February 24, 2002

The forty days of Lent are an approximate "tithe" of the days of the year. Spending roughly one-tenth of the year taking stock of our souls and the health of our culture is a wise investment. The sage says that the unexamined life is not worth living. A proper examination, however, needs a good standard of reference. One can hardly examine the human condition properly without reference to good and evil.

Our culture lapsed into a kind of moral delinquency for many years. By that I mean the social outlook and personal consciousness had grown fuzzy about what goodness and evil mean. A therapeutic attitude replaced moral belief, so that "feeling well" came to become the equivalent of goodness, and people began to think that nothing is intrinsically evil, with the result that perpetrators of evil were considered victims of circumstance and environment. "Be well" replaced "Good b'ye" (which means "God be with you)." And "sharing feelings" came to be the equivalent of witnessing to the truth. Indeed, many people came to think that there is no objective truth. The Pope addressed this philosophical sickness in the encyclicals "Fides et Ratio" and "Veritatis Splendor."

Truth is truth, whether acknowledged or not. In a conversation with a theologian, a professor who was a lapsed Catholic said that belief in any moral absolutes was a mediaeval conceit. He challenged the theologian to name one persuasive moral absolute. The theologian replied: "Thou shalt not kill a professor."

I spoke at a luncheon last week, after introductory remarks by Congressman Dick Armey. What he said was very much like a homily. He had come to realize how much good and evil a government can do. He did not say a government can be helpful or corrupt. He spoke deliberately of good and evil. President Reagan once spoke of an "evil empire" and President Bush has spoken of an "axis of evil." Both shocked some commentators who still prefer therapeutic language instead of the stark realities of a fallen world. September 11 made it increasingly difficult to ignore these deep facts of life and death.

Lent begins with a description of Our Lord confronting Satan in the wilderness. Christ endured the temptations to materialism, power, and unreality. He did this on our behalf, for only He can perfectly overcome those expressions of evil. God allows us to be tempted in order to purify our virtue, and so that we may console one another. We are never tempted beyond the power of his grace to overcome evil with good. This is the great message of Lent.

Fr. George W. Rutler