A War on Reality (4)

I concluded my previous post in this series by writing that is why I have called this series of posts A War on Reality, for it is the Devil's war. And I will write more on that aspect in the next post in this series. 

To start with, I want to think about Reality. And the ultimate Reality is the Blessed Trinity. All else is contingent. So when I write of a War on Reality, I am really referring to the Devil's continuing war on God; a war which, since he was defeated in Heaven by Michael and the heavenly hosts, he now conducts on Earth, through us.

Nonetheless, his fiercest hatred is for God, and the reality that is God, and the reality that God has created.

Consider the Blessed Trinity in a bit more detail, and in particular the qualities appropriated to each Person. 

If we think of the Father, the most essential characteristic is that He is, and arising from that, that He is omnipotent. So He revealed Himself to Moses: I Am who I am; and so the prayer taught us by the Son starts: Our Father, who art... It was Frank Sheed (if memory serves) who observed that 'nothing is impossible to God' also means that it is impossible for God not to be. Turning to the Son, we think first of the Logos the Word of God, by which all was created. This Logos is the wisdom or knowledge of God: the ultimate truth. The Holy Spirit, we know, proceeds from the Father and the Son by way of love.

It is, of course, no coincidence that the Penny Catechism teaches us that God made us to know, love and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.  To know, to love, and to be: those three again (with the addition of serving, as befits our status as creatures and ultimately sons).

The reason, therefore, that I call the current crisis surrounding human sexuality and identity a war on reality, is that it directly attacks existence, truth and love; and I see that as no coincidence either.  The assault on truth is perhaps the most obvious. By this, I mean not just the obvious lies of the progressive movement, but the requirement that we too must lie. We must use a language that bows to their ideology, whether that is preferred pronouns, or LGBTQ2S+... Failure to do so incurs severe social, and in some cases (and increasingly) legal sanctions. Questioning the dogma in any way risks being punished as a hate crime.

But it is also an attack on love; and that on many levels. In the first instance, it distorts our understanding of the nature and purpose of human sexual love. We know what the Church teaches about this; how the Jewish people were formed over centuries towards an understanding of this that was brought to fulfilment by Our Lord Himself and the institution of matrimony as a sacrament. And we can witness, both in history and in our own time, the good that flows when human sexual love is lived as Christ taught, and the terrible damage, to individuals, families and societies, that ensues when His teaching is ignored.  It further distorts our understanding of other human loves: that idea that we may (and indeed should) love others in ways that excludes a sexual component. And it distorts our understanding of how we should respond in love to those in difficulty - not least those suffering from poorly developed human psychosexual formation. Instead of offering them hope, support, and true compassion, we consign them to the alphabet soup and pretend that we think their deviance is not only acceptable but a type of normality (and that is another attack on truth, as well). And we do that in the belief that it is kind; rather than engage with the truth and work out what, in true charity, we might better do.

And finally, ultimately, it is an attack on being. In its transgender manifestation, the victims of this ideology come to hate who they really are, and masquerade as something that they are not. They may even mutilate their bodies in pursuit of a new way of being - that is, of course, wholly illusory and offers no hope of lasting happiness or well-being. But even more terribly, this perverted ideology that treats human sexuality as a game in which we can make up our own rules, results in the death of millions by abortion; and the spiritual death of millions more, by their complicity with abortion or all the other perversions that arise.

And as Catholics, where are we? We, above all others, should have the clarity of vision, and the courage of heart, to take a stand for Reality, for the Blessed Trinity, and for all those who suffer under this diabolic ideology.  Yet it is hard to see how to do so.

However, if, as I strongly believe, this is first and foremost a spiritual battle, waged by the Devil, then our first steps become much clearer.  As Our Lord says: Some devils can only be cast out through prayer and fasting.  So let us start there, in particular with the intercession of St Michael, who has already cast the Devil out of Heaven, and our Blessed Mother, who crushes the serpent's head. And let us pray that, beyond prayer and fasting, we may discern what other actions we should be taking, and have the courage to take them.

A War on Reality (3)

In the first two posts of this series, I suggested that our society's view of human sexuality, as reflected in the trans and homosexual worldviews, is profoundly counter-factual. Further, people accept (or at least acquiesce to) the trans illogicalities because they have previously accepted the homosexual assumptions and claims. 

Looking at our culture as a whole, there are many reasons that has happened: the influence of the universities and their sex research departments (largely filled with abnormal people - that is, people who are not normal in their sexual appetites and behaviours); the complicity of many heterosexual people because they want to feel better about their own sexual sins; the onslaught of pornography enabled by the internet; the malign strategies of the Frankfurt School and the Yogyakarta gathering, and so on.

But I am particularly interested in the Catholic collapse. We are called to be the salt and the light, a sign of contradiction: and yet we host LGBTQ+ Masses, teach our children that gay is good and 'made in the image of God,' and are called to 'enlarge our tent' to include... well everyone, regardless of their adherence to the Gospel.

How did this come about?

Again, it is a complex picture. We seem to have lost our understanding of our Faith, our conviction that we should share it with the world, and our confidence to do so.

These are all interlinked, but I think it is our understanding that is most fundamental. And in particular our understanding of sin.

I am told that in the bad old days (certainly before my memories begin in the 60s) priests used to preach sermons about hell fire and sin all the time, and give an unbalanced and fearful account of the Faith to the people. That, if it were indeed the case, is clearly wrong. But the reaction has been an over-reaction: we never hear about sin or hell now. Generations of children have been raised with no understanding of this: yet it was clearly very much alive to Our Lord's mind.

And its lack leads to serious theological problems.

In particular, I am thinking here about the doctrine of Original Sin, and the seriousness of personal sin.

To take Original Sin first. I ask you consider when you last heard a sermon that even referenced Original Sin. Yes, it can be a bit tricky to understand and to explain, but it is fundamental to our understanding of our situation, and the redemption that Christ achieved for us. Without it, the whole Catholic metaphysic falls apart. See Romans 5, and the Catechism §385 ff.

In particular, it is a failure to understand Original Sin and its very real consequences, that leads people to believe rubbish such as that 'gay people are born that way in the image of God.' I say rubbish, because it is. By that logic, we would not treat children born with life-threatening conditions, because they 'are born that way in the image of God.' Further, the evidence suggests that 'born that way' is not true either. 

But we shy away from the idea of Original Sin, as it is countercultural and uncomfortable.  And for the same reasons, we minimise the gravity of personal sin. Rather than recognise that a mortal sin is literally that, death to our soul, worthy of eternal punishment, we prefer to think of it as a minor failing, and that the worst thing we could possibly do is feel guilty about it. 

There are several causes of that, I think. One is liturgical: the shift from the transcendence of the traditional liturgy to the immanence of the new; Our Lord is our friend now, and friends overlook each others' failings...   Again, the logic is poor: Our Lord is indeed our friend, but he is also Our Lord! (and notice the preference for using the Holy Name rather than a title, such as Our Lord) And further, He is too good a friend to overlook our failings, for that is not true friendship.

I am not arguing against immanence, of course: the Word became flesh, and dwelt amongst us. Ours is an incarnational Faith. But as ever, heresy is found in stressing one part of the truth to the detriment of another; and that is the risk of 'We are the Easter people.'  We are indeed; but only if we are also the Good Friday people: we are explicitly commanded to take up our cross if we would follow Him. And in the imitation of Christ, we are bound to treat sin, death and judgement as seriously as He does.

Again, I ask you to reflect: when did you hear of the Four Last Things from the pulpit (or ambo as I suppose I am meant to say nowadays...); or the vital (quite literally) importance of the Sacrament of Confession? How dare we traipse up to Holy Communion, week after week, without first confessing our sins and gaining sacramental absolution? Yet that is the pattern for the vast majority of practicing Catholics. That is why I think the balance has tipped too far towards immanence.

And then there's the Devil.

How often do you hear him referred to?  And yet Our Lord was very clear about him, and was clearly engaged in a battle with him. If he does not figure in our understanding of reality, then we are deluded.  Our Lord refers to him as the Prince of this World (eg in John 14:30). One of the results of Adam's sin is to give him real power - a power that accounts for much of the evil in the world; which, along with concupiscence, helps us to understand how we may have disorders in our inclinations that are not wholly our fault.

But we don't like to think about, and still less talk about, the Devil.

Yet that is why I have called this series of posts A War on Reality, for it is the Devil's war. And I will write more on that aspect in the next post in this series.