The Great Flood

Lourdes is underwater.  

For the second time in less than a year, the little French mountain town is submerged in an unexpected and dangerous deluge. Dark, muddy waters of the Gave de Pau roar around—and almost above—the rocky little grotto where the Blessed Virgin appeared to Bernadette Soubirous.

These latest flash floods come just after the French government let loose a different kind of flood—the legalization of gay marriage. The same France Our Lady chose as a special site of healing is inundated with a torrential wave of sickening relativism regarding love and marriage. The meaning of marriage has been desecrated, and the French must now accept a distorted form of lust as “marriage,” must not assert that this sacred bond only belongs between one man and one woman. The voice of reason has been drowned out. The destructive floods drowning Lourdes are not a consequence of the political decision; but they are an apt sign of it.

In the United States, we are facing a similar flood. This week, the Supreme Court will decide whether to legalize gay marriage. Disney just okayed the first gay couple in its children’s TV shows. The Boy Scouts succumbed to cultural pressures to approve open gays in their ranks. The Pew Research Center just released a study revealing the striking media bias in favor of gay marriage. In short, everywhere you look, the falsehood that homosexuality is normal and praiseworthy and should be revered as socially acceptable as “marriage” is emblazoned across our newspapers and computer screens, proclaimed aloud from secular pulpits and flaunted with arrogant “pride” in our streets. The high tide of support for the gay agenda is overwhelming.

It is tempting to feel that our society will be swept away in this deluge: that the waters pounding about our ears will push down and wipe out our social sanity—a cultural Katrina for our country.  But in the midst of this rising tide, and thinking of the waters rising round our Lady’s feet at Lourdes in the wake of France’s sad new decision, we ought to remember another flood—a flood strangely connected by symbol to the one which we face now: the flood of Noah.

There is, perhaps, no little irony in the fact that the flag chosen by those who push gay rights was once chosen by God as a promise of hope to mankind: a rainbow.  The emblem which, for them, proclaims allegiance to a barren and self-destructive act, was once the herald of new life and fruitfulness for the scion of humanity stepping off the ark onto new ground. It was the promise of God that He would never flood the whole earth again.

It once proclaimed the end of the flood; now it proclaims its coming.

And yet, now, when the rainbow is a banner over the tide of those forcing their redefinition of love and marriage down our throats, there is a new and subtler significance in the symbol.  Noah’s stolen rainbow cannot be fully usurped. It remains for us, even now, a sign of hope.  Even as they wave it in our faces as a proclamation of their hellish new world, where sin calls itself love and authentic love is labeled hate, we see it and are reminded of its original meaning. It is still a promise. God does not and will not abandon us. There is hope amidst the flood.

Which brings us back to Lourdes. I visited Lourdes a mere week and a half after the murky floodwaters of last October swirled over the spot the Blessed Virgin chose for a sacred stream. Even as I arrived, the waters streamed from the sky in bitterly cold, torrential rains.

But that did not stop the faithful. In the freezing mountain rain and mist, pilgrims still gathered for the evening candlelight rosary procession outside the basilica. My glasses fogging in the cold, my jeans soaked through from the icy puddles pooling up at the altar of the snow-white Virgin, I was deeply moved by the incredible devotion of the many pilgrims who had gathered to pray. The floods had passed, and the faithful prayed on.

The waters of this cultural tide will leave wreckage and havoc in their wake. As if to remind us of God’s promise that the waters will not overwhelm us, a rainbow shines out in the very center of the battle, giving us hope even from our attackers. And while the waters still roar about us, when our prayers are lifted in hope, we ought to remember another promise, to the man who prays to God in time of distress: “The floodwaters may reach high, but him they shall not reach” (Psalm 32:6). Just as for the faithful at Lourdes, these waters will pass, and our prayers will continue. The clouds will break. The waters will subside. And God’s promise will shine in sky, untarnished—still our symbol of hope.

Gave de Pau in Lourdes

Blind

“Oh, no,” I thought, as I pulled into the church parking lot in search of a Mass. “Here we go again. The 60s in all their glory.”   Against the morning sky, the irregular silhouette of the brick building looked nothing like a church.

Abandon Hope, all ye who enter here.

I passed through the vast lobby into the angular church: sterile, bare, and plain. The one artistic touch was the stained glass windows, but I’m pretty sure I had seen them before--in the nightmare I had after reading Dante’s Inferno. Worst of all, behind the sanctuary the brown brick wall was broken only by a large, white square. The boring stucco outline reminded me vaguely of a parking garage. No colors, no aesthetic appeal. Just a blank backdrop.

To be fair, what the church lacked in design, the priest made up for in reverence. While I find it hard to feel I’m in a church when the decor tells me I’m in a town hall or modern art museum, by the consecration the “jaws-of-hell” stained glass windows had ceased to distract me.

But suddenly, as the priest raised the consecrated host above his head, it disappeared. I blinked in astonishment. Against the blank cream-white square of the sanctuary, the cream-white host was virtually invisible. “Behold the Lamb of God,” proclaimed the priest, as I could behold nothing but his raised hands and arms stretched up above the altar.  Just as I made an act of faith that the host was no longer bread but the Body of my Lord and God, so too I had to make an act of faith that the host was even there.  I simply could not see it.  My mind raced back to Thomas. “Blessed are those who do not see, but believe.”

Coming out of that church, I realized: when you paint your world one color, all distinctions and meanings disappear.  As I mused upon my invisible God and my blindness caused by the bad backdrop, it reminded me of another kind of blindness I encounter every day. “Why can’t they see?” I have cried in disbelief at the headlines I read this week. Radical gay-agenda activists are ranting more and more about “marriage equality,” and daily I discover that for many people, who man is and the purpose of sexuality have disappeared. They have gone blind.

What to me always has been, and always will be, an obvious and self-evident truth, is to them simply invisible. “Love is love,” they declare--a tautology disguising their ignorance of what love means. Their blindness is all-encompassing. Men can be women. Women can be men. Even children are sexualized to push the gender-destroying agenda. It is truly heartbreaking to witness their open-eyed delusion and wonder how they can be shown the truth.

LGBT activists chose a rainbow as their emblem, but I believe a blank, single color--like the wall of a parking garage--would be much more appropriate. They use one and only one standard by which to measure their actions: sexual satisfaction. Human nature, the love of God, natural order written in our heart--none of this matters to them. All that matters is the satisfaction of their sensual desires, even if they are self-destructive and unnatural. Blinded by their overriding misconception of love, they cannot see the reality of the love of God.

Ignoring the contrasts and harmonies of men and women in their God-intended roles, they obliterate distinctions between genders. They level all things by one crooked ruler, paint all the earth one color, all one theme: so it is not surprising that their ability to see the truth disappears. They deliberately discard the context in which sexuality is meant to be understood; so they cannot see what sexuality actually means.  Sex is for two inseparable ends: the loving union between a man and a woman in a permanent relationship, and the procreation of children as the fruit of that love. If you reject that--as we did in the 60s when we embraced contraception in our marriages and modern art in our churches--then the authentic context is gone and the truth disappears. Divorce, abortion, and gay marriage logically follow as steps along a blind path, deprived of the light of truth.

Soon the Supreme Court will decide whether to legalize gay marriage in the United States, and gay rights activists are pushing hard to erase all lines between men and women. Against the backdrop of their disordered desires, God's design disappears and they can no longer see the truth; and they want everyone else to see it their way, too.

But though many will keep telling me, when it comes to differences between men and women, that there is nothing there to see--just as some tell me the Eucharist is only bread--I believe that men and women are intrinsically different. I believe God made it that way. And I believe that that is not only incredibly good, but incredibly beautiful. It may be a long time before we leave behind the inheritance of the 60s, the backdrop which robbed our churches of their designed beauty and threatens to rob our marriages of their beautiful design. But I know that even if we cannot see the restoration of truth in society, the truth is still there. The Lamb of God is still raised on high, invisible though He may be, and He still shall take away the sins of our dark, blind world.

Not Waving But Drowning

--a version of my article was also published at Catholic Exchange today.

 

British author Stevie Smith (1902-1971) once penned a striking poem called “Not Waving But Drowning.” The poem retells a real-life incident in which a man swimming at a beach began to drown; when his friends on the shore saw him gesticulating wildly, they misinterpreted his signals for help as cheerful waving at them:

Nobody heard him, the dead man,

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought

And not waving, but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

 . . .

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always  

 . . .

I was much too far out all my life  

And not waving but drowning.

Smith’s poem hints at the unhappy truth that human perception is flawed; that there is too often a disparity between the way we perceive someone and the reality about them. In fact, frequently what we see of another person’s life is not merely different from but totally opposed to the real story.

It was exactly this grim poem about misperception that came to my mind when I opened my Facebook page and contemplated a sickening social ill splattered like a headline across the top of my news feed.

A woman I know in her 20s was bombarding Facebook with pictures of herself kissing her boyfriend, bragging about how happy she is shacking up with this year’s bedmate. How she’s so much in love. How nothing on earth could make her happier than being the live-in girlfriend of this hottie hunk of man—unless a cure could be found for the cramps her contraception gave her from time to time.

My heart ached at this depressing situation, and yet this was only one example of an all-too-common problem: that many young people I’ve encountered appear happy and content to live on a strange level of unreality: the world of sexual license and self-serving materialism. Some have dived so deep into this secular worldview it seems unlikely they’ll ever resurface to sanity. Atheism, agnosticism, and anti-religious sentiments are prevalent in my generation. Getting drunk is a good time; sexual sins are not sins to them; hook-ups, contraception, and gay marriage are the norm of “love”; and anyone who objects to these things is a narrow-minded bigot.  They seem satisfied that their notions of true happiness apparently reach no higher than owning the newest iPhone, beating the latest video game, or achieving a romantic relationship that resembles the Twilight series.

I realized, however, that, just like the people on the shore in Stevie Smith’s poem, my perception of this situation is not quite accurate. External signs of happiness, “wavings” in which the obstinately-secular flaunt before the world what they profess makes them happy (such as the hooked-up couple whose “love” is not grounded in a life-long commitment before God, or the college student who denies the existence of God and seems overjoyed at purchasing a newer piece of technology or attending the midnight premiere of the latest blockbuster)—these external trappings of happiness and high emotions are signs not of flourishing but of failing; of empty souls slowly drowning in a world flooded by materialism.

People who have plunged into this secular mindset aren’t really doing what will leave them satisfied. Alcohol, drugs, and extra-marital sex can’t actually give lasting happiness or lead to human fulfillment; they just effect a cheap imitation of joy for a very short time. And people who seek nothing higher will ultimately find themselves lost, unhappy, and restless, with bitter hearts and broken lives. The material pleasures with which they surround themselves are not happiness, but only empty replacements for the deeper joy of vocation and virtue—and will leave the souls who embrace them still floundering for something real to cling to.

The contracepting couple without the grace of the sacrament of Marriage to keep them going in tough times probably won’t still be together when they’re middle-aged, let alone next year.  The young atheists in times of suffering will fumble for some humanitarian meaning to life that will eventually leave them cold and seeking satisfaction elsewhere. Even if at the moment they seem quite content with their situation, that’s not the whole story.  We don’t see the damage they’re doing to their own hearts; hearts flailing for help because they’re not yet in the right place. The tragedy is that, unlike the poet’s dead man, they don’t seem to realize it. They’ve been much too far out all their lives; and they are not waving, but drowning.  

#YOLO

“It was a crazy night but . . . y’know. YOLO.”

UrbanDictionary.com defines “YOLO” as an acronym for “You Only Live Once,” and says it is “mainly used to defend doing something ranging from mild to extreme stupidity.” The new term recently rose into popular parlance after its use in a rapper’s song, and went viral across the cyber sphere as a Twitter craze; #YOLO has become a buzzword for crazy, irresponsible behavior. Got drunk last night at the party? Well, YOLO. Got a tattoo? Did some dangerous stunt? Tried meth? Spent $1,000 on shoes?  Oh, y’know, you only live once. Carpe Diem. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. YOLO.

When I first heard this phrase, and the way it is commonly used, it brought to my mind the day, not long ago, when I attended the funeral of a young man named Andre. I had never met him, but I had been following his story for several years. He was only 16.

In the middle of 8^th grade, Andre was unexpectedly diagnosed with leukemia. This summer, after several years of intensive chemo and painful complications, Andre’s earthly body failed him, and he passed away.

His funeral was deeply moving, and at the same time, it had a note of joy; because in spite of all the suffering—the unimaginable suffering of his illness, and the deep sorrow of his family—Andre lived life to the fullest. His family testifies that he was a miracle of moral strength and incomparable faith. He never stopped hoping that he would be healed; he continued his studies, took up new hobbies, was thankful for the blessings he had. He kept on each day doing as he ought to have done. Friends and family spoke of his beautiful smile, his determination, his love.

As I said before, I never knew Andre personally. But as I sat there listening to the testimony of his faith, marveling at his amazing trust in God's plan for him, it struck me that, while perhaps other may have experienced more than he did, this young man did more with his less-than-seventeen years than many people do with seventy.

He didn’t get to go to college. He never even had the normal “high school experience.” He was confined to a hospital bed for much of the last two years of his life. But he had only one life to live, and he made it a life worth living, by putting his all into everything he did, his love for his family, and whatever trial or task God put before him.

Many would say that Andre had a low “quality of life,” and would pity him because his sufferings prevented him from doing many things.  Such people take “quality of life” as a sort of measure of how much a person is able to enjoy or experience; which is why people say that someone without money for luxuries, or someone who is wheel-chair bound, has a not-so-wonderful quality of life. That particular view of life is what drives YOLO-ists. You only live once. You only have one shot at getting as high as you can, doing daringly stupid activities, experiencing different things in this life to the fullest, they say.

But do people with that attitude comprehend what it really means to say “You Only Live Once?”  On my deathbed, would I be glad if I had done those sorts of things? “Gee, I’m awful happy I won that drinking contest. And my life would have been so much less awesome if I hadn’t gone bungee jumping, or partied it up that one spring break.”

Wouldn’t I rather ask myself, “Did I spend my days well? Will my friends and family have been blessed to know me? Have I given my all for what I believed in? Have I loved others as much as I can, given of myself to help them as much as I can? How has my love borne fruit in my life and in the lives of others?”

Because in the end, it isn’t what wild experiences you had that matters; ultimately, what will matter is how you lived through each ordinary day, whether you lived a worthy life, glorifying God in all you did and pursuing Him with all your might. Yes, it can be hard; it will probably mean less cheap thrills and more living for things that really matter in an ordinary life of work and prayer--maybe even bearing terrible crosses, as Andre did--all for the sake of a far more lasting joy. It will take time, and effort, and giving your all to love to the fullest for God. But, y’know . . . you’ve got one chance. Just do it. YOLO.


 

You Can't Take It With You

“You know, Grandpa says most people nowadays are run by fear. Fear of what they eat, fear of what they drink, fear of their jobs, their future, fear of their health. They're scared to save money, and they're scared to spend it.  . . . People who commercialize on fear—you know, they scare you to death so they can sell you something you don't need.”

These words, spoken by dauntless stenographer Alice in director Frank Capra’s 1938 film You Can’t Take It With You, could easily be a snapshot of modern society. The standards set today for a contemporary man, or a contemporary family, drive people to chase certain goals: having a certain kind of car, or a smartphone, or a perfect figure. Consumers dread falling short of the commercial ideal—even if they already possess all that is necessary for a happy life. Yet, they would do well to heed Alice’s inherited wisdom, because, in the face of modern materialism, Capra’s light-hearted You Can’t Take It With You rather boldly aims to redefine personal success and failure. A soul whose sights are set on material success, the film points out, ultimately loses its joy in living.

The story revolves—rather uniquely—not around the two young lovers, Alice and wealthy banker’s son Tony Kirby, but around the heads of their two families and the contrast between their personal philosophies. On the one hand is Anthony P. Kirby, successful businessman disconnected from his wife and son.  On the other is Grandpa Vanderhoff, a father-figure whose zest for life is the heart of his family.

As the story begins, Tony’s single-minded, business mogul father is about to close a major deal, while, one room away, Tony is wooing pretty secretary Alice. When Tony’s mother tells his father about it, Kirby puts the matter aside as unimportant. The real center of his day, the reason he gets up in the morning and goes to work, is not his family, but his business.  Grandpa Vanderhoff’s day, by contrast, is marked by acts of simple wonder at and delight in life: sharing a bag of popcorn, taking a walk in the park, sliding down a banister. He takes a genuine interest in the people he meets. Beginning a conversation with a clerk, he learns the clerk hates his job but has a special talent for toy-making, and invites the man home to dinner—and home to stay. “The same One [takes care of us],” Grandpa explains to him, “that takes care of the lilies of the field, except that we toil a little, spin a little, have a barrel of fun.”

Though his notions may seem foolishly idealistic, he simply has his priorities straight: if pursuing material success destroys a man’s happiness and love for life, it’s not worth doing. Unconventionally, each person in Grandpa’s household chooses whatever enables them to best fulfill their role as members of a family, joyfully—not whatever brings them the most success. Their lives are by no means idyllic; as Vanderhoff says, they “toil a little, and spin a little.”  The family cannot scrape together one hundred dollars when asked to do so; there are even hints there have been harder times in the past. Yet, although the family lives hand-to-mouth; they are content doing so. They are happy, because they are not afraid of material failure; they concern themselves with a more important kind of success. What exactly that success is—and what exactly failure is—only becomes clear when Tony’s upper-crust parents come into direct conflict with the Alice’s colorful family.

Everyone in Tony’s life pursues material goals and consequently lives in perpetual fear. Tony’s father is afraid of failure at any step as a businessman. Tony’s mother is afraid that her son’s middle-class love interest will take a feather out of her social cap. And their associate Ramsey is the tragic portrait of a man so consumed by material business fears that it eventually quite literally kills him. Tony himself ultimately admits to Alice that fear of failure keeps him from pursuing what he really wants in life instead of simply conforming to the social expectations. “It takes courage,” he says, “You know everybody’s afraid to live.”

Such fears so deteriorate the relationships in his father’s life that eventually his father must face the bitter truth about himself: he is, as Grandpa Vanderhoff points out in a very rare outburst of righteous anger, a failure. When Kirby vehemently rejects Alice’s family and their whole class as scum, Vanderhoff loses his temper for the first time in 30 years:

“You're an idiot, Mr. Kirby,” he cries, “What makes you think you're such a superior human being? Your money? If you do, you're a dull-witted fool . . . And a poor one at that. You're poorer than any of these people you call scum, because I'll guarantee at least they've got some friends. . . . You'll wind up your miserable existence without anything you can call friend. You may be a high mogul to yourself, but to me you're a failure - failure as a man, failure as a human being, even a failure as a father.”

In Grandpa Vanderhoff’s eyes, you can’t take it with you. Fears and undue concerns for material success are ultimately irrelevant, as he sees it, because material success cannot last. Capra’s film explores how success in the world’s eyes may mean failure in reality; and failure in the world’s eyes may mean success at what is most important.  It presents a striking perspective on the fear instilled in the soul by materialism—particularly relevant in an increasingly materialistic society, as it undermines the commercial messages which pervade modern life. As Capra carefully makes clear, those who trust in God, like the lilies of the field, need not be anxious about material things, what they are to eat or what they are to wear—for the most successful businessman in all his material splendor was not arrayed in joy as one of these.

A Thing Worth Doing Badly

 Stepping into a strange church for Sunday Mass is invariably an adventure that evokes no little amount of trepidation; it is extremely difficult to know what to expect. So, two weeks ago, as a visitor in a strange town, I found myself wondering rather nervously what kind of Mass I had walked into. Would there be a borderline heretical homily? Sketchy changes to the words of the Mass? Liturgical dancers? 

At first it seemed like it would be middle-of-the-road: a quiet Midwestern parish with a school attached. The interior had obviously been built or redone in the 60’s, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, and it looked like the Mass would be conducted fairly well.

Until the music started.

From the opening hymn to the recessional, the entire Mass was accompanied by a lone soprano pounding bravely away on an electric organ, backed up by a heavy-handed snare drum. The hymns were all from the ‘70s and ‘80s: something about peace, and celebrating, and justice, and we are one people, and harmony—all punctuated by loud raps on the drum. “Let us build the city of God (BOOM-chh-BOOM) may our tears be turned into dancing (BOOM BOOM).” I gritted my teeth, closed my eyes, and strained all my attention to focus on the readings, the homily (which was decent), and the holy sacrifice of the Mass—all to no avail. When the final “Thanks be to God” was muttered—full of genuine gratitude, on my part, that it was over—and the congregation crowded quickly out of their pews and into the parking lot, I staggered out into the sunshine feeling as though I’d just been subjected to the very dregs of liturgical artistry.

Now, come to think of it, I have heard some genuinely dreadful liturgical music in my time, both lyrically painful (“Lord of the Dance,” anyone?) and musically inappropriate (saxophone jazz at the Easter Vigil), but this Mass marked a particularly depressing milestone in my experience. It wasn’t just the inane lyrics; it wasn’t just the Disney-esque, vague ‘70s melody; it was the fact that, in addition to already being bad music, it was done so badly.

I wondered why this fact was what had made the music so distracting and frustrating to me, and I remembered that “A thing worth doing,” as G.K. Chesterton once said, “is worth doing badly.” This essentially means that if something is worth doing, then it is still worth doing even if we’re not very good at doing it. Take, for instance, my kitchen garden. It’s not acres of rich, abundantly fruitful lands that yield bucket-loads of harvest; it’s a little square of Southern clay with a few scraggly vegetables vines and a berry bush or two. But growing a garden, planting seeds and reaping the fruit of your own labor, is a thing worth doing, so it’s worth doing even if one is not wildly successful at it.  Learning how to paint is something worth doing—even if the artist isn’t a Rembrandt or Michelangelo. Writing is likewise something worth doing, even if it’s done rather badly—which is my excuse, anyway.

But, on the other hand, I think it would be safe to propose a corollary to Chesterton’s principle: if a thing worth doing is worth doing badly, then a thing not worth doing is not worth doing badly. It’s not worth it to fight a war over a mile of territory; it is doubly idiotic to wage such a war badly. It’s not worth doing to plant a tree in the middle of the desert where it does not belong; it would be even less of a worthy task to badly botch the job of planting the tree.

I would not have minded the mind-numbingly-mediocre music at Mass half so much, I think, had it been good music done badly. If the most a parish could get was a cantor singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” a capella, then very well: singing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” is a thing worth doing. If all that the music ministry has to offer, however, is bad music done badly, then it would be better to have no music at all. Insipid liturgical hymns from the ‘60s onward are not worth doing, nor is a snare drum snapping an electric organ into meter. Why, then, must we have these things at all? Would not a reverent silence be far more conducive to prayer, to raising the mind and heart to God?  

Such, at least, were my thoughts as the last pounding strains of “Here In This Place” faded away and I exited the Mass that Sunday, hoping desperately that somehow the Church will see a renewal of beautiful liturgical music—done well—in my lifetime. It will mean something of a revolution: throwing out the banal hymnals and the drums; putting more time and greater effort into seeking out good musicians, and cultivating the taste of younger generations to appreciate more traditional hymns. Meanwhile, I am resolved to stoke the fires of that revolution, by making it clear that the bad music done poorly has to go: give me good music at Mass (even done badly) or give me death—I mean, silence.

 

On Getting a Haircut and Social Networking

Author's note: an updated version of this article was recently published on Catholic Exchange, so I've replaced the old version here with the new version.

Once in a blue moon, I get my hair cut at a hair salon, and last week afforded me one of those rare occasions. The lady who cut my hair was a thin middle-aged woman with a stiff dark bob and arms heavily splattered with a rainbow of tattoos. She was efficient and excellent at her job; she also was sensitive to the fact that I, unlike many of her customers, was not a “talker,” so she resorted to talking to the other stylists as she combed and cut my hair. 

“I had a dream last night that I was pregnant again,” she laughed, turning to the woman on her right.

“Oh, Lord . . .” groaned her companion, shaking her head.

“I know, isn’t that nuts,” my stylist replied. Glancing at me in the mirror, she explained that she had sterilized herself years previously. “So it’s like not even possible,” she said.   

I squirmed uncomfortably as the conversation swiftly moved on to other topics. Somehow I felt guilty at having missed an opportunity. There sat I, a Catholic young adult with a solid Catholic education under my belt, one of the John Paul II generation that was supposed to change the world and restore all things in Christ. And I couldn’t even bring up morality in front of my hairdresser as she casually dismissed the sacred, life-giving powers of human sexuality. I just sat there, shrinking behind my big black cape and trying to melt into the salon chair.

As much as I failed to do so, I did desperately want to plant a seed, ask a question, open up an opportunity. That’s the way personal evangelization starts—or so I’m told, because, as you probably have guessed, I’m awfully bad at it. When face-to-face with a chance to speak the truth to one who thinks differently, I always seem to utterly flub it. I miss the cue and fail to speak before the topic changes, or I cannot think of what to say until hours later.

If that sort of evangelization was the only kind out there, I would be, to put it mildly, sunk. But fortunately for people like me, in our day and age, when every faithful Catholic is called upon to be a witness for Christ in a world that has rejected Him, there is a multitude of other chances, in many different fields and through many approaches. In particular, in these times there is an immeasurably vast new ground to be won for Christ, and Pope Benedict XVI has been particularly vocal in urging young Catholics to use the new tools at their disposal to evangelize that new world.

I’m speaking, of course, of the internet. There is incredible potential for evangelization in social networking like Facebook, in YouTube, in the blogging world, in Twitter. Those of us who can use these tools, who maybe even are skilled at using them, have an increasingly important responsibility to use them well, to use them for the greater glory of God. Although they are most often used to transmit secular messages, these sites can and should be used to actively proclaim the truth.  As our contemporaries, dissatisfied and longing for happiness, wander about the cyber-world seeking not only entertainment but fulfillment, we should be out there letting them know where that abiding fulfillment can be found: in Christ.

Take Facebook, for instance. It’s a social networking stream that, if not heavily polluted, can at least be pretty pointless—a hub of mindless procrastination. But precisely because it can reach so many people, it’s a perfect outlet for Christians to witness to the truth—to post about it, talk about it, proclaim it in that very public world by showing that they’re not afraid to identify themselves with their Faith and show the world what living the Christian life looks like. Catholics on Facebook can share their faith experiences with those who otherwise may never come into contact with faithful Christianity.  Moreover, because social networking is exactly that—a network—when someone connects with one person who lives the Faith to the fullest, he often quickly comes into contact with a whole group of others who are doing the same. For that reason, Catholics can use the same outlet to actively spread the Catholic position on key issues. For instance, I know an actively pro-life young woman who frequently posts pro-life images and news to her Facebook feed—and all of her “friends,” and her “friends of friends,” Christian, agnostic, or whatever, pro-life and pro-choice alike, will stumble across that taste of the truth as they browse their Facebook Newsfeed over their morning coffee—and even more people will see it if it has “likes” or comments.

That’s just one small example; but there are many other avenues of using new media for Christ that are rapidly rising in importance and influence. Catholic bloggers have in recent years dramatically increased the volume of the Catholic voice on the web on political issues, pro-life and pro-family topics.  Catholic magazines and news sites that have moved online in recent years are now reaching a much larger audience. Young adults gifted with video-editing skills have also taken huge strides in promulgating the faith to an image-and-sound-byte driven world. Such tools and opportunities are available for free to everyone with internet access; so virtually every Catholic has the chance to make the best of them. On the web, we can also expand our ability to evangelize in new media by connecting with and supporting other Catholics across the world in ways we were never able to do previously, so that together we can speak about Christ to a generation that is giving Him the cold shoulder.

St. Paul in Athens

It’s not my charism to argue apologetics over the fence with my Baptist neighbor or catechize my hairdresser on sexual morality as she evens out my bangs. There are gifted individuals that can do that, and it’s a special responsibility they are called to exercise prudently; I hope that maybe it’s a skill I can pick up with time. But right now, for those of us who aren’t so adept at being vocal in those situations but still want to be Christian witnesses, there are thousands of less time-sensitive opportunities right at our fingertips. Across the internet, young adult Catholics who understand this new world have a special opportunity to proclaim Christ, to speak the truth, and to get the message of the Gospel “out there” where our secular counterparts can find it.

Adele, Fulton Sheen, and the "Hookup Culture"

The artists of our world, Fulton J. Sheen once said, have a special role; they often are the first to perceive—and point out—the real problems in a society. Artists don’t necessarily offer solutions to modern problems—but the best of them invariably identify and put before the public exactly what those problems are. This is possible because through art man can be brought to understand that what is evil is ugly (and, by contrast, that what is good is beautiful), even if he intellectually is having difficulty agreeing that what is evil is wrong. 

Lately, I’ve encountered a recent illustration of Sheen’s point; and I may begin by recalling the name popularly attributed to our society: “the hook-up culture.” Our world has seen no less than four decades of skewed moral vision when it comes to romance, since the sexual revolution of the 60s. And now, two or three generations later, the artists of our day are beginning to point out the nasty afterbirth of the free love, hookup mentality in a very provocative way. Modern musicians especially, often themselves deeply imbued with popular notions of sexuality and love, are unmistakably starting to outline the current generation’s desolate frustration and deep-seated dissatisfaction with the hookup lifestyle--in fact, it is arguably the dominant theme of pop-music from artists who write their own songs. Years of rushing into sexual relationships, inevitable and bitter breakups, have left their scars on them, and it’s coming through in their music, perfectly detailing how painful “free love” is in reality.

One such case is probably a British pop-star that has hit the top of the music world in the last few years: Adele.  This contralto’s powerful soul-style songs, which successfully rocked the boat of the American music world, have led the charts for a long while now. And they are almost all depressing. With the exception of some hopeful, committed-to-love kind of songs (like “Make You Feel My Love”), Adele’s pieces are almost exclusively—and all of her top hits are definitely—tortured, frustrated breakup songs. Her music plumbs human heartbreak, exploring the whole wild and wicked scale of tangled emotions and passions: from burning emotional desolation, to sorrowful unwillingness to let go of the past in spite of the pain, to furious, bitter vengefulness.  Invariably at the root of the anguish in these songs is a background story of having let another soul come close in love, of having given away oneself to another, only to have that gift and that sort of “love” necessarily destroyed in a culture that treats relationships as “hookups.” “Rolling in the Deep” is probably Adele’s most famous, and some fans might balk at the idea of it’s being a mark of the hookup culture. Musically, the piece is enjoyable, almost Diana Ross or Mo-Town style, but the lyrics betray that the sentiment of vengeance expressed is neither a normal nor healthy way to end any relationship:

See how I'll leave, with every piece of you

Don't underestimate the things that I will do           

 . . .

Baby, I have no story to be told

But I’ve heard one of you and I’m gonna make your head burn,

. . . .

Think of me in the depths of your despair

Making a home down there, as mine sure won't be shared.

The message beneath the music plainly conveys a firestorm of fury; although the source is somewhat vague in “Rolling in the Deep,” another Adele song about heartbreak, “Set Fire To the Rain,” sheds a little light on the situation. “Set Fire to the Rain” comes from the same album, 21, which Adele supposedly wrote about her breakup with her lover of two years, and tells her story of passionate “falling in love,” consequent breakup, and ends with some disturbing imagery describing the singer’s sense of betrayal:  

When I lay with you

I could stay there

Close my eyes

Feel you here forever

You and me together

Nothing is better 

 . . . there's a side to you

That I never knew, never knew,

All the things you'd say,

They were never true, never true,

And the games you play

You would always win, always win. 

 . . . . . .

I set fire to the rain

And I threw us into the flames

And I felt something die

'Cause I knew that that was the last time!

Although less famous than Adele, another striking artist rapidly rising in popularity is Ingrid Michaelson, whose music betrays at the same time a desperate longing for fulfillment and a painful realization that a hookup lifestyle leaves one unfulfilled. “The Way I Am,” certainly her most popular song, describes a desire for committed, faithful love:

If you were falling, I would catch you;

You need a light, I’ll find a match . . .

If you are chilly, here, take my sweater;

Your head is aching, I’ll make it better

Because . . . you take me the way I am.

While she sings of fidelity and commitment, however, Michaelson also recounts how scarred living a free love lifestyle can leave a person, in her less-well-known, post-breakup song, “Starting Now”: 

I want to crawl back inside my bed of sin
I want to burn the sheets that smell like your skin
Instead I'll wash them just like kitchen rags with stains
Spinning away every piece that remains of you
But before you finally go there's one thing you should know: that I promise
Starting now I'll never know your name
Starting now I'll never feel the same
Starting now I wish you never came into my world
It's my world, it's not ours anymore.

There is a tangible pain and bitterness in these shocking lines, which simultaneously describe both the hookup world and exactly what it does to a soul: brings it to the apex of commitment, the utmost physical indication that a total self-gift has been made, only to destroy that sense of love and leave the heart shattered and aching in the end.

If Bishop Sheen was right, and the artists of a time are the first to speak about the problems with a society, then modern music is a signpost pointing unmistakably to the modern notions of love.  There are others; Ingrid Michaelson and Adele are just two of many whose work runs along similar themes. These musician’s voices are singing some poignant truths about our world’s problems, and, while not prophetic or profound, and whether or not they realize it, as artists they are at least unanimously pointing to the same truth: the hookup culture hurts. It leaves souls desperate, thirsty for fulfillment, broken, feeling betrayed and angry. Hopefully, as the world listens to their music, it will start to listen to their words and what they have to say about our society’s stance on love.  

Our New Bigotry

 

For a nation whose founding document declares that “all men are created equal,” the U.S. has seen a whole lot of inequality, usually raising its ugly head in the form of discrimination and prejudice against particular minorities. We’ve even seen the widespread legalization of the most degrading prejudice: human beings transacting the trade of other human beings, treating real persons like commodities, something you can obtain if you want and dispose of at your will.

If you think I’m talking about slavery in the South before the Civil War, think again. I’m referring to something that happened earlier this very month.  According to LifeNews.com, Kevin and Deb McCrea from Iowa had more kids than they wanted—because through the use of In Vitro Fertilization, they had 18 extra embryos. So Deb found new parents for them . . . on Craigslist. Through the public, online market, she located couples who wanted to have kids, and sent her children to be born and raised through other women.  Deb felt she couldn’t sign off her own embryonic offspring to “just anyone.” “I don’t want to give up that right to see pictures of that child and compare that child to ours,” she said, “And see what they would have looked like and if they’re healthy and happy.”

Even though she just gave all 18 away, Deb wants to keep an eye on her other kids raised through surrogate mothers, because she feels she has a “right” to do so. But the poor woman’s words clearly indicate that she has a warped sense of what constitutes responsible parenthood; she doesn’t seem to understand that “rights” only come with “duties.” Although she must have known, when she paid for a whole batch of embryos through IVF, that she would never fulfill her natural duty to raise the children, she still wants the sense of fulfillment that comes from watching them grow.  

On the one hand, Mrs. McCrea’s desire to find loving homes for the children is somewhat understandable. Yet, unlike when a naturally-conceived child is put up for adoption because it’s parents can’t care for it, the very need for these kids to have parents and homes is purely a result of man’s scientific blunderings in God’s exclusive creation-zone. Situations such as these should never arise in the first place; yet with IVF, kids without parents who want or are able to raise them are made by the dozens in a petri dish. Deb McCrea’s search for new parents for her kids is not like an unwed mother putting her child up for adoption; it’s the moral equivalent of a woman naturally giving birth to as many kids as she possibly can, only then to decide she doesn’t want them and giving them all away.

Deb says she plans someday to tell the children the truth; it boggles the imagination to know what it will be for them to learn that they were the extra ones; that their biological parents chose to make them all, but wanted just one or two of them; that they chose a sibling from the same “batch,” while the others were the leftovers whose coincidental existence wasn’t important enough—or convenient enough—to merit a life lived with their rightful home and family.

Cases like the McCrea’s are stunning examples of what is so disturbingly wrong about IVF: it encourages a mentality of irresponsible parenting under the pseudonym of compassionate solutions for couples who are having trouble conceiving. Because they want a baby, IVF advocates essentially argue, couples should be allowed to create as many children as they want and then pick a few to live, so that they can fulfill their desire for parenthood. The rest of the kids, meanwhile, are given away or remain permanently frozen in storage.

The use of IVF treats children like a product—in the way that a puppy is a product to a breeder: a cute product, a product people get emotionally attached to, but a product all the same. They reduce a real, little person to a commodity, something parents can pay money to get when they want, and dispose of as they choose to, as the McCreas have done with their “extra” kids. But children aren’t puppies; they are persons, whose value is not based on the fulfillment their parents get from seeing them grow up.

“Human beings as a commodity?” I heard someone exclaim when they read about this, “I thought that went out with the Civil War!” But it hasn’t.  IVF is a new kind of bigotry that has become legally accepted in the US—a new legal sale of human beings like products, without respect for their personhood. Just as slavery was rooted in and perpetuated bigotry against blacks, IVF is steeped in a discrimination against embryonic human babies—because it creates many at once, and arbitrarily chooses which ones of the siblings will live with their parents, or live at all, and which ones don’t.  In the same way that the slave trade in the South was based on a denial of the rights and dignities of blacks, the selection process of IVF is based on a denial of the rights and dignity of human babies.

They say times have changed; and they have. Back in the day, you had to be Catholic, or black, or Jewish, to be the object of someone’s bigotry and discrimination. Now? Well, now, you just have to be an unborn human baby.