Catholic Faith and Evolution – Are They Compatible?

A couple of weeks ago, I received a copy of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism, authored by John Zmirak.  The Politically Incorrect Guides were a series of several books published on various subjects in the early 2000s by Regnery Press, a conservative publisher.   These books, called by their fans “PIG’s” for short, are actually quite informative, and each features a different author who is an authority in a certain subject area.  At this time, I have approximately six of these books in my own library, as they are concise, easy to read, and for the most part present a more accurate perspective on a controversial subject than you will find in most “mainstream” narratives.  This PIG on Catholicism is likewise useful, although there are some issues I do take personal exception with in regard to the topic of evolution and science, and that will be my main focus here. 

First, I feel a little background information on the author, John Zmirak is in order.  He is, for starters, editor of a Catholic periodical called The Stream, which can be accessed online at www.thestream.org.  This periodical is a fairly conservative journal, and it does have good content.  Zmirak was at one time also the Press Secretary to former Louisiana Governor Mike Foster and he has also contributed extensively as a reporter and editor to a variety of other publications.  In addition to this PIG on Catholicism, he has also written at least 11 other books.  His educational credentials include some impressive content as well – he has Bachelor of Arts from Yale, an MFA and Ph.D. from Louisiana State University and he has taught courses as well at both LSU and Tulane.  In reading the majority of the PIG he authored, Zmirak generally holds pretty orthodox Catholic religious views, and is also conservative politically.  In all, I would conclude that Zmirak is a talented writer and also a sound voice of Catholic orthodoxy on a variety of issues.  However – and this is where it gets more complicated, as not all orthodox conservative Catholics necessarily agree on all the minors – when it comes to science and evolution, Zmirak expresses many points that I would disagree with him on, and this is where my focus will mainly be concentrated.

The section of Zmirak’s book I want to focus on is Chapter 10, entitled “Is the Church Anti-Science?”  The chapter itself encompasses approximately 34 pages, and in order to see where things differ one has to read the text carefully.  The majority of it, on a positive note, is actually not bad reading at all, as it largely affirms the importance of both faith and reason as well as making the valid (and truthful) case that in many cases the Church was on the forefront of scientific discovery.  So far, this is all good and actually true – no Catholic or any other Christian of any denominational tradition would deny any of this at all.   However, when delving deeper into the “meat” of the chapter, there are a few small things we are going to address more at length momentarily, but let me just give where Zmirak is coming from in regard to science first.

While Zmirak is mostly sound and orthodox in the majority of his theses in this book, when you get to Chapter 10 you quickly find out that Zmirak would fall into the category of what is called a theistic evolutionist.  Theistic evolution basically asserts that while one can affirm that God did ultimately create the universe and everything in it (to deny that, regardless of who you are, would be outright heresy from a Catholic perspective), he also instituted the evolutionary process and therefore evolution is the reason why creation happened – to put it this way, for the theistic evolution, God essentially created the process of evolution, and then it did the rest.  Although a theistic evolutionist would affirm the uniqueness of humanity, there is a twist to this – God created the apes and then chose a specific ape to give a soul and spirit to, and thus Adam was essentially a genetically-enhanced gorilla or chimpanzee.  Therefore, when God injected the soul into that special ape, evolution took over, and – voila! – Man comes into the picture!  There are a number of problems with this position and we will address them, but I wanted to make a couple of important points.   First, despite a very flawed perspective on creation, a theistic evolutionist is technically still a Christian, and despite that variance, someone can still otherwise be an orthodox and faithful Catholic.  And, leading to the second observation, a theistic evolutionist doesn’t necessarily deny God as ultimate Creator, but rather the person has a faulty understanding as to how the creative process happened.  This essentially means that I don’t have a problem accepting a person like Zmirak as a fellow faithful Catholic and a brother in Christ, and I will not dismiss all the good material he and others who would share his perspective have produced based on a different view of creation he has – I think he’s fundamentally wrong, and that his theistic evolutionism has some gaps, but at the end of the day I still can see he doesn’t deny the essentials of the faith.  I hold a similar position with fellow Creationists like myself who happen to be in what is called the “Old Earth Creationist” camp; despite holding to the view that the earth is billions of years old, for the most part, Old Earth Creationists are still Creationists – one particular figure that comes to mind is Protestant Old-Earth Creationist Hugh Ross, who has produced some good material.  I have more sympathy for “Old-Earthers” as well because I used to be one too, and I understand where they come from.  The problem I would have with the “Old Earth” position, however, is that those who hold to it need to face some sticky theological issues, in particular concerning the origin and present reality of sin and death.  However, that is a discussion for another time.

One more thing I wanted to add in this lengthy introduction is to note that not every Creationist ever agrees 100% on everything.  Even among us “Young-Earthers,” there are differences in opinion about such things as the origin of the Genesis 6 Nephilim (some, like myself, hold to a Watchers view while others hold to a Sethite position), whether the sun revolves around the earth or if it is the other way around (the Geocentric view, espoused by Catholic writer Bob Sungenis among others, vs. the Heliocentric view, which is the one I would hold to), or other such topics that may arise.  It is to actually be expected that differences of opinion on minor points happen, and at the end of the day, we can still be good friends although we may differ on the minors – what counts is the major belief which we all share, that being that God created the universe and everything in it.  That being said, it is perfectly fine to engage in healthy debate and discussion over minors, as long as we don’t end up making those minors into majors.  Having established this basic understanding, we can now dive into the “meat” of our subject.

The first thing I would like to address is found on page 220 of Zmirak’s book, and it is a clear affirmation that science and the Catholic Church are not in conflict with each other.  That is actually very true, and looking at it Thomistically, here is why.  First, theologians such as Aquinas, Bonaventure and others noted that God authored two “books,” those being Nature and Revelation.  Revelation, for the sake of our argument here, is synonymous in this context with Holy Scripture as whole, while Nature is pretty much self-explanatory.  If we introduce supernatural grace (which comes from God alone and nowhere else) into this, then here is what happens – Nature will always affirm Revelation, and in turn, Revelation will always work to elevate, heal, and perfect Nature.  We see this in Scripture in such passages as Psalm 18:2, 44:6, and 96:6, as well as passages in the earliest chapters of Genesis where God declared at each point in his creation of all that is that “it is good,” and this is also affirmed in mathematical principles such as the “Golden Ratio” and the Fibonacci Sequence, particularly if one looks at the particular designs of things such as sunflowers, snail shells, and the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy itself.  These things bear witness to the fact that natural law has a supernatural source, which is also a major tenet of another school called Intelligent Design.  Intelligent Design (or ID from here on) is not the same as Biblical Creationism, and that is because of one important difference – ID is based on scientific evidences, while Biblical Creationism is theological in emphasis.   Although Biblical Creationists and ID proponents are two different schools of thought with even some disagreements, it is also very reasonable to accept both Biblical Creation and ID as the framework together of a valid explanation of origins.   Rather than being in conflict (which both some ID proponents and Biblical Creationists seem to miss), I personally feel that the combination of Biblical Creationism and ID are actually complimentary, and in my case, I would hold to both myself while at the same time also include what is called a Christian euhemerist perspective – to explain that, euhemerism essentially holds that much of the mythology and folklore of many cultures has at its root something which inspired it, and thus despite embellishment over time, once the fictional aspects of a subject are stripped away, a core truth is there which can be accepted.  When it comes to both ID and Biblical Creationism, a euhemerist view of things happens on topics such as dinosaurs, and if you can be completely honest about it, the so-called “dragons” that dominate the folklore of many cultures would establish that these people encountered something, and what they encountered more than likely were the creatures we today call dinosaurs.  Aside from the foray into euhemerism and ID, getting back to Zmirak’s premise, he is on-point here by acknowledging God is the supernatural source of all creation.  However, it is when we get to page 22 that we encounter the first problem with his position, and I want to discuss that now.

Anyone who is familiar with any of the PIG books will note that in their basic structure they have these little gray boxes inserted at various points that highlight certain things, and one of those shows up on page 222 entitled “Fourteen Centuries Before Darwin.”  Here, Zmirak attempts to use the writings of St. Augustine to refute a literal reading of Genesis, and he even presupposes that St. Augustine taught evolution.  But, did he really?   Zmirak makes a few key errors in his assertion at this point and these are errors that can be easily corrected.  First, in my readings of St. Augustine or any of the other Church Fathers, which I have done extensively in my own research, I see no evidence whatsoever that any of them espoused anything remotely akin to evolution.  They did differ regarding their interpretation of Genesis, which is true, as some like St. Augustine would be aptly classified as “Old-Earth Creationist” while others such as St. Lawrence of Brindisi, some centuries later would be more “Young-Earth Creationist.”  The idea of a Darwinian-type macroevolutionary process of one species evolving into another was far from their minds, John N Wynne, in his book A Catholic Assessment of Evolution Theory (Restoring Truth Ministries, 2013) notes on page 254 that the actual position of St Augustin was that one should never depart from the literal and obvious sense of except where reason makes it unattainable or necessarily requires it.  That goes back to the “Fourfold Hermeneutic” principle I have talked about before, in that something can be both literally true and allegorically valid at the same time.

In discussing how Genesis is to be understood and interpreted, there are concepts the Church gives us to do so.  The most important of these is something we’ve touched on before elsewhere in my earlier Genesis study called the “Fourfold Hermeneutic of Scripture,” and we can remember it with the easy acronym LAMA:

         Literal – what it says in plain language

                     Allegorical – what it admonishes us to believe

Moral – what it compels us to do

 Anagogical – what hope it instills

Theologians and Biblical scholars have literally gotten into dogfights over the years regarding these, and often try to assert the prominence of one over the others.  However, in reality, this conflict was never really necessary – on the contrary, a passage in Scripture can be one or more of these at one time and still be true, communicating the core truth it was meant to.   It is of no surprise that the two pivotal books of the Bible – Genesis, and Revelation – have been at the forefront of this.  This is a major reason why a discussion such as this is important, and it also calls into play a harmonious fusion between faith and reason.  The whole remainder of this discussion will emphasize that very thing.  In doing so, I will also be contrasting some of Zmirak’s positions – particularly those where he asserts that Catholic doctrine and evolutionary theory have no conflict – with what the Church really says, and I want to preface that first.

When Zmirak makes the assertion that Catholic doctrine and evolution are not naturally exclusive, he does take care to note that theistic and Darwinian evolution are two different things and that Darwinian evolution does conflict with the Church.  Of course, he is correct, but it also poses some problems – for instance, what if a theistic evolutionist embraces Darwinism, as many indeed have?  Darwinian evolution, as Zmirak correctly points out, is very secular and even dangerous, as it has been the driving force behind many of the more nasty policies of some tyrannical regimes in the last century.  It is also the main impetus behind the eugenics movement, from which the abortion industry has its roots.  What Zmirak fails to note, however, is that the man who advanced and taught theistic evolution among Catholics, the late renegade Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), was an avid proponent of many of those things as well.  Chardin’s influence is oddly absent from Zmirak’s discussion of science and faith, and that to me was puzzling.  Given that the widespread acceptance among many Catholics of theistic evolution is due in part to Tielhardism, I find it odd that Zmirak omits any mention of him in the discussion.  Of course, Zmirak is not by any means a Darwinian evolutionist either, whereas Chardin was, and maybe as a benefit of the doubt that is why Zmirak doesn’t really include anything about him in the discussion.  But, here is the fundamental problem:   Although Zmirak rightly rejects Darwinian evolution, he is also appearing to fail to understand that even the milder theistic evolutionary views held by otherwise orthodox Catholics are at odds fundamentally with traditional Catholic teaching and this will now be addressed. 

In the year 1959, Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini published a landmark text evaluating evolutionary theory from a classic Catholic perspective entitled The Theory of Evolution Judged by Faith and Reason (historical reprint republished by - Boonville, NY: Preserving Christian Publications, 2008).  In it, Ruffini provides a lengthy, thorough evaluation of the idea of evolution in light of historical Magisterial teaching, and his work is revolutionary in regard to refuting many of Teilhard de Chardin’s errors.  On page 85, Cardinal Ruffini gives a very succinct affirmation of Biblical creation when he affirms that the fact of the creation of all things is certainly an object of special divine revelation – by that, he means that human understanding cannot fathom the miracle of creation in entirety, as it preceded humanity’s creation later. But, as the act of creation sets time in motion, it gives certainty to the fact that everything started from a certain time.  On the following page (86), Ruffini goes on to note that the distribution of creation (as he terms it) was a product of divine revelation as well.  In short, Ruffini is affirming that the account in Genesis is historically accurate.  Reading further, Ruffini makes an important point which leads into the next part of the discussion – the purpose of Creation and its order is arranged by the Creator for dogmatic/moral reasons and not as a scientific fact.  However, that being said, Ruffini also notes that scientific evidence - often cited by evolutionists in terms of “epochs” – would affirm the Genesis record.  If that is the case (and I believe it to be so), it provides clarification then for another argument.  Zmirak attempts to make a point on this based on St. Augustine’s writings, but he both misses the point as well as affirming Biblical creation without realizing it.  It is a well-worn argument used by many over the years which sort of relegates the Bible to the realm of faith and divorcing it from reason, which is a fruit of Enlightenment influence we see reflected in such statements as “the Bible is not a science or history book,” and it is an argument that has its roots in the secularized mentality of people like Baruch Spinoza, the philosopher who claimed the Bible is only a religious book and therefore has no relevance in other areas.  The modern manifestation of that fallacy, which even Zmirak holds, is that the Bible is not to be relied on for matters of history or science, but rather is a “book of faith” only.  It is time to address and debunk that now, as it’s a very prevalent argument used by even some Catholics as well as Evangelical Protestant scholars to diminish the authenticity of Scripture.  We will now examine that argument.

Zmirak, on page 222 of his book in the gray box entitled “Fourteen Centuries Before Darwin,” uses St. Augustine to buttress the assertion that the Bible was only written to teach us faith, not science.  People who utilize this argument often state that the Bible is not a science text or a history book, which we will examine more shortly.  As for now though, let us deal with Zmirak calling upon the authority of St. Augustine.  To counter this, we turn back to what Ruffini says on page 171 of his book when he notes that St. Augustine studied Genesis for over 30 years before formulating his insights on it, and in the time he wrote his many works, St. Augustine demonstrated levels of maturity of thought.  Ruffini contrasts, for instance, Augustine’s thoughts in AD 389 in De Generi Contra Manacheos, as well as his last work on the subject in AD 415 entitled De Genesi ad Litteram – in the latter, Ruffini states further on page 176 to note that there is a distinction between the concepts of creation and administration – God created all in an instant, in Augustinian theology, but never ceased being sovereign over Creation.  What we see here in that context is that God made living things with the ability to grow and adapt, which a theistic evolutionist will see as their “aha!” moment.   But, this does not prove progressive evolution, and if anything it affirms scientific fact that variations within species do exist but that no species can evolve into a completely different species.  So, getting back to Zmirak’s text, we will take his assertions and respond now.

• 1.  Zmirak notes that St. Augustine originally didn’t hold to the idea that the “days” in Genesis were literal 24-hour days.  There is some merit to that, but that does not make St. Augustine a theistic evolutionist either.  If Zmirak would read this in context, he would see that Augustine did believe in divine creation, and his view is somewhat unique in that it leaves leeway for either a “Young-Earth” or “Old-Earth” Creationist interpretation – Augustine held that the act of creation was simultaneous, but was ordered in minute detail.  Rather than making this support for Augustine embracing an early form of theistic evolution, at best it would more likely make him closer to what the ID or “Old-Earth” Creationist proponents hold.  This is why we really need to exercise caution using either Scripture or Tradition selectively, as that serves no one well.  The overall consensus of the Church for over 2000 years is that a special creation happened – God created everything that exists – and although there were debate and differences in opinion among the Church Fathers themselves over minor details, the conclusion reached by all of them is still the same.  So, whether one reads St. Augustine’s works, or those of St. Lawrence of Brindisi (who was a literal six-day Creationist), the end result affirms a cardinal belief – God the Father Almighty is the Creator of heaven and earth, and all things visible and invisible, as the Creed we say at Mass every Sunday clearly states.  Again, let me reiterate that no Church Father I have read has ever endorsed theistic evolution, and its prominence is a rather recent phenomenon. 

• 2.  In attempting to make the case from St. Augustine that Scripture only teaches truths of the faith and not scientific facts, Zmirak makes some errors.  First, while it is true that Scripture was not intended to be a science manual or a history book, we also need to remember the principle of non-contradiction, which in metaphysics is based on a Thomistic perspective that we note in Fr. Norris Clarke’s book The One and the Many – Aquinas and Bonaventure, among others, held that God authored two books, Revelation and Nature.  Nature affirms Revelation, and Revelation perfects Nature.  For the sake of this discussion, this is what it all means – while it is true that the Bible is not a scientific text or a history book per se, true history and true science do bear out the truths of Scripture nonetheless.  And Scripture was not designed to be comprehensive history or a science manual, granted – its actual purpose is the revelation of God’s plan for the redemption and salvation of mankind.  That is a major reason why in certain parts of Genesis certain historical details are omitted – they are not relevant to the story, and there are other sources to “fill in the gaps” if one is interested in doing so.  By reading these other sources (Enoch, Jasher, Jubilees, etc.) it gives a “bigger picture” of what one sees in Scripture and does provide a point of context.  Even today, other historical texts are written the same way – for instance, if you were studying World War II and you came across two different histories (for sake of context, one is written by an American soldier, while the other by a Luftwaffe officer who served in Germany), both would be accurate, but both would have omissions of certain details because they would not be relevant to the particular account.  But, in putting both together, you get a fuller picture of the event.  That is what Scripture is – the focus in it is on salvation history, but the history it records is still accurate and can be corroborated with other sources to get a fuller picture of a particular time. 

On these two points, Zmirak’s assertions for theistic evolution fall apart even more, for in saying that Augustine promoted it he neglects to read further in Augustine’s works, as Ruffini illustrated.  The reality is that Augustine’s views on variations contradict evolution as he states clearly that a man cannot “evolve” from a bean, etc.  But, a bean can adopt a different character, and in some areas grow bigger or taller – that is commonly called microevolution, and microevolution is definitely a reality that is scientifically proven.  So, no, apes are not “relatives” to us as Zmirak asserts, but they do have a common Designer, which we, of course, believe to be God.  This also begs another question that a former Anglican priest friend of ours raised, and I find it valid – if apes “evolve” into people, then why do apes still exist?  I mean, chimps, gorillas, and orangutans are still around, and no one has even tried to examine if they “evolved” or what they “evolved” from – it is amazing that only humans seem to be a product of evolution but time seems to have miraculously stood still for Cheetah while Tarzan “evolved” into himself – hmmmm!!!  A chimp fossil from antiquity is still a chimp, regardless of if one thinks it is thousands or millions of years old.  That merits a discussion of its own at some future date.

This now leads to a discussion on first principles.  Zmirak and other theistic evolutionists try to have this both ways in that they acknowledge God is creator and source of all that is but then they take almost a Deistic approach of demoting God to a mere clock winder – he created it all, set it in motion, and then sat back to let it “evolve” on its own.  Fr. Chad Ripperger, in his book The Metaphysics of Evolution (Norsterstad, Germany: BOD), uses Wovlner’s definition of First Principles on page 7.  It is a three-part definition, and essentially is set up like this:

• 1. That from which something in some way follows
• 2. Any cause
• 3. Anything that is in any way first even if it has no relationship with later members

On page 8, Fr. Ripperger further talks about “real principle,” defining such as the principle from which being proceeds.   Then there is “logical principle,” meaning a truth from which other truth proceeds – the last, Ripperger notes, is one that governs how we come to know a thing, and it is built into the very structure of our intellect.  As God is the ultimate truth, it is logical to conclude that he is the source of all other truth.  That important distinction, as noted on page 15 of Ripperger’s text, is in regard to evolution, and her is why evolution is not a compatible view with Catholic teaching – evolution dictates that the existence of a being comes from something lower than itself, but Divine Revelation suggests a greater intelligence than ourselves is the true source of our origins (that would be God, if you just tuned in).  The violation of the evolutionary position is in regard to what is called priority of act of potency, which means an act had to precede the creation essentially.  Despite Zmirak’s assertion on page 219 that Catholic beliefs about creation do not contradict evolution, in reality, that non-contradiction is superficial and involves a common observable natural law – this means procreation of species, etc.  In this area, as we will discuss next, the Darwinian variety of evolution contradicts itself while many theistic evolutionists have a false assurance that causes self-delusion on that issue. 

While Catholic teaching is certainly not harmonious with evolutionary theory on a very fundamental level, there are some things where intersectionality does happen though.   One of the most obvious is the process of procreation.  A true evolutionist who accepts the idea of “natural selection” therefore would technically by their own ideological system be incapable of supporting things like the LGBT agenda, abortion on demand, or even the most radical forms of feminism.  If survival and continuity of a species is important (and no question it is), the evolutionist would naturally have to oppose “same-sex marriage” and abortion on the grounds that neither of those things does anything to perpetuate the survival of the species.  In fact, both of those things violate a fundamental principle of evolution, either of the Darwinian or theistic variety – if you don’t have proper sexuality and you keep killing your young, you essentially cancel your own existence.   What is so odd about that, however, is that many who believe in what is called “more” evolution (whatever that is!) are often involved in things that defy the own basic premises they supposedly embrace.  Of course, this is where things such as eugenics and transhumanism, not to mention the various “third sex” theories hawked by early homosexual activists such as Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895), a German lawyer who was openly homosexual himself and adopted Darwinian principles to justify his own sexual preferences.  One way he did this was by formulating a “third sex theory,” which essentially stated that male homosexuals and lesbians were the way they were because they were “evolving” into a “third gender.”  Much of that is still being advocated by the rise in transgenderism we see in recent years too.  Eugenicists such as Margaret Sanger also used Darwinian evolution to justify abortion – abortion was seen by her and others like her as a means of removing the “human weeds” from the human gene pool and thus ensuring the “survival of the fittest” with a little help to accelerate the process – we see how that ended with the demonic policies of Hitler’s Nazis.  Although a typical theistic evolutionist such as Zmirak would find all of this repulsive (and rightly so), in reality, if any evolutionist were honest, they all should see the actions of Ulrichs, Sanger, and the Nazis as contrary to basic evolutionary principle – the natural law that supposedly dictates evolutionary theory could not afford to allow the possibility of a forced “culling of the herd,” as technically even the weakest member of a species can supposedly adopt.  On pages 220-221 as a matter of fact, Zmirak actually devotes a very fluent section to repudiating eugenics-based racism on the same premise.  He is right, of course, but his understanding is still incomplete of the whole argument. 

Any commonalities that evolution and Catholic teaching share are in reality just verifiable facts that empirically belong to neither.  Both do accept the basic facts but come to different conclusions regarding them.   Any belief system (including evolution) has at its core some truth that, over time, is elaborated upon but the thought processes of its proponents into something totally different, although the kernel remains.  Many things mentioned earlier we can note in early cultures – legends of dragons, etc. – can be easily substantiated but established facts.  For instance, the dragons of folklore are possible references to various species of what we know as dinosaurs, and the universal flood in Genesis also has corroborations in other cultures too as a historical reality – in other words, something happened.  So, in the same way, we must also be fair to the evolutionary theory in the same way – we accept what can be verifiable truth and reject the rest.

What evolution accepts as empirical fact (and it is) on some issues – the necessity of procreation for a species to survive, for instance – has at its core a universal principle, and Catholic teaching does not deny that at all.  However, we have a fuller understanding of it from a Catholic perspective due to the metaphysical principles of proportionate causality that Fr. Ripperger discusses in his book.  It also ties into another principle – resemblance – that Fr. Ripperger discusses in that logically life begets life, and this is where evolution differs dramatically with the Judeo-Christian perspective of Catholic teaching.  In essence, evolution gets the following two things wrong in this regard:

1.  Evolution violates this principle in that, for the evolutionist, lower life that is different evolves into a more diverse higher life.

2.   Evolution also gets the process backward in saying that lower – and even non-living substance – evolves into higher living organisms.

•   a.     This would violate the principle of resemblance, as nature dictates only a thing can         produce something in its own form (or largely similar at the most)
•     b.     It also violates proportionate causality, in that an effect cannot be greater than its cause.  In other words, the cause must be nobler than the effect.

Hence, the reason why I must fundamentally disagree with Zmirak concerning his assertion that Catholic teaching is compatible with evolutionary processes because it clearly is not.  While it is true that science is not in conflict with the Catholic faith, it is also fundamentally an error to call evolution “science” in the strictest sense, as in reality, it is a set of theories based on a non-theistic worldview.  While I understand this can be murky territory (thanks in part to heretical views that have gained tacit acceptance, in particular, those of the late Teilhard de Chardin), it really should not be at all – God created the natural order of things, and it is only logical that he also is the origin of the laws by which Nature operates.  For instance, two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom together produce water, and if you heat water at a certain temperature, it turns from liquid to gas.  On the other extreme, if you freeze water at a certain temperature, it solidifies to ice.  These are observable, empirical facts that no one could dispute.  Likewise, if you drop a ball off a roof, it goes downward instead of up – simple gravity, another empirical scientific reality.  On a more complex level, design too has mathematical and physical laws that determine different things – a snail shell, a sunflower blossom, and the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy, for instance, can all be calculated using what is called the Fibonacci Sequence, and the proportions of the human face can be measured using what is called the “Golden Ratio” (equaling 1.618).  Many of these fundamental principles of chemistry, geometry, etc., were discovered by men of faith, and today they are universally accepted and readily observable.  So no, Judeo-Christian faith is not anti-science; it is just through supernatural grace we have a fuller understanding of how it works, that is all.

Now, seeing it from that perspective, the Church tells us that we can discuss evolution and other systems of thought without accepting or agreeing with them.  It is important to know what these things are (a “know thy enemy” principle if you will) so that we may more intelligently address them.   But, the Church has never espoused or presented a dogmatic official position on evolution, although many wrongly assume that Catholics accept theistic evolution.  On the contrary, people need to understand more clearly what the Church actually says, and essentially it can be reduced down to two things (CCC 159, 2293, 2294):

1.          We cannot ignore that these views exist, but we must also inform ourselves as to what they                  truly entail.

2.           While accepting evolution is not fully possible, it is acceptable to find common areas with it                 and use these as both a tool of education and evangelization

               (also true with other beliefs and traditions).

3.            The basis of the Church’s belief is enshrined in the historic Creeds, and they all affirm God                  as Creator of all, visible and invisible.

If we understand the above properly, then encountering a person who believes the evolutionary view should not be threatening, but rather an opportunity for debate, discussion, and even evangelization.  Many people who hold to false views on anything do so because they have a skewed understanding of God, Christianity, or the Bible.  Our witness to them, as Catholic Christians, is to show them the truth, and it opens doors when we do so.  But, a great responsibility is entailed – we must present accurate truth, and not one tainted with bad theology.  This is why, as II Timothy 2:15 admonishes, we are to “study to show ourselves approved.”

In conclusion, I now want to offer a few closing thoughts.  First, I concur with Zmirak that faith and science are not mutually exclusive and are not in conflict.  However, I also would assert that the theory of evolution, in particular, is not compatible with Catholic faith, as evolution is a theory only and not viably scientific.  Third, although I think that Catholics who believe in theistic evolution do so in error, if they are orthodox in other aspects of faith then they are still validly Catholic.  Zmirak’s book is a good example of this – aside from the theistic evolution discussed in some sections, his book is indeed a valuable resource.  Fourth, although some writers (including Zmirak) attempt to justify their views on theistic evolution by appealing to St. Augustine and other Church Fathers, in reality, many of the Church Fathers would actually reject theistic evolution – there were legitimate areas of debate and difference among the Church Fathers regarding how the term “day” in Genesis was interpreted, but no Church Father in their writings ever endorses any form of evolutionary theory.  On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of the Fathers were very much creationist in their thinking, as they all would quickly affirm that they believe God created the universe.   Many may have possessed what we would call today an Intelligent Design approach to creation, but there were certainly none of them who would have said men came from monkeys.  And, further, all would maintain that humanity is a special and unique creation in God’s image.  Fifth, metaphysics suggests that evolution is not possible, as it is not logical for something to “evolve” from a lower life form into a higher one that is completely different.  A higher intelligence, a “Designer” if you will, is evident in all creation, from the tiniest atoms to the most massive star in the universe.  That all being said, it is, therefore, conclusion to note that it is illogical to even entertain the notion that one species “evolves” into another, and macroevolution is not scientific in that it is not observable.  That being said, variations within species (microevolution) is an observable fact and is also scientifically verifiable, but despite how one member of a species may be bigger or a different color, it is still the same creature.  Finally, where commonality does exist with the Judeo-Christian worldview regarding some aspects of evolutionary theory, it is perfectly fine to acknowledge it, and it is also acceptable to examine and have a good knowledge of evolutionary claims.  However, despite apparent commonalities, those should always be viewed as being from a supernatural source for the natural law that made such commonalities a reality and does not validate evolutionary theory in totality.  These points will therefore both summarize a response to some of Zmirak’s content, as well as providing further detail on the difference between these matters by appealing to both faith and reason, Revelation and Nature, and in the end one confirms what the other perfects.   Thanks again for allowing me to share it with you.

(Originally written 9/20/2019)

              

True Capitalism vs. Corporatism

As I write this, it is about 7 AM in the morning and I am sitting in the lounge of a large corporation I am doing some long-term contract work for.  I have been in the corporate world as an administrative professional for over 20 years at this point, and a part of the reason I am writing this now is due to a bit of exasperation I have been feeling about the behemoth called "Corporate America," and today is a day in which it would be opportune to talk about it.

My own experience with "Corporate America" started back when I was a couple of years out of college in 1998, and over the years I've worked for several large corporations in a number of industries, as primarily I have done what is called "temp work" during the majority of that tenure.  Being a "temp," which is a word I honestly hate to use as I am in reality a contractor, has been a revelatory experience - I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly in many companies, and with that being the case I have reached a number of conclusions.  One of the most prominent conclusions I have come to is that the higher up the corporate ladder one goes, the less practical common sense people possess.  Higher echelons of management in corporations have a sort of "tunnel vision." and it is a tunnel wallpapered with dollar signs.  Their rabid pursuit within the tunnel often denies the fundamental human dignity of their designated underlings, and the more tragic reality is that those higher-ups are often forced into the tunnel by their superiors who have an even more restricted view of human dignity and less foresight and common sense than even those below them in a management capacity.  Observations like that are the primary reason why something like this needs to be addressed.

I want to first define what the term "corporatism" is, as that is the driving impetus behind much of this. According to a Wikipedia definition, corporatism is defined as "a political ideology that advocates the organization of society by corporate groups," and furthermore, it can be classified as a form of fascism due to the fact that sectors of the economy are controlled by a private organizations (corporations) in conjunction with government bureaucracy.  Another term for this in its extreme form is syndicalism.  The idea of corporatism is often confused with free-market capitalism, although they are definitely not the same.  For corporations striving toward this syndicalist view of economy, the term "monopoly" is often used, in that a sort of carnivorous and even cannibalistic insight exists which puts a corporation in a position to take over and eliminate is "competition," which often is a smaller and more "mom-and-pop" type business of some sort.  It also seeks to eliminate self-sufficiency of individuals by creating a new class of serfs, these serfs being individuals confined to cubicles in large offices where unreasonable demands and threats of disposability keep them in check, placated as well by "benefit packages."   The common "serf" is viewed by the corporate higher echelons as an expendable commodity, and thus the employee "serf" is seen merely a means to the corporate entity's end, and thus dignity of personhood is both diminished and despised.  That summarizes the "Corporate America" of today.

In the 1998 cult classic Office Space, we see how this is played out.  One reason why this movie is a cult classic is because it presents a very accurate portrayal of the general attitudes of large corporate monopolies and their management.  And, people do relate to it.  Besides paying the employee an "acceptable" wage however, what it the true benefit of monopolistic corporatism?  Very little actually, and we will now discuss why.

The driving force of much of monopolistic corporatism is greed, which is seen as a cardinal vice in traditional Catholic teaching but is worn as a badge of honor in the corporate world.   It is what John Horvat calls in his book Return to Order (York, PA:  York Press, 2013) on page 2 by the term "frenetic intemperance."  The way Horvat defines "frenetic intemperance" is this - an exaggerated trust in our technological society, a terrifying isolation of our individualism, and a self-imposed heavy burden of materialism.  The result, as Horvat further notes, is a modern economy that is out of balance, cold, impersonal, mechanical, and inflexible, and it can in time lead to socialism or fascism.  Horvat, on page 14 of the same text, gives monopolistic corporatism another name - gigantism - and notes that this mentality undermines the free market as well as attacking rights to private property, and this is all driven by an oligarchy of powerful corporate executives who couldn't give a damn about the workers they manage.  Frenetic intemperance, Horvat posits, is the driving force behind corporate gigantism (or monopolistic corporatism). 

Hillaire Belloc, in his seminal text The Servile State (London: T.N. Foulis, 1912), mistakenly I believe labels this same mentality as "capitalist," and he notes that the type of frenetic intemperance Horvat refers to creates a moral strain - a contradiction exists between the accumulation of wealth and the moral base of laws and traditions (Belloc, p. 53).  This means that in time the capitalist economy gives way to one of two evils, socialism or slaverly, (p. 60), of which in reality both are one and the same.  In his book The End of Democracy (Arcadia, CA:  Tumblar House, 2017), Christophe Buffin de Chosal notes that true capitalism is a good thing in that it encourages the investment of saved assets to generate new profit.  But, as he notes on page 123, there is also a negative capitalism, and this one is enabled by big government that often is funded by corporate entities, and thence the problem.  It is a problem which creates a caste system in which, as de Chosal points out on page 69 of his book, discriminates against some in favor of others - the large corporation, for instance, is favored over the small business, and the corporate exec over the data entry clerk.  It also discriminates against the consumer as well, in that the pursuit of wealth on the part of large corporations prioritizes quantity over quality, and cheap junk is marketed to consumers at more-than-invested prices.  That is, inevitably, where problems and inbalances arise, and the average worker in these corporations is forced onto a ferris wheel of mere survival and is often suppressed.  Good, quality work is no longer rewarded, but rather numbers and unrealistic production quotas, which inevitably lead to mistakes and ultimately a tank in quality of work.  This is a sad commentary for sure upon Corporate America, although the powers-that-be could care less.  So, what of the average worker then who has much to offer but is suppressed?   That is where we now go in the next part of the discussion.

The great Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper wrote a classic book in 1952 entitled Leisure:  The Basis of Culture, and in it he has some interesting insights.  He notes, beginning on page 43, that the "worker" is characterized by these three personal traits:

1.  Extreme tension of powers of action
2.  A readiness to suffer in vacuo, unrelated to anything.
3.  Complete absorption into the social organism - itself planned to utilitarian ends
(Josef Pieper, Leisure:  The Basis of Culture. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1963)

So, what does Pieper mean?  First, the idea of leisure is seen by this mindset as strange and frivolous: "work for work's sake" is the order of the day.  This describes Corporate America to the proverbial tee - numbers, numbers, and more numbers!  A production-based environment is stressful, and cold managers expect numbers without taking into account variables, and that creates unnecessary and undue stress on the worker.  Pitch-perfect accuracy matters little, as does any other dimension of quality - rather, numbers are the priority.  But, mass-production of any sort ultimately leaders to inperfection, and it does one thing - it forces the consumer to invest in more of the product.  Inferior quality is almost the prime objective of the corporate hack who is bereft of common sense, and if workers don't produce the anticipated numbers, they are deemed useless and disposable, like used tampons in a woman's restroom.  This "corporate exec" mentality is a hazardous bi-product of both Enlightenment thinking and social Darwinism, and it ultimately does diminish God-given personhood.  You don't find this mentality in a lot of small independent businesses, but it is rampant in large mega-corporations.  Until we address this malady in our society, we face an imminent financial collapse as in time the inferior quality and excess quantity of crap product will implode many large corporations, and maybe that is the goal, as Big Business and Big Government also seem to collaborate in a lot of this.  Although it seems like a wild conspiracy, let us now demonstrate it next.

So, the question arises as to if a conspiracy exists between large corporations and centralized governments?  On the surface it doesn't look possible until one looks from the perspective of corporatism, especially its fascist dimension. As the Wikipedia article on corporatism notes, the Italian model of Fascism mandated in the 1920's by Mussolini has as its integral component a corporatist system "in which the economy was collectively managed by employers, workers, and state officials at the national level."   In order for that to happen, influential corporate executives would have to hold some sway, and in a system like that, they indeed would.  Ben Shapiro notes in his book The Right Side of History (New York: Broadside Books, 2019) that even Karl Marx incorporated this into his scheme, and despite Marx's rhetoric of "seizing capital from the bourgeosie" in order to centralize it all into the hands of the state, his scheme needed willing benefactors to make it work, and many of his successors have indeed sought the "unholy alliance" of the corporate tycoon with the statist ideologue, which involved putting at the disposal of the big corporations such apparati as the "eminent domain" privelege, etc.  Also, getting Big Business on-board with a leftist agenda is paramount - the small business which holds to traditional values is then seen as an obstacle, and in order for the corporation to further advance its frontiers, the small business must be closed by legal means, and greasing the palms of the right politicians with cash is a sure way of making that happen.  It is one reason today, as a matter of fact, why big corporations are often unaffected by stringent regulations while small businesses are often forced to comply or close.  As Shapiro notes further in his book on page 140, the catalyst to make all this happen was in the personage of Auguste Comte (1798-1857), although it could be added that Georges Sorel (1847-1922), a Marxist philosopher, equally contributed to this as both of them introduced social Darwinism into economics - this meant a "survival of the fittest" mentality applied to economics in which the stronger multi-national corporation could prevail over and devour smaller business entities, and for the state's economic stability a corporation could use (abuse) state legislation to accomplish doing just that.  It is from this that abominations such as "eminent domain" and over-regulation of industries emerged, and a corporate oligarchy benefitted from codified (albeit unjust) laws.  Therefore statism and corporatism join forces at this point, and to insure corporate interests were advanced and protected, major financial players even from the time of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan sought to place leadership in power to advance their own interests, and it worked.  It is also another reason why the moguls of huge corporations are often the chief financial backers of very leftist causes - the abortion industry, the LGBT agenda, the teaching of evolution in schools, etc.   Like the spokes of a wheel, all of these things go back to one source, and that source is malevolent to the core.  Plineo Correa de Oliviera, in his text Revolution and Counter-Revolution, points out specifically why this conflicts with the Judeo-Christian worldview - on page 80, he notes that the Judeo-Christian worldview and its social manifestations (which he called the Counter-Revolution) does not ally itself with what he called "today's hyper-trophied technicalism," which is characterized by its adoration of novelty, speed, and mechanics, and it also opposes the tendency of such a system to organize human society mechanistically (al a Huxley's Brave New World scenario).  Spiritual values, Oliviera notes, must take precedence over material considerations.  If they don't, then what happens is essentially (and precisely) what de Chosal notes on page 53 of his book - in time, world governments will no longer be the actions of major decisions affecting nations, but rather an oligarchy of major money powers.  The opinions of voters then effectively carry no weight because the voters don't have the money - but, the big corporate entities do.  As he notes on the same page, "democracy" is a political system that enables organized minorities to hold ultimate power, more so if they have limitless financial assets to do so. The needs of the "little guy" are jettisoned in favor of the oligarchy of corporate execs, and hence the problems.  As we will see, it trickles down to how workers are treated as well.

The above is also the reason why I am a Monarchist rather than a Democrat - democracy starts out with mob rule and anarchy, and then a strong force takes it over and turns it into a tyranny.  In the case of monarchy, the king is seen rightly as both servant and father to his people, and he is therefore subject to a higher law with a corporate oligarch fails to recognize.   Monarchy is tied to tradition, a moral code, and a sense of common decency that the corporate exec or political autocrat in a democracy lacks, and the good of others is the main concern of the monarch, and to note this good - also known as the common good - the monarch appeals to something higher than himself.  That something is a combination of divine Revelation and natural law, both of which make a monarch more accountable than either a career politician or corporate executive can be.  Once that order is restored and realized, then a fair advantage is given for the small business to thrive as it should.  Corporations can exist, and in and of themselves are not evil, provided their motivation is honorable.  But, forcing small business competition out of the way by dishonest means, treating employees like automaton droids, and being so greedy that one can't see the higher good doesn't constitute ethical business etiquette, something many of the "Fortune 500" entities have forgotten.  It is high time to recover that sense of decency and honor, and to check the unbridled power of billionaire corporate moguls - they are not above divine law, natural law, nor even state law.

Here is the bottom line to all of this.  First, it is not necessarily wrong to accumulate wealth, as no one should be hindered.  Secondly, in principle large corporations are not wrong either - there are some fine multi-billion dollar corporations out there which provide good services.  Third, however, is that the wealth of individuals and corporations should not be based on practices which are unethical, illegal, or dehumanizing to employees or other businesses.  Fourth, while responsible government is necessary, no government official should be bought, paid-for, and in the back pockets of any corporate entity.  Fifth, all people of creative mind and proper talent should be encouraged to pursue their dreams, free from corporate greed or political interference.   If those five things are recognized and practiced, it could effectively end corporatism and instead lead to a rise in both social betterment and economic growth.  This, I feel, can also only be achieved by one form of governance, and that is Christian monarchy.

Christian monarchy is based on a balance of power - the worker works, the soldier defends, and the noble leads.  This is not to be done in a superior manner that either diminishes personhood, but rather in a way that values contribution.  Such a system, under Biblical precepts would also provide the virtue of charity to those who lack certain abilities through no fault of their own, and in doing so, it shows everyone has value as a creation in God's image.  The corporatist model lacks this in so many ways, in that it stresses the production-based operation, and the result is that only in true Social Darwinian fashion only the most productive carry value while anyone is expendable.  The corporatist model is greed-based and lacks authentic charity, and thus it falls short.  It is the reason why movies such as 1998's Office Space and the film Outsourced from a few years later are popular.  It is also why country singer Johnny Paycheck sang a hit song in the 1970's called "Take This Job and Shove It."  The corporation does not address dignity of personhood (other than a skewered politically-correct version of it, or a lawsuit compels them to) but rather asks "how is this good for the company?"  Also, the stranglehold Corporate America has gained over the American economy has choked the life out of having passion for what one does - people are reflexively programmed to get up at the same time and then sit in little cubicles from the majority of their days, with only one purpose - paying the month's living expenses.  Corporations have stripped quality of life from so many, and it has created a less-inspiring environment in many offices and other workplaces.  Pieper notes the word for such apathy is acedia - basically, this translates as a stick-in-the-mud apathy (Pieper, p. 44).  This acedia is a discontented feeling many of us have, and St. Thomas Aquinas called it a sin against the Third Commandment - taking God's name in vain.   That bears a whole discussion of its own, but what Pieper is saying is that the pursuit of work eventually robs us of reflecting on who and what we are in God, and faith in God is taken for granted or even in vain.  Good point, and the potential source point of a future article!  Essentially, in reading further in Pieper's book, it is adequate to say that leisure and idleness are not the same - you can essentially be busy and idle at the same time, and indeed we get so caught up in working and paying bills this day and age that it makes us complacent and idle in other areas.  We forget things, housework suffers, and Christian service is seen as fruitless and not profitable.   I can definitely see the wisdom in what Pieper says.

In short, Corporate America forces us to sin against the Third Commandment by holding a pink slip over our heads - if we dare pursue higher things, we can lose our livelihood and means of survival.  It is, essentially, tantamount to a form of paid serfdom, but in some aspects feudal serfs were much better off than today's average employees in corporations.

The idea of how Corporate America is exploiting both the personhood of workers as well as national economy is not lost on many writers.  One in particular, political commentator Pat Buchanan, gives a discussion on that in his book The Death of the West (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002).  On pages 32-38, Buchanan makes the following observations about this:

1.  The post-industrial economy has wreaked havoc on the family due to a necessity of two-income households.

2.  Women, being forced into the workplace by economics, are causing an inbalance as many qualified men are losing out due to a combination of radical leftism and greed-driven corporatism.

3.  Birth rates are down in Western society due to the inbalance caused by more women in the workplace.

4.  Because young men are stripped of their fatherhood and family duties, many are left in bad situations, and they are often under-employed or even unemployable.

This inbalance is in line with Pieper's acedia, where large mega-corporations are forcing people into "ruts" and the primary outcome of this is detrimental on a lot of dimensions.  What I have called corporatism earlier is given another name by Buchanan - economism.   Buchanan defines economism as a mirror-Marxist ideology that many is a mere economic animal, and that free-market capitalism is abused to benefit some at the expense of others - the beneficiaries then begin to embrace Horvat's definition of "frenetic intemperance," and an inbalance results.  All of this is orchestrated by the hands of mega-corporations, and their "billionaire boys' club" of leaders have used their influence to manipulate national economies for at least the past 150 years or so.  A lot of it can also be attributed to the theories of the flaming homosexual economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), whose economic theories blended corporate interests with big government, and in a lot of ways Keynes is the progenitor of Corporate America and its excesses. 

This witches-brew of Keynes, Comte, a bunch of corporate billionaires, and their big-government beneficiaries constitutes the main culprit for the nasty inbalance we see in our modern economics, especially when it comes to the personal lives of the average worker.   It is a system that is fundamentally flawed, has the wrong focus, and it violates so many things in regard to the Biblical and Magisterial concepts of dignity of personhood as well as transcendental properties of being such as truth, beauty, and goodness.   Obsession with production and dollars diminishes an appreciation for the greater good and what constitutes it, and in doing so, it diminishes the quality of life God intended for us to have.  On that, we close with a short Scripture lesson.

In Luke 10, Jesus is visiting the home of His good friends Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus, whom He'd raised from the dead.  The apparent scenario here was that Jesus was invited by His friends to a dinner at their home, and while Jesus is visiting and imparting some eternal wisdom in informal pre-dinner conversation to others there, Martha is busying herself in the kitchen and is also getting flustered with her sister Mary for not giving her a hand.  Martha finally basically tells Jesus to tell Mary to get the lead out and help her, and Jesus responds in this way (to paraphrase) - "Martha, stop a minute and smell the roses, girl!  Your sister is getting some good stuff here, and you could use it too.  You are so busy you are missing out."   Martha demonstrates a perfect example of Pieper's definition of acedia in his book, as he defines that on page 45 as a deep-seated lack of calm that makes leisure impossible, which eventually manifests outwardly as visible frustration and despair.   Leisure, in the true sense on the other hand, is not equivalent to "being busy," and instead is roughly related to "going with the flow."   It is further defined as a serenity that allows for productive action, but not at the expense of the more important things in life.  Mary in the story exemplifies that leisure - she was not being lazy or shirking her responsibilities, but rather saw a bigger picture and decided to explore it.  This gives an important lesson then for us.

We as a culture are caught up in a malaise of consumer-driven busy-ness, which only serves to enrich the oligarchial "Billionaire Boys' Club" of corporate moguls.  It is rife with distractions, deadlines, and other clutter, and it has gotten us severely out of focus.  As Catholic Christians, it is time to reclaim the focus, and a paradigm shift back towards the family-centered business - true capitalism, in other words - needs to happen.   If it did, I believe people would be more fulfilled.  It is obviously not practical to totally eliminate big corporations, but rather, they need to be kept in check so that they don't violate the opportunities of others.  Until we are able to get it in check, society suffers, and only a radical shift will restore what once was.  Thanks for allowing me to share this lengthy discourse, and hopefully some of this will be a beacon of encouragement to those caught in the corporate "rat race." 

(originally written 9/11/2019)

When Dislike and Complaining Are Good Things

This past Sunday, the parish priest in his homily expounded upon the Gospel reading of the day, which was based on the passage in Luke 10:38-42.  The priest, Fr. Larry Donohoo, brought out a couple of profound points about this passage that most have never considered, and there is a certain amount of liberation in hearing these insights.  I wanted to do my own lesson on this today based on the information I gleaned from Fr. Larry's homily this past Sunday, and it will hopefully give some perspective to others as well.

Let us first look at the Gospel passage itself.  In it, Jesus is invited to the house of his friends, Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus (the same Lazarus Jesus would raise from the dead).  At this visit, apparently Jesus was invited by his hosts to share dinner with them, and while Martha is rushing about getting everything ready, her sister decides to "sit at the feet" of Jesus and sort of drink in His wisdom.  Martha, like any hardworking woman who is trying to prepare a nice dinner, is by this point getting exasperated and she then lets her feelings be known by complaining to Jesus about Mary's apparent laziness and asking Him if He even cares (a little rude for a host to ask a guest, in my observation) that this is going on.  Jesus, in effect, tells Martha to sort of "chill out," and that there is something greater going on here than merely a dinner or Mary shirking her responsibilities to help her sister - as verse 42 of the passage records, He essentially says "You are worried and upset about all these minor details, but your sister is seeing the bigger picture here - you should maybe stop, take a breath, and maybe soak up a little of this great wisdom yourself."  That is not exactly what the text says, but it is the message Jesus is getting across.  Martha's problem, in this case, was fussing over the minor details while missing the bigger picture, which is one application we get from the passage.  It also communicates that Martha was not exactly happy with her sister either, and although we cannot concretely draw a conclusion, perhaps some sibling rivalry and other things were involved, which now leads to what the core dimension I am taking from this entails.

If you will note the passage, although Jesus tells Martha to essentially "chill out," He is not condemning her for complaining.  He also doesn't focus on the aggravation that was between the sisters either - we read nothing of that in the passage either.  However, what we do get from the passage in retrospect is this - there is a sense of familiarity to us about the situation, as many of us have been there at some point.  As a matter of fact, if we read this passage within the overarching context of all Scripture, it makes a couple of enlightening insights to us that Fr. Larry pointed out in his homily and that I intend to expand on shortly.  But, the big takeaway from all this is simply that it is not wrong to be human, and to have human feelings about things.  It means that God is big enough to handle our limitations because he created us.  And, on occasion, he can even use those limitations for his ultimate purpose.  We can now expand on this at this point.

Fr. Larry made two important points about this passage that many of us who have read it over and over throughout the years often miss, and let's take a look at them:

1.  You can dislike someone and still love them - you don't have to like everyone to demonstrate Christian charity.

2.  It is also OK to complain to God about what is bugging you - our prayers don't have to be flowery, poetic, and nice all the time - the prayer of the heart can at times express frustration and even anger, and God is big enough to take it.

Growing up as I did in a fairly traditional Holiness/Pentecostal environment and later converting to the Catholic Church, I too have displayed a flawed sense of what it means to relate to people and to God.  We at times are almost altruistic in the way we deal with others if we are Christians, as we feel an obligation to "be sweet" to everyone and "play nice" even when it drives us out of our minds to do so.  Likewise, in our prayers as well often we think that we always have to sound "religious" in our prayers and that we should emulate some sort of saintly piety, even when we feel otherwise.  When we do that however, we are not being honest with God, and that can create bigger problems.  As Fr. Larry pointed out in his homily, many of the Psalms themselves, as well as even the prayers of some in Scripture, were of a complaining nature - the people praying them were limited human beings with a finite human nature, and often were far from perfect.  And, to be honest, they were not expected to be.  Our dislikes of certain individuals therefore and the frustration we need to vent are also intimately connected, which now leads to some individual insights on both issues.

Let's take the fact that not everyone is likeable, and realistically we should not be expected to like every human being in the world.  To be honest, some people are just, well, a pain you-know-where, and to be honest you want to fish-slap them when you even look at some of these people.  That is natural, and perfectly understandable, because we all have been there if we're honest with ourselves.  It is a universal fact that you are not going to like everyone you encounter, and likewise not everyone is going to like you either - just being you at times will rub people the wrong way, even if you don't intend it to be so.  It is not even that you are necessarily doing anything wrong, but someone just decides you are a person they dislike, and you will be viewed that way by them regardless of how nice you try to be or how friendly you are with them.  And, there are people like that who do that to you as well - you don't know why you cannot stand them, but you just cannot.  In a situation like that however, you ask yourself this question - if that person was to be in a situation where they were in immediate danger, would you try to help them?  If you could honestly answer "yes" to that, then you are actually better off than you thought, because what that means is that as much as you cannot stand them or even intensely dislike that person, you still value them as a human being, and would not deny charity to them if they were in that situation.  Respecting dignity of personhood and valuing any human life transcends a dislike of a person's individual quirks, and if you can see that, you then would actually love that person while not liking them.  Let's now take it to a more personal level.

I am going to talk about my experience with this, as it may help someone else.  As many who know my story have heard, my parents divorced when I was quite young, and for the majority of my childhood I was raised by my divorced mother.  Although my parents are my parents, they were not pleasant people - my father tends to be manipulative and controlling, and even is slightly racist, while my mother is a person who doesn't really care about anyone but herself and does everything she can to make herself as obnoxious and unpleasant to people as she can.  God knows why they are like this, but I have a personal confession to make about them - I dislike both my parents as individuals because neither of them were exactly supportive of me as a kid and to this day I don't feel really all that comfortable being around either one of them.  But, do I love them?  Of course - they are my parents after all, and they are also fellow human beings created in God's image, and in that regard they also share genetic and biological roots with me.  While it can be hoped that they will one day straighten themselves out, at this point both are in their 70's and the likelihood of that happening is negligible at best.   And, that is how I deal with my own struggles in this area.  I also have some very disagreeable in-laws as well that have caused some problems over the years, and the same thing applies to them as well - I cannot stand them personally, but if they were in a bad way I would offer a hand to them.  The crux of Christian charity is rising above the personal feelings without denying them and doing the right thing, even when it involves a person who you cannot stand.  We often hear the phrase that "Jesus loved everybody, and so should we," and indeed that is true - but, Jesus was also fully human as well as being fully God, and there were some people even He could not stand.  Do you think He really liked the Pharisees and scribes who were constantly bugging Him like bothersome gnats?  When you read in Scripture about those accounts, He was not overly thrilled about them honestly, as they disgusted Him with their behaviour, but that didn't mean He didn't love them and indeed, a couple of them (Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea) actually become His disciples later, while another, a guy named Saul, undergoes a dramatic conversion in the Book of Acts and becomes St. Paul, the great Apostle of the the early Church.  Love entails honesty as well as charity, and we have to get the stones as Christians to love people honestly and not just merely "put on the happy face" because of a misconception of the common excuse "that's what Jesus would do."  In other words, Jesus disliked some too, and it is something we inevitably will do ourselves, so let us at least do so with honesty and in time who knows what witness that will be?   A harsh word in honesty will often go further than a dishonest smiley-faced front. 

Nadia Bolz-Webber, the eccentric and somewhat theologically liberal Lutheran pastor who has generated a lot of her own controversy over the years, also has said some things on this subject I personally agree with, although she did so in a somewhat unorthodox and volatile way.  In particular, she did a sermon once called (and forgive me, but I am quoting her title - disclaimer alert!) "God Forgives Assholes."  The gist of that message was simply this - we can forgive but that doesn't mean we have to be the person's best friend.  Dislike can entail forgiveness in other words, and disliking someone is not the sin - it is what we do because of the dislike which determines a lot.  Bolz-Weber herself for instance is someone I actually dislike - her theology is off, she's outlandish in her presentation, and she can come across abrasive and nasty.  Yet, I also have enough Christian charity to acknowledge where she is right (even with strong language in this case) and see a kernel of truth.  Also, Bolz-Webber is not a person I dislike so much I couldn't talk to her - it would be good to maybe sit and have a conversation with her sometime over coffee and a scone and it is possible to even be friendly with those one disagrees with, which is a whole other issue I want to now move to. 

The whole like/dislike thing also has another dimension to it as well - there are some people we may be 100% in agreement with as far as politics, theology, worldview, etc., are concerned, but for some reason we may not be able to stand to be around them.  On the other hand, there are people who may be polar opposites of the spectrum from us, yet for some reason they can become some of our dearest friends.  Especially among those of us who are more conservative theologically and socially (as I am), this has generated a lot of debate and controversy over the years, and I am going to cite a couple of historic examples.  I have gained a lot in recent years from reading the works of Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), and his seminal text The Twilight of Civilization (1939) is one of the most profound things I have read (in the future, I have a few insights I want to share from it too here).  He is fairly orthodox as a Catholic scholar, and much of his material has great relevance for our time.  But, when talking with fellow conservatives and traditionalists, an issue regarding Maritain comes up - one of his best friends was Saul Alinsky (1909-1972), who was a cultural Marxist and also exerted a lot of influence over many people - Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and others - who have been responsible for the detriment in our society in recent decades.  Does Maritain's friendship with Alinsky nullify the relevance of his works for orthodox Catholic writers?   I would say personally for me it wouldn't.  While his friendship is not one of the best highlights of his legacy, Maritain was still a great philosopher and he wrote many good works that a Catholic in good faith can glean wisdom from.  Likewise, there is the great Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), who has two very good (and solidly orthodox) texts I use frequently entitled Catholicism (1938) and The Splendor of the Church (1956), which was quite insightful in my understanding of the Creeds.  However, de Lubac also had a controversial association with another Jesuit cleric by the name of Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), a quasi-heretical theologian who unfortunately pushed transhumanism, modernism, and theistic evolution onto Catholic thought, and has done some serious damage.  By all indications, I don't note any Teilhardism in de Lubac's writings that I have read, but they were noted as being good friends regardless.  So, does that mean that I cannot use de Lubac's works for insights?  Not at all - as a matter of fact, the rule of thumb I have with anything is that where it is consistent with historic faith, it is to be preserved, while anything in opposition to historic faith is to be chucked out.  Other controversial friendships over the years have included famed Southern Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor's association with mystic and questionable theologian Thomas Merton, and also Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar's friendship with Protestant theologian Karl Barth.  Even in the political spectrum too, many unlikely allies can be found on occasion - two of note are the openly gay Milo Yiannapolis and transgender Blaire White, who surprisingly are also aligned with the conservative political position on many things.  Yet, on the other end of that argument, I often see some of the nastiest people who otherwise share my views on many things too, but I cannot stand to be around them - one that comes to mind here is evangelist Jimmy Swaggart.  I could also add others from "televangelist land" to that list, such as Pat Robertson or John Hagee, not to mention a number of what we call "rad-Trad" Catholics who are openly anti-semitic and uncharitable despite their being orthodox and correct in many other areas.  The complexities of human relationships make the subject of like/dislike somewhat more complicated that surface impressions - it is highly possible to like those who have radically different worldviews as friends while disliking others who may share your convictions but may be total jackasses as human beings.  But, while it is natural and not wrong to like or dislike different individuals, it is imperative that we love them as fellow human beings regardless who they are as individuals, and an extreme situation such as a natural disaster or an accident on the highway will determine that quickly. 

The second point that Fr. Larry brought up in this whole discussion is the idea of complaining.  When it comes to prayer, many of us have a preconceived notion of what constitutes an authentic prayer, and we think that if we stray from those conventions somehow we dishonor God.  However, in looking at both the accounts in Scripture as well as just practical everyday life, we as human beings are not always holy and sanctimonious, and we deprive ourselves of many things when we try to put up fronts and avoid honesty about ourselves.  God wants us to be open with him, and to be honest we have nothing to lose with doing so because he already knows us better than we do ourselves.  What that means then is that we go to him with our needs, and we do so as honestly and openly as possible, and sometimes that may not be pretty!  Over the years, I have had more shouting matches and fights with God than many will ever know, and I have cussed him out on occasion, given him ultimatums, and threw some nasty tantrums at him - I wouldn't dare divulge that to everyone in detail obviously, and let me just say that if someone were ever to hear one of those moments, I would probably have my own Christianity questioned.   Thankfully, God doesn't see it that way, and often things are not as they appear - often, the most intense, seemingly hostile fits we throw in our prayers at times are the very things that remind us of how much we do rely on God, and the fact we would not be even talking to him at all if we didn't believe in him.  Faith is a mysterious thing that can take a lot of manifestations, and that may even be anger and frustration at times - remember, for instance, the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel in Genesis 32:22-32?  Jacob said he wasn't going to let go of the mysterious stranger (seen by the Church as an early typology of Jesus) until he was blessed, and he walked with a limp after that "prayer meeting!"  Also, just like with our spouses and other loved ones, conflict happens, and the arguments at some point are inevitable as you are not always going to agree on everything with even the person you love the most - why should God be any different in that regard?  Difference is though, usually God ends up being right anyway, and just like that spat with our spouse that happens, once everyone cools down apologies happen and life goes on - I have had to apologize to God a lot on occasion, and thankfully he is always forgiving of me, perhaps more than I am of myself.  So, the next time you don't feel the "joy, joy, joy down in your heart" when you pray and you instead feel like giving God a tongue-lashing, it doesn't mean you are any less spiritual or reverent toward God - you still love him, he still loves you, and perhaps he allows you to vent in order for you to ultimately feel better.  Or, in the case of Job when Job was complaining, God gently will remind us once we cool down that perhaps we didn't see the full picture, and that maybe we acted out of haste before we thought things out - I do that, you do that, and practically every human being alive has done it if we are all honest with ourselves.  So, yes, you can complain as a form of prayer too, and there would be something seriously wrong with you honestly if you didn't at least once in your lifetime.  Your love for God, just like your love for your spouse, should go deeper than any emotional outburst, and at the end of the day you know the love is there despite how ticked off you might get.  And, without sounding silly and somewhat formulaic, I will nonetheless say that God is also a big boy, and he can take it - he transcends us on so many levels anyway, and he sees past the frustration we may feel and will deal often with the root issue that the frustration stems from in the first place.

I am hoping that this series of rambling observations will be encouraging for you, as I know that some reading this may have struggled in these areas.  It's OK, in other words, and perhaps this is the very bit of wisdom you need at this moment, or perhaps you have a past situation that now in retrospect you can see you were probably better off than you thought you were at the time - no, God is not going to deep-fry you in the grease pit of hell just for getting a little emotional or not being able to stand to be around someone else.  Those feelings are completely normal, and as long as you have the wisdom to know the difference for instance between dislike and hate, you will be fine.  Thanks again for allowing me to share, and will see you soon.

Pleading the Blood - The Truth

As a convert to the Catholic Church from the Pentecostal tradition, there is something I have been pondering for some time that needs a solid teaching, and that is this whole idea that many Pentecostals and Charismatics have about "pleading the Blood of Jesus" over everything and anything.   The question here is - is "pleading the Blood" even Biblical?   That is what we want to explore. 

Among Pentecostal and Charismatic circles, the practice of "pleading the Blood" is a common one, and almost a tradition among them.  For years, I even prayed that sort of stuff myself even.  But, even as I participated in it, something in the back of my mind - a still, small voice if you will - kept gnawing at me and asking, is this right to do?  The more that voice asserted itself, the more I was coming to realize that perhaps the Holy Spirit was trying to say something to me about it, so I thought I had better explore the question a little more.  And, so I did.  Here is what I came up with.

When the Blood of Christ is mentioned in Scripture, it essentially is in reference to two things:

1.  The forgiveness of sins through the Atonement.
2.  Healing of the physical body as another promise of the Atonement.

The application of the Blood of Jesus then is tied to what we as Catholics would understand as sacramental grace - due to the fact it entails both the forgiveness of our sins and the healing of our bodies, for the Catholic the Blood is tied into at least three of the seven Sacraments of the Church - the Eucharist, Confession, and Unction.  If that is the case then, why do so many of our Pentecostal brethren attempt to "plead the Blood" over their cars, finances, and other things then?   That is where we need to consult the pages of Scripture to see where this idea comes from.

Many Pentecostals who engage in this practice point to one thing in particular that they can gain some justification for their idea from, and that is Exodus 12:7 - prior to the event of the Exodus itself, the Israelites in Egypt were instructed at the first Passover to slaughter an unblemished lamb and sprinkle its blood on the doorposts of every home to protect it from the judgment God was about to mete out on the Egyptians, in this case the death of the first-born son of every house.  The Exodus was indeed a foreshadowing of the coming of Christ, but it doesn't mean that every event deserves repetition - what God told Israel to do literally at that time has no bearing on the promises of the Atonement, as rather we see it as a typology of the Atonement in that it symbolized God's salvation of His people from destruction, that is all.  For the ancient Israelites, it was a literal deliverance and salvation from the bondage of Egyptian slavery, but for us as Christians it is the liberation from the effects of death and sin.   It must be understood that everything that happened in the Old Testament were real events, but at the same time God used real events to point people to Christ - that is the bottom line of why Scripture is important to us in retrospect.  Christ is at the center of all Scripture, and thus everything points to His personhood and His divinity.  It doesn't mean though that we as modern Christians have to repeat every single action we read about in Scripture though, which is a major weakness with many faithful Pentecostal people.

Pentecostals often try to bring into the present a past event like the Exodus by pointing to some New Testament references for their justification, such as I Corinthians 5:7, where Jesus is rightly called our "New Passover Lamb."  They also take passages such as Hebrews 12:24 and I Peter 9:26-28, both of which refer to the sacrifice of Himself Christ did for us to redeem us and forgive us our sins, as a model for their practice.  Other passages, such as Romans 3:25, are used as well in speaking metaphorically of Jesus as a lamb, and these things are taken as a mandate by some Pentecostals to do exactly what the passage says - applying the Blood - to every aspect of life in order to gain some sort of special merit.  They however fall short here, as the references in Scripture would more aptly point to the Passion of Christ, and thus would be more in line with the Catholic position of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which is for our salvation.   And, it therefore reduces the Precious Blood to a talisman or a mere pious superstition, which is what I want to talk about now.

It is important to understand that trivializing holy things and reducing them to some sort of magic act is tantamount to blasphemy, and many well-meaning Pentecostals who "plead the blood" over everything from their doorposts to their diamond rings don't realize what they are truly doing when they do that.  It in essence reduces the Blood to a mere pious "tradition of men" and a quasi-occultic talisman and it makes those who do such things minimize the true benefits of Christ's sacrificial act for us.  I have talked in the past of various manifestations of what is known as "charismatic witchcraft," and the more I understand how erroneous this whole "plead the blood" practice is, the more I am becoming convinced that it is a form of witchcraft.  If anyone reading this is doing it, stop immediately - by denigrating the ultimate gift of God to save us in such a way, you commit blasphemy without knowing it.  This leads to one final observation before I conclude.

Many people who are engaged in this practice of "pleading the blood" are often also some of the most virulently anti-Catholic individuals - they mock the Eucharist, and make allegations against Catholics by saying we supposedly "crucify Jesus all over again."  In reality, that is not what the doctrine of the Eucharist is about, and as I explained in my studies on Scott Hahn's The Lamb's Supper, it doesn't have anything to do with that.  But, to humor those who would say such a thing and make dumb accusations, let's say that it did - they criticize Catholics for the Eucharist, yet they throw the blood of Christ around like beads at a Mardi Gras parade, so who is being more disrespectful?   As we have noted several times before, the Eucharist is Biblically-based, and it also has substantiation for its observance over two thousand years of Church history.  The whole "pleading the blood" practice though does not - it is less than a century old, and many of those who teach it are also dubious in other areas as well, as they are mostly televangelists on religious television who do a number of other outlandish things and try to blame the Holy Spirit for it.  Some Pentecostals and Charismatics like painting themselves as "spiritually elite," yet in this and so many other areas, they often show a woeful lack of spiritual maturity, and as a result many of them fall away fast when the pressures of life challenge them.  A good recent example is a former classmate of mine from my undergraduate days who recently has taken a shocking turn in his life.  When we were in school together over 20 years ago, this guy was noted for being a super-charismatic - he was on staff at one of the biggest megachurches around then, and he was so Charismatic in his practice that people got the impression that he was some sort of spiritual powerhouse.  This guy was also a good friend back in the day too - we talked a lot about many things, and when he later became a priest in an Old Catholic group of some sort, he often would call me to "pick my brain" on things regarding the Eastern Church and such.  However, only a few short years ago, it was almost as if he fell off the face of the earth, as I lost touch with him.  When I found him on social media some years later, he had drastically changed - he ended up divorcing his wife, moving to Asia, and by all appearances he has embraced the "gay lifestyle" and spends a lot of time photographing semi-nude male models in weird poses.   This was one of those people who engaged in the practice of "pleading the blood" at one point, and at this time he is engaging now in a sort of revisionism of the lives of the saints and of Christian doctrine itself by making it more "gay-friendly" - one of his recent things he wrote about was part of the whole "gay Christian" appropriation, for instance, of certain saints of the Church (in this case, Saints Sergius and Bacchus) by recasting them as "gay lovers" based on the mis-translation of some Greek word.  One of what used to be the most on-fire Pentecostals I knew, in other words, is now an activist for the LGBT community and is resorting to blasphemy and historical revisionism to justify himself.   It is a slippery slope to base faith and religious belief on emotions, as it can have some catastrophic consequences, and the whole "pleading the blood" idea sounds good, but in reality it can cause a lot of damage, as can any blasphemous or heretical practice. 

I may have gotten a bit harsh toward the end of the last paragraph, but I do so with good reason - the miracle of salvation and of the fact that God Himself became man to save us is a precious thing, and I would even go as far as to say that the decision one makes to follow Christ is the most important life choice one could ever make, as it is for eternity (or, more correctly, has eternal consequence).  Especially in a society that grows more irreligious and secular (the culmination of almost 400 years of Enlightenment influence), it is vital that we approach Christ with a spirit of humility and of reverence, two things sorely lacking among many who profess Christianity of any sort today.   One reason I am no longer Pentecostal myself is due to that very thing - while there are many fine people who are devout Christians in Pentecostal groups to which this doesn't apply, there are also many more who display an arrogance and just a nasty attitude that in no way reflects the Lord they claim to serve, and also lacks the fruit of the Holy Spirit they claim to revere.  They turn out to be obnoxious jackasses to be honest, and anyone who is around such people quickly picks up on that too - it nullifies any potential Christian witness that such people could have had.  Often it is these sort of people who flippantly throw around the whole "plead the blood" schtick as part of their own little pious masquerade, and they don't understand the implications of their behavior.  They will one day have blood, in other words - the blood of many people they could have reached but did not crying from their own hands.   That blood will have a different sort of plea - the plea of those who died in their sins for justice against those who could have showed them the way but didn't.   That is frankly not a plea one should desire to hear, as it is a hallmark of shame.   On that note, I want to now conclude with a few challenges for some different groups of people.

If you are one of those Pentecostals, Charismatics, or even Evangelicals or Catholics who has gotten caught up in the whole "pleading the blood" practice, I challenge you as Saint Paul did young Timothy to "study to show yourselves approved" by educating yourself on what the true purpose of Christ's Blood is about.  As you do so, renounce what you have been doing, and ask God to forgive you for it, as you need to get this right.  If you are a person who has been hurt by this sort of thinking and either have come to your senses or maybe were at the receiving end of some Pentecostal nut throwing the Blood around flippantly, I first offer an apology to you on behalf of Christians as a whole, and also would ask that you not let this color your perception of Christians nor hinder you from examining the claims of Scripture and of Christ for yourself.   "Traditions of men" such as "pleading the blood" over one's favorite shoes and other such nonsense have done more harm to the evangelistic mission of the Church than many realize, and it is important to discard those things and focus on true belief and faith instead.  NO ONE should be hindered from receiving a chance to accept Jesus Christ and believe in Him, and no fruity, overly-pious, goofy Charismatic fad should hinder anyone in doing so either.  The time has come for Christians to stop playing games with their faith and with the fates of others, as we live in a world that is increasingly hostile to the truth of God's Revelation, and we cannot afford any messing around, as that could create innocent martyrs.   This was a tough message to write today, but hopefully it will impact others who read it.  God bless until next time.