By: Christopher West

Two of my biggest interests in life are theology and music. In fact, before I discovered John Paul II’s theology of the body and decided to devote my life to studying and teaching it, I had pursued a career in the rock and roll world as a drummer, guitarist, and singer/songwriter. If John Paul II has been the biggest influence in my theological life, without a doubt, the Irish band U2 has been the biggest influence in my musical life.

Ever since I first saw them on MTV in 1983 (it was the video for New Year’s Day), I have followed their career with great interest. Their music is in my blood and speaks deeply to my soul. The band’s rather unconventional faith in Christ is well known. Their songs are steeped in biblical imagery. Long before I had any faith of my own, I think that “spirit” in their music attracted me and possibly even helped open me in some way to Christ.

U2 & TOB

One of the many causes that Bono, the band’s singer, champions is fighting the spread of AIDS in Africa. I have thought for many years that Bono would be very interested in the idea of “sexual redemption” taught in John Paul II’s theology of the body as a means of getting to the root of the AIDS crisis. In fall of 2005, in a meeting seemingly orchestrated from heaven by John Paul II himself, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Bono and introduce him to the late Pope’s teaching. I gave him a copy of my book Theology of the Body for Beginners and we had a very lively exchange about the Scriptures, sex, redemption, and the Catholic Church.

Fast forward to late December 2006. A friend called me on the phone and said, “Have you heard the new U2 song? It’s called ‘Window in the Skies.’ You’re not going to believe it.” I typed the title into Google and listened with amazement. It’s a song about how Christ’s resurrection can redeem the sexual relationship. The chorus repeats the joyous refrain, “Oh can’t you see what love has done? Oh can’t you see what love has done, and what it’s doing to me?” Here is a sample of some of the verses:

 

The rule has been disproved

The stone it has been moved

The grave is now a groove

All debts are removed

 

The sky over our head

We can reach it from our bed

If you let me in your heart

And out of my head…

 

In the bridge, Bono echoes the joy of Eden — and one of the main themes of John Paul’s teaching — when he cries: “I’ve got no shame, oh no, oh no!” Then, admitting the many ways he has hurt his wife (Bono has been faithfully married to his high school sweetheart for nearly 25 years), he says, “But love left a window in the skies, and to love I rhapsodize.” As the song ends, he offers the same hope “to every broken heart, for every heart that cries — love left a window in the skies.”  So, has Bono been reading up on the theology of the body? Perhaps. Or, maybe as John Paul II himself emphasized, these are simply truths that find an echo in every human heart and Bono has tapped into it.

By: Christopher West

In his theology of the body, John Paul II insisted that the body has a “language.” The body “speaks.” This is not a controversial idea. Everyone can readily recognize the concept of “body language.” What is controversial about John Paul’s teaching, however, is that the body can speak the truth, or it can speak lies.

Is There Truth?

A great many Americans are suffering from a deadly disease and they don’t even know it. It’s rampant in our schools and universities. The majority of people living in your neighborhood probably are infected. And a good number of people in your local parish most likely have it too. It’s called “truthophobia.”  Why are so many people afraid of “the truth”? Somehow we have the idea that the truth is against us, that it’s out to get us. So, the most typical response? Deny it.

“There is no truth,” many say. But, in response, one feels compelled to ask, “Is that true?” Many will retort, “Well, if truth exists, you can’t know it.” Again, it begs the question, “How do you know?” “Well, you can’t be sure,” they’ll say. “Are you sure?”  Truth is one of those things from which you can run, but you can’t hide. In our attempts to deny truth, we find ourselves cornered into admitting that it exists. At a minimum we find ourselves longing, perhaps unwittingly, for some truth on which to stand, even if that truth is that “there is no truth.” If it’s true that there is no truth then it’s not true that there is no truth. In other words, there is truth.

Truth & Freedom

Why do so many people chafe at the thought of truth, especially that the body is answerable to truth? For example, we’ve all heard people respond to Church teaching on sex or abortion by angrily exclaiming, “It’s my body and I can do whatever I want with it.” Such people are convinced that the very idea of “truth” compromises human freedom. But, is that true? Christ taught that “the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:32). As John Paul II demonstrated in various ways and on various occasions, you can’t have one without the other. They stand or fall together.

Truth without freedom leads to tyranny. Conversion by the sword is meaningless and disrespectful. This is obvious to us today. What is not so obvious, however, is that freedom without truth also leads to tyranny. How so?

If there is no truth, no objective standard to which we are all accountable, then all that exists is a power struggle between opposing opinions. Objective reality does not settle disputes; power does. Might makes right. Those with the most money, media influence, or military muscle will impose their self-serving view of the world on the weak. “In this way,” as John Paul II wrote, “democracy, contradicting its own principles, effectively moves towards a form of totalitarianism” ( Evangelium Vitae 20).  How, then, do we reconcile freedom and truth? John Paul II fought valiantly for religious freedom understood as the right of every human being to be free in his or her search for truth. There is no place for a tyranny of truth. For truth to have meaning in a person’s life it can never be imposed, only freely sought and embraced as it is found.

The Splendor of Truth

At the same time, John Paul II devoted his entire life to proposing (never imposing) what he called “the splendor of the truth” to the whole world. When the truth is upheld in all its splendor, it doesn’t need to be imposed on anyone. Men and women of good will are drawn to the splendor of truth when they see it, especially when they have been systematically deprived of it.  We’re attracted to truth because we are created for it, like bees are attracted to flowers. Truth liberates because it enables us to be who we really are as persons. Truth, when discovered, is like a homecoming. It’s like reaching solid earth when you have been lost at sea. Truth, then, is nothing to fear, for truth is Christ, and Christ is perfect love, and perfect love casts out all fear — including, and especially, “truthophobia.”

By: Christopher West

Remember Mel Gibson’s graphically violent movie Apocalypto? It  generated a lot of criticism in the media when it came out.   USA Today asked, “How can Gibson disgust us?   Let us count the ways: There’s a face chewed off by a panther, a spear impaling a man’s skull, a chest ripped open by a blunt arrowhead and a head spurting blood as if a spigot has been turned on.”  Having seen the movie for myself, I can tell you that’s not the half of it.   What could Mel possibly be trying to say?   Is he merely a blood-crazed maniac as the media would have us believe?   Before I share my thoughts, I need to put my immediate reaction to the film in context.

It’s All About Children!

For the month or so before I saw the movie, with my wife caring for our newborn son, I had been managing both our busy home and my busy office.   I had been dividing lots of 18 hour days between helping our older kids with their school work, laundry, grocery shopping, preparing meals, getting ready for a course I would soon be teaching, and trying to meet my publisher’s deadline for a new book I was writing.  I try sincerely to practice what I preach about embracing the sacrifices that come with living a Catholic marriage.   But I’m a fallen man.   I entertain the same questions that everyone else does — especially at 4 a.m. when little Isaac can’t seem to understand how desperate I am for sleep.   That’s when I wonder, Are all these sacrifices really worth it?   And I’ll pray, Dear God, can this pleeeeeease be the last time we go through this new baby craziness?

It was in this state of mind that I went with some friends to see what one reviewer dubbed “Mesoamerican Rambo.”   To be honest, I was hoping a night out with the guys would offer a little “escape” from the pressures of life with a newborn.   I came out of that theater not only renewed in confidence that every sacrifice I make for my wife and children is well worth it.   I came out of that theater wanting to have another baby right away.   Bring it on!  Fertility, I think, is the interpretive key of the film.   That’s what this small tribal village valued most.   The sexual boast among the men was not how many women they’d bedded, but how many children they’d fathered.   Of the numerous reviews I read, not a single one grasped this basic point.   The common sentiment is bafflement and the common accusation, even from movie critics within the Church, is that if Gibson is trying to offer a message of hope in the midst of cultural decline, “that’s not at all clear.”

Renewed Strength for the Battle

Maybe I was smokin’ something, but it was crystal clear to me.   Mel, himself, says the movie is about “the spark of life that exists even in a culture of death.”   That’s precisely what I took away from it.   This movie — not despite its graphic violence, but in and through it — offers us a gripping visual allegory for understanding what spouses are up against if they are going to take God’s plan for marriage seriously.  I’m not gung-ho about seeing hearts ripped from people’s chests, heads cut off, or people eaten by jaguars.   However, if Gibson, as an artist, was trying to depict what the spiritual battle might actually look like, one could argue that he may not have gone far enough.   The devil is no red cartoon character with a pitchfork.   He’s a hideous demon who prowls around like a ravenous lion (or, shall we say jaguar?) looking for people to devour (see 1 Pt 5:8).   He wants our heads, our hearts, and — perhaps most of all — our fertility.   He’s after our children (see Rev 12).

From the beginning, the devil’s enmity has been aimed directly at matri-mony, which means, “the call to motherhood” (see Gen 3:15).   This was the raging battle that Jaguar Paw, the main character of Apocalypto, found himself at the center of.   With unflagging determination, he overcame insurmountable challenges in order to save his wife, his son, and their — by the end of the film — newborn baby from certain doom. That baby was the life asserting itself in the face of so much death.   That baby was the light shining in the darkness and, thanks to Jaguar Paw’s valor, the darkness did not overcome it (see Jn 1:5).   That’s what I want to fight for in life.   And that’s why I came out of the theater recharged to embrace the challenge of being a husband and father.   Thanks, Mel.   I needed that.

By: Christopher West

I was recently watching The Empire Strikes Back with my boys.   I grew up on the original Star Wars Trilogy and have enjoyed sharing these movies with my kids.   But I wasn’t much of a theologian when I was a boy.   Hence, Yoda’s glaring heresy (Merriam-Webster defines this as  a “denial of a revealed truth by a baptized member of the Roman Catholic Church”)  went right passed me when I was sitting in the movie theater as a ten-year old.  At one point during Luke Skywalker’s training, Yoda pokes Luke on the shoulder with his cane and mutters in his classic half-Grover/half-Miss Piggy voice, “We are not this crude matter.   Luminous beings are we.”   Before reading further, can you spot the heresy?

Flesh vs. Spirit

The human body is not “crude matter” housing our true “luminous” selves!   This is the heresy of “dualism” which introduces a false split in the human being between body and soul.   In the authentic Christian view of things, the human being is an incarnate spirit or a spiritualized body.  As the Catechism says, “The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body: that is, it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body.”   Furthermore, “spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature” (CCC, n. 365).

John Paul II insisted that the “body can never be reduced to mere matter: it is a spiritualized body, just as man’s spirit is so closely united to the body that he can be described as an embodied spirit” (Letter to Families, 19).  It is only because of original sin that we experience a rupture within us between the physical and the spiritual.   Lacking the reintegration of spirit and flesh to which we are called in Christ, we inevitably lean towards one side of the divide or the other, towards “angelism” or “animalism.”   One promotes a “spiritual” life at the expense of the body and the other a “carnal” life to the neglect of the spirit.

Animals or Angels?

Angelism views the human person as a spirit merely housed or even imprisoned in the body.   Since the “real person” is something purely spiritual, angelism not only considers the body external to the person, it tends to view the body as an obstacle to spiritual fulfillment.   The angelistic moral code is rigorism; it tends towards prudishness and a fearful repression of bodily feelings and desires.   Many Christians throughout history have fallen prey to this distortion.   Even today people make the calamitous mistake of considering this “holiness.”

Animalism, on the other hand, stifles the spirit so that it can live a “carnal” life unhampered by the voice of conscience.   Its moral code is permissivism, condemning any manifestation of temperance as a hindrance to freedom.   Animalism promotes bodily pleasure as man’s ultimate fulfillment.   Hence, it encourages men and women to indulge their (disintegrated) bodily impulses without restraint, leading toward the indecent and the shameless.   All we need to do is turn on the television or the Internet to see how prevalent this distortion has become.

Dualism attacks the very foundations of Christianity.   Christianity, at its core, involves the incarnation of spiritual reality.   How do we recognize the anti-christ according to St. John?   He is the one who denies Christ come in the flesh (see 1 Jn 4:2-3).  Don’t get me wrong.   I’m not concluding that Yoda is the anti-christ.   But I am saying we should be aware of the subtle and not so subtle ways our culture promotes a dualistic view of the human person.  So the next time someone says to you, “Aw, you’re an angel.”   Say, “No, I’m not.   I’m an incarnate spirit …and you’re a heretic.”

Well, you better leave that last part off.

By: Christopher West

 

The Spiritual Love-Life of a Rockstar

As demonstrated in his encyclical God is Love and more recently at the Fifth World Meeting of Families in Valencia, Spain, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, like John Paul II before him, is intent on helping the world see the connection between divine love (agape) and sexual love (eros).   To help us reflect on these themes, I’d like to turn to what may seem an unlikely source: Bono, lead singer of U2, hailed as the biggest rock band in the world.

You’ve probably heard Bono sing about that “fever” he gets when he’s “beside her: desi-i-i-i-er, desi-i-i-i-er” (drums in the background: boom-badoom-badoom, badoom-doom).   But this is no normal rock-n-roller glorifying lust.   Bono may still not have found what he’s looking for, but this is a man on a sincere quest to integrate eros with agape.  In a book-long interview with Michka Assayas, Bono reflects at length on his unconventional Christian convictions.   And Assayas simply cannot understand how the world’s biggest rock star could believe Jesus is the Son of God.   Nor can he understand how Bono has remained faithful to his wife of twenty-five years.

In the portions of their dialogue that follow, Bono responds to his incredulous interviewer’s suggestion of “incarnating” lustful temptations by turning it on its head.   Bono meets Assayas right where he is and, with a stroke of genius, directs the conversation towards a reflection on the relationship between eros, agape, and the Incarnation of God’s Son.

Setting the Record Straight

Assayas: But you’re the singer and front man in a band, and it’s not just any band.   I’m sure you’ve been tempted.   Don’t you ever feel that no matter what you have decided [about fidelity to your wife], love needs to be incarnated? …Think of groupies.

Bono: We never fostered that environment.   If you mean groupie in the sense that I know it, which is sexual favors traded for proximity with the band….   Taking advantage of a fan, sexual bullying is to be avoided, but the music is sexual….   Sometimes …the erotic love [we sing about] can turn into something much higher, and bigger notions of love, and God, and family.   It seems to segue very easily from me between those.

Assayas: …I’m surprised at how easily religion comes up in your answers, whatever the question is.   How come you’re always quoting from the Bible?   Was it because it was taught at school?   Or because your father or mother wanted you to read it?

Bono: …Let me try to explain something to you, which I hope will make sense of the whole conversation. …I remember coming back from a very long tour….   On Christmas Eve I went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. …It had dawned on me before, but it really sank in: the Christmas story.   The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough.   That it would seek to explain itself and describe itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty… a child, I just thought: “Wow!”   Just the poetry.   Unknowable love, unknowable power, describes itself as the most vulnerable.   There it was.   I was sitting there, and …tears came down my face, and I saw the genius of this, utter genius of picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this.   Because that’s exactly what we were talking about earlier: love needs to find form, intimacy needs to be whispered.   To me, it makes sense.   It’s actually logical.   It’s pure logic.   Essence has to manifest itself.   It’s inevitable.   Love has to become an action or something concrete.   It would have to happen.   There must be an incarnation.   Love must be made flesh.   Wasn’t that your point earlier? (Bono in Conversation with Michka Assayas, pp. 119-120, 124-125).

Here Bono echoes St. Paul in helping us to see that the union of man and woman is meant to point us to the Incarnation.   It’s all about Christ’s love for the Church (see Eph 5:31-32).   Go Bono!

By: Christopher West

Back in January of 2006, the internet began to buzz with news that a British woman married (more aptly, attempted to marry) a dolphin in Israel.   First question: Has the world gone absolutely berserk?   Answer: Yea, pretty much.  Sharon Tendler, from East London, wore a white silk dress and a pink tiara as she stood by Cindy-the-dolphin’s tank for this unique ceremony.   Sharon apparently kissed Cindy and whispered “I love you” into the dolphin’s blow hole.   How romantic.

Israel’s leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that after a gift of some mackerels, Sharon’s friends tossed her into the water so she could swim with her new husband.   “I’m the happiest girl on earth,” the bride reportedly said, as she chocked back tears.   “I made a dream come true, and I am not a pervert,” she stressed.  Of course, anyone familiar with Canon Law knows that this couldn’t be a valid marriage since Cindy is a female dolphin.  Mercy.   Where to begin?   How about “in the beginning.”

In the Beginning…

In Genesis we read, “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man [adam] should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’” (Gn 2:18).   First, God creates the animals, which the human being  names (‘adam’  here means man in the generic sense, not first the “male”).   But among the animals “there was not found a helper fit for him” (Gn 2:20).  This is a key line that Sharon Tendler might do well to reflect upon.   I’d say the same for Cindy-the-dolphin, except dolphins can’t reflect on such things.   Herein lies the problem.

We may be amazed at what scientists have demonstrated dolphins and monkeys are capable of.   But we do not delude ourselves when we recognize that there is something more to the human being, a particular richness, an inner life, an inner self, something spiritual that even the most advanced animals do not possess.   After all, it is human scientists who reveal the ability of monkeys, not monkey scientists who reveal the ability of humans.

It’s impossible to speak, even analogously, of the inner life of animals.   It’s because of our inner life that we experience wonder, recognize beauty, yearn for love, search for meaning, desire knowledge, and seek understanding.   It’s because of our inner life that we long for truth and goodness and are pained by evil and injustice.   It’s because of our inner life that we have the capacity to marry.   Dolphins, however cute, simply do not have this capacity.

Be Not Afraid…I Am With You Always

Now I can understand why in today’s world Sharon Tendler might resort to such a thing.   Our pornified world has turned a large number of men into beasts — wolves with a one-track mind, and women are the prey.   If I were a woman and I had a choice between a wolf and a dolphin, I’d chose the dolphin too.

This “woman marries dolphin” story is just the latest fall-out of the so called sexual “revolution.”   In reality, it has proven to be a “devolution.”   And it’s going to get worse before it gets better.   As someone put it to me recently, evil has no guard rails.  But we needn’t fear.   Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more (see Romans 5:20).   Christ is preparing a great springtime for the Church and the world.   The darker it gets, the more we are drawn to the light.

The Church’s teaching on the human person and on human sexuality is the stone the modern world has rejected, but it will become the corner stone of a whole new world.   If you are in doubt, take up a study of John Paul II’s theology of the body and I think you will see what I mean.

By: Christopher West

We ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel — so go the lyrics of a song by a band called “The Blood Hound Gang.”   The band’s name carries the same theme — we’re animals with an urge to merge, so let’s go for it whenever the urge presents itself.   The idea is almost laughable, but for the fact that large swaths of humanity accept it as modern common sense.

Songs like this, backed by the media and even mental health professionals have fostered the notion that sexual restraint is inherently bad for us — and many of us have believed them.   But does this make sense?   We encourage self-restraint all the time: don’t hit your sister, share your toys, don’t eat the whole cheese cake.  These, and a great multitude of other restraints, are considered normal and healthy.   But why do people cry “pathology” as soon as someone suggests restraint for the sexual appetite?

A Culture of Indulgence

It’s certainly true that a puritanical and repressive approach to the sex drive is not healthy.   No one (I hope) wants to return to the days of deafening silence about sex when the sight of a woman’s ankle could cause scandal.   But is unrestrained libido the answer?  Our society has come to champion sexual indulgence as a right.   And we wonder why molestation, rape, abortions, “fatherless” children, adultery, divorce, pornography, and STD’s are rampant.   Could it be because human beings, both men and women, are behaving like animals?

When push comes to shove, do some people really believe “we ain’t nothin’ but animals”?   If a woman says of her date, “He was an animal,” we know immediately what she means: he did not respect her as a person; he treated her as an object to satisfy his own instincts.   If we “ain’t nothin’ but animals,” where’s the problem?

Take this behavior to its extreme.   Suppose a man forcibly indulges his “animal instincts” with a woman.   What makes this a crime?   Blood hounds can’t be charged and prosecuted for sexual misconduct.   The very words “crime” and “misconduct” indicate a moral order, a meaningless concept for animals.   And this is precisely the point.

Human Dignity and “Animal Rights”

So often behind the modern push to equate human beings with animals lies the subtle or not-so-subtle agenda of moral relativism, the rejection of a moral order to which all are accountable.   And so often behind the agenda of moral relativism lies the desire to indulge libido without any restraint — that is, the desire to behave like animals when it comes to sex.

A world that teaches “chickens are people too” is inevitably a sexually confused world.   When we raise animals to the level of human persons, we’re not really dignifying animals, we’re debasing ourselves.   And one of the first human mysteries to be debased in the animals-are-persons and persons-are-animals world-view, as the above song points out, is sexuality.

Although biologically similar, the joining of man and woman in “one flesh” is worlds apart from the copulation of Fido and Fidette — at least its meant to be!   Fido and Fidette are merely following an instinct intended to continue their species.   Man and woman are meant to be loving one another in the image of a life-giving God, something impossible for a being ruled by instinct.

Because of the effects of original sin, we often experience our sex drives acting upon us as if we were animals.   But if we are ever to find happiness, we must, with the help of divine grace, raise our behavior above — far above — what the musk oxes and jack assess are doing on the Discovery Channel.

By: PaxCare Staff

The word “dignity” is thrown around in many circles of our society today. Employed for a variety of reasons and circumstances, the meaning of the word can get lost or watered-down.  The good news is that Catholics do, indeed mean something specific when we use the word “dignity” and it does, indeed, differ from the way many people use it.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church #1700 says, “The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God (article 1); it is fulfilled in his vocation to divine beatitude (article 2). It is essential to a human being freely to direct himself to this fulfillment (article 3). By his deliberate actions (article 4), the human person does, or does not, conform to the good promised by God and attested by moral conscience (article 5). Human beings make their own contribution to their interior growth; they make their whole sentient and spiritual lives into means of this growth (article 6). With the help of grace they grow in virtue (article 7), avoid sin, and if they sin they entrust themselves, as did the prodigal son¹, to the mercy of our Father in heaven (article 8). In this way they attain to the perfection of charity.”

So there you have it.  To break it down, an authentic, Catholic sense of dignity recognizes that…

1.  We are made in the image and likeness of God.  Therefore all human life is sacred regardless of the diseases or limitations under which he suffers.

2.  A person is behaving in a manner consistent with his dignity when he strives to live according to the gospel and pursues both his heavenly destiny and his obligation to bring the face of God to the world in all of his works and relationships.

3. A person is behaving in a manner consistent with his dignity if he works to protects his life and health, works to preserve his spiritual, physical, moral, and psychological integrity, and strives to support others in their pursuit of the same.

4.  Above all, the person is true to his dignity to the degree that he renounces sin and embraces a life of virtue.

Incidentally, you can also find these points enumerated in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.

So, anytime you hear the word “dignity” you now know what it is supposed to mean.  Any definition that falls short of the above is simply… not worth dignifying.

By: Dr. Greg Popcak

Why do Catholics run schools, hospitals, charity organizations and the like?   Are we just terminal do-gooder busy-bodies who can’t just leave well-enough alone?

Well, of course the answer to that is “no.”  But I wonder how many Catholics ever ask themselves why we do all these things.   The answer is important and it may not be what most people think.

DEFENDING THE DIGNITY OF THE PERSON

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church begins in a curious place.   It doesn’t start, as you might expect, with talk about the Christian preference for serving the poor or even a fundamental and equal right to life for all people.   It begins instead with a reflection on the Trinity (the central mystery of the Catholic faith) and how we are made in God’s image and likeness.   Why?   Because the entire point of the social doctrine of the Church is to stand up for the God-given dignity of the person as it is revealed to and understood by the Catholic Church.   So what?   Well, that statement really highlights a profound difference between social work and Catholic social justice work.

For instance, a secular social worker is interested in solving a person’s problems in the most efficient, legal way.   Is it legal?   Does it get the job done?   Good.   Problem solved.       But Catholic social justice work is not primarily concerned with solving the problem.   It is concerned, first and foremost, with upholding the dignity of the person as it has been revealed to us and is understood by the Catholic Church.   We solve temporal problems like ignorance and illness and hunger and loneliness as a means of standing up for the dignity of the person as we understand it, not because we see these things as ends in themselves.

WITNESS  MUST NOT  UNDERMINE ACTION  

As a Catholic social justice worker, (as every Catholic is a “Catholic social justice worker” whether or not you are an “official, degreed helping professional (TM)”   ) I must do what I can to meet your needs, but I cannot meet your needs in a way that undermines my dignity as a person—or yours.   If I do, the entire point is lost.   Everything I do for you, and the way I do it, has to be mindful of our mutual dignity as persons made in the image and likeness of God.   If my actions communicate any other message, I am doing you, me, and the Kingdom of God a disservice.

Everyone gets their wimple in a knot when a bishop or pastor tries to “crack the whip” about the personal morality of his teachers or makes a fuss about how closely his hospitals and charitable organizations keep to the mission and doctrine of the Church.   “Why all this fuss about morality and doctrine?!?   There are poor people out there, children, the sick and hungry.   Aren’t we about meeting their needs?”

Well, not really.   We’re about saving their souls, and because we are embodied souls, we also attend to their needs as a way of saving their souls and witnessing to their dignity as sons and daughters of God.   But if we neglect our mission and become merely secular social workers, or doctors, or teachers, or whatever, then the gospel goes unheard in the charitable work we do.   We become clanging gongs.   Indeed, what does it profit us to meet their needs but lose their souls.   What does it profit us to do good works and lose ours?

Living out Catholic Social Justice

By all means, dedicate yourself to living out all the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.   Be a fully-engaged Catholic social justice worker in every aspect of your life regardless of your state in life, but never forget that the point is not meeting needs, but meeting needs as a means of standing for the dignity of the person  and proclaiming the gospel with our actions.   No matter what superficial good  we might be doing, it counts for nothing if our  life, mission, or methods are at odds with the gospel our actions are called to proclaim.