By JOE SIXPACK
There was once a lion that had grown too old to be able to hunt for his food, so he decided instead to acquire his prey by trickery. He would lie in his den and pretend to be very sick. He made certain everyone knew the king of beasts was ill so they would all come and pay him homage. Each animal of nature would come to visit the lion to honor the old king, but the lion took advantage of their trust and naiveté and would devour them.
After many of the animals had disappeared, the sly fox figured out what had happened. He, too, went to visit the lion to pay homage, but remained outside the cave. “How are you?” asked the fox.
“I’m very ill,” replied the lion. “Won’t you please come in and sit with me a while?”
“No, thank you,” said the fox. “A lot of my friends are missing, and I can’t help but notice that there are many footprints entering your cave, but I see none coming out again.”
In 1 Peter 5:8-9, our first Pontiff wrote: “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world.”
The lion in our story is like the Devil. Satan is a trickster, and he always has been. Jesus said, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and he has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Satan is a deceiver, and his favorite deception is to convince mankind he doesn’t exist — that he is merely a boogeyman, a myth made up to frighten children into behaving themselves. The world no longer believes in Satan, but his evil is evident all around us.
The Devil tempts us with great subtlety. Examples in modern times are found in the legalization of abortion and same-sex unions. Playing on our sympathies, the Devil told us that surely it would be cruel for a woman to have to carry the “product” of rape or incest, or that the life of the mother is certainly more important than a life that hasn’t yet seen the light of day. The play on our sympathies about rape or incest seemed reasonable at first glance, but as Catholics who obey God’s commands we know that compounding one mortal sin with another of taking a human life is wrong and a crime worthy of eternal punishment.
We learned that the threat to the life of a mother who is pregnant is defined as her emotional health, which tells us the Devil tricked us from the beginning. Notice how the Devil leads people to change our language: a woman isn’t carrying a baby in her womb, but rather a product of conception — dehumanizing the preborn child so it becomes easier to abort, like excising a tumor.
The Devil used the homosexual lobby to lie to us. Homosexuals first told us they only wanted to live out who they were free from the fear of being discriminated against. They told us they would never ask for special rights, that they only wanted to feel safe in society. That was a lie. They next began to demand special rights on the basis of how they choose to pervert themselves in their sexual activities, telling us we must accept how they live. Then they demanded the right to be “married,” something that is not possible either theologically or philosophically.
And the Devil uses his deceptions to make us feel like bigots if we oppose the destructive force of homosexuality as something normal. It’s not normal. Sodomy is one of the three mortal sins that cry out to God from the earth for justice, which is why God destroyed two cities for this perversion. They changed the language, just like the abortion lobby. They hijacked the word “gay” to mean homosexual, but that isn’t at all what it means. Until the 1970s, “gay” meant lighthearted, carefree, and happy.
I’ve worked with many homosexual men over the last thirty years, leading some of them to a chaste life as Catholics. I have never met a practicing homosexual who is happy. Many put on a good front of happiness, but it doesn’t take long in listening to them to realize they aren’t at all happy. Indeed, no one living in a state of chronic mortal sin is happy, whether homosexual or heterosexual.
Not only does Satan tempt us as a society, but he very subtly tempts us individually. It’s easy to justify what we want to do so as to avoid what we ought to do. The man who says to himself that he works hard all week, so there is nothing wrong with getting hammered after work on Friday night is justifying doing what he wants, despite the fact that God’s law tells us drunkenness is a sin. The woman who tells herself the summer weather is hot and nobody any longer believes exposing bare flesh is wrong dresses in grave violation of the Sixth Commandment, tempting men by dressing in ways that would have landed them in jail fifty years ago and labeled them as loose women. It doesn’t matter what modern society thinks, but rather only the unchangeable laws of an unchangeable God.
We Catholics have bought into the modern culture’s lies, which are the Devil’s lies. We have accepted the moral errors of situation ethics and the fundamental option.
Situation ethics is an error that contends moral decisions shouldn’t be based on moral laws, but on the specific particular situation in which a person finds himself. Since this situation is unique and unrepeatable, the person’s conscience alone is to determine the right moral decision, apart from any principle or law. The fundamental error of situation ethics is that it is incompatible with the fact that God gave us an objective moral norm to judge what is right and wrong: the Ten Commandments.
The Church has always taught there are some acts which are intrinsically good and some which are intrinsically evil, apart from any circumstances. A good example of situation ethics would be for a newlywed couple who use contraception because they are not yet financially capable of caring for children. Yet contraception is always morally evil, no matter the circumstances.
The “fundamental option” is the theory of those who hold that a person commits mortal sin only when he has the intention of rejecting God. An example of this would be when a couple engages in premarital sex, believing themselves to be expressing love rather than rejecting God. However the Church teaches that when a person knowingly and willfully does anything which is seriously against God’s law, a mortal sin is always committed, no matter the sinner’s intention.
As Catholics, it’s our responsibility to have a positive impact on culture and society, to change it however we can in a way that leads mankind to God. Our individual acts that seem insignificant work in a conglomerate way to change the world. But for us to do that, we must first work to change and improve ourselves. It is our responsibility to form a right conscience in accordance with Christ’s teachings, as passed on to us through His Holy Catholic Church.
We have to stop justifying what we want and begin doing as we ought, and have frequent recourse to the Sacrament of Penance. The counterculture has become the prevailing culture, and it’s our responsibility to become the new counterculture to bring the return of a Christian culture. Our modern culture is the Devil, and we must “resist him, firm in our faith” in order to stop him. It’s time to stop caring about what is politically correct or about what society thinks and care more about what God thinks.
If you have a question or comment you can reach out to me through the “Ask Joe” page of JoeSixpackAnswers.com, or you can email me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.
Hey, how would you like to see things like this article every week in your parish bulletin as an insert? You or your pastor can learn more about how to do that by emailing me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.
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