Observable Limits
It seems rather obvious to state that we human beings are a species at a crossroads. An informed Catholic, that is, a practicing Catholic who is attentive to and honours magisterial teaching, the teaching of Jesus Christ, is very aware of the trajectory of human history. Human history is salvation history, a life and death drama playing itself out in the microcosmic recesses of human souls and in the macro-arena of everything "out there", i.e., nations, the world and - why stop at the planetary level - the wider cosmos.
The Church provides a multitude of navigational aids to enable travelers to avoid the dangerous shoals of relativism and its diabolical offspring so that those seeking safe harbour may find hope here and now and joy everlasting in the next life.
CCC 50 By natural reason man can know God with certainty, on the basis of his works. But there is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly arrive at by his own powers: the order of divine Revelation. Through an utterly free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. This he does by revealing the mystery, his plan of loving goodness, formed from all eternity in Christ, for the benefit of all men. God has fully revealed this plan by sending us his beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
Tragically, many members of the human race are unable to resist the currents pulling them toward destruction upon spiritual, intellectual, biological, social and political reefs. They willfully or through seasoned ignorance cling to their imagined paradises (safe zones, etc.), odd fictions that consume their attention and contaminate their souls until there is little freedom left in their minds and thinking to enable them to recognize their Creator. And, even when they do meet God - through a conversation, a life-giving embrace or through a crisis real or imagined - they flee to the chaos or confusion with which they are most familiar. It is a strange condition among humans that chaos (and fear) for many is more acceptable than the comfort of knowing the truth and the healing, consolation and fulfillment that grows in the soul from knowing and embracing the person of Jesus Christ.
CCC 68 By love, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. He has thus provided the definitive, superabundant answer to the questions that man asks himself about the meaning and purpose of his life.
CCC 69 God has revealed himself to man by gradually communicating his own mystery in deeds and in words.
We are at a crossroads. Disease, environmental degradation, economic, social and political instability: are all symptoms pointing to a contaminated spiritual environment. Some would exploit the symptoms to enact in others a dependency upon false gods, to make those most susceptible to fear malleable, more susceptible to exploitation and more susceptible to accepting dangerous ideologies masquerading as solutions to man's problems, ideologies that lead to inhumane behaviours.
Fr. Paul D. Scalia, son of the great Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Antonin Scalia, offers the following sober analysis. He writes:
We live in an impious culture, which if it will not change will not long be free. For us the past has nothing to teach; only the present matters. Wisdom is discounted; only technology is worthwhile. We are increasingly cut off from the examples of our flawed but noble past. In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis wrote about such impiety: We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. Likewise, we refuse to receive the wisdom of our founders and wonder at our current confusion.
And, Fr. Scalia continues:
It’s not the impious who are free but the pious. Those tethered to the wisdom of the past are not seduced by ideologies or panicked by demagogues. Piety prompts a reverence for the rule of law rather than an arrogant or casual dismissal of it. What is more, devotion to lasting principles means the pious have something to contribute. They have materials from which to build. Piety thus serves as the necessary foundation for reform, which is why two of our greatest reformers – Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. – rooted themselves in Christianity and our nation’s founding.
Most of all, religious piety contributes to a free society. Religion has been the bearer of wisdom, both human and divine, throughout the ages. Faithful people are pious people. Their piety extends, yes, to the goodness of their nation – but also and more importantly to the wisdom bestowed by the devotion of centuries and millennia.
The Church proposes that
CCC 70 Beyond the witness to himself that God gives in created things, he manifested himself to our first parents, spoke to them and, after the fall, promised them salvation (cf. Gen 3:15) and offered them his covenant.
Furthermore,
Reason without faith becomes a pseudo-religious ideology and faith without reason becomes a caricature of human logic.
Day after day after day, ad nauseam, we are exposed to debilitating news reports that are more propaganda than facts. Propaganda - i.e., a mixture of fact and fiction disseminated as fact in order to further inhumane ideologies.
The news has been commodified, commercialized and thus subject to the whim of profiteers seeking to benefit from, among many things, human misery. Catholic media, for the most part, are among those best inoculated against the virus of commercialized (hyperbolic) news, and so Catholics - attentive ones, at least - are better able to navigate the secular media's misguided attempt to own the narrative and thereby render minds dulled by myth increasingly susceptible to deadly agendas.
Contrary to those dangerous agendas,
CCC 71 God made an everlasting covenant with Noah and with all living beings (cf. Gen 9:16). It will remain in force as long as the world lasts.
CCC 72 God chose Abraham and made a covenant with him and his descendants. By the covenant God formed his people and revealed his law to them through Moses. Through the prophets, he prepared them to accept the salvation destined for all humanity.
If we hope to celebrate God's creation by exploring it for truth, by necessity human beings desiring authenticity and objective truth should embrace the hope that the Gospel offers. Without hope, human beings have little reason to value anything but a narrow concern for mere survival.
A race constrained by their baser instincts will never rise above the exploitation of others for its continued existence. That same race, addicted to the pursuit of control, abusive power and disordered pleasure, will produce a heap of victims so high the weight of said mountain of guilt will crush a people to extinction.
The Supreme Pontiff surveys the state of scientific research into the ‘starry firmament’, whose immensity and order speaks to humanity of the ‘power and wisdom of its Author’. He stresses that such inquiry implies a search for higher truths and observes that advance in this area, as in others, must be linked to higher aspirations: ‘since the moral universe transcends the physical world, every gain made by science is on a plane lower than that of man’s personal destiny’. The scientist, therefore, must also turn to the ‘acquisition of spiritual values, of justice and of charity’.
It remains to be seen whether or not humans will survive and thrive, to explore the farthest reaches of the known universe in search of God's truth and beauty hidden among the stars. Humans may very well be too consumed by wars or disease or apathy to find the strength to create opportunities to explore what lies beyond.
The Church offers both faith and reason as a way for mankind to achieve our true potential.
Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).
Are we alone in the universe? We'll never know. We'll never find out, that is, if we allow ourselves to become bound and undone by relativism, progressivism and other false religions that cloud our judgement, that blind us to opportunity and rob us of the curiosity that fuels the imagination and which propels us to explore the unknown and to seek wisdom.
Only the truly free person, only truly free people can risk adventure and preserve their human dignity and the dignity of others. Only the Holy Spirit sent by Christ can free the heart and mind and give someone the confidence to open himself up to discovering God's creation as it is. I.e., reality as it is, free of any distortion imposed by small minds that indulge ideologies that keep human beings locked in competition for power and control and make us act far beneath our dignity as beings created in the image and likeness of God.
We can remain among the cozy and careless residing at the Wokeness Motel, or we can caravan with truth-seeking pilgrims on their way to the Promised Land, the fulfillment of hope promised to those who are faithful to God by keeping His commandments.
CCC 73 God has revealed himself fully by sending his own Son, in whom he has established his covenant for ever. The Son is his Father's definitive Word; so there will be no further Revelation after him.
The future is seeded in the current moment. Only those configured to the Word, the Logos, are free and thus capable of appreciating reality as it is. Only the free know to Whom they belong and, because they know to Whom they belong they know the way forward and the way home. They know their true home is both here with God and with God beyond the horizon.
If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
That Eternal Word makes His home among us in a particular way every Mass. A prayer from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer retained in the Ordinariate Mass (Divine Worship) captures beautifully our relationship to the Word and His Body the Church. That same prayer is a perfect tool inviting God to help the humble pilgrim navigate his or her way past the various contemporary nonsenses, absurdities and crazinesses that litter our lives.
Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank Thee for that Thou dost feed us in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of Thy favour and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of Thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of Thy everlasting kingdom, by the merits of the most precious death and Passion of Thy dear Son. And we humbly beseech Thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with Thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as Thou hast prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to Whom, with Thee and the Holy Spirit, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.
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