Circum(in)ventions

People these days increasingly don't want organized religion, institutionalized church, or fixed ideas about much of anything. There is an increasing hostility toward the "imposition" of anything really. Millennials et al don't want to know what you've found to be true. They want to figure it out for themselves, and then they might agree with you, maybe.

The idea of transmitted truth and tradition is too constrictive; it boxes you in to something you didn't come up with yourself and that you might not have chosen freely. There is some beautiful idealism tucked away in there somewhere, but it continues to run amok.

There is value to the idea of challenging fixed ideas and conventional wisdom. We ought to be asking "Why?" to sharpen our answers to the oft-asked questions. However, we all too quickly throw away the transmitted wisdom of our ancestors and forefathers, and I am speaking most prevalently of our faith, our Tradition of a moral code discerned from the Revelation of our Provident God.

Morality, as Benedict XVI has been teaching us, is no longer being considered and practiced as strongly in absolutes. Relativism is sexier and more appealing to the individual-focused spiritual-but-not-religious seeker who embraces the modern religiosity of "Moral Therapeutic Deism," a basic God who made us in love but isn't too actively involved in our world except for mild delight in our triumphs, disappointment shortcomings, and a mild hotline of prayer which we sometimes utilize.

It feels like far too many people have no desire to hold themselves, everyone around them, and society to a high moral standard. The expectation is almost solely that liberality and tolerance be practiced in excess, so anyone who finds a partner or circle of people that freely consents in action can do as they please.

Majority isn't truth, friends.

American law may be made by popular referendum, but we worship a God who is immutable, the source of unchanging truth and an illuminating deposit of faith.

My problem with this evolving attitude of modernity was exacerbated by a story I heard earlier this week on NPR and reported originally by the New York Post (story from NYT). New York City public schools are not only distributing condoms and birth control to teenagers; now they are distributing morning-after pills and doing so without parental consent/informing (the story mentions that families can opt out of the system, which does not even come close to making it ok).

I almost had to pull over for the level of guffaw that this story evoked from me. I could not believe how far the reach of birth control has gone. It exists; it's widely available; it can be gotten without prescription; it can be gotten in public school; it can be gotten from school in morning-after form; it can be gotten without parental consent. The vomit is coming up my throat.

Setting aside for the moment (slash for this blog post) the debated (im)morality of contraception and other birth control methods, it just illustrates a manifestation of this troubling trend of lapsing morality that is diffuse throughout our modern culture.

When we want to do something, even if it has negative consequences for ourselves or others, we do it.

We shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to major stuff. We opt to act how we want to act and figure out how to remedy it later, regardless of immorality or its effects on ourselves and others. Let's go down some parallel roads, and you decide if there's similarity enough across these topics to back up what I see to be the problem.

We love to drink, to have some shots and some beers and get hammered. And I'm not talking about people chemically/bodily predisposed toward alcoholism. So, we invent chaser pills and chug tons of water while we drink ourselves silly to ease the hangover that's coming the next morning. But you bet we won't be drinking any less.

We love to eat, to go pound some monster burgers, huge portions of fries, enormous steaks. And I'm not talking about people with medical conditions that cause severe weight gain or obesity or emotional disorders that cause people to overeat. So, we invent liposuction and gastric bypass surgeries to give us an out when we eat our way to unhealthiness.

We are increasingly in love with some abstract idea of justice, in which our society has become more bloodthirsty for the death penalty, to execute our criminals on death row. And I'm not just talking about gun-nut conservatives in the boonies of the South. We don't want them getting out and wreaking more havoc, and we want vengeance for ourselves and the victims and their families. But we don't want the blood on our hands, and we want them to go quick and peacefully; so, we invent the lethal injection to minimize outward signs of struggle and avoid the visuals of the electric chair and the gallows.

We love to have flexibility and autonomy; we are increasingly wary of committing ourselves to marriages. And I'm not talking about those people who were thoughtful and careful as they moved into marriage but could not make it work. So, we cohabitate - live together before marriage to "try it out" rather than grow a relationship and discern the marriage over time. And when we do marry, we do so knowing that we can resort to a divorce if and when it doesn't work.

And we love sex. This itself isn't wrong, but the social sin comes in our attitude toward sex. We are pleasure-seekers wanting the ecstasy of sexual acts with none of the repercussions of pregnancy. So rather than training ourselves in self-denial or learning the depths of our awesome sexuality that is a gift from God, we give in to our desires with eager abandon, treating sex as a commodity of pleasure, turning other people into, at the most, faintly loved partners and, at the least, into objects for self-gratification. We choose not to look at ourselves in the mirror or adjust our behavior because our pursuit of pleasure blinds us to the errors of our ways.

So we invent condoms to prevent the man's seed from making it to an egg. We invent female condoms or IUD's to insulate the woman from fertilization. We come up with medical procedures to disable our bodies from offering their chemical contributions toward procreation. We invent pills that control a woman's cycle so that she might avoid pregnancy. We create another pill that can terminate a pregnancy before the child develops into (God forbid) a fetus and a newborn baby. And we meticulously perfect "medical" procedures that murder humans developing within their mothers, even as late as their potential moment of birth.

The scene in the NYC school system is a scary one to me, because it is an admission that teenagers can and will have sex, so we should just let them. And we should give them an out when their actions lead them to undesired, unplanned pregnancies. I don't want girls getting pregnant, dropping out of high school, and never returning because of one bad decision; but I also don't want tiny humans dying to give these teens their second chance.

I want a society in which we overcome apparent evils with the incredible love we receive from God. Why can't we pay forward our love of one another toward these challenges and overwhelm them with good? How come we put our energy into institutionalizing a system in which teenagers can get a morning-after pill without parental consent rather than formulating a system of support that helps to pay a teen's medical bills, provide her counseling throughout her pregnancy and after, and create a structure in which she can keep the baby and begin motherhood or offer it for adoption to a family that is waiting for their miracle?

I admit naivety, idealism, and stubbornness. But I refuse to admit defeat in accepting sexual promiscuity, especially among youth. We can restore a vision of love that recenters sexuality on a true exchange of procreative, unitive love. We can overcome the evils of abortifacients, abortions, and under-the-table recourse.

Accepting negative behaviors are not the way to fight them. Education is the way forward. Every time we move further into these shadowlands, it will be more difficult to come back. Let's stem the tide of liberalizing these backwards methods and shine the light of love and life on these situations in which evil tries to rear its head and win the battle.

Practice self-control. Try to do the right thing rather than expecting technology and human innovation to come up with a way that endorses your behavior. Have a morality that's bigger than social relativism. Love the Love that is God, and be a conduit through which His Love and grace can flow to help overcome these darknesses.