By DONALD DeMARCO
If prayer and pen can conjure up a gift, I would like to utilize this possibility and provide five Christmas gifts for my faithful readers of The Wanderer. These “gifts” would be of an intellectual nature, “lights,” as it were, consistent with the “Five Mysteries of Light” that St. John Paul II added to the rosary.
Christmas centers on a Light that dispels darkness and illumines the mind and heart so that the message of Jesus can be more clearly discerned. My “gifts,” therefore, are intended to illuminate five areas of darkness that have clouded certain truths of the Catholic faith. My hope is that these “gifts,” which are merely restatements of enduring truths, will be treasured and not exchanged for something more trendy.
Or, to put it another way, there are a few lights on the Christmas tree that are flickering. All they need is a little tightening so that they can shine again with their original unwavering brightness.
1) Religion protects and cultivates spirituality:
The secular world is in love with spirituality. It is religion that it objects to. Thus, we find prevalent in our society a false dichotomy between spirituality and religion. The heretical belief has been well circulated that organized religion stifles spirituality. The problem with unorganized spirituality, however, is that it soon becomes disorganized spirituality. No one exclaims, “I love baseball, but I don’t like organized baseball; structure is spoiling the game, there are too many rules.”
A vital function of Catholicism, as a religion, is to test and clarify spirituality to ensure that it is directed to God and in harmony with the needs of one’s neighbor. Religion is to spirituality what music is to dancing, engineering is to mathematics, and what a directed life is to a series of momentary impulses.
2) Catholicism teaches truth:
Do Catholic churches need to make available material that promotes abortion, same-sex marriage, human cloning, and so forth, so that churchgoers can become acquainted with the “other side”? The “other side” is represented adequately enough by incessant reiterations through the media and other highly visible avenues of secular culture.
Churches have a duty to represent the truth of Church teachings. They have no need of either sleeping with the enemy or having the enemy sleep with them. When a math teacher explains that two plus two equals four, he incurs no responsibility to represent contradictory viewpoints. Adam and Eve may have been better off had they not considered the viewpoint of the Serpent. It is by the light of truth that we are freed. The “other side” is the dark side. And, in the words of St. Paul, “Light and darkness have nothing in common.”
3) Catholics are fundamentally humanists:
Secular journalists never tire of complaining that Catholics are forever trying to “impose” their faith values on the public. But Catholics do not try to impose Sunday Mass, Ash Wednesday abstinence, and holy days of obligation — which are faith-based — on non-Catholics. In fact, they could not “impose” any values on anyone, even if their lives depended on it. Values are intrinsically non-imposable.
Moral issues, such as abortion and euthanasia, however, are broader, more humanistic concerns. Catholic morality is not strictly a matter of faith, but reason’s response to the natural law. It is through the universal faculty of reason that Catholics embrace all other human beings. We all begin at ground zero. Issues involving human rights are not narrowly Catholic, but represent a convergence that unites all human beings. Catholic morality is simply anthropology put into practice. Catholics impart truths; they do not impose them.
Our Voyage
4) The dogma is the drama:
Dogma, which simply refers to teaching, is neither stifling nor a barrier to creativity. Without dogma the Church would be devoid of content and, as a result, be both unhelpful as well as unintelligible. She would have no stories to warm the heart, no lamps to light the way. According to Church dogma, man is able to know something about God though this knowledge is infinitely less than what God is in Himself.
Consequently, there is endless opportunity for creativity, as man navigates from the finite toward the infinite. A ship, thanks to her navigational instruments, can explore no end of hitherto unknown regions. But take away these instruments, and the ship is lost. Just as the light from the North Star guides the ship, Church dogma gives us the confidence that our voyage has meaning and direction. The dogma, then, like any good adventure, is the drama.
5) Christ must come first:
Everyone wants peace. But how many are willing to pay the price? Peace is not simply an object of choice. It is the fortuitous consequence of choosing to live life well. If I put myself first, I inevitably find myself in conflict with all others, especially those who put themselves first. My ego is no more spacious than itself and can hardly be a peace formula for as small a multitude as two, let alone all the people in the world.
Christ’s way of love and truth embraces all mankind. Without Him, as John the Evangelist tells us, we can do nothing. The formula for JOY is to put Jesus first, others second, and yourself third.
“Thy will be done” is a simple, prayerful acknowledgment of the primacy of Christ, who is, par excellence, the Prince of Peace.
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