It's true! We have a Pope! Buenos Aires Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected yesterday to succeed Benedict XVI to the Chair of Peter, and he has taken the regnal name of Francis. An exceedingly humble, simple man with a great love for evangelization and orthodoxy, who holds a Master's Degree in Chemistry. The first Jesuit, the first from the Americas, and the first Francis. What a great day! I'm excited!
So in such a big event, we find wonderful opportunities to evangelize to those who would usually not pay much attention to the workings, or the message, of the Church. And in doing so, of course, we also find many of the common "worldly hopes" rooted in misunderstandings of the fundamental teachings of the Church. You've heard them, or maybe even thought them, yourself.
"I hope this new Pope gives women a fair shake this time!"
"Maybe now we'll get female Priests!"
"I hear this Pope might allow condoms and say gay marriage is okay!"
Well alright. So what do you say to these types of comments? Outside of a snarky answer like "Saying the Vatican oppresses women because they can't be Priests makes as much sense as saying the hospital oppresses men because they can't give birth.", how do you handle situations where the person making the comment is well-intentioned albeit ignorant on how the Church works? Well, for starters, not like this wonderful conversation I had with someone the day the conclave began:
B: Pray for Pink Smoke!
Me: Why's
it gotta be pink? Because girls like pink? Why can't girls like blue?
People like you with antiquated notions of oppressive gender roles are
putting feminism back 50 years.
B: Putting
women back 50 years? Wrong notion. Want to find a place where women
are oppressed....look in the direction of the Vatican. When you see
pink smoke, you'll see a woman elected Pope.
Me: I
know what "pink smoke" means, B. It means "fundamentally
misunderstanding Catholicism on its most basic level". Because it's not
like the most important figure in the religion, other than God Himself,
is a woman. Oh wait. It is.
B: Oh, really? Then most the world misunderstand on its most basic level, man.
Me: ...yes?
Luckily, for those who care to know what they're talking about, there
are countless resources. Perhaps you could start with www.catholic.com,
or pick up an easy to read copy of Catholicism for Dummies by the
always eloquent Fr. John Trigilio. Remember, those who already know
everything never learn anything.
Oh gosh, what am I thinking? You're also certainly welcome to sit in with my Sunday School kids some day.
So yeah, obviously this is something I struggle with on occasion myself. And hey, I "won" the argument! In the worst way possible, but there it is. So my first piece of advice is to be empathetic and understanding. Know where the person is coming from, and do your best to address there specific issue. Try to get them to understand that the Church and the Pope doesn't sit around making up arbitrary doctrines that change on the mood and view of the current pontiff. Make it clear the the new Pope can't make abortion same-sex "marriage", or women priests okay "okay" anymore than the President of the United States can repeal the law of gravity.
As a culture, the world tends to be obsessed with what it can test empirically. What it can touch, taste, smell, hear, and see. The philosophical tools of study and proof have been largely thrown aside, which has led to the sharp rise in "new atheism" and related movements. The idea that a spiritual change is as real and as objective as a physical change gets muddied in endless barrages of images to the contrary.
And this is where we can take a page from our new Vicar of Christ. Although a man of steadfast faith and belief, he remains humble and service-minded. At all times proclaim Christ through your actions and your love. Will they walk away convinced? Maybe not, but through your love they may begin to hear the whisper of truth.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Strike your foot against a stone
This Wednesday, the 13th of February, is Ash Wednesday. So remember to go to Mass! Oh, you're not Catholic? That's fine, now is a great time to convert!
Anyways, now that we've gotten that out of that way, let's talk about Lent a little bit. Well, sorta. We know what Lent is, the time of preparation leading up to Easter Sunday. It's a great time of penitential sorrow and joyful hope all wrapped up into one semi-confusing ball of ecclesiastical celebration. But this time of sacrifice and abounding Grace finds it's biblical roots in Christ's 40 days of fasting in the desert at the beginning of His ministry. And just as we end Lent with the celebration of Christ conquering death in Easter, Christ's preparation for the rest of His life ended with an event that foreshadowed Easter, namely His temptation by, and conquering of, Satan.
We tend to focus on this event somewhat one-dimensionally, seeing it (and rightfully so) as the New Adam succeeding where the original failed. But there's another, often overlooked, view to this. Namely, what can we learn about ourselves and our own concupiscence in the way the Devil chose to tempt the Son of Man? And what can it teach us about staying on guard against sin? To really understand this, let's pull out the biblical account and go through these temptations step-by-step.
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
So we have Christ's frame of mind. Guided by the Holy Spirit to fast and grow in a spiritual way, much like many of us are day in and day out. And, being fully human, it wore Him out. Just as our journeys wear us down. And when we're at the beginning of something great, that's when the Devil takes notice and decides to step in.
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”
This is the first thing Satan goes after. Our own selfish desires. And there's a reason for this. It's simple, requires nearly zero effort on his part, and is incredibly effective. What do you want right now, this instant? What do you think you need? The Devil uses this rationalization with great delight and we are all too often eager to take the bait. But wait! Jesus has some advice for us! That guy, He's always got a nugget of wisdom. He retreats to the word of God, and reminds us that while temporal pleasures and even needs can sustain us and even please us for a time, it is He, the true Bread of Life, that we can sustain ourselves on. In many ways, He's saying "Don't worry about that right now. You've got me. So keep your eyes on the prize."
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
Now this is where most of the "survivors" of temptation one get snagged. Turns out that the Devil is a smart guy, and he knows how to think long-term. People tend to think that once they overcome their carnal, directly selfish desires, they're home free. They see the reward for their piety and they grab it in all it's glory! Victory!
...right?
Christ is the King of Kings. His mission on this earth was to gather the people to Himself, to show them that He is the Lord. And here's His chance. Satan is fully aware of the goal here, and he's perfectly willing to help attain it. No fuss no muss, no bloodshed or suffering. Sure, it's kind of a cheat, it's kind of the "easy way out", but this is the whole reason He's here! This is exactly what He wants!
This is what our next temptation always is. If the Devil can't keep us from our mission, then he'll do exactly the opposite. He'll help us in it. He'll smooth out the wrinkles, cut out the work, help us justify the means to the end, because it's all for the greater glory. Except now we're here, at the top of the mountain, and everything is how we imagined it, but... not. Just a little skewed, a little warped. So what's wrong?
Have you ever thought about why God, in His infinite mercy, didn't just snap His fingers after the fall of man and make everything okay again? Maybe that's not the way He wants it to work. Have you ever thought that there was something to that old silly idea of the felix culpa? "O happy fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer" isn't an accidental statement. God, for whatever reason in His wisdom, found it proper to work great good out of struggle and evil. We're called to that standard right alongside Jesus. And once again, He shows us the way.
Our actions need to be centered on the worship of God at all times. The old axiom "There's the easy way and there's the right way" holds true here. The moment you do something that doesn't glorify God, even in your pursuit to glorify Him, you've fallen into sin and temptation. And often you may not even realize it until it's too late. But we are often tempted with means to what we believe we want, with a path that seemingly lines up with our mission, but gets us there in a warped and disordered way. "Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only."
The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written:
Anyways, now that we've gotten that out of that way, let's talk about Lent a little bit. Well, sorta. We know what Lent is, the time of preparation leading up to Easter Sunday. It's a great time of penitential sorrow and joyful hope all wrapped up into one semi-confusing ball of ecclesiastical celebration. But this time of sacrifice and abounding Grace finds it's biblical roots in Christ's 40 days of fasting in the desert at the beginning of His ministry. And just as we end Lent with the celebration of Christ conquering death in Easter, Christ's preparation for the rest of His life ended with an event that foreshadowed Easter, namely His temptation by, and conquering of, Satan.
We tend to focus on this event somewhat one-dimensionally, seeing it (and rightfully so) as the New Adam succeeding where the original failed. But there's another, often overlooked, view to this. Namely, what can we learn about ourselves and our own concupiscence in the way the Devil chose to tempt the Son of Man? And what can it teach us about staying on guard against sin? To really understand this, let's pull out the biblical account and go through these temptations step-by-step.
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
So we have Christ's frame of mind. Guided by the Holy Spirit to fast and grow in a spiritual way, much like many of us are day in and day out. And, being fully human, it wore Him out. Just as our journeys wear us down. And when we're at the beginning of something great, that's when the Devil takes notice and decides to step in.
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”
This is the first thing Satan goes after. Our own selfish desires. And there's a reason for this. It's simple, requires nearly zero effort on his part, and is incredibly effective. What do you want right now, this instant? What do you think you need? The Devil uses this rationalization with great delight and we are all too often eager to take the bait. But wait! Jesus has some advice for us! That guy, He's always got a nugget of wisdom. He retreats to the word of God, and reminds us that while temporal pleasures and even needs can sustain us and even please us for a time, it is He, the true Bread of Life, that we can sustain ourselves on. In many ways, He's saying "Don't worry about that right now. You've got me. So keep your eyes on the prize."
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
Now this is where most of the "survivors" of temptation one get snagged. Turns out that the Devil is a smart guy, and he knows how to think long-term. People tend to think that once they overcome their carnal, directly selfish desires, they're home free. They see the reward for their piety and they grab it in all it's glory! Victory!
...right?
Christ is the King of Kings. His mission on this earth was to gather the people to Himself, to show them that He is the Lord. And here's His chance. Satan is fully aware of the goal here, and he's perfectly willing to help attain it. No fuss no muss, no bloodshed or suffering. Sure, it's kind of a cheat, it's kind of the "easy way out", but this is the whole reason He's here! This is exactly what He wants!
This is what our next temptation always is. If the Devil can't keep us from our mission, then he'll do exactly the opposite. He'll help us in it. He'll smooth out the wrinkles, cut out the work, help us justify the means to the end, because it's all for the greater glory. Except now we're here, at the top of the mountain, and everything is how we imagined it, but... not. Just a little skewed, a little warped. So what's wrong?
Have you ever thought about why God, in His infinite mercy, didn't just snap His fingers after the fall of man and make everything okay again? Maybe that's not the way He wants it to work. Have you ever thought that there was something to that old silly idea of the felix culpa? "O happy fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer" isn't an accidental statement. God, for whatever reason in His wisdom, found it proper to work great good out of struggle and evil. We're called to that standard right alongside Jesus. And once again, He shows us the way.
Our actions need to be centered on the worship of God at all times. The old axiom "There's the easy way and there's the right way" holds true here. The moment you do something that doesn't glorify God, even in your pursuit to glorify Him, you've fallen into sin and temptation. And often you may not even realize it until it's too late. But we are often tempted with means to what we believe we want, with a path that seemingly lines up with our mission, but gets us there in a warped and disordered way. "Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only."
The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written:
‘He will command his angels concerning you
to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"
to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'"
Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’"
And here we go. You've proven that you're not going to give in to your desires, and you wont be fooled into gaining the whole world but losing your soul. You keep your eyes on God. And finally, Satan turns to his last refuge, the last place you'd expect him to strike. The pages of scripture itself. Twice has Christ rebuked the Devil, quoting scripture to prove him wrong. So now the Devil spouts scripture right back at him.
See, Satan knows the word of God too. Better, in fact, than we do. He knows what it means and, more importantly, he knows what it doesn't mean. And he turns it around on us, uses it in lockstep with our pride. "Yeah, you've got all the authority you need. You can see it all right here, plain as day on the page. You know what it means, and you don't need anyone else to push their man-made interpretations on you. The Spirit is guiding you."
I have a good idea that a number of you reading this will immediately know what I mean, not because you necessarily agree with me but because you'll feel a little attacked, as a few little strings of your pride are tugged, just a bit. And that's the point. This last temptation, this is the one that gets the last holdouts. This last temptation is the one that has caused more irreparable damage and splintering of Christendom than anything else. The right verse, mixed with carefully measured pride, will infect everything we do and say in pursuit of the Kingdom. This is the killer.
"It is said 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test'". Christ's words here resonate within us on every level. Pride is always putting God to the test. Boldly proclaiming "Let's see who's right." is what pride tricks us into doing every day. When we feel those string start to pull, and we feel the pride begin to well up in our hearts, that's when we must repeat the words of Jesus, the final words He said to drive off the Devil for good. "It is said 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test'".
When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.
Yikes. The point is, even after all this, he'll be back. This is why Lent is so important to us. It's a time to fall to our knees and feel the sorrow at what we've caused, and look forward joyfully at the hope He's created. There's a lot of Grace floating around during Lent. Please don't neglect to reach out and accept it.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Who do you Tweet that I am?
I'm sitting here writing this article out at my desk from home, on my computer that has two monitors. A few minutes ago, I was reading tweets by the Pope on my phone from the couch. I don't have one, but tomorrow morning millions of people will wake up and read the newspaper from their tablets. Who knows what will be happening a month from now, a year, a decade? When I graduated high school, I never would have thought ANY of that was ever going to be possible. Well, except the computer with two monitors, I'm not that old.
So what's my point? Technology is moving quickly, faster than anyone would have expected, and what people are realizing more and more readily is that it's all coming down to information, communication. This definitely has its downsides, as the more information we're inundated with on a daily basis can serve to blur the lines between solid truth and relativistic ambiguity, but it has so many potential upsides.
Christianity has a real opportunity here. Getting the gospel out to the masses is just a few clicks away. Through blogging, twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and countless other social media sites, we can share our faith with more people than every before, and I would encourage anyone who can to do so. I mean, like I said above, the Pope is on twitter. Guys, the Pope! And he posts from his iPad! His account is @pontifex, by the way. You should follow him if you don't.
But there are some pitfalls we need to watch out for in this brave new world. The flip side of the coin is that, while you can reach countless souls, they can reach right back. And take it from me, it can be a real challenge to not get sucked into a pointless internet debate.
I don't say that to try and stop people from evangelizing directly on the internet. I've been in plenty of debates over Instant Messenger, email, even Facebook that myself and my "opponent" have walked away from feeling at least a little more educated on the others perspective. But often times there are people who will insult you and your position with no intention of discussion, and for the smallest things. I once posted a Lenten reflection on Facebook for my Christian friends, and had the entire thing blow up when a few people started commenting how annoyed they are when people mention God on the internet like He actually exists. I don't normally, but I ended up having to deleted all the comments just to keep the spirit of the reflection intact.
So how do we get around this? Well, sometimes we can't. If you blog, you can think about filtering comments, or just shutting them off completely. I don't do that, but it's an option. On twitter, you simply can't keep people from reading, retweeting, and replying to your messages. You can lock down your Facebook page and configure certain posts to only be viewable by certain people. But you're not going to reach a whole lot of souls by doing that.
So what it comes down to is pure old fashioned discipline. Pick your battles, identify who wants actual dialogue and who wants to troll you in anonymity. But remember the saying that if you're not turning anybody off, you're not turning anybody on. And as you go forward, keep in mind the words of Christ in John 15:20:
Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.
So what now?
Well, if you like what you read here at all, check out my other posts, post a comment, and/or subscribe to this blog! You can also check out my twitter feed at https://twitter.com/UnrefinedRoman, which you can also check out over on the sidebar. You can also like my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/UnrefinedRomanism for more updates, reflections, and whatever else I feel like posting from day to day.
So what's my point? Technology is moving quickly, faster than anyone would have expected, and what people are realizing more and more readily is that it's all coming down to information, communication. This definitely has its downsides, as the more information we're inundated with on a daily basis can serve to blur the lines between solid truth and relativistic ambiguity, but it has so many potential upsides.
Christianity has a real opportunity here. Getting the gospel out to the masses is just a few clicks away. Through blogging, twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and countless other social media sites, we can share our faith with more people than every before, and I would encourage anyone who can to do so. I mean, like I said above, the Pope is on twitter. Guys, the Pope! And he posts from his iPad! His account is @pontifex, by the way. You should follow him if you don't.
But there are some pitfalls we need to watch out for in this brave new world. The flip side of the coin is that, while you can reach countless souls, they can reach right back. And take it from me, it can be a real challenge to not get sucked into a pointless internet debate.
I don't say that to try and stop people from evangelizing directly on the internet. I've been in plenty of debates over Instant Messenger, email, even Facebook that myself and my "opponent" have walked away from feeling at least a little more educated on the others perspective. But often times there are people who will insult you and your position with no intention of discussion, and for the smallest things. I once posted a Lenten reflection on Facebook for my Christian friends, and had the entire thing blow up when a few people started commenting how annoyed they are when people mention God on the internet like He actually exists. I don't normally, but I ended up having to deleted all the comments just to keep the spirit of the reflection intact.
So how do we get around this? Well, sometimes we can't. If you blog, you can think about filtering comments, or just shutting them off completely. I don't do that, but it's an option. On twitter, you simply can't keep people from reading, retweeting, and replying to your messages. You can lock down your Facebook page and configure certain posts to only be viewable by certain people. But you're not going to reach a whole lot of souls by doing that.
So what it comes down to is pure old fashioned discipline. Pick your battles, identify who wants actual dialogue and who wants to troll you in anonymity. But remember the saying that if you're not turning anybody off, you're not turning anybody on. And as you go forward, keep in mind the words of Christ in John 15:20:
Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.
So what now?
Well, if you like what you read here at all, check out my other posts, post a comment, and/or subscribe to this blog! You can also check out my twitter feed at https://twitter.com/UnrefinedRoman, which you can also check out over on the sidebar. You can also like my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/UnrefinedRomanism for more updates, reflections, and whatever else I feel like posting from day to day.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Advent and the Year of Faith
So I meant to update this sucker back when the Year of Faith began on October 11th, but then I didn't. So then I meant to update this past Sunday, since it was the beginning of Advent. And I didn't! Again! So anyways, I'll just knock em both out now. And in the future, I promise to update more. If anybody has any topics they are interested in seeing discussed here, please feel free to suggest them down below. I'd love the feedback.
Well first off, happy new year! At least in the ecclesiastical sense; the calendar just clicked over into Advent this past Sunday, the first season of the liturgical calendar. Advent is a time of preparation for, and reflection on, the birth of Christ. It could even be regarded as a foil for it's close cousin on the calendar, Lent. Although they share the color purple, and people can sometimes get the purpose of these two great season confused, I believe their means to and end are really quite diametric from one another. Where Lent is a season of penance tempered by hope, Advent is a season of hope tempered by penance.
As we approach Christmas and the celebration of the coming of the Lord, we reflect on scripture. Read the first two chapters of St. Luke's Gospel and you can't help but feel the electricity buzzing from the pages as all of Heaven prepares for this event, an event that is the culmination of the thousands of years of prophetic foreshadowing that fills the pages of the Old Testament. Angels begin heralding the birth of John the Baptist and, shortly after, the birth of Christ. You get the joyous and excited exclamations that make up one of the Church's most famous prayers, from both angelic and human sources: "Hail Mary, full of Grace! The Lord is with you!" and "Blessed are you, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb!".
These are profound ideas, once that we could fill pages and pages exploring and fleshing out, but these are also the ordinary attitudes of the Advent and Christmas seasons. This year, however, things are, I feel, slightly different.
As I mentioned above, we are currently about two months into the Year of Faith, where Pope Benedict XVI has sought to refocus the Church on her primary goal of winning souls to Christ. This is a massive push towards what has come to be known as the New Evangelization, a movement.meant to introduce a new generation of Catholics to the good fruits of the faith. The emphasis on catechesis and study, so we can really know our faith and the reasons behind our beliefs. But most of all, the emphasis on action, on the mission to go out, making disciples of all nations. It is this that I believe the Church has missed in the modern age. The active proclamation of the Gospel.
SO here's where the message of Advent ties in uniquely with the Year of Faith. When asked where the term "gospel" comes from, what it means, most people will say that it means "God News". And this is true, it does. But there's a whole lot more to it than that, and it shines a lot of light on the mission of Christianity.
If we follow the root of the word back, past the Old English godspel to its Latin and, ultimately, to its root in the Koine Greek used in scripture, we find that the word is euangélion, literally "good messenger". This was a term that a person living under the rule of the first century Roman empire would find familiar, albeit out of place in relation to a small baby born in a manger. This wasn't a humble term, but one of great imperial weight.
Let me explain. When the Roman army returned from battle, messengers would be dispatched to the corners of the empire to proclaim an euangélion, the victorious message of the glorious expansion of imperial rule. The basic idea was that people would know that the king was on his throne and that he had won.
Now imagine the seeming paradox when the Gospel writer takes this mighty term and flips it on its head. He describes a poor man and woman traveling to a tiny town a few miles away from Jerusalem, having a child in a cave full of animals. And suddenly a heavenly host comes pouring from the sky declaring... an euangélion. The King has won. The mission is complete, the war is over. Which king? Caesar? No no, the tiny baby in the cave. The king of the world is on His throne, and He is victorious.
See, the euangélion is the moral of the Advent story. It's no longer Kyrios Caesar, it's now Kyrios Christos.
So that's all interesting, but how does it tie into the Year of Faith? Our focus on the New Evangelization? Well, look at the words. Evangelization. Euangélion. Hmm. The Year of Faith and the New Evangelization is all about the Advent. We're embroiled in the middle of a new euangélion, a renewal of our faith. So use this Advent time and follow the example of the Gospels. Announce the arrival of the Savior, keep abuzz with activity, learn your faith, and remember that it's all pointing to this: The king is on His throne, and He is victorious.
So what can you do to move forward? A few suggestions:
Well first off, happy new year! At least in the ecclesiastical sense; the calendar just clicked over into Advent this past Sunday, the first season of the liturgical calendar. Advent is a time of preparation for, and reflection on, the birth of Christ. It could even be regarded as a foil for it's close cousin on the calendar, Lent. Although they share the color purple, and people can sometimes get the purpose of these two great season confused, I believe their means to and end are really quite diametric from one another. Where Lent is a season of penance tempered by hope, Advent is a season of hope tempered by penance.
As we approach Christmas and the celebration of the coming of the Lord, we reflect on scripture. Read the first two chapters of St. Luke's Gospel and you can't help but feel the electricity buzzing from the pages as all of Heaven prepares for this event, an event that is the culmination of the thousands of years of prophetic foreshadowing that fills the pages of the Old Testament. Angels begin heralding the birth of John the Baptist and, shortly after, the birth of Christ. You get the joyous and excited exclamations that make up one of the Church's most famous prayers, from both angelic and human sources: "Hail Mary, full of Grace! The Lord is with you!" and "Blessed are you, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb!".
These are profound ideas, once that we could fill pages and pages exploring and fleshing out, but these are also the ordinary attitudes of the Advent and Christmas seasons. This year, however, things are, I feel, slightly different.
As I mentioned above, we are currently about two months into the Year of Faith, where Pope Benedict XVI has sought to refocus the Church on her primary goal of winning souls to Christ. This is a massive push towards what has come to be known as the New Evangelization, a movement.meant to introduce a new generation of Catholics to the good fruits of the faith. The emphasis on catechesis and study, so we can really know our faith and the reasons behind our beliefs. But most of all, the emphasis on action, on the mission to go out, making disciples of all nations. It is this that I believe the Church has missed in the modern age. The active proclamation of the Gospel.
SO here's where the message of Advent ties in uniquely with the Year of Faith. When asked where the term "gospel" comes from, what it means, most people will say that it means "God News". And this is true, it does. But there's a whole lot more to it than that, and it shines a lot of light on the mission of Christianity.
If we follow the root of the word back, past the Old English godspel to its Latin and, ultimately, to its root in the Koine Greek used in scripture, we find that the word is euangélion, literally "good messenger". This was a term that a person living under the rule of the first century Roman empire would find familiar, albeit out of place in relation to a small baby born in a manger. This wasn't a humble term, but one of great imperial weight.
Let me explain. When the Roman army returned from battle, messengers would be dispatched to the corners of the empire to proclaim an euangélion, the victorious message of the glorious expansion of imperial rule. The basic idea was that people would know that the king was on his throne and that he had won.
Now imagine the seeming paradox when the Gospel writer takes this mighty term and flips it on its head. He describes a poor man and woman traveling to a tiny town a few miles away from Jerusalem, having a child in a cave full of animals. And suddenly a heavenly host comes pouring from the sky declaring... an euangélion. The King has won. The mission is complete, the war is over. Which king? Caesar? No no, the tiny baby in the cave. The king of the world is on His throne, and He is victorious.
See, the euangélion is the moral of the Advent story. It's no longer Kyrios Caesar, it's now Kyrios Christos.
So that's all interesting, but how does it tie into the Year of Faith? Our focus on the New Evangelization? Well, look at the words. Evangelization. Euangélion. Hmm. The Year of Faith and the New Evangelization is all about the Advent. We're embroiled in the middle of a new euangélion, a renewal of our faith. So use this Advent time and follow the example of the Gospels. Announce the arrival of the Savior, keep abuzz with activity, learn your faith, and remember that it's all pointing to this: The king is on His throne, and He is victorious.
So what can you do to move forward? A few suggestions:
- Read the Bible. Seriously, just hit about five pages a day and you'll have the entire thing read, cover to cover, in a year.
- Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Again, 5-10 paragraphs a day and you'll have it knocked out in a year. Check out http://www.flocknote.com/catechism and sign up to have a snippet sent to your email every day. It's already about 56 days into it, but you could catch up in a night and take it from thee.
- Study the Catholic faith. There are countless resources on the web. http://www.catholic.com is a good place to start, and there are a number of good books you can get. Also, look up your local Diocese's website, many of them are beginning to provide study materials and online courses for free or cheap. This is a link to the Archdiocese of Washington's adult faith formation program. Lastly, if you're not sure where to go, find a church and give them a call. Sign up for an RCIA class, or something similar.
- Pray. This cannot be stressed enough. You don't need to lock yourself in a silent room full of icons and statues for an hour, just start with ten minutes. Maybe pray the rosary every day, that'll take about that much time. Then, as you feel comfortable, ad another five minutes. Work your way up, and soon an hour wont seem like enough time.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Form One Body
Hey, a new post! We're living in crazy times, people.
So this past weekend I went to a wedding celebration party reception thing for my cousin. It was pretty nice, and I got to see all of my cousins in one place at one time for the first time in... I dunno, a long time I guess. We have pictures to prove it too. But one of the things I found interesting was that despite not seeing each other all the time (in some cases, there are gaps of years at a time) and despite sometimes not always seeing eye-to-eye, when we get around a table we're able to just sort of pick back up and everything is great. Because hey, we're family, even if we don't want to be sometimes.
So that got me thinking. You know, the glory of God absolutely shines through our lives, and everything we experience is, in some limited way, a reflection of Him. So in the same way that my cousins (and aunts and uncles etc etc) are intrinsically bound to one another through family ties, so are Christians bound to one another through baptismal grace. We even describe baptism as an adoption as children into the family of God, which is in of itself a reflection of Christ's begotten Sonship to the Father.
So strong is this grace that it can't be broken, not even in death. As we pray for one another here on earth, those souls in heaven and, yes, even in purgatory, pray for us as well. It's a common misconception by many Protestants that those who are dead are seperated from us here on earth, that they are so contented in the beatific vision that they simply wouldn't care to pay attention even if they could. The problem with that view is that scripture makes it pretty clear that God is a God of the living, not of the dead, and it's pretty clear that those in heaven are actually more alive than we are. But most of all, we are united. We are all the body of Christ, He is the vine we are the branches. The book of Revelations even shows the saints in heaven offering our prayers to God, using the symbolism of bowls of incense. Of course, it is through Him that we commune, not of our own power or will, and after we die that communion will take a different form. But don't make the mistake of believing that we do not commune.
Appropriately enough, the Church refers to this as the Communion of Saints, comprised of three parts. The Church Militant, or those of use still fighting the battle here on earth, the Church Suffering, those undergoing the process of purification in purgatory, and the Church Triumphant, those being exposed to the full glory in heaven.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the Communion of Saints not as just a binding of the members of the Church, but the very Church itself:
After confessing "the holy catholic Church," the Apostles' Creed adds "the communion of saints." In a certain sense this article is a further explanation of the preceding: "What is the Church if not the assembly of all the saints?" The communion of saints is the Church.
"Since all the faithful form one body, the good of each is communicated to the others.... We must therefore believe that there exists a communion of goods in the Church. But the most important member is Christ, since he is the head.... Therefore, the riches of Christ are communicated to all the members, through the sacraments." "As this Church is governed by one and the same Spirit, all the goods she has received necessarily become a common fund."
It goes on to state:
Communion with the saints. "It is not merely by the title of example that we cherish the memory of those in heaven; we seek, rather, that by this devotion to the exercise of fraternal charity the union of the whole Church in the Spirit may be strengthened. Exactly as Christian communion among our fellow pilgrims brings us closer to Christ, so our communion with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from its fountain and head issues all grace, and the life of the People of God itself"
This is a beautiful concept. A seamless Church, constantly looking in on itself, building each other up spiritually, bestowing the graces we have received back onto each other. The perfect, Holy perpetual motion machine. We are called to pray for one another, to intercede for one another. Since the prayers of the righteous have great effect, but, according to St. Paul, no man on earth is righteous "no, not one"... well, I'll let you reason out where those prayers of great effect are coming from.
As I stated earlier, this tends to be a concept that many Protestants (and not a few Catholics) lose sight of. But Jesus Christ prayed for unity, and the Church, the Communion of Saints, is the ultimate fulfillment of that prayer. So the next time you're praying for someone (or asking someone for prayers), know that you're in good company.
So this past weekend I went to a wedding celebration party reception thing for my cousin. It was pretty nice, and I got to see all of my cousins in one place at one time for the first time in... I dunno, a long time I guess. We have pictures to prove it too. But one of the things I found interesting was that despite not seeing each other all the time (in some cases, there are gaps of years at a time) and despite sometimes not always seeing eye-to-eye, when we get around a table we're able to just sort of pick back up and everything is great. Because hey, we're family, even if we don't want to be sometimes.
So that got me thinking. You know, the glory of God absolutely shines through our lives, and everything we experience is, in some limited way, a reflection of Him. So in the same way that my cousins (and aunts and uncles etc etc) are intrinsically bound to one another through family ties, so are Christians bound to one another through baptismal grace. We even describe baptism as an adoption as children into the family of God, which is in of itself a reflection of Christ's begotten Sonship to the Father.
So strong is this grace that it can't be broken, not even in death. As we pray for one another here on earth, those souls in heaven and, yes, even in purgatory, pray for us as well. It's a common misconception by many Protestants that those who are dead are seperated from us here on earth, that they are so contented in the beatific vision that they simply wouldn't care to pay attention even if they could. The problem with that view is that scripture makes it pretty clear that God is a God of the living, not of the dead, and it's pretty clear that those in heaven are actually more alive than we are. But most of all, we are united. We are all the body of Christ, He is the vine we are the branches. The book of Revelations even shows the saints in heaven offering our prayers to God, using the symbolism of bowls of incense. Of course, it is through Him that we commune, not of our own power or will, and after we die that communion will take a different form. But don't make the mistake of believing that we do not commune.
Appropriately enough, the Church refers to this as the Communion of Saints, comprised of three parts. The Church Militant, or those of use still fighting the battle here on earth, the Church Suffering, those undergoing the process of purification in purgatory, and the Church Triumphant, those being exposed to the full glory in heaven.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the Communion of Saints not as just a binding of the members of the Church, but the very Church itself:
After confessing "the holy catholic Church," the Apostles' Creed adds "the communion of saints." In a certain sense this article is a further explanation of the preceding: "What is the Church if not the assembly of all the saints?" The communion of saints is the Church.
"Since all the faithful form one body, the good of each is communicated to the others.... We must therefore believe that there exists a communion of goods in the Church. But the most important member is Christ, since he is the head.... Therefore, the riches of Christ are communicated to all the members, through the sacraments." "As this Church is governed by one and the same Spirit, all the goods she has received necessarily become a common fund."
It goes on to state:
Communion with the saints. "It is not merely by the title of example that we cherish the memory of those in heaven; we seek, rather, that by this devotion to the exercise of fraternal charity the union of the whole Church in the Spirit may be strengthened. Exactly as Christian communion among our fellow pilgrims brings us closer to Christ, so our communion with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from its fountain and head issues all grace, and the life of the People of God itself"
This is a beautiful concept. A seamless Church, constantly looking in on itself, building each other up spiritually, bestowing the graces we have received back onto each other. The perfect, Holy perpetual motion machine. We are called to pray for one another, to intercede for one another. Since the prayers of the righteous have great effect, but, according to St. Paul, no man on earth is righteous "no, not one"... well, I'll let you reason out where those prayers of great effect are coming from.
As I stated earlier, this tends to be a concept that many Protestants (and not a few Catholics) lose sight of. But Jesus Christ prayed for unity, and the Church, the Communion of Saints, is the ultimate fulfillment of that prayer. So the next time you're praying for someone (or asking someone for prayers), know that you're in good company.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
When Kings go off to War
So I was reading a blog post by Catholic Answers Live radio host Patrick Coffin the other day, specifically this one. It's an interesting commentary about the attitudes that many atheists tend to have towards believers, but what really stood out to me was the silly rationalization that Dr. Richard Dawkins gave for not debating Dr. William Lane Craig. He doesn't debate people who support genocide? Really? I feel like if I was given the chance to confront a man on (what I considered) his dangerous ideological fallacies, I would jump on it. How else can progress be made?
But regardless, the point I found interesting was one that many, many atheists I know have thrown out there, and one that most of my Christian friends try to duck or ignore. Namely, how can we justify our belief in an all loving God, a God that is, in fact, Love itself, when that same God ordered the genocidal butchering of entire cities that occur time and again in the Old Testament? How could that possibly jive with Christ's message of "Do to others as you would have them do to you"?
Modern Christianity has many advantages. We have the ability to look backwards over thousands of years, and see a lot of the big picture. What may have been confusing for a Jew in antiquity can become crystal clear for those of us that can look and see how the hardships of his life pointed so definitively towards its fulfilment in Jesus. But it also has its disadvantages. We are so disconnected from the culture and norms of the apostolic age and beyond that we often fail to see the context in which some of those hardships could have occurred.
God chose to reveal Himself to the world through the Israelites. He set these people aside as His chosen, to slowly but surely prepare the world for His coming as the incarnate Son. We know this already, because we get to look back on the entirety of the now-closed canon of Scripture and this this as we read through the New Testament. But we often forget that it was slowly-but-surely. The Bible was written over the course of thousands of years, and in that time God's chosen people changed in many ways. We can see the covenant grow from a marriage with Adam and Eve, a family with Noah, a household with Abraham, a tribal nation with Moses, a kingdom with David, and of course the fulfillment of it all with Christ when the world was ready to begin accepting Him.
And just as we see the covenant grow, we see the challenges posed by the world around them grow as well. For much of their existence, the Israelites were a collective of a fiercely tribal system surrounded by polytheistic paganism on every side. If they didn't have that danger to face, I have my doubts as to if they could even have lived with each other without resorting to full-time violence. The only thing holding them together over the long run was their desire to defend themselves from the darkness around them, and even that wasn't enough oftentimes.
How could the nation that was was meant to be the light in the darkness, to be the catalyst of salvation in the world and gather all people to itself accomplish any of this when it couldn't even keep itself together?
Last week, we talked about the idea of Just War. The world that ancient Israel existed in was one of violence and war. It was commonplace for a city-state to simply up and lay siege to the lands of another for little to no reason, so much so that spring was even considered the time of year when kings go off to war. If you did not go conquering, you were likely to be conquered.
As I said before, the development of God's people was progressive. Christ even noted this when He told the leaders of the Temple that their understanding of marriage was incomplete, that Moses had allowed divorce because the people simply were not yet ready to hear the full truth that Christ was now presenting to them. Things that they had always regarded as truth and law were being challenged by the very one who put them into law in the first place, as He showed them the next and final step in the story of salvation.
Because in the end, it is a story of salvation. As I'm sure you've noticed has become a semi-common theme in my entries, people are messed up, and as a result salvation history is messy. In it, Israel represents the children of God, those that are meant to be pure and holy. But as in our personal lives, sin finds a way to creep and slither in, infecting and tempting the people of God. The nations and paganism around them represent that sin, that temptation. Although hard to understand then you look at the individual event from the comfort of your 21st century home, in the grand picture it begins to make sense.
If you have cancer, you do not sit by and wait, you attack it. And you do not stop when you've eradicated 99% of it. It's a zero-sum game. You get it all, or you die. When the ancient Jewish tribes were commanded by God to eradicate the pagan nations around them, they were being commanded to respond to sin in the only way they culturally and contextually were prepared to. God tolerated an evil in order to work it towards the ultimate good, as He does all things. Although initially counter-intuitive, without war and violence Christ's message of peace could never have happened.
Ultimately, these are hard verses for us to understand, and oceans of ink have been spilled trying to make sense of them. There are many mysteries of our faith that we will never fully grasp in this life. Grasping how evil can ultimately produce good is one of the most profound. A particular theme in the ancient scriptures is that as God is ordering His people to do one thing or another, although that thing may have immediate practical uses (destroy this city before they destroy you or you become landless nomads for all time), it fits in the grand design in a way that can only be understood in the light of Christ a thousand years later (eradicate sin before you are damned).
But the unfortunate reality is that when an atheist, or anyone else who has no desire to see scripture in any sort of context, comments on these passages, there are too few of us who stand ready to challenge them on any sort of intellectual level. So my challenge to you is to steep yourself in scripture, and never forget both the narrow and wide context of God's mercy.
But regardless, the point I found interesting was one that many, many atheists I know have thrown out there, and one that most of my Christian friends try to duck or ignore. Namely, how can we justify our belief in an all loving God, a God that is, in fact, Love itself, when that same God ordered the genocidal butchering of entire cities that occur time and again in the Old Testament? How could that possibly jive with Christ's message of "Do to others as you would have them do to you"?
Modern Christianity has many advantages. We have the ability to look backwards over thousands of years, and see a lot of the big picture. What may have been confusing for a Jew in antiquity can become crystal clear for those of us that can look and see how the hardships of his life pointed so definitively towards its fulfilment in Jesus. But it also has its disadvantages. We are so disconnected from the culture and norms of the apostolic age and beyond that we often fail to see the context in which some of those hardships could have occurred.
God chose to reveal Himself to the world through the Israelites. He set these people aside as His chosen, to slowly but surely prepare the world for His coming as the incarnate Son. We know this already, because we get to look back on the entirety of the now-closed canon of Scripture and this this as we read through the New Testament. But we often forget that it was slowly-but-surely. The Bible was written over the course of thousands of years, and in that time God's chosen people changed in many ways. We can see the covenant grow from a marriage with Adam and Eve, a family with Noah, a household with Abraham, a tribal nation with Moses, a kingdom with David, and of course the fulfillment of it all with Christ when the world was ready to begin accepting Him.
And just as we see the covenant grow, we see the challenges posed by the world around them grow as well. For much of their existence, the Israelites were a collective of a fiercely tribal system surrounded by polytheistic paganism on every side. If they didn't have that danger to face, I have my doubts as to if they could even have lived with each other without resorting to full-time violence. The only thing holding them together over the long run was their desire to defend themselves from the darkness around them, and even that wasn't enough oftentimes.
How could the nation that was was meant to be the light in the darkness, to be the catalyst of salvation in the world and gather all people to itself accomplish any of this when it couldn't even keep itself together?
Last week, we talked about the idea of Just War. The world that ancient Israel existed in was one of violence and war. It was commonplace for a city-state to simply up and lay siege to the lands of another for little to no reason, so much so that spring was even considered the time of year when kings go off to war. If you did not go conquering, you were likely to be conquered.
As I said before, the development of God's people was progressive. Christ even noted this when He told the leaders of the Temple that their understanding of marriage was incomplete, that Moses had allowed divorce because the people simply were not yet ready to hear the full truth that Christ was now presenting to them. Things that they had always regarded as truth and law were being challenged by the very one who put them into law in the first place, as He showed them the next and final step in the story of salvation.
Because in the end, it is a story of salvation. As I'm sure you've noticed has become a semi-common theme in my entries, people are messed up, and as a result salvation history is messy. In it, Israel represents the children of God, those that are meant to be pure and holy. But as in our personal lives, sin finds a way to creep and slither in, infecting and tempting the people of God. The nations and paganism around them represent that sin, that temptation. Although hard to understand then you look at the individual event from the comfort of your 21st century home, in the grand picture it begins to make sense.
If you have cancer, you do not sit by and wait, you attack it. And you do not stop when you've eradicated 99% of it. It's a zero-sum game. You get it all, or you die. When the ancient Jewish tribes were commanded by God to eradicate the pagan nations around them, they were being commanded to respond to sin in the only way they culturally and contextually were prepared to. God tolerated an evil in order to work it towards the ultimate good, as He does all things. Although initially counter-intuitive, without war and violence Christ's message of peace could never have happened.
Ultimately, these are hard verses for us to understand, and oceans of ink have been spilled trying to make sense of them. There are many mysteries of our faith that we will never fully grasp in this life. Grasping how evil can ultimately produce good is one of the most profound. A particular theme in the ancient scriptures is that as God is ordering His people to do one thing or another, although that thing may have immediate practical uses (destroy this city before they destroy you or you become landless nomads for all time), it fits in the grand design in a way that can only be understood in the light of Christ a thousand years later (eradicate sin before you are damned).
But the unfortunate reality is that when an atheist, or anyone else who has no desire to see scripture in any sort of context, comments on these passages, there are too few of us who stand ready to challenge them on any sort of intellectual level. So my challenge to you is to steep yourself in scripture, and never forget both the narrow and wide context of God's mercy.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
A Well-Formed Conscience
The concept of Just War has been done to death. I was going to talk about it a bit, but we all pretty much get it. War is never the ideal, but when pushed to certain circumstances, a war can be considered just. St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas pretty well have the subject covered. If you want to read about it, by all means, go nuts.
So instead, I'm going to sort of branch out from it. First off, I want to briefly hit on the issue that many people pick up, namely that war is never ever ever okay ever for any reason ever. Basically, I tend to agree, except for the tiny issue that humanity is profoundly messed up at a very fundamental level. Everything we do turns to dust and ruin. It's messy being people. Imagine you're a parent, and you come home one day after work to find your entire kitchen has been smeared with brown paint and there sitting in the middle of it all is your naked, smiling toddler, proud at his contribution to household beautification.
God, for all intents and purposes, deals with that every moment of every day with every single one of His billions of children. Thank goodness He's more understanding than we are.
The reality is that war and conflict exist, and nearly always have. This does not make violence the human ideal, but it does make it the human condition. They are a reality that we need to deal with directly, and with the understanding that we can't just simply wave them off with claims of Christian pacifism.
But all that aside, what I really want to talk about is a slightly more complicated issue. Just War very explicitly touches on if a conflict is Just, and that would naturally extend to the soldiers fighting on the just side. But what about an unjust conflict? What about the soldiers fighting for that side? Are they sinning by participating? How about soldiers compelled into service in one way or another?
You know, culpability is a funny thing. It can vary from sin to sin, and person to person. There is no "one-size-fits-all" answer to explain it. So I'm going to focus in on the criteria that we use to determine a mortal sin: The sin must be a grave matter, you must have knowledge that what you're doing in sinful, and you must be doing it with full consent of the will.
Patriotism is a great thing. Being willing to step up when your country calls you to duty, to fight for and defend your principles, those things can be noble. But patriotism alone isn't a theological mandate, or some sort of excuse for invincible ignorance. Now, if your country steps into a conflict with the intent to resolve it for the sake of peace and ending human suffering, or if you, as a soldier, are led to believe as such, an argument could be made that your duty as a soldier has not conflicted with your faith.
And excellent example of the other side of this though would be the Nazis. German soldiers were very much held accountable for their sins, and their attempts to hide behind the flag simply didn't fly. They knew the atrocities being committed, they participated with consent of the will. Nobody held a gun to their head.
Except maybe they did. Many killings have occurred in history through force. This is a tricky area, but I will say one thing about it. There's always a choice. So ask yourself, is the choice you're making a selfless one, or a selfish one?
Even in a conflict that could be deemed just, unjust things can, and do, happen. Your team goes into a town to drive out the dictator subjugating it's people, a good and noble purpose. But are you doing the right things during that fight, limiting the combat to enemy soldiers, or are you abusing innocents? What if those innocents pull weapons on you themselves? Do you shoot first and ask later, or try to disarm them? It's a muddy area for many people.
This highlights another point, which is the importance of a well-formed conscience. Atheists and relativists will talk about how religion has somehow "hijacked" morality, but this is an absurd notion. Morality is from God, that's very true, but it is, in many way, written on our hearts. You generally don't need to be a Christian to know murder is wrong. But what religion tends to do is bring forth the concepts of absolute truths. There is a real "right", and a real "wrong". But how do we know what these absolutes are? Well, additionally, religion introduces the concept of a well-formed conscience. Our moralities, like most other things, demand to be learned, developed, and refined, but I'd argue that most people don't realize they need to or simply don't want to do this.
This is where morality moves out of the realm of concepts and into practice. In war, you often cannot take the time to study and think, but instead must rely on intrinsic reaction, and the Christian action must come to the forefront. In many ways, this is the goal of a well-formed conscience, and vital to the application of Just War doctrine specifically, as well as our actions in general.
So instead, I'm going to sort of branch out from it. First off, I want to briefly hit on the issue that many people pick up, namely that war is never ever ever okay ever for any reason ever. Basically, I tend to agree, except for the tiny issue that humanity is profoundly messed up at a very fundamental level. Everything we do turns to dust and ruin. It's messy being people. Imagine you're a parent, and you come home one day after work to find your entire kitchen has been smeared with brown paint and there sitting in the middle of it all is your naked, smiling toddler, proud at his contribution to household beautification.
God, for all intents and purposes, deals with that every moment of every day with every single one of His billions of children. Thank goodness He's more understanding than we are.
The reality is that war and conflict exist, and nearly always have. This does not make violence the human ideal, but it does make it the human condition. They are a reality that we need to deal with directly, and with the understanding that we can't just simply wave them off with claims of Christian pacifism.
But all that aside, what I really want to talk about is a slightly more complicated issue. Just War very explicitly touches on if a conflict is Just, and that would naturally extend to the soldiers fighting on the just side. But what about an unjust conflict? What about the soldiers fighting for that side? Are they sinning by participating? How about soldiers compelled into service in one way or another?
You know, culpability is a funny thing. It can vary from sin to sin, and person to person. There is no "one-size-fits-all" answer to explain it. So I'm going to focus in on the criteria that we use to determine a mortal sin: The sin must be a grave matter, you must have knowledge that what you're doing in sinful, and you must be doing it with full consent of the will.
Patriotism is a great thing. Being willing to step up when your country calls you to duty, to fight for and defend your principles, those things can be noble. But patriotism alone isn't a theological mandate, or some sort of excuse for invincible ignorance. Now, if your country steps into a conflict with the intent to resolve it for the sake of peace and ending human suffering, or if you, as a soldier, are led to believe as such, an argument could be made that your duty as a soldier has not conflicted with your faith.
And excellent example of the other side of this though would be the Nazis. German soldiers were very much held accountable for their sins, and their attempts to hide behind the flag simply didn't fly. They knew the atrocities being committed, they participated with consent of the will. Nobody held a gun to their head.
Except maybe they did. Many killings have occurred in history through force. This is a tricky area, but I will say one thing about it. There's always a choice. So ask yourself, is the choice you're making a selfless one, or a selfish one?
Even in a conflict that could be deemed just, unjust things can, and do, happen. Your team goes into a town to drive out the dictator subjugating it's people, a good and noble purpose. But are you doing the right things during that fight, limiting the combat to enemy soldiers, or are you abusing innocents? What if those innocents pull weapons on you themselves? Do you shoot first and ask later, or try to disarm them? It's a muddy area for many people.
This highlights another point, which is the importance of a well-formed conscience. Atheists and relativists will talk about how religion has somehow "hijacked" morality, but this is an absurd notion. Morality is from God, that's very true, but it is, in many way, written on our hearts. You generally don't need to be a Christian to know murder is wrong. But what religion tends to do is bring forth the concepts of absolute truths. There is a real "right", and a real "wrong". But how do we know what these absolutes are? Well, additionally, religion introduces the concept of a well-formed conscience. Our moralities, like most other things, demand to be learned, developed, and refined, but I'd argue that most people don't realize they need to or simply don't want to do this.
This is where morality moves out of the realm of concepts and into practice. In war, you often cannot take the time to study and think, but instead must rely on intrinsic reaction, and the Christian action must come to the forefront. In many ways, this is the goal of a well-formed conscience, and vital to the application of Just War doctrine specifically, as well as our actions in general.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)