The title of this post reflects two related pieces found in my feed reader this morning. The first, via Mark Shea, contains a note he received apparently late last week:
Sadly, it appears that GU will comply with the HHS Mandate without even a fight. I spoke to Melissa in Human Resource at Gonzaga today and she confirmed December 1, 2012 Gonzaga will cover contraceptives, sterilizations and plan b drugs. This devastating news comes out at the same time Cardinal Dolan said as Catholics we will fight the immoral HHS Mandate.
As Catholics, we will be called in the days ahead to stand up for our Catholic faith and it will be difficult. Remember what our Lord said about being “lukewarm” and have courage.
If you feel called to email or make a phone please do. Above all please keep Dr. McCulloh and Bishop Cupich in your prayers.
President Thayne McCulloh, D. Phil
president@gonzaga.edu
509-313-6102Most Reverend Blase J Cupich
509-358-7305
Mary Cole, Executive Assistant to the Bishop
mcole@dioceseofspokane.org
It's a sad commentary upholding the reason Fr. Longenecker has put up this post asking the Catholic world to wake up:
The biggest problem with American Catholics is that the majority of them are asleep. Lulled by
materialism, the good life and the cares of the world, they’re blind to the real crisis facing America and blind to the real crisis facing the Catholic Church. They’re frogs in a pan of water.
We need to wake up and smell the catastrophe. We need to be aware that the temperature’s rising.
The catastrophe is that certain implicitly modern ways of viewing the world have crept into our society and have undermined a Catholic world view. The first of these is relativism–the idea that there is no such thing as truth, or if there is such a thing as truth you can’t know what it is, you can’t express it, and you certainly cannot attempt to impose it anyone else. Relativism relegates all truth claims to personal opinion. You have your truth. I have my truth. You say po-ta-to. I say po-tah-to. If all truth is relative than anything goes. Think it through. If all truth is relative then you may do what you please and I must tolerate it.
The second poison in modern society which has seeped into the Catholic Church is utilitarianism. This is the belief that what is useful is what is good. We want our technology to work. We want our infrastructure to be efficient and economical, and that’s fine, but when we apply utilitarian principles to moral choices the result is deadly. Suddenly a person’s worth is determined by how useful they are or what ‘quality of life’ they have or whether it is costing us a lot to keep them alive. Utilitarianism has infected the mindset of Catholics so that they choose worship style, marriage choices and most every other choice according to what is useful, economic or practical.
The third thing that poisons modern Catholicism is sentimentalism. This is when people choose only according to what seems nice, compassionate or caring. We must, of course, be nice, compassionate and caring, but there are other criteria for choice as well, and if the only criteria for choice is to be compassionate, caring and nice, then what happens when it seems more “compassionate” to provide abortion for a poor woman or more “caring” to terminate the life of the aged or the infirm or the disabled? Sentimentalism combined with utilitarianism leads to death camps.
American Catholics who don’t think this will happen here are asleep. They’re like the frog in the pan of boiling water–the temperature increases bit by bit until they are boiled to death and all along they just thought it was getting more and more warm and comfy.
It’s Advent. Wake up and smell the catastrophe. Realize where this country is headed. Realize that already our hospitals have complicated “Do not resuscitate procedures” which are similar to England’s “Liverpool Care Pathway”. This euphemistically named procedure was first devised by caring and compassionate doctors to provide a way to care for terminally ill patients. Now it is being used to euthanize the old and even newborns with disabilities.
Wake up and smell the catastrophe. It is all much further along than you think.
Gonzaga, as Mark writes, has caved. And as Fr. Longenecker writes, has given in to relativism, utilitarianism, and sentimentalism.
It's a sad day if you're a faithful Catholic.
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