By DONALD DeMARCO
Jack Benny entertained American audiences for more than three decades as the reigning comedian of radio and television. His most memorable and hilarious bit involved his delayed response to a gunman who presented him with an ultimatum — “Your money or your life!” After a dramatic pause, the inveterate skinflint answered — “I’m thinking it over!
What was considered those many years ago a joke is now a matter of serious deliberation. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, how do we decide between a “sick society” and a “healthy economy”? Government leaders continue to crow about the importance of an economic recovery even though it might come at the price of a sicker society with its inevitable rise in the number of deaths. On the other hand, governments scarcely, if ever, mention moral reform. American President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continue to promise that the day will arrive when our economy will be flourishing and better than ever.
Robert Cardinal Sarah’s book, The Day Is Now Far Spent, was published the year before the pandemic arrived. It warns that there may be trouble ahead if people do not make God the center of their lives. His warning is directed principally to the Catholic Church. If the “Salt of the Earth” loses its flavor, what can be said of the rest of the world?
“It is of capital importance here,” writes the good cardinal, “to rediscover the notion of human nature as the condition for the flourishing of freedom” (p. 158). “Our humanity attains the fullness of flourishing, by accepting the gift of sexed nature, while cultivating and developing it” (p. 160). And God is “the treasure and source of all human flourishing” (p. 224). Christ, Himself, has said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
But how can a person flourish in a world in which darkness is falling precipitously? He cannot do it by himself. He is completely reliant on God. As Cardinal Sarah tells us, with loving concern: “Dear friends, you wish to lift up the Church? Get down on your knees! That is the only way! If you proceed otherwise, what you will do will not be from God. Only God can save us. He will do so only if we pray to Him” (p. 16).
Our present predicament, as Cardinal Sarah explains, is twofold. We have cut ourselves off from God, and, at the same time, we have cut ourselves off from our own roots. Therefore, we find ourselves floating in space with neither aspiration nor anchor. Under such circumstances, flourishing is not possible. An aggressive Western globalization, according to Sarah “tends to make humanity uniform…cutting man off from his roots, from his religion, from his culture, history, customs, and ancestors” (p. 242).
On the one hand, a “fluid atheism,” a subtle and dangerous state of mind “snares priest and parishioner alike within a web of falsehood and compromises” (p. 334). “Western liberty is now a ‘shadow play’” (p. 233). We no longer understand that true liberty is the daughter of truth, which directs liberty to seek the good. If I say that two plus two is five, does that make me freer? “Rather,” he states, not mincing words, “I am more idiotic” (p. 276).
There are an infinite number of errors. But none of them make us free. Without truth, liberty becomes license, merely the illusion of liberty which exhausts itself is self-destructive activities.
On the other hand, in denying the gift of our sexed humanity, we are also making our sexuality fluid. We no longer believe that God created us male and female. We prefer to re-create ourselves according to our whims. Some profess that there are no men or women, just whatever we conceive ourselves to be. This fluid sexuality leads to the LGBT coalition which is mistakenly presented to the world as a “community.” One should be grateful here for Cardinal Sarah’s refusal to acquiesce in political correctness.
“Thus it is politically correct,” he writes with his acid pen, “to speak about the ‘gay community’ as though they were a separate class of people with a common culture, a particular way of dressing and speaking, neighborhoods set aside in the cities, and even their own stores and restaurants.”
He urges those who are tempted by homosexuality “not to be shut away in the prison of LGBT ideology” (p. 167).
The distinguished French theologian Henri de Lubac has contrasted submission to Revelation with submission to a purely human system of thinking and acting. He defines the former as a “fertilizing submission” and the latter as one that is “sterilizing.” This distinction is in accord with the words of St. John the Evangelist: “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the Evil One. Do not love the world or the things in the world” (1 John 2:12-15).
There is a great deal of talk from Catholics who call themselves “liberal” to change the Church. But inevitably what this means is that the Church should be more like the world. One particular priest has gone as far as to say that the world is the “leaven” that the Church needs in order to grow. Nevertheless, as Cardinal Sarah reminds us, this is empty talk since “the Western world no longer has any experience of the supernatural” (p. 49).
In rereading Cardinal Sarah’s book, it is possible to discern in it a prophetic element. The current pandemic can very well be a consequence of abandoning God and living by secular norms. We should be more concerned about moral reform than economic recovery. Naturally, we need both, but a moral life in which we honor God more than mammon must be given priority. If we understand the true meaning of the pandemic, it beckons us to return to God and live by His Commandments.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest three books are How to Navigate Through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life [posted on amazon.com], and the soon to be published, A Moral Compass for a World in Confusion.)
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