Christ and the defense of values

Brendan, your words on the Spirit of the World were very illuminating for me as I had not reflected on the characteristics of the devil in this way. And while I agree that we must be absolutely uncompromising in our hearts towards Satan and all of his ways, we must also be careful not to become Manichean and divide reality into good and bad. For all reality-- if it is reality-- is good. And God is the Master of it all. Like Saint Paul, we must test everything and retain what is good-- meaning that which is true, beautiful, and ultimately real. Satan, on the other hand deals with lies and tries to take our attention away from what is really real.

The situation at Notre Dame and the many cultural challenges to the Christian way of life you mention have been the subjects of many conversations lately for me (as I'm sure they are for so many). But I fear, that as Christians, we often don't go far enough. We take for granted what really is at stake, and we deprive ourselves and the world of the very reason why any of us should care about these issues (life, family, etc.) in the first place.

Let's take the invitation to Obama from Notre Dame. On the one hand, we can repeat all we want that his views are absolutely in contradiction with ours on the crucial matters of life (many of the pro-life responses, and calls to reverse the invitation hold this line). On the other hand, we can champion the need for dialogue and openness to the world. But both positions (which, besides indifference, tend to be the dominant ones), reveal absolutely nothing about why a Catholic should care enough to write petitions or grant honorary degrees. The Dalai Lama could hold the same positions on life or openness/dialogue.

Instead, what is taken for granted in all of the reassertion of the Catholic position on abortion, etc., is WHY we believe a human life is so precious so as to warrant support for a decision that would place an ill-prepared woman or couple in a position of tremendous difficulty. WHY is a human life so important that terminal illness should not lessen the commitment to care? If it were enough simply to justify these difficult positions on the grounds of "human rights", then in our era of rights assertion it should simply be a matter of accepting that all humans have rights. If it were enough to simply assert that "God said so" then Obama, who also recognizes God to some degree, might give pause. But we are also fallen human beings, and we are weak and emotional and prone to selfishness and rationalization. In the face of an unplanned pregnancy or dying relative, neither the concept of human rights nor the doctrine on the Imago Dei is enough. We need a presence, someone REAL, who can show me it is possible to live this way-- consistent with the "self-evident truths" that are before me.

I need to be shown a Christ who is so real as to walk with me through my troubles. I need a Christ who is so real as to make choosing the more difficult path reasonable. I need a Christ who is real, and experienced, who I can see and touch.

And no one, or at least very few, talks about this Christ. Instead, I hear the call to defend Christian values, and prevent the change of legislation. I hear the defensive call to segregate from those we disagree with (not unlike La Sapienza university's refusal to let the Pope speak last year). I hear the clash of ideologies. And if I were not Catholic, I would observe all this and conclude that Catholicism is simply another "faith tradition" that happens to be pro-life. Shrug shoulders, move on.

Is all we have to offer as Catholics, pro-life apologetics?

I'm not in any way shrinking from pro-life convictions or poo-pooing pro-life activism. But I really do see a giant missed opportunity to invite the world into the an understanding of how Christ could make a formerly pro-abortion Roman culture the most human one in all of history. The early Christians did this not with pro-life t-shirts, but with an invitation to share the experience of someOne who fundamentally altered their lives. And again, who talks about this?

I want so much to share with you this Q&A session with Fr. Carron we had earlier this year. We spent a whole morning talking about Christ and politics/social issues, and it's a real goldmine. Here is an excerpt:


Q: Lastly: can you help us, let’s say, as a community of CL in the United States, of Catholics with a great desire to promote a culture of life…

JC: Our desire is to promote Christian life. This is the big mistake. I have decided to explain this very well. What is the question? That many people in the last three centuries tried to defend Christian values without Christ. But doing Christianity without Christ, you know, is impossible. What we have before us—the collapse of the family, the collapse of the culture of life, the collapse of these kind of things—is the example of this failure, this cultural failure. Because the Enlightenment is the attempt to construct Christianity, the values of Christian life without Christ, without belonging to Christ, without the root, without the foundation of Christ. And this is what we can now see before us: the failure, the historical failure of this attempt. And many people, even with this historical failure right in front of them, keep going defending what is defeated, as if nothing had happened!

Chris Bacich: So—let me clarify here—what you are saying is that to have the presumption to be pro-life without Christ is something that doesn’t work.

JC: That’s right. How did we get to this situation? Because many people—for this reason I referred to the Enlightenment—for at least the last three centuries have tried to defend, to live Christian life without Christ. This is the project of the Enlightenment in a nutshell: the attempt to live Christianity without Christ, the reduction of Christian life to a set of values, of Christian values, without the necessity of belonging to the Church, to Christ, to the historical event in history that is the Church. This is the attempt. Now, we have the results of this attempt before us. What is happening? We should focus our attention to what is happening in a number of countries—in Spain, Italy, Ireland, Poland, here—in every country there is the defeat of the Christian mentality. In all of these countries everything has changed: in Spain one day it’s marriage, another it’s abortion, another it’s gay rights, another…in Spain, a Catholic country!

So, we are pro-life, we are defenders of life. But the question is: how can we defend life? What is the method to defend life? Without a Christian faith, without the discovery of Christ, life, the defense of life has no foundation. It is not because I don’t want to defend life: I want to defend life! The problem is how can I reach this goal? If I mess up the method, I fail my goal, you know? And this is the question! In order to create a culture of life, Jesus Christ did not make a pro-life movement; he founded Christianity, the Church. Why didn’t Christ make a pro-life movement instead of the Church? Or a university? He founded the Church and this is the answer to all these questions. Christ was not stupid, not as naïve as we think. Because this is the only realistic explanation for why we are here, why we are pro-life, why we defend education. Because we have met Jesus in a real movement that awakes ourselves to Christian life, to the love of Christ, and this embraces everything. Because we are Christian we defend life, education, everything! But the first thing is this: without the encounter with Jesus Christ, people are splintered. One of them can be pro-life and pro-abortion, or pro-life and pro-divorce—one part against the other one. This is a division in the person. What is the only way that we can meet something that unites all our person and enables us to embrace, to affirm every value, every Christian value? Only if we meet Jesus Christ. Without this, we are defeated in the long-term and, as we see, in the short-term, as well.