Faith And Personal Identity
By DONALD DeMARCO
In the year 2001, one hundred years after the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated Leo Tolstoy, his great-great-grandson, Vladimir Tolstoy, requested that the Church review Tolstoy’s teachings on the grounds that the excommunication of this great writer was a hindrance to national unity.
Tolstoy had no belief in the immortality of the soul and regarded Christ as merely a man. His novel, Resurrection, published in 1899, includes strong criticism of church ritual.
Tolstoy provided clear testimony of his rejection of the Church when he wrote: “It is perfectly justifiable that I have renounced the Church that calls itself Orthodox….I renounce all the sacraments….I have truly renounced the Church, I have stopped fulfilling its rites, and I have written in my will to my close ones that they should not allow any clergymen from the Church near me when I will be dying.”
Church officials made it clear that they stand by the church’s 1901 decision. Moreover, they pointed out that Tolstoy excommunicated himself.
I recall interviewing a cleaning lady for our home. She informed us that she did not do dusting and her bad back prevented her from doing any lifting as well as executing a variety of other chores that are usually associated with cleaning a house.
Her forte, strangely enough, was gossip, and I felt that this alone would not get the house clean. Nonetheless, she identified herself as a “cleaning lady.”
I wished her well, while thinking to myself that she should probably pursue some other line of work. It was clear enough that her self-identification had nothing to do with who she is or what she does.
Personal identity cannot be merely the name we assign to others or the label we confer upon ourselves. It must be rooted in who we are, which is to say, in what we believe and in how we live. A person who formally rejects all that his church teaches, cannot consider himself as being one of its members. A woman who does not clean a house has no justification in calling herself a cleaning lady.
A pressing problem in today’s world involves the self-proclaimed Catholic who rejects a goodly part of Catholic teaching. Can a person truly be a Catholic if he accepts abortion, promotes contraception, and allies himself with a party that plans to force pro-life Catholics to pay for abortions?
Such is the case with Sen. Tim Kaine, former governor of Virginia and Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate. How much of one’s Catholicity can one barter away and still maintain one’s identity as a Catholic?
It is an interesting question because it raises another question that is even more problematic. Can one identify himself as a humanitarian if he accepts the slaughter of millions of other human beings? A good Catholic must first be a good human being. Catholicism and humanitarianism coincide. They do not stand in opposition to each other.
It is most interesting that Kaine believes that education is the answer for reducing the incidence of abortion. This is why he wants abortion to remain legal. Is the Democratic candidate at all aware of the fact that the secular institutions of higher education are bastions of abortion promoting rhetoric and are largely closed to any pro-life group that attempts to educate people as to what abortion really is and how it impacts negatively on society?
In addition, Kaine apparently rejects his own Church as a pro-life teacher, since her own form of education on the subject has eluded him. What institutions are left to teach that abortion is not such a good idea?
The belief that education will reduce the incidence of abortion is naive in the extreme, since “education” has been promoting abortion for decades. It simply flies in the face of facts. Is there any other politician who believes that crimes should remain legal and gradually eliminated through education? Who would propose that shoplifting should not be illegal, but eliminated through education? But education does not promote shoplifting and yet this particular crime prevails, costing store billions of dollars per annum.
Something more than educational institutions are needed in order to rectify any serious moral problem. Does anyone believe that if terrorists were properly educated, they would abandon their terrorist activities? Kaine’s naiveté is enough to disqualify him from any political activity, let alone being vice-president of the United States.
The Church’s consistent and forceful teaching on the subject could not be clearer. Vatican II referred to abortion as an “unspeakable crime.” Pope Francis recently stated that abortion is an “abominable crime.” Abortion rejects God’s creation, deprives unborn children of both life and hope, and contravenes more than 2,000 years of unwavering Church teaching.
Can a football player identify himself as such if he resolutely opposed to winning? He would certainly be cut from the team, an action that both the Church and the secular world, in certain circumstances, would be reluctant to take.
What we truly believe goes into who we are, not what other people call us or what we arbitrarily call ourselves. And what we truly believe determines how we live. To believe and live as a Catholic is to be open and loving to all one’s neighbors, even “the least of my little ones” (Matt. 25:41).
Abortion is not an act of love. And what is a Christian without love?
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Poetry That Enters the Mind and Warms the Heart; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World are available through Amazon.com.
(Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Bishop Exner Award.)
