Have you ever gone shopping … for heresy? If you were invincibly ignorant before, prepare to receive a mega-dose of truth! Error doesn’t take a vacation: it’s ripe for the purchasing at the everyday low price of your soul.

Let’s look at some of the offenders:

Glade’s slogan: “Created by nature, captured by Glade.”

The Holy Catholic Church says (Canons of Vatican I):

If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, were produced, according to their whole substance, out of nothing by God; or holds that God did not create by his will free from all necessity, but as necessarily as he necessarily loves himself; or denies that the world was created for the glory of God: anathema sit

Sorry, Glade. I’m sure you’ll be enjoying the refreshing scent of cinnamon apple for all eternity–in Hell.

Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Desire for true happiness frees man from his immoderate attachment to the goods of this world so that he can find his fulfillment in the vision and beatitude of God. “The promise [of seeing God] surpasses all beatitude. . . . In Scripture, to see is to possess. . . . Whoever sees God has obtained all the goods of which he can conceive.”

You lose, kitty.

Council of Trent:

If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; anathema sit.

Oh, don’t worry. You earned your eternal destiny.

“Looks so natural, no one can tell.”

(1 Samuel 16:7):

Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart.

(Luke 12:7):

Even the hairs of your head have all been counted.

Utter foolishness and pomp.

The Manichaeans, of whom St. Augustine is rightly regarded as the most illustrious refuter, were spirit-matter dualists. More to the point, they were soul-body dualists such that they regarded the body as evil and the soul as good. They even ascribed to the body its own “will,” which they regarded as base and evil.

Believe it or not, many many people think that Christianity–especially Catholicism–has always taught this about man: that his soul is good and his body is evil. The world thinks that Catholicism regards the body and sexuality as sinful. Even my arch-nemesis The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Catholicism claimed that the Church professes dogmas such as the perpetual virginity of Mary because it regarded the body and sex as evil. In fact, the Church has constantly dealt with heresies that introduce a division into man between soul and body: from Docetism to Descartes.

Irony of ironies, the world is dualistic and Manichaean in its approach to the human person. Just look at how we justify things these days: “I can do what I want with my body.” Besides the glaring error when this statement is used to justify abortion (what you’re doing only secondarily involves your body and is primarily intended to kill another person), what’s the reasoning? This statement means “the body has nothing to do with morality.”

For example, let’s think about so-called “homosexual unions.” I say “so-called” because homosexual actions actually divide rather than unite those who engage in them: this actually follows from what advocates for their liceity themselves claim.

Why should homosexual actions and heterosexual actions be morally equivalent? The specific difference between the two (indeed, the characteristic which even gives us the words “heterosexual” and “homosexual”) is that homosexual actions do not involve sexual complementarity while heterosexual actions do. There is simply no denying this complementarity on a physical level (to speak vulgarly, even in terms of “mechanics”).

Now, what is the argument from those who hold that the two are morally equivalent? They say that sexual complementarity on the physical level is not relevant to the morality of the action, or, in general, a person’s body or his sex does not pertain to his actions in a morally relevant way. Now, every morally relevant action is an action of the person, that is, of the subject. So, what they’re saying is that the body is divided from the person. If this were true, then it would be true that homosexual relations and heterosexual relations are morally equivalent, but it would also necessarily mean that no act of sexual intercourse could involve the persons who perform it other than by a sort of merely incidental association.

Sex would then be an act of the body, but it could never be a personal act; it could never involve love. Frightful to say, but if this line of thinking is continued, then things terrible crimes such as rape would be morally equivalent to petty theft since they would be thought to involve only the body regarded as drastically foreign to oneself.

Recall, again, the Manichaeans. They did not strive to overcome the flesh because they regarded it as evil and as a separate thing from the person: they became consumed with seeking sensual pleasure.

Men who deny the goodness of the body do not make themselves angels.

John Paul II talks about this same tendency in Veritatis Splendor:

48. [ ... ] A freedom which claims to be absolute ends up treating the human body as a raw datum, devoid of any meaning and moral values until freedom has shaped it in accordance with its design. Consequently, human nature and the body appear as presuppositions or preambles, materially necessary for freedom to make its choice, yet extrinsic to the person, the subject and the human act. Their functions would not be able to constitute reference points for moral decisions, because the finalities of these inclinations would be merely “physical” goods, called by some “pre-moral”. To refer to them, in order to find in them rational indications with regard to the order of morality, would be to expose oneself to the accusation of physicalism or biologism. In this way of thinking, the tension between freedom and a nature conceived of in a reductive way is resolved by a division within man himself.

This moral theory does not correspond to the truth about man and his freedom. It contradicts the Church’s teachings on the unity of the human person, whose rational soul is per se et essentialiter the form of his body. The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of the human being, whereby it exists as a whole — corpore et anima unus— as a person. These definitions not only point out that the body, which has been promised the resurrection, will also share in glory. They also remind us that reason and free will are linked with all the bodily and sense faculties. The person, including the body, is completely entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of body and soul that the person is the subject of his own moral acts. The person, by the light of reason and the support of virtue, discovers in the body the anticipatory signs, the expression and the promise of the gift of self, in conformity with the wise plan of the Creator. It is in the light of the dignity of the human person — a dignity which must be affirmed for its own sake — that reason grasps the specific moral value of certain goods towards which the person is naturally inclined. And since the human person cannot be reduced to a freedom which is self-designing, but entails a particular spiritual and bodily structure, the primordial moral requirement of loving and respecting the person as an end and never as a mere means also implies, by its very nature, respect for certain fundamental goods, without which one would fall into relativism and arbitrariness.

49. A doctrine which dissociates the moral act from the bodily dimensions of its exercise is contrary to the teaching of Scripture and Tradition. Such a doctrine revives, in new forms, certain ancient errors which have always been opposed by the Church, inasmuch as they reduce the human person to a “spiritual” and purely formal freedom. This reduction misunderstands the moral meaning of the body and of kinds of behaviour involving it (cf. 1 Cor 6:19). Saint Paul declares that “the immoral, idolaters, adulterers, sexual perverts, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers” are excluded from the Kingdom of God (cf. 1 Cor 6:9). This condemnation — repeated by the Council of Trent” — lists as “mortal sins” or “immoral practices” certain specific kinds of behaviour the wilful acceptance of which prevents believers from sharing in the inheritance promised to them. In fact, body and soul are inseparable: in the person, in the willing agent and in the deliberate act, they stand or fall together.

Bolding by me.

St. Augustine wrote the following about Manichaeism (Confessions, Book V, Section 10):

I still thought that it is not we who sin but some other nature that sins within us. It flattered my pride to think that I incurred no guilt and, when I did wrong, not to confess it… I preferred to excuse myself and blame this unknown thing which was in me but was not part of me. The truth, of course, was that it was all my own self, and my own impiety had divided me against myself. My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner.

And the A Priori Award for most redundant blog post title goes to … this post!^*

Do we buy into the “self-made man” mentality that we’ve inherited from Existentialism? Interestingly enough, I like to call Existentialism the “philosophy of Original Sin” because its starting point is man as he finds himself after the Fall rather than God and man made in the image of God. Guess what? This philosophy is the result of Pride and it teaches us Pride as a way of life.

We may think that we’re immune, but how often do we find ourselves asking children, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

What kind of a question is that? We ought to be asking, “What do you think God wants you to be when you grow up?” Do we take for granted that our kids will get married? Take over the family business? Go to college? Is their life about what we want them to do? Is it about what they want to do? No. It’s about God and the special way of loving him for which he made them that we call a ‘vocation’.

In my own life, I’m often asked, “Why did you decide to become a priest?” Becoming a priest is not something that someone “decides” to do (in the usual sense of the word). Granted, it’s something that I must commit myself to and love intensely, and I do, but the Church could tell me at any time before I’m ordained, “We don’t think you have a vocation to the priesthood,” and I would accept that! I don’t have a right to be ordained because priesthood is a vocation: it’s literally something to which I must be called, not merely something to which I can aspire.

I am not the first principle of my vocation! God forbid it (as if it were possible)! I am merely responding to God. A better question is, “Why do you think God wants you to be a priest?” The answer is, of course, that he made me for that purpose. He designed me for that and every smallest grace that he gives me will make me the type of person he wants me to be, if I let him.

Christ not only calls us, but he models for us (and gives us the power to imitate him) the appropriate response. “The Son does nothing on his own but only what he sees the Father doing.” In the same way, let me not “decide” on a state in life alone, but rather let me choose only what Christ has chosen for me.

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* Thank you! Thank you! This is so unexpected … I’d like to thank God first of all, of course. There’s also a very special woman that I need to mention … mom, come on up here! (Inner monologue: “Blast it! I was hoping for the coveted Tautology Award.”) [and so forth]

Nick Winker wrote an hilarious (fictitious) interview with Archbishop Lefebvre in the context of the Church as a software project. It’s very well written. Actually it reminds me of when X.org was formed from XFree86, only kind of backwards.

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.

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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.

It’s been a good summer for documents, so far. We’ve had: the pope’s letter to Chinese Catholics, Summorum Pontificum, and Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church.

Of course, the media have gotten things just as confused as they always do about these sorts of things. It seems like we’ve been hearing about “the Latin Mass” and “the Tridentine Rite” for ages now. I hope that people know what is meant by these terms, but we still must be careful to use proper terminology in order to avoid misrepresenting the truth.

For instance, where use is made of the provisions outlined in the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, I wonder whether people will begin to refer to “the Latin Mass” (as if the current Missal is not in Latin). Who knows what they would call the ordinary form of the Roman Rite (especially when celebrated in Latin) in such places? “No, not the Latin Mass … the Old Latin Mass … you know what I mean.”

Regarding the document on the Church, there have already been several documents since the Council which have clarified the proper terminology for referring to particular churches not in full communion with the Church or for referring to Christian ecclesial communities. The media, of course, is treating this document as if this is all news that is radically different from what the Church has previously taught.

I recently read a petition for the General Intercessions at Mass that asked God for openness to “Church vocations.” Is there such a thing as a non-Church vocation? The only way in which I could see this making sense is if it is speaking of a “Church vocation” vis-a-vis a “secular vocation,” e.g., “married life” as opposed to “carpentry” (although St. Joseph seemed to reconcile these without a problem).

I certainly hope that “Church vocation” was not meant to be synonymous with “priesthood or religious life.”

There is often talk these days of a “vocations crisis” in the Catholic Church in America. I believe this is an accurate diagnosis, but I would clarify that I believe we have a “vocations crisis” properly speaking, that is, we are not merely lacking priests (or even religious) in terms of numbers. No, the problem is much deeper and more serious than one of manpower.

What is the vocations crisis we are facing:

1. The vocations crisis is a “crisis of response to vocations,” that is, a vocation is a calling from God. Certainly, there is no lack on God’s part.

2. The vocations crisis necessarily affects every vocation. Vocations are complementary because they are given for the benefit of others, of the Church. Therefore, the crisis affects the married life (look at the state of family life in America), the single life (in various manifestations), the priesthood, and the religious life.

3. The vocations crisis is symptomatic of an “identity crisis” inasmuch as people either no longer believe that God created them for a purpose or they would rather invent their own purpose in life.

This identity crisis is fostered by our culture, and it strikes at the heart of every human person. Those who do not know that God created them out of love, to be happy in Heaven live a tragic existence, and it is the duty of Christians to evangelize the culture as well as those persons who suffer in this way. Those who believe God has a purpose in mind for them–a way of loving for which he especially designed them, a way that they will be of service in the Church as they ought to be, a way for them to be happy–but who would rather invent their own purpose are in a different situation. They do not lack Faith–as do those who do not believe God has a vocation for them–they lack Love, which is the more serious deficiency. In fact, it is deadly.

The lack of Faith and the lack of Love have the same cure: the sacraments. These physical meetings with Christ that give us grace are the only way that the disease of Pride will be eradicated from our hearts.

There is a fairly concrete way to overcome the vocations crisis that I can see:

1. The worthy celebration of the liturgy according to the norms of the Church (Without worshiping God rightly, we cannot serve him well in other ways).

2. A rejection of sin, especially sins that undermine the dignity of the human person such as abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and contraception (These sins, in a very powerful way, teach us to regard the persons whom we ought to love as objects. They destroy the family, which is rightly called “the domestic Church.” Without a family united by real love, it will be very hard for someone to give his life to God.)

Without these, our hearts cannot be free enough to give our lives to God.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the St. Louis Post Dispatch awhile ago. While there’s still hope that they might print it, I don’t think that they will.

Anyway, here it is:

As we prepare to celebrate America’s independence, we recall the principles on which our nation was founded. Abraham Lincoln recognized that America’s greatness came from her fundamental respect for the rights of the human person. He called American government a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

In America today, however, the legality of abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia results from a belief that is essentially anti-American: the belief that a person’s rights must be earned. To believe that a person’s rights depend on his degree of physical development, how old he is, what he can do, or whether he can stand up for himself is to be opposed to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence itself, which recognized as primary and inalienable each person’s right to life.

As recently as the twentieth century, Americans rejected Communism because it denies that people have any rights besides those which the government grants to social classes. Today, however, Americans ignore the basic right to life of entire classes–especially the unborn and the disabled–simply because they cannot survive without help.

The first gift of America to the world was the firm recognition that a nation exists to protect individuals and that if a nation disregards even one of the most helpless of her members, that nation has acted unjustly. America has always believed herself to be the custodian—not the source—of her people’s rights. Let us not abandon that now.

Boy was it tough to try to shoe-horn what I wanted to say into 250 words or fewer!

Stephen Mirarchi has a post on his recent experience praying at an abortion clinic.