The Culture of Death Kills Vocations
The Culture of Death kills our desire and ability to respond to the vocation God has given us in life. Working to build a Culture of Life is intrinsically linked with a fruitfulness in the area of vocations. This should be obvious to us, but oftentimes does not seem so because we have grown accustomed to thinking of our lives within the framework provided by the Culture of Death.
Abortion–the most heinous example–is a personal matter for everyone. First, it is an offense against God. Second, it does unspeakable violence to people that we love. Third, it is an insult against our own dignity because it claims that our lives have only arbitrary or subjective value.
Committing offenses against God (e.g., those sins which tear down the Culture of Life, i.e., build the Culture of Death1) always wounds Charity which makes it harder for us to do God’s will.
We also must turn a somewhat stark glance to the consequences upon the world of the Culture of Death. How many priests we would have now if we hadn’t killed tens of millions of children by abortion in the last few decades in the United States alone? How many mothers and fathers? How many great saints?2
The Culture of Death teaches us to think of our lives as fundamentally purposeless, in fact, as not fundamentally anything since it teaches us that we have no origin as persons who are intended to exist and no destiny for which we are intended.3 When we think of our lives as separated from the purpose for which we were made, any concept of a vocation–much less the ability to respond to it–becomes impossible.
If we think the consequences on the priesthood have been bad, let’s look at married life. The Culture of Death is a direct (undoubtedly demonic) attack on the family. The family, after all, is rightly called “the domestic Church” because it is there that the newest members of the Church first learn to know and to love God.
While abortion is a denial of the dignity of every human person–and this has a very personal and concrete effect on each one of us–it causes not only harm to each individual but to families. After all, my vocation is not for my sake, it’s for the sake of the Church: every person can say that. The worst offense is not that my dignity as a person is absolutely insulted by the Culture of Death: it’s that God’s honor and sovereignty are insulted, it’s that the Church is insulted, and it’s that unspeakable violence is done to the least of my brothers–the poorest of the poor.
If the root of our lack of zeal for doing God’s will is Pride, then we must also recognize that the Culture of Death is a culture of Pride. It’s a culture that says “my value comes from me, or from the fact that I can stand up for myself, or from my own accomplishments, or from the government, etc.” That’s Pride. The Culture of Life always recognizes in humility that life is a gift that is not deserved but which is loved greatly–that the great value of every human person comes from God alone and not from us.
Non nobis, Domine, non nobis sed Nomini Tuo da gloriam.
1 I did not merely say “build the Culture of Death” because the Culture of Death is, more accurately, an anti-culture. Since evil is not a substance, any so-called “culture” which promotes evil (and therefore leads to death) is only a corruption of something more substantial. “God did not make death” as it says in Wisdom 1.
2 This is not to imply that those children who died by abortion are not saints but simply that their greatness has not been manifested in the world as it should have been.
3 Interestingly, this is an important reason that the Eucharist is the cure for the Culture of Death as well as for our lack of response to vocations: the Eucharist is the source and the summit of Christian life whereas the Culture of Death primarily teaches us that our lives have no source and no summit. I plan to develop this theme in a later post.
