St. Julia of Corsica, A Saint for Our Time

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 23 May 2014. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com. 

Today is not a major feast day in the Church's liturgical calendar but, as always, there are saints whose feasts are celebrated.  One of the more interesting of today's saints is St. Julia of Corsica (also known as St. Julia of Carthage), a martyr who refused to be seduced by personal gain or cowed by the threat of torture and death.  My first post about St. Julia, published four years ago today on the blog Principium et Finis, remains one of the most visited pages on that site, a testimony to the timelessness (and the timeliness) of this saint.

St. Julia of Corsica

"St. Julia" by Gabriel Von Max

Julia was a noble maiden who lived in Carthage in the 5th century.  When that ancient city was captured and sacked by the Vandals, Julia was enslaved and sold to a Syrian merchant named Eusebius.  Despite the hardships and humiliations of her servile state she remained content, even cheerful, because of her piety and her deep love of Christ.  These same qualities greatly endeared her to her master.

   On one occasion, when Julia was on a journey with her master, he stopped at the island of Corsica where the locals were celebrating a pagan festival. Eusebius joined in the revelry; Julia, needless to say, stayed away. Her refusal to participate greatly annoyed the local governor, who, according to the account in Butler’s Lives of the Saints,

asked who this woman was who dared to insult the gods. Eusebius informed him that she was a Christian, and that all his authority over her was too weak to prevail with her to renounce her religion, but that he found her so diligent and faithful he could not part with her.

   Felix, however, was not one to take no for an answer.  First, he offered Eusebius four of his own female slaves in exchange for the one Julia; Eusebius emphatically refused to surrender her.  Next, after her master had fallen asleep, the governor approached Julia directly, offering to free her if only she would sacrifice to the pagan gods.  She answered that she was “as free as she desired to be as long as she was allowed to serve Jesus Christ.” This answer enraged Felix, who had her tortured and crucified.

    A few points stand out from the account of St. Julia’s life.  First and foremost, her devotion to Christ and her courage in the face of unspeakable suffering is an inspiration to us.  Maybe, the next time I’m tempted to “go along with the crowd” simply because I’m afraid of the disapproval or verbal abuse of others, I’ll take some strength from Julia’s fortitude in the face of much, much worse persecution.

Julia also shows us the power of example.  Clearly, her character and virtue made a large impression on her master Eusebius. While her diligence and fidelity alone were not enough to win him over to the faith, at least not right away, they did give him the courage to stand up to the governor Felix, and convince him not to give her up for, literally, any price.  None of the accounts I have seen, unfortunately, tell us anything about what eventually happened to Eusebius. One wonders whether the example of her heroic martyrdom was finally enough to make him a Christian. We do know that the witness of the martyrs was crucial to the conversion of very many people, for which reason Tertullian said: "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church."

A Saint for Our Time

Julia's story also tells us something about the nature of sin.  I am reminded yet again of Father Richard John Neuhaus’ aphorism:  “When orthodoxy becomes optional, sooner or later it will become proscribed”.  What he meant was that simply by doing the right thing one is seen as a rebuke to those who are not doing right.  Look at Julia: she wasn’t interfering with the pagan festival, she was simply staying away. The governor, however, couldn’t tolerate anyone who was not actively endorsing his activities.  How often we have seen this same attitude today. Granted, at least in the United States, nobody is literally being crucified, although the advocates of a “New Orthodoxy” will certainly try to destroy the reputation and livelihood of anyone who does not publicly cheer for their innovations.  

The Benham Brothers

A recent example (among many) is that of the Benham Brothers, whose planned home improvement program on the HGTV network was cancelled [see here] because the brothers, who are evangelical Christians, publicly oppose abortion and gay marriage.  It appears that the activists who intimidated HGTV also successfully pressured the bank with whom the Benhams have worked for years to sever ties – at least until the counter-reaction from Christians and others concerned with the erosion of personal freedom caused them to reconsider.  The bank now claims that the whole thing was simply a misunderstanding [here].

    But sin's not the end of the story, either.  We have seen throughout the history of the Church the truth of the aphorism, "The bigger they come, the harder they fall"; zealous persecutors from St. Paul himself to the Nazi death-camp guards who were awed by the martyrdom of St. Maximilian Kolbe have been converted, often by witnessing the faith and Christ-like serenity of their victims.  The ancient accounts don't tell us, but the governor Felix might well have been one of these. Whether or not he himself was moved in this way, we can be sure that many of the other pagan witnesses were.

    Finally, the example of St. Julia of Corsica has continued to inspire people through the centuries and is still with us to this day as a reminder that, although there there will always be defeats along the way, Christ wins in the end.  If we can put our faith in that, as Julia did, we can persevere. As St. Peter said: " Rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed" (1 Peter 13).

St. Joseph the Worker: We Are More Than What We Do

    They say that necessity is the mother of invention but, as today's feast of St. Joseph the Worker shows us, sometimes measures taken for practical purposes can point to deeper truths.

Holy Family Father and Son, by Corbert Gauthier

    The memorial of St. Joseph the Worker is a very recent addition to the liturgical calendar. Pope Pius XII, who wanted to present a Catholic alternative to the Communist celebration of May Day, instituted it in 1955.  Who better to counter the self-proclaimed "vanguard of the workers" than a great Saint who was also a laborer, a man known for his patience and perseverance, but also his piety?  As such, St. Joseph is also the ideal embodiment of the Dignity of Work.  He shows us that work is not simply something we do to survive, or that connects us to a certain economic class, but is an essential part of our humanity, a way in which we act, at least in a small way, as co-creators with God (see St. John Paul II's Laborem Exercens).
     At the same time, we can see that while a worker may be honored for his work, he is not defined by it.  Here the Catholic view stands in sharp contrast to the outlook of Marxism, where a working person's primary identification is with his class, and he finds meaning by working toward the "workers' paradise" of a fully communist society; since the realization of the workers' aspirations is the Greatest Good in this worldview, those who are seen as obstacles (such as members of the Capitalist Class) deserve to be extirpated.  Western market-driven societies have their own false anthropology in the phenomenon of the workaholic, whose whole life centers on his career, and who sees no meaning beyond it.  
     Christians, however, see our primary identification as adopted sons an daughters of God: equal in dignity (regardless of externals such as class, sex, race, etc.), called to love, and all of us members of the One Body of Christ who are are made in the image and likeness of God the Creator. What we do is an expression of what we already are, particularly when, as Christians we dedicate our work to the Greater Glory of God (Ad Maiorem Dei Gratiam), as St. Ignatius Loyola put it.
     Now look at St. Joseph.  There have probably been carpenters more skillful than Joseph, or more productive, but none of them have feast days. We honor him today in his role of worker, but that's not why he is a Saint.  He's a Saint, and a great Saint, because he cooperated in God's great work of salvation.  Today's feast reminds us that we can all aspire to sanctity, even humble laborers, and that whoever we are, and whatever we do in this world, what we do for the Kingdom of God and who we are in the eyes of the Father is what matters in the end. 

Confession, Jonah, and the Prodigal's Sons

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 21 March 2016 on the blog Principium et Finis. To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

I had the good fortune to be able to go to confession the other day. A part of my penance was to meditate on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). My confessor emphasized that the father in Jesus' story, who extravagantly welcomes back his wastrel son, is the true "prodigal". In the context of Sacrament of Confession we can see a clear identification between this father and the loving and forgiving God, with ourselves as the erring son who, having wasted his father's generosity, returns home chastened and knowing that any any kindness he receives will be more than he deserves. "Father", he says, "I have sinned against Heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son" (Luke 15:18).

"The Return of the Prodigal Son" by Jean Germain Drouais (angry son at right)

There is another son in the story, however, the Good Son, who remained faithfully at home and, as he tells his father, “ 'Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command” (Luke 15:29).  Angry that his erring brother is receiving a huge “welcome back” party, while his father “never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends” (Luke 15:29), the obedient son stubbornly refuses to come in and join the celebration.  He is, in fact, still obstinately standing outside the house at the end of Jesus’ parable, and the last thing we see is his father pleading with him “to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:32).

    Thinking about this second son, I was reminded of the story of Jonah.  I had never before considered how closely Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son parallels the last two chapters of the book of Jonah.  In the Old Testament book we see the people of Ninevah, like the Prodigal Son himself, whole-heartedly repent, and in turn receive whole-hearted forgiveness.  Who could object to that?  As it turns out, Jonah could, and does, object:

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said, "I pray thee, LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil.  Therefore now, O LORD, take my life from me, I beseech thee, for it is better for me to die than to live" (Jonah 4:1-3).

"Jonah, Seated Under the Gourd, Contemplates the City"
(Maerten van Heemskerck)

Jonah stays angry, at least as far we can see.  God tries to soften his heart, first with kindness, by growing a large plant to shield him from the sun; next, a harsher approach, in which he kills the plant and exposes the sulking prophet to the ravages of sun and wind.  Jonah’s heart is unchanged: "I do well to be angry,” he says, “ angry enough to die” (Jonah 4:9).  The story ends, as does Jesus’ parable, with the voice of the Father explaining to his angry son why it is better to show compassion for those who were lost in sin:

"You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night.  And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" (Jonah 4:10-11)

In both places, it is left unsaid whether the Father’s kindly words eventually pierce the heart of his unforgiving son.

    Which brings us back to Luke’s Gospel. The parable of the Prodigal Son is the culmination of a series of parables illustrating that, as Jesus says, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7).  He is addressing a group of  Scribes and Pharisees who were grumbling about Jesus, saying "This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2).  The angry son in the parable is obviously intended to represent Christ’s hard-hearted critics.  

    Scripture, of course, always works on numerous levels, and we can see other meanings in the unforgiving brother as well.  As I meditated on this passage I could see myself in this unlovely figure; as much as I can identify with the erring but repentant son, I can also be the judging, unyielding son who refuses to share his Father’s joy in the redemption of those who had previously fallen. Sometimes, amazingly, I can be both at once.

     In his way, the angry son is the worse sinner.  There can be no doubt that the first son has indulged in serious and destructive wrongdoing, but because it’s so obvious, and the consequences so inescapable, he knows he needs to repent.  The second son appears to be doing all the right things, and in fact he is . . . on the outside.  He is really like (again) the scribes and pharisees, whom Jesus says "are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness" (Matthew 23:27). The appearance of probity keeps him from seeing his own sinful heart, and he willingly removes himself from his father’s house.  Jesus makes the same point with a different parable in Matthew’s Gospel:

A man had two sons; and he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' And he answered, 'I will not'; but afterward he repented and went. And he went to the second and said the same; and he answered, 'I go, sir,' but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." (Matthew 21:28-31)

    This is, I think, a good point to consider as we approach Holy Week.  It may be that the inspired author of Jonah, and Jesus himself with his parable, finish with a open-ended question, because we, in the person of the (self)righteous son, are being invited to give up our stubbornness and embrace the Father's compassion. All of us need to throw ourselves on the mercy of God, Who in his prodigal love for us gave His only Son to suffer and die for our sins.  Who am I to place my judgment over His?

What's Up With Chocolate and Lent?

An earlier version of this Worth Revisiting post was first published 6 March 2016 . To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

To Give It Up Or Not . . .  

What’s up with the chocolate?  As I was driving home from work last week I passed a church with a signboard out front that said, “Lent: Give Up Chocolate, Not Hope.”  I kept thinking about it all the way home, both because I think the folks who put up the sign were trying to make an important point, but also because they were (inadvertently, no doubt) undercutting their message at the same time.  I had decided to to write about it, and took a picture of the sign Sunday on my way to an event at a Catholic church (not my parish church).  When I got to the church, as I was running through my thoughts on the first sign, I saw a second sign, or really a notice on a bulletin board in the hallway: “Don’t Give Up Chocolate For Lent.”  Hmmm . . . one tells me to give up chocolate, the other says the opposite. Well now, should I or shouldn't I? What's a person to do?

Lent Is A Season Of Hope

I should mention that the first sign appeared outside a non-Catholic Christian church, but I think that the good point it was making is perfectly catholic, that is, that Lent is a Season of Hope.  I don’t mean hope in the secular sense of the word, which often refers to little more than desperate wishful thinking.  Christian Hope is the confidence that, however bad things might be in the here and now, we know that Christ will triumph in the end.  The sacrifices and penances of Lent actually serve to reinforce that Hope, by helping us to detach from our hopeless reliance on the things of this world (pleasure, power, politics, money, and even family and friends - not to mention comfort foods like chocolate). In fact, the best sacrifice is when we give up something good, because even the best things in this world are insufficient. Our own best efforts are insufficient without God’s help. It’s no accident that God-Made-Man Himself was put to death through the cooperation of officials of the greatest religion and officers the most advanced government the world had yet seen; “Unless the Lord has built the house, they labored in vain who built it” (Psalm 127:1). The small austerities of the penitential season serve, at least in part, as a reminder that we don’t really need things, but we do need Christ.

Body And Soul

That’s where I think sign number one is in danger of sending a mixed message.  To my ears, at least, it sounds almost dismissive of the idea of sacrificing something concrete for Lent, as if it’s saying, “If you insist on giving up something go ahead, but it’s not really important; all that really matters is your interior disposition”.  Again, I don’t know if that’s what’s intended or not (one can only say so much on a roadside signboard); I certainly hope not, because while the interior disposition is the more important, the external action helps to form and direct it.  We are both body and soul, and as Christians we worship God made Man, so our faith is incarnational and sacramental. Unlike angels, who are pure spirit, we need to apprehend abstract realities through physical signs (I discuss this idea at greater length in a number of other posts, most fully in my post "Mozart, Herbert, John the Baptist, and Why We Can't Be Angels"). Therefore, giving up something without the proper interior disposition is pointless, but maintaining the proper disposition without reinforcement from the world of created things is, in the end, contrary to our nature, and therefore very difficult (which is why Jesus gave us a visible Church and Sacraments).

Maybe I Shouldn't Give Up Chocolate . . .

Here’s where the second chocolate sign comes in.  “Don’t Give Up Chocolate This Lent” is the slogan of Catholic writer Matthew Kelly’s “Best Lent Ever” program this year. His website explains:

Lent is the perfect time to form new life-giving habits and abandon old self-destructive habits. But most of us just give up chocolate. Then, when Easter arrives, we realize we really haven't grown spiritually since the beginning of Lent.

Lent is not just about giving things up, like chocolate. Lent is about doing something—something bold to become a better husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter, friend, neighbor, etc.

I don’t think that Kelly is actually opposed to giving up chocolate per se: in his book Becoming the Best Version of Yourself, he relates (very powerfully) how he broke his own chocolate addiction, and uses that as an example of how we can let things other than God become our master. This is, in fact, the purpose of the tradition of Lenten sacrifice. In promoting The Best Lent Ever, however, Kelly is using the giving up of chocolate to represent something else: here it represents the very different problem of going through the motions of a nominal sacrifice without really experiencing anything deeper.

What's A Person To Do?

    It’s interesting that both slogans are using apparently contradictory messages to make the same (good and true) point: that giving up chocolate (or coffee, or watching sports, or whatever) is not enough, that truly experiencing what the Season of Lent is meant to teach us requires much more.  They both also have the effect of seeming to trivialize the value of such sacrifices. To be fair, Kelly’s program offers plenty of other concrete ways of living out Lent, such as daily meditations, inspirational videos, etc.  I suspect that the slogan was chosen since it catches the eye precisely because it is so contrary to expectations.  The problem is that many more people, unfortunately, will probably see the slogan than will look into the program. Let's hope it doesn't encourage people to forego Lenten sacrifices altogether.

    As I said before, what's a person to do? Perhaps there’s no way to fit the both/and nature of a good Christian observance of Lent into a catchy slogan. Is there some pithy way we can say “Lent: Give Up Chocolate to Remind Us That Our Hope Is In Christ Alone”?  Or, “Don’t Give Up Chocolate For Lent If It Doesn’t Help You To Grow In Christ”?  However that may may, chocolate is not the issue: we can, in good conscience, either give it up or not. Whether we participate in Matthew Kelly's well-received program or follow some more traditional Lenten devotion, however, we should observe this most important penitential season both in body and in soul: let's allow the Word to become Flesh in our own lives.

Prophet Samuel,The Candidates, & the Letter to Diognetus

  Today is election day here in the United States, and we face more a dispiriting choice for our highest office than we have seen in this country for a long time, perhaps ever.  It may be that we are testing the validity of Joseph de Maistre’s famous observation, "Every country has the government it deserves” (Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite).

Give the people what they want: King Saul and Prophet Samuel

    Before we consider that possibility, I’d like to take a look at 1 Samuel, chapter 8,  the Vulgate Latin version of which we are reading in my advanced Latin classes right now.  It occurs to me that this scripture may have some some applicability to our current situation.  In this Biblical reading Samuel, judge and prophet, has grown old, and has passed his office of Judge on to his sons Joel and Abijah.   Unfortunately, the sons do not “walk in the ways” of their father (1 Sam 8:3). In fact, they are thoroughly corrupt: they are greedy, take bribes, and generally “pervert justice” (1 Sam 8:4).  The elders of Israel get together and go to Samuel. After pointing out the (rather severe) shortcomings of Joel and Abijah, they propose a radical solution: “Appoint a king to rule over us, like all the nations” (1 Sam 8:5).  

    Whatever merit there might be in their complaints, Samuel doesn’t like their proposed solution.  He turns to the Lord in prayer, and receives a surprising reply:

"Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.  According to all the deeds which they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, hearken to their voice; only, you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them." (1 Samuel 8:7-9)

    Samuel follows the Lord’s instructions, and warns them of the various ways in which the king will abuse and exploit them: how he will take their sons and daughters and put them in various roles of service to himself, and how he will take various of their possessions and bestow them on his servants (1 Samuel 8:11-17).  He concludes with a stern warning: “And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the LORD will not answer you in that day" (1 Samuel 8:18). The people are unimpressed.  On the contrary, they seem determined to illustrate H.L. Menken’s wry definition of democracy: "The theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”  After Samuel’s long list of the wrongs they will suffer,

. . .  the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; and they said, "No! but we will have a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles." And when Samuel had heard all the words of the people, he repeated them in the ears of the LORD. And the LORD said to Samuel, "Hearken to their voice, and make them a king."   (1 Samuel 8:19-22)

    The people of Israel don’t understand that they can only be free when the accept the Rule of God, because the alternative is the tyranny of mere men.  As Bob Dylan (in a moment of lucidity) once wrote, “You gotta serve somebody.” Men and women who serve God and his commandments are able govern themselves in this world, on a personal level and corporately.  Those who reject the Wisdom of the Lord in the hope of being their own masters find themselves instead the slaves of fellow creatures, of “such a thing as myself” (as Shakespeare’s Cassius says of the tyrant Caesar) . . . or worse. St. Paul advises us that “the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners” (1 Timothy 1:9).  A state peopled by godless citizens will, necessarily, be under the heel of tyranny.

    That’s my fear for the United States.  I’m not saying that either of our present unlovely candidates will, of himself or herself, bring about the end of the republic.  They are rather a symptom of a deeper problem: we wouldn’t be in this position at all, faced with so execrable a choice, if we had really kept God as our true sovereign.  It’s not that we haven’t had our own Samuels: Benjamin Franklin warned that the U.S. Constitution offered “A republic, if you can keep it”, and I’ve often found occasion to cite John Adams’ warning that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

    My purpose here is not to endorse either of the two stunningly flawed human beings the two major parties have offered as presidential candidates.  I do think it is clear that one of the two is decisively less unacceptable to serious Christians, but it still remains a true choice of the lesser of two evils.  The outcome of this or any election, however, is of only passing importance.  More significant to me is the fact that a substantial number of Americans, from across the political spectrum, have deemed character, morality, rule of law, truth, and even basic decency as less important than getting what they want.  It’s bad enough that such a society will inevitably see ever greater human suffering in this world; a much worse consequence is that it will become even harder to hear the words of the Gospel in so degraded an environment, and many souls may be lost. The election of neither the Republican nor the Democratic candidate will change that grim reality.

    At the same time, this is a season of Hope, and of renewed purpose for those of us who aspire to follow Christ.  St. Paul tells us that, in reality, “our citizenship is in Heaven” (Phillipians 3:20). The anonymous author of the 2nd century Letter to Diognetus elaborates,  reminding us that we Christians  “dwell in the world, yet are not of the world”, and further that

as the soul is in the body, so are Christians in the world . . . The soul is imprisoned in the body, yet preserves that very body; and Christians are confined in the world as in a prison, and yet they are the preservers of the world. The immortal soul dwells in a mortal tabernacle; and Christians dwell as sojourners in corruptible [bodies], looking for an incorruptible dwelling in the heavens.

In other words, we have our work cut out for us.  Nonetheless, the outcome of today’s election, however bad, will be of only passing importance in this world; our conduct in this world will be of eternal significance, both for ourselves and any other souls we can bring with us, in the next.

On Being A Child of This Age

(This Throwback was first published 30 June 2015)

G.K. Chesterton

The great G.K. Chesterton said of the Catholic Church: “ It is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.” If you doubt that the slavery of our particular age is getting more degrading by the day, consider the following random samples from the unraveling of our once-Christian culture:

- The big news from last week, of course, was the U.S. Supreme Court’s “finding” that the Constitution of the United States mandates that states may not exclude same-sex couples from their definition of marriage.  In his dissent from the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts  wrote “The right it announces has no basis in the Constitution or this Court’s precedent.” No, but it is perfectly attuned to the Spirit of this Age.

- A major newspaper in Pennsylvania announces that it “will no longer accept, nor will it print, op-Eds and letters to the editor in opposition to same-sex marriage”, with the grudging exception that it would “for a limited time, accept letters and op-Eds on the high court's decision and its legal merits.”  Journalists in the United States may claim to have an unshakable commitment to free speech, but the Spirit of our Age does not tolerate opposition.

- It is equally intolerant of any disagreement on the new conventional wisdom that sex, or “gender”, is not something inborn, but a thing we can create for ourselves and change at will. Actress Alice Eve learned this the hard way after she pointed out via social media the seemingly obvious fact that cosmetic surgery can’t turn male Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner into an actual woman.  After a torrent of abuse from the forces of "tolerance", she was soon sounding uncannily like the victim of one of Stalin’s show trials: “Maybe this needs a little thought. I felt confused and now I feel enlightened and like I know what education I need to move forward.” 

-Since “gender reassignment” surgery is such a good thing, how can we withhold it from anyone? The New York Times, in an article celebrating surgical intervention of this sort for teens, reports that in Oregon 15 year-olds can undergo this mutilating, life-changing procedure at state expense . . . and without parental consent. The Times reports that “advocates say that extending treatment to teenagers will alleviate depression and suicide”, although it concedes that “The evidence is mixed. A large-scale Swedish study at the Karolinska Institute found that starting about a decade after gender reassignment surgery, transgender people were still more than 19 times as likely to die by suicide as the general population [link here, which the NYT somehow forgot to include].”  Other researchers have published similarly grim results, such as this U.S. study that found more than four out of ten transsexuals have attempted suicide. Perhaps it would more “mixed” if they could point to other studies  demonstrating an upside? No matter. The Spirit of the Age has declared it good.

     - This article at Life Site News reports on Laura, a healthy, 24 year-old woman in Belgium who will be killed by lethal injection this summer, simply because she doesn’t want to live.  She says, “Life, that’s not for me.”  Well, to each his or her own, I suppose.  After all, she has received official approval. Interestingly, one of the psychiatrists who signed off on her case is currently hawking a book touting “euthanasia for psychological reasons”, so Laura can get what she wants and give the doc a little publicity as well.  The Spirit of the Age calls that a win-win!

I could go on, but you get the idea.  The proverbial Visitor From Another World could only conclude that we are in the midst of some sort of suicidal societal dementia, or possessed by a malevolent demon that renders us incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy, and that is intent on destroying not only us as individuals but also the institutions that sustain us.  Or perhaps, if he’s familiar with Earth literature, he might see us as an entire world full of Victor Frankensteins who, like the eponymous protagonist of Mary Shelley’s novel, seek to usurp God’s power of creation, only to spawn a destructive force beyond our control.  It would be easy to look at the Signs of the Times and despair.

    Despair, however, is not an option for us, because despair means giving up hope. Christian Hope is the confidence that God will fulfill his promises of mercy and salvation, and if we surrender that trust, we are giving up on God; we are in fact, committing a grave sin. Instead, St. Paul instructs us to “Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer” (Romans 12:12).  In other words, if we stay connected to our Lord, and endure our present hardships with His help, we will be with Him in His final victory. That’s not a bad deal.

    Clinging to the Lord, of course, is not simply a personal matter; we are called to be witnesses to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Who knows? Our wayward countrymen may yet amaze us like the Ninevites surprised Jonah when they repented in sackcloth and ashes (see Jonah 3).  Short of that happy but perhaps unlikely outcome, we might at least rescue some fortunate individuals; as scripture tells us,“whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins” (James 5:20).  Finally, by remaining faithful to Christ we can serve as one of his instruments in preserving his Church, which will be a source of healing after today’s craziness has run its course.  As the future Pope Benedict XVI said in a famous radio address almost half a century ago, “when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.”

    Which brings us back to where we started. Chesterton tells us that the Catholic Church is the only thing that frees us from enslavement to whatever the current foolishness happens to be.  But it is not a freedom for our own sake alone, it is freedom for service: service to our Lord and our fellow men and women, and service to the Truth . . . and the truth about humanity is and always has been that we were made to love and serve the Lord in this world, and to be eternally happy with him in the next.  Isn’t that infinitely better than anything the Spirit of This Age has to offer?