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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
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"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

On September 14, 1998 the Holy Father issued an encyclical entitled Reason and Faith. In it he traces the relationship between faith and reason, the interaction between philosophy and theology, and the different stances of contemporary philosophy. His letter applies to all peoples of whatever religious persuasion and philosophical background. Everyone is a philosopher in that everyone must have a worldview and everyone must have a set of values that is the ultimate guide for his acts. As the pope remarks, certain fundamental questions pervade the life of every human being: "Who am I? Where do I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life?" The pope asserts, "No one can avoid this questioning, neither the philosopher nor the ordinary person."

The pope notes that at one time there was a belief that human reason could understand everything and even the mysteries of revelation had to be reduced to reason. In our day we have the opposite situation, a despair of ever finding absolute truth. The pope criticizes several contemporary philosophies that, for different reasons, state that truth cannot be found. These persons are called relativists because for them there is no absolute truth. "All positions are equally valid…. Truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines even if they contradict one another." The pope notes that sometimes persons try to decide the rightness of a thing by a parliamentary majority. Truth is what 51% of the people think it is. This sort of relativism suffers from fatal theoretical and practical defects.

On the theoretical side relativism violates the principle of non-contradiction, that is, that we cannot affirm something and at the same time deny it. Statements that contradict one another cannot both be true. One cannot say that he exists and simultaneously does not exist. Similarly one cannot say that the act of adultery is both moral and immoral at the same time. Only one of the two opinions can be true.

In practice relativism, holding that contradictory assertions can have equal validity, is totally unworkable and universally rejected irrespective of what persons may hold in theory. Only an idiot would maintain that the point of view of a Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and other dictators whereby they felt justified in killing and brutalizing entire populations had any validity whatever. If there is no absolute truth to which all people must adhere and all are free to choose what they like as truth, then the genocidal programs of these notorious dictators were also good because from their point of view these were necessary and good acts. Nobody considers those who are guilty of ethnic cleansing, terrorism, murder, rape, incest, child pornography, armed robbery or blackmail as having a point of view that enjoys equal validity with the opposite position. We put these people along with their points of view into prison and thereby in practice declare relativism untrue, whatever we may spout in theory.

Perhaps it is possible to hold the mind in suspended animation about what is true, but in real life whenever we act we cannot avoid taking a position. One may pretend to be agnostic about the morality of premarital sex, but if one engages in it he has taken a position. He has decided either that is morally good or that it is evil and he chooses to embrace evil. Neutrality is impossible in choices of human acts.

All our choices have consequences. People may convince themselves that abuse of narcotics and excessive consumption of alcohol are not morally evil but they cannot undo the consequences to their bodies and their social life. Holding untrue positions such as the philosophy of Nazism and atheistic humanism has brought disastrous consequences to the human race.

Untrue opinions embraced to gain some advantage often come back to bite us. Take the case of contraception which is widely practiced by Catholic couples in spite of the teaching of the Church. To justify contraception one must maintain that purely recreational sex that is consensual is morally good. If contracepting couples do not believe this they are at war with themselves. If they accept the principle, they have effectively undercut all sexual morality and abandoned the right to tell their teenagers to refrain from recreational sex. Indeed if the principle is correct it could be argued that their teenagers have a right to recreational sex. Why would parents deprive their children of something they say is good? Or take another example. Polls show that 68% of women want President Clinton to get a pass for perjury and probable obstruction of justice. The reason is that Mr. Clinton has supported abortion rights, affirmative action, and has appointed women to positions in his administration. But if Mr. Clinton is allowed the luxury of picking laws that he likes and trampling those he dislikes others will play that game. If the President can commit perjury with impunity why should not persons who perjure themselves in sexual harassment or rape cases—where presumably women want the perjury laws enforced—also escape with impunity. Indeed it was in connection with a sexual harassment case that the presidential perjury occurred. Tampering with the truth in order to gain some temporary advantage inevitably results in undercutting one’s own rights. The pope writes, "Once the truth is denied to human beings, it is pure illusion to try to set them free. Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery."

As for the belief that majorities should decide what is the truth, recall the majority in Jerusalem that clamored for the death of Jesus. At least one researcher alleges that Hitler’s attempted extermination of the Jews would have had a high rating in the polls in Germany.

Why do people hold relativism in spite of its theoretical absurdity and its ruinous consequences when put into practice? The pope suggests one answer: "Persons can even run from the truth as soon as they glimpse it because they are afraid of its demands." In this he is but echoing Jesus who said, "People preferred darkness to light because their works were evil." (Jn. 3:19) We will either serve truth or we will serve falsehood. If you think that truth is a hard taskmaster wait until you start serving falsehood. Ask about the hells experienced by alcoholics and drug-addicts and how free they are. The truth, however demanding, liberates. The bothersome discipline of proper diet and exercise gives freedom to live longer lives of higher quality. Avoiding narcotics abuse keeps one from being the slave of a drug. It is essential to find the truth because "the truth will set you free" (Jn. 8:32).