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Miscellaneous Thoughts on Difficult Church Teaching and the Holy Spirit

Deacon Douglas McManaman

I remember one of my email correspondences with Eve Tushnet, who is the brilliant author of Gay and Catholic and Tenderness. I had written a piece for my students which was an attempt to support and explain as clearly and pastorally as possible the Church’s teaching on same sex marriage. We certainly see eye to eye on this issue, because she adheres to Catholic teaching on the nature of marriage and sexuality, but I didn’t quite “seal the deal” for her with respect to my contention that a same-sex relationship cannot be a one flesh union (in that a one flesh union means becoming reproductively one organism in the sexual act). My article left her unconvinced. In the end, she stressed the importance of urging students to “trust the Church”– and by this I gather she did not mean trust in a group of male celibates, many of whom–she is fully aware–have proved themselves to be untrustworthy. Rather, I believe she meant trust that Christ is working in and through the Church. I found it interesting not to mention praiseworthy that she finds it in herself to trust Catholic teaching, despite what she sees as a weakness in what I see as the heart of the matter.[1]

I’ve written quite a few articles over the years (600+), many of which have vanished from memory. On a few occasions I stumbled across some of these forgotten articles and after reading some of them over again, I wondered to myself how I was able to acquire certain insights, given that I did not know then what I know now, and yet what I wrote then was in perfect agreement with what I have come to know now only as a result of experience. It’s not that I have the charism of infallibility–there are many articles I’d written that I would like to remove from the internet permanently, but I don’t have the nerve to ask the editors to remove them after they put time and effort into publishing them. But despite my stupidity, limitations, sinfulness, and other imperfections, the Holy Spirit seemed to have helped me say what I otherwise would not have been able to think of saying, for the sake of my students.

In 1980, upon discovering that the Catholic Church teaches that contraceptive means of birth control are morally wrong, I became very interested in why that is the case, because at first it struck me as terribly out of date and closed minded. I was fortunate that some of my professors did not think so and encouraged me to think about it more. I remember where I was standing in Waterloo, Ontario when the light bulb went on (Waterloo and Phillip), the moment I believe I came to see why contraception is morally problematic. From that point on, I was determined to uncover the reasons for this so that I could explain this difficult teaching to others, especially my future students. Initially, I found the explanations of many who defended Humanae Vitae to be rather unsatisfactory; I knew they would not persuade skeptics that taking the pill or wearing a condom or sterilization (for contraceptive reasons) is morally wrong, while NFP can be legitimate and morally justifiable. It was only after meeting Dr. Joseph Boyle in Toronto that I discovered what I thought was the most persuasive and logically coherent presentation on why every marital act must remain open to new life and what that meant. I worked hard to make this intelligible for my young students and taught this over the years. Their reaction was very much like their reaction to Leibniz’s modal proof of God’s existence (If MLp, then Lp, or “If the Necessary Being is possible, then the Necessary Being exists”) – some students simply did not understand it, others understood it but found it uncompelling, while a minority understood it and found it compelling.

I am not an “all or nothing” thinker. I don’t believe that if a person gets something wrong over here in this area, then they cannot be trusted in what they say over there in that area. I do love Hans Kung, for example, especially when he writes on the Reformation, Luther, Erasmus, and Vatican II, but I have never been able to understand the issue he has with Catholic morality, specifically abortion, cohabitation, and contraception. And he’s not the only one whom I can study and enjoy in one area, but scratch my head when it comes to the difficulties they seem to have with these moral issues in particular. I’ve spent a great deal of time over the past 46 years studying the fundamentals of ethics only because I was a teacher of young adolescents, and you have to get morality right when you are teaching students of this age group. There’s only so much time in a day, and if one is devoting a great deal of time to the study of Church history, perhaps there isn’t much time left for ethics. Could that be the reason Kung and others appear to be a little off on sexual ethics? I don’t know for certain, but I wonder.

John O’Loughlin Kennedy has written a brilliant, well-researched, and very interesting work entitled The Pope is the Curia and why it cannot listen. In it, he discusses the history surrounding Humanae Vitae, the work of the Birth Control Commission that was initiated by Pope John XXIII, not to mention a rather brilliant analysis of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. Without knowing what I know now about sexual ethics and the nature of contraception, I could easily be persuaded by his presentation that Humanae Vitae was a complete disaster and the product of clerical stubbornness. But it was as a result of studying this issue for many years that I came to believe that the Church is indeed guided by the Holy Spirit; for in my mind there is no chance a bunch of celibates in Rome could have figured this out on their own, especially when the Western world was capitulating.

In 2009, I wrote an article for my students entitled A Concise Account of Why Women are Not Ordained, and it was just that, a concise summary of the reasons for the non-ordination of women. Seventeen years later, however, after exposure to a number of rather brilliant feminist thinkers, I am less than enthusiastic about this article and would not be inclined to use it or recommend it to students. Moreover, within my eighteen years as a Deacon, I have seen more than my fair share of clerical misogyny, especially in recent years. That is why I was inclined to write Thoughts on the Influence of Old Prejudice, which began with an account of an experience I had one day that to me suggested some interesting things about the psychology of prejudice and unconscious bias. Naturally, I began to wonder whether the Church’s position on the non-ordination of women could turn out to be little more than a residue of centuries of old prejudice (misogyny) and patriarchy. But, could Kennedy’s brilliant and critical analysis of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in this same work turn out to be similar to his historical analysis of Humanae Vitae in the sense that reason and common sense at this time would lead to one obvious conclusion, while the Holy Spirit working in and through the hierarchy lays down the contrary conclusion, despite the weakness of the hierarchy’s arguments supporting it? In other words, in my mind, one side wins the argument hands down, at least up to this point in time, namely the side that argues that the exclusion of women from Holy Orders is indefensible. Could it be the case that the Holy Spirit–who works in and through the Magisterium made up, in part, of limited and even self-centered prelates [2] scattered among a good number of genuinely holy and wise prelates–has led the Church, through that hierarchy, to the right position, despite the fact that the side arguing for the ordination of women puts forth the better arguments, while the other side scrapes for reasons that in the end come across as tortured and as durable as a thin water balloon? I’d have to say that it is indeed possible and highly plausible. If it can happen in my own individual life, how much more so in the life of the Church as a whole?

Perhaps this is ultimately a matter of trusting that the Holy Spirit does indeed work in and through a Church made up of flawed individuals. As Eve Tushnet said in that same email correspondence to me: “In the end our faith is not founded on whether we accept the arguments we’ve heard for particular doctrines, you know? It’s founded on a personal relationship with Christ as given to us through His Bride the Church, our Mother and Teacher.”[3] And I do believe that at this time in our history, it is better not to say “trust the Church”, only because for many people that conjures up images of having to trust a bunch of men, many of whom are emotionally abusive, negligent, self-centered, sometimes haughty and incompetent. It is much better to say “trust in the Holy Spirit” that descended upon the Church at Pentecost, who is the “soul of the Church”, the “spirit of truth” (pneuma tes aletheias) and who will lead the Church to the complete truth (Jn 16, 13), certainly through our efforts but despite our dullness of intellect.

Of course, this does not mean that Church teaching does not develop and that her current understanding of certain theological matters must remain forever unchanged. Nor does it mean that her common teaching that is not a constituent part of the deposit of faith but may pertain to it is irreversible. Much less does it mean we must resign ourselves to current ecclesial structures and practices that may stifle the Spirit (1 Th 5, 19) – structures and practices have changed throughout history and will continue to change, albeit rather slowly. And so, we still need theology to push the envelope and test certain hypotheses, for it is not always clear what does and does not belong to the deposit of faith [4]. That is why open discussion (Synodality) is utterly important–shutting it down retards the development of doctrine and only harms the Church, especially the prospects of ecumenical unity.

But Jesus did say “I am with you always, until the end of the age” (Mt 28, 20). What does this mean if not that despite our own limitations, short sightedness, intellectual sluggishness and incompetence, somehow collectively as a body he will not allow us to be led astray on the most important issues. In this case it is not so much a matter of grace building on nature, but grace superseding nature, as it were, that is, overcoming nature if you will. The gates of hell will not prevail against it (ekklesian), he said (Mt 16, 18). How can he err in that promise? In the end, the Spirit has to win out, otherwise what good is that promise?

Notes

1. She very wisely wrote: “I personally didn’t think you quite “sealed the deal” on why a same-sex relationship can’t be a one-flesh union; or at least, if the reason for that is, “‘one-flesh union’ refers to becoming a biologically-reproductive organism,” I don’t then know why only biologically-reproductive organisms can offer one another complete love. It seems to me that we have often seen examples of deep, self-sacrificing love, e.g. during the AIDS crisis in gay communities, where there did not seem to be any love held back, if you see what I mean, among those who nursed their partners through their last days. Or their friends–sex seems neither necessary to a full gift of self, nor in some visible way deleterious to it. Service is a way of loving someone with your body, I think….But I do think it would help advance the purposes of your speech to just give a defense of obedience! Basically tell your students that it is actually ok if they and/or the people they shepherd don’t understand the reasons for specific commands, as long as they understand why the Church is worthy of our complete trust. That in itself is a big ask, esp nowadays when we all know how untrustworthy so many Catholics have been.” Eve Tushnet, email message to author, March 14, 2022.

2. Pope Francis writes: “There should be no place in the Church for a worldly mentality. The worldly mentality says: “This man took the ecclesiastical career path, he became a bishop”. No, no, in the Church there must be no place for this mindset. The episcopate is a service, not an honour to boast about. Being a bishop means keeping before one’s eyes the example of Jesus who, as the Good Shepherd, came not to be served, but to serve (cf. Mt 20:28; Mk 10:45) and to give his life for his sheep (cf. Jn 10:11). Holy bishops — and there are many in the history of the Church, many holy bishops — show us that this ministry is not sought, is not requested, is not bought, but is accepted in obedience, not in order to elevate oneself, but to lower oneself, as Jesus did who “humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). It is sad when one sees a man who seeks this office and who does so much just to get there; and when he gets there, he does not serve, he struts around, he lives only for his own vanity.” General Audience. Wednesday, 5 November, 2014. The following year Francis wrote: “Remembering that you have been chosen from among men and constituted on their behalf to attend to the things of God, exercise the priestly ministry of Christ with joy and genuine love, with the sole intention of pleasing God and not yourselves. It is unseemly when a priest lives for his own pleasure and “struts like a peacock!” Homily of His Holiness Pope Francis. Vatican Basilica, Fourth Sunday of Easter, 26 April 2015.

3. Tushnet, email message, March 14, 2022.

4. “On January 24th Cardinal Ratzinger offered an important clarification regarding the CDF Responsum, specifying that it did not intend to say that this teaching was a part of the deposit of faith but rather that it pertained to the deposit of faith. This ambiguity resulted in part from poor English translations of the Latin”. Richard Gaillardetz. “Infallibility and the Ordination of Women”, Louvain Studies 21 (1996): 3-24.

Slow of heart

Deacon Douglas McManaman

What is interesting about the discussion on the road to Emmaus is that the two disciples are talking about Jesus, while the very person they are talking about is right there walking with them, but without their awareness that this person is in fact the risen Christ. They see him as a stranger. Luke tells us that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him”. This is an interesting expression. The obvious question is: “What is it that kept their eyes from recognizing him”?

Of course, the risen Christ had a glorified body, so he did not look quite the same as he would have before the resurrection, but there is a more interior reason they failed to recognize him. The clue, I believe, is in the nature of their hope: they hoped that Jesus would be the one to “redeem Israel”; however, their understanding of that liberation was far too narrow. Jesus came not to liberate a particular nation (Israel) from Roman oppression, but to deliver humanity from the oppression of sin and death.

Old habits are very difficult to change, especially habits of thinking, and many of our assumptions keep us from understanding the obvious. For example, in the synoptics, Jesus had to foretell his passion three times (that the Son of Man was destined to suffer and be put to death, but on the third day he would rise again); for the disciples simply could not understand how victory could come about through any means other than physical force. Not even Peter understood that Christ came to defeat death by dying and rising (See Mt 16, 22). And even after seeing the risen Christ, the disciples still could not get beyond an understanding rooted in old habits: “When they had gathered together they asked him, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’” (Acts 1, 6).

There was something in these two disciples that kept them from recognizing him, and it was with respect to this that they were “foolish” (Gk: anoetoi), lacking wisdom and the insight that would allow them to see who the real enemy is, which is sin and death, not the Roman Empire–Rome was destined to fall in the late 5th century. Jesus came to defeat the one enemy man was powerless to defeat, namely death. Their hope was narrow because their hearts were narrow, that is, their love was too limited in scope: “…how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets declared”.

“Slow of heart” (bradeis te kardia) is an interesting expression as well. What it suggests is that understanding follows upon the disposition of the heart, which is the center of intellectual and spiritual insight. It is the heart that keeps the disciple from fully recognizing Christ, who is in our midst, mistaking him for an ignorant stranger. But Jesus begins to teach them, opening the Scriptures to them, all the while still failing to recognize him. In other words, the stranger teaches them about himself. Luke tells us, however, that their hearts were burning; hence, they were open to learning, which is why they were listening to him in the first place, and it was this openness that gradually disposed them to recognize him. But recognition only came after they pressured the stranger to stay with them. It was at this point, when he was at the table with them, that he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them; then their eyes were finally opened and they recognized him.

What was it that opened their eyes? The breaking of the bread. In other words, it was “community” that opened their eyes; they had table fellowship with a stranger, as Jesus himself was wont to do, and it was only at this point that they were given the eyes to recognize that the stranger in their midst was Christ himself.

Breaking bread together, that is, table fellowship, means much more than eating for the sake of my own individual nutrition. For the Jews, breaking bread brings about a genuine communion of persons, for each person partakes of the one life source on the table, namely the food, so that all who are at table become one. This is a very profound and symbolic understanding of a meal that we’ve lost in the West; and this table fellowship is precisely what ruined Jesus’ reputation among the religious leaders at the time, namely, his fellowship with tax collectors, who were regarded as traitors, and his fellowship with “sinners”, those who did not observe the proscriptions in the Torah because they were not familiar with them. In short, he associated himself with the marginalized.

In feeding the five thousand, he entered into intimate communion with everyone who came to listen to him. But in the minds of the religious leaders, to commune with the ritually unclean is to become unclean. For Jesus, however, the reverse takes place. Those who partake and thus willingly enter into communion with him become clean, because he is clean, the fount of all holiness.

In joining a human nature to himself, the Son of God joined himself to every man, as it were (GS, 22), in all times and places–for the Word is eternal. We know this from the parable of the Last Judgment: When did we see you hungry, naked, and in prison?… As long as you did this to the least of my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25, 31-46). And so, Christ is in our midst, drawing near and walking with us, and we don’t necessarily have the eyes to recognize him. To do so, we need to take on the mind of Christ, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself and took the form of a slave” (Phil 2, 5-7). It is our willingness to descend with him, to become a slave (doulou) and associate with all who are suffering that opens our eyes to the Christ hidden behind the face of the stranger. In short, we discover Christ in community, not in a privatized Catholicism.

The Eucharist is the Bread of Life in which we become united with Christ in all his physicality, but the community of the faithful is Christ’s Mystical Body, and so the Eucharist should move us away from a bourgeois spirituality towards a deeper insertion into the international community that Christ is. The Eucharist in which we receive the whole Christ, his body, blood, soul and divinity, should change us into that body, and that should give us the eyes to see him underneath his various disguises, as Mother Teresa would often say. But it is very possible for us to resist that impetus. Jesus speaks about this in the gospel of Matthew: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.’” (Mt 7, 21-23).

In the end, we will not be judged on our theology, or our private acts of piety, but on how we related to Christ hidden underneath his various disguises, as he identified himself in the first century with those whom we would be least likely to suspect were his dwelling places: the hated tax collector, the prostitute, and those who neglect the religious requirements of the Torah.

Padre, don’t forget

Deacon Douglas McManaman

My good friend, a retired priest from the Diocese of Hamilton, Ontario, took a group of kids to the Dominican Republic more than 30 years ago. One day he went out to the outlying regions in Consuelo, called the Bateyes, which are small rural settlements designed for plantation workers. They are very impoverished areas, lacking basic services such as clean drinking water. My friend remembers meeting a very poor woman who was blind and who had one arm severed; she was in her 50s, and of course she was living in great poverty. Through a translator, my friend said to her: “I’m sorry”. He was sorry for her condition, for her suffering. She read his sorrow on his face and simply said to him in reply: “Padre: don’t forget, there is going to be a resurrection”.

My friend felt tremendously uplifted by her words. In her suffering, and in her faith and hope in the resurrection, she lifted him up. This lady experienced something of the empty tomb; she was a witness that we can actually experience the reality of the resurrection without actually having been at the empty tomb. She is an example of those whom Christ referred to in the gospel of John: “Blessed are those who have not seen but believe”. Her Easter joy transcended all her misery.

The word ‘gospel’ means good news. Over the years, I would often ask my students: “What is the good news”? Many of them would be stuck for an answer. Only a few could tell me. And many Catholic adults today reduce the gospel to “a collection of rules and prohibitions… to the repetition of doctrinal principles, to bland or nervous moralizing” (Aparecida, 12). “You shall not kill”; is that good news? “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain… You shall not commit adultery… You shall not steal…”; is this the good news? Not at all: “…for through the law comes consciousness of sin” (Rom 3, 20).

Recently, I was part of a 90-day spiritual exercise at a local parish that includes rigorous disciplines, such as cold showers, fasting and abstinence on Wednesdays and Fridays, no social media, no sports on TV and alcohol, work out three times a week, and more. There are many good things about this exercise, in particular the weekly fraternity meetings, but it is very easy to fall into a discussion on the details of how we failed in this or that discipline during the week: “I was just too tired to work out this week”, or “I had a glass of wine”, or “I just couldn’t take cold showers this time around”, etc. This is not the good news, for we are talking about our failures. If anything, it was good news that the program ended on Easter Sunday.

And this leads me to what the gospel really is, namely, Easter. The good news is the resurrection of Christ. Death has been defeated; for death had no power over him. So much of our sinful behavior throughout our lives is rooted in a deep but unconscious fear of death. The good news is that death no longer has the final word over your life and my life, and we know this because one Person has risen from the dead. His resurrection means that you too will rise to new and everlasting life. To live in him and to die in him is to live and die in the sure hope of resurrection. Furthermore, all those we loved in life and who have died, we will see and touch them again, for we will rise with a glorified body, not subject to sickness and death–and we won’t look like we do now, which is more good news to many of us.

I remember walking into my friend’s office and seeing a picture of a little girl, about 4 or 5 years of age. I asked my friend who that is. “That’s little Stephanie”, he said. One afternoon she choked on a sandwich and died. It was one of the saddest days of my friend’s priesthood, walking into the hospital and seeing her young mother and father standing there beside the hospital gurney with the lifeless body of their four-year-old girl lying on it. About 6 months later in the middle of a dark winter night, however, my friend had a powerful dream-vision of Stephanie, but not as a 4-year-old child, but a young adult woman in her 20s, surrounded by a bright white light, like nothing my friend had ever seen before. She said to him: “I can’t see my parents now, but I can come to you. Tell them not to worry, that I am happy.” My friend then reached out to her and suddenly found himself sitting up in bed, in the pitch black of night, about 3 am. What struck me, among other things, is that she did not appear as a child, but as a young adult.

The gospel is a message of salvation. But more to the point, our resurrection to new life begins now, in this life. Salvation is ours today, it has been freely given, as sheer gift. And we are saved by faith, not by works. As St. Paul says: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2, 8-9). We did not nor can we save ourselves. Even our own cooperation with grace, our free decision to follow the lead and promptings of divine grace is itself a grace; for we were given the power to cooperate and to follow, so we cannot take any credit for where we are today.

The good news is that our sins have been forgiven: “In him we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us” (Eph 1, 7-8). For example, there is nothing that the paralyzed man did to earn God’s forgiveness (Mk 2, 1-8). His friends who brought him to Jesus believed that Jesus could and would heal him. Nothing more is required. Christ’s healing of his paralysis is a resurrection. He can freely stand up. That’s what the forgiveness of our sins is, namely, our theosis. The problem, of course, is that we have a very hard time believing that and even receiving that forgiveness. Many of us still believe, deep down, that we have to do something to earn it in some way. But to think this way is to very subtly and perhaps unconsciously reject the gift of grace he offers us; so instead of “all glory and honor are yours”, some of us would rather a portion of that glory directed our way. But God loved us while we were sinners: “God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5, 8).

The focus of our lives must not be on our sins, our failures, our shortcomings, but on the immeasurable and gratuitous nature of his love for each one of us. Only then can our life be a genuine response to that love, a joy, not a burden.

The Silence of God

The Silence of God published @ Where Peter Is

Deacon Douglas McManaman

One of the most pressing questions people have, young students especially, has to do with the problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? And if God exists, how can he allow so much suffering and evil in the world? Questions bearing upon the tragedies that befall the innocent are very puzzling to say the least, and they are downright scandalous for some, to the point where many have simply rejected outright the very notion that a good God exists.

The philosophical resolutions of such questions are certainly interesting and perhaps persuasive to a good number of people, and they usually include the point that human beings have the power of free choice, and when we choose to do things our way instead of God’s way, life begins to fall apart. A more sophisticated response is that God is all powerful and he is supremely and perfectly good, which means that 1) he wills your perfect happiness and 2) has the power to bring about your greatest happiness; hence, whatever God allows to happen to you in your life, he allows ultimately for your greatest happiness.

There is nothing wrong with these arguments per se; they are sound. However, one does not want to be engaging in this kind of discourse when in the presence of someone who is broken by the loss of her own son, or who has been suffering from clinical depression all her life or someone with PTSD as a result of being exposed to the horrors of war or the evils that are around us but hidden from most people, except police officers and undercover agents. It’s much easier to be impressed with certain abstract ideas in the presence of like-minded people far removed from such suffering, but when in the presence of a person who is in deep darkness, suffering in ways that we’ve never experienced, we begin to sense the inadequacies of our neat and tidy solutions. If we were to push them onto our suffering brethren anyways, ignoring our deepest intuition to keep quiet, we’d see firsthand that our answers only increase their feelings of alienation, isolation, and darkness. The only response these situations call for is utter silence. We just need to be present to them in their suffering; for there are no words that can relieve them of their darkness and the pain they have to live with. The only thing that will bring them any sort of consolation is our silent presence, which acknowledges our inability to console them with words, ideas, platitudes, or rational discourse.

Their suffering is a great mystery; for their lives and all that has happened that plunged them into darkness is in many ways beyond our ability to fully comprehend. It is opaque and larger than ourselves, and our task is to remain quiet and listen, share in their suffering, participate in it, feel it; for the more we feel it, the more we relieve them of their loneliness and sense of abandonment.

And that is why Good Friday is the ultimate answer to the mystery of suffering. God does not deliver us a series of premises that entail a conclusion that is supposed to satisfy the mind. Rather, God the Son descends among us, joins himself to a human nature and enters into our darkness. The light of the world enters into the darkness of human suffering not because he wants to understand our suffering–God is all knowing, so he does not lack any understanding. Rather, he joins himself to our flesh, our suffering, our human situation, tastes misunderstanding and rejection, becomes the object of death threats and attempts on his life, was rejected by some of his disciples who couldn’t tolerate his claim to be the Bread of Life, and experiences the worst physical suffering, his passion and death, all this in order to be present in silence to the sufferings of each human person, the sufferings we have undergone and are currently undergoing and have yet to undergo in our lives. He who is Life Itself dies in order to be present in our death, that we might find him there. All this so that our suffering will not be an experience of complete and utter desolation and loneliness. We still suffer, but there is a divine presence in that suffering, a Person who is there paying close attention to each one of us. Scripture assures us that this Person, this presence, is even in the very bowels of hell: “If I climb to the heavens you are there, if I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there” (Ps 139, 8).

I’ve always said to my mental health patients that you accompany Christ in his suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he accompanies you in yours–while Peter, James, and John sleep. They cannot stay awake, but you stay awake; for your depression keeps you from the peace of restful slumber. That is your gift to him, and it is the deepest sharing in his passion. Moreover, friendships are based on common qualities, and you have something in common with Christ, namely innocent suffering and mental anguish, and this common factor establishes an identity that is an eternal source of joy.

God is so good that he chooses to taste complete alienation even from himself; for God the Son experiences the anguish of the Father’s silence: Jesus receives no response from God to his anguished prayer to let this cup pass him by (Mk 14, 32-42), and there is no answer to his final words on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mk 15, 34). And this very lament was uttered centuries earlier by a victim of injustice:

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why so far from my call for help, from my cries of anguish? My God, I call by day, but you do not answer; by night, but I have no relief (Ps 22, 2-3).

His words have become Christ’s words, or better yet, they were Christ’s words from the beginning, for God the Son is eternal, embracing all time and place. Like the psalmist, we too keep Christ company when we suffer what he suffered. Nothing but the silence of his presence and ours adequately responds to the mystery of suffering. This alone gives us the strength to trust that our darkness and death are not the final word; the final word will be uttered three days later.

Thoughts on the Trastevere

I have a picture of the piazza di Santa Maria, which is in the heart of the Trastevere (Rome), on my computer. I am familiar with this piazza, I’ve been there a number of times. In fact, if one were to drop me off anywhere in Rome, I would be able to find my way there. I’ve been inside the Basilica di Santa Maria, in Trastevere, which is one of the most beautiful Churches in Rome. So when I gaze at this picture, I think back to the time I spent there.

Each time I gaze at the picture, however, I notice a detail or two that I did not notice while there. There is so much about this small area that I was not explicitly aware of. I often gaze at the apartments surrounding the piazza; I was not aware of the number of apartments there are–in fact, I still don’t really know, I haven’t counted–, nor do I know who owns those apartments, whether they are rented out or not. I do not know the apartments from within, I’ve never been inside them, and I don’t know the occupants, what they do, where they came from, I don’t know the two restaurants on the street level, I’ve never eaten there, nor have I worked there, so I don’t know the employees or the owner, what it is like to work there every night, etc., I don’t know what kind of plants are in the pots, nor do I know anything about the architecture of those buildings, how they were designed, nor the kind of drywall used for the interior, I do not know the kinds of materials used on the outside of the apartments, I do not know about the wiring (the quality of wire used, nor how the building was and is now wired, whether or not it has changed, etc.), nor do I know anything about the plumbing (the kind of metal pipe used, the plans for the plumbing), etc. I have been inside the Church, but there is so much to know about the interior, such as the ceiling and when it was built, the art, who produced it and when, the floor of the Church, who designed it and when and under what circumstances; I do not know about the geological features below the ground on that small piazza. In short, there is so much about the history of that piazza that I am unaware of and will always be unaware of; there is a veritable cognitive inexhaustibility about that little place that I am, nevertheless, familiar with. I could spend more time there and if I did so, my understanding of it would gradually increase, especially if I had access to a historian, a geologist, an architect, and a carpenter perhaps. After a time, I would very likely not look at that piazza the same way again, just as we do not look at anything we come to know more fully the same way as we did initially.

The world is like that; science is like that. In the 1950s, we had no idea that there was so much more to the cell than what we thought at the time, i.e., a membrane, a nucleus, protoplasm, etc. We now appreciate that the complexity of a cell far exceeds that of a computer. How much more is there to the physics of a simple water molecule than what most of us currently know about water? How much more is this true of human nature? Consider what cognitive psychology has discovered about the epistemic conditions that are behind the day to day judgments we make, almost entirely unaware of the influences that have shaped those judgments? I know what I know, but I tend not to be aware of how much I do not know and how much more there is to know about the very things I know. I can make myself aware of it to some degree as I have done here, but the details will always escape me, for if I understood the extent and the details, I would not be ignorant of them. I can only know my ignorance generally.

The same is true of people. How much about these students before me do I not know? How much more is there to know about them?

Now all these new pieces of information that are gradually acquired as my experience is enlarged are data, as it were, that become part of the limited set of data we already have, on the basis of which we draw our conclusions about the real. I come to a conclusion about the student in front of me (or any person, for that matter) or the city I’ve been to twice, etc., on the basis of the evidence I have up to this point, that is, the data, the theses that constitute the set I now possess. I draw a conclusion about this person, or about Italy, the Trastevere, the food, etc., on the basis of the data I have acquired. New data might corroborate a judgment, it might enrich it, but new data may also render my current set of data internally inconsistent, which in turn affects the plausibility of the data I have. In other words, some theses will have to be dropped, for their plausibility has been drastically reduced. I have to adjust, that is, accommodate the new data, throw out certain theses, etc. For example, I may learn that this student before me is actually abusive to her parent, or I may become aware that he has autism spectrum disorder, etc. Or, thinking back to the piazza di Santa Maria, I may say to myself: I’d love to live here in one of these apartments. But with further data, I may change my mind. I look at those apartments now and certain feelings of nostalgia arise, but after years of acquiring new data (perhaps as a result of living there), that may change. I may become completely indifferent to this place; I may never want to see it again. Sometimes ignorance is bliss; for if I am ignorant, I can imagine anything I want about this place, i.e., a life that is exhilarating, but in the end the product of my imagination is unreal.

Think of growing up in a white, American, Catholic/Protestant world. The Sikh, the Hindu, the Muslim, etc., all come across as foreign. I don’t know what they believe, how they think, but they do dress differently, their symbols are different, they don’t eat the same kinds of foods. Initially at least, they appear as strange; they are an enigma. The usual course of action is to react defensively: I remind myself what it is we believe, that we see the world as it really is, that our way is right, it is the norm, and they are not part of that norm; I tend to think they should assimilate to our way of life, or way of dress and way of thinking, eating, etc. The unknown can give rise to fear. But as we come to know them, as we begin to live with them day in and day out, we begin to understand one another. Fear begins to subside, and they are not so foreign anymore; we realize that they are in many ways just like us. And they too looked at us as foreign, and they have or had the same defensive reaction. The world as they see it makes sense to them, it is right not just to them, but absolutely, and in their minds perhaps, we are the ones who have to assimilate. In other words, they can be just as dogmatic as we are. But this new encounter enriches us both with new information, and so it can enlarge our cognitive frame of mind. It is a real personal encounter that provides this new data, which may corroborate or render inconsistent the set of data we already possess and through which we see and interpret the real.

This epistemic process involved in plausible reasoning takes place within the realm of theological science as well–how could it not? There is so much about my Sikh brother that I don’t know about, and there is so much about me he does not know about, and as Socrates pointed out, there is so much about me that I don’t know about, and as the Old Testament makes clear there is so much about God that I don’t know about; as a Christian, there is so much about Christ that I don’t know about. Indeed, I can say with St. Paul that Christ lives in me and I live in him, but how much more is there to know about him? The knowledge I refer to here is connaitre, the French verb for connatural knowledge, the kind we possess for those close to us. The more I love someone, the more I enter into a kind of union with that person, and the result is the more I know him. Do I really believe my love for Christ is adequate? And so isn’t the same epistemic process at work in my knowledge of Christ? Isn’t the same process at work in a Muslim’s knowledge of Allah or a Jew’s knowledge of G_d? And, could further data upset the applecart of my own set of data, my own limited cognitive framework? Of course it can and it will, in due time. My conclusions are tentative because they are not strictly deductive; they are a matter of coherence. They are maximally plausible on the basis of the theses I have at my disposal. But the plausibility of these theses may change with further data. We see this type of growth and development–sometimes revolutionary–throughout the history of the Church. If the 10th or 14th century Church were to look into a crystal ball and see the Church in the 21st century, with its expanded understanding of human rights, the right to freedom of speech, our post-Vatican II ecumenism or pastoral approach to human beings, our understanding of the separation of Church and state, perhaps the way people dress, etc., would she be scandalized?

There are none so blind

Reflection for the 4th Sunday of Lent

@Where Peter Is

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Many years ago people would often ask me whether I thought this person or that person in the seminary was going to make a good priest, and I would readily offer my opinion. I’ve since refused to answer such questions only because I’ve been wrong far too often. This person, who I thought would make a great priest, turned out not to be, and that person who I thought would not last very long turned out to be a fine and committed priest. The fact of the matter is we simply don’t have all the information required to make a secure and accurate judgment, whether we are talking about the quality of future priests or just people in general. We are always information deficient, but we tend not to realize it. We are inclined to believe that “what you see is all there is” (availability heuristic), which is a very pervasive cognitive bias.

I used to teach the Theory of Knowledge to International Baccalaureate students, and when teaching young adults, one has to provide lots of examples, so I began to pay attention to the mistaken inferences that I would make on a daily basis and would use these as examples to illustrate the precarious nature of inductive inference. It is remarkable how many mistaken inferences we typically make every single day, but without realizing it, and that is another common bias of ours–we tend to quickly forget the times we were wrong, but the instances when we were right stand out in our memory like neon lights. Take a simple matter like forming a judgment on why a student has been late to class five days in a row: “Well, because he doesn’t really care about his education”, or “He doesn’t like my class, he’s bored”, etc., and then a short time later we discover that his mother is dying of cancer and he has to take his younger sister to school every morning, so he just can’t manage to get to school on time, let alone concentrate. These things happen all the time with us.

The first reading is a good illustration of this. David is regarded as having the lowest social standing in his family; his father and brothers thought he was the least likely to be chosen king, so they left him in the fields to do the menial work of a shepherd; he was not even included in the lineup for the prophet Samuel. Of course, this is the person whom God chose to be king of Israel. The Lord said to Samuel with regard to Eliab: “Do not judge from his appearance or from his lofty stature, because I have rejected him. Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.”

One serious problem with human beings is that we don’t like the feeling of not knowing; we insist on the feeling of possessing certain knowledge, which inclines us to settle upon unwarranted conclusions, only to vigorously defend them even when evidence is eventually brought forth that strongly suggests our judgment is mistaken. And so, it is very important to cultivate a healthy skepticism in the face of our own truth claims and remain ready to alter them if evidence demands it. Openness or open-mindedness (docility) is a very important virtue, one not easy to cultivate, especially for religious people, ironically enough.

Consider the judgment that the disciples pronounced on the man born blind, in today’s gospel reading: “As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’” This is a good example of the need to have an answer to a difficult question. Suffering is a great mystery, but it makes things so much easier if we can convince ourselves that this person is suffering misfortune because of his sins or the sins of his ancestors. Suddenly I don’t feel guilty for not making the effort to help this person, after all, his condition is a kind of punishment from God. This is a primitive mode of thinking that has not entirely disappeared. I remember quite clearly a number of people who insisted that the Covid 19 pandemic was a divine chastisement on the world for its sins. But how would one know this? How do we distinguish between the daily misfortunes that befall us personally and those that affect others or the world at large? Is a flat tire a punishment from God? Is a death in the family a punishment from God? Thankfully, Jesus corrected the disciples: “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.”

There’s an old proverb: “There are none so blind as those who will not see”. So much of our mistaken beliefs are rooted in a desire for them to be true, and so we attribute great weight to evidence that confirms them. We see this in the conversation between the man born blind and the Pharisees. They asked him how he was able to see. He told them. They asked him what he thought of the man who opened his eyes. “He is a prophet”, was his reply.

But they didn’t quite like what they were hearing. In fact, they began to doubt that was born blind, so they called his parents in and asked them. They, however, were astute and knew that if they said something the Pharisees did not want to hear, they would be made to pay in some way. They acknowledged that this was their son and that he was born blind, but to the question: “How does he now see?” they said: “Ask him, he can speak for himself”. So, the Pharisees called him back again and said: “We know that this man (Jesus) is a sinner.” The man replied: “If he is a sinner, I do not know”. He readily acknowledges his ignorance, but not the Pharisees; in their own eyes, they know. The man continued: “All I know is that I was blind and now I see”. So they asked him again: “How did he open your eyes?” At this point, it is becoming comical. The man said: “I told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?”

The man born blind has a sense of humor, and what he says to the Pharisees at this point is rather brilliant: “This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if one is devout and does his will, he listens to him. It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything” (Jn 9, 30-33).

Of course, this is not what the Pharisees wanted to hear, so before throwing him out they managed to assure him of his place: “You were born totally in sin, and are you trying to teach us?” Note the irony. Who is really blind here? Those who will not see.

St. Paul says that God chooses the weak of this world to shame the strong. To the Corinthians he writes:

Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God (1 Cor 1, 26-29).

And of course, the prime example of this is our Blessed Mother, who was nothing in her own eyes: “The Lord has looked upon the nothingness (tapeinōsis) of his handmaiden” (Lk 1, 48). That is why Mary was able to listen to Simeon and the prophet Anna at the Presentation in the temple. She was impressed by what they were saying to her; she could listen to them, because she was not elevated in her own eyes.

It’s a very dangerous place to be in to see ourselves as something. Like water, God seeks the lowest place–that’s why basements flood, not the upper levels. God is always found in the lowest places. And Mary has the highest place, she is the Queen of Angels, only because she held the lowest place in her own eyes.

Religion and Relationship

Reflection for the 3rd Sunday of Lent

Deacon Douglas McManaman

That Jesus is speaking to a Samaritan woman is quite radical; for Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Pious Jews were known to take long detours rather than walk through Samaria. It was unheard of for a Jewish man to speak with a woman in public, especially a Samaritan woman, and the disciples marveled (ethaumasan) that Jesus was speaking to her. Moreover, that Jesus was asking her for a drink was also quite radical–he was willing to use her vessel from which to drink, which would have rendered him ritually unclean. Also, he did not condemn her, knowing that she was married five times and was currently living with a man who was not her husband, but he chose to relate to her anyways, to communicate and actually drink from her container. As we can see, Jesus was not very orthodox by Jewish standards. Relationship is more important than law–i.e., the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mk 2, 27).

But what’s particularly interesting about this conversation with the Samaritan woman is the change that took place in her during the course of it. She goes from calling Jesus “Sir”, to calling him a prophet, to becoming a witness to the Samaritan villagers that he is the Messiah, and finally, the townspeople go from believing in him on the basis of her testimony to believing in him through their own personal experience of Jesus, professing him as Saviour of the world (Sir, prophet, Messiah, Saviour of the World). And this was all due to Jesus’ decision to enter into relationship with this woman, to do something contrary to religious custom, to actually communicate with her as a human being with inherent dignity. And this was typical of Jesus—after all, he entrusted the good news of the resurrection to Mary Magdalene, chose her to be the first person sent to deliver the good news of the resurrection to the rest of the disciples. His was a very unique and revolutionary way of seeing women. Incidentally, the woman at the well is venerated as Saint Photina. She was martyred under Nero, and her name means enlightened one or “shining”, which calls attention to her missionary work, bringing the light of the Gospel to those in Smyrna and Carthage. In the Eastern rite, she is venerated with the rare title “Equal to the Apostles” (Isapostolos).

But most importantly, this gospel shows clearly that true religion is not primarily about law; it is about relationship first and foremost. Both words (religion and relationship) are from the Latin religare, which means “to bind fast”. Jesus desires to enter into relationship with this woman, to give her the living water of his own divinity, but he asks that she give him the water of her humanity. That is the exchange he offers each one of us: “I will give you my divinity if you give me your humanity”, to be divinized, deified (theosis), filled with the life of grace, sharers in the divine life.

For every desire we have in our lives is ultimately a desire for God. Nothing in this world can satisfy the human heart, which is restless and is always in search of rest. The problem is that the human heart’s thirst is infinite, and nothing in this contingent universe can bring it rest, nothing except God alone. St. Augustine said it on the first page of his Confessions: “O Lord, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You”. God became flesh so that we could make our way back to God in the Person of Christ. He is the living water that alone brings rest to the human heart. For most people, it takes a lifetime to finally learn this.

I mentioned in a previous reflection that a patient I was visiting in the hospital told me about a certain person who owns a 165-million-dollar estate; this patient was utterly dismayed that someone would spend so much on himself. Later in the day I decided to do a “fact check”, and indeed he does own a 165-million-dollar estate, but that’s not all; he has three other estates in Florida, all three totaling 230 million, another property in Hawaii at 78 million, another in Washington for 23 million, and some apartments in New York City totaling 80 million. It is a strange phenomenon that the more wealth we acquire, the greater our desire for more. One would think that greater wealth would be accompanied by a corresponding decrease in desire, that one is gradually reaching the point at which one no longer feels the need for more, but it seems the opposite happens; the more wealth we acquire, the desire for more continues to increase, as if we are becoming poorer. It’s as if the heart rebels against us by desiring more, as if to tell us that we’re on the wrong track.

St. Augustine says later on in the Confessions: “O You Omnipotent Good, You care for every one of us as if you care for him only, and so for all as if they were but one!” (3.11.19). This life is about coming to know that love intimately, not just in our heads, but knowing it by experience.

There’s a wonderful story of a San Francisco physician who had a friend do some house sitting for him while he was away on vacation. When he returned, he found his friend sitting on the stairs, staring out into space. As he approached him to see if he was ok, his friend stood up, screaming, and he began hitting the doctor with a tennis racquet. The doctor lost consciousness, but when he came to, his friend had a dagger; he tried to fight him off, but he was overpowered. He then saw a hallway filled with light, and he said the love coming from this light was utterly overwhelming. He said it was so overwhelming that “this life must have something to do with learning to love like that”. But then he corrected himself: “Rather, this life must have something to do with learning to be loved like that, to allow yourself to be loved by this light”. He then adds that if anyone you know died in horrible circumstances like this, “if my experience is any indication, they did not die alone; they died in a sea of love around them”.

Sin takes on a whole new meaning for us when we have personally experienced the love that God has for us. At that point, religion is no longer a matter of observing rules, and sin is no longer the violation of a law; rather, it is the rupture of a relationship. I remember the first change that took place in me when I returned to my faith as a teenager, after having had a very personal experience of God’s intervention in my life, was that I could no longer take the Lord’s name in vain, which was habitual for me at the time. I became aware that I had God’s undivided attention at every instant of the day; I was in relationship with a Person and my actions affected this Person.

To get to that point, we have to pay attention to what God is doing in our lives, individually, in my life, your life, the particular ways that God is showing you that He loves you, that he is paying attention to you, giving you his undivided attention, to become more aware of the blessings he pours out upon us at every moment, that is, allow ourselves to be loved by him and allow that love to awaken us and bring us to life. Then we begin to taste a tiny portion of the joy of heaven, for that experience is very much like finding a great treasure in a field, and we will be ready and willing to give up everything in order to purchase that field so as to never lose that treasure.

Fire and Rain

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_443fireandrain.html

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

These are wonderful readings and there is so much to cover, but no time to do so. If this were a Pentecostal or Baptist Church, maybe–they tend to preach for 40 minutes. Something tells me you wouldn’t appreciate that. But the readings this Sunday emphasize the importance of keeping the commandments. In the first reading, we read: “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and they will save you. If you trust in God, you too shall live. The Lord has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose”.

Now, as St. Paul says, the law does not save (Rm 8, 3). We are not saved by the works of the law, but by faith (see Eph 2, 8), but these verses seem to suggest otherwise–that we are saved by our works. Both are right. If you have a living faith, which according to St. Augustine is fides cum dilectionem (faith that works through love), your life will bear fruit in charity: love of God and love of neighbour. If I love God, I will love what God loves, and God loves each one of us as if there is only one of us, as if you are the only being in existence to love. As St. Augustine says in his Confessions: “O thou Omnipotent Good, thou carest for every one of us as if thou didst care for him only, and so for all as if they were but one!” (3.11.19). And the commandments are nothing but the concrete implications of the love of God and the love of neighbor. The first three commandments have to do with God, the last seven have to do with our neighbor. This means that God is first. Do not worship any gods but the Lord your God; to worship is to make the center of your life. The most beloved gods today are money, security, my own comfort, pleasure, sex, popularity and power. These gods must be placed on the backburner, and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who revealed himself in the Person of Christ, must take their place.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? …So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’…Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides (Mt 6, 25-34).

There it is. Put God first, and all other things will be provided. Seek first his righteousness, his justice, that is, his will. That’s it. Why is there so much evil, so much suffering and darkness in the world? Because people do not put God first, they worry too much about themselves, and so they end up putting themselves first, and others second. When that happens, our life slowly begins to fall apart.

We’ve heard the old expression: ‘You are what you eat’. No, rather, you are what you love. In other words, you are what you worship. You are exactly what you have made the center of your existence. The more God becomes the center of your existence, the more God radiates through your life, and the more the self decreases in importance in your own eyes. You and I begin to love what God loves, and the less there is of you, and the more God occupies that place once occupied by you, the more you will live in his joy, because God is joy itself.

As was mentioned, if I love God, I will love what he loves. What does He love? He loves every human person that he has created, brought into this world, and redeemed by the death and resurrection of his Son. He loves them so much that he identifies with each one of them, especially the least of them, the most destitute, so much so that what we do to them, we do to him. If God loves each one of us as if there is only one of us to love, then we must learn to love each person as if that person is the only person to love.

Our culture does not understand this. Speaking generally, we value people on the basis of their quality of life, and when we value something according to its quality, we value it according to its usefulness. A television of low quality will cost less, for it is less useful. Once it no longer functions properly, it is of no value, to be tossed out and replaced by a newer and more useful model. That’s how we as a culture have begun to treat human beings. Many in the medical profession have adopted this mentality, which is the opposite of a “sanctity of life” mentality that regards human life as sacred, of immeasurable value, created by God.

We know from Scripture that your life is the breath of God. In the second chapter of Genesis, we read that “the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”. Your life is holy, because it (the soul) comes directly from God, brought into being by a unique and singular act of creation by God. Your value does not decrease as you get older, more frail, less able to do the things you used to do. Your value does not decrease if you were to lose your ability to walk and communicate intelligently with others. Every week as part of my ministry I visit a person with Alzheimer’s who used to be an Emergency room doctor just two floors below in the same hospital where he is now. His life is just as immeasurable in value as it was when he was a practicing physician taking care of patients. Of course, many people today do not see that nor agree with that, but believe that at this point, medical personnel should be available to put an end to his life and others like him, with proper consent.

If we don’t begin looking at human beings from God’s point of view, as people created in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the death and resurrection of Christ, then we will inevitably look upon human beings with that quality of life mentality that believes that as the quality of life lessens, the value of the person lessons. Then we begin to see them as useless eaters. When we see people like that as useless eaters, we no longer look upon them through the eyes of love. We no longer love them for their sake, but for the sake of what they do for us as a society. Are they productive? Do they contribute in any way?

They are not productive in the way we typically employ that word, but what these people do, whether we are talking about Alzheimer’s patients, or Down Syndrome children, developmentally disabled people, etc., is they provide us with the opportunity to love them for their own sake, to learn to love human beings for their sake alone, not for the sake of what they can do for me or for society at large. We never really love another person unless we love them for their sake, not for the sake of what they do for us. I love food primarily for what food does for me–it tastes good, and it is good for my health. But I don’t really love food. As St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out, we don’t destroy what we love, but we destroy food when we eat it. When I say I love food, what I mean is I love myself, I love it for what it does for me.

When we love human beings for what they do for us, we love ourselves primarily. If we love human beings whose spirit is the breath of God, then we won’t destroy them. We won’t be able to destroy them, kill them, give them a lethal injection to put them out of their misery. We can certainly administer medications that treat pain even if our pain management has the effect of shortening their lives, but we don’t eliminate pain by eliminating the patient. Willingly destroying a human life is contrary to love, even if it is in accordance with a person’s will. If someone who was severely depressed asked me to take this gun or that needle and put them out of their misery by killing them, they are asking me to do something incompatible with love. It might feel like love, but we don’t destroy what we love. God alone is the Lord of human life, and he commands us not to kill. He does, however, allow us to reject his will, but he warns us that doing so has repercussions: “I put before you fire and water. Stretch out your hand for whichever you choose”. If we stretch out our hand to the fire, it will burn and destroy us. Water, on the other hand, is life giving. We are what we love. If we choose death, we die. But if we choose life, we live.