The Challenge and the Test

By S.G. Liaugminas

Deep in thought while reading through Psalm 55 the other day in the Liturgy of the Hours, I came to the verse about those who will not amend their ways. It concluded, "They have no fear of God." I was stopped cold, frozen on that line, for I don’t know how long. "They have no fear of God." The line practically came off the page at me, for some reason, and I was flooded with thoughts that seemed to come from nowhere, and all at once. As a longtime journalist with all too many files in the cabinet, I poked around, following where the thoughts were going.

Some of those random ideas started to gel, diverse clips I’d saved over time seemed to start connecting, and here’s what came of it. Two years ago, Charles Krauthammer noted in an essay in Time magazine "…in our thoroughly secularized culture, there is one form of religious intolerance that does survive. And that is the disdain bordering on contempt of the culture makers for the deeply religious, i.e., those for whom religion is not a preference but a conviction." He continued: "Every manner of political argument is ruled legitimate in our democratic discourse. But invoke the Bible as grounding for your politics, and the First Amendment police will charge you with breaching the sacred wall separating church and state." (Time, 6/15/98).

Obviously, public discourse about religion has opened up considerably, though still uncomfortably. Finally, many are starting to learn what that First Amendment actually intended. As the words were being drafted, Thomas Jefferson (in Paris at the time) wrote to James Madison of the need to guarantee individual liberties, stating, "A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against any government." It was for these very sorts of rights that they had fought the Revolution in the first place. And the first one orders that our government will not be allowed to establish a ‘state religion’ OR prohibit the free exercise of anyone’s religion. It doesn’t mean, as Krauthammer points out, that one’s personal politics cannot be grounded on the Bible or beliefs of their faith.

There is plenty of precedent for that. Take just two here to illustrate. At the end of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln concluded: "And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice…I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God." In John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address in 1961, the President boldly declared: "…man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God."

What happened, then, to bring about the climate Krauthammer spoke of, or the ongoing practice of discrimination, or Roe vs. Wade? Apparently, the truths of all men being equal and endowed by our Creator with the unalienable right to life are no longer "self-evident." Especially with the Supreme Court imposing arbitrary interpretations of our formerly inviolable, great American documents for which the Founding Fathers invoked the protection of Divine Providence.

Leaving aside here the long, complex series of sociological, political and cultural metamorphoses that drove these changes, there’s a simpler and easier cause to identify, and it is related to the rest. Underlying it all is semantic engineering, the manipulation of language, which is much more insidious than just verbal gymnastics. Control language and you control thought. That’s power that can easily be abused, the more language is abused. It has an ancient history. In "Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power," author Joseph Pieper notes that Plato had a lifelong battle with the sophists, "those highly paid and popularly applauded experts in the art of twisting words, who were able to sweet-talk something bad into something good and to turn white into black." German philosopher Hegel saw sophistry (using words to deceive) as a distinct danger to any society, believing that "such absolute and unmoored questioning that plucks apart any object and dialectically discredits everything….almost inevitably leads us to the conviction that everything can be justified if we look hard enough for reasons." Plato fought his whole life against corruption of the word, and thus the language.

This bears looking at for just another minute here, because Plato (d. 347 BC) is unbelievably relevant, though some have rendered the much more recent Declaration of Independence far less so. Plato was deeply concerned with "the possibility that something could well be superbly crafted—that it could be perfectly worded; brilliantly formulated; strikingly written, performed, staged, or put on screen—and at the same time, in its entire thrust and essence, be false; and not only false, but outright bad, inferior, contemptible, shameful, destructive, wretched—and still marvelously put together!" Calls to mind a whole host of experiences in modern society, doesn’t it?

Hitler said that if you tell a lie often enough and with authority, it would become truth. In addressing this abuse of language, Pieper writes: "…instead of genuine communication, there will exist something for which domination is too benign a term; more appropriately we should speak of tyranny, of despotism. On one side, there will be a sham authority, unsupported by any intellectual superiority, and on the other a state of dependency, which again is too benign a term. Bondage would be more correct…a state of mental bondage…Serving the tyranny, the corruption and abuse of language becomes better known as propaganda…

"Propaganda in this sense…can be found wherever a powerful organization, an ideological clique, a special interest, or a pressure group uses the word as their ‘weapon.’ And a threat, of course, can mean many things besides political persecution, especially all the forms and levels of defamation, or public ridicule, or reducing someone to a nonperson—all of which are accomplished by means of the word."

Well. That takes in a lot. Hitler called the Jews "parasites," among other things, robbing them of their human dignity in all, hideous ways. The Dred Scott decision said: "Although he may have a heart and a brain, and he may be a human life biologically, a slave is not a human person." Roe vs. Wade declared that although an unborn baby may have a heart and a brain, and he may be a human life biologically, that baby is not a legal person.

So how did we get to this chilling point where decisions of life and death, and the intolerance of immutable truths are in the hands of a great number of academic, judicial and political authorities who ostracize and ridicule, threaten, or at least render ‘irrelevant’ those who invoke traditional faith and values, and defend life? Semantic engineering and thought control. "They have no fear of God."

How DOES God fit into this discussion? The three major monotheistic religions, in their traditional forms, all require their faithful to live their beliefs, creed, Gospel, or tenets of faith in all areas of life, beyond the day of community worship at church, synagogue or mosque. For the devout believer, Islam means complete submission to the will of God, an obedience which extends to every aspect of life. That includes family life and human relationships, sin and morality, economics, judicial and military matters, government and politics. Everything in the secular world is subordinated to the demands of faith and how the individual lives it. A faithful Muslim would not, for instance, vote for a political candidate who supports and protects abortion. They do have fear of God.

The mandate for how a good Orthodox Jew should approach these matters was well stated by Don Feder, columnist and editorial writer for the Boston Herald. "The key question for Jewish conservatives…thus becomes: Are we merely Jew-ish or are we Jews?" writes Feder. "Are we ‘conservatives of Jewish extraction’ or are we Jews whose souls resonate to three millennia of Jewish teaching—Jews animated by the vision of Sinai, Jews who understand that loyalty to that lofty vision requires them to be conservatives of the spirit? Those of us who choose to be genuinely Jewish and genuinely conservative have at our disposal a Written and Oral Law that contains all the agenda we’ll ever need. We must seek the wisdom, courage and tenacity to apply those principles consistently to the modern world…"

He continues: "America allows the killing of one and one-half million unborn children a year in this country under the guise of reproductive rights. But abortion is the opposite of reproduction. And absent grave necessity, deliberately ending a nascent human life isn’t right. We know who put the child in the womb. Unless and until events reveal otherwise, we must assume that He wants the birth of each unborn child." They do have fear of God.

For Roman Catholics, the entire Catechism spells out in detail the complete guidance for living out the faith in every aspect of life, and the documents of the Second Vatican Council further apply Church dogma clearly to life in the modern world. No question is left unaddressed, and no response is ambiguous. One of those tenets is the absolute sanctity of all life, from conception to natural death. And yet, many members of Congress and many in state government who claim to be Catholic have consistently voted for and supported abortion in all its names and forms, including the most insanely murderous act of partial-birth abortion. How can this be? This grievous rejection of their moral imperative is probably due to a combination of semantic engineering and serious pressure from powerful abortion forces, our modern day sophists. Notice how politicians, most news media and activists manipulate the language (and voice intonation) to make sure that words like "pro" and "choice," "freedom" and "rights" are attached to reproduction, while the forces for life are called "anti-abortion" (negative connotation), "anti-choice," etc?

On a mass scale, the people and some politicians have been indoctrinated and re-educated to accept the unacceptable as something other than what it is. And people of many faiths, drawn into this groupthink culture, noddingly accept complete distortions of the truth, packaged as freedom and enlightenment. As Pieper puts it: "…the place of authentic reality is taken over by a fictitious reality; my perception is indeed still directed toward an object, but now it is a pseudoreality, deceptively appearing as being real, so much so that it becomes almost impossible anymore to discern the truth…For the general public is being reduced to a state where people not only are unable to find out about the truth but also become unable even to search for the truth because they are satisfied with deception and trickery that have determined their convictions, satisfied with a fictitious reality created by design through the abuse of language."

Concerned about this seduction that has occurred on a large scale among believers, the U.S. Catholic Bishops wrote and released a document to guide the flock back to faithful citizenship. In "Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics," the Bishops address that fictitious reality that has confused so many in the Church and they warn of the urgency of the threat this poses to our democracy. "(W)e will be judged by our actions," write the Bishops. "No one, least of all someone who exercises leadership in society, can rightfully claim to share fully and practically the Catholic faith and yet act publicly in a way contrary to that faith."

Addressing themselves directly to those in public office, the Bishops quote George Orwell in "Politics and the English Language" as saying "In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible." They go on to proclaim their responsibility "to call Americans to conversion, including political leaders, and especially those publicly identified as Catholic." This document is filled with unambiguous, strong words and conviction. "Catholic public officials who disregard Church teaching on the inviolability of the human person indirectly collude in the taking of innocent life…(N)o appeal to policy, procedure, majority will or pluralism ever excuses a public official from defending life to the greatest extent possible…Those who justify their inaction on the grounds that abortion is the law of the land need to recognize that there is a higher law, the law of God."

And they warn citizens in general that this responsibility exists in the voting booth as well as the halls of government. Like a splash of cold water to the face of the dozing, they state: "We get the public officials we deserve. Their virtue—or lack thereof—is a judgment not only on them, but on us. Because of this, we urge our fellow citizens to see beyond party politics, to analyze campaign rhetoric critically and to choose their political leaders according to principle, not party affiliation or mere self-interest."

In that campaign rhetoric, we hear a lot about ‘reproductive freedom,’ or ‘freedom to choose.’ At the conclusion of the Bishops’ challenge to Catholics, they talk about that, the importance of freedom: "But the future of a nation is decided by every new generation…It is now our turn to choose." Referring to the vocation to choose the path of human freedom rooted in law and in the truth about the sanctity of life, they state: "Freedom always implies the ability to choose between two roads; one which leads to life; the other, death."

That’s taken directly from Moses, from the account in Deuteronomy (ch. 30) when he revealed to his people God’s command, a law which he claims is already written in their hearts. "I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord your God, heeding his voice and holding fast to him." Illustrating the timelessness of that message, columnist Don Feder repeats its urgency in these times. "We stand for this or we stand for nothing at all," writes Feder. "As the Jewish philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel so poignantly declared: ‘We are God’s stake in human history. We are the dawn and the dusk, the challenge and the test. How strange to be a Jew and go astray on God’s perilous errands.’ How strange and how sad."

The same for Catholics, say the Bishops. "We cannot simultaneously commit ourselves to human rights and progress while eliminating or marginalizing the weakest among us," they write in their document. "Nor can we practice the Gospel of life only as a private piety. American Catholics must live it vigorously and publicly, as a matter of national leadership and witness, or we will not live it at all."

At the end of John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, he asks for citizens of America and citizens of the world to expect mutually high standards of strength and sacrifice of each other. He concludes: With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own."

I spotted an interesting billboard along the toll way near O’Hare airport several months ago that carried a unique reminder of the stakes of all this. The billboard was filled with a blue sky and puffy white clouds, with a simple message right in the center:

"You will be held accountable.