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Introduction
There has been a lot of chatter in the blogosphere about cannibalism, vaccines, abortion, fetal cell lines, lockdowns, masks, protests and Catholicism.
Not your normal word association eh?
How Catholics deal with the "World, Flesh and Devil" is, I feel, like holding up a mirror and not liking what we see.
Please don't be hasty and post a comment ... just yet.
Reality: The World isn't and People aren't Black and White / Good and Evil
First, the Black and White issues are, sadly, not as common as we would like to believe. They exist in the theological and theoretical realms, but once we try to categorize people as evil or good it gets more difficult.
The reason is simple ...
Most humans aren't wholly good or wholly bad. They are speckled, with varying degrees of black and white. Some people have groups of speckles that become splotches. Yet, they still aren't wholly evil or for that matter wholly good. The same applies to us Catholics. We are just as tainted with the effects of original sin and, since we have been given the truth, will be held to a much higher standard when we face our Judge.
So you see, in the real world, far removed from the esoteric thoughts of theologians, black and white doesn't make grey - because human, world, and spirits are involved it is muddy.
Example
Case in point is the debate about the liceity of vaccines that in some manner have been tainted by the murder of a baby.
On one side we have the Anti-Abortion lobby. Yes, that is what they are - lobbyists. Who want,rightly, to end the murder of innocents by the millions.
On the other side you have the industrial lobby. To these you can add practically any biological company that makes use of human and animal derived products. Yes the abortion providers are included in this mess, but they are just the sharp end of the spear in this case.
I've done a cursory check and the moral taint of abortions extends well beyond vaccines. If you truly want to avoid the taint of abortion, it looks like you'll need to move off grid to Antarctica and live off whatever you can grow. Don't even think about eating fish because a lot of morally tainted products have been eaten by them and you will be benefiting from immoral acts.
The rest of us are caught in the moral kill-zone framed by these groups. That's where having recourse to principles and moral theology are important not just for this situation by living in a world that is not Catholic and barely christian.
Living in the Real World - Stockdale Paradox
As Catholics we need to practice the virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity. This is, to some degree embeded in the Stockdale Paradox (source: Wikipedia / The Good to Great - Jim Collins)
James C. Collins related a conversation he had with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy during his period in the Vietnamese POW camp.[21][non-primary source needed] When Collins asked which prisoners didn't make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:
Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.[22]
Collins called this the Stockdale Paradox.[21]
So we need to continually practice virtue, while at the same time dealing with the reality. The Catholic Church is, morally, leaderless. As Elrond said (slightly modified for today's situation):
Catholics? Catholics are weak. [...] It is because of Catholics that Modernism survives. I was there. I was there 50 years ago ... when Popes John and Paul gave Modernism power. I was there the day the strength of Catholics failed. I led the Pope into the heart of the Church, where Neo-Modernism festered, the one place it could be destroyed! It should have ended that day, but evil was allowed to endure. Paul kept the Modernists. .... There's no strength left in the world of Catholics. They're scattered, divided, leaderless."
Catholics are not united and therefore christians and the world have lost their lodestone for truth, morality and principles.
So we have to deal with the reality that:
- By and large the Catholic Church is infested with error and the erroneous.
- There's still a Pope, a Vicar of Christ, but like many bishops, priests, religious, they are not leading in accordance with Catholic Teaching.
- The world largely has abandoned the foundations of Christianity.
- We are living in a world Fatima's warning about errors being spread confronts us on a daily basis.
We live in a tainted, muddy world and the way we will save our souls is by practicing virtue. That is what we must do, should our burdens, help others with their loads and trudge along the path of life.
The Hill To Die On
So what is the hill that we need to die on?
When we are asked to sin, that's where we need to take a stand. If you don't agree with the causal intentions - then hundreds of years of Catholic thinking teaches us what we can and cannot do.
Remote cooperation in evil means that you can be vaccinated if you want, but you can't be forced to be vaccinated. It also means that there are obligations that we have to address the cooperation.
Last Thought
I had to opportunity to speak with a scientist who was a student in Beijing the summer of 1989. He was in Beijing when the army moved into the square.
I asked him what he did ... his reply surprised me. He got on a train and got out of Beijing as quickly as he could.
There's wisdom in his response. All the protestors achieved was to give the government the excuse to issue the orders to disperse the demonstrators.
The scientist's response showed that that wasn't the hill he wanted to die on.
It also reminds me of something my Dad, having escaped from the communists after the war, said to some family members,
You talk too much.
There are things that you may want to say, but do you truly have a duty to say them. More importantly, when you say them are you certain that they will create a good outcome or will they make a bad situation worse? Will they make a good or neutral situation a bad one?
Have the protests done any good? From where I'm standing on a hill of principle of virtue (I hope) the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, are just
giving the government the excuse to ignore them and exclude them as a
legitimate factor in making decisions. All because they picked what
they though was a hill, but turned out to be a mound of private opinions instead
of principles.
We need to weigh our words and actions carefully as once said or done, they cannot be unsaid or undone.
The world is a muddy place, chose your path with prudence.
P^3
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