Morality

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Suicide by Cop

National attention has been given to the mass murder of nine black people in Charleston, South Carolina. On June 17, parishioners were attending the Wednesday evening Bible Study service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. A young white visitor had come for other purposes, and after listening for about an hour—and almost changing his mind—he used his Glock 45 caliber pistol to shoot and kill nine people including the pastor who was conducting the services. The headline in the USA Today section of our Saturday morning paper read ‘HATE DOESN’T WIN,’ reflecting the words of other parishioners and relatives who had let the Christian message of loving your enemies penetrate their souls.

That was Wednesday night, June 17. On Friday morning, June 19, we in Cincinnati experienced an equally senseless murder. A 21-year-old black man, Trepierre Hummons, placed two 911 calls about a man waving a gun and behaving in a threatening manner. When the first policeman, Sonny Kim, responded, he saw the situation. The mother of Hummons had become concerned about her son and had found him in the street shortly before Officer Kim arrived. The newspaper report read this way:

“As Hummons approached Kim, police say, Hummons’ mother stood between the two men and told Kim, ‘I’ll take him home.’ Then her son drew his gun. And Kim drew his. Hummons shot Kim multiple times and, soon after, wrestled away the officer’s Smith & Wesson semi-automatic handgun, police say. He then began shooting at a probation officer who had stopped to assist on his way to work. Another police offer, Tom Sandmann, came under fire as soon as he arrived on the scene. While Hummons’ mother tried to help the dying Kim in the street, her son turned Kim’s gun on Sandmann and began firing, police say.   Sandmann took cover behind his car, returned fire and fatally wounded Hummons.”

The paper reported that the seeds of this disaster were possibly planted early that morning, just after midnight. A woman filed a sex offense report against Hummons who was well known to the police. Hummons’ mother later told police that her son was having troubles with his girlfriend and wasn’t acting like himself. Early in the morning he had texted his friends, “I really love you and thank you for all you’ve ever done for me.” On his public Facebook page he posted an ominous message: “I love every last one of y’all to whoever has been in my life … you’re the real mvp.” The message was dated at 8:55 a.m., just eight minutes before he placed the first 911 call about a belligerent man with a gun.

This came as Cincinnati was already reeling or being roiled about the number of homicides that are up considerably from last year at this time. The police chief was recently ordered to come up with a plan within a very short time to stop this violence.

That is a very bad joke. Aside from turning the city, or at least its hot spots, into a police state, how can any city stop its violence in 90 days? The roots are deep.

That same Friday afternoon, after I had finished a business transaction, I asked the young black female clerk if she had grown up in Cincinnati. Yes, she had. I asked if she had ever heard anything about morality or commandments in her public education. She replied in the negative and then added that in her high school they were not permitted to say the Pledge of Allegiance because it contained the words “under God.”

Concerning both of these tragedies, many will ask themselves, “Why?” Or is the better question, “Why not?”

More on this next week.

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Rebuilding the Church

This series of blogs started because a picture of a former Catholic Church in the Netherlands now turned into a skate park continues to haunt me. It is a reflection of the neglect of the Church, specifically in Europe but also throughout the West, to proclaim the teaching of Humanae Vitae with confidence and conviction.

The intellectual debate about Humanae Vitae was completed very quickly. It was clear very soon that the rejection of the teaching of Humanae Vitae entailed the rejection of the natural moral law. Dissenters still calling themselves Catholic spelled out the logic of birth control, including even the acceptance of bestiality. Other dissenters spelled out their new principles for moral decision making. I pointed out in a liberal theological journal that Fr. Charles Curran’s principles cannot say no even to spouse-swapping. At least by the end of the 1970s, it was clear that the logic of birth control cannot say no to any imaginable sexual behavior between consenting persons of legal age. That is moral absurdity, and that should have been the end of the so-called “debate” about the merits of Humanae Vitae and Catholic teaching against all unnatural forms of birth control.

Instead, a majority of Catholics as well as other Christians became part of the contraceptive-based Sexual Revolution. Through contraception, sterilization and abortion, the Western once-Christian world stopped having enough babies to replace themselves. The Church and the world are in crisis and in need of a solution.

The solution is both simple and stupendous.

Simple: The Church needs to preach and teach God’s truths about love, marriage, sexuality, and the call to be generous in having children and raising them in the ways of the Lord. The Church has these truths, and everyone in the world needs them. The leaders of the Church need to preach and teach these saving doctrines with the confidence that they really are true and the conviction that they come from God and are for the benefit of every man, woman and child. Then they will also experience the joy that comes from seeing more Catholic couples internalize and live these truths.

Stupendous: The Church needs to inspire its members to say no to themselves and yes to serving God and others. The symbol of Christianity is the Cross. The teaching of Jesus about love, marriage and sexuality involves carrying the daily cross. Somehow, pastors of souls need to reawaken in themselves and their laity a true and personal love for the Lord Jesus. As his disciples, we will understand that the sacrifice of chaste living is just a normal part of walking with the Lord Jesus. Every day young men and women sign up to give their lives, if necessary, for the life of their country. What we need is that every day all men and women sign up again and again to live their lives on the narrow path of Christian discipleship, an adventure that we know involves the daily cross of saying no to ourselves and then the joy of saying yes to the Lord Jesus.

Next Sunday, May 10th, is Mother’s Day.  John F. Kippley, May 2, 2015

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They’re running scared

Articles that have appeared in the media controlled by Catholic dissenters seem to indicate that they are running scared. Humanae Vitae and natural family planning are not their favorite subjects except for criticism. They generally consider these subjects as settled in the negative and not worth discussing. Airplane comments by Pope Francis perhaps have made them almost giddy. After all, if the Pope can be soft on sodomy, what can he have against the use of unnatural methods of birth control that seek to make the marriage act just as sterile as sodomy? Of course, those who actually read what the Pope said and consider the circumstances in which he said it realize that he was not talking about sodomy in general but only whether that sin disqualified a particular priest for a Vatican banking job. On that one, he reserved judgment.

More recently Pope Francis not only presided at the beatification ceremony of Pope Paul VI but also praised his work including Humanae Vitae. The proponents of the Catholic Tradition regarding love, marriage and sexuality have been getting more press, even good press. If I were a dissenter and had been expecting the Pope and the Synod to say some things that further undermine traditional Catholic teaching on birth control and the indissolubility of marriage, I would be very concerned. So they’re writing.

One new trend is to treat systematic natural family planning as an ideal but not as the norm. That’s joined with the use of difficult cases to make the actual teaching of the Church look impossible to follow. For example, a long-absent soldier returns home during the fertile time, and they don’t want to get pregnant. The dissenters’ solution is simple—just contracept. Why? Well, it would be difficult to abstain. In other words, it would be a cross to abstain. Granted.

The problem is that the Lord Jesus told us—and still tells us today—that taking up the cross daily is the price of discipleship for which the reward is eternal happiness. With many words and sympathy-inducing scenarios, the message of the dissenters is the same: you are excused from carrying the cross of Christian discipleship. That is not compassion.

Compassion in this situation starts well before the actual scenario event. At NFP International, we do what we can to identify the fertile time and to keep it as short as possible when abstinence is required. Many of us who have been teaching Catholic NFP have suffered lots of rejection, but at NFP International we persevere simply because teaching chaste and generous NFP is the right thing to do. It’s a response to section 26 of Humanae Vitae that encourages couples to share their NFP knowledge with others.

The other thing that needs to be said is that through their mutual fertility awareness and Catholic faith, the couple in this situation may realize that it may be providential that they are fertile at homecoming. Do they really have a sufficiently serious need to postpone pregnancy? Perhaps seeing what he has seen may lead the military man to be all the more grateful for the gift of life.

Next week: Rebuilding the Church.