By DONALD DeMARCO
“Verizon,” the name of the electronic communications giant, is what is called, in sophisticated circles, a “portmanteau” word. It is a hybrid of two words fused together like “Internet” which is the blending of “International” and “Network.” “Motel” (motor + hotel), “televangelist” (television + evangelist), and “brunch” (breakfast + lunch) are popular examples of portmanteau words.
The two words that make up “Verizon” are “verus” and “horizon.” “Verizon” is a bold hybrid that suggests that there is a bright future on the horizon and that it belongs to the world of electronic communications.
But if “Verizon,” though extremely well-marketed, is not our true horizon in any moral sense, we are left to ponder what our true horizon might be. The distinguished theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar once remarked that every family should have a “hearth” and a “horizon.” Traditionally, the mother had the role of the former, the father, the role of the latter.
Today, however, uncompromising egalitarianism is loath to attach specific roles to men or to women. We have lost sight of our horizon and seek meaning in the “Now.” As a result, we have lost a way of connecting the present with the future. Our moral compass does not seem to be pointing in any particular direction.
Christianity brought into the world what now seems to be a lost horizon. We have become immersed in the immanent. We have lost our way and no longer know what road to take.
As Dag Hammarskjold has written, “Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find the right road.”
This loss of a larger vision seems to be evident in the current attitude toward marriage and divorce.
Christ made it clear enough when speaking to the Pharisees that marriage is indissoluble:
“Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Matt. 19:3ff; Mark 10:2ff.).
The Pharisees, as do many Catholics today, found this to be a hard saying. But Christ repeated that “from the beginning it [divorce] was not so” (Gen. 1:27).
The Pharisees were well aware that Moses allowed divorce, but Christ told them that it was because of “their hardness of heart” that Moses allowed divorce. Christ was not downgrading the importance of the moment. He wanted to set it in the context of a larger perspective so that it would not obscure the distant horizon. It was the true horizon that Christ had in mind.
The Pharisees believed in the here and now, in comfort and convenience. Christ was insisting that their vision was insufficiently narrow to see the horizon toward which He wanted them to direct their lives.
Contraception was accepted in the modern world because it promised a more comfortable life and greater convenience for the moment. But it opened the door to abortion, same-sex marriage, and various forms of euthanasia. It had a devastating effect on both the integrity and the very meaning of marriage and the family.
The English essayist Clive Bell examined sundry civilizations from ancient Greece to Enlightenment France and concluded that no great civilization ever placed comfort ahead of more important values.
The commitment to comfort is not an effective strategy for the long road. We have sentimentalized marriage and feel sorry for divorced Catholics who want to remarry.
But Christ is not being legalistic or insensitive when He teaches that marriage is indissoluble. He knows that the loving bond of matrimony is of critical importance for the good of the spouses, for the proper care of children, and for the benefit of society.
As the family loses its integrity, the government becomes, more and more, the formative principle of society. Sentimentality leads to easy divorce, adultery, instability, neglect of children, and political oppression. Because sentimentality lacks a horizon, it fails to see things in their larger implications.
Sentimentality, succumbing to emotions rather than employing reason, is both myopic and inconsistent. The sentimentalist is in love with “compassion,” but he has wounded that word by cutting it off from any horizon that would give it its true significance.
The late essayist Joseph Sobran was right on the mark when he made the following statement:
“What is strange — at least at first sight — is that this callousness about the unborn child should occur in a society where we are forever hectored to show ‘compassion’ for others. Even as enlightened voices urge us to take responsibility for unseen strangers, they soothingly release us from responsibility to our own children.”
For Malcolm Muggeridge, compassion is “a beautiful word now so abased as to be unusable.”
In Eph. 4:13, St. Paul advises us to be “tender-hearted.” This is a most interesting word. It contrasts with the hard-hearted people of Moses’ time, and yet St. Paul does not use it to advocate sentimentality. In 1 Cor. 16:13, St. Paul urges us “to be watchful and stand firm in the faith, be manful and stout-hearted.” Our hearts should be tender enough to accept God’s Word and to forgive others. At the same time, they should be stout-hearted enough to carry on God’s Word and not collapse under social pressure.
We should not lose sight of our true horizon or submit to secular or technological horizons that are mere fabrications. Hearth and horizon connect the present with the future, the immanent with the transcendent, and the temporal with the eternal. Life is always larger than what it seems to be in the moment. Christ wants us to live on that larger and more rewarding plane.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a senior fellow of Human Life International. He is professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University in Waterloo, Ontario, an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College in Cromwell, Conn., and a regular columnist for St. Austin Review. His books are available through Amazon.com. Some of his recent writings may be found at Human Life International’s Truth and Charity Forum. He is the 2015 Catholic Civil Rights League recipient of the prestigious Exner Award.)
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