sexta-feira, 19 de abril de 2013

72 Congressmen slam media for failing to cover Gosnell, Planned Parenthood infanticide remarks - by John Jalsevac

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 18, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a sternly worded letter, 72 congressman have accused the three leading mainstream media networks – ABC, NBC, and CBS – of “blatant media bias” for failing to cover two of the biggest abortion-related stories in recent years: the trial of “House of Horrors” abortionist Kermit Gosnell, and remarks made by a Planned Parenthood representative in support of infanticide.

“The broadcasters’ blackout of the Planned Parenthood infanticide lobbying scandal and the Gosnell ‘House of Horrors’ murder trial are the biggest and most politically-motivated media cover-ups in our nation’s history,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who led the group of 72 legislators.

The trial of Kermit Gosnell, who stands accused of murdering seven newborn infants by snipping their spinal cords, has been ongoing since the middle of last month. Testimony has featured former staff and victims presenting gruesome details about conditions inside Gosnell's "House of Horrors" clinic.

Until Friday, however, when pro-life activists took to Twitter en masse and sent hundreds of thousands of Gosnell-related tweets, most major media outlets had completely ignored the trial. Even following Friday's "Tweetfest," media coverage remains spotty.

The media similarly ignored shocking remarks made by Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow at the end of March, when she testified against a bill in Florida that would require abortion providers to provide care to babies born alive after failed abortions.

LaPolt Snow was asked by Rep. Jim Boyd what Planned Parenthood would do “if a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion.”

She replied simply: “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.”

“Censorship and media bias allows the corrupt abortion industry to profit at the expense of innocent women and children," said Rep. Blackburn. "The mainstream media has a responsibility to report the truth, not turn a blind eye to the biggest civil rights issue of our time.”

Click "like" if you are PRO-LIFE!

Rep. Steve Scalise agreed.  “If someone went into a hospital and shot seven babies and a mother with an AK-47, the media coverage surrounding the trial would rival a natural disaster,” he said. “Yet seven babies and a mother are dead at the hands of an abortion doctor using a scalpel, and the mainstream media’s silence on this story is deafening. By failing to cover this story and turning their backs on the culture of abortion in this country, the media has failed in their duty to provide unbiased coverage of this horrific tragedy.” 

In their letter to the three networks, the 72 congressman said that they see “no excuse” for the failure to cover the two stories, other than “blatant media bias.”

“We welcome your response to tell us that this is not so," they said, "that you can explain why Planned Parenthood's public endorsement of the right to deny medical treatment to children who survive abortion is not of interest to the general public.

"Help us to understand how one of the most notorious cases in our nation's history of patient abuse of mothers and babies does not merit airtime on your programming," they concluded.

Here are the links to the full text of the letters to ABCCBS, and NBC.

quinta-feira, 18 de abril de 2013

The Dangers of an Aging World - By Stefano Gennarini, J.D.

WASHINGTON DC, April 19 (C-FAM) Wolves prowl the streets of abandoned cities. Only prostitutes are left to take care of the elderly. War is looming. This is 2013 and the global population is aging. 

These are only a few of the alarming anecdotes retold at a conference last week. Decades of policies to reduce the number of people on our planet have had an effect, and it is generally not a good one, report the authors of three recent books on demographics. Read More

Médico: Tuvo sentimientos homosexuales muchos años... ahora ayuda a otros al cambio heterosexual

In RL 

Miguel Ángel Sánchez Cordón, tiene 55 años de edad, es de Granada (España) y médico desde hace 33 años, ejerciendo en tres Continentes (Europa, África y América Latina).

En su primera entrevista (Un médico explica cómo dejó sus sentimientos homosexuales y descubrió su heterosexualidad) que concedió a un medio de comunicación, en concreto a Religión en Libertad, para explicar su atracción al mismo sexo decía que "nunca me he identificado con la palabra `gay´ pues sé inglés - era el idioma más habitual en mi trabajo - y yo no era para nada `feliz´. Tampoco me podía poner la etiqueta de homosexual, pues aunque tenía esa orientación, yo NO me podía definir como un homosexual. Yo era un hombre, un médico, un cristiano, un hijo de Dios, pero NO era homosexual, por más que me pudieran atraer las personas de mi mismo sexo".

"Por años y más años, para evitar sufrir, reprimía cada vez más profundamente mi Atracción Mismo Sexo, ello me hacía mucho daño ¡Cómo no!".  

- Después de publicar su testimonio en Religión en Libertad (Un médico explica cómo dejó sus sentimientos homosexuales y descubrió su heterosexualidad), causó un gran revuelo y disparó el índice de lectura. ¿A qué cree usted que se pueda deber esto?
- Pues la verdad es que el primer sorprendido soy yo. Yo sólo he dado publicidad directa a este testimonio a las personas más allegadas.

Sí, es verdad que la AMS (Atracción Mismo Sexo) no deseada crea un gran sufrimiento en las personas que lo padecen y el descubrir a alguien que lo ha superado, origina cuanto menos una gran curiosidad entre los que no la padecen y, por supuesto, una gran esperanza entre los que la sufren.

Ello puede ser quizás un motivo y ya no hablo de las personas qué les constan han visitado ReL a raíz de ese artículo sino sobre todo me refiero no sólo al número de personas de las que tienen constancia, sino también de los que están interesadas en conocer más sobre esta terapia o aquellas que ya directamente nos están pidiendo ayuda…

- Dice que les han pedido ayuda ¿A quiénes se refiere usted?
- Me refiero a mí mismo, claro está y Alberto Pérez, por el cual yo encontré la terapia reparativa y que gracias a ésta y sobre todo a su buen hacer y dedicación yo pude redescubrir mi heterosexualidad de un modo total y completo.

Y es justo por ello que yo como médico puedo ahora también brindar mi ayuda a quienes andan descontentos o directamente desesperados por encontrar una solución al problema que más les agobia en sus vidas, es decir a su AMS no deseada.

- Usted habla de personas que tienen AMS y sufren por ello. Sin embargo lo que se ve a pie de calle, respecto a este tema, es más bien aparente alegría y felicidad...
- ¡Por supuesto! Sólo las personas que no quieren tener, ni sentir, ni experimentar esta atracción hacia personas de su mismo sexo, sufren. Las que lo aceptan, asimilan como parte de su vida, no tienen este conflicto.

Yo me refiero al sufrimiento de los que tienen una homosexualidad egodistónica, o sea que no la quieren y rechazan.

Yo respeto a uno y a otro tipos de personas. Cada uno es muy libre de reaccionar como crea le es más conveniente. Pero por mi experiencia personal y profesional, puedo afirmar y estoy completamente convencido de ello, de que si alguien que tiene AMS, busca dentro de sí la verdad más íntima, o sea aquella que no está sujeta a ninguna moda ni es consecuencia de presión social o política alguna, van a encontrar esa verdad que es inmutable, que es Dios.

- Dr. Sánchez, ¿no sería entonces mejor intentar de que esas personas que sufren por su AMS la aceptasen o la integrasen en su personalidad?
- Está claro que sí sería lo más práctico, de hecho la mayor parte de mis compañeros y colegas siguen esta línea. Fíjese que incluso en EE UU algunos terapeutas, ofrecen las dos posibilidades, o sea la terapia de reafirmación homosexual o la terapia reparativa.

Personalmente desde luego yo no lo quería para mí, y por ende no lo querría para nadie. Pues ya sólo desde el punto de vista meramente biológico y médico la homosexualidad no es un comportamiento normal, entiendo como tal la baja frecuencia a nivel mundial (globalmente inferior al 3%).

Ese intento de "convencerme" por parte de psiquiatras, psicólogos e incluso sacerdotes, de que "yo era así" y que por tanto debía de "aceptarme" me hería profundamente, me hacía sentir realmente triste y sin esperanza, porque no iba en sintonía con mi propia realidad más profunda.

Yo, como usted sabe, soy un profundo creyente y estoy convencido de que Dios nos ha creado a su imagen, según está escrito en el Génesis: "Dios creó al hombre a su imagen, a imagen de Dios lo creó, hombre y mujer los creó" (Gn 1,27) y por ello, y es para mí la Palabra de Dios; Dios sólo nos ha creado hombre o mujer, todo el resto no viene de Dios.

Y esto que afirmo, lo digo con todo el respeto del mundo, pues no quiero ofender a nadie con mis afirmaciones ¡Nada más lejos de mí! Para mí la homosexualidad no era mi verdad, no se correspondía ni con mi modo de entender la vida ni con mi modo de ver las relaciones con los demás.

Y lo mismo puedo afirmar con claridad por las personas que voy conociendo y a las que voy tratando en su proceso personal de "re-orientación" que coinciden conmigo en este punto fundamental.

- No me queda clara esa afirmación sobre "todo el resto no viene de Dios". ¿Me podría explicar que ha querido decir usted?
- Bueno eso es algo que vengo pensando hace ya tiempo y que está basado en la antropología del cuerpo que la Iglesia Católica, de la que soy miembro activo, afirma. Así como se refleja en toda la tradición cristiana enraizada en la Palabra de Dios.

Yo no soy teólogo y lo que digo lo expreso con mis pobres y propias palabras.

Yo estoy plenamente convencido de que Dios me ha creado hombre como a mi esposa la ha creado mujer. Cada ser humano es único, absolutamente único. Esta unicidad es la gran, la enorme grandeza de cada ser humano.

A usted o a mí nos ha creado Dios, lo mismo que a cada uno de los que puede que lean esta entrevista. Por eso somos sus hijos en el pleno y más exacto sentido de la palabra.

Sus padres o los míos han sido los instrumentos utilizados por Dios Padre para crearnos. Me explico mejor. Yo soy médico y esta imagen que le voy a intentar explicar creo que es muy clara.

Mire: en una eyaculación hay cientos de millones de espermatozoides y sólo uno llegará a fecundar a uno de los miles de óvulos con los que nace una mujer, justo ése que ese mes ha madurado…

Dejar este proceso a la casualidad, al mero azar es para mí una enorme estupidez. Yo veo en ese espermatozoide que fecunda ese óvulo, el dedo de Dios que me ha querido a mí y no a cualquiera de las otros miles de millones de posibilidades de fecundación.

¡Bien! Entonces continúo con la idea que quiero aclarar.
Como sólo Dios nos crea hombres o mujeres y como no hay en absoluto ninguna prueba biológica ni científica, ni genética, ni hormonal ni cerebral de que haya nadie que nazca homosexual o bisexual o pansexual o transexual… Yo afirmo que todas esas categorías son "justificaciones humanas", para definir situaciones que desde luego Dios Padre no las ha creado.

Y repito hasta la saciedad que todas esas personas que se puedan sentir identificadas con esas definiciones de homo, bi, pan o trans… me merecen el mayor de mis respetos.

Sólo quiero dejar bien claro que para mí, sólo existe una sexualidad humana que emana del acto creador de Dios Padre y es la de que somos u hombres o mujeres y por ende la sexualidad querida y creada por Dios está en esta única dualidad: un hombre para su mujer y viceversa.

- Hace ya varios meses realicé una entrevista a Alberto Pérez y le pregunté algo similar, pero igualmente lo repito ¿Es usted consciente de que se arriesga y mucho al testimoniar públicamente lo que hasta ahora ha dicho?
- Esto mismo ya me lo dicen mis familiares y mis amigos y yo le digo a usted lo mismo que les digo a ellos: ¡Y el bien que puede recabar a alguna de las personas que contactan conmigo pidiéndome una ayuda! No puedo dejar de hablar, de decir lo que en mi vida ha ocurrido.

Es por ello por lo que me expuse en el testimonio que ya hice y que de algún modo lo continúo con esta entrevista. Es a ellos a los que doy mi e-mail y hasta mi teléfono personal - cuando ya nos hemos conocido y contactado - y hasta ahora, lo puedo decir con gran alegría, que nadie ni se ha burlado, ni me han ofendido, ni se han sentido atacados o criticados ¡Todo lo contrario!

Yo sólo comunico lo que he vivido, lo que pienso al respecto, y es el cambio radical que mi vida ha dado: Antes vivía en una mentira, lo que no significa en absoluto que los homosexuales lo sean ¡Lo era para mí! Yo no quiero ir contra de nadie, sólo a favor de la Verdad.

Yo no quiero juzgar el proceder de nadie ¿Quién soy yo para hacerlo? Yo he encontrado una libertad, totalmente desconocida para mí y la comunico a quien como yo vivía esclavo, vivía adicto al placer sexual hedonista y estéril encerrado en sí mismo.

Ya hay personas que lo están agradeciendo, pues han encontrado una esperanza que antes de conocernos habían descartado.

Si hay algún riesgo en decir lo que dije, y en lo que ahora estoy diciendo, lo asumo con gusto, aunque solo fuera por una persona ¡Ya me merece la pena!

Recientemente alguien me ha dicho textualmente: "Quiero alabar al Señor por todo lo que Él ha hecho por mí en este periodo... quiero dar las gracias a Miguel Ángel y Alberto por su oración, por el trabajo real y sin descanso hacía mí… y finalmente quiero felicitarme a mí mismo de cómo estoy viviendo este nueva, novísima etapa de mi vida: ¡Estoy muy orgulloso de mí mismo!".

Y esta persona no ha sido la única… Y cómo dice nuestro Buen amigo Jesús: “El que tiene oídos para oír que oiga” (Mateo 13:9)

- ¿Pero cómo puede ocurrir que se dé una transición de una atracción homosexual hacia otra heterosexual?
- Imagínese una cebolla, con todas esas capas que la caracterizan. Pues bien, en el interior más profundo de cada persona está la imagen de Dios. Si eres un hombre, tu sexualidad más íntima se dirige, se expresa hacia una mujer y viceversa.

Como ya dije anteriormente no hay ninguna base biológica científicamente demostrada como para afirmar que alguien nazca homosexual. Han sido diversas circunstancias personales, familiares y/o ambientales las que la han llevado a esa situación de la AMS.

Conforme se va comprendiendo esas circunstancias que han herido el normal desarrollo psicológico del niño, se van intentando sanar y entonces, volviendo al ejemplo de la cebolla, se van quitando capa a capa todas esas "no verdades" que se han inculcado en la personalidad, en el carácter, en el modo de reaccionar, en el modo de expresar la sexualidad… Hasta que la heterosexualidad que es, para mí, el único modo de expresar la sexualidad humana, viene fuera; pero no porque no estuviese, sino porque estaba escondida tras un montón de mentiras. No sé si logro dar la idea.

Tú y yo, cada cual, es heterosexual, aunque ello pudiera ahora estar "velado"; seria como un cielo nublado donde no se ve el sol, pero éste está ahí y cuando las nubes se disipen va a volver brillar en tu vida. Para mí así fue y repito, tenía muchos años de adicción.

Todos los que hasta ahora han contactado con nosotros, y son muchos, muchos más de los que de un modo efectivo llegamos a poder contactar, acompañar, aconsejar, animar y tratar. Pues bien, todos ellos, están sumidos en una gran tristeza, confusión, desesperación - algunos han llegado a considerar la muerte como la única salida para su vida -.

Las gracias se las doy a ustedes que igualmente que nosotros se exponen y se arriesgan a divulgar algo que podría ser considerado "políticamente no correcto" y ello para poder dar algo de esperanza a una vida llena de callejones sin salida.

Todas estas personas que nos contactan de España y de fuera están buscando respuesta que les satisfagan, que les aclaren todos los interrogantes que tienen y como denominador común se basan en esta pregunta: "Yo que soy un hombre, ¿porqué me siento atraído por otro hombre, cuando eso yo no lo quiero?".

Al ser personas con fe sienten esa dicotomía entre su naturaleza como hombre y su comportamiento no coherente a su género. Ello les hace sufrir terriblemente, lo sé por propia experiencia.

- Su portal "Verdad y Libertad" ¿está siendo una plataforma de ayuda a todas esas personas con sentimientos homosexuales que quieren un cambio para su vida?
- Hasta ahora es sólo un sueño de proyecto, pues apenas está esbozado, pero estamos contentos. Desde que abrimos nuestro portal Verdad y Libertad hace algo más de tres meses, sin haberle dado publicidad alguna, hemos recibido más de 800 visitas de tres continentes y con una duración media de visitas de 5 minutos. ¡Ello nos ha sorprendido mucho!… Esta página como decimos en la introducción sobre lo que queremos ofrecer: "No es una página de carácter científico o médico. Las preguntas y respuestas que aparecen en la pestaña “inicio”, son una información simple acerca del porque de esta web, para entender qué, cuál y cómo es el trabajo que estamos realizando con cada persona que lo solicita".

- ¿Qué puede aportar su portal Verdad y Libertad?
- Nos parece que en este mundo en el que vivimos, tan falsamente democrático, cada cual se cree con la autoridad de decir sus verdades, olvidando que sólo Dios es la Verdad Absoluta y no se le tiene en cuenta, nosotros queremos aportar nuestro grano de arena en que su Verdad sea conocida, desde nuestra propia experiencia y la de las personas a las que acompañamos en el descubrimiento de su verdad particular.

Otro punto que nos motiva enormemente es el de la tan cacareada libertad. Libertad ésa que nada tiene que ver con la verdadera y auténtica.

La libertad para la mayor parte de las gentes, se la suele entender como el hacer lo que me plazca, cuando eso es un modo enmascarado de esclavitud sea del tipo que sea: sexual, poder, goce, anarquía, etc…

La libertad como la entendemos nosotros es la de ser conscientes de que Dios es mi Padre y me quiere, se ocupa de mí y yo quiero vivir coherentemente con ello y con Él.

Libertad para nosotros es optar por lo que quiero, tengo o debo hacer; nada que ver con lo que me gusta, me apetece o me place hacer…

Éste proyecto es la única parte de nuestra página web que aún no hemos publicado, pues lo estamos elaborando. En breve lo queremos tener publicado.

- Tanto Alberto como tú, Miguel Ángel, ¿estáis dispuestos a dar vuestro testimonio en foros públicos o medios de comunicación?
- Sí, estamos abiertos a un debate serio, fuera de motivaciones ideológicas, políticas o sectarias para que sinceramente podamos ir aprendiendo de las experiencias de unos y otros. Tanto Alberto, como yo, lo que brindamos es fruto de nuestra vivencia, lo que ofrecemos es nuestra experiencia, repito y termino, no queremos ni ofender ni convencer a nadie.

Para contactar personalmente con Miguel Ángel Sánchez Cordón: miguelangel@verdadylibertad.es





quarta-feira, 17 de abril de 2013

The road to same-sex marriage was paved by Rousseau - by Robert R. Reilly

In MercatorNet 

There is more to same-sex marriage than politics. It only becomes plausible if you accept certain assumptions about how to distinguish what is natural from what is unnatural and what is right from what is wrong. The intellectual origins of the debate stretch all the way back to the Greeks, but radical changes in philosophy over the past couple of hundred years accelerated the process. In the essay below, Robert R. Reilly gives some deep background. 

Ineluctably, the issue of “gay” rights is about far more than sexual practices. It is, as lesbian advocate Paula Ettelbrick proclaimed, about “transforming the very fabric of society … [and] radically reordering society's views of reality”.

Since how we perceive reality is at stake in this struggle, the question inevitably rises: what is the nature of this reality? Is it good for us as human beings? Is it according to our Nature? Each side in the debate claims that what they are defending or advancing is according to Nature.

Opponents of same-sex marriage say that it is against Nature; proponents say that it is natural and that, therefore, they have a “right” to it. Yet the realities to which each side points are not just different but opposed: each negates the other. What does the word Nature really mean in this context? The words may be the same, but their meanings are directly contradictory, depending on the context. Therefore, it is vitally important to understand the broader contexts in which they are used and the larger views of reality of which they are a part since the status and meaning of Nature will be decisive in the outcome.

Let us then review briefly what the natural law understanding of "Nature" is and the kinds of distinctions an objective view of reality enables us to make in regard to our existence in general and to sexuality in particular. The point of departure must be that Nature is what is, regardless of what anyone desires or abhors. We are part of it and subject to it. It is not subject to us. Thus, we shall see how, once the objective status of Nature is lost or denied, we are incapacitated from possessing any true knowledge about ourselves and about how we are to relate to the world. This discussion may seem at times somewhat unrelated to the issues directly at hand, but it is not. It is at its heart and soul. Without it, the rest of our discussion is a mere battle of opinions.

Order in the Universe – Aristotle’s Laws of Nature

There are two basic, profoundly different anthropologies behind the competing visions of man at the heart of the dispute over same-sex marriage. For an understanding of the original notion of Nature, we will turn to those who began the use of the term in classical Greece, most especially Plato and Aristotle. To present the antithesis of this understanding, we will then turn to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who eviscerated the word of its traditional meaning in the 18th century and gave it its modern connotation. The older anthropology is Aristotelian, which claims that man is by Nature a political animal for whom the basic societal unit is the family. The newer is Rousseauian, which claims that man is not a political animal and that society in any form is fundamentally alien to him. These two disparate anthropologies presuppose, in turn, two radically different metaphysics: one is teleological; the other is non-teleological, or anti-teleological. Again, the first one has its roots in Aristotle, the second in Rousseau. These two schools of thought provide convenient and necessary philosophical perspectives within which to understand the uses of the words “natural” and “unnatural” as they are variously employed by the proponents and opponents of homosexual acts and same-sex marriage today.

The discovery of Nature was momentous, as it was the first product of philosophy. Man first deduced the existence of Nature by observing order in the universe. The regularity with which things happen could not be explained by random repetition. All activity seems governed by a purpose, by ends to which things are designed to move.  Before this discovery, in the ancient, pre-philosophical world, man was immersed in mythological portrayals of the world, the gods, and himself. These mythopoeic accounts made no distinction between man and Nature, or between convention and Nature. A dog wagged its tail because that was the way of a dog.  Egyptians painted their funeral caskets in bright colors because that was the way of the Egyptians. There was no way to differentiate between the two because the word “Nature” was not available in the vocabulary of the pre-philosophical world.

According to Henri Frankfort in Before Philosophy, it was Heraclitus who first grasped that the universe is an intelligible whole and that therefore man is able to comprehend its order. If this is true – and only if it is true – man's inquiry into the nature of reality becomes possible. The very idea of “Nature” becomes possible.  How could this be?  Heraclitus said that the universe is intelligible because it is ruled by and is the product of "thought" or wisdom. If it is the product of thought, then it can be apprehended by thinking. We can know what is because it was made by logos. We can have thoughts about things that are themselves the product of thought.

As far as we know, Heraclitus and Parmenides were the first to use the word logos to name this “thought” or wisdom. Logos, of course, means “reason” or “word” in Greek.  Logos is the intelligence behind the intelligible whole. It is logos which makes the world intelligible to the endeavor of philosophy, ie, reason. In the Timaeus, Plato writes, "... now the sight of day and night, and the months and the revolutions of the years, have created number, and have given us a conception of time; and the power of inquiring about the nature of the universe; and from this source, we have derived philosophy, than which no greater good ever was or will be given by the gods to mortal man." Through reason, said Socrates, man can come to know "what is", ie, the nature of things.

Aristotle taught that the essence or nature of a thing is what makes it what it is, and why it is not something else. This is not a tautology. As an acorn develops into an oak tree, there is no point along its trajectory of growth that it will turn into a giraffe or something other than an oak. That is because it has the nature of an oak tree. By natural law, in terms of living things, we mean the principle of development which makes it what it is and, given the proper conditions, what it will become when it fulfills itself or reaches its end. For Aristotle, “Nature ever seeks an end”.  This end state is its telos, its purpose or the reason for which it is. In non-human creation this design is manifested through either instinct or physical law. Every living thing has a telos toward which it purposefully moves. In plants or animals, this involves no self-conscious volition. In man, it does.

Anything that operates contrary to this principle in a thing is unnatural to it. By unnatural, we mean something that works against what a thing would become were it to operate according to its principle of development. For instance, an acorn will grow into an oak unless its roots are poisoned by highly acidic water. One would say that the acidic water is unnatural to the oak or against its “goodness”.

The term “teleological”, when applied to the universe, implies that everything has a purpose, and the purpose inheres in the structure of things themselves. There is what Aristotle called entelechy, “having one’s end within”. The goal of the thing is intrinsic to it. These laws of Nature, then, are not an imposition of order from without by a commander-in-chief, but an expression of it from within the very essence of things, which have their own integrity.  This also means that the world is comprehensible because it operates on a rational basis.

It is by their natures that we are able to know what things are. Otherwise, we would only know specificities, and be unable to recognize things in their genus and species. In other words, we would only experience this piece of wood (a tree), as opposed to that piece of wood (another tree), but we would not know the word “tree” or even the word “wood”, because we would not know the essence of either. In fact, we would know nothing.

Nature is also what enables one person to recognize another person as a human being. What does human nature mean? It means that human beings are fundamentally the same in their very essence, which is immutable and, most profoundly, that every person's soul is ordered to the same transcendent good or end. (This act of recognition is the basis of Western civilization. We have forever since called barbarian those who are either incapable of seeing another person as a human being or who refuse to do so.) Both Socrates and Aristotle said that men's souls are ordered to the same good and that, therefore, there is a single standard of justice which transcends the political standards of the city. There should not be one standard of justice for Athenians and another for Spartans. There is only one justice and this justice is above the political order. It is the same at all times, everywhere, for everyone.

For the first time, reason becomes the arbiter. Reason becomes normative. It is through reason – not from the gods of the city – that man can discern what is just from what is unjust, what is good from what is evil, what is myth from what is reality.  Behaving reasonably or doing what accords with reason becomes the standard of moral behavior.  We see one of the highest expressions of this understanding in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

As classics scholar Bruce S. Thornton expressed it: “If one believes, as did many Greek philosophers from Heraclitus on, that that the cosmos reflects some sort of rational order, then ‘natural’ would denote behavior consistent with that order. One could then act ‘unnaturally’ by indulging in behavior that subverted that order and its purpose”.  Behaving according to Nature, therefore means acting rationally. Concomitantly, behaving unnaturally means acting irrationally. This notion of reality necessitates the rule of reason.

Reason and morality

This is relevant to man alone because only he possesses free will. He can choose the means to his end or choose to frustrate his end altogether. This, of course, is why "moral" laws are applicable only to man. These moral laws are what natural law means in regard to man. That man can defy moral law in no way lessens the certainty of its operation. In fact, man not so much breaks the moral law as the moral law breaks man, if he transgresses it. In short, when we speak of man’s Nature, we mean the ordering of man’s being toward certain ends. It is the fulfillment of those ends which makes man fully human.

What is man’s end? In the Apology, Socrates said that, “A man who is good for anything…ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong – acting the part of a good man or bad…” The Republic states that “the idea of the Good… is seen only with an effort; and when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and the lord of the light of this visible world, and the source of truth and reason in the intellectual”. Since Socrates, we have called man’s end "the good". This end carries within it an intimation of immortality for, as Diotima said in the Symposium (207a): “… love loves good to be one's own forever. And hence it necessarily follows that love is of immortality”.

The good for man, Aristotle tells us, is happiness. However, happiness is not whatever we say it is, but only that thing which will by our nature truly make us happy. Since man’s nature is fundamentally rational, happiness will consist in the knowledge and contemplation of the ultimate good. (That good, the theologians tell us, is God). Aristotle explains that happiness is achieved only through virtuous actions – the repetition of good deeds. Deeds are considered good and bad, natural and unnatural, in relation to the effect they have on man’s progress toward his end.

So, it is through Nature that we come to understand the proper use of things. The enormous importance of this for our topic is that, since the purposes of things are intrinsic to them, man does not get to make them up, but only to discover them through the use of his reason. He can then choose to conform his behavior to these purposes in a life of virtue, or to frustrate them in a life of vice. He can choose to become fully human, or to dehumanize himself. However, if his choice is the latter, he will not present it to himself in those terms. As Aristotle said, he must see what he selects as a good in order for him to be able to select it. If he chooses to rebel against the order of things, he will present this choice to himself not as one in favor of disorder, but as one for order – but of another sort. He will, as we have said, rationalize: vice becomes virtue. It is to the construction of this other sort of “order”, to this alternate reality, that we now turn. One of its modern architects was Rousseau.

Rousseau’s Inversion of Aristotle

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) turned Aristotle’s notion of Nature on its head. Aristotle said Nature defined not only what man is but what he should be. Rousseau countered that Nature is not an end—a telos—but a beginning: Man’s end is his beginning. He has no immutable nature. “We do not know what our nature permits us to be”, wrote Rousseau in his Emile. A 20th century version of this view was offered by John Dewey, who said: “human nature is not to have a nature”. There is nothing man “ought” to become, no moral imperative. There is no purpose in man or nature; existence is therefore bereft of any rational principle. This means there is no entelechy, no such thing as ‘having one’s end within,’ as Aristotle put it. In fact, reason itself is not natural to man, according to Rousseau – whereas Aristotle said it is man’s very essence. For Rousseau, the roots of reason are in the irrational. Reason is the servant of the passions, not of the truth.

Contra Aristotle, Rousseau asserted that man by nature was not a social, political animal endowed with reason. Unlike Aristotle, Rousseau does not begin with the family, but with an isolated individual in the state of nature, where the pure “sentiment of his own existence” was such that “one suffices to oneself, like God.”  Nature becomes a secular substitute for the Garden of Eden. Yet this self-satisfied god was asocial, amoral and pre-rational. His couplings with women were random and formed no lasting attachment. The family was not natural to him. As Rousseau wrote in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality , “… there was one appetite which urged him to perpetuate his own species; and this blind impulse, devoid of any sentiment of the heart, produced only a purely animal act. The need satisfied, the two sexes recognized each other no longer, and even the child meant nothing to the mother, as soon as he could do without her.” (Rousseau, in fact, abandoned his five children.) The Marquis de Sade expressed a thoroughly Rousseauian sentiment in his novel Juliette, when he wrote that “all creatures are born isolated and with no need of one another”.

It was only when through some unexplainable “accident” one man was forced into association with another that his godlike autonomy ended. “Man is by nature good”, said Rousseau, but we have somehow fallen from Nature. What man has become is the result not of Nature but of this “accident”, which also in some way ignited his use of reason.  Rousseau stresses the accidental character of man’s association in society in order to emphasize its unnaturalness and artificiality. It was not necessary. In fact, it shouldn’t have happened. Aristotle taught that you cannot reach perfection by yourself; man needs society and the political order to reach his full potential. The polis is necessary to him. Rousseau asserted the opposite: man begins in perfection, which the formation of society then takes from him.

Here is how Rousseau stated his thesis in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality: “… this state [of nature] was the least subject to upheavals and the best for man, and that he must have left it only by virtue of some fatal chance happening that, for the common good, ought never to have happened. The example of savages, almost all of whom have been found in this state, seems to confirm that the human race had been made to remain in it always; that this state is the veritable youth of the world; and that all the subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species”. 

In his Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, Rousseau purported to show the destructive influences of civilization and “progress” on men, whose “minds have been corrupted in proportion as the arts and sciences have improved”. In his work Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques, he describes himself as having advanced the "great principle that nature made man happy and good, but that society depraves him and makes him miserable....vice and error, foreign to his constitution, enter it from outside and insensibly change him."  Speaking of himself in the third person, Rousseau wrote that “he makes us see the human race as better, wiser, and happier in its primitive constitution; blind, miserable, and wicked to the degree that it moves away from it."

The society resulting from that “fatal chance happening” has corrupted man. This is Rousseau’s substitution for original sin. Through his association with others, man lost his self-sufficient “sentiment of his own existence.” He began to live in the esteem of others (amour propre), instead of in his own self-esteem (amour de soi). In this way man was “alienated” from himself and enslaved to others. This is what Rousseau meant when he said, “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains”. Here we see in Rousseau the origin of Marx’s idea of exploitation, carried through, in more recent times, to Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential assertion that: “Hell is other people”. If hell is other people, then heaven must be oneself.

Nonetheless, Rousseau knew that the pre-rational, asocial state of blissful isolation in the state of nature was lost forever, much as was the Garden of Eden. But he thought that an all-powerful state could ameliorate the situation of alienated man. The closest man can come to secular salvation is to abolish those dependent forms of association which have enslaved him to other men and kept him always outside of himself. He must sever, as much as possible, his relations with his fellow members of society so he can return the sentiment of his own existence to himself. How can this be done?

The state demands complete dependence

Rousseau described the accomplishment of this condition: “Each person would then be completely independent of all his fellowmen, and absolutely dependent upon the state”. The state could restore a simulacrum of that original well-being by removing all of man’s subsidiary social relationships. By destroying man’s familial, social, and political ties, the state could make each individual totally dependent on the state and independent of each other. The state is the vehicle for bringing people together so they can be apart: a sort of radical individualism under state sponsorship.

Rousseau’s program was to politicize society totally and his first target was society’s foundation – the primary means by which men are curbed of that total self-absorption to which Rousseau wished them to return – the family. To destroy the family Rousseau proposed that its primary function of educating its children be taken from it and given to the state. “The public authority, in assuming the place of father and charging itself with this important function (should) acquire his (the father’s) rights in the discharge of his duties”. The father is supposed to console himself with the thought that he still has some authority over his children as a “citizen” of the state. His relationship with his children has metamorphosed into a purely political one.

Rousseau’s attack upon the family and his exclusive reliance upon the state as the vehicle of man’s redemption is the prototype for all future revolutionaries. The program is always the same: society, responsible for all evils, must be destroyed. To promote universal “brotherhood”, the only source from which the word “brother” can draw meaning – the family – must be eliminated. Once society is atomized, once the family ceases to interpose itself between the individual and the state, the state is free to transform by force the isolated individual into whatever version of “new man” the revolutionary visionaries espouse.

The artificial family

Here is the point of huge significance for our subject. If the family is artificial in its origins, as Rousseau claimed, then it can be changed and rearranged in any way the state or others may desire. It is simply a shift in convention, a change in a cultural artifact. We can revise human relations in any way we choose. Whoever has sufficient power may make these alternations to suit themselves. There is no standard in Nature to which they must adhere or by which they can be judged. If we do not have a Nature, then there could not possibly be a problem with homosexual acts or same-sex marriage – or with many other things, as well. Pointing out that there has never been such a thing as homosexual marriage in history is superfluous to this point of view since man’s “nature” is malleable. It is the product of history. History moves on and man changes with it. Or rather man can change himself according to his desires, as long as he has the means to do so. Since things do not have ends in themselves, they can be given ends by whoever is powerful enough to do so.

This is the philosophy of the Sophist Callicles in the Gorgias, when he says to Socrates: “the fact is this: luxury and licentiousness and liberty, if they have the support of force, are virtue and happiness, and the rest of these embellishments—the unnatural covenants of mankind—are all mere stuff and nonsense” (492c). With the support of force, virtue becomes whatever you choose. It is not conforming your behavior to the rational ends of Nature, but conforming things to your desires. Reason becomes your instrument for doing this. For Rousseau, man is a creature of desire and appetites, to which his reason is subordinated. Rousseau’s host in England, David Hume, wrote in A Treatise on Human Nature: “Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions and may never pretend to any office other than to serve and obey them”. Reason is not, then, the means by which man reaches his end in the knowledge and contemplation of the good. It is a tool for satisfying the passions. The inversion of Aristotle is complete.

Natural laws or natural rights?

A modern day version of Callicles would not speak as frankly as he did to Socrates. He would cloak his inversion of natural law in the language of “natural right”, so that it might seem to be the same, while actually being its opposite – just as did Rousseau. If you are an active homosexual, you claim a “right” to sodomitical acts and same-sex marriage. Though “natural right” sounds like natural law, it is not, as Fr. James Schall has explained, at all similar. “Modern natural right theory”, he writes, “is a theory of will, a will presupposed to nothing but itself. In its politicized formulation, it has been the most enduring and dangerous alternative to a natural law that is based in the ontological reality of what man is.

Once natural right becomes the understood foundation of political life, the state is free to place any content into it that it wants, including the rewriting or elimination of natural law. The older constitutional tradition thought that the state was itself both a natural result of man's nature and, in that capacity, a check on the state. But if man has no ‘nature,’ he is freed from this restriction. Modern natural right means that nothing limits man or the state except what he wills. He can will whatever he can bring about whether or not it was held to be contrary to natural law.” Nothing less than this is what is playing itself out in the same-sex marriage struggle.

Though not directly speaking of Callicles or Rousseau in Salt of the Earth, the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said something that characterizes this school of thought: “the idea that ‘nature’ has something to say is no longer admissible; man is to have the liberty to remodel himself at will. He is to be free from all of the prior givens of his essence. He makes of himself what he wants, and only in this way is he really ‘free’ and liberated. Behind this approach is a rebellion on man’s part against the limits that he has as a biological being. In the end, it is a revolt against our creatureliness. Man is to be his own creator – a modern, new edition of the immemorial attempts to be God, to be like God.”

This is the anthropological and metaphysical perspective within which the same-sex marriage movement makes its case. To accept same-sex marriage means to accept the entire perspective from which it comes, including the assertion that “human nature is not to have a nature”. But natural law is nothing other than what it is to be a human being. Its rejection is a denial of humanity, of what is.




Pope Benedict XVI’s “First Convert” - by Roger Dubin

In CWR

The story of how a New York Jew wrestled with Christ and became Catholic

Groucho Marx once said, “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have a guy like me as a member.”  
 
So began my witness testimony at the Easter Vigil on April 7, 2007, when my wife Barbara and I entered the Catholic Church. For a New York Jew, who’d detested the name “Jesus” for as long as he could remember, to be standing before a packed congregation at Sacred Heart Church in Prescott, Arizona, having to recount in three minutes how he got there—well, you can imagine what a surreal a moment that was. 

Yet now, when instead of three minutes I have three thousand words, plus six years as a Catholic, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the election of Pope Francis for perspective, the task is, if anything, even more daunting. But Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, asked me to give it a shot, so here goes. 

On April 2, 2005, there came the news of the death of Pope John Paul II. I’d always admired the pope for his courage in confronting the horrors of communism, and for aligning with President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher in a united front that led to the downfall of the Soviet Union. Yet as a spiritual leader he meant nothing to me. 

Nevertheless, Barbara and I found ourselves becoming involved in the events and the funeral as they unfolded on television. Even the typically skewed commercial coverage couldn’t disguise the tributes from all corners of the globe, and the love for the pope and grief at losing him from Catholics and people of every faith. At some point in the two weeks following, Barbara—a long-lapsed Protestant who’d never lost her regard for Christianity—turned to me and said, “You’ve got to get religion, Roger. You’ve been drifting way too long.” 

Early on the morning of April 19, I left on a business trip, first taking the commuter flight from Prescott, our home since 2001, to the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. There was a wait before my next flight to the west coast, so I stopped for coffee, and soon after I arrived at the gate, the white smoke appeared over the roof of the Sistine Chapel on the television monitor. Sipping my cappuccino, I watched with a large group of travelers, interested—as a news hound mostly—in who’d been chosen. From my casual observation, however, quite a few in the crowd were Catholics, and far more invested in the outcome than I. 

When the announcement was made that Cardinal Ratzinger had been elected, people around me seemed to register either shock or joy. I had a pretty good sense of the reason for the split. In the days following Pope John Paul’s passing, I’d noted the avuncular and, to all appearances, mild-mannered cardinal playing a high-profile role in the funeral and related proceedings. I’d also heard quite a bit of commentary about his staunchly conservative stance as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, set in contrast to the “modernization” and “progress” many were hoping for and demanding. That hoary theme, complete with groan-inducing code words and liberal shibboleths straight out of American politics, brought on a depressing sense of déjÀ vu. “God’s Rottweiler,” some even called him, a denigration that struck me as both outrageous and naïve, though I knew almost nothing about him. 

I’d been a senior corporate executive for many years, I’ve had my own consulting business since 1996, and I understood that the cardinal, like the centurion in Matthew 8:9, was “ a man under authority.” Which meant that whatever he’d done to garner his reputation had been undertaken with the guidance and approval of his boss. Yet the criticism fell on him, which also told me he was a loyal lieutenant, willing to do his superior’s will and take the hit himself without complaint. People who viewed it otherwise, I grumbled, likely had an axe to grind, or were reluctant to criticize Pope John Paul, or were simply fools. 

That’s not very charitable, I admit. But remember, I was nowhere near being “Christian” in my judgments at the time. (Actually, I’m still nowhere near where I should be, yet I’m trying.) How often I’ve marveled since then at Pope Benedict’s kindness to everyone, even as he took on the agonizing work of expunging the “filth” from the Church and laying the foundation for renewal. How often I’ve wished I could feel his Christian charity towards the enemies within. But the rockiest rise on the road to becoming Christian, at least for someone like me, is learning to love as Pope Benedict loves—especially those whom you’d much rather smack upside the head and who richly deserve far worse. I suspect I’ll be wrestling with that one for a long time. 

So there I was at the gate—standing now, with just a few minutes left before I’d need to board my flight. If I had to miss the introduction of the new pope, it was no big deal, though I was vaguely hoping I wouldn’t. And then Pope Benedict XVI walked onto the balcony. The camera zoomed in, his eyes seemed to look right at me and through me, and that’s the exact instant my conversion happened. 

I’ll tell you more about that a little later, but first I want to affirm what I bet some of you are already thinking. I, too, have seen reruns of the video of that moment, and the reality is, the camera does not zoom in, certainly not in the way I experienced it. Nor do the pope’s eyes appear to look right at me, much less through me. I guess that was just one more minor miracle of that miraculous morning. 

In the years since, I’ve enjoyed saying that I’m Pope Benedict’s first convert, or tied for first, which marked an inauspicious beginning indeed to his pontificate. I’ve also joked numerous times that my conversion was like Saint Paul’s—one of my huge heroes—minus the saint part. I suppose I tend to make light of it all because the event remains utterly inexplicable to me. Indeed, with the passage of time, I’ve wondered occasionally if it actually occurred. The only concrete evidence is that I am Catholic, though that’s evidence enough for anyone who’s ever known me. 

I was raised in a family of Russian heritage that was troubled, dark, and often violent—thanks to my poor late father’s volcanic temper—among wealthy, successful relatives whose Judaism was solely about tradition, survival, and identity, not God. My little sister was born autistic, my elder sister and I fought, and my mother was completely overwhelmed. Not at all a happy home, and when I could escape, I would shut myself away and read—searching, I came to realize later, for something beyond, for truth, for understanding, for what it all meant. Because somehow, despite my parents’ agnosticism and my father’s draconian regime, I believed in God. Though I didn’t like him much. 

For the sake of tradition, my mother attempted—risking derision and explosions from her husband—to have us observe the High Holy Days, and urged me to become Bar-Mitzvahed for the same reason. The ceremony was rather a sham: a long-suffering rabbi crash-tutored me, taught me my Hebrew phonetically, and walked me through a Cliff Notes version of the Old Testament and the Torah. But it pleased my mother and my relatives. 

As for the New Testament, that was another matter entirely. My rabbi never once mentioned it, I knew little about it, and what I did know I viewed with suspicion. Yet I’d picked up the basics from my own reading and the movies—the big Technicolor sword-and-sandal epics of the time in particular, which I liked because they were, well, big, and in most cases about God in some fashion, and offered something more nourishing than popcorn to chew on. I understood how Jesus Christ came to be crucified, and the role of the Jewish leaders of the day in the show trial and sentence. Nevertheless, it was still bizarre and infuriating when I had several encounters regarding that general topic with Catholic boys. Evidently, I’d personally murdered their Lord (guess I must have dozed off there, for a couple thousand years), and they were none too pleased about it. Fists flew on both sides, despite the insanity of it all. 

To say I developed an antipathy towards Christianity would be an understatement. It was a prejudice shared by most among my relatives, though especially towards Catholics—who were blamed for the medieval passion plays, the pogroms, the worldwide discrimination, even some aspects of the Holocaust. I don’t recall whether it ever occurred to me that this prejudice was as irrational as the one that held me responsible for killing Jesus, but probably not. 

Being Jewish in my clan was more about what we were against, than what we were for—except for supporting Israel; about huddling together, not reaching out—except to help other Jews; about grim fatalism, not faith in God—except to complain about him. Perhaps understandably, as I became a young adult, I would rarely mention my being Jewish unless I sensed someone might be anti-Semitic. Then I’d drop the potential bomb to gauge the reaction. Words, by that point, had taken the place of fists, and I learned to wield them like a lepidopterist, leaving the moths pinned to their hatred and illogic. 

But the truth is, I never felt Jewish, in any God-centric way, until I became Catholic. 

All the foregoing, though, still doesn’t explain my loathing for the name “Jesus.” The reason I acquired that was the manner in which popular Christianity had abused it, and overused it, and commercialized it, and exploited it; and the way—in art, movies, and written depictions—the person of Jesus Christ himself was so often feminized: like some long-haired, blue-eyed flower child, floating just above the ground, spouting weightless fluff about peace and love. Maybe that’s unfair, but it’s how it came across to me and it made me ill.

After all, he was a Jew, I reasoned, and a carpenter’s son to boot. That was hard work in a hard time; you needed to be tough and strong to do it. In fact, I figured the Yeshua who strode the dusty earth of ancient Israel had to have been a powerhouse—with one hand holding a dove, but the other a hammer, and always the smartest guy in the room. Otherwise, what Jew would have followed him? And where was the Christ who said in Matthew 10:34—yes, even I couldn’t avoid picking up some actual quotes from the New Testament, as long as they fit my viewpoint: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” 

I liked that mental picture a lot: a muscular Jesus wielding a sword. Evidently no one else did, though, at least not since the good old days of the Knights Templar and such. Whoever Jesus really was I assumed was unknowable, given all the myths and hoo-hah about him, but my guess was that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob probably felt much the same as I did about who he’d become in modern times. Kind of like Brando in The Godfather, when he uncovers James Caan’s body at the undertaker’s and weeps, “Look how they massacred my boy.” 

In any case, at the age of 16 and just graduated from high school, I’d had enough of everything. I lied my way into the Merchant Marine and shipped out as an ordinary seaman on a decrepit tramp freighter bound for North Africa. When I came home, I embarked on what became a series of regrettable forays into several colleges—the regret was mutual, mine and the colleges’—and then, at the age of 22, I drifted “east.” What I found in the concepts of karma and reincarnation, and the moral relativism inherent in eastern mysticism and the New Age, was a way to understand God that let me off the hook, so to speak, for my sins and transgressions. Which, unfortunately, were legion. 

Following a first marriage that produced no children and failed in four years, and a rootless life as a professional musician, writer, and editor, in 1981 I met my wife Barbara—a gifted and inspired fine artist, and a guileless and giving human being. She had two children from her former marriage and had been a single parent for three years. Although fatherhood was not something I’d ever desired, her children—ages three and six at the time—were well mannered and charming. Barbara and I fell in love, got married, and I legally adopted the little ones.  

At around the same time that I’d drifted east, Barbara had experienced a sudden and intense pull to Christ—toward the very source of the forgiveness, kindness, and optimism that was the gentle Christianity she’d grown up with. Yet without a church to fulfill her needs, she was soon seduced by the New Age as well, though her reasons were nothing like mine. She was attracted to the emphasis on creativity that matched her fire and joy for life, the sense of freedom within God’s kingdom, and the concept of being a co-worker with God throughout eternity. Her Christian values, ethics, and view of humanity, however, never left her; indeed, as the years went by, her main goal was to help other New Agers become more Christ-like, for she discovered that so many of them were off-track. Perhaps not surprisingly, in the 1990s she felt herself drawn again to Jesus. One time—and one time only, she tells me—she dared, after all these years away, to speak personally to him and pray fervently for my conversion, certain that if she came back to Christianity on her own, our marriage would end and our children would suffer. 

I know without ambiguity that the detour she made into the New Age was made for my sake. Had she been Christian, we never would have met, and in order for the Holy Spirit to save me, he needed Barbara to reach her hand into my hell, take mine and never let go. I could be glib and call this sacrifice but another of the many she constantly, and quietly, makes for the sake of others, except that this one almost destroyed her. And yet, she has thanked me endlessly for the sole gift I gave her in return: bringing her into the Catholic Church, the very church she’d always imagined was more closed in and confined than any other on earth. 

So now, a guy who’d never wanted kids had an instant family. I embarked on a successful, though nomadic, business career, and struggled to make myself a better man. I loved the children dearly, yet couldn’t stop the rages of my father becoming my own. Over and over, the demons of the past would rise up and bring darkness to our family, and over and over the eastern teachings had no answers. The so-called “spiritual exercises” were all me-centered and ego-centered, and the last thing in the universe I needed was more selfishness. It fell to Barbara to hold everything together and bring the light back to our home. Of course, there were many beautiful times too, now glittering memories of their wonderful childhood and adolescence, and we remain to this day a very close and loving family. Yet it’s only because of Barbara’s strength and wisdom that our kids were able to grow into such exceptional adults. 

Roughly drawn, then, this is a sketch of the angry and deeply anti-Christian Jew who stood at the gate in Sky Harbor Airport on April 19, 2005, when Pope Benedict XVI greeted the world for the first time. I had neither the slightest inkling of, nor the remotest desire for, what was about to occur.  But I had been given a warning. 

Almost exactly a year before—I wrote it down—I experienced a dream so vivid that I remember it now just as I did then. I was in a business suit, walking the empty street of a city, going to work. Waiting for me at the entrance of a building, also in a business suit, was Jesus Christ—and he didn’t have to introduce himself. He looked a lot like I’d always thought he must: tough, no nonsense, all man, all-knowing. He certainly seemed to know everything about me, but didn’t care. 

We shook hands and he said, “I need you to do something. Go up to the top floor of this building and kill Satan.” Why me? I asked. “Why not?” he replied. I had no answer for that, so in I went. It was ultra-plush—marble and chrome and polished wood. I took the elevator to the top and there, at his massive desk in a huge office, was a handsome, well-groomed executive with a pleasant expression. Still, I knew who it was. He knew who I was too, and who’d sent me, because he stood and came over, intimidating except for the fear in his eyes. I laid my hands on his shoulders and said: “In the name of Jesus Christ…” The next words formed in my mind as “I kill you,” but they came out, “I kiss you.” His face went white, I kissed him on the forehead, and he crumpled down dead. 

Clearly, I thought on awakening, this had been some colossal cosmic mistake, as if I’d opened the wrong hotel room door and seen things I shouldn’t have. But I know now that the Body of Christ requires all sorts of parts for all sorts of purposes, and when Our Lord decides—for whatever arcane reason of his own—that he wants to get you, you’re got. Resistance is futile, so you might as well make the best of it. 

Because as Pope Benedict walked onto the balcony and raised his arms, and the camera appeared to zoom in, an unstoppable power and presence came through his eyes and sliced me open. I burst into tears, and everything I ever thought I was, or wasn’t, poured out. 

It was the Sword of Christ, and there would be no peace in me until I offered him mine. 

So ended, with those exact words, my witness testimony on April 7, 2007. I wish I could say that, in the years since, I’ve fulfilled the promise of my conversion, or returned a fraction of the priceless treasure I was given. But I can’t. 

I’ve served on the RCIA team every year. I’m on the Pastoral Council. I never miss Sunday Mass, pray every day, sit a weekly hour in the Perpetual Adoration Chapel, and support charities. I could check a few more boxes as well, but why bother? Because on the morning I heard that Pope Benedict had resigned, I was struck with the most crushing sense of personal failure and shame. This profoundly holy, heroic, and humble man—in whose luminous thoughts and words I’ve tried to immerse myself, and whom Barbara and I were blessed to see in person twice, and whose pontificate has been so historic and revolutionary—what have I done to help him? Have I ever really kissed and killed Satan, either in the wide world or my own soul? And as for Saint Paul—have I even attempted to follow his footprints? 

It’s all been too easy, being Catholic. Hardly any trouble at all. But no more. 

Ever since Pope Benedict’s resignation, I’ve been like Kevin Costner in the movie The Untouchables, and a bullet-riddled Sean Connery is grabbing me by the shirt and crying out with his last breath: “What are you prepared to DO?”
We shall see.