Homosexuality as a fad; the sex-drenched society

The Netflix film Cuties - sexualised depiction of women starts young

Nothing is more passé than being straight these days: Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, the 23-year-old daughter of the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, said as much in an Instagram interview in which she spoke about what it meant to her to announce that she is queer.

In the interview she said her main concern when coming out was not with negativity from the wider society but that her own circle might think she was just trying to be trendy.

She said this fear arose because it’s “hip or cool to be not hetero in my liberal bubble”.

What! That young people make decisions on their sexual orientation for life on the basis of what is the latest fad! How sick is that? But it fits the pattern of the "transgender craze" that has erupted and the cluster phenomenon of a group of girls suddenly declaring they want to be male, going on to explain themselves with an outpouring of the "internet-speak" they have absorbed.

New York-based Guardian columnist and lesbian Arwa Mahdawi, whose partner recently gave birth to a daughter they will raise together, reacted with amazement at the nature of Kennedy-Cuomo's fear for her reputation.

Mahdawi said that when she came out 20 years ago she was afraid of being assaulted for being gay. Now, instead of inciting "widespread slurs", being gay is "something that the privileged offspring of politicians reckon is a badge of honour".

Homosexuality as purely a status symbol!

Not taking away respect for homosexuals, if this is how young people make their decisions under the macabre influence of social media and the mainstream media's delight in highlighting weird self-invention,  then they are bound to suffer the death of their psyche, given how they have adopted the lie fed them by the elite who often create, certainly cultivate, the latest fashions in lifestyle as much as in entertainment or clothing. There's no fun in such fashions, however, as by their warped nature they eventually kill their followers' spirit - we all pity the ill-fated follower of fashion!

Kennedy-Cuomo also revealed that she had experimented with several flavours of sexuality (such as bi- and pan-) before deciding that hers is of the demi- variety.

That was another element that jarred with Mahdawi:

Last time I checked, demisexuals weren’t exactly an oppressed minority fighting for equal rights. They are just people who aren’t sexually attracted to others unless they form a strong emotional bond with them first.

Furthermore:

Acting as if needing to get to know someone before jumping into bed with them constitutes a marginalised sexual orientation that needs a flag seems to play into the hands of rightwingers who are desperate to argue that liberals are narcissists with a victimhood complex.

That said, I don’t think demisexuality should be written off as attention-seeking. Indeed, I think it’s instructive to look at what the rise of demisexuality says about sexuality more generally; Kennedy-Cuomo, after all, is just one of a growing number of (mostly) young people [my emphasis - BS] who have latched on to the label in recent years.

Note "latched on to"! Hardly, language to confirm that the state discussed relates to a innate personal attribute.

Then Mahdawi gets to a second point of importance when discussing sexuality today:

The fact that there was a need to come up with a term like “demisexual” (which was coined in 2006) shows how sex-drenched society has become. The portrayal of women in the popular media has become increasingly sexualised. Porn has never been so accessible. Dating apps such as Tinder mean it has never been so easy to hook up.

It all starts young, especially for girls, as was highlighted earlier this year when Facebook announced Instagram for Kids. In a letter to the company, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an advocacy group that often leads campaigns against big tech and its targeting of children, wrote of Instagram: 

The platform’s relentless focus on appearance, self-presentation, and branding presents challenges to adolescents’ privacy and wellbeing. Younger children are even less developmentally equipped to deal with these challenges, as they are learning to navigate social interactions, friendships, and their inner sense of strengths and challenges during this crucial window of development.

A coalition of 35 consumer advocacy groups along with 64 experts in child development co-signed the letter, which also stated: "Adolescent girls report feeling pressured to post sexualized selfies for attention from their peers". As well:

Citing public health research and other studies, the letter notes that excessive screen time and social media use can contribute to a variety of risks for kids including obesity, lower psychological well-being, decreased quality of sleep, increased risk of depression and suicide ideation, and other issues.

By their fruit you will know them! Another impact on young people's lives from corporate profit-seeking and the slavery of consumerism is stressed by Mahdawi:

Here’s the funny thing, though: while pop culture has become more and more sexualised, statistics show that young people are actually having far less sex than previous generations. There has been a lot of hand-wringing about hook-up culture, but it may be more of a media invention than a reality.

Indeed kids these days seem to spend more time describing the exact specifications of their sexuality and where it sits on various spectrums than they do actually having sex. Sex is supposed to sell, and it’s being sold to us willy-nilly – but as the rise of demisexuality shows, fewer people seem desperate to buy into what we’ve been told sexuality is supposed to look like.

The harm here comes in the form of young people turning to temporary sexual relationships - plural - and putting off a healthy search for one partner in life, in marriage, with a willingness to commit to the fruitful outcome that is children.

Especially, Mahdawi, as a new mother and obviously endowed with moral seriousness, is disturbed by the mental and emotional massaging of a sexual nature that goes on in the West, and increasingly in other societies, through all media and their accomplice, the entertainment world. Her terms, "sex-drenched society" and "increasingly sexualised" and "[sex is] sold to us willy-nilly" convey to me that this New York resident is very worried at the direction of society.

Rightly so! How can young people see the video of Cardi B's WAP, and note the awards given the song, and not have a shamed (girls) and scornful (boys) view of women? No wonder girls want to shed that female persona!

A second case of a woman letting down the side comes with the predicament that Billie Eilish found herself in after posing in a set of corsets. She had to withstand some disappointment from fans, even ridicule, but retorted with cussing repeating, "It's all about what makes you feel good".

Eilish is only 19 and so we can give her some leeway in sorting out what's important. Reportedly she told British Vogue:

My thing is that I can do whatever I want. It’s all about what makes you feel good. If you want to get surgery, go get surgery. If you want to wear a dress that somebody thinks that you look too big wearing, f**k it – if you feel like you look good, you look good.

New York Post also quotes a sympathetic fan:

“Guys, can we please realize that Billie is finding herself and that she is happy with the way she is and that is all that should matter. Billie is only 19 years old. She’s been [in] the public eye since she was 15 and she is finding herself. She don’t [owe] us anything.”

But the ET outlet identifies the contradiction of a young woman showing off her assets in a sexualised manner while campaigning for a positive view of women in society:

Eilish's new music also tackles the idea of men taking advantage of underage girls. She knows that this message combined with her more mature look will raise eyebrows.

Obviously, Eilish did not learn from the earlier instance of misuse of a photo - she has reported how her "boobs were trending on Twitter!" - or from the mockery that Emma Watson encountered after baring her breasts in - again - a women's fashion magazine in 2017. The mockery arose because Watson's interview had dwelt on serious topics like women's empowerment whereas she was seen to have let herself be milked by the magazine for greater sales.

A wag put these words into Watson's mouth: "Women's rights! Feminism! Social justice! Hey, look at my tits!" For both Watson and Eilish, certainly be proud of one's body, but don't let yourself be part of the abuse of women by the corporate elite in their profiteering by broadcasting sexualised images of girls and women. Learn the difference between liberation and objectification. It can come down to the question: "Who makes the money?"

This post has given attention to the diverse sources of concern about how the soft oppression of young people bolsters the malaise that is building in Western society, and rapidly elsewhere. The manipulation of the young and innocent by promoters of a set of false principles relating to sexual orientation, and feminism, is causing harm on a personal level and it is destroying the health of society as a whole.

The solution is to take stock, to start from the fact that young people are trapped in a toxic culture that prevents them from knowing the joy that flows when a person has learnt to be self-disciplined enough to be in control of their own intellectual and emotional life.

For that, they need goals and the support along the way that Western society no longer provides. Western society needs to return to the basics of our civilisation and learn again that God made us, and in opening up a relationship with us, makes it possible for us to know ourselves, how to be the best person we can be. That's the kind of self-invention we need.

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

In the prison of my subjective feelings

A prison of our own making - photo by Enrico Hänel from Pexels

One time when the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was at a magnificent waterfall that many people were admiring he overheard one visitor describe the scene as "sublime" whereas another called it "pretty". Coleridge decried the expression of "pretty" as failing to match the reality of the sight.  

The academic and writer C S Lewis explains Coleridge's disgust:

The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions. ...  'Can you be righteous', asks Traherne, 'unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.'"

When people are in a group where there is an argument going on, each of those arguing looks for support on the basis of what everyone should agree to, what is logical, what is true to that which exists in the real world, and akin to that, what is the God-given reality. In other words, each party in practice points to some objective moral or intellectual value that the other side has violated. Each side ought to know, but often doesn't, that it is pointless to say "I don't care what you say, I have my own opinion - [or worse] - I have my own facts".

To speak about the objectivity of moral and intellectual values means there's something outside of what I think or I feel - my subjectivity - and things are right and wrong or good and bad in reality, for reasons that everyone must agree to because, on consideration, those reasons can be arrived at logically or because they can be observed and their meaning agreed to.

We have our own feelings and emotions but we have to live in the real world. Therefore, we have to train ourselves to react in an appropriate manner to what we encounter. The child has to learn "to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful", as Plato wrote. Teachers help the young learn of the richness that lies in Shakespeare's lines, or in the works of other writers or artists that have lasted the test of time - esteemed because they are seen as being true to life and therefore valuable in understanding the human experience.

Some in education, especially, come up with methodologies or concepts they want introduced into the curriculum. They often shy from expressing an objective value for their innovations but say they are important because they are "necessary" or "progressive", or "effective". However, Lewis states:

They could be forced by argument to answer the questions 'necessary for what?', 'progressing towards what?', 'effecting what?'; in the last resort they would have to admit that some state of affairs was in their opinion good for its own sake.

Objectivity relating to intellectual and moral values is not just a Western concept. Lewis refers to the principle being the basis of the Tao, the ultimate reality,  and acknowledges Hinduism's focus on what is known as Rta:

In early Hinduism conduct in men which can be called good consists in conformity to, or almost participation in, the Rta — that great ritual or pattern of nature and supernature which is revealed alike in the cosmic order, the moral virtues, and the ceremonial of the temple. Righteousness, correctness, order, the Rta, is constantly identified with satya or truth, correspondence to reality. 

Unfortunately, what worried Lewis, Coleridge, and Plato, is now widely accepted, namely that values such as what is good, what is beautiful and what is true "are just expressions of my subjective point of view, my subjective feelings". This means there are no principles outside ourselves that determine how we should behave or what degree of respect we should give to others. Here is where we pick up the content of a talk given by Catholic Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles.

He expresses what is the common sentiment of younger age groups: 

"Don't tell me what to think; don't tell me how to behave; don't tell me what's beautiful. My subjective feelings determine value and what's the matter with that?"

That attitude of a young person going into life draws a heartfelt response:

Do you see everybody how it locks us into these little prisons - the little prison of my subjective consciousness of my immediate feelings, and how the realm of objective value breaks us out of these pathetic little prisons and allow us now to explore worlds beyond my little arena of feeling and subjective apprehension?

To be drawn by a great master [artist] into the realm of objective value - it opens my life in such a wonderful way.

Another problem with this hyper-subjectivism is we're locked in our little prisons affirming our own feelings all the time - it sets us necessarily against one another if my feelings are incommensurate with yours. My feelings have no real reference to an objective value. All I can do is fight with you. We can't appeal together to some transcendent "third" by which our feelings are measured. No, we're just now in a war of feeling against feeling, this little prison that leads to warfare. I'm afraid that's where a lot of people find themselves today. That's the default position of a lot of people.

Break out of the prison! What gets you out is objective moral, intellectual, and aesthetic value. What opens the door toward real communion [is that] together we fall in love with Shakespeare, together we fall in love with Dante.... Good, now we've transcended this little petty world.

I know you hear this all the time, but don't let them seduce you with this suffocating subjectivism. Rather be open to the realm of the objective.

Michael Sandel, a political philosophy professor at Harvard, says in his book What Money Can't Buy, "We need to reason about how to value our bodies, human dignity, teaching and learning." He means we ought to use our intellectual powers to arrive at principles that allow us to agree on the reality of all that is important. The purpose of that is to create a harmonious society. For example, we need to go beyond scientific findings and find the deeper values of matters like patriotism, family, solidarity and justice. 

In an interview on that book, he is asked if there is "any downside to engaging with the world through the eyes of moral philosophy, rather than simple market logic?"

His answer is: "None but the burden of reflection and moral seriousness."

Rather than charging into debates on important issues flailing about with hot emotions or pure assumption, we need to identify values that are relevant to the context, that provide essential meaning. Sandel gives a topic related to his book's subject matter to illustrate his approach and he points to the goal of social discourse:

"Consider the language employed by the critics of commercialisation," he writes. "'Debasement', 'defilement', 'coarsening', 'pollution', the loss of the 'sacred'. This is a spiritually charged language that gestures toward higher ways of living and being." 

Those "higher ways" point to the importance of understanding the distinction between subjective and objective values. Lewis and his short work The Abolition of Man (see here) states that emotions "can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform. The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it". Further: 

Either we are rational spirit obliged for ever to obey the absolute values of the Tao, or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasures of masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motive but their own natural impulses. Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery. 

All the more reason to escape from the horror house of subjectivity, that small prison of self-invention and emotional self-absorption. 

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

Christian meditation app fills the gap

Jump into this video here for insight into a richer experience

Sam Harris is a writer and podcaster with a background in neuroscience. His is the youngest face of the "New Atheism"  brigade, which we don't hear about so much now because it has become clear that it is a touched-up version of traditional atheism.

However, Harris has gone on to promote Mindfulness, a well-meaning fad that has a business side attracting products such as Jimmy Kimmel's Mindfulness Coloring Book or the emag, 108 Mindfulness Lessons, which offers advice on surviving test stress and other student difficulties.

Harris' interest in mediation dates from his college days and his Waking Up app has been well-received. However, he has given his attention mostly to the Hindu and Buddhist strain of meditation, ignoring the riches of the Christian experience.

This is where those who want a more complete form of meditation, one that aligns with the hunger for a relationship with the deepest element of reality, that is, God, need to turn to groups such as the long-established World Community for Christian Mediation. This is "a global spiritual community united in the practice of meditation in the Christian tradition. It shares the fruits of this practice widely and inclusively, serving the unity of all and building understanding between faiths and cultures."

The community serves people in all kinds of situations, including business people and physicians."Members of WCCM span more than a hundred countries. There are about sixty-seven national coordinators. Its international centre is Bonnevaux – an ancient monastic site now dedicated to global peace and dialogue around the daily practice of meditation – near Poitiers in France."

For the latest community news on its website have a look here, and jump into the mediation page here. 

Watch the video titled The Pilgrimage - The Way of Christian Meditation here. Access the WCCM app here 

Sam Harris is right that we must do something to rid ourselves of the "habitual distraction" that contends with us for control over our time and mind space -  "your thoughts are incessantly appearing and capturing your attention and deluding you", he says.

But you can see how more profound  the Christian experience is when meditation is regarded as the pathway to deep attention to God, leading us to "feel the feelings of God". That is the path to follow!

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

All belief points to a spiritual capacity

Detail from art by Lia Halloran A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader.

New Scientist magazine has a series of articles on the topic of "Effortless thinking". One is titled "The god-shaped hole in your brain". 

The profound implications on the issue of the mind having a spiritual capability beyond what the brain produces are clear when the author writes:

If God designed the human brain, he (or she) did a lousy job. Dogged by glitches and biases, requiring routine shutdown for maintenance for 8 hours a day, and highly susceptible to serious malfunction, a product recall would seem to be in order. But in one respect at least, God played a blinder: our brains are almost perfectly designed to believe in him/her.

This is akin to the point of the famous passage from man-of-the-world Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions in which he states:

Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we men, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you – we also carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. 

The New Scientist writer also goes into the kindred matter of " the powerful and very human attribute we call belief":

Beliefs define how we see the world and act within it; without them, there would be no plots to behead soldiers, no war, no economic crises and no racism. There would also be no cathedrals, no nature reserves, no science and no art. Whatever beliefs you hold, it’s hard to imagine life without them. Beliefs, more than anything else, are what make us human. They also come so naturally that we rarely stop to think how bizarre belief is.

In 1921, philosopher Bertrand Russell put it succinctly when he described belief as “the central problem in the analysis of mind”. Believing, he said, is “the most ‘mental’ thing we do” – by which he meant the most removed from the “mere matter” that our brains are made of. How can a physical object like a human brain believe things? Philosophy has made little progress on Russell’s central problem.

The writer of this series reveals in one article that he is an atheist, but he does his readers a service by stating clearly key elements of what humans have experienced of the spiritual world.  

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

When the front door of the mind is locked

What's allowed in? Kevin Bidwell photo - Pexels

J R R Tolkien wrote, “Myths, fantasies, and stories can open the heart’s back door when the front door of the mind is locked”. Already around the middle of last century he had recognised that the common mindset had become "If I can't see it, it doesn't exist". That "front door" is often the "plausibility structure" that individuals unconsciously construct in their way of thinking, and these days many commentators have expressed dismay at the shallowness of thought generally - typical examples here and here. 

A second element that impacts our pattern of thinking - what we accept as plausible - is the lack of ongoing contact with a rich variety of people outside the "we" group determining our reactions. Therefore, there is a lot of "emotional" responses to stimuli as against calmer reasoning as to best behaviour or where the truth lies.

In this connection, longtime readers of this blog will know that one area of interest of mine is how the supernatural realm is sometimes unveiled, but the wonder can be glossed over because of predetermined habits of mind, or simply by the distractions of this digital age. 

In my previous post, the experience of one survivor of the Florida apartment collapse is highlighted because the chain of events that led to her survival readily prompts recognition as a reality that prayers are effective. As she told reporters who took her account, she felt it necessary to thank God for keeping her safe, given she had lit a prayer candle before an icon of Our Lady of Guadelupe, signifying her belief that God answers prayers made through the intercession of other Christians, on earth or in heaven.  

Further, in a post here I report an account of a father who was part of a series of miracles in bringing an adopted son from China and seeing the boy's medical problems overcome. 

Now, I want to offer two more cases of people whose experiences are inexplicable other than that they arose from an encounter with the spiritual realm. The source of this information, the same as above, is a trustworthy author and journalist. He writes:

 A] I know that the divine is truly present in some things and places, and not in others. I also believe that the demonic is likewise present in some things and places. I once interviewed a woman who could not get books to stop flying off her shelves in her house until she burned and buried the ashes of two little humanoid wooden figures she and her late husband had bought at a bazaar in rural Indonesia on a vacation. She had not imagined it, but those objects had been used in some kind of wicked ritual. When she placed them on her bookshelf, she would wake up the next morning to find all the books splayed on the floor. 

B] If you have ever been part of an exorcism or a deliverance rite, you know that holy water is not the same thing as water that comes out of the tap. People who are demon possessed, it burns them. A couple of years ago, I was in Manhattan visiting friends. The wife of the family is possessed, and under the care of an exorcist. When her husband brought out a blessed object he had concealed, she reacted badly, her face changing, and a voice not her own coming out of her, cursing the presence of this object. I saw this with my own eyes. The poor wife apologized, and said, “I’m sorry, that’s not me.”

Store these accounts in your heart. They are not "stories" in Tolkien's sense of being fictional but they can contribute to a deeper mindset, one that accepts that there is a greater richness to life than meets the uncurious eye or the distracted consumerist world view. Each of us has a responsibility to form our "plausibility structure" in an independent fashion in order to better know the truth when we meet it, the truth that will set us free.

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

A natural witness to the supernatural dimension

From the horror collapse of  Florida's Champlain Towers South comes an extraordinary account of survival. Just before it all fell, something jolted condo owner Iliana Monteagudo awake - she calls it a "rare force" - and thinking an open door at her balcony might be letting gusts of wind into her apartment, she got out of bed to close it. Then, behind her she saw a widening crack moving down her wall. She realised she had to get out of the building immediately. 

What followed is a startling series of events that lend weight to the notion of protection for those who pray for God's help.  Monteagudo, 64 and a Miami resident for 40 years, said she believes that if any of those moments had gone differently she would not be alive today. Let me use a report from CNN to describe what happened.

Before she went to bed she had lit a prayer candle before an icon of Our Lady of Guadelupe, and so by that action asking Mary, Jesus' mother, to intercede before God on her behalf.

But after she saw the huge crack Monteagudo went into overdrive. "Something inside me said run", she said." You have to run to save your life." The first help toward her quick escape was that the night before she had put her pills and credit cards into her purse because she knew she had to get up early in the morning. Quickly she put on clothes, grabbed her phone and purse, blew out the candle and left her condo.

She knew not to take the elevator but didn't know that the emergency stairs were just beside her unit, so she went to the farthest set of stairs instead.

"If I knew that, maybe I would have taken that one," Monteagudo said.

But as she was flying down the six floors of stairs, pleading with God to let her see her sons and grandsons again, she heard the sound of the tower she lived in collapsing. If she had been in the stairs closest to her home, she likely would have been crushed, her son, Andres Alvarez, said.

"She had to wake up early the next day, the next morning," Alvarez said. "She didn't take her sleeping pill because she was afraid she was going to oversleep. If it wasn't for that open door... if it wasn't for that wind... if she hadn't seen that crack... she wouldn't be here telling the story."

If a person is open to the wider principle of letting the eyes see and the ears hear, the "what ifs" do pose the question: Did God answer Iliana Monteagudo's prayers? Only God knows the answer.

In one way it is strange that Jesus, though understanding that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, directed everyone to pray for what they need - "And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matthew 21:22). He used the parable of the persistent widow and the evil judge to urge not to give up when prayers are not answered in the way and time we expect.

A couple of preachers this Sunday had insights into how a person's faith, or that of someone close to them, was very much involved in Jesus' miracles, and how this is so in our lives, too. The gospel reading was about Jesus going to Nazareth, and his former neighbours did not accept him as an authoritative teacher and healer, though they knew of his miracles elsewhere - he did cure a few sick people there, though. 

What's involved is a "faith dialogue" with God. God offers, but we have to accept the offer. With an openness of heart and mind, miracles can happen. The message on Sunday was: "Let go of a scepticism that is born of limited expectations."

With Jesus' miracles he repeatedly told the cured person: "Go, your faith has healed-saved you." We can go to Jesus in hope and fearlessness.

The twin ideas of hearing and seeing are closely linked to the concepts of learning and understanding, both hallmarks of life and intelligence. However, all of us have that inclination to block out what we might see, to talk over what we might hear, and so shut our heart to what we need to understand. This is where repentance and metanoia (Greek for turning around) come in. The prophets knew their message was usually not accepted because their people were rebellious (Ezekiel 2:2-5). Isaiah (6:9-10) and Jesus (Matthew 13:13) were saddened... "because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand".

"We must not delimit the power of God to act and save...Everything is pure grace and God has the power to do everything... [so] 'if our faith is weak, all we need to do is to imitate the father whose child was suffering from epilepsy. He said to Jesus, 'I believe; help my unbelief'" (Mark 9:24).

To "delimit" means to "determine the limits or boundaries" of something. To avoid blocking our hearts and minds to the spiritual is a real challenge when the main players in society have been captured by the secular mindset and, in turn, they turn their firepower on us and want us in the same chains of conformity as themselves.  "Secular" means being being directed away from the spiritual order of life to have a focus only on the material and what is of this earth. This is very damaging to human wholeness. Conversely,  a "spiritual" mindset is all enveloping and open to all possibilities. 

To a Washington Post reporter, Monteagudo described her abrupt awakening this way: “It’s like something supernatural woke me up. I felt something strange..." Before leaving the apartment, "I blew out the candle that I light every night for Our Lady of Guadalupe”.

“I was afraid I was going to be crushed,” she said, adding: “I kept going, screaming, ‘God, help me, please help me. I want to see my sons, I want to see my grandsons, I want to live, please help me, God.'"

Monteagudo thought about all the things she lost: wedding photos, first Communion photos, kids’ birthday photos. "I lost everything, I don’t have a past,” she said. “But I say thank God, I’m still alive.”

Clearly, there has been a dialogue of faith in this woman's life, and it continued during her short but horrifying ordeal. 

A final point is that God can perform whatever wonders he wishes, at any time he desires, but he usually only performs a miracle when faith is present in a person's heart and mind. As in Nazareth, it's hard to envisage Jesus, the Creator God, healing someone who outright rejects him. The way to bridge the gap in our dialogue with God is to cultivate whatever tender shoots of faith that we have still alive from our religious upbringing, or that we find springing up as we experience the mysteries of the human journey.  

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

Germans in tussle with teaching authority

The Church in Germany is offering the rest of the world a view of the clash between what many Germans believe should be a democratic institution but which, in fact, is a body whose role is the preservation and dissemination of what God has revealed by word and deed, through Scripture and Tradition. 

In the months ahead, representatives of German lay groups, parishes, and religious orders, will meet with bishops in a form of an ongoing synod - what they refer to as a "synodal path" - on how to reform the Church, especially its structures, to prevent a recurrence of the scandalous tide of sex abuse. 

Though that is the stated goal, and it is a noble objective, there is a fear the journey will be a wasted one as participants rehearse the hoary topics of  greater share of power for the Church members, the ordination of women, and a change in its stance toward the sinfulness of homosexual acts (N.B. the Church makes no moral judgment concerning the person who is, among other things, a homosexual). The hope is that the path will come to an end next February.

Debate on the ordination of women to be a priest, in particular, will display in stark terms the conflict between the "enlightened" ones and those charged with upholding the living teaching office of the Church. This office is its "magisterium" involving the "clarification and manifestation of the truth contained in the deposit of faith or truths connected to the deposit and the mission of the Church" (Feingold 2016)* 

Note that "this teaching office is not above the word of God in scripture, but serves it". The commission can be fulfilled only through God's anointing of those who fill the office as successors of Peter and his fellow apostles, and through the help of the Holy Spirit.

Pope John Paul II declared in 1994 that priestly ordination must be reserved to men only.  He did it in such a way that made plain he was making a definitive and infallible statement that confirmed the Tradition of the Church:

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force. Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Luke 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful. 

Read the short document here. It displays the elements of an exercise of the teaching authority of the pope in a case of infallibility, which is immunity from error in the teaching of the magisterium through the assistance of the Holy Spirit.

Feingold comments:

In this paragraph, the Pope has expressed himself very precisely so as to make clear that this pronouncement is definitive and therefore infallible, and thus can never be changed by any future pope or council. All of the requirements given in [the Vatican Council's] Lumen gentium §25 (summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church §891) are clearly realized. First, the Pope confirms that he is acting as supreme pastor when he speaks “in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren.” Second, he explicitly intends to make a definitive act (“this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful”). Finally, he is teaching on a question pertaining to faith and morals, for he says that it is “a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself.”*

Here is an instance of God acting in the Church for the guidance of His people. For those who have lost the sense of the spiritual as an integral part of our world along with the material, this is a hard saying.  

Therefore, that the ordination of women as priests is still on the agenda in the German discussions has caused the fear of another German schism to grip many in the Church outside secularised Europe. 

*Feingold, Lawrence, 2016, Faith Comes From What Is Heard: An Introduction to Fundamental Theology, Emmaus Academic, Steubenville, Ohio.

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

We must not squander the Covid crisis

As with a world war, so too with the pandemic that maims families and nations

As Winston Churchill was working to form the United Nations after World War II, he famously said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste”. With the Covid crisis creating havoc all around us, each community and even each person would do well to follow Churchill's prescription.

A common refrain in conversations is, "It'll be good when we get back to normal". But is it going to be true? So much of the lifestyle in developed countries seems unfit for purpose, if that purpose is to engender mental and physical health, happiness in the way of personal satisfaction with a meaningful role in society, and a hopeful mindview that knows worthwhile goals. 

Once again, for those of us bogged down in the mundane, a vision of what is possible when we decide to take control of  our life comes from Pope Francis in speaking this week about the aftermath of the pandemic. Several times in the past year he has returned to the theme of transforming whatever is not working in personal life and in the world's structures.

Pope Francis said this week that the world must not return to its “normal” way of life as the Covid crisis eases:

Only one thing is more serious than this crisis, and that is the risk that we will squander it, and not learn the lesson it teaches.

It is a lesson in humility, showing us that it is not possible to live healthy lives in an unhealthy world, or to go on as we were, without recognizing what went wrong. 

Even now, the great desire to return to normality can mask the senseless notion that we can go back to relying on false securities, habits and projects that aim exclusively at pursuing wealth and personal interests, while failing to respond to global injustice, the cry of the poor and the precarious health of our planet.

What does all this have to say to us as Christians?  We, too. are called to reflect seriously on whether we want to go back to doing what we did before, as if nothing happened, or instead to take up the challenge of this crisis.  

Crisis, as the original meaning of the word shows, always implies a judgement, a distinction between good and bad.  In ancient times, it was used of the farmer who separated the good grain from the chaff to be discarded.  In a similar way, the present crisis calls us to distinguish, discern and sift, in everything we do, between what is enduring and what is passing.

Pope Francis looked at "a world still struggling to emerge from the dramatic crisis caused by the pandemic" and said: "This scourge has tested everyone and everything". 

How we and the world respond to the test is crucial on many levels. The challenge is to not plod on as a victim of what life throws at us but, rather, to apply our will to create a new set of conditions for the well-being of our own family and for the whole human family.

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

Safeguarding the family from the digital juggernaut

The digitally distracted family. Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

One way to break free from a psychically cancerous society is to be online less. People are increasingly seeing the need to undertake detoxification from technologies that create tension and other forms of distress in their life.

Robyn Ferrell's description of our predicament is so true. She writes:

The smart phone has become like a valet, arranging your life in terms that make it liveable. The smart phone is an object that does your thinking for you. You use its calculator to do what you used to do as mental arithmetic. You use its camera as a repository, and perhaps a substitute, for memory. The calendar is your social secretary, nudging you to your “two o’clock”. You keep track of time with it. You keep track of money with it. In fact, you even use it as money with a cashless payment app. You use it to find out where you are, and to navigate, with the map app.

When waiting anywhere, it is an indispensable amusement, with its podcasts and news apps. It’s the library in your pocket, the encyclopaedia, research assistant and broker of disputes at the dinner table. “Who was that guy in …?” You can even talk to it, and “Siri” will answer you and perform things for you. It makes you feel powerful, with a surge of attachment for this shiny and incredibly useful object.

And yet. Are you really sure who is master and who slave? Now you can’t add up to save your life; you’re lost without the calendar to tell you where to be when; you no longer remember the phone numbers of your friends and relations (or even your own). You need the phone to move funds or record your steps or summon an Uber. And that’s before you even make a call on this (uncannily) smart phone.

This was your instrument, but now you are beholden to it and dependent on it. And meanwhile, it is reporting on you behind your back. Like a jealous lover, it has you under surveillance wherever in the wide world you are roaming, discoverable by mobile phone towers and revealed by your purchases and searches. Or perhaps more like a handler, relaying your information faithfully to the powers that be, the marketers and advertisers who pay well for it. 

Ferrell links this view with that of Martin Heidegger, who died in 1976 and who had the insight that with technology all of nature had become a "standing reserve" - on call, as if it were a part of industrial inventory. For example, soil has no longer an essence in itself, but is seen as part of the food production sector of the economy. Everything has a means or end instrumentality. Ferrell goes on:

In this sense, Heidegger saw the danger of technology as a spiritual one, not only infecting others who become a standing reserve but a habit of thought in which even the self becomes trapped. It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that this dystopia has arrived, in the form of the internetted world bound in all its fibres to the instrumental-mercantile. 

Therefore, technology generates "consumer logic", central to which is "a prefabricated idea — a shorthand for thinking that forestalls thinking".  With the adoption of instrumental thinking and automated thought, "no other thinking makes sense anymore".

Drawing on other social observers, Ferrell leaves us with the view that "habits of mind associated with a market economy and its related technology ... became inflated in the modern world" and that "this remains a suggestive point of departure for diagnoses of our time".

You may recall the meme: "That moment you've lost your phone but feel like you're the one that's lost." That state must be part of the diagnosis of our time. As well, there is the resulting distress caused by the way tech companies tap addiction psychology in the design of the smartphone, to take one device.

Dr Anastasia Hronis, clinical psychologist and honorary associate at the University of Technology, Sydney, says a smartphone notification gives a dopamine rush similar to a hit of cocaine or a win at the slot machines:

I specialise in addictions — yet clients don't say 'I have a problem with my phone' — they present with anxiety-depression, and often phone addiction is a cause.

I foresee a push towards cafes and theatres introducing phone-free policies in the future, but for now the self-regulation is down to us.

A working mother reports how self-regulation in deliberately trying a digital detox proved a boon for she and her husband and their two sons:

I thought that anxiety, distraction and stress was the inevitable price I needed to paid for being a working mother.

But it was my own decision to not be fully present [within the family], and it was a habitual thing that could only be broken through a total detox.

Research findings on the digital environment coming out of Australia shed light on the worries parents have about their children:

Parents were significantly concerned about the negative impacts of digital media and technologies on their child’s physical activity levels (73%), attention span (62%), and time for, and interest in, playing (62%). 

Parenting and teaching are harder than they used to be:

• Most (73%) parents and grandparents think it is harder to control their child’s digital habits since they have got their own screen-based device.
• 83% of parents, carers and grandparents felt that their child was negatively distracted by digital technologies. 13% of these respondents felt that this distraction was experienced to ‘a great extent’.
• 84% of educators in Australia believe that digital technologiesare a growing distraction in the learning environment.
• 59% of respondents observed a decline in students' overall readiness to learn in the last 3-5 years.

This Growing Up Digital report I have been quoting from has this as part of its conclusion: 

Overwhelmingly, parents, carers and grandparents recognise that they are a critical influence on their child’s use of digital media and technology – in good and bad. 72% of parents recognise that their own technology habits influence those of their children. 90% of participants agreed with the statement, “I need to be a responsible user of digital technology for my child to learn from”. 

A comment that reflected a common view was: “As a parent I need to know how to work the programs and sites the kids access to be able to protect them. I do not assume they are safe”. Indeed, it is unrealistic to expect that children will improve their digital media habits unless they see their parents at home behaving accordingly.

It's not only the addictive nature of the technology and the learned ettiquette, or lack of it, of social media that consign adult and child alike to a toxic psychic state, but there is also the fact that digital media and technologies are mostly offered to young people for consumption rather than content creation. The Growing Up Digital report states:

Parents grapple with confusing messages about whether educational or learning uses of digital media and devices and recreational and entertainment use need to be treated in the same way. The time recommendation increases with a child’s age and are based on the idea of media as a ‘digital babysitter’ and a source of entertainment, rather than recognising the educational, active and engaging purposes that digital media can provide. Clarifying the key point that there are better uses of screens than others, and the need for balance in a young person’s day, is critical to seeing change in parental decision making [My emphasis -BS]. 

Passively consuming digital content poses other risks, too. The content that young people absorb and consume from the digital world around them is filled with ideas and examples that shape their views of the world around them and how they fit into it. Some of these are inappropriate and unsafe and without sharing what they are seeking and experiencing online, parents have little leverage to intervene. For parents, it is far better to engage in a conversation with young people about their habits and share the digital world with them.

Here's the report's punchline:

Ultimately, it has become abundantly clear that we all have a problem, and we all must take responsibility for helping young people grow up healthily, happily and responsibly.

The challenge must be accepted especially by those of us with a religious worldview. First, the technology itself - as I have tried to make plain for parents in this post - has an impact on the way we think, and parents must be ready to counterattack. Secondly, parents must be confident in their God-given role of caring for young ones. Third, parents must decide on practical steps to break the addiction, even simple practices such as putting smartphones in a drawer around meal time.

Based on the arguments and information of the type I have presented here, I am among the growing number convinced that a response in our personal lives is urgent as we wait to see if governments will be courageous enough to take a stand against the economic power and cultural influence of "Big Tech".

An important part of that response must be more time devoted to prayer and the reading of our scriptures. These in particular can provide some spiritual balance to the agitation that purposeless digital use generates. 

SOMETHING EXTRA: "Remembering is a subversive communal activity in an age that coaxes us to drift in the constantly streaming, twittering present, forgetful of history, forgetful of the past." - Richard B. Hays, drawing on his Biblical scholarship

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

Christian insights into what we are today

The stuff of culture can create a heavy burden

Daniel Defoe, the English author of Robinson Crusoe, was as well a trader, business and political journalist, and travel writer.  His story of the shipwrecked sailor, published in 1719, has Crusoe looking back at his spiritual state as his life alone begins after eight years at sea. The words strike a chord when looking at the lives of many today:

I do not remember that I had, in all that time, one thought that so much as tended either to looking upwards towards God, or inwards towards a reflection upon my own ways; for a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or conscience of evil, had entirely overwhelmed me; and I was all that the most hardened, unthinking, wicked creature among our common sailors can be supposed to be; not having the least sense, either of the fear of God in danger, or of thankfulness to God in deliverance.

There's the challenge for us all - to be alert as to what is happening internally, and as to how the environment of this age is imposing upon us "a certain stupidity of soul".

Another insightful observation about how the world we live in traps us in a particular frame of mind comes in this form:  

Perhaps we are not touched by idols today (even when we live in places with statues of gods and deities) but there are many other idols of a more subtle kind which we can easily fail to recognise as such – materialism and consumerism, the obsession with money and wealth, the cult of sex and even of the body, the slavery to image and fashion, the cult of the hero be it in the media or in sports (‘fans’ = fanatics, a word used to describe the actions of frenzied worshippers in another age). Obsession with such idols can blind us to the very real needs – material, social, spiritual – of those around us. Then we fail in the essential quality of being a child of God – love for each other.

Fr Frank Doyle SJ on 1 John 5:14-21. 

Read in full here.

Finally, there is the curse of  meaninglessness that has seeped into the bloodstream of society:

There is so much division in society today, simply because the individual is facing a crisis of meaning and purpose.  Because of secularism, man does not believe in a creator or the existence of the Ultimate, whom we call God.  He has no idea of his origin, purpose in life or the outcome at the end of this life.  The world teaches us that the universe, and that includes us all, comes from the random interactions of the atoms.  It is by accident that we were born into this world.  Life has no meaning, no intrinsic value, except to make the most of what this world offers, at the end of which we return to the universe as atoms. This lack of purpose means that we are called to live for ourselves.  There is no reference point, no objective truth or morals to follow.  It is all about me finding fulfillment in this life.  People are important to me insofar as they can enrich my life.  This is what individualism is all about.

Therefore, we have to take a countercultural stand. St Irenaeus, who died about the year 202, has words that encourage Christians to be countercultural these days in their mind and lifestyle: 

The glory of God is each person fully alive!

Ω On the eruption of dysphoria and rising rate of mental illness in young Americans, see my post here

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

Mother says: 'Down's Syndrome is all about love'

Tommy, inset with his mother Jane, plays murder suspect Terry Boyle in a BBC drama

When my wife and I were talking about having a second child - this is more than 20 years ago - I did not show any enthusiasm because I was afraid. I was much older than my wife, but we would both be in the older group of new parents, and I was afraid that there would be a high chance of our having a baby with Down's Syndrome. Having an abortion if this did occur was out of the question. So we did not have a second child. 

I have come to regret how I let my fear rule our life in this way. I regret not being more positive about how God gives each person - whatever their personality, characteristics, or interests - a meaning in the providential plan for us all. I have come to regret, too, being so very ignorant of how people affected by Down's Syndrome can be a boon to a family and to society.

Earlier this month, this blog looked at how Richard Dawkins was chastised by parents of children with Down's because he could see only sorrow in the lives of such people and their families. See this post here. The parents pointed out that, to the contrary, despite health problems being typical in the early years, people with Down's were innately happy and they brought a lot of joy to their families. 

So, to continue to educate myself on this matter, I want to lay out more information on the life of a person with Down's Syndrome and what impact it has on their family.

Jane Jessop had been a marketing executive in England, and when a doctor told her that her newborn son had Down's Syndrome, the genetic condition caused by the presence of an extra chromosome in the pers, “My first reaction was to wonder why God had sent this baby to us....What was God’s purpose, what did he want me to do? But maybe it was more about God’s plan for Tommy.” The syndicated Telegraph article continues:

In her tired, postnatal state, she could not then have predicted that her son would go on to star in a prime-time BBC series, one of the first actors with Down’s to do so.

Down’s affects about 40,000 people in the UK and life expectancy has increased dramatically since the 1950s; somebody with Down’s can now expect to live to their late fifties, at least, with some living well into their seventies. 

Jessop highlights what is referred to as "the joy and warmth Tommy has brought into her world" - “He’s enriched us enormously. I’m delighted with the young man he’s turned out to be.”  The article explains:

Most people with Down’s experience some form of intellectual impairment; for many, language is delayed and memory impaired.

“Tommy’s prognosis was very poor. But I would say to parents, don’t believe all those pessimistic forecasts. When Tommy turned one, he kind of woke up. It was as though the sun came out; he became smiley and started learning. He reacted to everything, whereas he hadn’t in his first year. When we came into the room, he would bounce up and down. He attracted love.”

Tommy’s communication skills thrived with the help of music; he loved being sung to and playing with little bells on sticks. He once said that when he dances, he “becomes the music. It’s as if he disappears into himself,” says Jessop.

Tommy [who is now 36] was part of the first cohort of children with Down’s to attend a mixture of mainstream and specialist schooling (before the 1981 Education Act, disabled children in England were mostly segregated from their peers).

It enriched his childhood, as well as those of his classmates, who learnt to appreciate difference. Aged 10, he became a strong reader virtually overnight; he was fascinated with online quizzes and began to memorise Trivial Pursuit answers so he could beat his family.

“It was a bit cheeky – and good practice for learning lines now.”

Jessop admits to being a little sceptical when a teenage Tommy said he wanted to be an actor. “We didn’t really believe him. We were thinking: ‘Well, Tommy likes books, why doesn’t he work in the library?’ ”

She created a theatre group for those with learning disabilities, and it was successful in highlighting the skills of its members in the demanding entertainment industry. Tommy was then included in a BBC talent group.

[At present,] Jessop is frightened by the prospect that Tommy’s condition might at some point be eliminated from the population.

All pregnant women in the UK are now offered a free prenatal blood test screening for Down’s, first approved by the UK’s National Screening Council in 2016 (it replaced a more invasive test which carried of a risk of miscarriage).

Nine out of 10 in the UK terminate their pregnancy after receiving a positive diagnosis, according to a 2013 government report. The condition has almost disappeared in some countries, like Iceland, where termination rates approach 100 per cent. [See my Dawkins post here for details on Iceland's aggressive screening regime.]

Jessop says: “I’m really thankful I was never offered a test, because that is a horrible decision for parents to take. It’s ironic: now [people with Down’s] finally have the chance to learn and show us who they really are, and society and scientists are trying to deprive them of the chance to live. I’m not talking about abortion itself, I’m just talking about the choice of doing it because a child will have Down’s.

"I think having a child with Down’s syndrome is all about love. Some of my best times are when it’s just me and Tommy on location – he’s really good company. Think about your family, friends and colleagues – how boring would it be if everyone was the same.

“And the tragedy is that many adults with Down’s syndrome are aware of this. Tommy himself feels very scared by it.”

Her views are shared by actress Sally Phillips, whose son Olly was born with Down’s in 2004. Phillips told the Telegraph in 2016 that raising her son has been much more fun than she anticipated after seeing the grim face of the doctor who gave her Olly’s diagnosis.

“I think I would have been really served by having someone around standing up and saying: ‘This is a good thing’,” Phillips said. 

Tragic case

A tragic case of misdiagnosis arising from a prenatal test has come to light this week where an Irish couple sued doctors because they had an abortion when told their baby had Edwards’ Syndrome, a condition that is usually fatal around the time of birth. In fact, the baby was healthy and the tests had shown false results. The story - see here - concludes in this way:

Lawyers for Rebecca Price said the realisation that she had aborted a “normal, healthy baby” caused intense, nervous shock and left her with a devastating sense of loss.

Prenatal testing conducted in a perfunctory manner, and the acceptance of abortion as a catch-all remedy, are a combination that can be expected to cause ongoing torment as the death toll mounts because of mistakes.

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

Mind wide shut - a common affliction in science

The door of the mind can be firmly closed to certain ideas

As a test for how open your mind is, here’s a story about finding happiness, told by a young Spanish professor to American writer Rod Dreher who was visiting Barcelona. The account was given at dinner so here it is in Dreher's words:

Pablo (as I will call him) was raised in a Marxist home. He was baptized as a baby, but that was the last thing he had to do with Christianity in any real sense. His parents were unbelievers, but they baptized their kids as part of the ritual of their Catholic society. Yet all throughout his childhood, he had the ability to see a woman that nobody else could see. There was something about her not quite right. He assumed it was the Holy Virgin from Christian mythology, but the culture of his home was materialist, so he never really tried to understand what was happening.

When it came time for his first communion, he told the priest that “I’m not going to eat that sh*t.” The priest slapped him for his blasphemy. Pablo was shocked to hear these words coming out of his mouth. Where had they come from? They weren’t his own.

There were all kinds of other spiritually dramatic things that happened to him, but this morning, I can’t remember them clearly. The climax of the story came a few years later, when he was roaming the streets of his city with a couple of his buddies. This was 2004. A homeless man walked up to them, and began to speak to Pablo: “Ah, Pablo, it is so good to finally meet you,” he said. “I am here to tell you that Jesus loves you.” And then the homeless man began to tell Pablo all kinds of things about his life. He was reading Pablo’s heart, and telling him things nobody could have known other than he, least of all an indigent stranger on the street.

He told Pablo that he knew that he had been seeing a woman appear since childhood, but that Pablo needed to know that that wasn’t the Holy Virgin. That was the Evil One disguising himself to deceive Pablo. Apparently Satan had had his eye on Pablo for a long, long time.

“Finally I asked the man what was his name,” Pablo told me. “He laughed and said, ‘The Happiness of Christmas.’ I asked him what his name really was, and he said the same thing.”

After bringing this message to Pablo, the homeless man wandered down the street, and disappeared into the crowd.

“Was he an angel?” I asked Pablo.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you follow him?”

“No, he was an indigent. We were all standing there completely shocked. My two friends saw and heard all of this. It wasn’t something I imagined.”

The next morning at breakfast, Pablo’s mother asked him what was wrong. “You seem different,” she said. But nothing was wrong. Everything was finally right.

Pablo then went to a church, to Mass. “I saw Our Lord in the Eucharist, and I knew that I really was looking at the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Creator of the Universe. I knew that this was where I had to be, and I could not leave Him behind.”

Pablo was confirmed as a Catholic, and began to roam around, looking for the will of God. Eventually he ended up in Barcelona. He is married now, and is a teacher.

He was the only religious believer in his extended family. Again, they were all Marxists. But one by one, seeing the difference Christ made in Pablo, they began to convert. His father was the last holdout. But one year ago, as he lay dying from stomach cancer, Pablo’s father called for a priest, made a confession, and was reconciled to Christ through the Church. Pablo now expects to be with his ex-communist father in Paradise someday.

My question for the "atheist" or the agnostic is, given that the information about the main incident comes from an honest source and there were witnesses to the accuracy of what the homeless stranger was telling Pablo, could it be at least possible that the strange man was somehow a messenger from God?

Clearly, there are several philosophies or academic constructs that have propelled Western society - and increasingly the whole world - into adopting a materialistic mindview. Because of this mindview and that other doors that close a person off from reality, many people find it extremely difficult to accept, or admit that they could accept, the existence of the spiritual realm because it is far beyond what is "normal".

Therefore, it's natural for a person to develop the set of materialistic preconceptions based on personal experience, education and on the fact such concepts are fashionable, if not de rigueur, in society. Society makes it easy even for those from a religious background to bow to the anti-intellectual and hedonistic (meaning, in effect, anti-social) moral atmosphere, given the consumerism, the wish for material success, and the superficiality promoted through all forms of media. 

It's worth spending some time checking out the filters, the blinkers, the gates, the doors that prevent a person or people generally from acknowledging the strength of information of another kind, other than what they are used to. Theists are accustomed to examining their conscience, which brings a person back to their essential beliefs. So let's look at some philosophies that have shaped Western societies and threaten to engulf societies around the world where the elites think they will be held in contempt if they do not follow the lead from abroad.

Doors that close a person to the spiritual:

1. Logical Positivism

Though he is by no means the first in this, Alfred Jules Ayer's 1936 work Language, Truth and Logic would have us accept the belief  that "only knowledge that can be empirically verified is warranted or meaningful". Of course, that statement is a philosophical principle and cannot in itself be empirically verified.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was of the same school, though he had a basic agnosticism, in that we cannot know anything. Reality was made up of statements, not objects. His principle was that we could not say anything except what can be said, meaning only propositions arising from natural science were possible.

2. Rationalism 

This is the philosophical position that adds human reason to the mix in that the empirical sciences and philosophy can provide sufficient explanations for all of reality. This is the foundation of the "New Atheists" who deride any attempt to undertake theology as a compelling pursuit of reality. On this basis Stephen Hawking expressed the view that physics would in time deliver a "theory of everything".

Rationalism is interesting in that its adherents are split into two camps. One party holds, as we see above, that reason is all we need to understand reality, though an objection is that it would fail to comprehend God who always remains more unknown to human reason than known. The other party has too little confidence in reason and proposes that even if there are realities above the bounds of reason we do not need a doctrine or science about such things because the natural order should be sufficient for human aspirations - we should not aim too high!

3. Materialism  

Keeping it simple, "materialism is a form of philosophical monism [denying the existence of a distinction or duality in some sphere, such as that between matter and mind, or God and the world] that holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. ... Materialism is closely related to physicalism [naturalism]—the view that all that exists is ultimately physical." (Wikipedia)

4. Scientism

This belief system runs from the weak version: “Of all the knowledge we have, scientific knowledge is the best knowledge”, to the "arrogant, dogmatic, or otherwise epistemically vicious" intrusion of science into other fields of study. In response, there is the pushback in academic circles like this: "Philosophy and Scientism: What Cognitive Neuroscience Can, and What It Cannot, Explain".

Another case of dogmatic scientism comes through the writing of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett who declare that a believer in God cannot accept both evolution and that God has been guiding human development.  But a mainstream Christian is freer in this matter and can accept both, though pointing out how the accepted theory is flawed in part.

In conclusion, scientists have achieved much that they can be proud of, but the history of the intellectual domain points to a close-minded materialism today that would have dismayed Galileo, Newton, Descartes and Pascal, as well as the "father of genetics", the developer of the Big Bang theory, and the head of the Human Genome Project—all of whom had a deep religious faith.  For the scientist and for all of us, the challenge remains: How to account for the spiritual nature of the experiences Pablo had as a child and the encounter with the stranger as an adult?

Ω Here is a list of eminent scientists, many of them Nobel Prize winners, who have shown that their life's work incorporates having a firm relationship with God.

Ω Go to my blog here to tap into my archive of posts.