By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
Of course men are not women, you might respond — it’s a matter of fact. You can certainly say that for yourself if you so choose, but you cannot say it for everyone. Not anymore. The politically correct absconding from the use of reason is exploding into a political and social lobby of ever-increasing proportions. The numbers of those no longer rooted in reasoned discourse have increased in proportion to those rejecting faith. The “tyranny of relativism” Benedict XVI so wisely warned us about is no mere academic theory.
The Trump insanity syndrome is simply one aspect of this mass rejection of man’s rational faculty. The president’s impassioned pro-life leadership elicits howls of pain from the demons raging inside so many today. When a person rejects God they begin to pick and choose which of God’s gifts they will or will not use or acknowledge. The mind is one of these. God’s will and plan in Creation is another.
Social discourse now is so closely and severely policed that someone just recently was banned by Twitter for stating that “men are not women.” In solidarity I tweeted:
“Men are not women. Ban me @Twitter. Waiting. . . .”
At 233 Retweets and 1,290 Likes later, I remained unbanned from the social network, but I and the others who acknowledged my statement had made our point. The capacity for reason remains for everyone able to function without certain obvious impairments, whether or not they choose to use it. Among all of us in the faith it remains always a part of our perennial witness. Faith and reason must always work together, grace and nature being the result of both the original act of creation by God and the Incarnation and redemption in Christ.
One would have to read the Bible and acknowledge the Church in order to benefit from these articles of faith, however, and many today are busying themselves with tantrums that involve rejecting anything suggesting a will prior to their own. Even in the Church this heresy is gaining ground as official teaching makes a back-door denial of the Commandments and the order of grace itself in the movement to give the Eucharist to those who cannot possibly benefit — the divorced and civilly remarried.
The lobby for reason and common sense has not been completely vanquished, as was evident from some of the comments in reaction to my Twitter post. Some see the crackdown on free thought and speech as a harbinger of more dire punishments to come:
“In the not too distant future saying that could land you in jail, unless we demand that this tyranny stops.” @busygarden wrote.
The capitalist overlords on Twitter as well as other social networks in tandem with certain elected officials are taking a page from what we used to think of as “futuristic” dystopian novels. Now these musings of the literary prophets of doom are materializing before our incredulous eyes. A young mother in the UK was recently arrested for not calling a transgender man by the preferred and false female pronoun in an online forum. She was reported to the thought police as guilty of the crime of injuring the other party.
No one was actually hurt, of course. The only thing that got damaged was the artificial veneer of alternate reality that the ideology of gender and other Godless agendas rebels seek to impose by force on human freedom.
“God said: I knew you before you were born. In the womb I created you. (I think God can judge whether someone is male or female.) Anything else is from the logic of the evil one!” @aryservant commented.
The role of the Devil in any attempt to unseat the primacy of God’s will can insinuate itself into our lives through the disordered use of any gift or any other rejection of God’s sovereignty in any way. Our witness of faith and reason in the marketplace of ideas finds its highest expression in our thanks, by which we constantly refer back to God in humble gratitude for all that we are and have.
The Lord Himself leads us in this reordering of all creation back under His Lordship and in His obedience to the Father above all in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It was Christ’s obedience in suffering that redeemed us from the original disobedience of our first parents. Every time we both remember His obedience and experience it in the unbloody re-presentation of His Passion and Death in the Holy Mass we cooperate and participate by intellect and will in His obedience, thus making it our own.
Our sins, which always involve rejection of God and of His will, are undone, they are forgiven and the wounds they cause healed, as we pray, worship, and receive the Lord Himself in the Eucharist.
The story of man’s disobedience is the story of all of creation. Genesis recounts the first time that creatures fell for the lie that they could be like God, not in imitation but in equality, thinking they could “make themselves to be like God.” Our Lord was falsely accused of this sin and crucified for it. But He could not “make” Himself to be like God who already is God without beginning or end.
As we read, “God created man in His own image and likeness, male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27). Yes, Twitter, men are not women and neither are women men. The differences that exist in creation demand our obedience, not our manipulation through lying language or mutilation through futile surgery.
Obedience, however, means I must make room in my life for Someone Else. I can no longer be the center of my own existence. It is in the end the ancient story of pride told so well by the Scriptures that we see played out again in our time. Only the ancient truths written down in the Scriptures and taught still by the Church under the guidance of God’s Spirit of truth can save us from the bottomless void opening up beneath us as we open our ears once again to the dulcet tones of the Liar himself: “You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5).
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
@MCITLFrAphorism
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