But humans do transcend nature

The claims of the soul...often a function of pain. Photo: Zach Dischner

The tendency of our time is to idealize nature, with its impulses and appetites, not to transcend it. While anthropological discourse since antiquity has dwelt on what sets man apart from other species, there is a strange determination abroad, these days, to evidence that we are no more than animals.

This does not mean, though, that our age is impervious to the Spirit. The claims of the soul are evident for being often expressed negatively, a function of pain. 

While moderns are loath to speak of God, they readily admit to feeling trapped in creaturely limitation. 

While giving no explicit credence to doctrines of the afterlife, they are consumed with a yearning for more. 

While determined to assume their incarnate humanity, they vaguely know that our body points beyond itself, since every apparent satisfaction is but achingly provisional.

From the forthcoming book Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses by Erik Varden, a Trappist monk, and Bishop of Trondheim, Norway.

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Motherhood: the fear, the awe, the joy

Dorothy Day and her daughter (Tamar) Teresa.

My child was born in March at the end of a harsh winter. In December I had to come in from the country and take a little apartment in town. It was good to be there, close to friends, close to a church where I could stop and pray.

A woman does not want to be alone at such a time. Even the most hardened, the most irreverent, is awed by the stupendous fact of creation. No matter how cynically or casually the worldly may treat the birth of a child, it remains spiritually and physically a tremendous event. God pity the woman who does not feel the fear, the awe, and the joy of bringing a child into the world.

And then the little one was born, and with her birth the spring was upon us. My joy was so great that I sat up in bed in the hospital and wrote an article for the New Masses about my child, wanting to share my joy with the world. I was glad to write it for a workers’ magazine because it was a joy all women know no matter what their grief at poverty, unemployment, and class war. [Source]

Words of Dorothy Day, an American activist. She died in 1980 aged 83. Her daughter, her one and only child, was born in 1926. Day had had an abortion - "the greatest tragedy of my life" - and subsequently had thought she was unable to have any more children. The outcome, however, was a legacy of nine grandchildren and her example of social activism on behalf of the poor and world peace.

Ω See also: 

Doctors appeal to reason over abortion push

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Moral measure of the economy

                                                                                                                       (Source)

Picking up from my previous post, on the dignity of working people and the context for most being the family situation, more needs to be said about the principles each nation should use to judge its degree of success in fulfilling its obligations to all its citizens, and to the international community.

Here is a set of principles that lays a solid basis for making such a judgment:

 

1. The economy exists for the person, not the person for the economy.
2. All economic life should be shaped by moral principles. Economic choices and institutions must be judged by how they protect or undermine the life and dignity of the human person, support the family and serve the common good (see below).
3. A fundamental moral measure of any economy is how the poor and vulnerable are faring. 

4. All people have a right to life and to secure the basic necessities of life, such as food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, safe environment, and economic security.

5. All people have the right to economic initiative, to productive work, to just wages and benefits, to decent working conditions as well as to organize and join unions or other associations.
6. All people, to the extent they are able, have a corresponding duty to work, a responsibility to provide for the needs of their families and an obligation to contribute to the broader society. 

7. In economic life, free markets have both clear advantages and limits; government has essential responsibilities and limitations; voluntary groups have irreplaceable roles, but cannot substitute for the proper working of the market and the just policies of the state.
8. Society has a moral obligation, including governmental action where necessary, to assure opportunity, meet basic human needs, and pursue justice in economic life.
9. Workers, owners, managers, stockholders and consumers are moral agents in economic life. By our choices, initiative, creativity and investment, we enhance or diminish economic opportunity, community life and social justice.
10. The global economy has moral dimensions and human consequences. Decisions on investment, trade, aid and development should protect human life and promote human rights, especially for those most in need wherever they might live on this globe.

This is from “A Catholic Framework for Economic Life,” by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. For the document, see here. The document concludes:

According to Pope John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, the Catholic tradition [Catholic social teaching] calls for a “society of work, enterprise and participation” which “is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state to assure that the basic needs of the whole society are satisfied.”  All of economic life should recognize the fact that we all are God’s children and members of one human family, called to exercise a clear priority for “the least among us.”

What does the Church teach about the common good?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (nos. 1906-1909) explains: “By common good is to be understood the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily" (Gaudium et Spes 26 § 1; cf. GS 74 § 1).

The common good concerns the life of all. It calls for prudence from each, and even more from those who exercise the office of authority. It consists of three essential elements:

“First, the common good presupposes respect for the person as such. In the name of the common good, public authorities are bound to respect the fundamental and inalienable rights of the human person. Society should permit each of its members to fulfill his vocation. In particular, the common good resides in the conditions for the exercise of the natural freedoms indispensable for the development of the human vocation, such as the right to act according to a sound norm of conscience and to safeguard . . . privacy, and rightful freedom also in matters of religion (GS 26 § 2).

“Second, the common good requires the social well-being and development of the group itself. Development is the epitome of all social duties. Certainly, it is the proper function of authority to arbitrate, in the name of the common good, between various particular interests; but it should make accessible to each what is needed to lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work, education and culture, suitable information, the right to establish a family, and so on (cf. GS 26 § 2).

“Finally, the common good requires peace, that is, the stability and security of a just order. It presupposes that authority should ensure by morally acceptable means the security of society and its members. It is the basis of the right to legitimate personal and collective defense.” (Source)

💢 For a splendid examination of the intellectual history underpinning the ideologies that present themselves as liberal and progressive but are, as a consequence of their principles, truly limiting and oppressive, go to:

Evangelization and Ideology: How to Understand and Respond to the Political Culture by Matthew R. Petrusek, 2023,Word on Fire, Park Ridge, IL. 

💢 See also:     

Economy of Communion - people before riches,

Pay inequality highlights broken world of work

CRT: The Church's teaching on how to reform society 

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Dignity of work: The worker - and family

Work must be adapted to the needs of the person. Photo Source

First, work. Then we will examine wider issues relating to the creation of a society where the well-being of the least of its members is the measure of its success.

Most of the world devotes one day each year to honour the struggle of working people to gain conditions of work that reflected respect for them as human beings. May 1 is often the day selected to pay tribute to these ordinary people who united their concern for each other and became heroes. And are forced to continue to do so.. However, the U.S. is one of those countries choosing another date, and this year it's today, Monday September 4.

The importance of work for each individual's exercise of their God-given capabilities on the one hand, and the danger on the other hand that managers of capital, and investors themselves, submit to greed and abandon a good faith relationship of fairness in the employment relationship, makes it imperative there is constant review of business practices and outr attitudes to work.

There was a story in the news about 5 years ago that can teach us a little about the Catholic view on work. A Catholic website gives us this account:

A shopper named Karma Lawrence spied former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens working scanning groceries at a Trader Joe’s in New Jersey and took a picture of him. On social media, Lawrence lamented what she thought was the bad, uh, karma life had doled out to Owens.

Owens, a Yale graduate, explained that decreasing royalties from Cosby reruns had put pressure on him to earn a regular living to support his family. Many of the tweets in support of Owens asked the question, “What’s wrong with someone doing an honest job?” At least, they wrote, he was working to support his family—no shame in that. In fact, it’s quite honorable.

When interviewed, Owens said to Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, “There is no job that’s better than another job. It might pay better, it might have better benefits, it might look better on a resume and on paper. But actually, it’s not better. Every job is worthwhile and valuable.”

This is straight out of the Catholic playbook on its social teaching with regard the dignity of work and worker. The website adds:

Any honest job can be a means of worship and a means of personal holiness for the worker. The micro-marvel of tiny ants, dutifully working, carrying many times their body weight, gives God just as much glory as do the macro-marvels, like majestic mountain peaks piercing the clouds.

It’s like that with our work, too. As St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, wrote: “Before God, no occupation is in itself great or small. Everything acquires the value of the love with which it is done.” 

One might say that the greatest job, then, is the one that is done with the most love, for the glory of God.

Workers and the wider society

Catholic social teaching on how to support those who encounter the systemic obstacles to a full life, those obstacles that are the legacy of American history, is the subject of a statement just issued by the American bishops' conference to mark Labor Day. Its title is: Radical Solidarity with Working Families.

The statement points out that while there are positives in the US economy, there are elements of a structural nature that restrict and distort the lives of large numbers of families:

Three out of ten mothers report that there have been times in the past year when they could not buy food. Millions have been priced out of homeownership while rental housing becomes even less affordable. Healthcare is yet another expense that is becoming out of reach for too many. Roughly one out of two adults have difficulty affording medical care, causing many to delay or forgo care.

The previous statement had focused on "mothers, children, and families, sharing the bishops’ vision for an authentically life-affirming society that truly prioritizes the well-being of families and generously welcomes new life".

The Church had joined in offering nutrition programs, affordable housing, access to healthcare, and safety net programs. Now it saw the need to call for sustained attention to:

[...] justice for workers – including things like just wages, support for organized labor, and safe working conditions regardless of immigration status – and policy solutions to support all children and families.

Fundamental to this kind of discussion is our understanding of the priorities involved: "Economic activity and material progress must be placed at the service of the person and society" (Source #326). The economy and business activity are for the person and the basic cell of society, the family. The bishops' statement puts it this way:

The purpose of the economy is to enable families to thrive. This notion is deeply rooted in Catholic social teaching. The Church teaches that “it is necessary that businesses, professional organizations, labor unions and the State promote policies that, from an employment point of view, do not penalize but rather support the family nucleus” [See * below]. Similarly, the Second Vatican Council concluded that “[t]he entire process of productive work... must be adapted to the needs of the person and to his way of life, above all to his domestic life, especially in respect to mothers of families....”[See ** below] Are we meeting these standards?  There is much more we can do.

Gaps in American society's care for working families

Congress enacted important laws at the end of last year that the U.S. bishops had supported including the PUMP Act and a permanent option for states to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage for one year after birth. While these are promising steps, there remains much to be done to advance policies that help women, families, and children.    

The bishops urge bipartisan solutions on these issues among others:

💢 Congress should strengthen the Child Tax Credit. The credit is a powerful pro-family and anti-poverty program, yet it currently excludes too many children in need. Congress can better support families by structuring the credit so that it is fully refundable in order to have the biggest impact on the lowest-income families. It is also vital that the credit continue to serve all families with U.S. citizen children regardless of their parents' immigration status, be made available for the year before birth, not undermine the building of families, and not be paid for by cutting programs that serve those most in need.

 

💢There should be national support for paid family leave. The policy should be crafted in a way that does not unduly burden lower-income organizations or individuals, does not penalize larger families, and will not destabilize existing social service programs. The United States is one of only a handful of countries that does not guarantee paid family leave. It is pro-life to support families as they welcome new life and care for loved ones.

Workers as victims of suppression of unions 

💢There needs to be better access to affordable, quality child care and pre-kindergarten, which also ensures just wages for child care workers and teachers. In addition, families that choose to care for children at home should be supported. Faith-based child care and early education programs have served families for decades and should be included as part of the solution, in a manner consistent with their freedom to retain their religious character. Child care is one of the biggest expenses in many families’ budgets, and it is causing many families to have fewer children than they would like. At the same time, the child care sector itself is plagued with low wages for workers, making it difficult for them to meet the needs of their own families. Working families need a solution to this child care crisis.

Finally, the essential role labor unions can and often do play in society must be acknowledged and affirmed. As Pope Francis stated when meeting delegates from Italian trade unions,  “… one of the tasks of the trade union is to educate in the meaning of labor, promoting fraternity between workers… Trade unions… are required to be a voice for the voiceless. You must make a noise to give voice to the voiceless.” Unions should continue to be supported in their work that supports healthy, thriving families, especially those who are most in need, and encouraged in maintaining and increasing their focus on performing that critical role. Indeed, as Pope Francis has suggested, “there are no free workers without trade unions.”

As an outsider, I suggest that as such a wealthy country the U.S. should be ashamed of itself that it promotes economic and social inequality by withholding statutory paid leave of the type most advanced countries have had for many years. The threat of a rail strike in the U.S. last year on issues such as this highlighted the low regard given to working people in much of the American economy. By way of comparison, "The European Union Member States adopted four weeks of paid leave per year as a minimum European-wide standard in 1993". Four weeks of paid leave. In 1993! That ILO source also provides a chart showing how emerging nations such as Algeria and Brazil reveal the fact that American workers often remain victims of employer theft of family time.

Privatised profits versus socialised costs

One can justifiably extend that to wage theft as well. From the Economist magazine in 2019:

The OECD, a club mainly of rich countries, compares minimum wages around the world by adjusting for inflation and the cost of living, and converting them into American dollars. On that basis Australian workers pulled in at least US$12.14 an hour last year, up by nearly 4% from 2017. That puts them narrowly ahead of their peers in Luxembourg, ranked second, and a whopping two-thirds better off than federal minimum-wage earners in America (my emphasis). 

Many business leaders take an amoral perspective of their role. They are among those still bound to Milton Friedman's principles of economic freedom for investors and managers (privatised profits) within a low-tax environment, of a sentence of submission for workers, with the government (or philanthropists) picking up the social cost of business activity. Therefore, as a final dip into the rich source of understanding of our human predicament that is the Church's social teaching, here is a statement from the Compendium of Social Doctrine (see below no. 332): 

The moral dimension of the economy shows that economic efficiency and the promotion of human development in solidarity are not two separate or alternative aims but one indivisible goal. Morality, which is a necessary part of economic life, is neither opposed to it nor neutral: if it is inspired by justice and solidarity, it represents a factor of social efficiency within the economy itself. The production of goods is a duty to be undertaken in an efficient manner, otherwise resources are wasted.

On the other hand, it would not be acceptable to achieve economic growth at the expense of human beings, entire populations or social groups, condemning them to extreme poverty. The growth of wealth, seen in the availability of goods and services, and the moral demands of an equitable distribution of these must inspire man and society as a whole to practise the essential virtue of solidarity,[***] in order to combat, in a spirit of justice and charity, those “structures of sin” [****] where ever they may be found and which generate and perpetuate poverty, underdevelopment and degradation. These structures are built and strengthened by numerous concrete acts of human selfishness.

The care for working families is the responsibility of society as a whole, but directly, each business corporately and each leader within the enterprise. For society to take such a stance, the political system must be oriented to social support, which, in turn, involves on the resources and good will of those with the means to help those in need of support, from life at its beginning to the point of a natural death.   

* Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 2004, no. 294 (Quoting Laborem Exercens, no. 10; Familiaris Consortio, no. 23).

** Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), 1965, no. 67.

*** Pope Pius XI, Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, on the ethical implications of the social and economic order, 1931, no. 694.

**** Ibid., no. 695.

Society needs to espouse the essential virtue of solidarity. Photo Source

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Ideology is transforming medical mindset

Kathrin Mentler sought help. Next came a distressing conversation. Photo: Source

Canadians have been embroiled in debate over another shaming case of people being offered doctor-assisted suicide rather than treatment and care expressing patient dignity. As in the "official' line in North America in the treatment of young people suffering gender confusion,  a self-interested clique can be identified as promoting a convenient and fashionable ideology of non-care.   

The Globe and Mail reports on an interview with a suicidal patient whose struggle seems to epitomises the abandonment under ideological pressure of health workers' most basic goal: do no harm. The Canadian health service's Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) programme has given rise to a national outcry. The report states:

Kathrin Mentler, 37, lives with chronic depression and suicidality, both of which she says were exacerbated by a traumatic event early this year. Feeling particularly vulnerable in June, she went to Vancouver General Hospital looking for psychiatric help in dealing with feelings of hopelessness she feared she couldn’t shake. 

Instead, Ms. Mentler says a clinician told her there would be long waits to see a psychiatrist and that the health care system is “broken.” That was followed by a jarring question: “Have you considered MAID?”

“I very specifically went there that day because I didn’t want to get into a situation where I would think about taking an overdose of medication,” Ms. Mentler, a first-year counselling student, told The Globe and Mail in an interview.

“The more I think about it, I think it brings up more and more ethical and moral questions around it.”

Vancouver Coastal Health, which operates the hospital, confirmed that the discussion took place but said the topic of MAID was brought up to gauge Ms. Mentler’s risk of suicidality.

Criticism arises over growing list of neglect

MAID is not currently legal for mental illness alone. Canada legalized assisted dying in 2016 for patients with “reasonably forseeable” deaths and expanded eligibility in 2021 to those with incurable conditions who were suffering intolerably. The legislation was set to expand again in March to allow MAID for those with mental illness as a sole condition, but the federal government sought a one-year pause to allow for further study.

The issue has divided doctors, researchers and mental health advocates who have taken sides in a contentious debate that is ultimately about patient autonomy versus patient protection.

Publicized cases have fuelled criticisms that the life-ending procedure is being offered in lieu of sufficient mental health and social supports. In April, 2022, CTV News reported that a 51-year-old Ontario woman with severe sensitivities to chemicals chose MAID after failing to find affordable housing free of cigarette smoke and chemical cleaners. And last August, Global News reported that a Canadian Forces veteran seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and a traumatic brain injury was unexpectedly offered MAID by a Veterans Affairs Canada employee. 

Clinician's comment added to the distress

When Ms. Mentler presented to Vancouver General Hospital’s Access and Assessment Centre in June, she wanted psychiatric help and was prepared to stay overnight if needed. The centre offers mental health and substance use services, including crisis intervention, according to a web page about its services.

After filling out an intake form, she was taken to a smaller room where she shared her feelings and mental health history with a clinician. Day-to-day life was feeling overwhelming and she worried about her persistent feelings of depression, she recalled telling the clinician.

“She was like, ‘I can call the on-call psychiatrist, but there are no beds; there’s no availability,’ ” Ms. Mentler said. “She said to me: ‘The system is broken.’ ”

But it was the clinician’s next comments Ms. Mentler found particularly distressing.

“She said, ‘Have you ever considered MAID?’ ” Ms. Mentler said, adding that she was so bewildered by the question that she didn’t initially understand what the clinician meant. “I thought, like a maid that cleans a room?”

Ms. Mentler had not considered MAID before, but told the clinician of her past attempts to end her life by overdosing on medication. She said the clinician replied that such a method could result in brain damage and other harms, and that MAID would be a more “comfortable” process during which she would be given sedating benzodiazepines among other drugs. 

The counselling student says she left the centre soon after, not wanting to think about the encounter. The next day, she says she awoke wanting to scream and cry, and posted about the exchange on a private social media account to a group of friends who echoed how troubling they found it to be.

How can this be standard procedure?

As to the hospital service's reason given for the conversation about suicide:

Ms. Mentler is unconvinced.

“Gauging suicide [risk] should not include offering options to die, which is what it felt like,” she said. “I also think it’s worth considering that, as of right now, MAID for mental health is not legal yet, so giving someone the specifics of the process seems wrong. How can this be standard procedure for suicide crisis intervention?”

Jonny Morris, chief executive of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s B.C. division, said the province, like many other jurisdictions, lacks a “systematic, accepted response” for how people should approach those in suicidal crisis. 

 As in most countries where traditional social norms and ways of life have been disrrupted by an individualistic and nihilistic mindset, Canadians suffer from mental illness in increasing numbers. Some statistics: 

💢More than 6.7 million Canadians, that is, one in two Canadians have—or have had—a mental illness by the time they reach 40 years of age. 

💢Opioid overdoses now account for more deaths in Canada than automobile accidents.

💢Over 4,000 Canadians die by suicide every year—an average of 11 per day.

The increasing health expenditure as Canadians' lifestyles are degraded by the typical Western lifestyle is often cited as a reason why the Canadian Government supports the MAID programme.

The online news outlet The Tyee reports:

These expansions [to MAID] have been met with heavy criticism from disability and mental health advocates, social workers and experts on mental illness. In 2019 then UN Special Rapporteur for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Catalina Devandas-Aguilar, said she was “extremely concerned” people with disabilities may request MAID because they couldn’t access adequate care.

Since then several people have told The Tyee and other media that they’re accessing or considering accessing MAID not because of their disability but because they’re unable to access supports to live a good life.

What is happening to Canadian medicine?

But ideology is the main reason why MAID has become a central feature of the Canadian health system, according to Scott Kim, a psychiatrist and philosopher who studies medical assistance in dying. He served on the Council of Canadian Academies Expert Panel Working Group on MAID Where a Mental Disorder is the Sole Underlying Medical Condition. Dr Kim writes:

The debate in Canada has not focused enough on why well-meaning doctors are continuing to approve and perform such outrageous cases of MAID. Aren’t doctors supposed to protect the vulnerable? Are they not guided by an ethic, a professional identity, that goes beyond the floor set by the law? What is happening to Canadian medicine?

The answer is that it has been captured by a uniquely Canadian MAID ideology. The current crisis cannot be averted without addressing this potent driver of Canadian MAID practice.

[I]t is striking that Canada’s main MAID-provider organization, the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers (CAMAP), has been promoting the practice of bringing up the procedure unsolicited. The organization, which received $3.3 million from the government to develop a curriculum for MAID providers, has set this out as not merely something permissible, but as a “professional obligation.”

It is difficult to overemphasize how radical this position is. 

Ideological capture in Canada is not hyperbole

Dr Kim goes deeper into the matter benefiting from his research vantage point: 

Consider the controversy over doctors and staff initiating unprompted conversations with patients about MAID. Such incidents are understandably disturbing because no one should suggest to another person – especially someone living with a disability – that their life is not worth living.  

Such unprompted initiations of MAID conversation are prohibited in the Australian state of Victoria, and in New Zealand (both jurisdictions in which the procedure is legal). One does not have to be a fan of gag rules – and, to be clear, I’m not – to see that such prohibitions are meant to draw attention to a clear boundary: Even when MAID is legal, it should be an exception to the practice of medicine, not something to be taken into its very bosom. There is a reason why all MAID laws regulate how to respond to requests, not how to promote it.

But in Canada, aided by a flawed law, a MAID ideology is transforming the way medicine views itself. To talk of ideological capture in Canada is not hyperbole.

Consider a patient who still has good (even curative) treatment options left, but who refuses them and requests MAID instead. In the Netherlands, a doctor who believes that the patient indeed has genuine options would be violating not only the law but also their professional ethic as a doctor if they sign off on MAID in such a case. Since MAID is a last-resort exception there, a Dutch doctor must exercise their professional medical judgment to determine that no medical intervention will alter the outcome for the patient.

In contrast, a Canadian doctor faced with a MAID request from a patient with a curable disease can put aside such an ethic (or, as one psychiatrist in such a situation put it in an interview with The Globe and Mail, go “against her better judgment”) and terminate the patient’s life. Why would well-meaning Canadian doctors discard their professional ethic? Why do they not feel the force of it to guide their practice?

To see why, we only need to return to the CAMAP document on bringing up MAID with patients. CAMAP repeatedly calls MAID a “treatment option” and a “care option” that is “medically effective.” This kind of Orwellian word game has chilling consequences. MAID is now a treatment option that a doctor may provide instead of even a curative option; after all, both are “medically effective” care options.

Through this ideological lens, it is easy to see why a doctor might approve MAID for even those who desperately want to live but cannot afford to. 

 Dr Kim's conclusion is this:

As we have seen, this MAID ideology – one shared by no other jurisdiction in the world – has made fact-based policy making nearly impossible in Canada. Unless its spell is broken, it is difficult to see how a further deepening of the crisis can be avoided, for no set of “safeguards” born from the ideology will be able to protect the society’s most vulnerable from the “helping hand” of medicine.

As with gender ideology's approach to distressed young people—cash flow first, patient second—so too with the unprincipled, and basically uncaring, response to the needs of sick, disabled and depressed seen in the Canadian practice of euthanasia. The official Canadian submission to an ideology that promotes low-cost solutions to an individual's life difficulties speaks volumes about the nature of that society now, and its direction for the future.

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Suffering fails as an objection to God

Boat people in 1982 after eight days at sea.

The Sky Woman of the Iroquois creation myth bore twin boys, Sapling and Flint. The first was kind and the other cruel. The hard-hearted god spent his time creating the hardships that stand in the way of humans and devising problems his twin was forced to fix. 

The Asian perspective on the universal puzzle of life's struggle might be provided by the story of the farmer who responds to the pain and distress with the query "Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?"

In a YouTube examination of human suffering, Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota taps into Catholic tradition to challenge us all to acknowledge that God's actions or permissions are beyond our capacity to understand because God is of an order than humans just cannot grasp.

Bishop Barron says:

I do a lot of debate and dialogue with non-believers. Very often when agnostics and atheists attack the faith, it’s along the lines of, “How could an all-knowing and all-good God allow"—now fill in the blank; maybe the suffering of children, or natural catastrophes, for animals to suffer the way they do, or leukemia in a five-year-old.

These are just so anomalous. “How could you possibly believe that an all-knowing, all-good God could allow these things?” Much of the objection hinges upon the puzzle that is proposed by the existence of God.

Here’s a classic answer from within the heart of our tradition. “I admit it,” Paul says, “I admit it. God’s ways are confounding to us.”

He says in Romans 11:33:

Oh, the depth of the riches

and the wisdom and the knowledge of God!

How inscrutable are his judgments

and how unsearchable his ways!

Barron continues:

So the atheist or the agnostic might say, “Well, isn’t that neat? Isn’t that an easy way out of the problem? To just say, ‘Oh, it’s a great mystery.’”

Well, not really. We have to realize whom we’re dealing with and whom we’re talking about when we deal with and talk about God. God is not something in the world.

[O]bjects and events and experiences within the world... If I use philosophical language, those are all categorical things. They can be categorized. I can say, “Oh yeah, that’s this type of thing and that’s something else. Oh yeah, that’s where that thing ends and where that thing begins.”

They are all definable, and limits to each can be identified.

I can say, “Well, yeah, that’s Jupiter, but that’s Saturn over there.” There’s that person, and here’s this person. They’re separate, they’re definable, they’re categorizable.

Then there’s God, the Creator of all things, the reason why there’s something rather than nothing. 

The explanation for the universe itself is not an ingredient in the universe. It’s not a thing among others within the universe.

Very often atheists and agnostics make that fundamental error. They think of God as some big object. “Some say it’s there, some say it’s not. Let’s go find out.” But that’s what God is not.

Therefore, God, in our great tradition, is described as being totaliter aliter. That means not just other, like Jupiter is other than Saturn. God is totaliter aliter. It means he’s “totally other.” God can’t be compared to anything within the world.

It’s not as though, “Well, here’s this thing and then there’s God over there.”  Well, then I could define God. Even that word definition —definire. Finis in Latin means a limit. To define something is to set a limit to it.

God can’t be defined. God can’t be delimited.Therefore, he can’t be contrasted with or compared with anything in the world.

Let's start reading the mystics on this

This means that God can’t be seen. Now, don’t think of that as, “Well, there’s some visible things floating around and there’s some invisible things like atoms and all that.”

No, no, God is in principle invisible. He can never come within the scope of my senses or of my mind. When I move into the reality of God, I’m going to that place—I’ll quote U2 here, but they’re relying on the mystics—where the streets have no names.

If the streets have names, I kind of know where I’m going. [...] But when you’re dealing with God, who’s not a thing in the world, you’re going into a place where the streets have no names.

That’s why there’s that great text in our mystical tradition called The Cloud of Unknowing. Think of the cloud on Mount Sinai, the cloud that signals the presence of God. It’s a cloud of unknowing. "I can’t see. I don’t know where I’m going. I can’t get my bearings.”

Oh, the depth of the riches and

wisdom and knowledge of God!

How inscrutable are his judgments

and how unsearchable his ways!

Why is God doing what God is doing? I don’t know, and that’s not a cop-out answer. You see my point?That’s the only answer I can coherently give, given the nature of God.

Now, let me take it a step further. So that’s the undefinable quality of God, but God is also a person. God’s not some dumb object or force. God is a person.

I don’t know about you, but persons are always mysterious. And I’m talking here about human persons.

[A] person always remains elusive and mysterious,because the person has got a hidden, secret identity that is apparent to you only when the person reveals it.

Isn’t it interesting that married couples—married for forty, fifty years—will say, “My husband or my wife is now more mysterious to me than he or she was before.”

That makes perfect sense to me, perfect sense that the more you delve into a human person, the stranger and more elusive and mysterious that person becomes.

Now, combine these two things. God is an infinite, undefinable person. Therefore, how inscrutable his judgments, how unsearchable his ways.

Something like a child and parents 

Stay with that last phrase for a second. Think of a little child in relation to his parents. A little three- or four-year-old. And the three- or four-year-old understands, “Oh, my parents love me, but man, do they do strange, inscrutable things. Forcing me to go to bed when I don’t want to. Telling me I can’t do this or that, and that’s the very thing I want.

But when I’m hungry for something and they tell me no, I can’t have it. They take me to this guy wearing a white coat and he sticks needles in me. I don’t know what they’re doing.”

If a child could be given the vocabulary of St.Paul, he would say vis-à-vis his parents,

“How inscrutable they are, how unsearchable their judgments. I don’t know what they’re doing. Somehow I know these two people love me, but boy do they do strange things to express it.”

Well, obviously the little kid doesn’t have the capaciousness of mind to take in what his parents understand[...] Parents get it, but the child, in principle, can’t get it.

Now, take that, and lift it to the infinite degree: the difference between our consciousness and God’s consciousness, the difference between us and this infinite, indefinable person who is God.

Is it puzzling that his judgments seem pretty strange and inscrutable to us? Sure. In fact, the more religious you are, the more you’re going to feel this.

The takeaway is this: 

Why do we think for a second that we should be able fully to understand the judgments of God? No, no, “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.”

You say, “Okay, well then where am I left?” Where you’re left, I think where we’re all left, is in the attitude of that child vis-à-vis his or her parents: “I know these people love me. I know that at some deep, instinctual level. I don’t understand why they do everything they do, but yet I will trust. Yet I will trust.”

Now we come to the central teaching of St.Paul, which is what he calls faith. But don’t think of faith propositionally, first of all, as accepting certain propositions.

Think of faith as meaning this existential trust. I’m justified, Paul says, by faith, by this trust in God whose ways and judgments I know remain inscrutable to me.

We are relating to an infinite, indefinable person who loves us. Therefore, in him we place our trust.

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Poetry and our spiritual journey from indifference

Yes, we are the unappreciative possessors of a spiritual capacity to travel into the "invisible and unnameable regions of being" that is much, much more than employing our mental processes alone to build a mere body of cognitive knowledge.

Once again, that "information architect", Maria Popova, by investigating how poets come to understand the human condition, identifies "the truth about us” that is exhilarating. She warns of what can be described as the scab of indifference that covers the eyes and ears of our heart, an indifference engendered by submission to the sensual body, the lustful eye, pride in possessions.

SPELL AGAINST INDIFFERENCE

by Maria Popova

The rain falls and falls

cool, bottomless, and prehistoric

falls like night —

not an ablution

not a baptism

just a small reason

to remember

all we know of Heaven

to remember

we are still here

with our love songs and our wars,

our space telescopes and our table tennis.


Here too

in the wet grass

half a shell

of a robin’s egg

shimmers

blue as a newborn star

fragile as a world.

It's so true that the wonderful world around us has meaning, should we care to pause and consider who we are and the source of the gift put into our hands.

Like poetry, prayer is an instrument for paying attention. As Paul observes in his letter to the Romans:

For what can be know about God is perfectly plain since God himself has made it plain. Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity—however invisible—have been there for the mind to see in the things he has made [...] to see it was rational to acknowledge God.

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