July 6, 2003

This past week, His Holiness Pope John Paul II issued an “Apostolic Exhortation,” addressing the decay of European civilization. In it he speaks of Europe’s current state of disorientation, uncertainty, and weak sense of hope. Europe’s problems are not being well addressed by the European Union, which is still trying to identify itself: plummeting birth rates, a shortage of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and other forms of sacrificial humanitarian service, the collapse of marriage, loss of reverence for life, and a general spiritual and psychological malaise.

On this holiday weekend, we should consider the many ways our nation is following the cultural decline of Europe. Glaringly symptomatic of this was the Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas decision, which was read at the same time as the Pope’s Apostolic Exhortation, Justices Rehnquist and Scalia and Thomas honorably dissenting. By virtually removing all moral choices from legal address, and basing itself spuriously on the same fictitious constitutional “right to privacy,” or Due Process Clause, cited in the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, it opens the door to a long list of affronts to natural law and the moral order. Anyone who doubts that is as naïve as those who doubted the prophetic warnings in Pope Paul VI’s prophetic encyclical Humane Vitae on the sacredness of life.

As the Supreme Court moved from its proper judicial role into an assumption of social activism, it based its reasoning on a notorious line from the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of life.” Justice Scalia rightly mocked this as the “sweet mystery of life” clause. The words sound sweet, but so do most of the beguiling seductions of the Prince of Lies. If we fall along with Adam and Eve into the philosophical quicksand of thinking that we are gods, then we will reduce the mystery of life to private opinion. That essentially pessimistic unreality is an old mistake of the Gnostic heretics. Jesus founded His Church on a Rock, not on a wish. The Rock is the Divine Love, which can be discerned in part by the natural order of His creation. As sects and denominations splinter and vanish, the Catholic Church remains the one voice of reason.

On Independence Day, the most patriotic thing we can do for our nation and world civilization is to renew the Faith which comes to us from the Apostles. In these confused times many people have tried to refashion Catholicism to their own daydreams. The Apostles are the Founding Fathers of Christian civilization because they themselves obeyed Christ and none other. They knew that to deny nature and choose what is unnatural is to destroy the self and, sooner or later, all of civilization.

Fr. George W. Rutler