Thursday, March 29, 2007
Monday, March 26, 2007
Finding God Amidst the Chaos
There is so much confusion in our world today. Sin brings disruption, disunity, discord, and disaster. In Redemptor Hominis John Paul II wrote that the very talents and achievements of the modern age for which mankind boasts before its Creator are the same accomplishments that cause mankind so much anguish and concern. Over the last few Lenten Lecture talks at the University of St. Thomas with Father Tad Pacholczyk, Dr. Jean Kitchel, and Dr. Marcella Colbert, an attempt has been made to bring an order of ethics into the chaos of end of life decisions. With the Baby Boomer generation aging, the financial pressure of insurance companies is increasing. And with the complex decisions conerning maintaining, withholding, or changing medical treatment for the dying that require a level-headed prudent person to make, it seems that it is almost impossible to do the right thing in certain circumstances. How does one know the Church's teaching as to whether to administer antibiotics to a father dying with cancer who has contracted pnemonia? When should the respirator machine be considered extraordinary means of life support? With treatment ever evolving, with new options constantly developing, how are we to know we did everything we could to protect the life of Grandma?
These questions are recognizably specific to the individual situations. How is a Catholic suppose to discriminate between all the information and find the Church's latest statement of teaching concerning the event at hand? Perhaps the problem lies not so much in the communication of information by the Church, or the speed with which the Church pronounces definitively upon the morality of the latest action of the scientific community. Perhaps the problem is older and deeper than we think. Maybe the real predicament at hand is the crisis mankind faces in "the modern age". That is maybe the difficulties of professing the faith in its entirety and in the spirit of obedience to Divine authority in an age that scowls at such "traditional" understandings of moral formation is what is really at the crux of these ever developing bioethical dilemmas. We are not too far away from the day when humanity must face some type of biological hybrid (physiologically speaking) between animal and human DNA. We are already presented with situations in which the Church is asked to choose between permitting adoption of frozen human embryos conceived in vitro or allowing them to die naturally removed from machine support. When Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae in 1969 a wave of dissent ensued throughout the Church's ranks causing a bitter and still felt discord among professed Catholics. The issue at concern in Humanae Vitae was simply the Church's perennial teaching that artificial contraception is intrinsically immoral according to the natural moral law. Now envision a time in the not too distant future when the Church will have to, in order to fulfill her Christ given mission to teach, to sanctify, and to rule the People of God, pronounce binding judgments on these more complex end of life and bioethical decisions.
Yet the problem is not the complexity of the situations. History has presented the Church with seemingly discouraging situations before--the rise of the evolution movement, rationalism, communism, and modernism to name just a few. Rather the problem lies within our hearts. "For out of the heart comes forth murder, adultery, unchastity, perversion." Jesus said. The real battleground is not the forum of communications, but the integrity of the will. Now is the time to decide with a world of uncertainty whether or not we as Catholics are going to submit in advance with the "obedience of faith" to the Church's magisterial teaching on innumerable issues no matter what the outcome may be. Indeed, if Catholics had this sort of attitude in anticipation of Humanae Vitae's release, there would have been nothing but the God-intended docility among the People of God to every "lawful authority" that St. Paul writes about in Romans chapter 13. In the end we must face the predicament of choosing to obey lawful authority in the "modern age"-an age that while, "claiming to be wise, became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles." -Romans Chapter 1
These questions are recognizably specific to the individual situations. How is a Catholic suppose to discriminate between all the information and find the Church's latest statement of teaching concerning the event at hand? Perhaps the problem lies not so much in the communication of information by the Church, or the speed with which the Church pronounces definitively upon the morality of the latest action of the scientific community. Perhaps the problem is older and deeper than we think. Maybe the real predicament at hand is the crisis mankind faces in "the modern age". That is maybe the difficulties of professing the faith in its entirety and in the spirit of obedience to Divine authority in an age that scowls at such "traditional" understandings of moral formation is what is really at the crux of these ever developing bioethical dilemmas. We are not too far away from the day when humanity must face some type of biological hybrid (physiologically speaking) between animal and human DNA. We are already presented with situations in which the Church is asked to choose between permitting adoption of frozen human embryos conceived in vitro or allowing them to die naturally removed from machine support. When Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae in 1969 a wave of dissent ensued throughout the Church's ranks causing a bitter and still felt discord among professed Catholics. The issue at concern in Humanae Vitae was simply the Church's perennial teaching that artificial contraception is intrinsically immoral according to the natural moral law. Now envision a time in the not too distant future when the Church will have to, in order to fulfill her Christ given mission to teach, to sanctify, and to rule the People of God, pronounce binding judgments on these more complex end of life and bioethical decisions.
Yet the problem is not the complexity of the situations. History has presented the Church with seemingly discouraging situations before--the rise of the evolution movement, rationalism, communism, and modernism to name just a few. Rather the problem lies within our hearts. "For out of the heart comes forth murder, adultery, unchastity, perversion." Jesus said. The real battleground is not the forum of communications, but the integrity of the will. Now is the time to decide with a world of uncertainty whether or not we as Catholics are going to submit in advance with the "obedience of faith" to the Church's magisterial teaching on innumerable issues no matter what the outcome may be. Indeed, if Catholics had this sort of attitude in anticipation of Humanae Vitae's release, there would have been nothing but the God-intended docility among the People of God to every "lawful authority" that St. Paul writes about in Romans chapter 13. In the end we must face the predicament of choosing to obey lawful authority in the "modern age"-an age that while, "claiming to be wise, became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles." -Romans Chapter 1
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