Return to Home Page

What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in Education?
Toppling Dominos
Anti-Christians don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of Secularism
"Don't Impose Your Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death Warrant?
Court Ordered Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for Catholics in this Election
Christians Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay Marriage
Whose Side are You on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way, Baby
The Incarnational Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them.  How Else Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality, and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well, Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong Side
"These are the Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few are Married
"...Prepare him for additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a Person?
The Point of a Point of View
Politically Correct, Morally Depraved
Population Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal if...
Get Rid of that Worthless Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues Prior to Voting

by Monsignor James C. Brunner

Faith Points

There are persons who believe that philosophy is the most useless of the sciences. Most people view philosophers as ivory tower dreamers who have no influence on the real world. They are more impressed with practical people than with mere theoreticians. I will argue that philosophers far from being impractical are really the only practical people and that the most practical science in the world is philosophy. Philosophy can be based on reason alone or it can be guided and enriched by revelation and becomes theology. Here I will use the word "philosophy" as a stand-in for one’s basic values or theology.

Philosophy is the most practical science because it is the guide for all other human activities. The first source of human activity is its goal. It is the first thing sought and the last thing achieved. One’s philosophy defines what is of value or worth seeking. Philosophy furnishes the goals of human activity and so it holds prides of place in importance in human activity.

An example of the importance of philosophy can be seen in the way different parts of humanity treat monkeys. If you go to the Orient you will discover that monkeys enjoy a privileged existence. They may come and go as they please and eat what and when and where they like without being hindered or molested. Orientals are not inclined to use them for medical experiments. The reason for this is that many Orientals consider monkeys as sacred. In America there is little hesitation in using them in medical experiments except among a tiny minority of persons largely regarded as cranks. If they tried to feast in a cornfield here the farmer would not delay in filling them with lead. Why the difference in treatment? The philosophies in each place are different. Does this make a difference? It does to the monkeys.

Many fail to appreciate the power and the scope of a philosophical principle for good or evil. The principle that we are made to the image and the likeness of God engenders respect for human life and equality of human beings. In the absence of this principle human life is sometimes considered expendable. When principles of a master race or the superiority of one’s own race replace respect for humanity as an image of God the result has been aggressive nationalism, slavery of certain groups, unfair treatment of minorities, ethnic cleansing, abortion, and so-called mercy killing. The principle that private property must yield to collective ownership spawned Communism and millions of deaths, enslavement of nations, infliction of torture, and threats to world peace. The problem with the Nazis was not merely that they were nasty and cruel but that their very principles were nasty and cruel. Their theories of a master race resulted in an attempted elimination of the Jews, considered somehow inferior, as well as of other undesirables like political enemies, Gypsies, the crippled, and the deformed. The Nazi principles worked themselves out in the killing factories erected at Auschwitz and Dachau, which were nothing if not practical and efficient.

So it is clear that philosophical dreamers are more important than practical people in the same way that a caterpillar operator is more important than his machine, however powerful it may be. Dynamite is not so much to be feared as the warped values of terrorists who might use it against human beings. So it is also important that principles and values be true, in accord with right reason and objective reality.

It is not my point in all this to have everyone specialize in philosophy or theology, but to apply it to a current situation of the adultery and admitted lying by the President. I submit that his conduct, appalling as it is in itself and in the bad example it gives, is not nearly as bad as some of the principles that are being spawned or invoked in its wake. I refer to the ideas that sexual immorality is not very important, that if adultery is consensual it should not be of anyone’s concern except the persons involved and their families, that illicit sex is a victimless crime, and that there should be no penalty for lying as long as the motive was to hide sexual indiscretion. At the root of these assertions is the principle that consensual sex has no special moral relevance and justifies lying to conceal it. That noxious principle is capable of creating more damage than what the President has admitted to.

Adultery is a grievous crime because it is a fundamental betrayal of the marriage covenant; it has the capacity to destroy families and to generate mistrust and hatred between spouses. We have no need for further documentation on the social pathology generated by the breakup of families. Our nation has for years been a veritable experimental crucible of the corrosive effects on society of broken families. If consensual sex should be regarded as morally licit why deny it to teenagers? The illicit uses of sex have produced millions of victims. There is teenage pregnancy, unwise marriages under pressure of pregnancy, abortion to cover sexual immorality or eliminate its consequences, transmission of sexually transmitted diseases that cause sterility and sometimes death, sexual harassment, the degradation of women in prostitution and pornography, both consensual activities. It is possible that incest might be consensual and, according to the principle cited above, completely permissible. Sexual immorality is far from being unimportant or merely private in nature when it has such disastrous effects in society.

The principle that government officials should be permitted to lie to us on certain occasions is equally dangerous. Politicians will not confine their lying just to cover immoral activity, but extend it to anything else that is embarrassing to them. Have we already forgotten the lies of the Soviet and Nazi regimes and the control that they thereby exercised over entire populations? Our lives literally depend on truth from our public officials and they should not be allowed to lie to us with impunity. If our public officials are not held to the standard of truth we have lost the principle that ours is a nation of the rule of law and not of persons. They could use lies to frame, imprison or execute political rivals. Lies could conceal violations of campaign laws and thus perpetuate political control of an entrenched ruling elite.

I am appalled by presidential immorality but as a practical matter I am much more concerned about the principles some are peddling to justify it. The president’s conduct can do no more harm than it has already done, but the principles I have criticized can do enormous damage for years to come. And that is not an ivory tower dream.