No matter where we look in our country today, we are surrounded by a culture of death. We see gun violence, stabbings, suicidal persons jumping from heights, and untold bioethics violations.  

On June 24 of this year, on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, the U.S. Supreme Court repudiated Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) in their landmark decision for Dobbs v.  Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In this decision the court held that the Constitution of the United States does not confer a right to abortion. Many anticipated this decision would be a spark to ignite a flame for the culture of life. To the contrary, the Justices who expressed the majority opinion have become martyrs to armed physical threats, being stalking wherever they appear in public, and even subject to demonstrations including against their family outside their homes. Little to no executive action against these outrages has been addressed or investigated. If our country was exhibiting a Christian ethic, the Justices would be protected for their dignity as persons made to the image and likeness of God. A secularist ethic would insist on humane treatment of the Justices as it would animals. A totalitarian ethic would ignore their welfare when it judged they were not yielding decisions as tools of the state. #whatdoYOUthink?

I stopped short the first time I heard Archbishop Sheen say that he calculated the culture of death to have begun when the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively. The two bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians.  At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. The United States became the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime. The 2 different kinds of bombs were delivered by an American B-29 bomber. By the time the United States conducted the first successful test (an atomic bomb was exploded in the desert in New Mexico in July 1945), Germany had already been defeated. The war against Japan in the Pacific, however, continued to rage. President Harry S. Truman, warned by some of his advisers that any attempt to invade Japan would result in horrific American casualties, ordered that the new weapon be used to bring the war to a speedy end despite mostly women and children being the victims and blotting out the difference between military and civilian.  #whatdoYOUthink?

On August 2, 2022, 77 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a United States CIA drone strike sent 2 RX9 Hellfire “sword bomb” missiles to pulverize the Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri as he stepped out on the balcony of his safe house in Kabul, Afghanistan. The blades allow the missile to cut through metal and walls without destroying the building; and the effects on a human man? None of Al-Zawahiri’s family or civilians were killed President Biden reported.  Some press reported there had been rumors of his death for several years. #whatdoYOUthink?

A Gallup poll from 10-15th August 1945 found that 85% of Americans approved of using atomic bombs on Japanese cities, while only 10% disapproved. In 2022, I did not see or hear any outcry from moral authorities toward the United States drone strike pulverizing death on a man on a neighborhood deck. Would a Gallup poll in August 2022 differ from the Gallup poll in August 1945? #whatdoYOUthink?

Since time began, the Divider, the Destroyer, the Deceiver has battled for man; and it will continue until the end of time. In the beginning, the Eternal cautioned against eating the fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil because the Evil fruit would turn man away from God. It results in spiritual death. Technology is the new Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We must choose the Good and Avoid the Evil. The early technology of fire and the wheel up through harnessing electricity seemed to help man. The technology that brought the destruction of humans at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and can direct drone missiles with hellfire blades are evil but they are obvious for all to see. Evil technology is being developed that will change and obliterate man. No, it is no longer science fiction. It is being carried out in laboratories in universities and government laboratories. Is it irresponsible to ignore it and our future? #whatdoYOUthink?

August 6, 1993 on the 48th Anniversary of the beginning of the culture of death (Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Sheen) the august papal document of St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (VS) was promulgated.  In this, St. John Paul teaches that man can and must respect the norm of morality even in the most difficult situations: "Temptations can be overcome; sins can be avoided, because together with the commandments the Lord gives us He gives us the possibility of keeping them." Humans have a responsibility to inform their conscience through a dialogue with God in faith. It is a process. JPII intends VS to be accompanied by the Catechism. He rejected the proposition that the Church's teaching is essentially only an "ideal" which must then be adapted to each case. On the contrary, our culture stresses individualism, moral relativism, utilitarianism and hedonism. As a result errant Catholic moral theologians teach consequentialism, proportionalism and probabilism. #whatdoYOUthink?

The Eternal Law is the plan of government in the Supreme Governor, God. It is the basis for all obligations, this is, the foundation for the essential order of reality in the universe. This plan is the natural inclination of all things to their proper end. Man is subject to the eternal law of God in a special fixed way conformal to his nature as a rational moral being. Man’s rational participation in the eternal law is intellectually. It is universal to every man for the common good. #whatdoYOUthink?

In Judeo-Christian Morality, Sacred Scriptures and Tradition are the sources of moral theology. The Church is, by the will of God, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to and to authoritatively to teach that Truth which is Christ himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origin in nature itself. But people act as if God did not exist. #whatdoYOUthink?

People can will to act contrary to the Natural Law. It is the experience of policemen, social workers and exorcists to see violence around them as when gangs begin recruiting children as members as early as 12 years old. As a result of evil environments, vicious customs, and corrupt habits there are habitual causes of ignorance of the natural law. Feelings and passions generated by these circumstances can make a person irrational in a particular decision. #whatdoYOUthink?

Moral relativism is the view that ethical standards, morality, and positions of right or wrong are matters of individual choices. We can all decide what is right for ourselves. You decide what’s right for you and I’ll decide what’s right for me. Moral relativism says, “It’s true for me, if I believe it.” #whatdoYOUthink?

August 2022 is the 29th Anniversary of Veritatis Splendor which was promulgated in August of 1993 on the 48th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Consider these consequences: Sheen had warned for decades against the cultural conflation of freedom with license. Freedom in the classical moral tradition had limits, and it was the limits that made freedom meaningful - to be free was to be unobstructed in the pursuit of one's nature, like the free movement of a joint or the freedom of a plant growing unobstructed toward the light. But the growing push for freedom as license meant determining for oneself what was good and evil, within a culture and a legal structure that increasingly saw itself as merely facilitating the exercise of individual autonomy. As Justice Kennedy famously wrote, back in 1992:

"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."

This is ethical anarchy. Fr. Gillis has warned/anticipated: …the annihilating force not of a bomb but of an ethical theory (ethical anarchy) may be released in every country and over the entire globe. The results in both cases will be similar. It will be horrible if we annihilate a civilisation."

On the contrary I SEE NOW that the Justices affirming the dignity of the unborn in Dobbs HAVE sparked  a fire, enkindled a flame for the culture of Life by pausing ethical anarchy.  We must follow their lead in a Civilization of Love.. We must affirm their sacrifice. We must be the BELLOWS to magnify their Truth:  the BELLOWS of prayer; the BELLOWS of an informed conscience; the BELLOWS of witness that echo VS “the splendour of truth shines forth in all the works of the Creator, and in a special way, in man, and created in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:26) Truth enlightens man’s intelligence and shapes his freedom, leading him to know and love the Lord. Hence the Psalmist prays: “Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord.”(Ps 4:6)

#whatdoYOUthink?