Why I Don't Fret Much About Atheists

If you're already a fan of Bad Catholic, you'll know he delights in making atheists' heads explode.  If you read my last post about his new organization, 1Flesh, you know they're taking on the task of showing the world that Humanae Vitae was right.

The timing couldn't be better.  With the hullabaloo over Obamacare and the HHS mandate, the Fortnight for Freedom vs. the so-called War on Women, people are hungry for answers on what exactly the Church teaches on contraception, why, and what reasonable arguments are there on the subject.  It's no surprise, then, that 1Flesh has gone viral.  Just a few days into the official launch, the site's had so many hits, they're sprawling for a server big enough to handle it.  Their Facebook page, as of this writing, four days into its announcement, has over 2300 likes.  The world is listening.

Needless to say, the world, the flesh, and the devil aren't going to take this lying down.  Haters gonna hate.


In fact, they've already started.

You've probably been expecting this.  In fact, some small part of you has probably been kinda hoping for it.  Come on.  You can admit it.  Some small part of me wanted it, too.  I think it's kind of hard-wired in us, sometimes, to want to ride forth into battle for Truth, Justice, and the Latin Rite.

VOTR Bonus Points if you've seen this movie!

On the whole, though, I'm not really big on arguing with atheists.  With some exceptions, I see no point in it, other than the sheer joy of battle, which is risky to your spiritual health.  As St. Escriva said, it's not wise to waste time throwing stones at the dogs who bark at you along your way.  Oh, the Gentiles are raging again?  Ho-hum.  Been there.  Done that.  It's the same old song and dance (cue Aerosmith).  It amounts to, "Come down, and we will believe!" (cf. Mark 15: 32)


And that's just it, isn't it?  The whole of our faith, its single most important claim, is that Jesus Christ literally, physically rose from the dead one Sunday morning in A.D. 33.  That is the hope in which we are called.  For this hope, we do things that otherwise would seem counter-productive, if not downright masochistic.  We accept and bear our crosses and trials with patience, bless those who curse us, do good to our persecutors, return good for evil, forgive injuries and ask pardon for our own, always putting our own self-interest last.  At least, we're supposed to.  If you don't believe in the hope of a resurrection - what unbelievers call the "pie in the sky" - why wouldn't you baulk at such moral teachings?  St. Paul saw this clearly:

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied (1 Cor. 15: 16-19). 

Either God exists, revealed to us His will through the Scriptures and a teaching Church, and will come to judge the living and the dead unto eternal reward or punishment,

-OR-

Christianity is by far the single greatest crime against humanity ever conceived, and must be destroyed at all costs.  It logically follows.  Debate in these cases, then, comes down to first premises.  You've got to be far more skilled than I to get anywhere in situations like that.

So I cut the honest atheist of good will a lot of slack.  As I've said elsewhere in these pages, faith is a gift.  We can't achieve belief on our own.  And this is why we leave the judging of people up to God.  We can discern the objective matter of a deed, but only God knows the extent of anyone's culpability.  Some of the atheists who hate us because some of us first hated them.  You will usually do more harm than good to a soul by telling him he's going to hell.  Most people today are already in hell.  If you want to evangelize people, start by getting them to admit that, then show them the Way out.

That's for the "honest" atheists, mind you.

There is, of course, another species of atheist.

These are the ones you see and hear about the most.  I suspect they're a great, loud-mouthed minority, like planes that crash, or self-styled pro-lifers who think we can show killing babies is wrong by blowing up buildings and shooting doctors.  A lot of outsiders think most of us are like that.  Let's not make the same mistake about others.

For a small minority, though, these folks sure do get around.  I've not had any here yet, but the blog is young.  (Heck, I don't even get spam yet.)  I don't argue with this type, because they're not interested in debate.  They don't want to improve their understanding, nor do they wish to enlighten others.  They just want to pick a fight.  

It's Envy incarnate:  people who can't stand anybody else being happy, and feel they have a right and/or duty to "bring them down a peg or two."

Traditional catechetics teaches that Envy of Another's Spiritual Good is a subspecies of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost.  Such sins are all but unforgivable, for it is hard to repent when you reflexively sneer at Mercy itself.  Appeals to reason cannot prevail here.  Even prayer can be doubtful.

There is a sin which is mortal;  I do not say that one is to pray for that (1John 5: 16).

Such people may not believe in God, but they serve a god.  The god who is always most powerful when his existence is denied.

One Flesh - Let Not Man, Nor Copper, Nor Latex, Nor Drugs Divide

I say this a lot, but I really can't say it enough:  I thank God that I've lived to see these days!  He has raised us up a new generation of the faithful, well-formed and bold as lions.  They've had enough of our wishy-wash, and they're not going to take it anymore.

The problem with truth is that it's seldom popular.  How much are you willing to sacrifice for the sake of being on the right side?  Your job?  Your friends?  Your liberty?  Your family?  Your life?  What's your threshold?  Christianity is not easy.  Jesus ain't for wussies.  Standing by Him, or standing by His Vicar, the Pope, or His Church will cost you.

That, and the fear of scism - yet another split in the Church - has kept priests and bishops fairly quiet about certain moral issues.  The Church's teaching on sexual morality, for example seems more honored in the breach than in the observance.  Parishioners often come to church expecting to be affirmed in their okayness, rather than challenged to repent their sinfulness.  In short, the scism's actually there de facto, but some of our clergy hope it'll go away if they just pretend it's not there.

If you think I'm being harsh, check out what Cardinal Dolan told the Wall Street Journal:

 The "flash point," the archbishop says, was "Humanae Vitae," Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical reasserting the church's teachings on sex, marriage and reproduction, including its opposition to artificial contraception. It "brought such a tsunami of dissent, departure, disapproval of the church, that I think most of us—and I'm using the first-person plural intentionally, including myself—kind of subconsciously said, 'Whoa. We'd better never talk about that, because it's just too hot to handle.' We forfeited the chance to be a coherent moral voice when it comes to one of the more burning issues of the day."

 As a result, people can cite spurious surveys claiming 90% of Catholic women defy Church teaching on artificial contraception, and otherwise intelligent people actually find it believable.


Because, truth be told, it may not be 90%, but it's probably better than 50%.

It's a good thing Jesus said, Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.  I don't even want to think about how many people would willingly make an informed choice, knowing it would lead to damnation.  At least the poorly formed have a chance.

But those comfortable days are numbered.  I've believed for some time now that this decade is going to be the Anti-'60s.  More and more of today's young people are demanding an objective reality, straight answers, a truth outside themselves, a challenge to be more, and something worth giving their all for.

In the spirit of this, Bad Catholic  and his merry band of friends have started a new website:

1Flesh

Their mission:  to expose, on a secular level, the damage that our contraceptive culture has done to women and to society in general.  It affirms sexuality in accordance with the Natural Law.  This blog supports them altogether!

Now, since they're focusing on the sociological, psychological, demographic, and philosophical side of things, I thought I'd take on the theological, typological, semantic, and aesthetic aspects.  This is a many-headed beast, and it's going to take me some time to put it all together coherently, but since these young folks are sounding the trumpet, what can an honest man do but grab his armor and set out to do his best?  Look for more on this in a week or so, maybe sooner.

Drawing Down the Lunatics

I've heard my share of Christian witness, some of it quite interesting, and/or deeply moving.  One of the things that irks me, though, is the unfortunate tendency of the born-again to utter the hapless phrase:  " . . .and then I found Jesus!"

Always, I find myself thinking the same thing:

Faith, Hope, and Charity are what we call the Theological Virtues, because not only do they point us toward God, but they also proceed from Him.  Contrary to popular belief, it's not about the quest of Man for God; it's the quest of God for Man.  What's the first question God asks in the Bible?  "Where are you?" (Genesis 3: 9)  God always makes the first move.  This is why Jesus says, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him." (John 6: 44)  [BTW, you'll notice I finally got off my lazy duff and got out my RSV-CE for citations.  I haven't banished the Douay, but this one's a bit less Shakespearean and a bit more ecumenical.]

There's a brilliant post on this today from Bad Catholic.  Check ye it!

We can't build our own stairway to heaven.  Play your old Zeppelin albums backward all you like; you'll only succeed in trashing your needle (ask your parents, if you don't get the references here).

You'll never convince some people, though.  The Gospel of Self-Help is a business too big to fail, it seems.  Even now, rest assured, an ex-Amway salesman from Hoboken has found the astonishingly simple answer that's eluded all the great minds since the dawn of civilization.  As we speak, he's in the basement, making an infomercial to promote his tapes, promising you instant salvation, on your own terms, in the comfort of your own home, by tapping the latent Answers Within YOU!

 . . .which is unfortunate, because analog tapes are obsolete and have gone the way of the dinosaurs.  So should the notion that you can make yourself happy, good-looking, and successful just by telling yourself that you are.  In the end, you climb toward Heaven, not to get with God, but to be God.  And we know where that ends, don't we?

Yep, back in our last post, with good old Phaëton, taking the sun out for a spin.