A Sermon (though not on Religion)

One of the arguments made across the political and national spectrums in favor of vaccine mandates and vaccine passports is easily summed up as, the government makes us do other things, so why not those?

This is an intellectually dishonest argument; it is simplistic and ignores a great many things. To begin with, an awful lot of the things government compels us to do are in fact morally wrong. We can debate about the specifics, but suffice it to say (and I believe that in their hearts even my liberal and progressive friends would agree) that there are areas where existing government intrusion into our lives is wrong. Or are there actually folks out there willing to argue that an act or idea is right merely because a government thinks so? Let's hope not.

Yes, there are times and places where government does in fact have the right to cajole individuals into acting certain ways and in certain manners. But as a practical matter governments cannot dictate every move we make (though they may try). If government were to attempt to really make us do right rather than wrong in every conceivable instance (if we could actually conceive of every instance) I assure you that the amount of new regulations necessary would make the current tax code read like a children's book. The ifs, ands, and wherefores would require that much analysis. And they would still be incomplete.

Yet governments must act against the truly awful things which may occur in the world. I have to believe that, as a matter of right reason, there are guides and standards which we can appeal to in determining where and why they can act. Indeed anyone who argues for any public act at all must, in their hearts, believe this too. Aquinas taught that as government can't see to everything, it should only prohibit (or by logical argument encourage) only those things so vile and debased (or so good and and laudable) that without whose prohibition (or sanction) civil society could not exist. 

The question then becomes, is COVID so great a threat that it requires massive government intrusion into our lives?

Emphatically, no.

We have Aquinas

In my life I have been blessed by the presence of many good Dominican priests and nuns. Some were pastors, some teachers, and many just good friends. I don't say things like this lightly but I thank God all the time for sending them my way. They have been a great help and comfort to myself and my entire family in too many ways to count.

This Tuesday December 1st one of them, Sr. Willard Reagan, passed away. She was the guidance counselor at my kids' High School, St Alphonsus in Dearborn, Michigan. The school is gone but the memories and the relationships live on, even in death.

This probably means more to me than most folks can ever appreciate, and it has meaning on such a profound level that I doubt I can really fully explain it, but as soon as I learned of her passing I heard her voice in my head telling me, "We have Aquinas. We know."

A bit of background, which I'll keep as brief as I can. St. Thomas Aquinas is perhaps the greatest philosopher in Catholic history. His writings and preaching on life, the universe, and everything are a treasure trove of right thought on all the trouble in the world. He was also a Dominican monk, and the Dominican order of priests and sisters are justly proud of him. On a more personal note I take it as a mark of the Divine that Aquinas's feast day is me Pops birthday, January 28. I like that kind of serendipity.

One day as I was hanging around St. Alphonsus for whatever reason Sr. Willard spotted me. She was excited that a nephew of hers had been given the command of a ship in the US Navy. She was proud of that, and told me that of everyone she knew she thought I would appreciate the news best. I did; I was happy for her.

This led to a conversation about things of this Earth. We soon agreed that some things are really right, and others really wrong, no matter what any one person might think. Truth exists. And that's when she remarked, in a quietly confident tone, "We have Aquinas. We know."

Yes we do, Sr. Willard. We know. Not only from Aquinas, but from good teachers and leaders such as yourself. Godspeed.

The pursuit of happiness

Does God want us to be happy? The short, quick, and obvious answer is yes. Of course He wants us to be happy. Yet the next question is on us. What should make us happy?

We rarely ask and even more rarely answer that question honestly. We need to ask ourselves what ought to make us happy, and answer accordingly. Indeed we need to ask ourselves what exactly we mean by happiness first. I've been very happy lately with my golf game. But it is a fleeting, vain happiness, if I am to be honest with myself. In fact, it's downright shallow.

Socrates, that old pagan, famously opined that the unexamined life is not worth living. Aristotle taught that happiness is the highest goal, and that the greatest happiness comes from examination of the greatest things. Aquinas expanded on that further by saying that the greatest happiness comes from thinking about God. And I think I'll leave it at that.

Atheists do not understand Religion

Atheists tend to make one critical error about religion. It is that error which reveals much about their attitudes towards serious religion.

Atheists assert that religion is entirely faith based. They like to quote the Letter to the Hebrews: faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). True enough. Yet they abuse the passage as well as the concept of faith. They are wrong to assert, as normally follows, that when someone has faith in something, no amount of logic or evidence can change their immediate view. For anyone of real faith realizes one important fact: faith and reason cannot contradict one another.

A belief in a God is a point of philosophy, not religion. It is a truth readily and conveniently overlooked by many nonbelievers. As such, the profoundly religious do not argue that faith is beyond or without reason. The history of the Catholic Church is deep with Saints who assert that faith and reason compliment rather than contradict one another. Aquinas, Augustine, indeed any Doctor of the Church says as much. So as philosophy is based on reason, and the existence of a God is a philosophical matter, it follows that faith must be congruent with philosophy. We are, ahem, graced with the ability to reason. No just God (and a just God is again a rational philosophic conclusion) would allow for any type of knowledge to contradict another. Knowledge, being of three basic styles (empirical, rational, and faithful) must be in harmony or it would have no value. The real truths of science, philosophy, and religion must be in league, or all knowledge is suspect.

That people, even Popes and Imams, have used religion poorly is without doubt. No human being is perfect; ergo, any human being can err. Yet how many secularists, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, have also done horrible things against humanity (one wonders if perhaps they together killed more and caused more calamity than presumably religiously inspired actions) without the aid of religion? Still, to assert that religion is based solely on faith is a rather hollow claim. It begs the question of whether the accuser actually researched religion or is simply acting knee jerk.