By DONALD DeMARCO
Virginia Woolf was an English writer, born in London in the year 1882 and regarded as one of the most important modernist authors of the twentieth century. She was particularly noted for her use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Her works have been translated into more than fifty languages. Throughout her life, however, she was plagued by mental illness, with what today would be classified as a bipolar disorder. She was institutionalized several times and tried to commit suicide at least twice. In 1941, at the age of fifty-nine, she died by drowning herself in the River Ouse at Lewes.
She was a harsh critic of Christianity and considered herself to be an atheist. In place of God, she adopted an atheist’s religion of doing good for the sake of good. Despite her troubled life, she was continuously trying to find meaning behind her suffering. In a 1929 essay, “A Room of One’s Own,” she suggests that truth is far more important than the pleasant illusions by which many people organize their lives. “Why, if it was an illusion,” she wrote, “not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place.” This remark has a certain relevance to the situation in America today after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
In the minds of many pro-abortionists, the Dobbs decision is a catastrophe. Yet, if they could honor the principle that the fact has supremacy over fiction, they should accept the truth that there never was a provision in Roe v. Wade for abortion. It is a scientific fact that human life begins at conception. According to Catholic theology, the Annunciation, being nine months prior to the Nativity, is an indication that human life begins at conception.
In the year 1620, when pilgrims were setting foot on Plymouth Rock, which augured a new beginning for them in America, two anatomists — Paolo Zacchia in Italy and Thomas Fienus in Belgium — found empirical evidence that life begins at or nearly at the moment of conception. Facts have supremacy over fiction because they ascribe a reality.
A fact is a doorway to truth. When we listen to the protests of pro-abortionists, we observe that truth is stranger than “friction.” Truth, however, is not difficult to find. What is difficult is that it is often difficult to put into practice. As St. Thomas Aquinas states, truth is simply the “conformity between mind and object.” Honoring the simple truths of life allows us to get through the day. Yet the larger truths — the nature of the unborn, the principles of morality, the reliability of the human mind, and the reality of God — are often replaced by ideologically preferred fictions.
Truth is our ticket to freedom. And by “freedom,” we mean an escape the net of illusion. Facts introduce us to truth. They are stubborn and irremovable. At the same time, they can be unpleasant, even dreadful. But facts, because they are real, lead us to larger truths that can provide meaning for our troubled lives. Virginia Woolf sought the meaning of her suffering. Her struggle against her various difficulties was no doubt courageous.
Ralph Waldo Emerson stated in his essay on the intellect that “God offers to every mind a choice between repose and truth. Take which you please — you can never have both.” Emerson’s life was shrouded by tragedy. His first wife died at age twenty after two years of marriage, and three younger brothers, all of whom had bright and promising careers, died away within a short span of years. His first son died of scarlet fever. “Repose” did not characterize Emerson’s life. Yet he never hid from the truth and drew strength from the passing of his lost loved ones.
He maintained that “the purpose of life was spiritual transformation and direct experience of divine power, here and now on Earth.”
Character is the quality of a person that allows him to pay tribute to reality, as difficult as it may be. It is based on the recognition that it is only through realism that there can be any real hope for a better future. It is choosing something that is true rather than something that is merely convenient or pleasant. In this regard, Christ urged His followers to deny themselves. This denial can be related to taking the easy path, the one of “repose,” to which Emerson refers. In the field of sports, an athlete becomes stronger when he goes up against a strong opponent.
The eternal question regarding the meaning of life should not be difficult to answer. The meaning of life is to provide challenges which, when met, help to form our personality. It is the extra effort that helps us to become the person that God intended us to be. The willingness to choose truth over illusion, fact over fiction is the test we must pass in order to attain our personal authenticity. Difficulties are blessings in disguise that we need in order to overcome complacency.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” said Robert Frost. “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.” It is tempting to do nothing. Let us say that the woods represent temptation. Let us say that our promise is to God as a proper way of thanking Him for creating us. And let us say that the miles we must travel are the length of our life which culminates in death. At that point we may hear the words of Christ: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” (Matt. 25:21).
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