About the Pope

April 6, 2005

By: Mike Talley

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My wife and I were talking the other night about the death of the Pope. We are Protestant and therefore know little about Roman Catholicism, but we got into a great discussion about why so many Catholics were so upset about the death of the Pope. One line I heard several times from the News was that on one hand many feared that the new Pope would not carry on the work of the previous and on the other hand many wanted a more Liberal Pope. There is one thing I do know about this Pope and that is that he stuck to his and his churches beliefs. He did not bow to pressure to get with the times. He stated the continued position of the church on abortion, the death penalty, contraceptives, gay marriage and women priests, just to name a few. His belief in absolute truths was what got us really talking. My wife was telling me that she wished more people, i.e. politicians, would stand up and state what they really believe, that there are absolutes in this world. I tried to explain why that doesn’t appear to be possible now, but then I really got to thinking about the whole idea of moral absolutes.

Whether you like it or not, moral absolutes exist. Oh, you may try to deny they exist or claim they are just archaic leftovers from our Puritan past, but I have news for you: They exist. They have always existed. In every society, in every country that has ever existed, moral absolutes were there. The surprising thing is that no matter the culture, or even religion, the moral absolutes that existed have all been very similar. Here are some basics: Do not sleep with another persons mate. Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do no lie. Do not cheat. Do not rape. Do not intentionally starve people to death to make your life easier. You can keep adding to this list, but can we agree in principle that there are good reasons for that list? But here is where it gets sticky. That list sounded an awful lot like the Ten Commandments of my faith and the Jewish faith. Oh No! We can not have that! But it is true. All major religions have moral tenants that are very similar to the above list. I am sure they differ somewhat, but the main thrust is that there is a certain moral code that we should all live by. If we live by that code, society is better off.

The past forty years has seen a dramatic decline in the belief in moral absolutes. We have been conditioned to accept all people, regardless of how they live, as valid. Meaning, we must not judge them. If we judge, we must draw from some list of absolutes to compare the person’s life to. That would be unfair, as the other person may not ascribe to our personal set of beliefs. There was a time when the vast majority of people shared a common set of beliefs. Not everyone practiced them or even cared much about them, but they existed. Society functioned better because of the underlying bedrock of certain moral absolutes. Now we have come so low that we are unable to judge any action, because in doing so, you have to have some absolute truth to base your judgment on. Currently most everyone agrees that child molesters are bad, evil, vile people. Why is that? How come we can say that with any degree of certainty? Because society still holds onto the moral absolute that molesting little kids is a bad thing. What about murder? Well, it used to be that all murder was held to the same test, but not anymore. Sure he killed his parents, but he had a troubled life. Sure he killed the cop, but he had a fear of authority. It happens all the time. People who have killed someone get off totally or with very light sentences. It has come to the point where certain types of murder are worse than others. The same can be said about robbery and a host of other crimes. When a society begins to lose touch with its moral absolutes, then rationality becomes the test.

Terri Schiavo is a great test case. I have really stayed out of this argument, and all I will say is that is was inhumane as hell to starve someone to death. I do not care what her wishes were or what mental capacity she had, if her husband wanted her dead that much, he should have taken a gun and shot her in the head. At least there would not have been as much suffering. But my point is not all that, rather how the American people overwhelmingly approved of what happened. How is that possible? This is the line you heard over and over again "Man, I sure would not want to live that way". We rationalized what we would want or not want. Would the American people say such things if someone who kept 100 dogs lost his job and was unable to provide for all his animals so he starved 20 of them to keep the rest alive? Would we say "Gee, I would not want to live like that, at least most of them were able to live"? I highly doubt it. My guess is that the guy would be hauled to prison for a very long time. Am I missing something here? When did animals reach a higher level of importance than humans?

When you begin rationalizing, you begin to undermine your absolutes. You find yourself saying "Well, you know…..who am I to judge….." We are called not to judge others, but that only applies to comparing them to our lives. But their acts? Well you have to call a spade a spade. If someone is acting contrary to the public norms or moral absolutes, society has the right to judge that person, for the sake of maintaining the public good. What about gay marriage? The common response is "Well, if they are a loving couple, why not let them get married? It does not affect me." The problem is that once you begin to allow things contrary to society's agreed absolutes, then there is no stopping the slide. Many of you will laugh at me and call me a fool, but explain how if you bend the rules to allow gay marriage that you can then stand by rules that prevent "others" from getting "married"? If it is wrong to judge gay couples and not allow them to get married, then how is it right to keep those who practice polyamory (group marriage), or bigamy, or polygamy from getting married? See what I mean? Look, you may not agree with all of society's moral absolutes, but they exist for a reason. You begin to demolish them, you open up a Pandora's Box.

Moral absolutes are a good thing, but they are inherently based on or found in some type of religious context. Many people are reluctant to "push" their views on other for fear of looking like a close-minded hypocrite. But the simple fact is that societies function and thrive when there is respect for the absolutes that the society is based on. When you give credence to fringe groups, you begin to rationalize their behavior in order to allow it to fit into society's absolutes. When you begin to rationalize, you begin to weaken. Then, if it is ok for one exception, then all exceptions are ok. If you stand up and fight, you will be labeled a homophobe, or a hate monger or worse. So most people meekly step aside and accept what is happening around them for fear of looking ignorant or intolerant.

The Pope stood up to the world. Sympathizing with people versus condoning peoples actions are two separate things. He sympathized without condoning, thus he left his church more firmly grounded on the moral absolutes of their faith. Good for him and for the sake of a better world, I hope that the next Pope has the guts to stand up for the truth, no matter how archaic it may appear in the modern world. Truth does not change. You can rationalize things, but the truth will always remain.

Mark Steyn has a column about the Pope and I think it best sums up what I have been trying to say:

By contrast, the Guardian thought Karol Wojtyla was "a doctrinaire, authoritarian pontiff". That "doctrinaire" at least suggests the inflexible authoritarian derived his inflexibility from some ancient operating manual - he was dogmatic about his dogma - unlike the New York Times and the Washington Post, which came close to implying that John Paul II had taken against abortion and gay marriage off the top of his head, principally to irk "liberal Catholics". The assumption is always that there's some middle ground that a less "doctrinaire" pope might have staked out: he might have supported abortion in the first trimester, say, or reciprocal partner benefits for gays in committed relationships.

The root of the Pope's thinking - that there are eternal truths no one can change even if one wanted to - is completely incomprehensible to the progressivist mindset. There are no absolute truths, everything's in play, and by "consensus" all we're really arguing is the rate of concession to the inevitable: abortion's here to stay, gay marriage will be here any day now, in a year or two it'll be something else - it's all gonna happen anyway, man, so why be the last squaresville daddy-o on the block?