The Invulnerability Of The Catholic Church
By DONALD DeMARCO
The Catholic Church is a paragon of balance. In this regard she has no peer. There is sin, but there is forgiveness. Punishment is tempered by mercy. Nature is elevated by grace. Sex is conjoined with responsibility. Rights are counterbalanced by duties; work is counterbalanced by prayer. Will is tethered to reason. Where there are difficulties, there is hope. Where there is doubt, there is faith. Where there is goodness, there is love. Problems are resolved; order is maintained.
The secular world knows no such system of balance. In its zeal to correct a wrong, it has a tendency to find the wrong existing everywhere and allows no corrective to stand in the way of preventing its omnivorous application. King Herod over-shot the mark when he murdered the Innocents in a misguided attempt to eliminate a single rival. Herod was not a champion of jurisprudence.
Racism, in the lens of the secular world, appears to be the great and unforgiveable sin. But, in its wild and furious attempt to abolish it, everything becomes a target of racism, while the remedy remains unrecognized. Thus, in some circles, mathematics itself is a source of racism, in addition to the Western tradition, art, and all religion.
In the most recent attempt to eliminate racism, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is attacking “environmental racism,” The environment, to be sure, does not discriminate. It has no moral capability to favor one race over another. Despite many pressing national problems that Canada’s leader has chosen to ignore, he has decided, much in the manner of Don Quixote, to wage an assault against the environment for being a source of racism.
On Friday, March 4, 2022, Trudeau told the House of Commons that he had “mandated the Minister of the Environment” to go ahead with an initiative to combat “environmental racism.”
“We know,” the prime minister added, “that the impacts of climate change are felt more acutely by marginalized and minority groups, and this bill would ensure environmental racism is addressed and prevented.” A reporter for Rebel News, to take but one example, has described the plan as “insane.”
We read the following in Matt. 5:45, which is an excerpt from the Sermon on the Mount: “He [God the Father] makes His sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”
No environmental racism here! If minorities need sunglasses and umbrellas, these items are readily available, but not courtesy of the environment. A tree’s fruit, as well as a garden’s vegetables, are available for everyone. It is not the environment that needs to be corrected, but the attitude of those who are in charge of an equitable distribution of the goods of the Earth. To blame the environment for racism is to seek its corrective in the wrong place.
Another example of excess occurred on the same date, March 4, that Trudeau introduced his “environmental racism” bill. Six women, wearing red-cloaked costumes over t-shirts, stormed St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco during Mass. Their message was to inform the Church that “Forced motherhood is enslavement.” When pro-lifers attempted to stand in front of the pro-abortion protesters, they were physically assaulted.
Slavery, like racism, is condemnable. But should the war against this evil be so broad that it indicts everyone who opposes abortion?
The Catholic Church does not endorse slavery. Abortion has its negative impact on women, as well as ringing the death knell for the unborn, half of whom are female.
An attempt to speak with the protesters proved futile. According to one eyewitness, “The dialogue got nowhere as the pro-choicers used circular logic, dehumanizing rhetoric, and fallacious philosophy to justify violence against the unborn.” The sextet of protesters believed in “will” but not in “reason.” Therefore, when their will was frustrated, they resorted to violence. The Church never dissociates reason from will.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who coined the term “sociology,” introduced a religion without God, which he called the Religion of Humanity. He taught that serving God was a form of slavery. Rather than being slaves to a nonexistent God, we should be “servants of Humanity.” The fact that Humanity is an abstraction made it an unworthy object of worship. Comte had difficulty in distinguishing love from slavery. Love of God is a free act and the very antithesis of slavery. Christ mandated that we love both God and neighbor. Comte, however, saw these two loves as incompatible with each other.
In a similar way, “pro-choice” advocates fail to understand that the Church loves everyone in a way that invites reciprocal love. The Church loves the unborn as well as the pregnant woman. She honors will as well as reason. The Church does not enslave; she liberates.
The excessive use of the reformative instinct in the secular world, promoting freedom, as it does, without restraint, views any apparent limitation of freedom as a form of slavery. Therefore, even marriage, and parenting, become, by this twisted logic, a form of slavery.
In his classic study, The Flight from Woman, Karl Stern refers to “The unspeakable mystery of the and — of God and His Creation, of God and His People, of Christ and the Church.” It is precisely this and that gives the Church both its breadth and its balance. It is a vain undertaking to attack one part of the Church while ignoring her counterbalancing complement. The secular world believes in one thing at a time — freedom without restriction, for example, or will without reason — which results in losing sight of the extensive damage it is doing.
The Church will remain invulnerable because it is a God-created system of balance and integrity that has no Achilles heel.
- + + (Dr. Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus of St. Jerome’s University and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College. He is a regular columnist for St. Austin Review and is the author of 41 books. He is a former corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy of Life. Some of his latest books, The 12 Supporting Pillars of the Culture of Life and Why They Are Crumbling, Glimmers of Hope in a Darkening World, and Restoring Philosophy and Returning to Common Sense are posted on amazon.com. His most recent book is Let Us not Despair. He and his wife, Mary, have five children and thirteen grandchildren.)