Pharisaism and the New Pro-Lifers

It’s become quite common over the past year or two to see articles, social media posts and comments, and other forms of expression declaring that “You can’t be pro-life and…” Exclusions include everything from “pro-death penalty,” “pro-torture,” “anti-immigration,” or “anti-welfare” to “pro-gun,” “pro-war,” and “alt-right.” When it’s not phrased according to the “you can’t be…” formula, the sentiment comes as an admonition or call out of those who claim to be pro-life but scandalously advocate some farther right view of one of these issues. There’s no question that opposing torture, taking care of the poor, etc. are important to the support of life, especially for someone coming from a Christian background.

It’s also common see the terms “pharisee” or “pharisaism” come up in commentary or discussions of this topic. Make no mistake: this is always a serious charge to throw around. After all, the Pharisees were on the receiving end of Jesus’ strongest criticism and serve as some of the chief antagonists of Christ in the Gospels. Their crime? “Hypocrites!” Jesus declared, for the Pharisees did not always practice what they preached. They were also known for getting into people’s business, harshly demanding the strictest adherence to the rules and to the law. “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger” (Mat. 23:4). The Pharisees’ merciless approach was particularly hard on the poor, who often lacked the resources to fulfill the last letter of the law, the vulnerable, and those whose past mistakes had put them in difficult positions.

It makes perfect sense, then, to see accusations of pharisaism in this debate. So many of the items at hand here involve the same kinds of people that the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. Torture and the death penalty have as their focus the vulnerable (and indeed, law enforcement and peace keeping too often perpetrate injustices against vulnerable populations). Immigration and welfare policies impact the poor and the vulnerable. Those who rightly stand up for the lives of the unborn, one vulnerable group, but callously discount concern for the lives of other vulnerable groups are certainly being inconsistent. These new pro-lifers, as we might call them, have a point in admonishing and calling out inconsistencies and hypocrisy on these points.  

But there’s something important that these new pro-lifers (and many others) miss about the Pharisees. Most people know that the Pharisees were merciless taskmasters who enforced a very strict adherence to the rules and the law, but far fewer know why they did this. The Pharisees emerged in a time when Judea was only a tiny province within the Roman Empire, making both imperial law and pagan culture obstacles to the practice of the Jewish faith. Their raison d'être was to find a way for the Jews to remain faithful to God under these living conditions and ultimately to be free of the Romans and have their independence once again. Unlike the Sadducees, who favored compromise with the Romans, the Essenes, who practiced total withdrawal from worldly affairs, and the zealots, who saw violent rebellion as the only answer, the Pharisees believed that God Himself would deliver them to freedom once more as He had done in the past – but with one critical caveat: the Jewish people needed to be pure – all of them (or at least almost all).

This belief is the reason that the Pharisees were so strict and so unwilling to show mercy or compassion. In their understanding, the Jewish people were suffering under the Romans as a punishment for their unfaithfulness and only when they had returned to faithfulness would God relent. This did make sense, after all: it was a pattern and theme which repeated over and over throughout the entire history of the Hebrew people, notably in the books of Judges, Samuel, Chronicles, and Kings. The Pharisees were so demanding and unyielding not because they were just callous or for whatever reason instinctively authoritarian, but because they saw every failure to keep even the smallest point of the Mosaic law as one more weight on the scale of judgment angering God and keeping him from freeing them of oppression. They insisted on separating themselves from the rest of the culture (indeed, this is precisely where we get the word “Pharisee” from) and rejected any imperfection or compromise not just as a personal sin, but as something which would be imputed to their entire people. This isn’t to attempt to rehabilitate the Pharisees or to defend their failure to grasp the spirit of the law, something for which Jesus strongly rebuked them. The point is that the Pharisees were severe in demanding total purity of their fellow Jews because they viewed anything less as contributing to keeping the intolerable status quo in place – which brings us back to the new pro-lifers.

While any pro-lifer is to be lauded for standing up for the rights of the poor or the displaced or for rejecting torture, it is a trend of late to see the new pro-lifers go further than this. To many, not only are those who have imperfect views on the broader spectrum of issues to be corrected, but they are to be denied the pro-life name, to be excluded, and to have even their positive contributions be disavowed. Like the Pharisees, the new pro-lifers demand purity from anyone who would bear the name with any shortcomings viewed as mortally harmful to the movement. Those who oppose abortion and may even hold consistent views on most other issues are often demonized as the reason that the pro-life movement has not been more successful. Lest we dismiss the comparison to the Pharisees is too tenuous, bear in mind that it is common to hear or to read these new pro-lifers warn that God will not grant success to the movement so long as such persons are welcome in their ranks.

One need look no further for an example of this than Donald Trump and his supporters. While Trump is far from the perfect example of a consistent pro-life ethic, he nevertheless received strong support from large percentages of the pro-life electorate for whatever he would be able to offer. He may not have been perfect, but to many he was better than the alternative. To some pro-lifers, this was viewed as very questionable. It was unclear just how trustworthy he’d be, for one thing, and even if he followed through his inconsistencies may harm the public image of the pro-life movement. These were reasonable concerns.  Far less reasonable and more in line with the thinking of the Pharisees were those new pro-lifers who went further, condemning any who would vote for Trump as “not pro-life,” as putting party over principle, and as drawing the ire of the Almighty onto the country by electing such a man. 

Trump is one example, but the stakes need not be so grand: this kind of truly pharisaical thinking has become common to see in all sorts of contexts. Worst of all is when this kind of exclusion and condemnation concerns not black and white matters of objective morality but prudential judgments about methods. A person might believe in the need to provide for the poor but reject a particular legislative proposal as a good or effective way to do it. Like the Pharisees who were so focused on the letter of the law that they could not see the spirit, too many new pro-lifers cannot see the good faith of such a person or try to understand their view, but see them only through the jots and tittles of the policy that they have questioned.

In his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict XVI made clear that Catholics should work together with people of other faiths where improving the temporal world is concerned. A Catholic and a Protestant can work together to feed the hungry, while a Jewish person is a good an ally in fighting a worldly injustice despite theological differences. That doesn’t mean these differences don’t matter or even that they may not in some ways impact mutual work in the temporal sphere. Such differences need to be acknowledged and taken into consideration, but the ultimate goal is still to be pursued. In a similar way, pro-lifers who recognize weaknesses and imperfections in the views of others should acknowledge them and try to address them, but they must also recognize these persons as the allies that they can be in the ways that they can be.

Too many Christian pro-lifers today have come to regard imperfect allies as bitter enemies. Like the Pharisees, they view them as traitors, as repellants to Divine aid, and even as greater obstacles than the worldly powers which have us under their power. This is a tragic trend which must stop.

The Philosophy of Gender

As part of a discussion, I have been prompted to write a post regarding the philosophy of gender. That is, what is the masculine, and what is the feminine? Let us begin by distinguishing between gender and sex.

First, gender and sex are not the same thing. Sex is biological. The sex of a person identifies the person as male or female - testicles or ovaries. Now the way the terms are normally used today, sex and gender are both understood to refer to this biological classification. What's important here is what we mean here in discussing gender, rather than what the words may mean in the dictionary, or philosophically, or whatever else.

Gender - as we're using the word here - refers to a person's quality of being masculine or feminine. Now consider how we think about masculinity. What makes a thing masculine? Typically, people associate the masculine with men, and the feminine with women. They define the terms on the basis of males and females. Things are said to be masculine insofar as they are like, or related to, men. Things are called feminine if they are like, or related to, women. Now this makes sense, and it's entirely consistent with the way most of us have grown up thinking. It's just obvious, right?

Well, if we think about it, we will realize one very important hidden assumption in this way of thinking. Namely, this definition is based upon the idea that the biological distinction between men and women is a primary characteristic of existence. In other words, in calling things masculine or feminine based on whether things are reminiscent or related to men or women, we're implicitly asserting that the distinction between men and women is something upon which other things can be based. That doesn't mean everything can be based on this distinction, but that at least some things can be - namely, those things which are called masculine or feminine.

At first glance, this seems fine. However, there's a real problem here when we consider God. God is called "He," after all. God calls Himself "He" in the Scriptures. Now God is not a male. First of all, God is spirit - He has no biology! Second, God created maleness and femaleness. So God is not male, but rather, He is masculine. That God is masculine is something that the monotheistic religions agree on. In other words, it's not controversial. It's a pretty well established fact. Yet if God is masculine, and masculinity is based upon men, well then we obviously have yet another problem, because first, we have already recalled that God created maleness, and He cannot be based upon something He created for He existed "before" He created it, and because second, that would make God dependent upon and defined by something, which He, the eternal Almighty, the uncaused cause, the one necessary existing thing, is not.

The reality is that masculinity and femininity are not defined by that which is male or that which is female. Rather, masculinity and femininity are based, in some way, upon God. Yet God is masculine, not feminine. In this we seem to have another problem, for how can we establish what is feminine if that which it is based upon is masculine?

The solution to this problem, and the answer which really gives us what we need to fully understand this issue, is that gender is relational. It is a matter of the relation between things. Let's simply forget about the words "masculine" and "feminine" for a moment, and simply consider God. God is God. Everything else is not. The important relation here is between that which is not God, and that which is. Now let's replace our term, recalling that we call God masculine. That which is not God, then, we can call feminine. Note here that we're dealing with relations, not identities. This is a very important distinction, because it's the difference between saying that men are gods and women are not - not something that we're trying to do!

Therefore, let's consider the relations between God and that which is not. How does God relate to that which is not? We could certainly list perhaps an infinite number of items, but let's keep it simple for now. First, God is separate from that which is not God. He is apart from it, not a part of it. In other words, God is not in creation, but "stands" apart from it. Second, God enters into that which is not God to effect His purposes. He has to do this, obviously, if He is to interact with creation, for we just recognized that He is not a part of or in it. That is, God enters into creation, either as the Holy Spirit acts in the world or as the Second Person of the Trinity became Incarnate and so literally united to creation.

We could go deeper, but let's stick with these basic relations for now. Not only are these simple ideas, but if we think about it they are really two very fundamental aspects of the relationship on which other ideas can be built. Now these relations can be expressed by the terms immanent and eminent (or transcendent). The quality of eminence or transcendence is the quality of being apart from a thing, being beyond it. We often speak of God as transcendent, and by this we mean that He is beyond the world; God transcends creation. The quality of immanence refers to being in or with something. I am immanent to creation, for I am a part of it.

These are the two basic concepts we want to keep in mind as we discuss the relation of gender. Recalling that God is masculine and Not God feminine, apply these ideas and then consider the relations between men and women. When we considered God, we focused on two of the more obvious and important relations between He and Creation. Where men and women are concerned, let us consider what may be the most obvious important relations between them: the creation of new life through their union. We see here very similar ideas regarding immanence and eminence that we saw with God. In that ultimate of human relations, procreation, man is really apart from the "creation," that is, the baby. He enters into the woman from without and accomplishes His purpose, the fertilization of her egg, that is, the "creation" of new life. The woman, on the other hand, is with the child. Throughout the entire process she is always, in a very important sense, connected to the child, one with the child. The child is in a real way truly a part of her. The man is beyond the child, while the woman is with the child, and the child in the woman.

It is important here to make a realization: if the feminine is the Not God to the masculine's God, then in their relation to one another, women are like femininity, and men are like masculinity. As God relates to creation, He is eminent to it. As man relates to a newly created child, he is eminent to it. Now creation is really immanent to itself, just as woman is immanent to the child. This is the real meaning of masculinity and femininity, at least in the sense in which we say that we are all feminine to God, and in the sense that we are the bride of Christ, and so forth: the masculine is that which is eminent, and the feminine, immanent.

In fact, we can see some extremely interesting examples of this throughout history. Consider pagan religions, which worshiped idols. The gods of the pagans were immanent: they were a part of the world, not transcending it. It is no coincidence at all that the pagans almost always had priestesses. Their gods were immanent, and so their sacrifices were offered by women, that is, by the feminine. The Jews, who worshiped an eminent God, had priests to offer sacrifice. They had men, who are eminent in their human relationships, to offer to their eminent God.

Women's Ordination

Memorial - St. Boniface

Memorial - St. Boniface
Patron of Germany, Martyr

St. Boniface was one of those great middle of the first millenium saints that made their mark converting pagans left and right (St. Patrick was another).

St. Boniface, you gained eternal glory by dying to preach the Gospel to those who were trapped in the bondage of idolatry, worshipping that which was not God rather than their Creator. Today, millions turn from God for the worship of money, sex, technology, and any number of other idols. Pray for us that we might be willing to die, both to self and in that martyrdom of the body, so that our modern world might find eternal joy in the home of God their Father. We ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

St. Boniface, pray for us!

Memorial - St. Christobal Magallanes and Companions, Martyrs

Optional Memorial

St. Christobal Magallanes, you were martyred because the government of your day chose to abuse the power which it had received from God, turning on Him from whom their authority came and on all those who lived in His Name. Today, the governments we are subject to are growing closer to following in a similar, unjust path, while some are already persecuting the Church of our Blessed Lord. Pray for us that we may enact positive and peaceful change in our governments, and that if called to make the same sacrifice that you made for your faith, we will do so willingly and joyfully.

St. Christobal Magallanes, pray for us.

Pirates of the Caribbean and the Fall of Western Civilization

This coming weekend, the keenly expected third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean films will be released in theatres. It won't be the typical summer release, but rather one of those "special" events where people dress up in costumes and go to the theatres at midnight so that they can see the highly anticipated release as soon as is humanly possible. Even beyond that, the theatres will no doubt be packed this weekend with all manner of swashbucklers and salty dogs. In short, most of western civilization will be going to see this film.

It would do them much good, however, to revisit the first film before doing so. This is not simply for the sake of refreshing their memories of the adventures of the buccaneers, but more importantly because the first film contains a message that most of western civilization is in dire need of hearing, and more importantly, of assimilating.

The first film, The Curse of the Black Pearl, tells the story of a crew of pirates trying to escape the curse of an eternity existing in between death and life as immortal half-men, unable to experience anything other than their own miserable, half-human existence. They can go through neither pain nor pleasure, a state which leaves them to a numb, meaningless, empty existence far worse than even any suffering might provide. The cause of all of this is a curse which came upon them after taking forbidden treasure, and their sole purpose is now one of trying to steal back all of the treasure so that the curse can be reversed.

Watching the film, one can't help but feel a bit bad for these fellows. They are in a simply pathetic state of affairs. What used to be men, they now simply go through the motions of men, even fighting amongst each other with no possible outcome to be gained, as they cannot be injured. These men have been without any meaning to their existence for so long that they don't even realize just how self-destructive and stupid their behaviors are. Fighting amongst selves causes enough delay in reaching a goal; in their case, the delay may be forever, if they choose to fight that long. Any member of the audience at once realizes just how stupid these cursed men are behaving.

Unfortunately, our society has been caught in an existence without meaning for so long that we, too, are essentially incapable of recognizing just how self-destructive and stupid our behaviors are. The reality is that western civilization is caught in the very same situation that these forsaken pirates were. Just like the pirates, we have sold our souls for various treasures. Sometimes it is money, but, as Captain Jack points out in the film, "not all that glitters is gold." One of our treasures is wealth. Another is fame. Sex is one of our treasures, as is science, and even progress in general. As a society, we have thrown aside what makes us human for the treasure - and in many cases, the unknown treasure. When it comes to progress, for example, we do not need to know the ultimate prize, simply that it is in some way moving forward.

This is perhaps best exemplified in the case of abortion and contraception. Here, we take the very life out of us and destroy it, all for the sake of our treasure. Modern science makes this parallel frightfully complete. Biology identifies life as that which fulfills 7 characteristics, one of which is the ability to produce new organisms. Contraception and abortion are designed to hinder and negate this ability, rendering us as not quite alive, but clearly not dead, either. In fact in western Europe, where we see this problem most prominently, the population is decreasing at a rate faster than it was during the black plague and the birth rate is in such that humanity is well on its way to virtual extinction on the continent. Without children to prepare for the future and a new generation to leave a legacy and bestow our accomplishments on, lives are reduced to an utter meaninglessness of going through the motions.

And these pirates teach us something else about the sins that plague our society, as well. Their first sin was a sin against themselves. They weren't so much hurting anyone; any claimants to the treasure had long since died. The only thing truly wrong with the treasure was that it was forbidden. That's the reality of all sin, in one sense: God said "no." There may be more too it than that (and there most often is), but even if there weren't, all that matters is that god said "no."

Yet even such a "harmless" sin leads the pirates into greater sins, sins against other people. The emptiness which they find in themselves after the first sin leads to a need, a need to fulfill what can only be fulfilled by more sin, and greater sin. Now they must steal, murder, and kidnap to fill the hole inside of them.

This is the reality of sin. Nobody sins to commit evil. Every sin is an effort - a misguided effort - to get some good. The pirates didn't go after this treasure to make their existence a constant, meaningless process of going through the motions: they wanted easy money. The person who has sex outside of marriage is trying to find love, even if without realizing it. The young man who gets high on drugs isn't looking to destroy his body, he's trying to find happiness in a fallen world. The woman who has 3 abortions isn't trying to snuff out 3 innocent lives, she is trying to protect her career.

And yet all sin leads to this emptiness, an emptiness created by trying to fill a need with self. We already have ourselves - adding more of oneself cannot fulfill. Selfish acts - and all sin is, ultimately, selfish - simply try to fill that hole inside of us with self, leading us to feel more empty than before; discovering the powerlessness to fulfill oneself is a very gnawing experience. And so the sinner, not knowing what to do, tries to take from others in the hope that they can provide what is lacking in themselves. Yet taking from others is simply another act of selfishness, another attempt to fill the hole with self. It is a numbing cycle in which the western world is trapped.

Ultimately, there are two possible endings to this cycle, both illustrated in the Curse of the Black Pearl. When the curse is finally - and unexpectedly - lifted, Captain Barbossa, the leader of the cursed pirates, has just been shot. Because of the lifting of the curse, he is finally able to feel. He is finally able to experience life - and yet all he can experience is death. His initial reaction is one of joy. He has gone for so long without feeling, that though all he is able to experience is the pangs of death, he rejoices in it. This is, ironically, what he was seeking: feeling and meaning, at any cost. Like today's western world, Captain Barbossa delved into sin after sin in his drive for meaning. Ultimately, the meaning that he found was death, and it came unexpectedly. He always expected to be in control of his mortality - to hang onto his invincibility until he was ready to surrender it. Yet death came, unexpectedly, and ironically, as the utter and perfect fulfillment of all of his desires. He sought meaning through sin, and he found the only meaning sin holds: death.

His crew, on the other hand, meets a different end: mercy. They, too, find themselves subject to death unexpectedly as the curse is lifted while in battle with superior British forces. However, death does not come to these men. They are granted mercy by the soldiers. The commanding officer did not need to grant these pirates mercy - and they had certainly committed crimes far exceeding the warrant of death - but he did. All they had to do was accept it. Their choice was to go on fighting to the death, or drop their weapons and accept the fate of capture.

Yet this is a deeper choice than it would seem, and one which ultimately our civilization will have to make. The pirates had gone for a great time without any meaning in their lives, without any feeling. Finally, they had found it, and they were left with a choice: life as prisoners, or death. They chose the former. This no doubt meant much suffering for them, especially in light of the allusion from earlier in the film that freedom is the greatest and most valued privilege of pirates. They would seem to heartily agree with the famous statement of Patrick Henry, "give me liberty or give me death!" But these pirates had something greater than that: meaning. They had sought meaning for so long, as their single goal, and though they had sought it in every corrupt, wrong, and evil way, by the grace of mercy, they had an opportunity to experience it. Even surrendering themselves to the British, the pirates could experience meaning. They could taste the sweet bite of an apple, or experience the warm Caribbean breeze on their faces and an infinity of other things which anybody else would take for granted. They must suffer for this, but ultimately, it was life, and it was meaning, and they chose it.

And so, this is where the western world stands. Indulging in an endless cycle of a search for meaning, a cycle leading deeper and deeper into sin and meaninglessness, one of two things will happen. Either death will come, quickly and unexpectedly, or mercy will. If mercy comes, it will be on the condition of suffering. There is much penance to be done for the sins our civilization has committed, and redemption will not come without suffering and hard work. And yet, if mercy is offered, and if it is accepted, we will have the chance to experience something beautiful, something incredible, and something well worth any suffering: meaning. If we are willing to lay down our weapons of vice and selfishness, we will find such infinite meaning that we had forgotten existed that the sacrifices required for it would seem radically insignificant. Let us pray for this; let us pray.