. What did you hear? You heard the words change, scriptural understandings, something different, series of challenges, the reality is etc. By using these words, what did Schori mean to say? Now, that’s the hard question. The Episcopal bishop used these words as talking points in the same sense as the old Greeks defined the word euphemism—“easy—speech—to say”.

A EUPHEMISM is a rhetorical device. It’s a sort of word craft enabling a person to refer to something while at the same time avoiding an unpleasant, painful, and frightening reality. Word craft is just the ticket when you want to spare someone’s feelings. And it’s just the thing for emphasizing style at the expense of thought.

RHETORICAL DEVICES like euphemisms are, to borrow from the poetry of Stephen Crane (1871-1900), “strange moves”. Euphemisms are harmless when they are improvisational. When used deliberately, however, they can be lethal. Crane’s thought may be found in Poem 40 of his suite called The Black Riders: “No strange move can I make without noise of tearing.”  [THE COLLECTED POEMS OF STEPHEN CRANE 1922, p. 42] 

SCHORI'S OPPRESSIVE litany is a catalogue of strange moves with an over-arching message—human beings are simply divine. After all, it was divinity that descended and humanity that ascended. The phrase “series of challenges” in the reality quote, for example, is a euphemism for avoiding the reality of the unpleasant, painful and frightening series of provocations by which the Episcopal Church USA is tearing the Anglican Communion apart for the short-term benefit of politically movitated special interest groups.

TO APPEASE these aggressive factions and in the hope that ecclesial conflict will go away, the Episcopal leader proposes that the person of Christ and the Truth of Christ are two entirely different things. Here’s how it goes. On the one hand:  What Christians believe is a human thing, the household code taught by Jesus Christ to his particular followers. On the other hand:  The One in whom Christians believe is a God thing, the universal principle of good inviting all human beings to unity regardless of who the prophet, guru or shaman happens to be.

THE CHIEF value of the Messiah’s witness, it follows, was his display of goodness and not his proclamation of truth. Who Jesus Christ represented may be eternal; what Jesus Christ said is not eternal—“despite what Jesus said about it” to quote Bishop Schori. So what does the Episcopal leader mean by saying, “I don't believe that there is any will in this church to move backward.”  [Boston Globe April 25, 2007]  She is speaking about orthodox Christians. The euphemism “backward” refers to anyone who believes Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life” and that “no one comes to the Father, but by (him)”.  [Jn 14:6]

YOU MIGHT think that it isn’t a big deal when a Christian leader uses euphemisms and other rhetorical devices. After all, educators, businessmen and politicians use them all the time. All the time, you say? What outcome do we expect if religious leaders emphasize style at the expense of thought—all the time? The cumulative effect is the cult of pleasantness and its rubrics of political correctness. The cult of pleasantness may be understood as a rigid and aggressive conformity to the aesthetic perception of equilibrium—whether or not such is actually the case.

POPE JOHN Paul II (1920-2005), of blessed memory, understood the cult of pleasantness at its core to be a “utilitarian conception” attempting to achieve the psychologically and intellectually impossible—the “union of egoisms”. . .

WHICH CAN hold together only on condition that they confront each other with nothing unpleasant, nothing to conflict with their mutual pleasure. Therefore, love so understood is self-evidently merely a pretence which has to be carefully cultivated to keep the underlying reality hidden...the greediest kind of egoism at that, (the exploitation of) another person.... [Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II), LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY, trans. H.T. Willetts (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981) 39.]

THIS “GREEDY kind of egoism” is, in a word, subjectivism: Everything in the cosmos in the raw. All that is seen or unseen is without meaning and coherence until the human subject provides it. The human subject who provides it can change it at will. All reality, therefore, is determined by the subject himself. To make things and make them okay, one need only edit the script, consult feng shui, orchestrate a new production, and manage the press. It’s only a matter of perception and preference. Two things stand in the way, however: faith and reason—the person of God and the reality of his Truth.

SUCCESS IS imminent, imagines the egotistic self if only more power is accrued and consolidated so that the sensuous ego may preserve the perception of equilibrium. You may recall the Emperor Nero’s favorite actor, poet and singer was himself. He spent his last hours as a fugitive in a villa outside Rome. As he watched his servants gather lumber for his funeral pyre in anticipation of his ritual suicide, he was heard to cringe repeatedly through his tears, “Qualis artifex pereo!” (“How great an artist dies here!”) [attributed to Nero by Suetonius]

THERE SURELY is an art to civilization; but just as surely, there is a science. I speak of a moral science which has as its decisive point of reference the informed human conscience—“the aboriginal vicar of Christ” as John Henry Cardinal Newman so eloquently expressed it.  [Letter to the Duke of Norfolk V in CERTAIN DIFFICULTIES FELT BY ANGLICANS IN CATHOLIC TEACHING v. 2 1885, p. 248]  The Vatican II Council (1962-1965) alerted the Church and the modern world to the false irenicism that fails to adequately critique human progress:

WHILE HUMAN progress is a great advantage of man, it brings with it a strong temptation. For when the order of values is jumbled, and bad is mixed with the good, individuals and groups pay heed solely to their own interests, and not to those of others.  [Gaudium et spes no. 37]

WE LIVE in an age of lotus-eaters when powerful elite in media, education, politics and government unite in celebrating the patriarch of all self-delusions: There is no truth revealed, there is none to be received, there is no truth waiting to be discovered.

ODYSSEUS, THE hero of Homer’s grand epic, understood precisely the danger to his crew on the journey home from Troy.To remain on the island of the lotus-eaters in the thrall of the narcotic flower—sleeping in peaceful apathy—meant abandoning Ithaca forever and perishing. The late Msgr. Luigi Giussani (1922-2005) of Venice and founder of Communio understood the dangers symbolized by the Lotus: “It is possible to be destroyed and wounded without suffering and, therefore, without embarking on the search for an answer.”  [By Grace, Always, Thirty Days 3 (1993): 66-71]  Pope John Paul II correctly diagnosed the social disorder as a pathology of sin. In his encyclical The Gospel of Life, he observed:

EVERYONE ELSE is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself. Thus society becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds. Each one wishes to assert himself independently of the other and in fact intends to make his own interests prevail. . . .

IN THIS way, any reference to common values and to a truth absolutely binding on everyone is lost, and social life ventures on to the shifting sands of complete relativism. At that point, everything is negotiable, everything is open to bargaining: even the first of the fundamental rights, the right to life.  [Evangelium Vitae No. 20 (1995)]

OUT OF the profound disorganization of contemporary western society, a rootless, clueless and ruthless antagonist has emerged, feeding on social decay and highly resistant against any reasonable constraint and the common good. What does the post-modern poster child look like? Slovenly and feral. He has an hypnotic fascination with disorder. He is redolent with selfishness.

HE EVIDENCES not a shred of care for the common good—the general welfare of a people, or community or the extended world. To the contrary, he burns with claims for preciousness and special privilege—fueled by the presumption that his subjective struggles and our sympathetic understanding replace the canons of moral judgment.

DR. JOYCE Little, Catholic theologian and author of THE CHURCH AND THE CULTURE WAR (1995), stripped the mask from the face of the post-modern poster child of secular society. What did she discover behind the façade of contemporary sophistication? The imperial self:

THESE ARE the people who value above all things self-empowerment and seek as their highest goals self-actualization, self-realization and self-fulfillment…. They have adopted the ‘character ideal of an autonomous man, using but unused’.  [THE CHURCH AND THE CULTURE WAR 1995 P.89] 

THE ENLIGHTENMENT philosopher Johannes Fichte (1762-1814) had a word for this. He named it the "age of perfected sinfulness".  [cf. Fichte The Characteristics of the Present Age 1847]  In the mind of the secular antagonist, the purpose of a society is to form and systemize an ecology of permissiveness and consciousness-raising. Why shouldn’t the truth be all things in Christ? Isn’t the phrase “the unpleasant truth” a self-evident contradiction? If the truth is the truth, why shouldn’t it be pleasant? The truth is clay spinning on the potter’s wheel, is it not? Grasp it with your hands and create what you wish.

WE KNOW very well that many individuals and social groups are tempted to retreat into their own peculiar fantasy lives—Jim Jones, Heaven’s Gate, Columbine, Virginia Tech to name a few of the worst examples. We have known as well the unpleasant, painful, and frightening reality of entire cultures becoming self-absorbed and in thrall to creating meaning out of anything.  [cf. Lifton THE NAZI DOCTORS 1986 p. 459]  Formalized as irrationality and tyranny, it is the National Socialism, facism, and Stalinism that waits to emerge in every generation. The diefication of pleasantness is not the essence of culture but the cold, heartless and soul-less imitation of culture. You hear the echo of the prophet Jeremiah:  “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace.”  [Jer 6:14]

LET'S LOOK at some of the so-called character ideals that have emerged in our peculiar age:

THE REV. Ann Holmes-Redding, a priest of the Episcopal Church USA for 23 years, announced in June that she’s been a practicing Muslim for 15 months. She says that she hasn’t violated any of her ordination or baptismal vows. In fact, she says she’s a better teacher, preacher and, what? Christian.  [I Am Both Muslim and Christian, The Seattle Times June 17, 2007] 

THE PRESBYTERIAN Church USA General Assembly (2006) declared that using the traditional trinitarian names of Father, Son and Holy Spirit leads to “idolatry”. “Mother, child and womb”, they say, makes for true worship.

THE WASHINGTON Post writer Susan Jacoby railed against the “retrograde nature of (Benedict XVI) and his papacy”. Denouncing his recent motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum”, she wrote:

NO ONE should pay the slightest attention to any pronouncements from this pathetic representative of a credulous, conformist past that preceded the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment and the separation of church and state in the West.  [Once a Sacred Cow, Always A Sacred Cow, Washington Post July 12, 2007] 

CNN WRITER Roland S. Martin highly values his credentials as a former Catholic who left the Church 13 years ago:

POPE BENEDICT XVI is meaningless, along with his decision to re-state the primacy of the Catholic Church….It doesn’t matter what Pope Benedict XVI has to say, or for that matter, any other religious leader. A Christian believes in Jesus Christ and what He had to say, not what a man of God has to say.  [http://www.cnn.com (July 13, 2007)]

IS THE Church unaffected by the “shifting sands of complete relativism”?  [John Paul II]  The answer must be, No. Surely the “‘character ideal of an autonomous man, using but unused’”  [Little]  and the “terrible gift of familiarity”  [Joseph Conrad THE ARROW OF GOLD, ch. 2]  it unleashes (quoting Joseph Conrad), can be applied to the example of conflicted Catholic clergy in the United States whose reprehensible conduct has grievously harmed the Church.

THE REPUTATION of the Catholic priesthood found itself on the auction block in Los Angeles in recent weeks, fetching a record $660 million. The winning bid was made by the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles which found itself in the unenviable position of buying back stolen property. What can never be recovered, of course, is the stolen virginity, youth and peace of mind of the assault victims.

WHEN A priest severs the logical relation between his sacramental ministry and personal conduct, the collateral damage is incalculable. In monetary terms, the payout is a staggering $2 billion indenture resting squarely, not on the offending homosexual priests, but on the shoulders of Catholic laity nationwide.

WE SUFFER, for example, because ambivalent Catholic clergy and laity invite pro-choice celebrity activists to sing and dance in our hospitals and schools. If prelates like the archbishops Raymond Burke or Charles Chaput dare to defend the cause of life and the magisterium in their own Catholic dioceses, it is they who are intolerant, hateful, and in the words of the Washington Post, “pathetic representative(s) of a credulous, conformist past”.  [Jacoby] 

IN HIS ad limina address to Pope John Paul II at the Vatican (2004), Francis Cardinal George spoke frankly:

THE CHURCH in the United States is in great danger…anti-Catholicism has always marked American culture.

THE PUBLIC conversation in the United States speaks easily of individual rights; it cannot give voice to considerations of the common good. The public conversation, like the political, legal and economic systems, is based on the generation of conflict between individuals and groups.

CULTURALLY, THE right to sexual freedom is now the basis of personal freedom. The Church. . . is seen as an enemy of personal freedom and a cause of social violence.

AMERICANS KNOW that we as a people can be generous, fair-minded and freedom-loving; we are slower to see that we can be arrogant, brutal and eroticized. [http://www.zenit.org JUNE 1, 2004]

CARDINAL GEORGE concluded his 2004 ad limina address by saying to the Holy Father:

A CULTURE founded on the rejection of the Sacrament of Holy Orders can grasp neither the Eucharist nor apostolic governance. We are still struggling to find an approach to evangelizing which will open our culture and our country to the Holy Spirit and to the path of Christian discipleship.  [Zenit] 

I BELIEVE any approach must begin with an understanding of what we profess in the Nicene Creed: “We believe in one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church”.  [SACRAMENTARY p. 368]  The days of God abasing himself before a bewildered and arrogant humanity are over. They ended with the Apostle Thomas who demanded to put his fingers and hand into the wounds of our Lord Jesus Christ.

IN SHORT, effective Catholic evangelization hinges on the ministerial priesthood and Holy Orders. Faithful laborers for the harvest  [cf. Mt 9:37]  are urgently needed to lead and guide strongly—to regenerate the Church, bring “times of refreshing”  [Acts 3:9]  to our culture, and to lead souls to Christ.

BEWARE OF any person, whether clergy or laity, who defends his conscience while judging God’s truth—“he is a hireling and cares nothing for the sheep”.  [Jn 10:13]  We cannot stand idly by while others work to make out of human society, Christianity and Catholic culture, a Darwinian “species pump” for alternative New Age spiritual forms. No, Bishop Schori, the truth is not the "light that is peculiar to our agitated moment".  [THE GIVING EARTH: A JOHN G. NEIHARDT READER 1991, p. 289]  We worship God. We do not worship our human understanding of God.

THAT SAID, either one will worship God as a divine person and obey God’s truth, or he will obey the content of his own mind and worship his own humanity. It’s going to be one or the other. Until the day of Our Lord’s coming in glory, human history will stand always in the shadow of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This conflicted generation, like all others preceding it, cannot breach the walls of Eden. The cherubim still stands guard. The flaming sword still turns in the gate to protect the Tree of Life and all it represents.

THE CHRISTIAN mission is precisely what Christ said it is:  “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”.  [Mt 28:19-20]  Catholic laity must not waste their God-given opportunity to help purify and strengthen the Church in the “mind of Christ”.  [1Cor 2:16]  We cannot wait for the post-Christian western world to slog through a thousand years of “hate-crime” legislation merely to find itself gasping at the end, Gosh, what we need is a moral and ethical system.

SO JOIN with others. Form a plan within your own demographics. Act resolutely to counter the vicious separation of faith and reason and its progeny—the Enlightenment secularism that relentlessly pushes to ghetto-ize the universal Church which the cosmic Christ himself founded. Take to heart the maternal wisdom of Josephine Fossett who counseled her daughter Joyce Little:  “Even were the whole world to go against the Pope, (you) should stick with him.”  [THE CHURCH AND THE CULTURE WAR 1995 (dedication)]

AS THE late John Paul II observed, this will be a Christian century or no century at all.  [source unknown]  I am not speaking of Lot’s narrow escape from Sodom and Gomorrah  [cf. Gen 19:26], but I am deeply concerned that future generations may look back on this generation and behold the Church as a pillar of salt. So let us be about the urgent and compelling mission of the Roman Catholic Church. I am speaking of the absolute, eternal and unchanging victory won 2,000 years ago by the Lord Jesus Christ on Golgotha's cross. I appeal to you to thoroughly understand the thought of St. John Chrysostom (347-407 AD), the Patriarch of Constantinople:

FOR YOU must long, says Christ, for heaven and the things in heaven. However, even before heaven, Christ has commanded you to make the earth a heaven.

DO AND SAY all things—even while you are continuing in (this world)—as having your conversation there (in heaven). . .   so that error (here) may be destroyed, and truth implanted (here) , and all wickedness cast out, and virtue return, and no difference in this respect be henceforth between heaven and earth.”  [The Gospel of St. Matthew, Homily XIX no.7] 

MY DEAR friends, my fellow Catholics, God is not purifying the ministerial priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States for nothing. I thank you for inviting me to speak before your prestigious association. May God bless you and keep you.  [Address given to the Ave Maria Greater Houston Founders Club July 24, 2007]