“A good parson once said that where mystery begins, religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least,
of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends?”  – Edmund Burke

I speak as an informed Roman Catholic, and in the tradition of the churches that have a tradition of using philosophy and reason to illuminate theology, man and society, and the natural world. The doctors of the church were both spiritual and practical.  Augustine and Aquinas were both very earthly and heavenly.

Those who hold to the sola scriptura and sola fides vary in how much philosophical ability they bring when resolving the words of scripture.  Some, especially who have learned philosophy believe in natural law much as I described above.  Some are learned but relativist, not holding to any foundational standard of law as derived from reason.  Many if not most do not hold to the concept of the natural law, and of those, many support the mixing of biblical laws falling into the “get into heaven” portion of God’s laws (sacrilege, words like abomination), with those for civil society (words like detestable) and see no distinction or separation as they are both in the Bible.  Not going to church on Sunday may be a sin but they will take every sin and make it a crime.   Note this is something the right and left have in common when they abandon natural law which makes fine distinctions.  Smoking is evil so both move to make it a crime.  Neither accept shame as an appropriate response, either things are required to be both crimes and sins or neither.  Many on the left aren’t otherwise religious but their list of “sins” is often longer and their zeal for punishing greater than any fundamentalist.  Both often make discoveries of new sins and go on crusades.

Aquinas said civil law is to keep the peace – to prevent disturbances. “Peace officers”.  Not inquisitors.  “Justice of the peace”.  The witch craze (burning witches) was quenched in Catholic areas before it started as the hierarchy used due process and rationality to dismiss the bizarre claims immediately – they would not hold up under the slightest due process or rules of evidence.  In protestant areas it ran far too long because they couldn’t separate the various kinds of law, any bad event meant a curse because there was a witch somewhere.  (Catholics had other, far worse problems – for all its light and law the clerical rot precipitated the reformation so I’m not accusing, merely citing history).

The founding fathers, those who signed the Declaration of independence and the constitution were Bible Christians.  Except for a few they were NOT Deists, though the deists often made better philosophers and explained the points better.  The constitution itself  says there will be no religious test for public office.  They understood that once you let theological disputes, and this would include disputes about morality as defined by the church, into the government, that there could be no peace or stability in the law.  If you make baptism a precondition, is it infant or adult baptism?  If you prohibit gambling, do you include risky investments or lending at interest?  If you prohibit “astrology and witchcraft”, do you regulate telescopes, clocks, calendars, and have to run stings to make sure that the Quakers are doing it right?  The government is always overloaded when just trying to prevent violence, theft, and fraud, as well as managing contracts and insuring perjury is punished.  Going beyond is impractical.  That is the line.  Natural Law says what Law ought to be, but also what its limits are.  And we started off properly.  Adding morality – either biblical or secular (political correctness, drug use) makes Government a busybody.  And busybodies are condemned in scripture and the devil’s name of Satan means the accuser.

Someone from the bible belt who says “God’s Law overrides Man’s Law” can thus mean almost the opposite of what a faithful Roman Catholic means when he uses the same words. A fundamentalist will mean that the as-literal-as-possible interpretation of biblical text is always important to make law and overrides everything including the constitution. A Catholic will mean that when Man’s laws themselves disrupt the order, breach the peace, are irrational or unjust – basically what Martin Luther King Jr. said, Natural law – reason, justice, order – must override the erroneous law which might have had the proper formalities of being adopted followed.

Judges see this when someone contests a law. A lower law contradicts a higher one such as a restriction on free speech that violates the first amendment. But the Constitution itself consists of words, so grammar and reason have to be used along with knowing the context to understand what those words mean.  If we abandon reason, then the lower law would be forever valid no matter what it said as only reason can properly identify, isolate, and resolve a contradiction and can only do so with the sharp distinction of clear meaning and context of the words within the texts.  Reason – natural law – was the father of the Constitution and is what resolves disputes.

There is also an end, a teleology, a reason to use reason, to have the Constitution and civil laws.  It is to preserve rights and keep the peace.  Even if you can rationalize some pattern of words into a meaning so it won’t contradict a lower law, if it denies rights to the people, gives government privileges, creates disorder, or otherwise destroys the balance they sought to achieve,  it is more likely sophistry and the lower law is still invalid.  Law is not merely a word game, it is the foundation of civil society.  A “country of laws not men”.  The shortest sophistry is to merge and muddy the two by equating  “laws discovered by men” into “man’s law”.  Only the former is legitimate, using reason as the means.  To do otherwise is to ask the people to respect a monster instead of an elegant artifact.  And respect is not fear.

As Christmas approaches, there will be the stories told of how Jesus Christ was born. Many will be dramatized, but the one thing everyone ought to do is go back to the source. Matthew and Luke report from two different angles.

Even more, everyone should read the Bible on a daily basis, and there are things for a computer or calendars or even radio programs that make it easy. There are audio versions, and they are maybe my favorite as I can play them on my phone or in the car, though I often need the pause button.

There is a purpose to reading the Bible and you should read it with that purpose in mind. It is for the Holy Spirit to continue and complete the work of restoring the image of God that was damaged by the fall, like a museum curator expert in restoration patching a faded and shredded masterpiece. They aren’t just to change your mind though that is a start, they are to change everything.

I think too many Christians are looking for the intellect in Paul’s arguments, the wonder at apocalyptic imagery, or the action-adventure of the wars of ancient Israel. Those are good for balance, but I would suggest concentrating where the most meat is: the Gospels.

It is the word of the word himself, the only one spoken of the Father before all ages. The spoken words are often in red but his deeds often speak more loudly many important messages. Most people can get past the 10 Commandments without finding any major faults. Try reading The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7, Luke’s parallel). Few can get through a few paragraphs. The Gospel of John shows Jesus’ divinity from his closest friend – there are stories there not in the other Gospels. Each has something to say to everyone.

Mark Twain once noted it wasn’t the hard passages of the Bible that gave him the most trouble, it was the verses whose meaning was absolutely plain. So I wouldn’t worry about a translation unless you are trying to go deep into Scripture. The Holy Spirit can speak to you through the text, even though Jesus spoke Aramaic, it was transcribed as ancient Greek, then to English. It is better to find the discount table at a Bible store and have something you can easily read in every room than it is to try to find the best translation or get stacks of commentaries and things like Vine’s expository dictionary, or learn Greek and Hebrew. The Word is alive. Sharper than any two edged sword – even translations by dullards. At least if you want it to transform you instead of debating what it might really mean.

Meditating on Scripture will fill your mind and will with the right things. Jesus answered everyone and everything. Consider when asked what must I do? (I’m paraphrasing here:) “Love God with all your heart, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself”. The man replied “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus could have given a dry, technical explanation. Instead he gives the story of “The Good Samaritan”. Note that Samaritans were something like pagans or heretics to Jews. Jesus then asks “who was his neighbor” to make sure his questioner gets the point. You can think about just this story for days or weeks. But then the hard part comes – what Mark Twain was getting at: “Jesus, you mean they are my neighbor and I’m their neighbor?” Daily you will find something that needs God’s grace – you only need the 1% cooperation.

That is why Scripture is both easy and hard, powerful, yet incapable of overcoming a small obstacle when I’m the one holding it in place. But I feel the pull of the Spirit, the fire in the words. At least when the words are not read to add to the noise and cacophony of daily life but to find that particular echo of the single Eternal Word spoken in the Eternal Silence of the Trinity. Properly read, Scripture begets silence and peace after the words settle in and the echoes fade from where they strike your heart.

As we celebrate the Birth of Christ and the events leading up to it, it is a good time to start anew the study of the Gospels – from their beginnings. And work through toward Good Friday and Easter.

At the root is the problem that the Bishops have conceded their power to the state.

Examples: A priest is not free to conduct a nuptial mass without a license from the state. So who does or does not define marriage? That is not new. The government has taken over charity in the form of welfare. Instead of drawing the line, the Bishops have long ago decided take the money, then when the strings of the web become visible, complain about the control – do their health care facilities have to provide contraceptives or abortion? Do their social work agencies have to allow homosexuals? Courts have said “public schools” are Government schools, so what should be a matter of subsidiarity is defined by Washington DC, not the local school board. They may have hoped “The Great Society” would be moral and more efficient being large and central, but you find none of those duties in traditional texts about the government role such as Aquinas section on law from the Summa. Or Tocqueville pointing out all the volunteer organizations, neither government nor business, taking care of such needs in early America.

The relatively new lack of separation of church and state is that 100 years ago the (Federal) government was a small and remote thing that you could spend your life without interacting with. Now the leviathan has taken over more and more areas of society, culture, and daily life where the Church used to be – and areas where the state has neither the competence nor authority to be. The destruction of subsidiarity was at the hands of the Bishops – either they were deceived or simply didn’t realize the consequences. Solidarity too – the Catholic neighborhood around the Parish and school with the Catholic hospital, and K of C where everyone knew each other is now the charter secular academy, sterile factory like medical center, welfare office, and direct deposit.

Solidarity starts with the community and works through subsidiarity. The “governmentalization” of the corporal and even spiritual works of mercy has had disastrous results, but the one thing the Bishops are not doing is renouncing what is ultimately an experiment is socialism – the same thing in essence which was condemned by Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum which is the foundational document on the church’s social teaching. The error is to try to moderate socialism, try to keep it in a constitutional or democratic structure, to try to engineer it to work better, nor to find smarter, better people to run it. It is and always will be invasive and micromanaging and in every area of society, cradle to grave, waking to sleeping. It cannot be otherwise for that is its nature.

The church is the institution which has the claim to ordering a person’s life, often in deep ways, but through mercy and grace, not indoctrination and coercion. The bishops invited the elephant (and/or donkey) into the living room, they cannot ingenuously complain about its presence or its acting like what it is.

If the Bishops desire to have influence in the average American’s daily life, including and especially Catholic Americans, the first thing they need to do is to reestablish the church by ejecting the government from those many areas it has invaded and captured or rented out to “private” oligarchs. The Bishops will never be those oligarchs without renouncing Christ himself. I am not as pessimistic, only because our government is going bankrupt. It will fail. This is a mathematical certainty given the debt, the economic growth, and the promises made. That will result in a smaller government, but it will either bring another great awakening, revival, and reformation, or anarchy and oppression. But it will be our choice.

After 9/11 the churches were full. When things collapse I think they will be again, but if the church is not prepared to resume its role in the spiritual and corporal works of mercy it will have lost a great opportunity. When the idolatrous god of big government fails, who or what will provide answers? Even now those hurting in the “occupy” movements should be an evangelical opportunity and they have identified at least the injustice. But Catholics tend to be content and condescending, and “too busy” for solidarity. Has the church no opinion? Nothing to say? The Gospel isn’t applicable? The truth has no power? Christ is not the answer to any of their questions? I do not think so.

The church militant should be fighting an offensive war, albeit with spiritual weapons, and the traditional reasoning and moral leadership she has shown through history. If the Bishops would again lead with the Laity from the moral high ground, but out of and away from the big, invasive government which is killing both the church and the common man outside, and ask the people to come together again in solidarity, I sincerely believe most will follow. To the freedom, but the freedom in Christ Jesus. The Decalogue begins not with a commandment, but with a statement: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery”. Pray that our religious leaders will return to vocal militancy to again lead us out of slavery.

Painting:  Render unto Caesar by Peter Paul Rubens, early 1600′s, Flemish.

To be fair to the secular progressives at USA Today, they did try to separate the advent of oral contraceptives from sexual license, but fell short as they described all of the benefits that derived from, in the words of the Magisterium, the separating of the unitive from the procreative.  Here is the link to a prophetic document warning the world of the harms that can arise out of the post-modern lust for sexual license.

Here is the abbreviated take on the USA Today celebration:  Our cultural overlords led us into a Brave New World where Mother’s Day becomes cause to celebrate intentional sterility – what some would dub a very unmotherly status.

Beyond a sociological disconnect is this glaring error:   USA Today’s article failed to mention some of the most seriously disturbing social and environmental affects of the pill.

Last Fall I was invited to speak at Right to Life Kanasas’ state convention, thanks to my old friends Elmer and Audrey Feldkamp.   Elmer has been in pro-life leadership in Kansas since Roe v. Wade came down, plowing on, through thick and thin, victories and losses, ever since.  He and Audrey are good people.

They asked me to address the downside of oral contraceptives.  The result is a powerpoint presentation entitled “The Four Horsemen of a Chemical Apocalypse.”  (Presentation available upon request.)

Note:  Right to Life Kansas is not affiliated with the National Right to Life Committee.  The NRLC has no position on contraception or the pill.

Like USA  Today, I found the advent of the pill quite profound.  Unlike USA Today, I found this advent profoundly disturbing.  Both my research and the USA Today article argree that the introduction of the pill marked the ascendancy of the Culture of Death over Christian history.

Unlike USA Today, I find no cause to celebrate.

This is because the pill has disturbed male-female dynamics.  The pill has disturbed women’s mental health.  The pill has disturbed women’s physical health.  And the pill has disturbed – and this may be the most disturbing of all – the environment.

I am no chicken little — the sky really does appear to be falling.

On this 50^th anniversary I will focus the remainder of my Mother’s Day post on the final of these four — the great “unmothering” of our fresh water supplies.

Consider …

… that the pill is, in reality, an anabolic steriod.  While we decry the use of such substances by body builders, we have had no problem at all with our girlfriends, wives, sisters and mothers ingesting them for fifty years now.  This is because the separation of the unitive f rom the procreative is a first order goal of postmodernity.  This is why Humanae Vitae is the watershed for postmodernity.  If you have not yet read it then you have missed one of the best examples of the prophetic office in our age.  Click here to be enlightened.

Why have you never thought of the pill as a steroid before?  Because it is not that bad, artificial testosterone, oh no, that is the nasty stuff used by bodybuilders, you know, the illegal carcinogen that lodges in their livers and causes cancer.

No, the pill is a “good” anabolic steroid, very legal — even protected — that helped build the playboy culture and merely lodges in breast tissue causing … well we don’t talk about that in polite society.  (See She Raced for the Cure, down the page)

This has widespread implications on women’s health (see She Raced for the Cure), but even more disturbing on a macro level, it has widespread implications on our international ecosystem.

Why?

Because anabolic steroids are not water soluble.  That is huge.   That is not to say that they do not, in the main, escape the female body.  The kidneys and bladder play their roles well.  Most of the tens of thousands of daily doses of the pill taken by millions of modernized women across the northern hemisphere do leave the bodies of the women ingesting them … and end up in the local sewage treatment plants – the ones conveniently located on our rivers and waterways.

Most human waste, including the attending paperwork, is water soluble.   We, like our ancient Roman cousins, have designed waste water treatment facilities based upon the assumption that earth and water can dissolve and filter out anything bad in our effluence.

But then slouches in this rough beast to be born in treatment facilities:  the estrogen pill.  What does 50 years of urine containing intentional sterility do to an ecosystem?

A great question!  Merely google “estrogen, rivers, fish, sex change” to do your own research on this very relevant question.  You will find articles as recent as last month and as ancient as 1994 raising a politically incorrect alarm.  So politically incorrect, in fact, that few are willing to ring it.

But of late this problem is becoming so glaring that persons of good will simply cannot ignore it.  Consider this from an ecology website two years ago:

After an exhaustive seven-year research effort, Canadian biologists found that miniscule amounts of estrogen present in municipal wastewater discharges can decimate wild fish populations living downstream.

The research, led by Dr. Karen Kidd, an NSERC-funded biology professor at the University of New Brunswick (Saint John) and the Canadian Rivers Institute, confirms that synthetic estrogen used in birth control pills can wreak havoc on the sex lives of fish. Small amounts of estrogen are excreted naturally by women whether or not they are taking birth control pills.

Note the above in blue – a politically correct fig leaf.  They do not note that natural estogen is water soluble.  Artificial estrogen is not.  These Canadians continue …

Male fish exposed to estrogen become feminized, producing egg protein normally synthesized by females. In female fish, estrogen often retards normal sexual maturation, including egg production.

“We’ve known for some time that estrogen can adversely affect the reproductive health of fish, but ours was the first study to show the long-term impact on the sustainability of wild fish populations,” explains Kidd. “What we demonstrated is that estrogen can wipe out entire populations of small fish — a key food source for larger fish whose survival could in turn be threatened over the longer term.” Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/fish-sex-change-47021801#ixzz0nRJ3EiED

Now, just in case you have pictured Canadian Mounties eyedropping estrogen onto waterways, think again.  Consider this more recent alarm from a technological website tracking this environmental threat:

Water Treatment Systems Unable to Remove Estrogen from Drinking Water

Estrogen and estrogen-like compounds enter water rivers, steams and reservoirs from many sources and remain there even after passing through water treatment plants. About 80% of 139 U.S. rivers are contaminated with trace [estrogen] compounds.  …  Existing water treatment processes, which often involve naturally occurring bacteria in sewage sludge, can only remove as much as 94% of estrogen from untreated water, but what remains is still potent enough to cause  [harm]. Although harmful estrogens often remain in water after treatment, this performance is not surprising, says Texas A&M Zachery Department of Civil Engineering Assistant Professor Kung-Hui (Bella) Chu, because conventional water treatment processes weren’t designed to deal with estrogens.

So it is a problem.  How big?  Very big.  Here is a recent academic paper on the subject, complete with molecular explanations.  One sentence, following the most recent (and alarming) fish sex studies in Europe, leaps off the page: “In fish, the observed effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals clearly have high ecological relevance as impairment of reproductive system have consequences at all ecological levels.”

This same alarming phenonemon has been documented all over the United States. Catfish, Bass, Trout — all feminized, all filled to the brim with synthetic estrogen.

How alarming is this?  Not very if you merely listen to the mainstream media.  Even most Christian media are ignoring this story.  Powerful social forces demand that it be ignored.  Big pharma, big feminists, big one worlders (Fabian socialists like Planned Parenthood and their useful idiots in elected office and the media).

Thanks  be to God for the Catholic media, for they have at least given it some columns -  although few inches in the past years.

Consider this from Catholic Register a few years back:

Contracepting the Environment: Environmentalists Mum on Poisoned Streams 

 BY WAYNE LAUGESENREGISTER CORRESPONDENT•July 15-21, 2007 Issue | Posted 7/10/07 at 1:25 PM •BOULDER, Colo. — When EPA-funded scientists at the University of Colorado studied fish in a pristine mountain stream known as Boulder Creek two years ago, they were shocked. Randomly netting 123 trout and other fish downstream from the city’s sewer plant, they found that 101 were female, 12 were male, and 10 were strange “intersex” fish with male and female features. •It’s “the first thing that I’ve seen as a scientist that really scared me,” said then 59-year-old University of Colorado biologist John Woodling, speaking to the Denver Post in 2005.

So a biologist was really scared five years ago.  Nothing has been done since then except denial.

Five years ago, when the sex bending was found throughout the United States,  University of Colorado physiology professor David Norris scratched his head and said:    “Nobody is getting passionately concerned about it.   It makes no sense to me at all that people aren’t more concerned.”

Norris has probably since learned that this particular steroid is the Holy Grail of the culture of death.  Contraception and abortion are sacraments in their system.  They played the flute, we danced to their tune.  We then opened Pandora’s Box 50 years ago.   We have now sowed to the wind for half a century.

Will we soon reap the whirlwind?

The scientists say yes.  (But only in hushed tones,  since it is politically incorrect to so speak.)

p.s.  The above is available as a presentation upon request.