Wellness industry defiles our worthy emotions

Emotions give us invaluable data about how we need to navigate our lives

Discomfort, illness, and unease commonly show up in people's lives these days, expressions of a malaise whose cause is difficult to identify. The massive numbers of people facing this complication have given rise to the post-Christian era boom of the wellness industry. 

As Sam Blum reports:

The wellness industry is vast—a McKinsey report last year estimated its total global value at US$1.5 trillion, “with annual growth of 5%–10%”—and purveyors of wellness products and services hawk everything from crystals that promise cardiovascular health to purportedly miraculous weight-loss teas that can leave the body dehydrated and depleted.

People show themselves willing to pay to clutch hold of any support in the face of whatever aspect of the widespread social dis-ease that affects them. As we will see, the flimsy nature of what is on offer involves participants in practices that can be comical  but also there are tragic outcomes, as in the case of a New Zealand woman who committed suicide while in the care of an American mentor, "spiritual healer" Ed Strachar,​ to whom she had paid about US$16,000.

The Blum article continues:

Wellness is a nebulous and sticky term, according to Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, an epidemiologist and a researcher at Australia’s University of Wollongong. “There’s no real definition of wellness,” he explained to HR Brew. “When you read about wellness in the news…it refers to some kind of vaguely scientific or pseudoscientific thing.”

Interviews with wellness chiefs in the medical field and wellness consultants in other industries suggest that any advice should be backed by science and never treated as a recipe for instant success. “It’s not a magic bullet,” Peter Bond, chief wellness officer at the consultancy Bond Wellness Company, explained. 

The World Health Organization includes mental health in its definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”.

Training in resilience and mindfulness is foremost in the approaches taken by the consultants that businesses call in. In the past, such characteristics would have fostered within a Christian family in the way of developing self-control, and by gaining meaning and purpose in each person's life through a close relationship with God, who becomes the individual's "ground of being", providing certainty and security, and insight into the value of a other-oriented moral life. 

Wellness training does not have a great success rate, as Blum reveals:

Though some research has seen modest short-term improvements to health behaviors, the overall long term efficacy of wellness programs has been unclear at times. Writing in the Washington Post last year, researchers Katherine Baicker and Zirui Song explained that after comparing 25 workplaces with wellness programs to 135 that didn’t, there weren’t “any substantial effects on employment outcomes (such as fewer sick days), health-care spending, or objective health measures” for workers who participated in wellness initiatives over a three year period.

Nevertheless, employee well-being could become a primary metric for gauging employee success in the coming years, according to Gartner’s Seven Predictions for the Future of Total Rewards report, which anticipates that “business leaders will increasingly focus on well-being metrics as a leading indicator of their employees’ engagement, satisfaction, and productivity”.

And according to a 2021 Kaiser Family Foundation survey of 1686 non-federal public and private employers, wellness programs are common, with “42% of small firms and 69% of large firms offer[ing] programs to help workers stop smoking or using tobacco, 44% of small firms and 63% of large firms offer[ing] programs to help workers lose weight, and 48% of small firms and 71% of large firms offer[ing] some other lifestyle or behavioral coaching program”.

Observers can often see in the general population the breakdown of behaviour that rises above instant gratification. This pleasure-seeking focus in people's life is part of the oft-cited evidence (see here and here) that people who believe in God, or who have a religious foundation to their life, are happier than those who do not. That's why the atheist Sam Harris draws on tested Buddhist teaching in his mindfulness meditation app (at $100/$500).  

The wellness claim of being able to effectively “end suffering” and rid a person of negative emotions is a big one. On Lewis Howes' "Greatness Coaching" website, it is said that in a discussion with Howes, [Sam Harris] "shares that when he experiences emotions like anger to sadness, he becomes interested in the emotion. He observes his body’s reaction and tries to distance himself from the feelings. ... So get ready to learn how mindfulness can end suffering on Episode 824."

The science that underpins a lot of the wellness coaching and business consultancy activity is suspect. Of course, Harris has a background in neuroscience, but his ideologically bound scientism undermines the value of his discourse.

Therefore, when these "mind coaches'/"spiritual healers" go on about why we should or how to control our emotions they are likely to be talking nonsense - or stating the obvious. As Oliver Burkeman, a frequent commentator on the psychological sciences, has written: 

[There is a] "dirty secret at the heart of the study of emotions. They don’t discuss it in interviews. But get chatting to a psychologist on his or her third whiskey, at a lonely bar on the outskirts of town near closing time, and you might finally hear the truth, which is that no one really has a damned clue what an emotion is."

Burkeman does a thought experiment: 

If you doubt this, recall a recent time you felt sad or frightened or angry or anxious, and ask yourself: what was that? Clearly, an emotion must be more than a mere thought: it’s easy to think about something that’s theoretically scary without feeling scared. And it must be more than a physical sensation: when I’m anxious, my stomach tightens – but my stomach tightens when I’ve eaten bad seafood, too, and that’s not anxiety.

Yet, when you subtract both the thought and the sensation, nothing seems to be left, as William James noticed back in 1884. Can you imagine the emotion of rage, say, while imagining “no flushing of the face, no dilation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a placid face?” James wrote in his essay "What Is An Emotion?". “The present writer, for one, certainly cannot.” Somehow, the emotion itself, as distinct from thoughts or sensations, has gone missing in action. And despite vast strides in psychology and neuroscience since then, it’s never quite been located.

For this reason, in his conclusion, Burkeman comes back to the hollowness of the wellness industry:

It’s a bit unnerving: we spend millions trying to fix our emotions – via therapy, books, medications and more – yet it’s not remotely clear what we’re trying to fix. Or perhaps, to adopt a perspective echoing Buddhist psychology, it’s not unnerving but deeply reassuring? After all, if there’s nothing to emotions except sensations plus thinking, it follows that nothing you could ever experience in life, no matter how terrible, will ever be anything more than a bunch of thoughts, plus a few physical sensations. And you can probably handle that.

Emotions, often referred to as passions, are part of our psyche and are neither good nor bad. It is the wilful action flowing from them that has moral weight. We need to learn how to apply our reason and free will to our emotions. 

  The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

The passions are natural components of the human psyche; they form the passageway and ensure the connection between the life of the senses and the life of the mind. Our Lord called man's heart the source from which the passions spring.[1764]

It’s clear from this teaching that our emotions are a created, ordered part of us. It makes sense, then, that “passions are neither good nor evil” as stated by section 1767, which goes onto say, “they are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will”.

Emotions help us connect our senses to our mind. The six primary emotions are sadness, anger, guilt, fear, love, and joy. Anger has a bodily response of heat, joy produces a lightness of spirit, and so on.

Clinical psychologist Matthew McCall offers advice that captures the Church's long history of dealing with emotions/passions:

Society rewards people for calm, controlled, rational decision-making, not for genuine expressions of emotions and feelings. It’s important to remember that there is a time and place for both; our tendency is to always see rational thoughts as “good” and emotional feelings as “bad”.

The reality is that we have emotions for a reason. They are a gift from God to help guide us through our lives. Emotions can tell us about ourselves, communicate experiences with others, and motivate us to virtuous action.

Emotions give us invaluable data about what we like and don’t like, what hurts us, what we want, what we need, and how we want to navigate our lives.

They also help us communicate this information about ourselves to other people. In fact, all of our core emotions have distinct facial expressions that are recognizable across all known cultures. This means they are relational and help us to express ourselves in a deep and powerful way.

And, finally, emotions function as our motors in life, giving us drive, energy, and vitality. Every core feeling comes with an impulse, something the feeling makes you want to do. For example, anger makes you want to fight and defend yourself when someone hurts you while sadness encourages you to draw close to a loved one to find support after a loss.

Once you understand the true definition and purpose of human emotions, you can appreciate why God gave them to us. They are powerful tools designed to help us understand ourselves, others, and ultimately, God better and more completely.

In that short account we can learn more about how to thrive as a person before God than by spending a lot of money on lessons in wellness that tend to promote little more than a self-centred life focused on the rich and famous. Common sense and guidance by morally upright people can deliver much more of value, with Jesus' words ringing in our ears: "I come to bring life, and life in all its fullness". 

Here, we can point out that mindfulness, as awareness of ourselves as part of God's plan in the present moment, is a development of the practices of the ancient Greeks, who meditated with the goal of "Know yourself". Mindfulness, also known by Christians as centering, is not prayer in itself, but it certainly is a useful aid to prayer and in achieving the purpose of Christian life, an ever-closer relationship with God. 

We have to be guided in forming our conscience in order to comply with the order God has created in our nature, but we are not just creatures of reason and will. As the Catechism states:

The perfection of the moral good consists of a person's being moved to the good by their will but also by their "heart".

Ω See Christian meditation app here 

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West provokes Putin's cultural war

The Radio Lemberg website in Ukraine displays its political colours: "Kyiv Pride showed that [...] Ukraine is set firmly on its path to Europe, on its path to the West."

Putin's war in Ukraine is not principally a land-grab - it has much deeper significance for him. In fact, this is the sort of war the West does not know how to fight because it is first and foremost against the secularism and depraved sexual morality that a "progressive" agenda demands be applied in every nation, either as accepted by a suitably propagandised population or imposed by the woke elite.

Before hearing from Putin himself, two commentators address the key religious element in Putin's decision to invade Ukraine.   

First, in his just-published Substack newsletter, John Schindler, former National Security Agency analyst and professor at the Naval War College, explains why Putin’s war on Ukraine is ultimately a religious war:

As Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, explained in early 2019, “Ukraine is not on the periphery of our church. We call Kiev ‘the mother of all Russian cities’. For us Kiev is what Jerusalem is for many. Russian Orthodoxy began there, so under no circumstances can we abandon this historical and spiritual relationship. The whole unity of our Local Church is based on these spiritual ties.”

What spurred Patriarch Kirill to make that statement was the separation of much of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Russia in early 2019 with the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, with go-ahead from the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople (i.e., Istanbul: who is the not-a-pope of world Orthodoxy, where national churches are self-governing). This involved the transfer of thousands of parishes and millions of believers from the long-existing Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, which has been under the [Russian Orthodox] since the seventeenth century, to the brand-new [Ukraine Orthodox]. The [Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate] is self-governing under Moscow and there wasn’t much spiritual demand in Ukraine for independence from Russia, what Orthodox term autocephaly.

However, the pressures of the not-quite-frozen conflict with Russia after 2015 made church issues a political football, and Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko made autocephaly his pet project, with backing from Ukrainian nationalists, who found it offensive that the Ukraine Orthodox Church remained under Moscow, where the church is a vehicle for Putinism, Russian nationalism, and anti-Ukrainian aggression. Advocates of the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine had a valid point there, and they were also correct that, since autocephaly is the norm in the Orthodox world, why didn’t Ukraine have its own, fully independent national church?

...[T]he advocates of the Ukraine Church [...] got their wish in early January 2019, when the Ecumenical Patriarch granted autocephaly to Ukraine’s new national church. What followed was predictably messy and politicized, with fights across Ukraine over parishes and clergy. This issue is neither simple nor clear-cut: the [Ukraine Church] is considered broadly nationalist (with exceptions) while the Ukraine Orthodox Church, despite its Russian connections, has many laypeople who are Ukrainian patriots who don’t feel they belong to a “foreign” church. Moreover, this issue birthed a schism in global Orthodoxy that has reverberated on several continents, most recently in Africa. 

Above all, the schism rendered Moscow white-hot with rage. The Russian Orthodox Church viewed this as a direct attack on its “canonical territory” and on world Orthodoxy itself. The Kremlin, too, made no effort to conceal its outrage here. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov quickly denounced the Ecumenical Patriarch as Washington’s puppet: “His mission, obviously, is being prepared by the Americans and they do not hide that they are actively cooperating with him, using the slogan of ‘freedom of religion and belief’…Bartholomew’s mission, obviously, is to bury the influence of Orthodoxy in the modern world.”

A few weeks later, Lavrov added fuel to the fire by castigating the Ukraine Church as “this travesty of history, and pursuing the objective of sowing discord between Russia and Ukraine in addition to preventing our peoples from being friends are essentially a crime [by the current Ukrainian regime] against their citizens.” A few months after that, Lavrov reiterated that this tragedy was all America’s fault: the Russian Orthodox Church “is currently under tremendous pressure from a number of Western countries, primarily the United States, which set itself the goal of destroying the unity of world Orthodox Christianity.”

It’s an article of faith in the Kremlin that the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is an American project designed to destroy world Orthodoxy and harm Russia. It’s painful for me to state this but the Russians have good reason to think this. Unlike absurd Kremlin propaganda lines about “Ukrainian Nazis” perpetrating “genocide” against Russians, the idea that Washington wanted the split of Orthodoxy in Ukraine is a reasonable inference upon examination of recent U.S. Government conduct. What’s the evidence?

Our Kyiv embassy congratulated the Orthodox Church of Ukraine for its birth and the selection of its first primate, then the State Department in Washington amplified the same. Celebrating Constantinople’s grant of autocephaly, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo hailed it as a “historic achievement for Ukraine”, which represented America’s “strong support for religious freedom”. Pompeo’s statement left no doubt about America’s backing the Ukraine Church against the [Church under the Russian Orthodox].

Pompeo’s position in the worldwide Orthodox schism was made clear by his subsequent meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch, whom the Secretary of State hailed as “a key partner as we continue to champion religious freedom around the globe”. Neither was this a partisan project, since the position of the Biden administration on this issue is identical to its predecessor’s. Four months ago, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also met with the Ecumenical Patriarch, reaffirming U.S. commitment to religious freedom, which in Moscow unsurprisingly looked like support for the Ukraine Orthodox Church.

Since very few Americans, and functionally no non-Orthodox ones, noticed any of this, it’s worth asking why the State Department felt compelled to take a public position on any of this. Does Foggy Bottom [the government and cultural hub in Washington D.C.] side with Sunni or Shia? What about Lutheranism versus Methodism? Who in Washington thought it was a good idea to throw its weight behind the Ukraine Orthodox Church, since anybody who knew anything about Putinism and its religious-civilizational mission had to be aware that such statements were guaranteed to raise Moscow’s ire.

That ire has now taken the form of air strikes, missile barrages, and advancing tank battalions. Just last month, Lavrov restated his government’s position that the United States stands behind the “current crisis in Orthodoxy”. As he explained without any word-mincing, Washington caused “the most serious dispute in the entire Orthodox world”, adding, “The United States of America had an immediate hand in the current crisis in Orthodoxy. They created a special mechanism, a special agency for the freedom of religious confession, which actually is not dealing with freedom but most actively set up and financed Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew so that he conducted a device for schism, particularly in Ukraine, in the first place, for creating there the schismatic, uncanonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine.”

We should not indulge Muscovite conspiracy theories nor countenance Russian aggression. However, the facts are plain enough. Simply put, by recognizing the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and hailing its creation, Washington changed the Kremlin’s game in Ukraine, making Putin’s long-term plans for his neighbor untenable. Without a united Orthodox Church across the former lands of Rus, answering to Moscow, the “Russian World” concept falls apart. 

Every secular geostrategic challenge cited as a reason for Putin’s aggression – Nato expansion, Western military moves, oil and gas politics – existed in 2014, yet Putin then chose to limit his attacks on Ukraine to Crimea and the Southeast. What’s changed since then that makes his effort to subdue all Ukraine seem like a good idea in the Kremlin? The creation of an autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019, with official American backing, is the difference, and Moscow believes this was all a nefarious U.S. plot to divide world Orthodoxy at Russia’s expense. Clearly Putin has decided that reclaiming Ukraine and its capital, “the mother of Russian cities”. for Russian Orthodoxy is worth a major war. Make no mistake, this is a religious war, even if almost nobody in the West realizes it.

See more on this perspective as Rod Dreher reports from Hungary.

It is existential — it is about identity.

Second, Stan Grant of Australia, a long-time international journalist and global analyst, has pertinent observations in a piece under the headline "Russia's Ukraine invasion is not just about borders or power. For Putin, it's about identity".  

Grant lays it out simply:

This is the sort of war the West does not know how to fight. It is not just about territory, or borders, or resources, or power. It is existential — it is about identity. 

Vladimir Putin has made it clear Ukraine is part of the soul of Russia. And he is prepared to crush the souls of Ukrainians to achieve his ends.

Yes, Putin has made security demands, he wants the West out of what he sees as Russia's sphere of influence. He wants a cast-iron guarantee Ukraine can never join Nato.

But it is the "why" that is more important than the "what" here. Why? Because to Putin, there is no Ukraine without Russia. They are one.

Grant goes deeper:

Putin [...] sees Ukraine as Russian land essential to Putin's idea of Russkiy Mir (Russian World). It is about Russian language, culture; it is blood and soil. It is mythological. Russkiy Mir is holy; central is Russian Orthodox faith. 

To Russian nationalists like Putin, Ukraine's capital Kyiv is the mother of all Russian cities. This is why Putin famously called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the twentieth century". It is oft repeated, not as often understood.

Reclaiming the essential unified identity of the people within the Russian "space" is most important for Putin, according to Grant:

Putin doesn't want communism back, he wants Russia back. The catastrophe wasn't the collapse of Marxist-Leninism, it was the suffering of the people. 

Russian-speaking Slavic people were cut adrift — as Putin sees it — from mother Russia.

Why can't the West fight this? Because the West doesn't even understand it. The West is meant to be a place beyond identity. 

This is everything the West is not. The modern West grew out of Reformation and Enlightenment. It was about liberation. In the West we change citizenship, we move countries, we swap or abandon religions.

Pluralism and multiculturalism have been hallmarks of progress. We celebrate diversity as a strength. But the success of the West poses harder and harder questions. 

Liberal democracy is staggering under the weight of growing inequality, contested rights and political tribalism.

What binds us? We appear ever rootless, not rooted.  

Not everyone, of course. Roots matter to some, but liberal democracy can leave us unmoored: it hollows out our communities, it mocks tradition, banishes faith from the public square.

Liberalism elevates the individual to the point of alienation. The scholar, Patrick Deneen, charted this decline in his book, Why Liberalism Failed [2018]. It has lost its moral and political core, he argues:

"Today's widespread yearning for a strong leader, one with the will to take back popular control over liberalism's forms of bureaucratized government and globalized economy, comes after decades of liberal dismantling of cultural norms and political habits essential to self-governance." *

The modern West is less village square than city centre. Yes, there are "somewheres", as the British writer David Goodhart put it, but inexorably we seem to be on a journey to "anywhere".

This is a demographic, economic and cultural fault line that runs through the liberal pluralist West and it is increasingly political. It is a battle over what the West is, and who is prepared to defend it.

It cuts across religious freedom, LGTBQI rights, race, gender and class. It divides the rural from the urban.

And Vladimir Putin sees it as a weakness. He has castigated the West for its culture wars and its corrosive identity politics.

Putin tells it as he sees it!

Finally, the extent to which Western modernity holds no allure for Putin and Russian patriots is made clear in a speech he gave in October last year in Sochi to an international audience. He first turned his gaze on global difficulties created by late capitalism, including the lax response to climate change, and to the pandemic, where national self-interest often takes precedence over helping poor nations.  

But he also spoke to "the importance of solid support in the sphere of morals, ethics and values" in "the modern fragile world".  Dramatic changes are occurring, Putin said:

We look in amazement at the processes underway in the countries which have been traditionally looked at as the standard-bearers of progress. Of course, the social and cultural shocks that are taking place in the United States and Western Europe are none of our business; we are keeping out of this.

Some people in the West believe that an aggressive elimination of entire pages from their own history, “reverse discrimination” against the majority in the interests of a minority, and the demand to give up the traditional notions of mother, father, family and even gender, they believe that all of these are the mileposts on the path towards social renewal.

Listen, I would like to point out once again that they have a right to do this, we are keeping out of this. But we would like to ask them to keep out of our business as well. We have a different viewpoint, at least the overwhelming majority of Russian society – it would be more correct to put it this way – has a different opinion on this matter. We believe that we must rely on our own spiritual values, our historical tradition and the culture of our multiethnic nation.

The advocates of so-called ‘social progress’ believe they are introducing humanity to some kind of a new and better consciousness. Godspeed, hoist the flags as we say, go right ahead. The only thing that I want to say now is that their prescriptions are not new at all. It may come as a surprise to some people, but Russia has been there already. After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks, relying on the dogmas of Marx and Engels, also said that they would change existing ways and customs and not just political and economic ones, but the very notion of human morality and the foundations of a healthy society.

The destruction of age-old values, religion and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family (we had that, too), encouragement to inform on loved ones – all this was proclaimed progress and, by the way, was widely supported around the world back then and was quite fashionable, same as today. By the way, the Bolsheviks were absolutely intolerant of opinions other than theirs.

This, I believe, should call to mind some of what we are witnessing now. Looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries, we are amazed to see the domestic practices, which we, fortunately, have left, I hope, in the distant past. The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity, when the works of the great authors of the past – such as Shakespeare – are no longer taught at schools or universities, because their ideas are believed to be backward. The classics are declared backward and ignorant of the importance of gender or race. In Hollywood memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what colour or gender should be in a movie. This is even worse than the agitprop department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Countering acts of racism is a necessary and noble cause, but the new ‘cancel culture’ has turned it into ‘reverse discrimination’ that is, reverse racism. The obsessive emphasis on race is further dividing people, when the real fighters for civil rights dreamed precisely about erasing differences and refusing to divide people by skin colour.

I specifically asked my colleagues to find the following quote from Martin Luther King: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by their character.” This is the true value. However, things are turning out differently there. By the way, the absolute majority of Russian people do not think that the colour of a person’s skin or their gender is an important matter. Each of us is a human being. This is what matters.

In a number of Western countries, the debate over men’s and women’s rights has turned into a perfect phantasmagoria. Look, beware of going where the Bolsheviks once planned to go – not only communalising chickens, but also communalising women. One more step and you will be there.

Zealots of these new approaches even go so far as to want to abolish these concepts altogether. Anyone who dares mention that men and women actually exist, which is a biological fact, risk being ostracised. “Parent number one” and “parent number two,” “’birthing parent” instead of “mother,” and “human milk” replacing “breastmilk” because it might upset the people who are unsure about their own gender. I repeat, this is nothing new; in the 1920s, the so-called Soviet Kulturtraegers also invented some newspeak believing they were creating a new consciousness and changing values that way. And, as I have already said, they made such a mess it still makes one shudder at times.

Not to mention some truly monstrous things when children are taught from an early age that a boy can easily become a girl and vice versa. That is, the teachers actually impose on them a choice we all supposedly have. They do so while shutting the parents out of the process and forcing the child to make decisions that can upend their entire life. They do not even bother to consult with child psychologists – is a child at this age even capable of making a decision of this kind? Calling a spade a spade, this verges on a crime against humanity, and it is being done in the name and under the banner of progress.

Well, if someone likes this, let them do it. I have already mentioned that, in shaping our approaches, we will be guided by a healthy conservatism. That was a few years ago, when passions on the international arena were not yet running as high as they are now, although, of course, we can say that clouds were gathering even then. Now, when the world is going through a structural disruption, the importance of reasonable conservatism as the foundation for a political course has skyrocketed – precisely because of the multiplying risks and dangers, and the fragility of the reality around us.

This conservative approach is not about an ignorant traditionalism, a fear of change or a restraining game, much less about withdrawing into our own shell. It is primarily about reliance on a time-tested tradition, the preservation and growth of the population, a realistic assessment of oneself and others, a precise alignment of priorities, a correlation of necessity and possibility, a prudent formulation of goals, and a fundamental rejection of extremism as a method. And frankly, in the impending period of global reconstruction, which may take quite long, with its final design being uncertain, moderate conservatism is the most reasonable line of conduct, as far as I see it. It will inevitably change at some point, but so far, do no harm – the guiding principle in medicine – seems to be the most rational one. Noli nocere, as they say.

Again, for us in Russia, these are not some speculative postulates, but lessons from our difficult and sometimes tragic history. The cost of ill-conceived social experiments is sometimes beyond estimation. Such actions can destroy not only the material, but also the spiritual foundations of human existence, leaving behind moral wreckage where nothing can be built to replace it for a long time.

The reality of Russian fears about the woke agenda in the West was highlighted by a participant at the conference Putin had addressed. Margarita Simonyan, a Russian journalist and prominent media personality, made this comment in the process of asking a question:

Mr President, as a mother of three young children, I would like to thank you very much for your healthy conservatism. I am terrified by the thought of my 7-year-old son being asked to choose a gender, or my 2-year-old daughter being told from all mobile devices, and even at school, as is now happening in many Western countries, that her future is that of a “person with human milk who gives birth to a baby”. And the thought that these tentacles of liberal fascism, so-called liberal, will reach us and our children. I really hope that this will never be allowed in our country, despite its great openness. 

As expressed, Putin's conservatism is "moderate" or "reasonable", to use his terms. However, his concern about "the sphere of morals, ethics and values" affecting his people certainly compounds the geo-strategic issues he is confronting in his assault on Ukraine sovereignty, issues he covered in answering a question at the end of his speech in October last year. 

On both counts, one wonders if Western observers gave serious enough attention to this leader of the world's largest nation, or whether the cultural and political agendas of the bureaucrats have been so set in concrete that a respectful handling of Putin's pleas for space for the Russian project was made impossible.     

* More on Deneen's view:

According to Deneen, "we should rightly wonder whether America is not in the early days of its eternal life but rather approaching the end of the natural cycle of corruption and decay that limits the lifespan of all human creations." The book argues that liberalism has exhausted itself, leading to income inequality, cultural decline, the erosion of freedoms, and the growth of powerful, centralized bureaucracies. [Source]

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Protecting religion means showing respect, too

 St. Francis de Sales School in Las Vegas. 

Gallup has reported: Roughly 21% of Generation Z Americans who have reached adulthood - those born between 1997 and 2003 - identify as LGBT. That is nearly double the proportion of millennials who do so, while the gap widens even further when compared with older generations. 

With such a mindset gripping young people in the US as well as many other Western countries, it is no wonder that religious schools become embroiled in a conflict with even young students on the matter of recognition of individual sexual preferences.

The right of religious schools to set rules of conduct both for students and for teachers is contentious even while law is relatively settled in some jurisdictions.

Australia is one nation that has tried to clarify the law on this matter, and in the process has highlighted the need for those championing the politically liberal - often referred to as the progressive - stance to allow space for the competition of ideas that John Stuart Mill called for in On Liberty.

Today we hear so much about the "harm" individuals identifying as LGBT feel is being done to them, or about the "micro-aggressions" such individuals perceive themselves to be suffering, and the consequent need to "de-platform" anyone considered unsympathetic to the party that is a "victim".  

But Mill believed that though prohibiting even discourteous conduct in intellectual expression might be a “convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world”, the “price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification, is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind”.

Obviously, a distinction must be made between "hate" conduct and a vigorous presentation of an argument, but latching on to the "hate" concept is a rhetorical tool too readily employed in the exchange of ideas on moral issues of great import to the welfare of society.

Therefore, there have to be safeguards for religious groups. As Frank Brennan, an Australian constitutional lawyer as well as Jesuit priest, has pointed out, in every jurisdiction there should be a law that:

[...] ensured that individuals and groups would not be discriminated against on the basis of their religion and that individuals and groups could be discriminating in preferring the appointment or employment of individuals who supported the religious mission of a religious organisation, in much the same way that a political party or politician could preference the employment of staffers who support their political agenda.

Speaking about the political wrangling surrounding just such legislation before Australia's parliament, Brennan states: 

In recent days, if you were to listen to the media reports, you could be forgiven for thinking that religious educators want to retain a right to exclude children or teachers from their schools on the basis of their gender or sexual orientation.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Or nothing should be further from the truth.  

Three years ago, Archbishop Mark Coleridge, the President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, told the Parliament: ‘Catholic schools do not use the exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act to expel or otherwise discriminate against students on the grounds of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status.’  

Ann Maree Rebgetz, Board Director of  Catholic Secondary Principals Australia told the parliamentary committee: ‘Catholic secondary principals have a strong moral compass in relation to the treatment of secondary students in our schools.  They believe that inclusivity, as a gospel value, must reign supreme in the treatment of their clientele.  This translates into the safeguarding of all students, and particularly those students who are in a minority and may feel marginalised.  Religious schools should not be able to discriminate against students on the basis of their sexual orientation and identity.’ 

Brennan goes into some of the details of the approach of Catholic schools: 

Undoubtedly there are many sensitive and novel issues to consider when looking to the best interests of transgender children and their classmates, especially in single sex schools.  These are challenges for all schools, and not just religious ones.  All school systems need to train teachers and administrators to deal with these issues compassionately and competently.  The guidelines of the Melbourne archdiocese for ‘Pastoral care for students experiencing gender dysphoria’ are an indicator that the Catholic school system is responding appropriately from the top. The challenge is to ensure that teachers in the classroom have a clear understanding of the Church position and community expectations, as well as the training to assist children in these circumstances.

There are some dangers in the aggressive mentality abroad in society, as alluded to above, that is not helpful in dealing with the social problem of massive increases in the West of claims of dysphoria. On this, Brennan offers some insights:

When marking the 50th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, Pope John Paul II called for a collective examination of conscience.  He spoke of ‘the tendency of some to choose one or another right at their convenience, while ignoring those which are contrary to their current interests occurs too frequently.  Others do not hesitate to isolate particular rights from their context in order to act as they please, often confusing freedom with licence, or to provide themselves with advantages which take little account of human solidarity.’

Brennan continues:

Whatever happens with the religious discrimination debate [...], we need to ensure that we are not trumpeting one right over another.  Religious schools should retain the freedom to teach their religious doctrine and to choose staff sympathetic to the school’s religious ethos.  We all have the freedom to manifest our religion or beliefs subject to whatever lawful limitations are needed to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.  And we all have the right to equality before the law being entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law.

As to how to handle the matter of the right to not hire an LGBT teacher, Brennan stays with the central idea of a school having the right to protect its religious purpose. It would be incumbent on a school to show that a qualified LGBT teacher could not be hired because that teacher would not be able to undertake their duties in good faith, in accordance with the doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings of the particular religion or creed, as long as the educational institution is one whose activities are conducted in accordance with those doctrines, tenets, beliefs or teachings.

Clearly, it's important for society to create the space to deal calmly with such issues as the rights involved in practising one's religion and in being accorded human respect. That these are not mutually exclusive is clear from Brennan's statement: "It behoves us to have a care for those who are most marginalised in our society." The key point is that the effort to find ways to care for the needs - and rights - of all must be linked to collaboration, not the fomenting of conflict. 

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Praying to the dead for help in our lives

Our vibrant community extends from the living to the dead

Emma Green, when at The Atlantic, wrote extensively about the way the younger generations of Western people are experimenting with new forms of religious belief. She finds plenty of evidence that young people tend to hold to a belief in the spiritual even as they reject religion. Among the forms of spirituality that find favour these days are Spiritualism, a religion in its own right, and the unstructured darker realm of necromancy, both of which involve contact with the dead.

Of course, the belief that we can influence life after death goes back to pre-Christian Judaism, whereby we ask God to forgive the sins of the newly dead; the Christian scriptures make reference to those who have gone before us to meet God face-to-face; and, supremely, there is the doctrine of all Christians becoming part of the mystical body of Christ, united in achieving the ongoing abundance of life for all.

Because of abuses within Catholic practices surrounding praying for the dead, and all the better to challenge papal authority, Luther and fellow rebels cut from their list of traditional Christian teachings to carry forward, the powerful doctrines of praying for the dead, and praying to the dead for their intercession before God for the needs of Christians still on earth. The doctrine is referred to as the "communion of saints".

This month, Pope Francis devoted his teaching time at a public audience to the doctrine. He first spoke of some of the misunderstandings surrounding the subject.

[...] our prayer and our devotion as faithful people is not based [...] on trust in a human being, or in an image or an object, even when we know that they are sacred. The prophet Jeremiah reminds us: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man, ... blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord” (17:5, 7). 

Even when we fully rely on the intercession of a saint, or even more so that of the Virgin Mary, our trust only has value in relation to Christ. [It's] as if the path toward this saint or toward Our Lady does not end there, no. It goes there, but in relationship with Christ. Christ is the bond that unites us to him and to each other, and which has a specific name: this bond that unites us all, between ourselves and us with Christ, is the “communion of saints”. 

It is not the saints who work miracles, no! “This saint is so miraculous…” No, stop there. The saints do not work miracles, but only the grace of God that acts through them. Miracles are done by God, by the grace of God acting through a holy person, a righteous person. This must be made clear. There are people who say, “I do not believe in God, but I believe in this saint”. No, this is wrong. The saint is an intercessor, one who prays for us and we pray to him, and he prays for us and the Lord gives us grace: The Lord acts through the saint.

The notion of "saint" has a double aspect. First, the early Church, including Paul, used the term to mean all those saved sinners who had surrendered their will in obedience to the loving God. These "saints" are the living, but also those who had fallen asleep in the Lord - the dead.  The second meaning refers to the dead who have been identified by the Church as clearly rewarded with eternal life in heaven, given their holy life on earth. A recent example of the second grouping of saints is St Teresa of Kolkata - Mother Teresa of Calcutta. 

The community of all Christians is profound:

By virtue of the communion of saints, of this union, every member of the Church is bound to me in a profound way. But I don’t say “to me” because I am the Pope — we are bound reciprocally and in a profound way and this bond is so strong that it cannot be broken even by death.

Indeed, the communion of saints does not concern only the brothers and sisters who are beside me  in this historical moment, but also those who have concluded their earthly pilgrimage and crossed the threshold of death. They too are in communion with us. Let us consider, dear brothers and sisters, that in Christ no one can ever truly separate us from those we love because the bond is an existential bond, a strong bond that is in our very nature; only the manner of being together with  each of them changes, but nothing and no one can break this bond. [...] The communion of saints holds together the community of believers on earth and in heaven.

In this sense, the relationship of friendship that I can build with a brother or sister beside me, I can also establish with a brother or sister who is in heaven. The saints are friends with whom we very often establish friendly relations. What we call devotion to a saint — “I am very devoted to this or that saint” — what we call devotion is actually a way of expressing love from this very bond that unites us. Also, in everyday life one can say, “But this person has such devotion for his elderly parents”: no, it is a manner of love, an expression of love. And we all know that we can always turn to a friend, especially when we are in difficulty and need help.

And we have some friends in heaven. We all need friends; we all need meaningful relationships to help us get through life. Jesus, too, had his friends, and he turned to them at the most decisive moments of his human experience. In the history of the Church there are some constants that accompany the community of believers: first of all, the great affection and the very strong bond that the Church has always felt towards Mary, Mother of God and our Mother. But also the special honour and affection she has bestowed on Saint Joseph. After all, God entrusts to him the most precious things he has: his Son Jesus and the Virgin Mary. 

It is always thanks to the communion of saints that we feel that the men and women saints who are our patrons — because of the name we bear, for example, because of the Church to which we belong, because of the place where we live, and so on, as well as through personal devotion — are close to us. And this is the trust that must always animate us in turning to them at decisive moments in our lives. It is not some kind of magic, it is not superstition, it is devotion to the saints. It is simply talking to a brother, a sister, who is in the presence of God, who has led a righteous life, a holy life, an exemplary life, and is now in the presence of God. And I talk to this brother, to this sister, and ask for their intercession for the needs that I have. 

 As an example of the relationships that can develop within the communion of saints, Pope Francis offered a prayer to St Joseph, an old prayer he said he had recited every day for 40 years:

“Glorious Patriarch Saint Joseph, whose power makes the impossible possible, come to my aid in these times of anguish and difficulty. Take under your protection the serious and troubling situations that I commend to you, that they may have a happy outcome. My beloved father, all my trust is in you. Let it not be said that I invoked you in vain, and since you can do everything with Jesus and Mary, show me that your goodness is as great as your power”.

Just as we are taught to ask fellow Christians to pray for us in our hour of need, so we can call on our brothers and sisters in Christ who have died and are enjoying their reward, a life close to the God who loves us. The mystical body of Christ, that ever-active communion of believers, is as real for us now as it was for St Paul.

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Journey to death should go all the way

From: The Death of the Woman of Darius, 1785, by Louis Jean Francois Lagrenee

Death should complete the full journey of one's life and not come through a premature act, removing the possibility of further growth as a person in what would have been the time available, even when dealing with the difficulties that medical conditions create.

Palliative care of the dying as opposed to the hard-headed "planning" of a person's death are issues taken up below.

Along with the view of death as arriving at the end of a journey, there has to be an attitude of death as a natural event, so that it is not feared but awaited with the calmness of arriving at a welcome destination.

This calmness was clear  in the letter made public this week that retired Pope Benedict XVI had submitted concerning his conduct when leader of the church in Munich. He reflected on his own mortality, writing that "quite soon, I shall find myself before the final judge of my life". He continued:

Even though, as I look back on my long life, I can have great reason for fear and trembling, I am nonetheless of good cheer, for I trust firmly that the Lord is not only the just judge, but also the friend and brother who himself has already suffered for my shortcomings. 

In light of the hour of judgment, the grace of being a Christian becomes all the more clear to me. It grants me knowledge, and indeed friendship, with the judge of my life, and thus allows me to pass confidently through the dark door of death.

The understanding of death as a "dark door" was picked up by Pope Francis in a message later in the week on what a "good death", a "happy death", might mean.

Dear brothers and sisters, perhaps some people think that this language and this theme are only a legacy of the past, but in reality, our relationship with death is never about the past — it is always present. Speaking about himself a few days ago, Pope Benedict said that he “is before the dark door of death”. It is good to thank Pope Benedict, who at 95, has the clarity [of mind] to tell us this. “I am before the obscurity of death, at the dark door of death”. 

 It is good advice that he has given us. The so-called “wellness” culture tries to remove the reality of death, but the coronavirus pandemic has brought it back into focus in a dramatic way. It was terrible: death was everywhere, and many brothers and sisters lost loved ones without being able to be near them, and this made death even harder to accept and process. 

[W]e try in every way to banish the thought of our finite existence, thus deluding ourselves that we can remove its power and dispel fear. But Christian faith is not a way of exorcising the fear of death; rather, it helps us to face it. Sooner or later, we will all pass through that door.

Christians are guided on their way to death by the light of the crucified Christ who rose from the dead and who awaits us "behind that dark door of death", welcoming us into our true home after this time of exile in our present lives, during which we are "aliens in a foreign land" (Acts 7:6). 

Francis goes on to highlight the solitude that surrounds the personal moment of death; also, the emptiness of our hands as we pass to the next life - with a humorous comment about the absence of a removals van following the hearse: 

It is only through faith in resurrection that we can face the abyss of death without being overwhelmed by fear. Not only that: we can restore a positive role to death. Indeed, thinking about death, enlightened by the mystery of Christ, helps us to look at all of life through fresh eyes. I have never seen a removals van behind a hearse! ... We will go alone, with nothing in the pockets of our shroud: nothing. ... This solitude of death: it is true. It makes no sense to accumulate.

[...] What we must accumulate is charity and the ability to share, the ability not to remain indifferent when faced with the needs of others. [W]hat is the point of arguing with a brother or with a sister, with a friend, with a relative, or with a brother or sister in faith, if one day we will die? What is the point in being angry, in getting angry with others? Before death, many issues are put into perspective. It is good to die reconciled, without grudges and without regrets! I would like to say one truth: we are all on our way towards that door, all of us.

The care of those approaching death is taken up in the next part of Francis's message to the weekly audience of visitors:

Two considerations stand out for us Christians. The first: we cannot avoid death, and precisely for this reason, after having done everything that is humanly possible to cure the sick, it is immoral to engage in overzealous treatment (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2278). That phrase of the faithful people of God, of the simple people: “Let him die in peace”, “help him to die in peace”: such wisdom! The second consideration concerns the quality of death itself, the quality of pain, of suffering. Indeed, we must be grateful for all the help that medicine is striving to give, so that through so-called “palliative care”, every person who is preparing to live the last stretch of their life can do so in the most humane way possible.

However, we must be careful not to confuse this help with unacceptable drifts towards killing. We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate any form of suicide. Remember that the right to care and treatment for all must always be prioritised, so that the weakest, particularly the elderly and the sick, are never rejected. Life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered. And this ethical principle concerns everyone, not just Christians or believers.  

 I would like to underline a real social problem. That “planning” — I don’t know if it is the right word — but accelerating the death of the elderly. Very often we see in a certain social class that the elderly, since they do not have means, are given fewer medicines than they need, and this is inhuman; this is not helping them, it is driving them towards death earlier. This is neither human nor Christian.

The elderly should be cared for as a treasure of humanity: they are our wisdom. Even if they do not speak, or if they do not make sense, they are still the symbol of human wisdom. They are those who went before us and have left us many beautiful things, many memories, much wisdom. Please, do not isolate the elderly, do not accelerate the death of the elderly. To caress an elderly person has the same hope as caressing a child, because the beginning of life and the end are always a mystery, a mystery that should be respected, accompanied, cared for, loved.

In our own life, and in caring for another, we should try to reduce pain and suffering, but to set out, by suicide or assisted suicide or euthanasia, to avoid everything in the way of suffering is to offend against the person by preventing growth through the challenge offered by suffering, even confusion, as alluded to at the start of this post. The main principle is of letting God's plan for the person play out without interference. The Catechism's paragraph 2278 that Francis cites states:

Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of "over-zealous" treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one's inability to impede it is merely accepted. The decisions should be made by the patient if he/she is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected.

Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should be encouraged. [par 2279]

This element of proportionate care or treatment is to be distinguished from the steps taken in what is known as euthanasia (Catechism par 2277):

Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable. 

Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his/her Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.

What we have seen in recent years among the general public of Western nations is the diminishing of moral sensitivity, meaning the gradual loss of insight into the way personal predicaments can be part of God's plan for the ultimate benefit of the person and society. As a result we hear the slogan, "the right to die", which is used to cover all cases of personal difficulty, often pressed into use in calling for legislation that enables family or society to slough off responsibility for ongoing care.  

Meanwhile, the Church continues to care for the sick and downtrodden, safeguarding the dignity of the individual and protecting the principles that defend the welfare of all in society. This is how this section of the Catechism is introduced:

Those whose lives are diminished or weakened deserve special respect. Sick or handicapped persons should be helped to lead lives as normal as possible.[par 2276]

Fortunately, some in society are realising that what Francis describes as "unacceptable drifts towards killing" are extreme and hurt us all.  They acknowledge that when a person is disabled, old and weak, handicapped with Down Syndrome, or burdened with a psychological illness, those close to them can share in the conditions promoting growth. We also grow through providing support as a community.

The usual calls for assisted suicide/euthanasia highlight where so much current moral thinking leads: to what is easy, to avoiding inconvenience, to what, in fact, removes the challenge – even adventure – of embarking on a journey that may be difficult. The journey at is final stages may need to employ palliative care but the likelihood is that it will allow magnificent outcomes: for the patient, the personal achievement of calm acceptance, and, for those accompanying the patient, a heightened regard for the welfare of others, through the practice of devotion at the highest level possible for a human, which is the laying down of one's life for the welfare of a friend or family member. Both outcomes are a boon for the whole of society.

Please read the following posts on this topic:  

💢 'Sacredness of ALL life' versus the world - go here

💢 Stories from the grateful and living dead - go here

💢 Mother says Down Syndrome all about love - go here

💢 When "right to die" becomes "duty to die" - go here

💢 How to change our attitude to suffering - go here

💢 Suffering and other acts of growth - go here

💢 Suicide makes losers of us all - go here

 Ω If you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.

 

Science as humble service to humanity

A vision of cosmic time: is the universe finite or eternal?

This is not a post of "the God of the gaps" type where the gaps in scientific knowledge are heralded as a confirmation that God is required to solve all the puzzles of the world we live in - and beyond. Rather, this post would encourage scientific endeavour as a humble service to humanity.

That humble service element is often missing in what we hear from scientists who use discoveries to push whatever theories or metaphysical stances infatuate them at the time.

What brings this to the fore is an article by scientists entitled "Observing more disk galaxies than theory allows", published on the phys.org news website. It gets into the subject of how the mode of thinking of scientists governs their methods and their interpretation of observations. The opening line is this:

The Standard Model of Cosmology describes how the universe came into being according to the view of most physicists.

The uncertainty surrounding that "standard model" approach is further seen in Merriam-Webster's  definition of "cosmology" as:

1: a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of the universe

   a theory or doctrine describing the natural order of the universe

 2: a branch of astronomy that deals with the origin, structure, and space-time relationships of the universe

    also: a theory dealing with these matters

The authors of the phys.org article explain what is significant about their article:

Researchers at the University of Bonn have now studied the evolution of galaxies within this model, finding considerable discrepancies with actual observations. The University of St. Andrews in Scotland and Charles University in the Czech Republic were also involved in the study. The results have now been published in the Astrophysical Journal. 

They continue:

Most galaxies visible from Earth resemble a flat disk with a thickened center. They are therefore similar to the sports equipment of a discus thrower. According to the Standard Model of Cosmology, however, such disks should form rather rarely. This is because in the model, every galaxy is surrounded by a halo of dark matter. This halo is invisible, but exerts a strong gravitational pull on nearby galaxies due to its mass. "That's why we keep seeing galaxies merging with each other in the model universe," explains Prof. Dr. Pavel Kroupa of the Helmholtz Institute for Radiation and Nuclear Physics at the University of Bonn.

The most striking piece of information is this:

In the current study, Kroupa's doctoral student, Moritz Haslbauer, led an international research group to investigate the evolution of the universe using the latest supercomputer simulations. The calculations are based on the Standard Model of Cosmology; they show which galaxies should have formed by today if this theory were correct. The researchers then compared their results with what is currently probably the most accurate observational data of the real Universe visible from Earth.

"Here we encountered a significant discrepancy between prediction and reality," Haslbauer says: "There are apparently significantly more flat disk galaxies than can be explained by theory." However, the resolution of the simulations is limited even on today's super-computers.

It may therefore be that the number of disk galaxies that would form in the Standard Model of Cosmology has been underestimated. "However, even if we take this effect into account, there remains a serious difference between theory and observation that cannot be remedied", Haslbauer points out. 

As it happens, there is an alternative to the Standard Model, the MOND (MilgrOmiaN Dynamics)  theory. "MOND's predictions are consistent with what we actually see," Kroupa said. So, in this there is a challenge for the Standard Model.

The researchers say:

However, the exact mechanisms of galaxy growth are not yet fully understood, even with MOND. Additionally, in MOND, Newton's laws of gravity do not apply under certain circumstances, but need to be replaced by the correct ones. This would have far-reaching consequences for other areas of physics.

"Nevertheless, the MOND theory solves all known extragalactic cosmological problems despite being originally formulated to address galaxies only," says Dr. Indranil Banik, who was involved in this research.

The outcome of the study would be very satisfying for Kroupa, who has made a big investment in developing the alternative model. He says:

"Our research group in Bonn and Prague has uniquely developed the methods to do calculations in this alternative theory." 

Despite his confidence, Kroupa adds:

"Our study proves that young physicists today still have the opportunity to make significant contributions to fundamental physics."

The rivalry between theories or cosmologies relating to galaxy growth bear similarity to the cosmological theories about the beginning of the universe.

However, to equate a "theoretical 0" moment with the unique act of creation by God would be wrong because scientific cosmologies and that involving belief in God and God's works are distinct. Science cannot provide a sure foundation for religious arguments, "which of themselves, are outside the proper sphere of the natural sciences”, Pope Pius XII said as far back as 1951. 

In his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pius remarked that “true science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree—as though God were waiting behind every door opened by science”, thus praising scientists for their work in what can be seen as the wonder of God's handiwork. 

The Catholic Church had already come to terms with evolution but is has been taking note of its implications for philosophical and theological conceptions of human nature. Of course, just as science is still unsure of the mechanisms of gravity, it is clear science still does not fully understand evolution, with environmental factors now being given more consideration over the simplistic Darwinian "survival of the fittest".  

But with regard the distinction between the Church's belief and the scientific cosmology of the origins of the universe I am going to examine the ideas presented in an article titled "Cosmology and Creation" by William E. Carroll, distinguished visiting professor at the School of Philosophy at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, China.

Carroll surveys the writings of Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and astrophysicist, one of the original proponents of what is now called Big Bang cosmology:

By the 1950s, Lemaître had developed a clear understanding of the methodological separation between theological and cosmological levels of discourse, a clarity not always present in his early years. In an essay written after World War II (but left by Lemaître in manuscript), he noted that the initial expansion of the universe from a primeval atom might be referred to as “a beginning”. But he continued:

“I do not say a creation. Physically it is a beginning in that sense that if something has happened before, it has no observable influence on the behavior of our universe, as any feature of matter before this beginning has been completely lost by the extreme contraction at the theoretical zero. A pre-existence of the universe has a metaphysical character. Physically everything happens as if the theoretical zero was really a beginning. The question if it was really a beginning or rather a creation, something starting from nothing, is a philosophical question which cannot be settled by physical or astronomical considerations.”

And so we have today the scientific world molding a cosmology that would have the Big Bang originate from "nothing". 

What is the Church's view? Carroll again quotes Pius, who was referring to a universe expanding from a primordial state:

“[I]t is quite true that the facts established up to the present time are not an absolute proof of creation in time. . . . The pertinent facts of the natural sciences, to which We have referred, are awaiting still further research and confirmation, and the theories founded on them are in need of further development and proof before they can provide a sure foundation for [religious] arguments, which of themselves, are outside the proper sphere of the natural sciences.”

 Carroll comments:

Pius did not claim that the new cosmology provided a scientific proof for the absolute beginning of the universe, nor that it constituted a cosmological confirmation of creation.

We must distinguish between specific arguments about creation based on cosmological theories concerning the beginning of the universe, and broader arguments about the existence of God based on our knowledge of nature and its processes. Further, knowing that God exists is not the same as knowing that God is the Creator.

In a communication to a conference in 1958 Lemaître noted, as Carroll reports:

[...] that his primeval atom hypothesis “remains outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendent Being. . . . For a believer, it removes any attempt in familiarity with God . . . [since God remains] hidden even at the beginning of the universe.” 

One of the Church's most prominent thinkers, Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th Century, had already come to a conclusion on this matter, guiding the Church's approach to science in modern times. Thomas wrote, according to Carroll:

“That the world had a beginning . . . is an object of faith, but not a demonstration of science. And we do well to keep this in mind; otherwise, if we presumptuously undertake to demonstrate what is of faith, we may introduce arguments that are not strictly conclusive; and this would furnish infidels with an occasion for scoffing, as they would think that we assent to truths of faith on such grounds.” 

"That with reason alone one can know God exists is traditional Catholic teaching", Carroll states, a stance built on the acknowledgement of the ancients that we perceive a reality that enables our reason to make true statements. 

Further, the way the Church uses scientific findings in its metaphysical pondering is illustrated by matters highlighted by Pius in his 1951 address. Carroll writes:

Pius emphasized two topics: the mutability of things, including their origin and their end, and “the teleological order which stands out in every corner of the cosmos.” He reminded his audience that modern physics had discovered examples of mutability in the universe not dreamt of before, on the level of both the macrocosm and the microcosm: “Thus physics has provided a multiplicity of empirical facts which are of tremendous assistance to philosophical reasoning.” Pius argued that science had broadened and deepened the empirical foundation on which rests the argument from the mutability of the world to “the existence of an Ens a se [a Being that exists of and through itself], immutable by His very nature.” 

The teleological order refers to the apparent purpose and beauty of the order found in the natural sphere, large and small, enabling the functioning of those seeking discoveries that are solid in reality as foundations for further exploration. 

In conclusion, this post posits, firstly, that an assumed conflict between religion and science is a false perception of the Church's position, certainly, and one would hope absent from the thinking of those dedicated to the humble service of humanity, which is the vocation of the scientist. Secondly, we must take to heart the distinction between the cosmologies, that is, the theories or doctrines espoused by parties within the varies scientific communities, and the observations made. An example might be the metaphysical declarations that neuroscientists make about the non-existence of the spiritual "mind" based on their observations of the brain.  

See the following posts for further interesting discussions on these matters:

💢 Gould's principle of Non-Overlapping Magisteria - go here

💢 Dali and the beauty of science - go here

💢 Big Bang Theory - go here

💢 Curious facts about Earth's existence - go here

💢 Four reasons you shouldn't exist - go here

💢 The Cosmos and the 'Theory of Everything' - go here

💢  Christian view of the Big Bang - go here 

💢 Christian view of evolution - go here 

Ω If you like this blog, go to my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.

Sexist woke corporate hypocrisy on display

Karissa and Kristina Shannon, Hefner, and Crystal Harris

The horrendous treatment of women by Hugh Hefner is being made fully public with a streaming documentary series The Secrets of Playboy. His reputation as a sleazeball is being confirmed not only by that investigation but also by women who are taking Hefner's organisation to court for abuse of employees.

The Sexual Revolution and the licentiousness that Hefner and his ilk appealed to in covering up their abuse of women for their own pleasure, and in making money from them, are certainly being identified one more time as a disease that wracked all who were overtaken by the corruptive power of the mis-identification of freedom. This applied during the late 20th Century, and it laid the foundation for today's promiscuous attitude toward sex, even though the extent of such behaviour seems to have ebbed somewhat. 

The reduction of sexual activity among young people recently may be the harbinger of an awareness that shedding a morality that has stood the test of time is stupidity in the extreme. The damage done to individuals and to society by doing so is made clear through the experience I relate now.

At the weekend the UK's Sunday Mirror reported this from twins who lived at the Playboy mansion:

Karissa and Kristina Shannon allege they were first lured to sleep with Hefner on their 19th birthday, then pushed into unprotected group sex and plied with alcohol and drugs. They say the magazine and TV tycoon “had a black soul” and the experience left them suffering from [post trauma syndrome disorder], depression and needing counselling.

When Hefner died in 2017, at 91, the twins were glad – so no other girls could suffer.

Karissa says she fell pregnant at 19 to Hefner when he was 83 – and “if felt like carrying the devil’s child”. She had an abortion without the tycoon ever knowing. 

Kristina tells the Sunday Mirror: “Hef acted like he owned you. If we broke his rules, six guards would drag us to our room and not let us leave. Hef called it ‘HMF arrest’, after his initials. He preyed on vulnerable young girls like us. He would offer you the world, then keep you trapped in his house, which was like a golden prison.

“We were Playmates, employed, and everything happened at the mansion, so we want to go after them. We are speaking out because we want people to know who he truly was and what was going on behind closed doors.”

The newspaper says the TV documentary "will raise more questions about how rich, powerful men could get away with abusing women in full sight". It cites the case of financier Jeffrey Epstein who was able to abuse young women despite previously being convicted of sex trafficking, and who died in jail while facing further charges. 

Film producer Harvey Weinstein is another who combined the belief that women should be made to appreciate the "benefits" of the Sexual Revolution. He was jailed for 23 years in 2020 for rape and sex attacks.

But this exercise of power in the name of freedom and human rights continues with the Playboy organisation, only now it is giving a woke twist to the abuse of women for the pursuit of profit.

Previously it had entered into a bit of virtue-signalling by making a move to not use photographs of naked women in its magazine, not saying so, but in fact bowing to the new dominance of internet pornography. However, it reversed its decision within two years as it shed "readership" at an increasing pace.

Now we see Playboy going with the latest bandwagon:

In an open letter last week [January 22], the organization variously declared itself to be “a brand with sex positivity at its core,” a workforce that is 80 percent female, and a company that continues to “fight harassment and discrimination in all its forms, support healing and education, redefine tired and sexist definitions of beauty and advocate for inclusivity across gender, sexuality, race, age, ability and zip codes.” 

On this basis Playboy should release its women employees, held to titillate the male population, and close the shutters on the whole sordid organisation: "Perhaps more than any other media outlet, it is responsible for the paradoxical equation of 'sex positivity' with a trivialized notion of sex and indeed what it means to be a woman." Amen to that last point, given the the kind of photos young women put on Instagram.

That quoted statement comes from author and academic Carl E Truman who offers further insights into the game Playboy is now playing:

Emily Hill offers a devastating critique of Playboy’s new stance in the Spectator that is blunt and compelling. As she indicates, its executives are merely doing what the executives of so many other companies are doing today, albeit Playboy is having to do so with singularly unpromising raw material: It is reciting the Liturgy of the Woke in a bid to retain its customer base and its profit margins. It remains to be seen, however, to what extent those who buy Playboy do so out of a deep desire to “redefine tired and sexist definitions of beauty and advocate for inclusivity across gender, sexuality, race, age, ability and zip codes”. 

[...] When Hef was cool, his perversions were ignored (even indulged), invitations to his mansion were coveted, and his commercial imprimatur was keenly sought. And of course, conservative critics who dared to point out who he was and what he stood for could expect to be decried as puritanical killjoys, lacking, as they did, “sex positivity”.

This brings us to the true significance of corporate wokeism: It is a sign of the morally vacuous nature of our times. In modern America, morality is nothing more than the sum total of the tastes of the moment. When free love and throwing off the sexual restraints of earlier generations was hip, Hef was a godlike figure who was the public face of a family restaurant chain. Now that the human cost of this revolution has become clear, Hef is a demon, denounced even by those who owe their livelihoods to him and to the capital acquired by his peddling of sleaze.

The fate of Hefner’s reputation, like the success of his career, speaks eloquently about the state of America and perhaps the West as a whole. Self-indulgent to a tee, the only morality it knows is that which chimes with whatever the tastes of the moment happen to be, whatever works, whatever makes money. Promiscuity yesterday, wokeness and inclusivity today.

And the tragedy is that such amoral morality, always driven by market forces rather than a true understanding of what it means to be human, must inevitably come with a hefty price tag, as the documentary on Hefner will no doubt reveal in graphic and painful detail. Still, at least the new woke Playboy will now make sure that its profit margins are built on moral chaos that is inclusive of all, regardless of gender, sexuality, race, age, ability, or zip code. 

💢 Hefner's widow vows to dress with modesty:

Crystal Harris had built a big social media following by putting up nude poses and the like. She said this made her suffer "internally in the process". ⁣

"In short, sex sells. I don’t know whether I felt empowered by dressing scantily clad, showing cleavage,  …or if I just felt it was expected of me or what… but now I can confidently and 100% proudly say, modesty is what empowers me these days, and because it feels so much better internally, it will probably be this way for the rest of my life."

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