It seems to me that we live in a time when the whole notion of conscience is made capricious and subjective. We cannot give merit to every notion, especially if some ideas should be groundless or delusional. We cannot force objective truth and reality to morph or suffer a quantum jump at will. This does not work. Despite disorientations, the sexual faculty belongs solely to bonds between men and women. Despite any form of dysphoria, gender is fixed. Despite an alarm about consequences, a life in the womb is a child deserving of life and not a non-person or cancer for extraction. Ours is a juridical society that seeks to replace the providence of God and the dictates of nature with the fiction that we can transform creation through legislation, new laws and sympathetic court appointees. The casualty is not only the harm rendered to persons; we also commit egregious wounds upon the truth and against those who would be its heralds.
Notice the political debates that preceded the last election. When truth becomes relative, it is hard to rationally argue facts. All that is left are opinions, groundless or not. I had to turn them off because they became shouting matches where past sins were disclosed and all forms of calumny were laid against opponents. It is amazing that such should denote our political and communal life precisely at a time in the course of mankind when science and technology is making leap after leap in our understanding of things. However, when it comes to us as corporeal beings, neither the dictates of God nor the laws of nature are deemed as relevant or binding. The conscience of a good Catholic must be formed according to Christian values and the truths manifest in the created order. We are called to render rational or reasoned judgments about the acts that we would pursue. Faith and morals must always be grounded upon truth.
What is the Essential Question?
When it comes to many of us the essential question is whether the embryo or fetus or child in the womb is a human being? The right or the wrong of the matter does not rest with our judgment but with the truth. Objectively speaking, even apart from religious argumentation, the answer is YES. As to how we will be judged by God and by right-thinking people in history, it will come down to whether we understood this truth. Admittedly, I find it difficult to understand how one might not know this. When it comes to Catholics, this truth is spelled out. Dissent on the question of human life and the commandment against killing will not spare one from being convicted before God if one has committed or enabled the taking of human life. This is a matter far more important than whether such a person might take Holy Communion. The deeper issue is whether a person who subscribes to the killing of children can have a share in heaven and the kingdom of Christ. One cannot be aligned to the murderous elder Herod slaughtering the Holy Innocents while seeking the life of the Christ Child and still expect to be in good standing before almighty God. Sanctions like withholding the sacrament or even excommunication are not to punish people but to awaken them to the clear and present danger into which they have placed their immortal souls. We want to show reverence to the things of God but ultimately God can take care of himself. The whole point of the controversy in the Church is that we are trying to create a more just society, preserve the life of the innocent and save souls.
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