Why the opposition to same sex "marriage"? -- part 2

I urge you to stop before reading the following article, and I most emphatically urge you not to allow children or more sensitive people to read it. It deals very explicitly with a very delicate topic. There will be some who think these things should not be discussed in a parish bulletin at all. I am of the opinion that we can no longer avoid the issue. It is assumed by the majority of young people even in Catholic schools that same sex marriage is equivalent to traditional marriage and should be respected as such. They are being taught this in government schools and in some Catholic universities, so called.  We live in a country founded by Calvinist Puritans who believed in predestination. I believe that it is part of the Puritan heritage to say "God made me this way." We Catholics believe in freedom and that behavior is a choice. The current climate says that a preference is unchangeable and that sexual activity defines the person.

We Catholics believe that the person is more than a set of predestined preferences. A person is not "gay" or "straight". A person is a child of God made in his image and likeness and thus all persons merit respect and the freedom of the children of God. A human person is not an orientation. A person may experience variations of attraction between same and different genders. Those attractions  do not define the person and seem much more malleable than the current climate is willing to admit. Some of the finest and holiest people I know have struggled with these issues. Their very struggle is a token of their commitment to the Gospel and the Lord. Yet, they have struggled and refused to allow this corrupt culture to define them. The following pages are written as a real response to real letter I received. It is written with respect and I hope honesty. I mean to offend no one, but I am bound to teach what the Church has learned from her Lord and has always  held and taught. Again I ask you to read this advisedly, carefully and prayerfully.

Continued from last week

To say that because Paul had to invent a word and we  cannot know its meaning, is intellectually dishonest. We know, and always have known, precisely what Moses, Paul, and Good and Gentle Jesus meant.  Your author questions the meaning and the culture not because he is unsure what they meant but because he wishes they had meant something else. Your author, I suspect, is a very well-educated, very scholarly fool. Having taught at a university myself, I have know quite a few of them. They usually have tenure, a point in life when actual thought and study cease. It is clear to anyone who is paying attention that the Lord, the Scriptures and the Church forbid certain intimacies and have done so from the beginning.

There is another intellectual error into which I think you fall. It is a uniquely American error, that seems to be spreading along with our very strange culture. I refer to the principle “Exceptio legem facit” (The exception makes the rule), an ancient legal principal that I have just now made up.)  Let me give you an example. When my cousins in the old country found out that we Americans were buried in metal coffins inside water proof concrete liners, they asked, “Who do you think you are? Egyptian Pharaohs?” In the old country someone is buried in a wooden box and twenty five years later the grave is declared re-usable. How is it that we have such elaborate and un-ecological burial practices? Simple: lawyers. The dirt in biodegradable graves settles. In an old fashioned cemetery you will notice that there are dips in the ground over old graves, and the tombstones lean to one side or another. Apparently someone who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time was hurt tripping in one of these grave, or perhaps a tombstone fell on someone. There was a lawsuit, a spate of legal work and voila! A new industry was born: concrete grave liners. The entire practice of a nation was changed because some klutz tripped on a grave, at least that’s the way I heard the story, and the truth is probably not much different. Another version was that a child was killed by a falling tombstone. Who knows?   

Another example. When I was a boy, very long ago, the world stopped on Sunday. Everything was closed for the Christian day of rest. It was great. Church, then a big meal with the whole family. Dad was home. People napped, the kids went out an played. Well, that was unfair to the very small group of people who didn’t consider themselves Christian. Why should they not be allowed to make money on what for them was just another day? The courts agreed, and the world changed. Now no one has anytime at all. We work seven days a week, 24 hours a day like the slaves of times past. A very small minority forced its will on the vast majority because “the exception makes the law.” We have medals for those who lose athletic contests, we have laws that forbid construction of new buildings that are not accessible, so we make do with old buildings (though I am all for accessibility. I have gladly built my share of ramps, new bathrooms and elevators). And now we must redefine marriage for what amounts to a minuscule part of the population. “I must agree with you because it would be wrong for you to actually be different. I must conform my thinking and my way of life to what has always been considered an aberration because 'the exception make the law.'” 

The mind boggles. The stomach turns.

There is one more scriptural argument that I want to make. It comes from Ecclesiasticus 2:24 “Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it.” Ecclesiasticus, also called the Wisdom of Solomon, is one of those Catholic Books that Luther and Calvin dumped. 

If death entered the world through the envy of the devil, what in the blazes was he envious of?  The devil is immortal, and compared to us, he is as if omnipotent and all-knowing. The answer is simple. God gave humanity something he didn’t give the angels. Remember the devil is a defrocked angel. God gave human beings the ability to create something immortal in the relationship between a man and woman. God creates the immortal soul but, in their coming together, man and woman collaborate in the creation of the human body, which, if Christ’s resurrection is a fact, is also immortal. 

There is a creativity about human beings that even the angels do not have. Angels cannot reproduce. Thus it is that the devil hates children and will do anything possible to destroy them. He has created and keeps creating sterility in our times. He delights in abortion, artificial birth control, sterilization, marriages that by their very nature can have no children, the pandemic of pornography, and the abuse of children. 

The above list is a symphony of modern rights and privileges. The abuse of children, is, of course, not tolerated... yet. But as we discard the narrow minded, sexist, homophobic, Judeo/Christian legacy, I am sure that we will reach the full stature of the Greco/Roman world and reintroduce slavery and ritualized child abuse. What glorious times await us as we free ourselves of the restrictive legacy of the past! Slavery has made a marvelous comeback even in our times. Most of what you own is made in China by those who are in effect slaves. Islam is increasingly allowed to live by it own sharia law even in the western world and slavery is part of Islam. Why, even now you can go to the Sudan and buy a Christian boy for as little $100 dollars. What's Sudanese slavery like? Here is a Wall Street Journal article from  December 12, 2001,

 One 11-year-old Christian boy told me about his first days in captivity: "I was told to be a Muslim several times, and I refused, which is why they cut off my finger." Twelve-year-old Alokor Ngor Deng was taken as a slave in 1993. She has not seen her mother since the slave raiders sold the two to different masters. Thirteen-year-old Akon was seized by Sudanese military while in her village five years ago. She was gang-raped by six government soldiers, and witnessed seven executions before being sold to a Sudanese Arab. Many freed slaves bore signs of beatings, burnings and other tortures. More than three-quarters of formerly enslaved women and girls reported rapes. While nongovernmental organizations argue over how to end slavery, few deny the existence of the practice. Estimates of the number of blacks now enslaved in Sudan vary from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands (not counting those sold as forced labor in Libya)...

Will slavery make a return in these United States through the legal principle of “the exception makes the law”? Remember it was fanatical Christians like the great Wilberforce who ended slavery in the Western world. What will impose these remaining restrictions once the faith of Moses, Paul, and Jesus is completely swept away. Will we stop at same sex marriage or we will march bravely on to brush away all these restrictions that protect the weak from the strong? 

I write these word having just celebrated the feast of the Annunciation, the commemoration of the moment in which God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, the moment in which heaven was wedded to earth in a marriage that can never end, the moment in which Jesus the Carpenter of Nazareth was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, Jesus whom we believe was one hundred percent God and one hundred percent man, not half and half but wholly God and man. It was the moment that God embraced the flesh that the devil despised, a marriage that can never end in divorce. The fact is that no marriage that has children can end in divorce. When a man and woman marry, they may separate, but if they have children they can never really be apart, no matter how much they long to be. They are inextricably bound up together in the very flesh of their children.

What about those couples who marry but cannot have children? Aren’t they truly married? Aren’t you offending them by saying that children are integral to marriage?  Oh forgive me. I am forgetting that “the exception makes the law.” Don’t be ridiculous. Marriage exists for children. Look at the way God made our bodies! Does the imperfect state of humanity which does not allow all to have children, mean we must define marriage as not having to do with children of our own flesh and blood?  Even the childless couple which respects the sanctity of marriage, longing for children they cannot have, creates a climate in which children are safe and secure. In our enlightened age children never quite know where they will spend the weekend. Will they be at Mom’s or Dad’s or perhaps at Grandma’s? Perhaps they will stay with Mom’s boyfriend’s mother’s house or perhaps they will stay with Dad’s boyfriend. 

Our children have become orphans on the road because our rights as Americans trump every rule of common sense. We are enlightened and our children are adrift. You are willfully blind if you do not see that marriage is about children.

As for natural law, there are many things that seem natural but that violate natural law. War, theft and murder come to mind. Simply because I desire something does not make it natural. I would eat Upper-Hessian red sausage until I looked like Jabba the Hutt and my arteries ground to a halt. My desire does not make it natural or good. 

To honor God in our bodies is Natural Law. Idolatry, adultery, effeminacy, theft, greed,  drunkenness, slander and swindle, (c.f.1Corinthians 6:9-10) are all quite natural, but they are still violations of natural law, that law which mirrors the very nature of God and the law of “the better angels of our nature” as Lincoln put it. It is the worse angels of our nature that we follow in this unnatural age. Make no mistake about it. Marriage exists not for my pleasure and consolation. It is a gift from on High meant to draw me into the sacrificial life of parenthood. It is about children, because  the kingdom of heaven belongs to children.  

Allow me once again to cite Ecclesiasticus 2:24 “Nevertheless through envy of the devil came death into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it.” Believe me. We will certainly find the death that the devil invented if follow our present course. God help the nation!

Why the opposition to same sex "marriage"?

I urge you to stop before reading the following article, and I most emphatically urge you not to allow children or more sensitive people to read it. It deals very explicitly with a very delicate topic. There will be some who think these things should not be discussed in a parish bulletin at all. I am of the opinion that we can no longer avoid the issue. It is assumed by the majority of young people even in Catholic schools that same sex marriage is equivalent to traditional marriage and should be respected as such. They are being taught this in government schools and in some Catholic universities, so called.  We live in a country founded by Calvinist Puritans who believed in predestination. I believe that it is part of the Puritan heritage to say "God made me this way." We Catholics believe in freedom and that behavior is a choice. The current climate says that a preference is unchangeable and that sexual activity defines the person.

We Catholics believe that the person is more  than a set of predestined preferences. A person is not "gay" or "straight". A person is a child of God made in his image and likeness and thus all persons merit respect and the freedom of the children of God. A human person is not an orientation. A person may experience variations of attraction between same and different genders. Those attractions  do not define the person and seem much more malleable than the current climate is willing to admit. Some of the finest and holiest people I know have struggled with these issues. Their very struggle is a token of their commitment to the Gospel and the Lord. Yet, they have struggled and refused to allow this corrupt culture to define them. The following pages are written as a real response to a real letter I received. It is written with respect and I hope honesty. I mean to offend no one, but I am bound to teach what the Church has learned from her Lord and has always  held and taught.

Again I ask you to read this advisedly, carefully and prayerfully.

Dear Rev Know-it-all,

I have just read a book that went meticulously through all the scriptural and natural law arguments that are put forward in opposition to homosexual relationships, and for each one, the author showed how they failed to provide a valid basis for deeming homosexual relationships to be wrong or immoral.  I think one of the things that makes this topic so difficult to discuss in the 21st Century western society is the yawning gap between our understanding of sexuality today and how the ancient civilizations viewed sexuality.  All of the Biblical passages, for instance, were written for an audience of ancient societies very unlike our own in regard to sexuality.  Anyone who has read about sexuality in ancient Greece or ancient Rome would be astonished at how vastly different their view of sexuality was from our own.

The book mentioned Leviticus 20:13 “If a man also lies with man, as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death.”  The author made the case that it was shameful for a man to degrade himself to something resembling the status of a woman.  The Catholic Church today would never dare put forward such a sexist justification for abstaining from homosexual relations. Likewise, the verses in the New Testament seem to have the same thing in mind.  1 Cor. 6:9-10 states that the effeminate “malakos” in Greek, was thought to be lacking in courage. In a couple other places, St. Paul uses the Greek term arsenokoitai to describe something that he considered to be immoral.  Paul appears to have made it up. Both malakoi and arsenokoitai have been translated at times to imply homosexuality, but that's actually inaccurate.  Neither of those terms means what we understand today to mean “homosexual.” So essentially the Bible doesn't say anything about homosexuality per se.  It remains unclear, then, how the Church came up with a blanket prohibition on homosexual relationships. And in terms of Natural Law, I would just ask that in thinking about it, you put aside any preconceived notions you might have about homosexuality and simply ask yourself, why is it intrinsically immoral for two men or two women to be in a sexual relationship?  What harm does that do?

Yours,

Someone who is trying to understand

Dear Someone who is trying to understand,

You are making a few logical errors, at least in my opinion. The first is a very basic error, at least from a Catholic perspective. You are looking for an answer that is “sola scriptura ”, that is from the “Bible alone.” Your assumption is that the Bible is self-interpreting. How can any book be self-interpreting when the words with which it is written can be redefined to suit the argument or the will of the reader?

Here are the four offensive passages in the Bible that need reinterpretation to accommodate our enlightened age.

1) “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable. (Leviticus 18:22 )

2) “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” (Leviticus 20:13)

3) “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” (Romans 1:26-27 )

4) “Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor the effeminate (malakoi), nor those who lie with males (arsenokoitai), nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.”(1Corinthians 6:9-10)

The first two are in the Old Testament. The Old Testament does not count because, well, it’s old. Good and gentle Jesus did away with that Old Testament mumbo jumbo like stoning adulteresses and not eating barbecued pork ribs.  The next two are St. Paul and we all know what a curmudgeon he was, indeed, an embarrassment!

There is one more Biblical passage that may bear upon the topic, and one rarely  hears it referenced.

   “Some Pharisees came to Him to test Him. They asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?’ ‘Haven't you read,’ He replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’  ‘Why then,’ they asked, ‘did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?’ Jesus replied, ‘Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning.’ ( Matt. 19:3-8)

This is not the Old Fashioned Testament, this not Paul the sexist curmudgeon. This is Good and Gentle Jesus defining marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman.  It is pretty clear in addition that Jesus thought that intimate contact outside of marriage, was wrong, a forgivable sin, but a sin none the less. He was not lightening the law. He was tightening it. He was stricter than Moses regarding sexual morality. He forbad something Moses allowed. Do you think that having forbidden divorce he would then allow intimacies that Moses taught were capital offenses?  Jesus limited sexual activity to a very narrow spectrum of activity and so do His followers. One woman. One man. Whole life. Exclusive relationship. Pretty narrow minded if you ask me. So your argument about same sex marriage is not with me, not with the Church, not with the Hebrew patriarchs not even with that old woman-hater, Paul of Tarsus. Your argument is with Jesus.  You are perfectly free to disagree with him. Who was Jesus after all? Just a failed carpenter, and un-ordained itinerant Rabbi and a person convicted of anti-government sedition, at least that’s how His world saw Him. Maybe they were right. Maybe I am mistaken in my belief that He was the Son of God and the Savior of the world, born of a virgin, crucified and risen from the dead and the founder of the religious organization to which I adhere.

My point is this, if you disagree with a guru, a philosopher, a cult leader or a politician you cannot claim to be his follower. Christians are those people who, like me, believe what Jesus the Christ has said. You cannot say “I am a devoted follower of the Great Teacher Mahatma Sri Baba Lu except in those areas about which we disagree. You’re a follower or you’re not a follower. You may be an admirer, an aficionado, a student of, but you are not a follower of the teacher with whom you disagree. If you think Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, mistaken on some fine points of doctrine and practice, you cannot at the same time call yourself a Christian. In this glorious republic and in all the world you are free to not be a Christian. You are free to think Jesus of Nazareth an interesting philosopher. You are free to leave any church you please and to join any other church, but it seems rather preposterous to claim membership in a church and then to disagree with one of its central tenets. Marriage is one of the few things enshrined as a  sacrament among Catholics. There are only seven sacraments in the Roman Church. You accept 6, but not 7? Can you be  85.6% Catholic?

The first four passages of Scripture have never been translated to mean anything but a condemnation of same sex physical intimacy until this our enlightened age. We Catholics have always believed that the interpretation of Scripture is impossible without reference to the tradition handed down to us from the Sts. Peter and Paul through the ministry of the early Christian authors and the unbroken chain of interpretation that links us to Christ and the first Christians. Trust me. Arsenokoitai and Malakoi mean exactly what they seem to mean, and that is people who engage in same sex intimacy. If you want to believe something else because of your superior enlightenment or your own political or personal needs, fine. Just don’t claim to be part of that faith which has come down to us from the apostles.

I was rather taken with a statement that you made in your letter. “Anyone who has read about sexuality in ancient Greece or ancient Rome would be astonished at how vastly different their view of sexuality was from our own.” I did read a little bit about sexuality in ancient Greece and Rome in my long distant college days as I got my degree in Classical Greek and then teaching classical languages and history for 25 years at a local university, and  I suppose I qualify as “anyone.” I am not astonished by how different our attitudes are from theirs. I am astonished at how similar they are. Fifty years ago, when we were still a Christian culture, the difference was much greater. There would be no ancient Roman or Greek who would think any of our current practices odd or intrinsically immoral, except perhaps, the Romans regarding romantic love. Romans were not very romantic.

Upper class Romans thought romantic love was always a big mistake. They may in fact have had a point, but I digress. The western world was not Roman at the time of Christ. It was Greek, just as the world is American now. Perhaps it will be Chinese soon, but for the time being it is baseball caps, Nike shoes and Chicago Bulls t-shirts that generally clothe the world. So it was at the time of Christ.  Greek language, architecture, sports and culture were everywhere from Germany to Ethiopia, from Spain to India. Quite possibly, more people in Rome spoke Greek than Latin at the time of Christ. Greek culture was embraced by the three great cities of the ancient western world, Antioch, Alexandria and Rome. Greek sexual morality was everywhere and it could be summed up in a simple phrase that echoes throughout our modern and enlightened times. “Whatever turns you on!” 

Actually it was friendlier to gender diversity than that. Many educated Greeks believed that male/male relations were superior to male/female relations because women had no souls and were the intellectual inferiors of men. It was surprising to the Greeks that Christians thought women the equal of men which is why St. Paul says to the women of Corinth “Put your veils back on, girls, the neighbors are getting the wrong idea.” 1Cor. 11:5 (I am paraphrasing a bit.) Romans actually disapproved of same sex unions between adults. If a noble Roman wanted to indulge in such behavior he usually moved to Athens. Romans however had no problem with pedophilia with either gender. The stoic ideal frowned on romantic love of any kind and man was always to be the dominant partner. Greeks, had no such problems.

The Holy Land and the rulers of ancient Palestine at the time of Christ were not oriental potentates as portrayed in most Bible movies. They were  thoroughly Greek. The Holy Land was dotted with temples to goddesses and fertility cults replete with prostitute priestesses and transvestite priests who plied their trade as a form of religious worship. For example, take a certain cup, which depicts things I would rather not bring up here. (Suffice it to say no women are depicted on the aforementioned drinking vessel.) It was found about two miles west of Bethlehem and had been made in around 5 to 15 AD, just a few years after Jesus the Carpenter had been born just down the road. Those who think that the very narrow sexual morality demanded by our Jewish Carpenter God was taught in a world with different sexual mores than our own; have not studied the period very thoroughly. Ours is still a more restrictive sexual culture than the Greco-Roman culture. We still don’t approve of adult activity with minors. In the ancient world it was taken for granted. It was actually considered a necessity in classical Greek culture. How else was a boy to be educated in philosophy and the military arts?

I am not making a word of this up. If it repels or offends you, good! Because that is where we are headed if we climb back into the Greco-Roman sewer from which Christianity lifted us. The words “Whom does it hurt?” would slide quite easily form the lips of an ancient pagan, once he got over the shock that anyone would take issue with any sexual activity whatever. Paul invented a word for such activity, “arsenokoitai” because no such word existed in the ancient world. The ancients did not differentiate one form of sexual activity from another. It was all just fine. There was just “Luv” (I use the 1960's spelling for the word, to more accurately translate the Greek word Eros and the Latin word Amor.)

To be continued………….

What can Christians do that atheists can't?

This is an interesting correspondence that I really didn’t have time to pursue  during the Lenten and the Holy Days. I tried to answer briefly, but the atheist who wrote me was very unsatisfied with my answer. Here is the correspondence, though a little abbreviated.

Dear Sir,

   Is there any ethical behavior toward one's  fellow human beings (and other fellow creatures) that Christians can do, but deists or atheists cannot do?  If so, what are they? And, what do I gain (in terms of ethical behavior) from believing that ethical action derives from a benign celestial dictatorship rather than our common humanity? (I only use the word dictatorship for lack of a better word, since it does seem that Christian ethics are issued by authoritarian mandate.)

(An anonymous atheist)

Here is my initial response:

An atheist or deist should not do unto others. He can only attempt the negative formulation of the golden rule, "What you hate do to no one." The Christian who claims to know the mind of God, to the degree that he knows the mind of God, can do the good. If I don't know the greatest good, how I can I do what's best for you? How do I know what's good. My morality cannot be absolute, so I cannot even begin to know what is good for you. If however, there is a God and there is good that He reveals then I can do the best for my neighbor, and not merely avoid harm. The most the deist or atheist can do is to leave the other alone. A deist should not even save a life, for who knows if it is better to live than to die?

The Rev. Know it all

Here is the atheist’s response (in part) to my response:

Dear Sir,

 I want to start off by noting just how vague you are in your response. Is there not one specific ethical behavior you can think of, which a Christian can do but the skeptic cannot? You say that the atheist or deist can only live by the negative formulation of the golden rule. You contend that if I am not a Christian, I can not know the greatest good. Therefore I cannot do the greatest good. It is immediately clear to me that this is not the case at all, since, in my own experience, I have been able to live by the positive formulation of the golden rule first as a Christian, then as a deist, and finally as an atheist........You are correct in saying that my morality, as an atheist or deist cannot be absolute. It then becomes relative to our shared biological, ecological, and cultural inheritance. This is, however, just as good as saying it is absolute because it is something we all share, rather than something merely shared by one or another ancient tribe of humans in our largely illiterate and ignorant past. In other words, we may say that insofar as we are absolutely human, any morality derived from a basic respect and empathy for this shared humanity is absolutely moral........Your last statement is blatantly ridiculous: “A deist should not even save a life because who knows if it is better to live or to die?” My first question is, What theoretical planet are you on? Have you actually participated in life, or have you merely been observing it? Being human beings ourselves, we intuit very well when it is better to live and when it is better to die. We have fashioned international law on these shared ethical intuitions. If we have any sort of emotional connection with our fellow men, we will feel sympathy for them. If we do not feel this emotional connection to those around us, we all recognize that something is amiss with this individual in the greater context of our supertribe. The psychological sciences are  particularly aimed at rectifying these situations.

(Again an anonymous atheist)

Dear Sir,

I don’t know about you, but I find this just fascinating. You ask me what planet I have been living on. I have been living on this planet for quite a few years. I have lived among the rich. I have lived among and served the poor. In fascination for the diversity of human experience and diversify, I have studied ten languages and traveled widely. I have devoted myself to the study of history. I have worked in factories, grocery stores, hospitals and orphanages where I drove a bus, among other responsibilities. I suppose I have been everything from the old professor to Ralph Kramden I have been the pastor of two parishes and have served in four more. I taught in a university for 25 years. I have lived in family life and cared for relatives young and old, paid bills, lost loved ones, accompanied people in their sorrows and watched them die more often than I care to remember.  Because I am a Catholic priest I have drunk more deeply of the wonder of human life than I ever expected to.

My religion, which you may think an illusion, has brought me intimately into the lives of more people than one can imagine. I have laughed with them. I have wept with them. Some have loved me. Some have despised me because I am a Catholic priest, but to imagine that I have hidden from life or that I have merely observed it is the amazing arrogance of a man who assumes that all men are the same. Perhaps this is a specific failure of the moral code of atheism. It cannot empathize with the sorrows of others. When the humanist says that man is the measure of all things, he really means “I am the measure of all things.” You wrote, “You contend that if I am not a Christian, I cannot know the greatest good. Therefore I cannot do the greatest good.” You have misunderstood me. It is not that you cannot know the greatest good, I maintain that if you are correct, there is no greatest good. The only possible good is my own survival, be that in an individual or racial sense. If existence of the self is the greatest good, it is an illusory, a pointless good because it will not happen, if you are right. You will die.  Your highest good is a cloud that will one day dissipate. Perhaps science will someday  learn to extend the existence of the self for indefinite periods of time. Time will still pass and the existence of the self will end. The sun will explode, the universe may  contract or someone will trip on the plug that keeps an artificially sustained consciousness in business. You will end if there is only time and no such thing as eternity. Your good will pass away because it is not highest. It is not even really higher than any other good.

Particularly distressing are your words: “Being human beings ourselves, we intuit very well when it is better to live and when it is better to die. We have fashioned international law on these shared ethical intuitions.” Intuit? How very scientific. We intuit the good.  What is the vehicle for that intuition? Bonhomie? Good vibrations. Nazi theory. Hitler certainly knew that it was better for some to live and for others to die. Abortion providers certainly know when it is better for some to live and others to die. The first killed untold millions on the theory that his race was better than theirs. He intuited that he was ridding the world of parasites by eliminating the landless Gypsies and Jews. Abortionist don’t bother with your better intuition. They know it’s better for some to die and others to live by checking their bank accounts. You say that we have fashioned

international law without the help of religion. International law before the advent of the Peace of God in the middle ages was simply “Might makes Right.”  The moral heroes of Atheism, like Stalin, Mao, the Castro brothers and Pol Pot made great sacrifices to establish the perfect state. They sacrificed uncountable millions of people other than themselves for the good of the state. How can you possibly accuse me of not living on planet earth. Pray tell, how do I migrate to the planet of atheist brotherhood, where my greatest good is at the heart of government and human conduct?

I stick to my original statement. As an atheist, you shouldn’t do unto others, and certainly I would rather not have you do unto me as you would do unto you because you highest good might be something repugnant or harmful to me. Your highest good might decide that my very existence was not congruent with your highest good as did the above mentioned heroes of Marxist atheist theory.  You may want to die for the cause but please leave me out of it.  Tyrants who have used the teachings of Jesus as an excuse for the aggregation of power have acted contrary to His will. In slaughtering the millions, the Revolutionists of the 20^th century acted in perfect harmony with the teaching of their founders. Don’t blame Jesus of Nazareth for the chaos of the world. The death and misery of the modern era and every era can be placed right at the feet of the brotherhood of man unrestrained by the ethical teaching of the Judeo/Christian moral code. Buddhists seem pretty nice. too. They, you will point out are actually atheist, but the Buddha is as much an ethical dictator as any divinity or pope.

If there is no real absolute truth, mandated by one whom you seem to be calling the great Dictator, then your intuited good may be quite different from what I intuit as good.  Particularly amusing is your talk of our shared ecological inheritance. It is my assumption that you live in North America, a place not exactly inherited, more properly stolen by the Darwinian fittest from its original inhabitants. Does your shared ecological intuition demand that if there are too many of us burdening the planet, some of us must go? Will it be you, or I or both of us? We deluded Catholics agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that to love is to seek the highest good of another. Perhaps you may think that destructive relationships, unnatural marriages, drunkenness, assisted suicide, “mercy” killing are all optional choices. The God, whom you say doesn’t exist seems to disagree with you, that is if He exists. Living, even in difficult situations is His general plan, with very few exceptions. If spaceship Earth is just a beginning for something timeless, the greatest good is to get you and me both to heaven. If spaceship earth is all that we have, at least at present, then perhaps we should give this land back to the indigenous inhabitants and volunteer to be ground up for fertilizer in the spirit of our common ecological interest.

You say that I am vague and have not given “one specific ethical behavior which a Christian can do but the skeptic cannot.”   Here is the one ethical behavior that a logically consistent atheist cannot do. He cannot love.  If love is to seek the highest good, then godless love is not a real possibility. I can enjoy, take pleasure in, desire another. I can strive for our shared well being. I can strive to please another or to make them happy.  The Christian believes that the highest good of another may not always be pleasing to that other, just as a vaccination may displease a squirming five-year-old.  The ancients admitted many different types of love among which were Eros, the love that desires to posses the beloved, and philia, the love that finds comfort mutuality and pleasure in another. Much rarer was the word Agape, the love that hopes for no return on its investment in the other. Eros and philia come easily to the atheist. Agape may not even be a possibility.

One last thought. I am unclear on the benign celestial dictatorship that you mention. I assume you are referring to the deity. If you were referring to the papal pretensions of the former cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires, he doesn’t seem very dictatorial when he kneels before an incarcerated Muslim girl to wash and kiss her feet. I imagine rather that you were referring to the pretensions of the founder of the organization the foot washer pope now heads. That founder too did not seem very divine or dictatorial in His pretensions. He too knelt to wash feet. In fact He knelt before and washed the feet of His own murderer.  Perhaps you are imagining a god who does not exist and thus you cannot find the God who does. You seem to think of God as big. We Christians have found the God who is remarkably small and wondrously humble. His eye is on the sparrow, and on the molecule and on the atom, and even on the Higgs Boson particle. We believe that He is through all and in all, though He is more than all. I pray that someday you meet Him.

Yours,

the Rev. Know-it-all