By DONALD DeMARCO
C. S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, affirms that “good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.”
This is a bold statement. In today’s world it would be dismissed not only as politically incorrect, but as both judgmental as well as offensive. Nonetheless, it is a matter of common sense.
Good people know what good is. Therefore, since evil is a privation of good, they also know something about evil.
But bad men, because they do not know what good is, cannot know what evil is. When we are awake, we know both what being awake is as well as what being asleep is. But while we are asleep, we know neither.
In 1 Cor. 2:15-16, St. Paul states:
“But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (New King James Version).
In Matt. 6:23 and in Luke 11:34, we are told that “if the eye is worthless, your whole body is in darkness.”
Lewis’ assertion is well supported by Scripture.
A sixth-century philosopher, Boethius, sharply criticized those “who slay the rich and powerful harvest of Reason with the barren thorns of Passion. They habituate men to their sickness of mind instead of curing them.”
It is an old story. And it continues to be played out.
Education is firmly on the side of enlightenment. But education has run into a major problem in today’s world in which it is considered unforgivable to make anyone feel uncomfortable. And some truths do precisely that.
But education is supposed to be enlightening, not necessarily comforting. It begins with the mind, not with feelings. But if the mind is in darkness, then the will has lost its reliable guide and the whole person is plunged into darkness.
I was led to think about these things after reading an account by a certain Lia Mills who was thrown out of her classroom because she thought that education began with open-minded reasoning rather than by clinging to a closed-minded ideology.
During a class discussion on the proper use of language, her professor stated that she is “always careful to refer to those who oppose abortion as ‘anti-choice,’ since they stand in opposition to a woman’s right to choose.”
Miss Mills, then a seventh-grader, ventured to express a more reasonable opinion. “They are not ‘anti-choice’,” she said and proceeded to defend her claim by pointing out that we would not say that every person who opposes murder or rape is “anti-choice.”
To bolster her argument she went on to say that those who oppose abortion are not “anti-choice” since they support most choices, “so long as the choice doesn’t interfere with the rights of another human being.”
This seemingly mild and sensible line of reasoning, incorporating indisputable facts, opened the floodgates to hostility and invective. Miss Mills was eventually ousted from the class.
She had crossed the line and made other students feel uncomfortable. She was told to censor herself in order to avoid making other people feel uncomfortable in the future. This meant that she should keep her “offensive, discriminatory beliefs” to herself.
In addition, she was obliged to make an apology to the class. Her apology, however, was criticized, dissected, and subsequently deemed “insensitive and insincere.”
Lia Mills, now 19, remains a stouthearted defender of reason. Her experience with her intolerant classmates only strengthened her resolve to employ reason in the defense of unborn life. She did not find the unreasonableness, intolerance, and hostility of her classmates to be an inducement to join the unthinking crowd.
A LifeNews.com story on March 28, 2014 reports that Lia has “blossomed into an articulate pro-life advocate, penning an article taking on euthanasia that ran at LifeNews last year and was very well-received.
“Here is how she describes herself on her Twitter account: ‘Lover of Jesus. Daughter of the Most High. Human Rights Activist. Public Speaker. Pro-life. Survivor. Revivalist. Nation shaker. World changer’.”
Miss Mills’ experience, one hopes, will open the eyes of the many people she addresses in the many pro-life talks she gives throughout North America. We might say, with C.S. Lewis, that she is a good person who knows something about both good and evil.
In his 1879 encyclical on Christian philosophy, Aeterni Patris, Pope Leo XIII reminded his flock and the rest of the world, that “since it is in the very nature of man to follow the guide of reason in his actions, if his intellect sins at all his will soon follows; and thus it happens that false opinions, whose seat is in the understanding, influence human actions and pervert them.”
Pope Leo was not thinking about abortion when he penned these words. Nonetheless, they apply to the present abortion discussion very well. When the eye does not see, the will is also in darkness. When the nature of the unborn human being is not seen for what it is, all sorts of perversions follow.
C.S. Lewis, together with St. Paul, St. Matthew, St. Luke, Boethius, Pope Leo XIII, and, yes, Lia Mills, make a formidable tandem in defense of reason, education, and the pro-life cause.
I would imagine that even Pope Leo XIII, had he been enrolled in the feminist class Lia Mills attended, would have been asked to leave.
The Pontiff was a great champion of philosophy, especially the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. In his aforementioned encyclical he stated that Aquinas “victoriously combated the errors of former times, and supplied invincible arms to put those to rout which might in after-times spring up.”
Philosophy is never out of season. Because it is both a universal and timeless human faculty, it rises above party interests and passing fads. Pro-life people are not anti-choice. Their adversaries, however, are anti-reason.
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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 latest works, How to Remain Sane in a World That Is Going Mad; Ten Major Moral Mistakes and How They Are Destroying Society; and How to Flourish in a Fallen World 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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