All This Evil - What's Going On? (pt. 1 From September 21st)
I’m glad that last Sunday we celebrated the Feast of the “Triumph of the Cross”. In my homilies I pointed out that God is very capable of bringing good out of evil situations if we decide to go along with His plan for our lives and the world. The cross was a terrible evil, yet God brought the greatest possible good out of it: the salvation of mankind.
This last week, as our nation once again faced evil acts (the remembrance of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the more recent political assassination), it’s good to keep in mind that our God can still bring great good out of evil, and allow the truth to conquer lies. Still, the lies tend to confuse many, and even good thoughtful people have expressed confusion when some people continue to promote their lies. We’re confused—or perhaps disbelief would be a better term—about how some people can publicly condone murder “as long as it’s done for the right reasons”. It’s especially shocking to see some Americans not only approving of the death of Charlie Kirk, but even joyously celebrating, and even mocking, his death.
What’s going on?
In this column and next week’s, I hope I can lend some insight and bring some perspective on what’s happening, both in our nation and in other parts of the world. (I recommend two books that have recently helped me to have a better appreciation of the issues and come to grips with the challenges that our Church faces in the modern world: From Christendom to Apostolic Mission and its sequel, The Religion of the Day, both published by the University of Mary Press, N.D.)
As a starting point, it’s important to recognize that many of the most basic assumptions about life and what’s important in life that were held by our parents and grandparents (depending on how old, or in my case, how ancient you happen to be) are no longer shared by much of the population. These assumptions were driven by the tenets of Christianity even when many people were not fervently practicing Christians. Belief about a God, life after death, and basic morality were woven into the fabric of our society. The unquestioning acceptance of those tenets was noticeably challenged in our country around the time of the industrial revolution (and sooner in other parts of the world) and were generally referred to by the proponents of the new viewpoints as “progressive”.
As I explained in an article I wrote last year, there was a social phenomenon called “modernism”, followed by an even more pernicious trend termed “post-modernism”. At various times in the last few centuries, there have been periods of “enlightenment”, which sometimes challenged the traditional teachings of the Church, but always in the end fell far short of their high ideals for society. And for good reason, because many of their premises were ultimately flawed and shallow, or just false.
Modernism might be seen as one of these. It arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly 1900 through about 1930, and was not just an artistic trend but a social one as well. It developed as a response to some of the major scientific discoveries and industrial changes of the time, as well as being influenced by new theories of psychology. It was a time of unprecedented rapid change, and society didn’t know how to handle that.
In the search for the deeper truths of reality, it looked within the person—who had become just a cog in a large industrial wheel, rather than looking to a God. Old values of civilization were discarded, including those taboos which suppressed immoral urges. There was a rejection of all religious and moral principles. Modernists believed there were other means of obtaining social progress. It sanctioned exploration of the perverse, as an attempt to get in touch with our “natural appetite” for adultery, incest, homosexuality, murder, deceit, theft, etc. Rather than perceiving these things as morally degenerate, they were seen as “liberating”! (Of course, if widely adopted and practiced, such nihilism would also result in the collapse of any civilization.) In short, it devalued any traditional or supernatural elements. It replaced God, as the focus of life, with mankind.
Post-modernism, rather than being a reaction to and rejection of modernism, instead took it a step further. Modernism may have replaced God with “mankind” or “society”, but post-modernism replaced society with the individual person. Now, “whatever the individual believes to be true, is true”. The problem with this, of course is that if all truth is subjective, there is no such thing as objective truth. Two and two does not equal four —not if I think that’s limiting or even racist. All truth, all reality has become entirely subjective. Good or evil is what the individual says it is. It is the modern equivalent of the sin of Adam and Eve, who wanted to be “like gods, knowing what is good and what is evil.” (In the ancient world it was believed that only deities could decide what was good or evil.)
In our current American society, we’re dealing with people who have eaten, even without realizing it, the rotten fruit of a bad tree, and with great fervor insist that everyone should take a bite.
I’ll explain more in next week’s column. Meanwhile, pray for our nation, but with hope, because God can—and is—bringing great good out of a great evil.
In Jesus,
Fr. Michael