News articles and editorials in the wake of the latest Supreme Court decision on abortion try to foist a patina of inevitability and the seal of finality on the issue of "abortion rights."
What we think is the right road
The only right road is that there is no right road. The only thing we know for sure is that we don't know anything for sure. The only constant is change. Only one of our presidents, Bill Clinton, is an alumnus of a Catholic college, and it was he who told us that the only secure foundation for democracy is a vigorous uncertainty about the truth of anything. Besides all that, Christians should be humble enough not to support any views uncompromisingly.
But it's the wrong road
It ain't so, for there are many things we can know through right reason (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1954, 307, 1776). The very idea, though, that there can be "right reason" – that is, graced thinking consistent with the established canons of logic (CCC 1960) – is alien to many today. That we may be sure of some things and thoughts; that there is an objective moral order; that there is an unchanging and eternal reality: these concepts are anathema to those who champion the self above all or who deny any ethical standard beyond their own feelings.
One New York Times columnist wrote that being sure about things "is the enemy of decency and humanity." One hopes that he is sure about that opinion. If that writer is correct, then there is no virtue and no vice; there is no right and no wrong; there is no good and no evil, for there are only opinions about such matters. Everything is a matter of mere conjecture.
Asked if he could define sin, President Barack Obama replied, "Sin is being out of alignment with my values." That is, of course, correct – if anything can be correct today – because, according to the intellectual fads and fashions of our day, there are no standards to which we may appeal except what pleases or profits us. The standard of right or wrong, good or evil, is always and only internal. It is solely up to us to make subjective moral judgments. Of course, others have preceded us in that view: Adam and Eve, committing the original sin (see Genesis 3:5 and CCC 407).
In his new book about the Traditional Latin Mass, Peter Kwasniewski uses the term "martyrial meaning" to refer to "absolute truth worth dying for, worth giving up everything for." There is a war, he writes, "against ultimate transcendent meaningfulness." If there is no ultimate meaning – no God, no Christ, no Church, no Truth – then the idea that sin means inconsistency with "my values" is perfectly intelligible.
However, Catholics know that God exists – and that everything is, or at least ought to be, different for us because we know that and act in the light of that primordial conviction.
But isn't the chief idea of education to produce an open mind? No: there is a profound difference between an open mind and an empty head. G.K. Chesterton put it well: "Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid." By the complementary power of faith and reason, we know that there is an enduring Truth, conformity to which produces justice and peace (for example, read John 12:46 and Romans 12:2).
"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth," wrote St. John Paul II. No contemporary cynic or nihilist exceeds the sneering contempt of Pilate's mocking question, "What is truth?" (John 18:18) asked of Him who is Truth Incarnate.
Must we be relativists to support democracy, much as Bill Clinton told us? It was also John Paul II who taught that a democracy in conformity with the moral law promotes the dignity of the human person, protects human rights and serves the authentic common good. A democratic system "would be shaken in its foundations" if people doubted the existence of objective moral law which spawns and sponsors civil law.
That, tragically, is precisely what has been happening in our country, where the pillar of the moral law has been disparaged, discounted and denied. And, as Psalm 11 plaintively asks, "When the pillars are overthrown, what can the just man do?"
St. Thomas Aquinas taught us that humility is not saying we know nothing and can do nothing, but instead knowing that apart from Our Lord, we can do nothing; that we worship God only and above all; and that, in concert with Him, there is nothing we cannot do (see Phil 4:13).
Humility is not denying that we have talent or strength; humility is using our gifts wisely and well. Humility opposes arrogance.
St. Paul, in his valedictory, adjured his hearers to be humble and bold – and admonished them about the enduring need to protect the people from "fierce wolves" (false teachers) who would sow confusion and error (Acts Chapter 20), pulling down the pillars of faith.
What we have received in and from the faith which comes to us from the Apostles, let us "proclaim from the rooftops" (Mt 10:27 and Lk 12:3), for we can be certain of the foundational truth of our lives: It is the eternal Truth of the Gospel, which should always and everywhere – nothing relative about it! – be in our minds (+), on our lips (+) and in our hearts (+). Laus tibi, Christe! ("Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ!")
Deacon James H. Toner serves at Our Lady of Grace Church in Greensboro.