The mantra from the left for some time now is that culture must progress, must move forward, that the ways of the past are anathema and to be avoided, at all costs.
We're paying a serious price for what they're calling forward thinking.
The modern idea of human freedom—that it means a rejection of human nature and the capacity tocreate oneself virtually ex nihilo—actually destroys human freedom. As Leonard Cohen says in his song Closing Time, “It looks like freedom but it feels like death.”
create oneself virtually ex nihilo—actually destroys human freedom. As Leonard Cohen says in his song Closing Time, “It looks like freedom but it feels like death.”Once human being is not essentially a gift given, it becomes a commodity. If we are all free to make of ourselves whatever we will be, if humanity is nothing but a blank slate on which to cast our ideas and achievements, then the human person as person is something of little account, little value. It is a very short leap from there to talking of ‘lives not worth living,’ of Ubermensch and Untermensch.
It all seems very fine to speak of freedom in these terms. It seems kind and tolerant to say that everyone just gets to make anything whatsoever they want of their lives, and that the essence of happiness and freedom is to do just that. It is sentimental, but sentimentality leads to the gas chamber.
When the fundamental reality of the human person as made in God’s image and likeness, and of God the Creator fashioning us so, is lost, then the door is not just open to a radical devaluing of human life. In fact the door is closed and barred fast against any coherent picture of human dignity and the ineradicable value of the person.
To a large degree Western Civilization has been living off the capital of its Christian theology for some centuries now, while largely rejecting that theology. We seem to think that it is normal and natural for humanity to respect the dignity of persons. But it takes only a little knowledge of history to know that chattel slavery and child murder, tribal warfare and destruction of the weak has been the norm of humanity for most of its history. And it is to that norm we are returning, quickly, as our capital runs out. Not so much a fiscal cliff as a spiritual and moral one.
The bolded words (my emphasis) seems to especially resonate with me on the day the President of the United States, driven by alleged (and dare I say faked) sentimentality, has signed or will sign 23 executive orders to enact policy he cannot get passed by the legislative branch of the government, executive orders
We are indeed on the path of that leads to the gas chamber, as radical and extreme as that might sound.
And we're doing so while our leaders speak of progress.
Knowledge of history is indeed needed... and a willingness to see this, as Fr. Lemieux has stated, as a moral and spiritual problem.
It begins with each of us. Are we those who will allow emotion to trump thought, allow the President and his leftist minions to take advantage of us under the guise of caring for our children?
When will we take the threat seriously?
When will we see the culture's problems as spiritual and moral problems?
When?
Time is running out. True freedom is at stake.
Lord, give us eyes to see.
