(10/15/09 - My Catholic column for Newman University newspaper The Vantage)
On Monday last week I was working the campus phone in the Telecommunications office when right before I had to go to class at 11 a.m. the phone began ringing off the hook by the family members of Sharon Neimann (Program Director of Newman University Nurse Anesthesia Program), whose granddaughter Aubrey was involved in an accident and was in critical condition in Lubbock, Texas. You may have read the Prayer Request e-mail from Ann Edwards later that afternoon.
One of the family members who called in told me that Aubrey “might not make it through the day.” Immediately my heart was pierced with sorrow for not only our faculty member whose family this little girl was, but especially for the parents of the small girl. I became horrified and tears welled up in my eyes by what I was told had happened to her.
As a parent of a 14 month little girl who can now scamper around the house and find potential danger, it frightened me to image that my wife and I could possibly experience such a tragedy. I had to try to get the mental images out of my head for my 11 a.m. bioethics class. Yet, as soon as class had finished at 11:50 I resolved to pray for the child, for the professor (who I don’t even know), and for the family. So I immediately went to the chapel for noon Mass, told Father Tatro to ask the congregation to pray for the people, and personally offered up my Mass and day’s works in honor of the child.
Seemingly providentially, the readings captured my spirit that day in context with what I was experiencing and praying about. The Old Testament reading (Jonah 1:1-2:2, 11) was the story of the prophet Jonah called to preach against the city of Nineveh. The man did not know the people, as they were Gentile “foreigners,” but for that very reason he had no concern for them and thus chose not to follow his calling and was caught aboard a ship “fleeing from the Lord.”
The Gospel reading (Lk 10:25-37) was the story of the scholar of the Mosaic Law who questioned Jesus about gaining eternal life, wherein they both narrow in on the heart of the Law: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” The scholar then poses the question, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus goes on to tell the story of the Good Samaritan, a half-Jew/half-Gentile, those despised by the Jews for their mutt-like religiosity, so to speak. Yet, Jesus makes the Samaritan the good guy, who came upon and cared for a Jew who was beaten by robbers and left for dead. The Samaritan, unlike those Jesus clearly contrasted in the story, was willing to have concern for another, not because of who he was, but merely because he “was moved with compassion.”
The messages of the both stories were clear to me: care enough for others, even those you do not know. Jonah should have cared enough for the Ninevites – to love his neighbors – to desire to preach against their sins with the hope for their conversion and salvation. The Samaritan fulfilled this calling. The point is famous and clear: we are all neighbors. We are to care for one another due to our mutual inherent dignity and value.
Yet, there are various ways we are called to care for one another, both physically and spiritually. Last Monday I felt as though the Gospel spoke to me as I “was moved with compassion” for the family of our faculty member and thought to lift the child and family up in prayer. Yet, there are still moments when I find myself being critical or less than compassionate toward some, even though I may intellectually appreciate the problem and effects of sin in the world. And thus I recognize my continued need to foster concern for all my neighbors and call everyone else to also foster their concern for other.
In the end, if we all fostered such concern in our minds and hearts, even to the point of being able to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44), a HIGH calling, the world would be in a much better state. To love our neighbors fosters healthy communities and on a grand scale healthy nations. To love enemies dissolves war, even if it’s unto martyrdom. Yet, even the early Christian martyrs converted Rome, as Tertullian prophesies, “The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.” Let us care not just for family and friends, but reach out all the more to our neighbors, even those we do not know.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Love Thy Neighbor
To Teach the Christian Faith
(10/8/09 - My Catholic column for Newman University newspaper The Vantage)
As a convert led into the Catholic Church via answered prayers, I love it that I am now blessed to be able to write a faith-based column for the campus newspaper. Yet, there’s been a little controversy among some who read my article “On Martyrdom” a few weeks ago. In one sense, it’s expected when discussing moral issues. We have various appreciations of moral truths and are at different levels of union with God, some deeply, some not yet established.
Personally, I fell in love with Jesus Christ at my initial conversion experience when I came to the personal appreciation that my personal sins were, in part, the reason He offered Himself up as the loving sacrifice for the Father’s just punishment for sin. “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
As my prayer life deepened I had clearly answered prayers that led me directly into the Catholic Church via the RCIA classes. I began going intellectually deeper via the depth of Catholic talk radio (locally 1360AM) which introduced me to apologetics, scholarly accounts of Church history, and the Early Church Fathers. My answered prayers and the intellectual power of Catholic apologetics are the bases for my book coming out in a few weeks, Praying Made Me Catholic: With the Biblical and Historical Reasons I Must Remain Catholic. Having come to an appreciation that the Catholic Church is the original Christian Church founded by Christ, I fell in love with Her also: “the Bride of Christ.” From there I knew I wanted to pursuit a theology degree to teach The Faith.
I started college at the University of Wisconsin, Marshfield. Eventually, I knew I’d transfer to a Catholic university for theology classes. Meanwhile, as a Catholic interested in social justice, the best thing I did was take philosophy and sociology classes (my double minor) and join the campus club Students Opposing Acts of Prejudice (S.O.A.P).
Being a secular university I became friends with a variety of personalities from many backgrounds. I established several good friendships with people from every section of the LGBT community. As my friends, they knew my theological convictions clashed with their lifestyles, yet as we interacted they came to know I still loved them due to their inherent dignity and infinite value as precious souls created by God. My conviction is that I am not to exclude anyone from myself, but love them even in their sins, as out Lord did, but not to love their sin, thereby seeking their good and to be willing to assist them in their freedom if they desire such.
At the UW we had a well known Christian club on campus, but the members came across as condescending, and thus none of my LGBT friends would be members very long. So I took it upon myself to found a Catholic club, the first in over 30 years. Despite the moral calling of Divine Revelation, my LGBT friends felt more welcome as I would express the Church’s teaching that, “They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives…” (CCC 2358).
Eventually I moved my family from Wisconsin here to Newman last fall because the school was initiating the Masters in Theology. At the same time, I had just finished the manuscript of Praying Made Me Catholic.
Clearly, I’ve not stopped writing since, as I am now writing for the Vantage as another outlet to express the ancient Christian faith. Yet, knowing that not everyone at Newman is a Catholic Christian, I tend to use apologetics when discussing matters (e.g., Scripture, Church history), as they are basic and easier to understand. As well, knowing that not everyone is Christian, when discussing moral issues I tend to address them according to the Natural Law. Natural Law is more approachable by basic human reason, as most of us share the same physiology and moral sensitivities.
This brings me back to the matter of controversy about my article a few weeks ago. I’ll admit, when addressing moral issues, I tend to be staunchly dogmatic. I’m sure this has much to do with my conversion experience, when my awareness of personal sin became heightened. When one makes union with the holiness of God one becomes very aware of the problem of sin. Yet, as I said last week, as Christians, when communicating with others, we are called to discuss issues like sin. Yet, we’re to do so in a non-condemnatory and compassionate way, sympathetic by the fact that none of us are perfect and we all have to battle temptations.
What has saddened me now, however, is how in the process of discussing matters of sin, some people have taken it personally and read my piece selectively. Again, when discussing moral issues controversy will be expected. Yet, I intentionally and clearly discouraged hate and discrimination. Of the LGBT community I said, “It is right that they should not be denied employment and housing…” (my anti-discrimination) “…as should be the case of anyone, as everyone needs to support themselves no matter where they are in their spiritual lives” (my rationale).
What’s unfortunate is how some people attempt to undermine the universal moral principles the majority of humans defend, whether Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., by vainly slandering them with inaccurate catchphrases like “judgmental,” “hypocritical” and “hate speech.” Those who slander me specifically do so to their own embarrassment when they discover that I have several close friends in the LGBT community!
In calling attention to “universal moral principles” is to say that they are not solely my morals, as I am not their author. They’re not even the morals solely of the Church, as She is not their author. God is the author of the moral principles of the Natural Law; thus they are easily accepted by most humans. Yet, it is up to the Church (clerics and laypeople) to articulate and uphold these moral principles, promote the holiness of virtue, and expose the destructive nature of sin in people’s spiritual and social lives. To go against the moral principles of Natural Law is to go against God, not me or the Church. Thus I don’t take such slander personally.
In contrast, there are various speculations of such organizations as the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association. Yet, they do not speak for God, and so their findings and theories are analyzed for what they are truly worth, some analytically good, some empty speculation. Yet, some organizations are deceptive when alleging that their findings are more than speculative. They may be compelling, but many compelling speculations over the centuries were dismissed when greater discovery and understanding came.
In the end, there will always be some who never choose God’s holy moral calling. Some even claim to have God in their lives while living contradictory ways. Thus Jesus made the analogy of people to good and bad trees, whereby we “will know them by their fruits” (see Matthew 7:15-23). Still, if Christians are speaking or writing lovingly, yet honestly (like pointing out certain actions as inherently sinful), they cannot be afraid to teach the truths of Natural Law, be intimidated by slander, or worse persecution.
Elementary philosophy tells us authentic truths are not a subjective. If two so-called “truths” contradict one another, either one or both is false. Yet, the moral truths of Natural Law have never been denied by most humans as merely speculative. Only recently does moral relativist philosophy do so. Still, the majority of people see through it, and thus we continue to protect people against such potential chaos with laws against breaking universal moral truths. As Christians we must love everyone enough to tell them the truth.
The Year for Priests
(10/1/09 - My Catholic column for Newman University newspaper The Vantage)
Unless you are familiar with either the ancient Greek of the New Testament you may be unaware that there is a Christian priesthood that offers a new form of sacrifice. And, unless you go to daily Mass here at Newman you may be unaware that the Church has declared this the year for priests, from June 19 to June 11, 2010.
The word “priest” is an English shortening of the Greek New Testament word presbyter, which is literally translated now in most English versions of the Bible as “elder.” In fact, Scripture speaks of two levels of priesthood: the priesthood of all believers and the ministerial priesthood. In our daily lives as Christians we continually offer our goods, our struggles, and our personal gifts up to God as our “spiritual sacrifice,” as Saint Paul called it.
The ministerial priesthood, on the other hand, offers a special sacrifice before God on behalf of the whole community. In the Old Testament the priests offered up various forms of sacrifices, such as “first fruit” offerings, which represented giving one’s best to God, as well as animal sacrifices, which represented detachment from idolatry. For example, the Egyptians worshiped bulls, so the Jews were called to sacrifice bulls, which represented killing false gods. In all this the Jews were trained to keep their focus on God.
In the New Testament Jesus put an end to the old sacrificial system, fulfilling the prophetic role of the sacrificial lamb while giving the Apostles (His new priests) the new sacrifice of the “New Covenant” of His body and blood – what Christians began calling the Holy Eucharist. In the Gospel of John, chapter 6, Jesus gives the preparatory teaching on the Eucharist as His “flesh” and “blood” becoming “true food” and “true drink.” Thus, in the Last Supper stories we have Jesus referring to the bread and wine as His “body” and “blood” of the New Covenant. As well, Saint Paul refers to the Eucharist as a “participation” in the body and blood of the Lord.
There was much controversy over the literal or symbolic nature of the Eucharist during the Protestant Reformation. As a result, one of the typical distinguishing marks between Catholics and Protestants is literal belief in the Eucharist and symbolic belief. However, when biblical scholars also become historians and properly interpret the words of Scripture to the historical record of what the ancient Church believed, we discover that for the first thousand years all Christians held a literal belief in the Eucharist.
Thus, you have men like Saint Ignatius, disciple of the Apostle John and the Bishop of Antioch, telling the Christians, “Take note of those who hold false opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God. ...They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again.”
As a disciple of the Apostles, this is the most ancient of clear statements of the Christian belief in the literal transformation of the bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Jesus, but from there forward this central and core tenant of the New Covenant is consistent.
You may be wondering why, when starting to talk about the Christian priesthood I diverged on a talk about the Eucharist. My point: Christ ordained a special priesthood to preserve and protect the teaching of the New Covenant and to bring the Christian community into communion with God. In other words, we NEED our priests! PRAY for our priests!
After daily Mass here at Newman we pray the following prayer. I encourage everyone to copy this prayer and praying it often.
O compassionate Jesus, I pray for Your priests. They are but weak and frail
human beings so stir up in them the grace of their vocation which was given
through the imposition of the bishop’s hands. Keep them close to You so that the
enemy may never prevail; let them never do anything unworthy of their vocation.O Jesus, I pray for Your faithful and fervent priests, and for Your unfaithful
and lukewarm priests. I pray for Your priests laboring at home and for those
abroad in distant mission fields. I pray for Your lonely and desolate priests,
for Your young priests and for those who have served for many years. I pray for
Your dying priests and for the souls of Your priests in purgatory.Above all, I pray for the priests closest to me, the priest who baptized me, those who
pronounced absolution over me in the sacrament of penance. I pray for the
priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy
Community. I pray for the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way. O
Jesus, keep them close to You and bless them abundantly in time and eternity.
Amen.
On the corner of First and Amistad
If you listen to pop music regularly you’ve likely heard the new song from the band The Fray called You Found Me with the opening lyrics, “I found God on the corner of First and Amistad” with the great chorus, “Lost and insecure, you found me, you found me.” The song then goes on to express the loss of a close loved one, after which, within a period of loss and desperation, God finds him.
We don’t exactly know in what manner God “found” him, but in its simplicity this song reflects the experience of conversion in Christian mysticism. The initial conversion experience can happen in various ways, from the simple reception of a clear articulation of the Gospel message, to the grandiose of what is known as “mystical experience,” such as through visions and symbolic dreams.
Christians are not to judge people; rather, they are to acknowledge the evil of sin. Sin is already condemned by God, as by its very nature it is a distortion of the good, whereas people are inherently good and can repent of sin and turn to God. Some people throw around the phrase “don’t judge me” in attempt to shut people down from calling attention to sin. But they often fail to recognize we are not judging them, but rather the evil nature of sin. Sin has both extreme and subtle expressions.
Another basic level of the mystical life is growing in union with God through “a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him” (Eph 1:17). Christ said, “no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Within this knowledge of Christ is the understanding of the New Covenant, wherein Christ offers up Himself as a sacrifice on our behalf, as only He is able to withstand the judgment of God on sin. Those who cannot recognize their own sins cannot apply Christ’s sacrifice to themselves as they remain unrepentant. However, the sacrifice of Christ for the repentant is applied through repentance in baptism and confession, and through covenant union with Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
Lastly, an essential aspect of the mystical life is growing ever deeper in prayerful union with Christ, as though intimate friends. This is where mystical experiences begin to take place. I encourage everyone to pick up books on the lives of the saints in order to be inspired in one’s own desire for a greater union with God. First, you have to want it!
Young Padre Pio showing the stigmata. Milk Murdered, Not Martyred
(9/17/09 - My Catholic column for Newman University newspaper The Vantage)
Martyrdom, Morality, and Authentic Freedom
As Will Farrell’s character Ron Burgundy had once said, “Milk was a bad choice!”
The other night I decided to rent the latest Sean Penn movie Milk; the cover promoting it as “An American Classic.” I had heard a little about it from the previews: Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to win a public service office in nineteen-seventy eight.
I usually enjoy historical films and I am all for civil rights. For what it was worth as a historical piece the writer and director did a decent job. However, there are certain moral sensitivities in the majority of humans that would rather not see certain actions. You can figure out what I’m talking about. A hand-full of scenes could have been left out.
Sorry for the spoiler if you decide to watch it after my warning, but the movie opens with the announcement by a woman that both mayor Moscone and supervisor Milk were murdered. Throughout the film it then covers the political campaigns and rise of Harvey Milk as known through his tape recorded dictation before his death. The film opens in the beginning of the seventies where he moves to San Francisco, opens a camera store, rallies the gay community to defend themselves and to activism, and by the mid-seventies he begins annual campaigns for his Castro neighborhood as district supervisor. It wasn’t until 1978 that he finally won. Near the end of the same year he was murdered.
Beyond the cultural desensitization and promotion of sin, what really agitated me to preaching (my poor wife!) was how the end of the movie portrayed his death. After a successful year of fighting a proposed law called Proposition 6 seeking to mandate the firing of any gay teachers or even those who supported gay rights Milk was sadly murdered by a fellow city supervisor. Immediately I perceived the film makers attempting to portray Milk as a martyr. Sure enough, after watching the special feature afterward one of his supporters, fellow supervisor Carol Silver referred to him as a “martyr.”
The term “martyr” has become greatly distorted in the minds of many who today misperceive the word to merely mean being killed for what one believes in. In other parts of the world some believe that they can kill themselves for their beliefs if they do so killing “infidels” – what we would classify suicide and manslaughter. The original meaning of martyr, however, meant to be a “witness” and was not intended to lead to death. Yet, in ancient times witnesses, usually of the lower class, were often tortured for the truth and even put to death for it.
This dying for truth became focalized in the person of Jesus Christ, who died for the sake of righteousness. As a Jew and follower of the Mosaic Law, in which were revealed moral laws, Christ lived perfectly and He taught that their essence was the Law of Love. At the same time, as the Redeemer of the human nature, Christ revealed the truth of His divinity so that He could reconcile humanity to God. In other words, being both human and divine, Christ became our link to God. It was primarily His witnessing to this truth that lead to Christ’s pre-ordained death, that He may become the atoning sacrifice for sin while conquering sin’s curse of death by His resurrection.
Christian martyrdom thus became an imitation of Christ for many of those united to Him ever since, dying for truth, especially in the twentieth century around the world. However, there have also arisen many imitators or distortions of martyrdom, like suicide bombers and those murdered for their beliefs and practices. Those murdered for unrighteous beliefs and practices clearly opposed to the Moral Law cannot be called martyrs.
A man like Harvey Milk is an odd case. In one respect he fought for civil rights, against job and housing discrimination against the LGBT community. It is right that they should not be denied employment and housing as long as their private lives do not interfere with their professional lives, as should be the case of anyone, as everyone needs to support themselves no matter where they are in their spiritual lives. In the complexity of the “gay rights” movement we find a mix of a fight for legitimate rights while also a desensitization of the culture to a lifestyle of sin. This movement is not equivalent to the various Women’s Suffrage movements (to vote, against domestic violence, equal pay, etc.) or African American Civil Rights, neither of which typically involve the promotion or desensitization to inherently evil actions.
Many philosophers will point out that the term “freedom” has also become greatly distorted in the minds of many as though meaning the ability to do whatever one pleases, so long as it doesn’t “hurt” someone else. That definition, many will point out, more accurately fits the term “license,” which also implies a lack of personal control in various aspects of one’s life. This confusion in terminology is due, in large part, to the moral decline of society with a modern democratic notion of rights as conflated with licentiousness. Thus many people lack control in their sexual lives, and this is not just concerning those same-sex desires, but also those involved in pornography, fornication, adultery, incest, pedophilia, rape, etc. The greater one loses control and the worse sins become when one allows themselves to lose control in the first place. When people do whatever they desires they are no longer “free” but become “slaves” to sin.
Authentic freedom, many philosophers call attention to, is being free “to do what is right.” However, due to the human problem or Original Sin and our tendency not to do what is objectively right, we need a quality “moral formation.” For example, a child will take the toy of another child as his own if he can get away with it. The parent must form the child to understand the concept of personal property. For without such moral formation, whether through parents or society, that child will grow up to become a thief. One’s social moral formation involves self, casual, and sexual interactions. In being properly morally formed one finds authentic freedom in being fully human, where we act according to how we were designed.
We were not designed to eat certain things that are poisonous for us, and thus we are not free to eat them. We were not made to murder people and thus we are not free to murder. We were not made to have sex with any or every person we please, and thus we are not free to do fornicate, rape, or commit incest, etc. We are to respect the design of our physical selves, our social selves, and our sexual selves. Still, some of us in this life are racked with various temptations, such as homosexual temptation, which is hard to understand when one has not had a good moral formation. Yet, some people are spiritually conflicted, desiring God but attached to sin, and the confusing voices of anti-God cultures do not help when they claim that certain sins are “okay.”
It is one thing to be tempted; the Church teaches us that that is not a sin. The sin comes when one knows something is evil and acts upon the temptation anyway. We were not told of Harvey Milk’s moral formation, but still, the film Milk is a bad rental choice as it condones sexual immorality and magnifies it by representing Harvey Milk as a martyr. He was not a martyr. Sadly, he was murdered.
The Problem of a “Secular Ethics”
(9/3/09 - My Catholic column for Newman University newspaper The Vantage)
Last week in bioethics class we were asked to read, summarize, and respond to the bioethical issue as to whether standard medical ethics apply in disaster conditions. The following is my abridged response informed by the Christian Faith.
In 2006 secular trained philosopher Mary Marshall sought to justify the option of various ethical conclusions in extreme situations, such as during the Hurricane Katrina incident concerning a doctor and two nurses in Louisiana charged with murder, with examples of paradigm cases as “seemingly impossible dilemmas”. First, of course, a philosopher of such justifying tendencies has to deny moral absolutes, as she does, claiming “Most of us in the worlds of bioethics and philosophy are wary of moral absolutes”, a claim of proportion I believe is quite the exaggeration.
To support the case of the Louisiana case Marshall proceeds to give accounts that she sarcastically assumes “even Solomonic wisdom couldn’t even resolve, because the options seemed morally bankrupt, or worse.” She is likely making a subtle allusion to the story of the two women claiming to be the mother of the same child in 1 Kings 3:16-28.
The fist case she presented was that of the William Styron story Sophie’s Choice, wherein a mother has to make the “painful or impossible” choice of “deciding which of one’s children to send to the gas chamber.” The second situation is that of a mother during the Sri Lankan tsunami “immersed in the deluge, clinging to her husband and child; and loosing the strength to hold fast to both of them, of having to let one go.” Third, she told of a school hostage situation where “parents with multiple captive children being allowed to remove only one” and then she asked “How do you decide which hand to release, which name to give?”
Marshall then tells of the Hurricane Katrina incident of those medical persons charged with manslaughter and the circumstances surrounding it. She then gives two final cases where a ship crewman throws 14 men off a sinking raft to save the rest, and then of a nurse (Szwajger) during the Holocaust who administered lethal doses of morphine to suffering and dying children about to be carried off to elsewhere to be killed. Marshall ends by illustrating her sense of “compassion” as a mother who “would rather that my child die the gentle death administered by Szwajger…than die a violent death at the hands of soldiers.” In conclusion she promotes that the Attorney General over the Katrina case “makes his findings, and as the case plays out, that compassion, not absolutism, is the order of the day.”
I was going to start my critique of her line of argument by focusing on the problem of a “Faithless Ethic,” but quickly realized the pluralistic problem of that, as there are many faiths. The problem orthodox Christians see in “secular ethics” is the lack of the deeper appreciation and wisdom provided by the principles and revelations of the Judeo-Christian faith. In fact, Solomonic wisdom could respond to every one of Marshall’s situations.
The mother confronted with the case of which child to send to the gas chamber could forego the choice all together and thereby likely face martyrdom – if she had faith in the Resurrection of the Just Dead.
The mother in the Sri Lankan incident would have to let her child go and offer him/her into the hands of God, as her primary duty is to her husband – granting she is faithful to her Marital Covenant.
The parents of the school children would have to cast lots to decide which child must be set free – putting the decision in the hands of God.
The sea crewman was completely unjustified – lacking virtue by fearing death and lacking faith of rescue (which, regardless, may never have come) wherein he chose to kill to “save.” Evil means cannot justify an apparent good.
The nurse who euthanized the children with morphine should have let the children be taken away – letting God judge the murderous soldier’s souls and not hers.
Marshall’s sense of “compassion” is what I would call a faithless and therefore, in ethical considerations, a false compassion. This is illustrated in her statement that she, “would rather that my child die the gentle death administered by Szwajger…than die a violent death at the hands of soldiers.” A Christian could point out that God the Father was willing to allow His Son to die a violent death at the hands of Roman soldiers. Ultimately, Christian faith and hope in the Resurrection of the Dead was the ultimate point and revelation of the Christ’s crucifixion, thus fueling the Christian ethical decision making. If we die in faith, or even for our children who are “sacrificed” for the sake of justice, we have hope in the reward of the Resurrection. We need not fear death! With such faith one has the freedom to allow the apparent worst. The theological virtues of faith, hope, and love and certain principles of human dignity can resolve all such “dilemmas.”
Yet, in a way, it is understandable that those not evangelized to the Judeo-Christian revelation would lack certain principles and appreciations, thus the problem of a “secular ethics.” They lack any firm foundation. Even if the secularist’s main ethical principle is based upon “human dignity,” as it presently appears to be, this is still a holdover from the Judeo-Christian view of humanity as dignified because it is “in the image and likeness of God.” As this principle is dissolving due to certain utilitarian ideas, where we are becoming mere objects or “utilities,” so dissolves our appreciation of ethics based on moral absolutes and we are all the more governed by the fear of death.