Freedom of Choice Incurs Responsibility

The State must construe according to the laws of Man, to its convenience and to public opinion, the Church must construe according to the Truth of Devine Revelation, and the individual – that is you and me – may construe according to his or her conscience.

This is not a very difficult concept to understand, but people’s vanity makes it so. We – that is you and me – tend to take credit for all the things that go right in our lives and, by the same token, we tend to shun responsibility for what goes ill. When things go wrong, we want someone else to blame and we forget that the choice that originated the misfortune is our very own; even if we delegate that choice to a third party. By extension, the State does the same. Each administration will take credit for whatever goes well, and then they'll blame the previous administration - or some global/social/economics phenomenon - for what went wrong. Natural as it may be, this attitude is entirely unfair and incorrect.

Whether our conscience is ruled by conviction or by convenience it’s our very own God-given right to free will that shall decide. Yet this necessarily implies that, when things go sour, we must take responsibility for our conduct. It is funny to me that most people in our society won’t do that. They will ardently pursue their own doom by behaving in certain unbecoming and/or irresponsible ways, and then they’ll blame fate - or some other party - for their destiny.

Take for instance the concept of “overpopulation” that is so diffused nowadays, and the proliferation of “Aids”, which are both somewhat connected. A lot of pseudo-thinkers overtly blame the Catholic Church for these social phenomena because we won’t brook our values to be corrupted by an ill guided popular belief that the use of condoms will solve everything. Let’s stop a while and think: Where is the problem originated? Is it originated in the midst of celibate priests who do not even contribute to populational increase and who frown upon the concept of “free sex”? Is it originated in monogamous couples and their families of between one and four children on average? Or is it originated in a population who has bought the idea sold to them by Hollywood and by secular society that the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake is what will make them happy? I don’t know about you, but the latter seems more conducive to irresponsible lasciviousness to me.

The point of the matter is: If you choose hedonism as a way of life, you are already behaving outside the indication of the Catholic Church, and therefore you have taken responsibility for your choice outside the prescription of the Church. Why then do you feel compelled to blame the Church you already disobeyed for not agreeing that you should disobey it again? Why blame the Church that said "don't do it" for any disgrace that befalls you when you do do it? It is not at all coherent. By extension, when society in general decides to behave outside the prescription of the Church, it cannot in fair mind blame the Church for the consequences.

If you are not yet convinced, take a simple fact into consideration: Asia harbours over 60% of the world’s population. It’s a simple fact. Easy to remember, but it is one not often discussed in the media. Now, couple this simple fact with another: Asian countries are not predominantly Roman Catholic. It’s another very obvious and very simple fact, but it is again omitted in the media whenever the subject of “overpopulation” is discussed. Now, with both facts in mind, you will soon arrive at the conclusion that the Catholic Church is not at all responsible for the size of the population of the Earth.

Then, why do we blame the Church for the ills that happen out of “free sex” even if the Church is not a supporter of "free sex"? There’s a good question! To find the answer, it is logical to think on whose best interest is the blaming of the Church. Who benefits from eroding belief in the Church? Funnily enough, it is the same people that sold you the idea that “free sex” is happiness. Coincidence? Again, this isn’t hard to understand: If your profit lies in a behaviour that contradicts the prescriptions of the Church – e.g. Selling condoms, renting motel rooms, selling x-rated movies, birth control pills etc. – wouldn’t it make sense for you to have people distance themselves from the Church? If people buy your idea, they’ll be buying your products as well over and over again. If they buy your products, and you advertise to sell more, then the media stands to gain as well; hence media support for your "theories". Does the Catholic Church advertise on TV? No. They don't make for very good advertising accounts. They don't contribute to the richness of media magnats and money makers, so they don't have a very strong say in the media.

Why do you let yourself be convinced? Simple: Because it is convenient for you to think that what you want – in this example: pleasure and free sex – is what’s good for you. It is convenient because you get what you want, and you feel good about it; at least until the bad of it hits you. Yes. You’ve read right. You’ll feel good until that dire moment when you discover you were lied to, and while someone made loads of money on your “free pleasure” you are left with sadness and defeat. You’ll be in hedonistic bliss until you unravel your destiny with a nasty surprise of some sort that would not have happened if you abided by a wisdom meant to help you live a good and fulfilling life. If you think I'm being dramatic, it's because your choices haven't led you to their ultimate consequence yet, or maybe you just don't care. This leads me to another funny thing:

It strikes me that people say “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” but they conveniently let themselves believe that there is such a thing as “free sex”. Is not sex more valuable on the market than lunch? Well, maybe not to some… Even so, the thing is: There’s no such thing as free sex. Free sex is a myth. Why? Because there are ALWAYS consequences; whether they are good or bad. If you are not acquainted with the principle of Causality, here's a brief explanation based on our example: If you pursue "free sex", then there is always someone getting a lot of pleasure, or someone getting romantically involved, or someone getting pregnant, or someone getting hurt in their feelings, or someone contracting a venereal disease, or a child being corrupted, or a family being destroyed; the list goes on. The point is "something" always happens as a result of "free sex". Nothing is absolutely free and there’s always a price attached. If you pick well, the price may be easy to bear. On the other hand, if you pick ill, that price my be steep.

So, next time you make up your mind about something, consider that you may have to remember that the onus of your decisions is your own. Consider that you will have no one to blame but yourself because ultimately, we each choose our own destiny.

Is the Catholic Church a Force for Good In the World?

I am a religious man, and I believe firmly in my Faith. In our western culture, this is becoming rarer by the year. I was asked today by the producer Krupa Thkrar of the BBC whether I think that the Catholic Church is a good thing for the world we live in. Yes, I think my Church, with all of its very human shortcomings, is a very good influence on our raggedy world of the present.

Arguments against my belief are constantly presented to me by friends who take pity on my “ignorance” and seek to save me from the “dark ages” and from my beliefs. The classical ones seem never to get old in the minds of my interlocutors. The Inquisition, the Church’s irreducible stands on Abortion, pre-marital/free sex and the incidents involving paedophiles are certainly the all time favourites of my agnostic and atheist “rescuers”. I am no cynic nor am I blind to the fact that the Catholic Church, as a secular institution, did have and does have its poor moments throughout History. I’ve even been known to hold an argument with intransigent clergymen or to complain to the local bishop about some priest here or there.

To all of my usual and occasional interlocutors, I have only this to say: The Church, as holy as it truly is in its mission to safeguard, defend and uphold the Repository of Faith in all of its Truth, is also a secular institution composed of fallible men and women. These men and women are as susceptible to the corruptions of our world as any of us, and from time to time they step away from their true mission and allow themselves to be corrupted by the world. However, there are none who can claim that the Church is the exclusive source of the evils it is accused of. More to the point, the Church’s shortcomings cannot possibly be more important to the History of Mankind than the Church’s defence of a Faith that preaches values and love that are as crucial to our Global Human Society of today as they were at the dawn of Classical History.

1. Was the Inquisition a horrible event? Yes. Was it more horrible than contemporary events perpetrated by secular institutions? By no means, and all one needs to do to be reminded of it is to review all the beheadings and rapes and torture perpetrated by heads of state not loyal to the Church (and to my English interlocutors: England too had its good share of royal tyrants).

2. Were a handful of Catholic priests found guilty of child abuse? Yes. Do the majority of paedophiles come from the Church? Not by a vast margin. Neither does the Church build porn websites on the Internet with “lolitas” on them, do they? To correct the problem, we should look first at the parties making money out of this, and the Church is certainly not among them. To our collective shame, there are today more cases of child abuse within the sanctity of home & family than there ever were in the Church. This is a sign of a diseased society, yet we see the Church, not Society in general, in the spotlight. Why?

The complete truth of the matter is that our world is infected by many social diseases like greed, hedonism and a variety of perversions and abominations. What transpires in the Church is but a reflection of a wider problem that infects all levels of society and all of our institutions. Like you and me, the people working for the Church are vulnerable to the temptations of the times. Some give in to temptation and step away from God’s teachings when they do. Does that mean that the Church, and all the good that comes from it in charity, ethics and Transcendental Devine Truth is nullified? Of course not!

The good that is done by the Catholic Church is multileveled and multifaceted. There is practical good done in CHARITABLE PROGRAMMES, in EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMES, and in the PROMOTION OF PEACE. There is social good obtained from the Church’s stands on the ETHICS in human relations and on painfully controversial but very necessary DEFENCE OF HUMAN RIGHTS and the DEFENCE OF ALL LIFE. There is a wealth of spiritual good obtained from the Catholic Church’s KEEPING OF GOD’S TRUTH and the Church’s availability to provide the peoples of the world with access to SPIRITUAL FULFILMENT.

Some of my interlocutors don’t realise that most of us, poor ignorant folk of the world, thirst and hunger for more than what the world can offer. We want JUSTICE and we want CONSOLATION and UNCONDITIONAL LOVE and UNDERSTANDING and so many other things that the world and all of its governments, its trinkets and its pleasures cannot provide. This is, in my humblest and most ignorant of opinions, the single-most and greatest benefit that the Catholic Church endeavours to deliver to the world. The Church is first and foremost the keeper of the Good News, and it is the Church’s holy mission to announce It and be available to those who seek It.

To those among you who say the Church needs to be modernised to serve the whims of the people and the interests of the wealthy, I have this to say: The above is EXACTLY why the Church cannot be a democratic institution malleable to the urges of societies around the globe. This is EXACTLY why the Church cannot be “modernised” to answer to the voracity of appetite of a consumer society that wishes to replace time-honoured moral values that exist to help us live well with one another with the egotistic ephemeral fix of “the next sexual partner” or “the next off-the-shelf pleasure”. Mind you, people still do it anyway, but let them do it outside the bosom of the Church and without consent from it.

Every time the Church has consented to the “urge for modernisation” and to the “sanction to adaptation” it became vulnerable to the very accusations that are still made against it to this very day. The Church’s calling is NOT the pleasing of personal interests and political agendas. What was the Inquisition if not a consequence of the Church’s involvement with the politics & economics of temporal power? NO! The Church is first and foremost the keeper of the Catholic Faith in God and in Jesus Christ, and the Church cannot budge from its obligation to the Truth of this Faith. The Catholic Faith is not the Church’s or the Pope’s Object to be changed by either of them. It is God’s alone and only He may change it. To the Church lies only the solemn duty of preserving and offering the Truth it safeguards to those who would willingly seek It.

To me, this makes the Catholic Church A VERY GOOD THING in our world of today.

Defender of the Faith?

I was once again dragged into a debate about the modernisation of the Catholic Church. There is a very simple concept that a lot of people do not grasp, which is the fact that the Church is not allowed to change the Faith it defends and upholds.

The Church’s holy mission is to announce, safeguard and keep Divine Truth as it was delivered, in trust, by God and by His Son Jesus Christ, whilst He walked amongst us here on Earth. It is not within the competence of the Pope and of the Church to modify this Faith in any way. It is God’s alone to do with as He pleases. To the Church falls only the duty of defending It and making It available to all who would willingly partake in God’s blessing.

Every time the Church has allowed itself to be either seduced or bullied into conceding to changes to the precepts of Faith; it fell in contradiction and disgrace. Presently, our Pope is accused of being a reactionary on account of performing his most solemn duty of returning to the True Path that is preserving our Faith from corruption into something else. For this very reason, the Church is not a democratic institution. It cannot be!

Nowadays, no one is obliged to pursue Catholicism, but to those of us who chose it as their path to God and to a happier life, the precepts defended by the Church are absolute.

Living on Borrowed Time

Did you ever realise that we live in a Borrowed Earth? Did you ever realise that when you function with an energy matrix based on dead things thousands of years old, you are borrowing energy from an ecosystem long dead? It's like using an inheritance to sustain a lifestyle that you cannot keep up with your own job's sallary. Eventually, your borrowed money runs out and you have to return to the austere ways you should always have kept. It isn't easy, but it is necessessary.

It much amazes me to think that there are people still resilient to the concept of Global Warming. Even in this day in age, when credible scientists both public and private have endorsed the occurrence of the phenomenon, there are those amongst us who choose to label the fact a fraud.

These same scientists and several world governments acknowledge the fact that Global Warming, though a cyclic natural event, is happening with an intensity never before witnessed by the Earth on account of OUR influence. That there are people who prefer to think that there is a nefarious economic plot behind this affirmation is cause for concern; to say the least. I have personally heard all sorts of conspiracy theories surrounding the fact that characterises the Global Warming Crisis. They are often complex and they normally revolve around the instinctive desire to maintain the comforts of excess. I acknowledge that it isn't easy to give up certain comforts, but we must each and every one of us take responsibility for all our deeds. What is the cost of your little selfish comforts? Who are you killing? Who are you condemning to want and hunger?

The people I speak of are not at all very distant from each of us. In most cases, they ARE us. These are people who prefer the maintenance of our present way of life where consumerism and the current power matrix of fossil fuels are concerned. These are people who are unwilling to give up their personal cars and their absurd generation of rubbish and pollution, just so that they may continue to surround themselves with trinkets that they soon tire of and throw away.

My appeal to you, the reader, is that you open your eyes to the fact that we are victims of our own surrender to those things that will never satisfy us; for there is no fulfilment in HAVING a thing. We must remind ourselves that we simply borrow this Earth from all generations of our species – past and present – and that those things we do come to own are as ephemeral as ourselves and not always worth having.
True fulfilment is found in BEING someone to someone else. True fulfilment is in friendship and in honour and in a clear conscience. True fulfilment is in all that, which the ethics of consumerism have been so viciously attacking over the decades to supplant and replace with the inequitable and ever insatiable values of ownership. Open your eyes and look about you and, when you search your own feelings, try to remember what it was that ever made you happy. Was it ever the THING that you owned, or was it in the PERSONS you’ve shared them with? Did they like you for who you were, or for the things you displayed? When you answer THAT question, you will certainly realise that you have been investing in the THING, when you should have very simply have been inventing in the PERSON.