March 21, 2004

Our Saviour planned his Passion without compromising the free will of all involved in it. Individuals like Judas who did what he "must" do were nonetheless culpable of the world's worst crime. This is impossible for the unaided human intellect to understand, because we are confined to the laws of time and space. Lent reminds us that God gives us freedom of will with all its privileges and obligations.

The Church, which is Christ's body, predicts the consequences of obeying or disobeying God. The moral breakdown of our culture is a case in point. In 1968, Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae was widely mocked and contradicted. He predicted what would result from a contraceptive mentality: abortion, euthanasia, and general contempt for natural law. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal's online editorial page, a thoughtful Methodist pastor basically admits this. Donald Sensing looks at the chaotic conversation about marriage in our increasingly divided culture:

"Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been technologically obviated. Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce without social stigma, and talk in 2004 on 'saving marriage' is pretty specious. There's little there left to save. Men and women today who have successful, enduring marriages till death do them part do so in spite of society, not because of it. If society has abandoned regulating heterosexual conduct of men and women, what right does it have to regulate homosexual conduct, including the regulation of their legal and property relationship with one another to mirror exactly that of hetero, married couples? I believe that this state of affairs is contrary to the will of God. But traditionalists, especially Christian traditionalists (in whose ranks I include myself) need to get a clue about what has really been going on and face the fact that same-sex marriage, if it comes about, will not cause the degeneration of the institution of marriage; it is the result of it."

Protestant Christianity opened the door to moral fragmentation by its denial of the Catholic logic of natural law. Catholics tainted by that mistake have abandoned that logic themselves. By a process of grace and reason, non-Catholic thinkers like Mr. Sensing are discovering the cogency of the Popes and saints. In an election year, politicians are accountable for their use of free will just as were the characters of the Passion. The Vatican explained on July 31, 2003: "When legislation in favor of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly, and to vote against it. To vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral."

Fr. George W. Rutler