Eight principles God gives us for joy

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The more I give my life away the happier I become… Pride's the greatest sin because what does pride say – basically, I gotta fill myself up to be happy. I've got to aggrandize my ego. I've got to fill myself up with good things. But the basic spiritual principle is: No! It's actually by emptying the self out that I become beatus, I become happy. It's by letting go!

This from Bishop Robert Barron in his video sermon for last Sunday’s gospel. He titled the video The Key to Happiness. Catch his insights on the video or by reading here.

Friends, we have one of the great passages in the New Testament today for our reading, namely, the Beatitudes, taken from the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthews, the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount.

Beatitudo just means happiness. I don't care who you are, what your background is, that's the one thing we all want. Everyone has that in common. We all want beatitudo. We all want to be happy.

Well here's [Jesus, God] telling us how to be happy. So we should pay close attention.

Living for the sake of the other

He says, first, “How blessed, happy … are the poor in spirit. The reign of God is theirs.” Why is this the first beatitude? Well, because pride's the greatest sin. What does pride say? Basically, I gotta fill myself up to be happy. I've got to aggrandize my ego. I've got to fill myself up with good things.

The basic spiritual principle is no,  it's actually by emptying the self out that … I become happy. It's by letting go, emptying out, living for the sake of the other. Not filling up the cage with all sorts of things but rather giving oneself.

So being poor in spirit means – don't think of it primarily in sort of monetary terms – it's a spiritual idea. Poor in spirit [means] the more I give my life away the happier I become.

Sorrowing for their sin

Next, “Blessed are the sorrowing. They will be consoled.” I know this can sound a little odd, like is this sort of a masochistic idea or sadistic idea…[but] the great spiritual tradition read it this way: How happy are those who are sorrowing for their sin.

We feel bad about all kinds of things. We feel bad because our dreams haven't come true. We feel bad because we didn't get the job we wanted. We feel bad because this relationship fell apart. But what's the one thing we should really feel sorrow over? Our own sins.

What do you mean? I'm okay and you're okay; I'm beautiful in every single way. Our culture today is telling me never to be sorry about my sins, never feel bad about myself. No, affirm myself at every turn. How's that working out for you? Look around the culture. How's that working out for us? Affirming ourselves at every turn, never admitting any kind of problem, to make you happy. It makes you miserable!

The key to happiness is being sorrowful for the right thing. Sorrowing for our sins – “they shall be consoled” the Lord says. Quite right. That's the first step toward repentance and toward the acceptance of forgiveness. How often do we think that the key to our beatitudo is being forgiven for our sins? Our sins are like a great burden, our sins are like chains.

The first step in losing those chains is to be sorry for our sins and thereby be open to forgiveness.

The goal is to empty ourselves

Third beatitude: “Blessed are the lowly. They shall inherit the land.” Again, it's so counterintuitive. Who inherits the land? The last time I checked it was powerful people, self-assertive people, those with no concern for the other. The Nietzschean Superman, the “I”, the “will to power” and “Don't get in my way. I'm the one that will inherit the earth”. Powerful nations willing to wield great weapons of destruction against their enemies. They're the ones who inherit the land.

No! says Jesus, rather the lowly. Think of it this way. Those who have emptied themselves, forgotten about themselves, are the ones who actually are closest to the earth. They're closest to reality. We're talking here about humility.

Don't think of that phony humility – someone who's humble says, “I'm not preoccupied with my own ego, how I'm doing, what impression I'm making. Rather I forget about all that. I get that monkey off my back and I lose myself in whatever I'm doing.

Notice, please, I'm lowly and therefore I'm close to the earth. Humble is from the Latin hummus and humilitas. Hummus means the ground, the earth.

When I'm preoccupied with my ego and my status, and how I'm doing, I'm divorced from reality. But when, in the simplest way, I forget about myself and I give myself to a book, or a person I'm talking to, or a task I have I become happy. Isn't it true? Think about it: The best moments in life are when you're least aware of yourself, least aware of your hang-ups and preoccupations. How happy are the lowly. They, indeed, will inherit the land.

Everyone's got a hungry heart

“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for holiness. They shall have their fill.” We're hungry and thirsty for so many things, aren't we?  I'm hungry for success. I'm hungry for more power. I'm hungry for material goods. I'm physically hungry for food. I'm hungry for attention.

Right. All these things we have – these hungry hearts, as Bruce Springsteen said. Everyone's got a hungry heart. We're always looking for what's going to satisfy us.

One of the most important questions to ask about yourself is this: what are you primarily hungering for? So amidst all these different hungers is there one that you really want? Is it success, money, power, fame?

The Lord says none of those will make you happy. They won't give you beatitudo. Now they're not bad in themselves… but the primary thirst of your life should not be for those things but should be for holiness.

What's holiness? Friendship with God. That's the one thing you should want above all as you're facing a decision in life. “Hey if I decide this it'll make me richer”. Yeah, but will it make you more of a friend of God? “If I choose that, it's going to make me more famous, for sure.” But will it make you a friend of God? “Boy, that's going to make everyone like me.” Yeah, I know, but will it make you more a friend of God? That's all you should be worried about.

So how happy are those who hunger and thirst for holiness? Listen, they shall have their fill because every other thing you hunger for in life you get it and it's fine, but it wears off. It goes away. It effervescences.  But your hunger and thirst for holiness, friendship with God, doesn't fade away, it intensifies.

What love looks like in a world of suffering

“Blessed are they who show mercy. Mercy shall be theirs.” Mercy is hesed in the Hebrew, misericordia in Latin.  Mercy is what God is. He's marked by tender mercy as in that beautiful translation of hesed that's in the King James Version of the Bible – the tender mercy of God.

What is that? Well, it's compassion. Look at that word compassion from compassio in Latin. That means to suffer; misericordia means the pain in your heart. It's the suffering that you feel in your own heart when you identify with the suffering of somebody else. That's what love, willing the good of the other, looks like in this world of suffering. You enter in a sympathetic way. Look at that word again – sympathia means to suffer with. You enter in a sympathetic, compassionate, merciful, way into the suffering of the world.

You know how many of us want to run from the suffering of the world: “Take me away from that”, “Make me immune to that” “Give me something  that will drug me so I don't experience it.”

Says the Lord: “The happier you will be if you identify in love with the suffering of the other.” Wait, trust me everybody! Your whole life will change if you let that sink in. If you say my task today is to, when I see suffering, to enter sympathetically into it. That to be merciful.

But if there's no anchor in your life...

“Blessed are the single-hearted for they shall see God.”  That's lovely. The single-hearted…That great line from Kierkegaard, the philosopher, [that] the saint is someone whose life is about one thing. That means he's a gathered person; he's involved with all sorts of things, might have a very busy life, but all of it is centered around one thing. It's the anchor in the rose window, around which the whole design is arranged.

If you can't name what that is for you, you won't be happy. If you say, “I'm a busy guy. I'm doing this and this, and [I’m] all over the place and, boy, I'm admired and look at all that [I’m] accomplishing.” Yeah, but if there's no anchor in your life, there isn't one thing that gathers all the things that you do, then  you'll be like the demoniac in the gospel: “What do you want of us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” Right. That's a single person talking but he speaks in the splintered plural.

How blessed are the single-hearted! What's the one thing you want amidst all the desires of your life? It should be to please God. Again it's related to what I said earlier: If you're doing X Y and Z, but in all that am I pleasing God? That's the one thing that matters: a single heart.

“Blessed, too, are the peacemakers. They shall be called the children of God.” Shalom, that lovely word that echoes up and down the scriptures. The risen Christ says it to his disciples: “Shalom, peace.” God makes the world in a great non-violent act, not suppressing some rival power. The crucified and risen Jesus returns not in avenging violence but in forgiving love.

God is peace. One of the great marks of his followers is that they are makers of peace. Not only are they peaceful themselves but they produce peace. Try it sometime if you find yourself unhappy. How much time do you spend in the course of the day making peace. Not just tolerating wickedness, or not looking the other way, not walking away from it but entering mercifully into it and making peace.

Trust me. It'll make you happy too. That's Jesus’ point.

Woe to you if everyone speaks well of you

“Blessed are those persecuted for holiness’ sake, the reign of God is theirs.” Again, how counter-intuitive! Who wants to be persecuted? But if you're persecuted for righteousness sake that means you're walking the right path. We're living in a fallen world. We're living in a compromised world. If nobody ever criticizes you, you are not in a good spiritual space. Woe to you if all men speak well of you, says the Lord. They treated the false prophets in just that way.

One of the great marks that you are on the right path, the path of happiness, is that you [have to] endure persecution. Do it as a happy warrior, not falling into resentment, but saying “Hey, that's a sign that I'm on the path the Lord wants me to be on.”

Go to Matthew Chapter 5. Walk through these. They are the key to what we all want – beatitudo. 

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Thanks to Bishop Barron for unveiling God's word for us in such a penetrating way.

Ω Another inspiring consideration of the Beatitudes can be found on the Living Space website here. These eight statements are key to being not only a good Christian, but also a human being who knows how to live one's life fully, to live abundantly. Read these principles and learn how to enjoy the adventure that is life in response to God's call to grow closer to Him.

Ω Leave a comment and, if you like this blog, read the same posts at my Peace and Truth newsletter on Substack, where you can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.

Tết Quý Mão 2023 - New Year highlights

While the rest of the sinophile world follows China in ringing in the Year of Rabbit, Vietnam observes the Year of the Cat. The reason why Vietnamese have the Year of the Cat rather than the Year of the Rabbit is that the Chinese word for rabbit (mao) sounds like the Vietnamese word for cat, which is con mèo. Also, whereas for the Chinese the rabbit symbolizes mercy, elegance, and beauty, for Vietnamese, those qualities appear in the more familiar cat. Likewise, Vietnamese switch the more familiar water buffalo for the Chinese zodiac's ox. Anything cute brings out the women in their colourful clothing saved for this time of year so they look gorgeous in the photos that go on to fill social media. Most urban centres cater for this eruption of photo-taking by providing an array of flowers and vivid displays appropriate to the the lunar year's animal.

This from HCM City's annual Nguyen Hue Street extravaganza. In fact, wherever colour or some interesting feature is seen, there seems to be the right place for a Tết photo.

And:

And:

Flowers are an essential component of Tết, which heralds the northern hemisphere's spring. That's why the Lunar New Year is sometimes referred to as the Spring Festival. 

To decorate their homes, Vietnamese spend large amounts on flowers. Accordingly plants are tended so that they flower just as Tết approaches. Here we at an extensive night market, where we follow a family as they struggle to make a choice. 

A whole park is taken over for the sale of flowers, especially the Tết blossom trees, the yellow apricot mai of the south and the deep pink peach đào of the north.

To have the trees flower on the first day of the new year is believed to bring good luck, one of the superstitions that alienate Christians from the traditional aspects of  the festival. Instead of activities aimed at placating the gods of luck, health, wealth and happiness, Christians focus on the other features of the festival, those of fostering family and fellowship.

The vendor has done a wonderful job in having the flowers blossom at exactly the right time.

A decision has been made, a small grafted bonsai mai, probably five years old, is set to be taken home and put on display in a prominent place. The price for the potted prize was 400,000 dong, about US$17. For those who enjoy bargaining, this is the time to shine, especially as the days count down closer to New Year's Day, when the markets disappear, and vendors take unsold stock home till next year. 

A burst of colour to greet visitors to apartment and office blocks, even shops and homes. This splendid example of the mai will hold its flowers for up to two weeks, and then be returned to the entity it was rented from. On the tree are the red envelopes, bao lì xì in Vietnamese, referring to "lucky money", which show the regard of the older person for the young, or adults for those who are old. Gifts of fruit and a selection of foodstuffs are also common. In fact, there are many cultural elements related to Tết, such as special rice cake treats to eat, but also protocols relating to the sequence of a family's visiting relatives and social "elders".

Businesses get in on act at Tết with special advertising, just for the festival time, even down to providing beautifully designed envelopes for money gifts, with their brand name of course! Above is an example from a supermarket chain, showing the gifts people might buy for the occasion. The third pictorial envelope shows people going to a pagoda, a matter of course for many of the mainly Buddhist population. Thanks to ScooterSaigonTour for this example. 

I hope you enjoyed this insight into a rejuvenating event that consumes the attention of a large part of the world's population because of the shared happiness it provides and the solidarity it cultivates by focusing, not on the desires of the individual, but on the family and the ties that bind a society together. 

All that remains is to wish you a belated Chúc mừng năm mới!

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Your conscience is not infallible. Go deeper.

When someone tells you they are doing what they believe is right, in most cases you know the proper response is to take cover! This blog often refers to the need to have an "examined life" and regrets the superficiality of much of the reasons supporting the life or death choices —literally— thrust upon society, especially impacting the young and the old and sick, but also employees of businesses led by managers, investors or owners who believe they have no responsibility for the wider welfare of their workers and their families.

Therefore, when a person argues they must follow their conscience, they also have to acknowledge that when they believe some line of thought or action is morally right, in reality, it could be completely the opposite.

Conscience is a fundamental anthropological structure in a person's essence, in our ontological constitution, that is, inherent in each person's innermost being. It pervades all cultures. None has been found in which it is not recognised as a fact or—in the present age—as a problem. It found formal recognition in ancient Greece and it has been the bone of contention with successive philosophies and understandings of the person since. Socrates spoke of his indwelling divine monitor. The Greeks gave it a name, and a definition that has stood the test of time as: The self-consciousness exercised in making moral judgements in respect to human action.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has this: 

Conscience is defined by its inward looking and subjective character, in the following sense: conscience is always knowledge of ourselves, or awareness of moral principles we have committed to, or assessment of ourselves, or motivation to act that comes from within us (as opposed to external impositions). 

The problem over the standing of the conscience in this age is the widespread notion that a person's conscience is infallible, that there is a justifying power to a conscience's judgement so that it must be accepted by others without challenge. This would mean, in effect, that Hitler or Stalin should not be held guilty for their murderous policies, that one should expect to see them in heaven.

But most upholders of the "infallibility" view go on to admit that people should not be free to do whatever they want—murder, steal, lie—even if the "offender's" conscience had approved of the act as the right thing to do in their situation. This points to the reality of moral truth, and that we can discover this truth given the necessary deliberation.

A law written in each person's heart

This from the Catholic perspective (the non-inclusive language reflects the 1960s' vintage of  the document):

In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience. Always summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law written by God; to obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged. Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths. In a wonderful manner conscience reveals that law which is fulfilled by love of God and neighbor. In fidelity to conscience, Christians are joined with the rest of men in the search for truth, and for the genuine solution to the numerous problems which arise in the life of individuals from social relationships. Hence the more right conscience holds sway, the more persons and groups turn aside from blind choice and strive to be guided by the objective norms of morality. Conscience frequently errs from invincible ignorance without losing its dignity. The same cannot be said for a man who cares but little for truth and goodness, or for a conscience which by degrees grows practically sightless as a result of habitual sin. — Source: Gaudium et Spes paragraph 16

In this light, conscience is the faculty that examines what is good and evil subjectively while manifesting the objective moral law known from our own innate awareness of moral truth. Assaults on this understanding have come within the last 200 years or so from the likes of Kant, with his concept of moral obligation, and from Freud with his "superego". But such conceptions have been recognised as lacking the essential elements of the conscience. For example, the superego misses the mark because the moral conscience does not rest on finding love, or approval, rather it's often the opposite. The conscience does not look to any authority other than the values that arise from the person's own being and will have an individual stand up for some principle in the face of opposition or worse from family, employer, community or nation. 

A person must deliberate on the circumstances surrounding a situation of concern to arrive at the highest possible certitude about the morality involved. Simply being personally certain about the morality relating to that situation is not a sufficient basis for action as subjective certitude marks a retreat from the search for truth. So a certain conscience can be false, can manifest error, and a false conscience can be certain, but also make an erroneous judgement.

A duty to correctly form our conscience

Therefore, we come back to the idea of an examined life. It is the responsibility of each person to correctly form their conscience, having in view objective truth. A conscience is wrongly formed when the person does not care sufficiently to arrive at objective truth. A lax conscience is that which, for weak motives or to support one's own mean motives, judges something as legitimate or not serious when it is, in reality, not right and it is of a serious character. 

In a paradox, while we have to accept that our moral judgement may be in error we should always follow the prompting our that distinctly human faculty. All the same, the notions that one's "conscience is infallible", that it is the "ultimate authority and cannot be appealed", are wrong because they bring us back to the principle of the justifying power of the erroneous conscience, that is, granting us licence to do whatever we desire simply because our conscience approves.

In this case, truth would be reduced to one's own truth, the subject's own satisfaction of certitude. Of course, the outcome would be that judgements of conscience within a community could contradict one another, and we know this does happen. It's clear a purely subjective judgement is not what gives conscience it's authority. In fact, the alternative to self-will in pursuing desired ends, and the poorly performed intellectual effort to inform one's conscience, is to strive to know truth, which in itself is the absolute that governs any judgement. Truth, as the absolute, is the objective standard by which to assess moral responsibility for the outcomes flowing from the judgements of conscience.

How we get to the truth is through guilt.  From here, I will follow the analysis of Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, in his book On Conscience (2007). He states that guilt disturbs the false calm of conscience. It is as necessary for each person as the physical pain that signifies disturbances in normal bodily functioning. Whoever is no longer capable of perceiving guilt is spiritually ill.

We get a clear idea of how guilt renders a valuable service from scripture. Psalm 19:12-13 states, "But who can detect his own failings? Wash away my hidden faults."

Ratzinger notes that the falling silent of conscience—no longer seeing one's guilt—is an even more dangerous sickness of the soul than the guilt one still recognises. This is because guilt is signalling that the truth is at hand, whereas experiencing no shame signals being at a great distance from the truth. Our consciences accuse us, as well as give us the satisfaction of approval.

The letter of Paul to the Christians in Rome also provides us with a guiding text. It says:

So, when gentiles, not having the [Jewish] Law, still through their own innate sense behave as the Law commands, then, even though they have no Law, they are a law for themselves.

They can demonstrate the effect of the Law engraved on their hearts, to which their own conscience bears witness; since they are aware of various considerations, some of which accuse them, while others provide them with a defence . . . on the day when, according to the gospel that I preach, God, through Jesus Christ, judges all human secrets. (Rm 2:14-16 NJB)

Ratzinger takes this key text relating to the natural law that Christian teaching holds as central to understanding the moral demands humans face, as it was for the ancient Greeks, as it is in the Vedic concept of the Rita and in the immutable principles of dharma. Paul posits that pagans, even without the revelation the Jews had, knew with useful clarity what God expected of them, that there is present in the human person "the truth that is not to be repulsed". Not to see the truth about right and wrong comes about because the human will hinders recognition, giving rise to guilt. 

Need to put our own preferences aside

The fact that the signal lamp does not shine is the consequence of a deliberate looking away from what we don't want to see. We have to accept the fact that the necessity to obey the truth arrived at by our study, consultation with the traditions of the community, and prayer, is of a greater priority than attaining our own preferences. In discussing the pre-eminence Socrates awarded truth, and his confidence in the human's capacity for truth, Ratzinger holds that what characterises the person as human is not that the person asks about the "can" but about the "should". All this is set against a worldview of many of the ancients, as it is again of post-modernists, that the person alone sets the standards for themselves.

It is if an original memory of the good and the true has been implanted in us, so that there is an essential tendency within each person, who is created in the image and likeness of God, toward the divine attributes of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True. It's as if we have a memory of ourselves as god-like creatures in the constitution of our being, which does not mean we have a store of knowledge, but we have an inner sense, a capacity to recall, what God has given us. We hear an echo, not from outside, but from within.

Paul's experience as a missionary to those who were not Jewish illustrates the ontological depth of conscience in the human person, Ratzinger says. He continues:

[Paul's] proclamation of the message of the gospel answered an expectation. [His] proclamation encountered an antecedent basic knowledge of the essential constants of the will of God ... which can be more elucidated the less an overbearing cultural bias distorts this primordial knowledge. 

Augustine, too, had noted that the sense for the good has been stamped upon us—that we could never judge that one thing is better than another if a basic understanding of the good had not already been instilled in us.

The neglect of both the ontological level of conscience and the centrality of the search for the objective truth led eventually to the scourge of the prevailing relativism, which arose from the Enlightenment's fallacies, the autonomy of the subject and the absolute claims of reason, having reduced reason to empirical or quantitative rationality. These two closely related perversions of the notion of conscience leave a large part of society floundering in uncritical conformity to convention.

That pervasive subjectivity reduces morality to personal preference, something ultimately irrational. Ratzinger finds that in such a relativistic context, in a world without "fixed measuring points" there is no direction, and "no one can be of much help to the other, much less prescribe behaviour to him". 

"It is never wrong to follow the convictions [of conscience] one has arrived at—in fact, one must do so," Ratzinger states. But those convictions can be wrong because the person has "stifled the protest" of the memory of good and evil in their being, because of "the neglect of my being that made me deaf to the internal promptings of truth."

Then comes the culminating but emphatic conclusion: "for this reason, criminals of conviction like Hitler and Stalin are guilty."

Preparing our conscience to reason rightly

To how do we prepare our conscience to arrive at correct moral judgements? There are four sources of moral knowledge:

1. Reality (objectivity): well-developed moral reasoning looks at how best a person can exercise their freedom in compliance with truth. The outcome is to establish knowledge of what is objectively (universally) right or wrong. This is opposed to calculating reasoning, which translates the world into quantitative measures in which the world becomes technologically exploitable. To make moral judgements more certain, a person has to strive to interpret the data of experience and the signs of the times, apply relevant historical lessons, take the advice of competent people, and listen to appropriate authorities.

2. Conscience: Since moral knowledge cannot be quantified, these days morality is left to the individual's imagination to decide. Relativism reigns supreme as judgements of conscience often contradict one another. Therefore, we need to note that "conscience is not an oracle. It is an organ which requires growth, training and practice, formation and education. In the concept of conscience is an obligation, namely, the obligation to care for it and educate it."

3. Community: Historically considered, morality does not belong to the area of subjectivity, but is guaranteed by the community. It is in the lifestyle of a community that the experience of generations is stored up: experiences of things that can build up a society or tear it down, how the happiness of an individual and the continuity of the community as a whole can be brought together in a balanced way, and how the equilibrium can be maintained. So the wisdom of tradition guides the individual. It is therefore disappointing to observe communities in the world today being captured by corrupted mindsets so that individuals are wracked by anxiety, confusion and despair.

In that connection, an egregious error is pervasive in society at this time, namely, that if many people say something is right and true then that judgement must reflect what is, in fact, morally right. In a lazy society, consensus takes the place of useful ethical investigation. Consensus does not, however, make for truth, and the moral judgement manifested by conscience cannot be made true by appealing to majority opinion.  Each person has an obligation to confirm to their own satisfaction that something is morally right or wrong, with responsibility for any moral decision attaching to the individual before the community and before God. God forgives, but the community—of a later period—may not.

4. The will of God and His revelation: Conscience described so far denotes a co-knowing of the person with God. it is from this consideration that there emerges the absoluteness with which conscience asserts its superiority even over authority. Ratzinger continues that only the will of God can establish the boundary between good and evil, that is, certitude about what is right or wrong.  

Taken in isolation, each of the four leave questions unanswered. But when they are taken in combination, the path of moral knowledge opens up before us. The formation of conscience demands attention to all four.

Adherence to a set of moral standards is of little importance in many societies globally. Uppermost among the causes for this is the pervasive permissive culture, " that does not recognise anything as definitive and whose ultimate standard consists of one's own ego and desires." We see the "dictatorship of relativism" and "the right to choose" giving little acknowledgement to the norms, values and lifestyles of the civilisation that made possible the world of today.

An inner apostasy against tradition has occurred in the hearts of cultural leaders and ordinary people alike. That has extended to alienation from objective truth and from God. Ratzinger draws a disturbing conclusion:

Whether a person is able to attribute reason to being and to decipher its moral message depends on whether he answers the question about God. If the Logos of the beginning does not exist, neither can there be any Logos in things...When there is no God there is no morality and, in fact, no mankind either.

In the formation of conscience the word of God is the light for our path (see Psalm 119). Prayer and openness to the guidance of the Holy Spirit are essential if we are to cultivate a heart sensitive to the movements within our conscience. 

Cultivation of familiarity with the inner voice of conscience is a lifelong endeavour. First, the family circle has to be the setting for the development of human virtues, which govern our actions, order our passions and guide our conduct. There the child's effort to overcome selfishness and pride, human weakness and faults, and feelings of complacency,  can be supported. The adult continues to work on their own life of virtue:

Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Paul to the Philippians 4:8)

Ignorance that affects right judgement can be blameworthy or not. When a person takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or is blinded by bad habits or self-centred lifestyle, that person is guilty over the wrong action or omission, even though the action was taken in the belief that their conscience approved of it. 

Again, a person must not be forced to act contrary to their conscience. This is a hot issue today in the fields of healthcare, education, government, and business practice. Nor must a person be prevented from acting according to their conscience, except when the exercise of their conscience offends against one of these three rules:

💢 One never do evil so that good may result from it;

💢 The Golden Rule: Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do so to them;

💢 Charity always proceeds by way of respect for one's neighbour, and of care for their conscience so that we do not prompt the neighbour to stumble into evil.

Therefore, this post will conclude by stressing the importance of our giving deliberate attention to forming our conscience well, and conversely, by accepting that though we must always follow our conscience in doing what what we believe is right and true, and in rejecting what is  morally wrong, our conscience may direct us on a path that is morally erroneous. Our conscience is not infallible, but with effort involving our whole lifestyle and our process of reasoning, we can turn aside from what is blinding us and grow in right judgement of moral conduct. 

𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶𐫶 

This post is indebted to the author of the work below in that much of the text here is from that book.

A Reflection on Ratzinger's Analysis on the Infallibility of Conscience by Thierry M NDime, Bambui, Cameroon, 2017. Published on Amazon, Kindle edition, 2022.

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Scientism's conclusions fail the 'what if...' test

Listening to deep space: a 500-metre Aperture Spherical Telescope in Guizhou, China.

Imagine someone you know has been studying radio waves and has invented an impressive satellite dish that can pick up every kind of radio wave in existence. You are being shown the instrument by its inventor, and you are impressed by its sophistication and the wealth of information it provides; it essentially covers the world of radio waves. At a certain point you pose the question: “I wonder if there are other kinds of waves out there that aren’t radio waves.”

You then receive the confident answer: “Nope. Nothing but radio waves exist out there.”

You are surprised and interested by this claim.

“How do you know that?” you ask.

“Because we’ve never picked up anything but radio waves on the dish.”

You are a little confused. “But I thought your dish was fashioned precisely to pick up only radio waves.”

“Right.”

“So what if there are other kinds of waves?”

“But we know there aren’t.”

“Because…?”

“Because radio waves are all we detect with our dish.”

At this point the circularity of your friend’s thinking has silenced you, so you begin to talk about the weather.

Something similar can happen with certain supporters of a scientistic view. They will note, rightly, that God, angels, and the human soul cannot be measured or observed by the methods of natural science. They will then say: “Science makes clear that such things don’t exist.” If you ask “How is that?” the answer will often be: “Because if they did exist, we would be able to see or detect them scientifically.” 

If you then reply “But what if there is a whole order of reality that is not material, and therefore cannot be detected by the methods of natural science?” the answer comes back: “No, such an immaterial reality doesn’t exist, because our scientific investigations don’t pick them up.”

Time to talk about the weather.

It is worth noting that the scientistic view is very narrow: if it is true, it leaves us with a much smaller and more boring world than the one presented by the Christian sacramental vision. The Christian vision grants all that Scientism suggests as far as the visible world goes, but it adds infinitely more.

Source

Unexpected outcomes in space research

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Pagan (STScI)

This image produced from the Webb Space Telescope was issued on January 11, 2023. NCG 346 is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy close to our Milky Way. A star forming region sweeps across the scene, dominated by hues of purple. Tones of yellow outline the region's irregular shape. Many bright stars dominate the scene, as well as countless smaller stars scattered in the image's background. Distance from Earth: 210,000 light years. Constellation: Tucana.

Astronomers probed this region because the conditions and amount of metals within the Magellanic Cloud resemble those seen in galaxies billions of years ago, during an era in the Universe's history known as 'cosmic noon,' when star formation was at its peak. Some 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang, galaxies were forming stars at a furious rate. The fireworks of star formation happening then still shape the galaxies we see around us today.

Since dust grains in space are composed mostly of metals, scientists expected that there would only be small amounts of dust, and that it would be hard to detect. But this new data from Webb reveals just the opposite.

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'God made you this way' needs care

The rainbow of moral qualities God invites us to exercise

To say to a person with a same-sex attraction “God made you this way” is a statement that distorts the person’s reality and so it's destructive. This was the starting point of a video dialogue featuring Catholic priest Mike Schmitz on the Matt Fradd Show on YouTube. My post picks out the main points discussed and uses some of the language employed in the conversation.

Those with a same-sex attraction can be assured God loves every person unconditionally. But to say “God made you this way” basically it undercuts one of the foundational doctrines of Christianity, namely original sin, which is the recognition that while we're made good we also have the wound left in our will and intellect as a result of our original parents rebelling against God.

The result is that “not everything that I want is the right thing; just because I experience a desire or attraction to something doesn't mean that God wants that for me”. A person cannot say, "I have a desire that is deep-seated or ingrained in me – I've never known not to have this feeling. Therefore, God in His perfect will made me this particular way."

That would mean that sin means nothing. As Matt Fradd points out, to say that because I’m tempted to look at porn, or I have always had an Irish temper, that is who I am and, therefore, I don’t need to move from those characteristics, or challenge any such quality within myself.

There is something positive about taking on board the admonition that goes back at least to Socrates (died 15 February 399 BC): Know yourself. But that knowledge should not lead to acceptance of all weaknesses or failings.

Acceptance of the reality of my situation is okay to the extent of prompting the thought, “What will I do with my characteristics, positive as well as negative? In what way is God calling me to change, or to build on my positive qualities?”

Rather than saying “This is my identity” we need to turn to the wisdom of the people around us and the wisdom of the Ancients to say, “Okay, what is a wise way forward” versus “I accept this, and accepting it means that I act on it.” The latter is so destructive. It lets us say, “God made me this way so I have a justification for anything I do or don’t do”. We don't grow as a person.

Twisting shame into celebration

The better way is to now bring it to the Lord. Often, what's inside us is a cause of shame. So we should not twist that experience of shame into a celebration of ourselves under the rubric of personal identity. Instead, it’s here that we invite the Lord into it, to do something with it, especially to hold me in the midst of it so that I recognize that I'm not identified with my shame.

Think about the move from shame to pride. What I see as my shame I may elevate as my greatest pride, as opposed to: “This doesn't define me. This may be a part of my experience, it's part of my reality, but it doesn't give me my identity.” In this we make the distinction between experience and identity.

When would you say to a friend, “You have had such and such an experience. Therefore, that is how you will be identified from now on”? People who have suffered through an accident refuse to be labelled "disabled" as if that is the main feature of their identity.

One of the more profound examples is of someone who’s been abused. That affects one's whole life. But, even if a friend has never known any relationship that wasn't riddled with vice, they’ve never known anything that wasn't affected by this, you would never encourage them to use that experience to declare that their identity is only that of victim.

Fradd played the devil's advocate:

But isn’t the Christian belief that homosexual acts – note, not homosexual orientation but the performance of sexual acts on a member of the same sex – are sinful, isn't that belief based on a false Puritanical doctrine?

Can you understand, Fr Mike, that acting this way is actually a beautiful thing? I'm acting out of a good part of me, the truest part of me. It's not a response to a trauma I've received. Rather it's when I began engaging in who I truly am when I came out and told people that this is how I've always been and entered into a loving gay relationship that I found a freedom that I've never had before and that's what you're telling me is wrong.

To equate that with these negative experiences you’ve cited such as anger and abuse is the problem. You have not yet said anything about my positive experience that makes sense.

Schmitz:

I would say two things to that. One is there's a difference between relief and freedom. So, yeah, if I spent a large part of my life living under the shame of, like, “I don't want someone to find this out. I have to wrestle with it privately”; or “Yeah, I'm feeling the weight of this matter" and then I go to this place where I've come out, and I'm met with welcome, met with a community. I meet someone who cares about me and knows this about me.”

So many people's stories are that they just can't let those close to them find this out about them. “If the people who claim to love me found this out they wouldn't love me anymore.” Understandably, when someone comes out and they find welcome, and they find people do love them, that's a relief.

But relief is not the same thing as authentic freedom, and relief is not the same thing as true peace. It can feel like peace, and it can feel like freedom to a certain degree, but is it just that you're no longer living in shame – which is not something that the Lord or the Church was asking you to do in the first place?

Rising above personal inclinations

However, Schmitz says that if a person tells him they do feel a deeper freedom by expressing their same-sex orientation he would not argue with them but would wait for that person’s experience to mature.

In exploring what true freedom looks like, Schmitz gives an example: I’m a Catholic priest but say I don't think God exists and after struggling with the issue I'm gonna come out and declare my unbelief. There would be a community online that would really be thrilled if I would do this and would welcome me and would praise me and I would want to kind of come alongside them … to offset the disapproving voices.

So, yeah, there's that sense of relief I would get but it wouldn't mean freedom as I’m newly bound by the views and culture of those I’ve aligned myself to. Also, it would mean that in this battle I've been engaged in there's a welcome release. It’s as if I say to myself, “I’ve made my decision. I'm no longer fighting this thing. I can rest and lay down my arms.”

Secondly and strangely, there’s more freedom when we don’t surrender when we know we are involved in one area of the spiritual battle that envelops every person no matter their situation in life. What the Church is asking of the person contending with same-sex attraction is the same it asks of the unmarried or married person, which is to control one’s inclinations, to resist the temptation of offending against God’s will as to rightful sexual relations. The Old Testament book of Leviticus provides a good example. In Chapter 18, a total of 16 verses condemn various forms of unlawful sexual relations between a man and a woman, and only one relates to homosexuality.

As to the true nature of freedom, take this example: “I been really having a tough time in my marriage over my family duties and kids at home, and this other woman has been very, very attractive to me. I've never felt this way with my wife. I don’t feel free tied to my wife and the demands of my kids. With the family I have to be someone I don’t want to be, but with my new friend I don’t have to be someone else. With her I get to be really who I really am.”

Let's keep in mind the scenarios used above as we turn to the excellent practice of an examined life.

Homosexual orientation: Okay, there's a certain feeling of freedom, a feeling of release or relief because I've given into something that I was battling with, and I’m enjoying the new experience. But the question is does God want me to be unhappy? Looking at Christ’s own life and his teaching I think that sometimes he would rather I be unhappy and faithful now than happy now and wrong. I cannot ignore what the Church has taught from the beginning, no matter what opinion polls tell me about public attitudes. I acknowledge God’s word in Leviticus 18 and Romans 1, to take two examples.

The other woman: If I continue on my desired path, my achievements in giving into the attraction of my female friend are to be damned and to have destroyed my family. Therefore, my natural appetite for immediate gratification must be controlled. I see I will be more free if I rise above my immediate impulses. My full response to the needs of my family will bring me out of myself. I will grow as a person. I will exercise many of the higher qualities that have lain dormant in me because of my self-focused lifestyle. I will acknowledge that “love” is a verb as well as a noun. I know I have to die to myself if I want to be close to Jesus, who says: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”.

Some concluding reflections:

The Church affirms the many same-sex relationships that express generosity and patience and so many other uplifting qualities. Some of these relationships can be categorized as deep friendship rather than the outcome of sexual attraction. Cultural prominence afforded dedication of friend to friend is a feature of past ages that has been lost in the present-day culture.

But the difficulty in the eyes of God, as expressed through the Church, is that a genital sexual relationship between those of homosexual orientation, as with any sexual relations outside marriage, is where the love stops and the “me” creeps in.

Those who experience a same-sex attraction should know that Christians can hold these two truths in their hearts at the same time:

1. For the person involved, a same-sex attraction is a very profound part of them and it is to be received and respected.

2. Genital sexual relations outside of the marriage of a woman and a man are seriously wrong because such behaviour is not in accord with the complementary nature of the bodies God gives us. When it comes down to it, God is God and I’m not!

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Recognising spiritual reality helps us grow

Graphic by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

In past eras, people had the mindset whereby they were not masters but participants in the world, that there were more dimensions to the world than the mere material that they could touch and see and exploit. Their understanding of reality was far broader than that within modern "advanced" mentality. This is just one more example of how humankind can lose the thread over time, so that the garment of civilisation falls apart. This has been seen in the collapse of the Roman empire and the ensuing Dark Ages, with the devastating wars after the Reformation, in Marxist states, and in the stultifying impact of Wokeism.

In brief, the worldview of people past and present had and has significance as to the nature of the human person and how we should live.

In a recent post on his Dreher's Diary blog (paywalled), author and cultural observer Rod Dreher delves into value of  worldview that incorporates enchantment, by which he means the world is  "charged with spiritual force and pregnant with ultimate meaning—because of the Incarnation". 

He quotes theologian Hans Boersma, who cites the state of mind of the Church fathers and medieval theologians:

The supernatural was not a distinct or separate realm of being that superimposed itself onto an independent and autonomous realm of nature. Instead, the supernatural was simply the divine means to bring created realities of time and space to their appointed end in Christ. Therefore, created realities participated in the heavenly mystery of Christ as their sacramental reality. Access to truth means sacramental participation in the unfathomable mystery of Christ.

Unlike today, it was a matter of participating in the truth, which meant "to be mastered by it rather than mastering it". That way of living with truth involves being open to the experience of "enchantment".

How the world is “enchanted”, that is, "charged with spiritual force and [...] meaning", is explored in Boersma's book, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving Of A Sacramental Tapestry (2011). 

To pick up on that term, an appreciation of sacramental reality can transform a person's life through the acceptance that God is invisible but can communicate with humans through everything He has enabled in and through us, e.g. food, music, work, family life, friendship, the natural world, our intellectual endeavours.

"Sacramental or Scientistic?" is the title of an article on a website of a Catholic university. The article features some thoughts of the wise on what we call enchantment, which is to be distinguished from pantheism: 

Richard Wagamese (1955–2017) is a beloved writer from Wabaseemoong First Nation (in current-day Canada). His life was transformed by returning to his Ojibwe family and culture after being separated from them for most of his young life. In his final book Embers, he shares meditations, reflections, and prayers that came to him during times of ritual and morning silence. He writes:

Remember. Remember that Creator is the wind on my face, the rain in my hair, the sun that warms me. Creator is the trees, rocks, grasses, the majesty of the sky and the intense mystery of the universe. Creator is the infant who giggles at me in the grocery line, the beggar who reminds me how rich I really am, the idea that fires my most brilliant moment, the feeling that fuels my most loving act and the part of me that yearns for that feeling again and again. Whatever ceremony, ritual, meditation, song, thought or action it takes to reconnect to that feeling is what I need to do today. . . Remember.

Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh (died January 22, 2022) steps into the Christian realm:

If Christ is the body of God, which he is, then the bread he offers is also the body of the cosmos. Look deeply and you notice the sunshine in the bread, the blue sky in the bread, the cloud and the great earth in the bread. . . . The whole cosmos has come together in order to bring to you this piece of bread. Eat it in such a way that you become alive, truly alive. Eat in such a way that the Holy Spirit becomes an energy within you and then the piece of bread that Jesus gives you will stop being a simple idea, or a notion.

The late Christian writer Rachel Held Evans offers this perspective:

This is the purpose of the sacraments, of the Church—to help us see, to point to the bread and wine, the orchids and the food pantries, the post-funeral potlucks and the post-communion dance parties, and say: pay attention, this stuff matters; these things are holy. 

We grow when we recognise that the world is an enchanted place. This can be expressed this way:

The Christian sacramental vision, the true sight given us by God, reveals the world and our path through it as adventurous, dangerous, beautiful, challenging, meaningful, momentous, mysterious, and ultimately all that our hearts ache for.

Apart from the touch of Christ, we are blind. We think we see, but our vision is distorted, and we mistake real things for unreal ones, and false things for true. We need to have our sight healed and restored. Those two blind men who called to Jesus were given a key piece of wisdom: the wisdom to know that they were blind. "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” (John 9:39). What a good prayer to make along with those blind men to the Giver of all good gifts: “Lord, let our eyes be opened.”

The beauty of the visible world speaks of God’s power and goodness: “The heavens are telling the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). Visible things are signposts and roads that penetrate to invisible realities.

For Loraine MacKenzie Shepherd, "God [is] the hidden force that holds the universe together":

But it’s not just a centripetal force that holds everything in place. There is complexity and beauty to this force. Have you noticed that the spiral pattern is found in everything from a spinning galaxy to tornados to spiral vortex patterns from electron waves? You will find spiral patterns in seashells and pine cones, fiddleheads and flowers. Scientists have determined that this spiral pattern best allows for both growth and stability—two forces that are essential for life. . . . God’s signature imprinted on the universe. 

However, beyond God sustaining us within the universe, God is active in our lives, individually and as a community/society. The scientistic, materialistic and self-absorbed worldview of people in large parts of the world—not everywhere, fortunately—makes it difficult for them, because of their impaired vision, to accept that God shapes and reshapes our lives, drawing us to Him should we accept the invitation. 

We of the "developed" world would do well to take note of the spiritual depth of our forebears and countercultural contemporaries. The Russian novel Laurus (2016), which made quite a splash in the West, aimed to capture the sentiments of 15th Century Russians, and in doing so, brings to life what it means to be alert to God at work in human affairs:

And everyone was surprised at what had happened and they praised God in heaven and His earthly oil lamp, Laurus. 

Or this:

. . . just as people suddenly awaken on a lovely day, see the sun is already high, contemplate its glints fluttering on the floor and the silver of a cobweb in a sunbeam, and weep tears of gratitude. 

Or this: 

O friend, I do not question the necessity of time. We simply need to remember that only the material world needs time. 

The novel has a prologue, which includes this exchange:

So why did you choose medieval history?

It's hard to say... Maybe because historians in the Middle Ages were unlike historians these days. They always look for moral reasons as an explanation for historical events. It's like they didn't notice the direct connection between events. Or didn't attach much significance to it. 

But how can you explain the world without seeing the connections? said Alexandra, surprised.

They were looking above the everyday and seeing higher connections. Besides, time connected all events, even though people didn't consider that connection reliable.

If we are wise, each of us can enjoy the multiple dimensions of our life, our world, not looking for reassurance alone—though spiritual awareness offers that to us—but acknowledging the foundation of reality.  

Ω Delve deeper into the nature of our enchanted existence through the useful website here. 

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Personhood does not depend on size

9-Week Human Embryo. Ed Uthman. CC BY 2.0

People who defend legal abortion often admit that the unborn are technically “human” but claim they are not “persons.” These nebulous arguments can be seductive and are popular with high school and college students who identify as “pro-choice.” However, one of the best answers to these arguments goes like this:

“We only question the personhood of someone we wish to harm.”

Try to think of a time when a human being’s personhood was questioned for a motive other than using, marginalizing, harming, or killing him. From American slavery to the Nazi holocaust, the whole point of questioning the personhood of others is to deny them human rights. It’s a rhetorical (and arbitrary) technique used to exclude rather than include human beings. [Do we want "inclusion" or not?]

Natural law principles forbid killing innocent human beings or treating them as if they weren’t really human, and the simple truth is that all human beings are persons, no exceptions.

Abortion is a human rights issue. Stephen Schwartz is a philosopher who shows, through non-religious reasoning, that none of these differences between born and unborn humans deprives any human being of basic rights. He summarizes his argument with the acronym SLED:

S – Size: A baby in the womb might be tiny, but how big do you have to be to be a person? And who decides? A baby in the womb is the exact size he or she is supposed to be for his or her age. A person’s intrinsic dignity should never be determined by his or her size.

L – Level of Development: Unborn babies can’t think like you or I do, but neither can newborn babies or some adults with disabilities. Feeling pain or perceiving experiences (what is called “sentience”) also doesn’t make us human persons; after all, rats and pigeons are sentient. Our value and our human rights come not from what we can do, but simply from what we are: human beings.

E – Environment: A baby in the womb isn’t born yet, but so what? Our location cannot change our value or who we are.

D – Degree of Dependency: You’ll hear it said, “It can’t live without the mother!” But that’s an argument against abortion! It makes no sense that we consider it despicable to abandon a newborn baby who cannot live without total dependence on another, but justifiable to kill an unborn baby who cannot live without total dependence on another. A civilized society protects those who are weaker and more vulnerable; we don’t authorize their killings.

We shouldn't be fooled or intimidated. The abortion advocates’ murky philosophical discussion of “personhood” is not a noble or nuanced search for what is true about the human person. It’s simply an excuse for one group of humans to dehumanize, oppress, and kill another group of humans. When faced with these arguments, simply ask, “Why does the difference between born and unborn humans matter? Shouldn’t we protect all human beings no matter how different they are from us?”

Ω Adapted from Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues, by Trent Horn and Leila Miller.

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Kids tragic victims of Western culture

Photo: PxHere

Mental health problems among young people in Britain are a public health crisis, says Dr Max Pemberton, who works full-time as a psychiatrist in the National Health Service. This is his assessment of what life means for incredibly high numbers of young people:

An epidemic of mental health problems affecting the young is becoming a full-scale public health emergency, with new data showing that more than a million children needed treatment for serious mental health problems in the past year.

The data also showed a startling increase in the number of under-18s admitted to hospital with serious eating disorders — a jump of 82 per cent in two years.

As an eating disorders specialist, I have seen first hand the increase in the number of patients being referred to my clinic, as well as those increasingly unwell patients for whom hospital admission is now the only option.

 As to the main cause for what he calls "this terribly sad situation" he identifies a lack of parental control and guidance of young people's use of social media:

The first [cause] is the rise of smartphones and social media. According to a survey conducted in 2021, 58 per cent of children aged from eight to 11 have smartphones — and 89 per cent of UK children aged eight to 17 had their own social media profiles.

We all know that images of models and celebrities in adverts are airbrushed in order to sell products, but increasingly this is also now the case for images posted by individuals, some of whom tweak and alter pictures using filtering and editing apps.

This means young children and teens are being bombarded with images that appear to have been taken spontaneously but, in reality, have been manipulated to create impossibly perfect faces and bodies.

No wonder young people feel under increasing pressure to copy these unrealistic images — with the result they are more likely to diet or work out to change their own body shape. In those who are susceptible, often due to underlying psychological and emotional difficulties, this can develop into an eating disorder.

I worked in eating disorders for ten years and many of my young patients told me they'd become obsessed with images they saw online, particularly things such as 'thigh gaps' (a space at the top of the thighs) on people's Instagram accounts.

Yet they entirely failed to realise that only a tiny fraction of the population naturally look like this, and that many of the images had been digitally manipulated.

Young boys need fathers

Eating disorders are not a minor matter. Dr Pemberton highlights heartrending statistics:

 ... [E]ating disorders have the highest mortality of any mental illness, and one in five of those with a disorder will die from it.

That is a horrendous statistic — yet people are having to wait years in order to get the treatment they need. 

Therefore, it is a mark of shame for British society that attention at government level, nor within the public as a whole, is not given to this emergency. Dr Pemberton emphasises that health resources provided are inadequate, with "shamefully long waiting lists for those who need help the most".

It is a scandal that clinicians working in services for the most unwell patients are powerless to do anything except watch as they deteriorate to the extent they need hospital admission.

  Back to the role of parents in this social catastrophe. Dr Pemberton offers advice:

So what can parents do? Find out who your children are following on social media and why; and encourage them to unfollow those people who aren't portraying real bodies positively.

Parents who suspect a child is affected by this disorder should push as hard as they can for referrals to specials services. He suggests getting support from eating disorder organisations such as the British group BEAT.

Finally, there is an excellent book, Getting Better Bite By Bite by Professor Janet Treasure, which can also help.

But the question also arises as to why increasing numbers of children have "underlying psychological and emotional difficulties", to use Dr Pemberton's words, which make them susceptible to unbalanced influence by social media, and thus, to eating disorders.

He goes some way to answering that question in another item in his newspaper column, where he features actor Hugh Jackman's affection for his father, who had recently died. He reports:

Jackman said: 'My mother left when I was eight, so my father raised us. He taught me really great values. A lot of who I am today is because of him.'

I've no doubt that it must have been incredibly painful to lose his father, but I hope he can take some solace in having had such a wonderful relationship. So many other men, unfortunately, cannot say the same.

All too often, families split up and the father drifts off, but the damage caused by this loss of a role model can last for ever.

I'll probably get pilloried for saying it, but after seeing troubled young men for years, my conclusion is that young boys need a father. 

Despite the fashionable antifamily sentiment that Dr Pemberton refers to, hands-on parenting by a male and a female parent are certainly the foundation of a society that is truly protective of its children, providing them, by means of a strong attitude of social solidarity, the resources and safeguards that healthy physical and mental growth demands.

Conversely, it is becoming increasingly plain to see that the so-called progressives of Western society are not the heroes of the era, but are cowards who prefer to militate for soft, culturally virtuous, goals rather than do the heavy lifting of confronting the corporate and political powers over the creation of conditions that support family life, and over the removal of conditions that perpetuate inequality.

To my mind, the economic and social injustice prevalent in US society that should be the progressives' target was made vivid by the scandalous fact that railway workers, who in November had declared strike action over stalled negotiations on pay and conditions, were left after the legislated settlement without any paid sick leave. Any self-respecting social movement should hang its head in shame at that state of affairs existing in the 21st Century.  

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There is no right side of history

Niccolo Macchiavelli ... saw role for political myth-making. Photo PxHere 

"I’m a political progressive. The idea that 'history' is on our side—which we’re sure to hear during this 118th Congress—is a dangerous myth," declares William Deresiewicz in his Free Press article on January 2, 2023.

He makes some good points:

The phrase embodies a specific view of history, the idea that the course of human events—with whatever stops and starts and temporary setbacks—traces an inevitable upward path. The notion dates back to the nineteenth century, if not earlier: to Hegel and Marx, to the liberal or “Whig” historians, to the Progressive movement itself. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."

And those on the “wrong side” of history? “History will judge them”—will judge Donald Trump, will judge Bill Barr, will judge Dave Chappelle and J.K. Rowling, will judge all the bads.

But history does not have sides. It does not take sides. The progressive view of history is not an observation. It’s a theory. It’s a myth that takes its place alongside other, different, historical myths: the belief that history is cyclical; the belief that history represents a long decline from some imagined Golden Age; the belief that we are heading towards apocalypse, or Messiah, or both.

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I have lived long enough to know that history is perfectly capable of slamming into reverse and backing up at 50 miles an hour. It happened with Ronald Reagan. It happened with Vladimir Putin. It happened with Trump.

Yet who’s to say what constitutes “reverse”? Who’s to say where history is headed, even in the long run? To take but one example: In The Great Exception, the historian Jefferson Cowie argues that the New Deal and its progeny—the liberal heyday from FDR to LBJ—was not the norm from which we’ve lamentably swerved. It was itself an anomaly, the result of a unique and unrepeatable confluence of circumstances. The norm, he says, is what preceded and followed it. “It might be more accurate to think of the ‘Reagan revolution,’” Cowie writes, “as the ‘Reagan restoration.’”

As for “history will judge”—the moral side of the progressive myth—it is no less a delusion. “History,” of course, means the future, and “judge” means condemn. But to say that the future will condemn x or y is to assume that the future will look like “us”—that by the time the future rolls around (whenever that may be) everybody will agree with us.

Which means that everybody will agree, full stop. But when has everybody ever agreed? When have there not been “sides”? After all, we are the future to those who came before us. And I can tell you that in the 1980s, the left was just as certain that Reagan and his henchmen would be judged by history. Yet here we are, and half the country still believes he farted rainbows. 

[[[[[[[[[[

Why does this matter? First of all, because it makes for complacency. History, in the progressive myth, is a kind of plus factor in political struggle: an invisible force, like something out of physics, that adds its strength to ours. History is on our side—we can’t lose! For decades now, Democrats have been assuring themselves that the coming of a majority-minority America will guarantee a future liberal hegemony. Latinos in particular are supposedly the cavalry that’s riding to the rescue. Well, now it’s beginning to look as if they just might ride in the other direction. As for millennials—a vast electoral cohort that currently skews progressive, and thus the latest leftist messianic hope—people have a funny way of getting more conservative as they get older.

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 The progressive myth of history also makes for arrogance and condescension. I said that the notion of history as a kind of force that blows through human affairs is like something out of physics—but really, it’s like something out of Christianity. It is a secularized version of the Holy Spirit. “History is on our side” is a secularized version of “God is on our side.” “History will judge them” is an update of “God will judge them.” To believe in the Holy Spirit is to believe that it acts through—that it fills—some people but not others. To believe in “history,” in progress as a metaphysical principle, is to believe in the existence of a progressive class: the ones who push history forward, the ones who are filled with the future.

In other words, us. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Which means that we have the right—the duty—to teach others how to live. How to speak, think, eat, spend, make love, raise their children, vote. You know how enraging evangelical preachers can be, how insulting it is to hear them talk about how sinful and benighted the secular are? That is how most people, including a lot of rank-and-file Democrats, feel about the self-anointed progressive class.

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... [T]his is where the bad behavior enters in. As soon as you declare a “crisis,” an “emergency”—another word you hear a lot these days—you give yourself permission to suspend the rules: to bury a story, to suppress dissent, to betray the principles you’re supposed to stand for. History has charged you with a special duty, after all; the future rests upon your shoulders.

No, it hasn’t. No, it doesn’t. Talk of the right side of history is, at bottom, propaganda—an attempt to persuade us that the largest issues have already been decided. 

As the new political season begins, let us not forget that nothing is, in fact, inevitable. The future is open. Let no one presume to foreclose it.

It's a shame that history isn't given much attention by higher education institutions and their clients these days:

'That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach' — Aldous Huxley (author of Brave New World;  (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963).

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