Month: August 2015

In 1992, writing the majority opinion for the Supreme Court in the Planned Parenthood vs. Casey decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy stated that “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” According to his reasoning, then, truth is not outside of one’s self; something to be sought and discovered, as scientists, philosophers, and ordinary human beings have done for thousands of years. It can be invented. And it needn’t matter if someone’s version of the truth is rooted in reality or not.
This past summer, Americans have seen what happens when Justice Kennedy’s opinion is taken to its logical extremes. The Obergefell vs. Hodges decision legalizing gay marriage, the recent scandals involving Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby organs, and the hubbub surrounding Bruce Jenner and his family have shown us what happens when a country loses common sense regarding matters of human life and sexuality: man becomes incomprehensible to himself.

The Planned Parenthood scandal has arisen from an utter obliviousness towards the dignity of human life. For what is the human fetus if it is not, in fact, a human child? From the pro-choice community, we hear a variety of opinions; none of them acknowledging the unborn baby’s humanity. It is a cluster of cells, they tell us. It is tissue. Life begins whenever individuals say it begins. And if adults believe that life begins months after birth, it’s permissible for them to kill a baby before their own arbitrary cutoff date. Or the fetus is a parasite, like a tapeworm or an amoeba. It’s a product of conception. Its organs can be sold for medical research with public encouragement and tax dollars. And, should that baby grow up to illegally poach a lion in Zimbabwe, Americans will mourn the lion while making death threats against the hunter.

When it comes to our sexual idenities, what is a man? What is a woman? Men and women, we can plainly see, are different from another. They are so different that if Bruce Jenner feels like he is at war with his masculine body, changing his identity would require him to surgically obtain a female body and legally change his name to Caitlyn. His children and ex-wife may no longer regard him as their father and ex-husband, but as a female friend or relative. At the same time, we are told that the notion of gender is outdated. People can change their gender the way they change their socks, or can choose from 58 different gender varieties on Facebook. And yet, if a scientist were to do a DNA test on Bruce Jenner now, there would be X and Y chromosomes etched into every cell of his body signifying that he is male.

What about marriage and family? What are they? Marriage doesn’t have to be one man and one woman bound together for life. A marriage could be two men, or it can be two women. It can end in no-fault divorce. It could be polygamous. A mother can be a surrogate, renting out her womb to incubate a child who may never have a relationship with her once it’s born. A father can be reduced to a sperm donor, either having children by multiple women and earning the scorned title of “deadbeat dad,” or donating his sperm to a fertility clinic and gaining public approval. In some circles, the words “mother” and “father” are now socially unacceptable. A child can have five parents, as seen here in the Netherlands. The children in these relationships are commodities, and can be bought by people who insist that they are entitled to become parents. Ignore the widespread family breakdown and resulting social disorder, we’re told. Just ignore it.
The American general public, soaring to the heights of irony, has declared it absolutely immoral to preach absolute moral truths. It is as Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once said: “America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance: tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. The man who can make up his mind in an orderly way, as a man might make up his bed, is called a bigot: but a man who cannot make up his mind, any more than he can make up for lost time, is called tolerant and broad minded.”
Many self-proclaimed Catholics and non-Catholic Christians have played along with this charade out of fear of being perceived as unloving. To be fair, we should not hate abortionists, or Planned Parenthood’s supporters, or the LGBT community. Jesus commanded that we love one another as he has loved us. But is it loving to tell Bruce Jenner that he should hate the male body he was born into, and hate his role as the father of his six children? Is it loving to deprive children of their rights to life, and their rights to have relationships with their biological mother and father? Is it not condescending to LGBT individuals to act like they are incapable of living chaste lives?
The freedom to destroy traditional understandings of human life and sexuality is the be all, end all of this age; so says Justice Kennedy. But in adhering to his definition of freedom, our country has enslaved itself to insanity. And when insanity is normal, the clear minded are the enemy. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot, the young Prince Lev Myshkin is hated by the Russian aristocracy because of his pure love towards two different women. Today, those of us who refuse to surrender to the sexual chaos of our time are seen as the idiots. For far too long, it’s been time for us to show the world where true wisdom about human life and love can be found.
The remedy for our national identity crisis is in rediscovering reverence for life, for our natural identities as male and female, and for the act that brings new life into existence. It is found in chastity; or sexual integrity. An integrated view of human life and love, by its very nature, is opposed to the confusion of our time. It strives for wholeness rather than wallowing in chaos or celebrating it. It’s countercultural to be sure, but the mainstream culture hasn’t done much good for us lately. The Sexual Revolution that promised us everything, but gave us broken marriages, broken bodies, broken families, and broken hearts. It’s refreshing to be countercultural sometimes. It would be refreshing to see men and women gazing upon each other without porn goggles. It would refreshing to hear people say that all lives have meaning and value, including those of the unborn. It would be refreshing to see babies treated like the human beings they actually are, instead of being thought of as menaces to society. It would be refreshing to see people loving the male and female identities they’ve had since their conception.
It’s strange to think that those of us who believe in human nature and the goodness of human life and chaste love are radicals by today’s standards. But it’s a title I proudly carry with me. People who have lived in a sewer their whole lives don’t know how good and healthy fresh air can be unless someone shows them. Our country has been choking on the fumes of the culture of death for awhile now. And it’s up to us to open up the manhole cover and give everyone a glimpse of the freedom that lies on the other side. Catholic University of America professor Dr. Chad Pecknold once said that “The underground of the 1960s shaped the culture of the next 50 years. The underground of today will do the same.” May his words be my generation’s legacy for years to come.