NBA’s Jonathan Isaac — Faith and Freedom Over Fear

I’m not an NBA fan, and never really was. Okay, I lied. I did follow the NBA during the 1980s when the Boston Celtics put together those remarkable teams led by Larry Byrd, Robert Parrish, and Kevin McHale, who were supported by such talented players as Dennis Johnson, Danny Ainge, Reggie Lewis, and so many others. But those days are long gone and today’s NBA has become just another woke organization driven by money and political correctness.

I suppose today I’m not much of a fan of any professional sport. I enjoy what’s left of amateur athletics, although it’s become more of a challenge to find true amateurs in any sport. College athletics, at least the big, money-making ones — football, basketball, even baseball — have become increasingly professional. Money rules! If you don’t believe this, just look for the highest paid state employee in your state. In almost every state it’s a football coach at one of the state universities. Yes, indeed, we spend our money on that which is apparently most important to us. To follow that thought any further leads us to places we really don’t want to go.

Another noticeable and regrettable change, in both professional and college athletics, has been the near disappearance of true sportsmanship — you know, an attitude driven by fair play, true respect for one’s opponent, and being gracious when winning or losing. This change seems to have grown out of the idea that winning is everything, again because winning means money, more money for coaches and more potential money for the athletes with professinoal ambitions. It’s also a symptom of the political and societal divisions that now plague our nation. Civility is gone, replaced instead by “in your face” attacks. We see it in politics, in the media, and on the playing field. We have constructed a “new morality” that is essentially amoral. How paradoxically fitting for today’s woke generations.

Given the almost universal enthusiasm for professional and collegiate athletics today, I suppose all this makes me a bit of a contrarian. I won’t deny it, because I often find myself standing on the outside looking in. I also enjoy encountering and listening to other contrarians, even those with whom I disagree, simply because they go against the grain and actually believe strongly in something, strongly enough that they risk all to share their beliefs publicly. But I especially enjoy listening when one of these contrarians speaks his mind graciously and decently without condemning those who attack him for his beliefs. (Reminds me of St. Therese’s “Little Way.”)

Last night I was led to a recent interview of an NBA player named Jonathan Isaac. To be honest, I’d never heard of him because, as I stated above, I’m not an NBA fan and haven’t watched a basketball game in over 30 years. But having started watching the interview, I had to watch it all. Mr. Isaac is a remarkable young man who has decided that his religious faith and the freedoms Americans hold dear far outweigh any fear of a virus. (Okay, Dear Diane just informed me he plays for our “local” NBA team, the Orlando Magic, proving she’s far more tuned in to the real world than I.)

I have received both Moderna shots and, as you have probably guessed, Jonathan Isaac is unvaccinated. But like him I believe that vaccination, particularly against this virus, should be a decision made by each individual. Given my age (77) I considered the shots a wise move. After all, the average age of those who have died from COVID-19 is near the average life expectancy of Americans. Yes, we old folks should probably protect ourselves. But for younger Americans, especially the very young, the death rate from the virus is minuscule. For them the decision becomes a trade-off: Which is worse, known potential vaccine side effects or the effects of contracting the virus? For those younger Americans who have already had the virus, their natural immunity offers more protection than any vaccine. And both the vaccinated and unvaccinated carry the virus and can transmit it to others. Sadly, the bureaucratic CDC and the ubiquitous Dr. Fauci have consistently ignored the proven science of natural immunity in favor of the politically inspired mandates that do little but increase government control over American citizens. Yes, indeed, we live in a modern day Wonderland that even Alice would have trouble navigating.

Anyway, the video is worth watching and certainly worth sharing with the young people in your life. Here’s a link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuSgJcp7NnI

Atheism and Down Syndrome

Richard Dawkins — I know you’ve heard of him...you know, the outspoken atheist biologist from Oxford — has once again come out and said something worthy of note. And again his target is babies born with Down syndrome. This time he advised parents who discover their unborn child has Down syndrome to “abort it and try again.” His reason? “It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.” He then added, “It seems to me to be plausible that if a child has any kind of disability, then you probably would increase the amount of happiness in the world more by having another child instead.” (You can read an article addressing Dawkins' comments here.)

I know several wonderful people born with Down syndrome and, believe me, their presence in the world has added significantly to the overall happiness of humanity, certainly to that part of humanity that knows these people. (By the way, in a later interview Dr. Dawkins admitted not knowing anyone with Down syndrome.) But we shouldn’t be too hard on Professor Emeritus Dawkins. After all, he’s a committed atheist, so his position is really a logical outgrowth of his worldview. Any true atheist must take a utilitarian approach to everything, even matters of life and death. If we are simply the products of a cosmic biochemical lottery, humanity’s survival would seem to demand we do all in our limited power to ensure only the most “perfect” among us live — you know, to keep the human race pure. Hmmm...I think I’ve heard something like this before. Anyway, in this sense Dr. Dawkins is merely being consistently atheistic. 

But even a true atheist can make philosophical errors. Dr. Dawkins, for example, speaks of the immorality of permitting Down syndrome children to be born, and yet how can such a concepts as morality and immorality even exist within the atheistic worldview? Where, indeed, would morality come from? Certainly not from God or natural law or even cultural traditions. Or perhaps, for the true atheist, morality is like truth, a kind of movable feast, a flexible concept simply adjusted to fit changing situations. How did Pope Benedict XVI describe it? Oh, yes, the “dictatorship of relativism.” (You might want to read Benedict's homily on the subject, preached to the Church's cardinals. Here the link: Pope Benedict XVI: 4/18/2005.)

It must be hard to be an atheist, always having to adjust what you believe and how you view the world, based on the changing appetites and designs of humanity. How blessed you and I are, people of faith who believe in a loving God who not only created each of us in a unique act of love, but then revealed His will for us so we can live happy, fulfilled lives in this world and spend an eternity of happiness with Him in the next. Pray for Richard Dawkins. God desires the salvation of all.  

The Descent

I've been reading some poetry lately, more than usual. It seems to fulfill a need. While there are certainly exceptions, poets seem to be saner than most of us, certainly saner than most modern philosophers, and the best of them have been given a gift of prophecy. Today, given all that's happening in our world, I need a regular dose of sanity, and have therefore turned to a few of my favorite poets.

Poets, of course, are often pessimistic when it comes to the human condition. (This is a gross generality, but it's my blog so I can write such things if I like.) Anyway, two of the poets who have lately grabbed my attention are W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot.

Turning the pages of my copy of The Poems of W. B. Yeats, I'd occasionally stop and read a poem that caught my eye. Among these was The Second Coming. Written in 1920, after the wholesale death and destruction of World War One, it foresaw, with prophetic accuracy, what the world would face in the years that followed. Crushed by four years of nightmarish violence, the enlightened pre-war optimism disappeared along with the promising lives of a continent's youth. Expedience trumped morality as human lives became expendable, the means to political ends. The war promised only a bleak future, one that Yeats described in his poem:

______________________________

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

 gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

________________________

W. B. Yeats

Writing almost a century ago, Yeats seemed to recognize that the 20th century would be one of chaos and upheaval such as the world had never seen. Rapid and remarkable scientific and technological progress would hide from many the continuing moral decline and the gradual replacement of religion by scientism in the minds of the elites. God is replaced by man, who finds himself caught between a failed rationality of the Enlightenment and the despair of the postmodernists. 

Closing my book of Yeats' collected poems, I turned to Eliot and amazingly opened right to page 96, the beginning of his long poem, Choruses from "The Rock" (See T. S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays), written not long after Yeats' poem. I've included those opening verses below:

____________________

Choruses from "The Rock"

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,

The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

О perpetual revolution of configured stars,

О perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,

О world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!

The endless cycle of idea and action,

Endless invention, endless experiment,

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

But nearness to death no nearer to God.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

_______________________

T. S. Eliot

Eliot, like Yeats and Chesterton and many others, was a modern prophet who saw clearly what would result from the moral distortions of his time. Read his thoughts on Christian society and culture in Christianity and Culture to get a better understanding of what we face today.  

Yes, as the poets remind us, we are surrounded by the signs of decline. Distracted by the wonders of technology that tell us how very smart we are, we forget that wisdom does not emerge from an integrated circuit. No, wisdom is passed down from one generation to the next through the traditions that today are forgotten, ignored, ridiculed, and suppressed.

We develop cures and preventatives, extending lives by years, even decades, but then slaughter the inconvenient infants in the womb by the tens of millions. Not content with denying life's beginnings, with god-like audacity we kill those approaching its end, the sick and the elderly, and label it "compassion."

We praise humanity's "progress" despite the evidence of a century of totalitarian despotism that destroyed more lives than in all previous human history. And yet, driven by extraordinary hubris, politicians scramble to acquire more power, actually believing they can control the uncontrollable and plan the unplannable.

It's all very disconcerting for those who lack faith. Most just move along in life hoping, at least, to find some ephemeral happiness. But some, far too many today, are driven to the brink of despair and self-destruction. Others find meaning in the extremes of human behavior and cling to ideologies that promise a distorted form of salvation. Satan is very busy in our world today.

Pope Benedict XVI

As I pondered the prophetic words of these poets, I couldn't help but think of the tragic events in Las Vegas. So many in the media and politics scream about controlling guns, the tools used by the man responsible for the carnage. But no one says a word about moral culpability because this would lead to an uncomfortable discussion of morality and truth, two words that have been excised from the popular language. As Pope Benedict XVI reminded us, today our culture is plagued by "a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”

No one dares examine the root cause of the Las Vegas tragedy and others like it: the fact that in our society human life has little value. If an unborn child, a human being with a beating heart who can experience pain, is considered disposable because he or she doesn't suit the parents' lifestyle or plans, then why not use violence to promote one's ideology or to satisfy  personal psychological desires? Without God, His commandments, and His gift of faith, there is no morality, there are no limits.

I thank God for my faith, and I do so every day, many times each day. For we were created by a loving God who has given us the freedom and the grace to accept His revealed Truth. But acceptance or rejection is up to us.

We must remember, too, that our loving God -- Father, Son and Spirit -- is the Lord of History and acts in our world through us or in spite of us. His will be done because His will cannot be denied. I encounter too many Christians who fear the future because of what they see in today's world. Such fears must never enter the Christian's heart, for our loving, merciful God has promised salvation to those who love Him. "Be not afraid" is God's constant command to His People, His reminder that He walks with us always. 

God's peace...

Church and State, Legality and Morality

A few days ago I heard a TV News pundit complain about Pope Francis' comment that freedom of speech was not without its limitations. This talking head, who calls himself a libertarian, was aghast that Pope Francis would say such a thing and even went on to suggest that the Pope was, in effect, blaming the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.

Of course the Pope was saying no such thing. He was merely echoing Church teaching that we are not "free" to do what is evil. Indeed the Church teaches that choosing evil is an abuse of freedom and that true freedom must serve that which is just and good. By choosing evil, a person rejects freedom and accepts the slavery of sin [CCC 1733]. The Pope is merely saying that there are moral limits to all freedom, including freedom of speech. The staff of Charlie Hebdo abused their freedom of speech by printing slurs against all religions, not just Islam. This, however, in no way mitigates the guilt of those terrorists who chose a far greater evil when they committed mass murder. The Pope was not excusing the terrorists; he was merely answering a question about the limits to freedom of speech. I think sometimes, when he speaks off-the-cuff, a poor choice of words can lead to misunderstandings, but since I'm just a deacon and he's the Pope I'll forgo any criticism beyond this one comment.

Getting back to our libertarian TV pundit, it would seem he and the Islamist terrorist have at least one thing in common: unlike the Pope, they both think and act at the extremes. The Islamist terrorist despises any thought of freedom of speech, and through acts of terror strives to intimidate all others, forcing them to think and say only that which conforms to his jihadist strain of Islam. To him freedom of speech is anathema. The libertarian plants himself at the opposite extreme and believes freedom of speech includes the license to say (and in most instances do) anything whatsoever. Interestingly, both view the issue from a legalistic perspective: one from the standpoint of a strict interpretation of sharia law and the other from an unrestrained interpretation of the First Amendment to our Constitution. 

The Pope, however, views freedom from a moral, rather than a legal, perspective. And that which is legal is not necessarily moral...and vice versa. Abortion, infanticide -- And what is late-term abortion other than infanticide? -- physician assisted suicide, same-sex marriage, and a whole range of other immoral behaviors are quite legal in many states and nations. But the fact that they are legal under man's law does not make them moral under God's law. And for us Christians, morality trumps legality.

The state, therefore, will often legalize and even encourage immoral behavior and punish moral behavior. When we turn to the New Testament we find these issues well defined. First of all, we are instructed to obey lawful authority, perhaps most clearly by St. Paul in Romans, chapter 13:

"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due" [Rom 13:1-6].

This is reaffirmed by St. Peter in his First Letter:

"Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right. For it is God's will that by doing right you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Live as free men, yet without using your freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as servants of God. Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor" [1 Pet 2:13-17].

Note, however, that Peter instructs us not to use our "freedom as a pretext for evil; but live as servants of God." And so our current Pope is in tune with our first Pope. Freedom has its limits. We must honor and obey lawful authority but only insofar as it does not command that which is evil.

It is Jesus Himself who articulates the principle most succinctly when he tells the Pharisees and Herodians to "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" [Mk 12:17]. Here Jesus is declaring that there are boundaries that define our obedience to human authority. When man trespasses on that which is God's -- e.g., when he permits the taking of innocent life through abortion or infanticide -- he must no longer be obeyed. Once again St. Peter comes to our aid to ensure we understand the ramifications of resisting the state when it demands obedience to that which is immoral:

"Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God" [1 Pet 4:12-16].

Meriam Ibrahim receives Pope Francis' blessing after her release from a Somali prison

Given how Christians are being persecuted throughout the world today, we should pay particular attention to these words of our first Pope who gave His life for the Faith. Just as we should listen to Pope Francis who has repeatedly stated that the ongoing persecution of Christians will serve to unite us in ways that other ecumenical efforts have not:

“Today the blood of Jesus, poured out by many Christian martyrs in various parts of the world, calls us and compels us towards the goal of unity. For persecutors, we Christians are all one!”

Pray for persecuted Christians.