The Gospel of Suffering

Wars, earthquakes, cancer, famine, mass shootings. A simple survey of the news will testify to its omnipresence in our lives. Suffering is inescapable.

From birth to death, suffering is part of human existence.  In this world of suffering, there naturally emerges the question: why? Why does suffering exist? It is a question asked by those who endure chronic illness, by those who experience the tragedy of natural disasters, and by those who mourn the loss of a loved one. It is a question that expresses the pain of those who suffer individually as well as those who suffer in communion with others. And it is a question that reveals the inner anguish and torment caused by the presence of evil.

Yet it is also a question that can find special meaning during these final days of Lent, particularly as we contemplate God’s divine love made present on the Cross. On the Cross, we find the fullest source of love and the meaning of suffering. Far from being an abstract or trite response, the answer we find on the Cross is concrete. It is a Person, Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Through this love, we are not only redeemed, but, according to Saint Pope John Paul II in Salvifici Doloris, “we also find ourselves...faced with a completely new dimension of our theme [of suffering].” This love for mankind, this love which moved the Father to send His only begotten Son to save us, is revealed to us in the these words spoken by Jesus to Nicodemus. It is a love bound to our salvation. It is salvific love.

This salvific love expresses to us a new dimension—the dimension of redemption—to the world of suffering. Sent to us by the Father, Jesus willingly embraced His messianic mission and took on the entirety of human suffering upon His shoulders. As portrayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, He freely went towards His own suffering, His own “cup” that He was to drink in the Passion of the Cross, aware of its saving power (cite?). In His Passion, Christ transformed suffering. On the Cross, He used it to “strike at the roots of evil” and to save us (SD 16). He redeemed suffering, and made it the means of something good.

As evidenced by our daily experiences, however, Christ’s victory on the Cross did not eradicate temporal suffering. Rather, it gave us a certain “gospel of suffering.” According to Saint Pope John Paul II, it is a gospel that not only recognizes the presence of suffering, but maintains it as one of the themes of good news. Through His life, death, and resurrection, Christ invites us to share in His agonies, offering us new strength and hope to endure life’s trials. In light of the Resurrection, we know the victorious power of suffering. We know that know that evil does not have the final say. Assured by this, St. Paul speaks of such hope in his letter to the Romans, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us” (Romans 8:18).

What does all this mean for us? The gospel of suffering reveals that the cross is not to be feared. Christ did not attempt to address the reasons for suffering in the abstract, but rather said to us, “follow Me.” As Christ told His followers, “If any man would come after me...let him take up his cross daily,” for it is this cross that leads to our redemption (Luke 9:23). More than simply calling us to follow Him, He also invites us to share in His suffering. In this accompaniment on the “hard and narrow” path, we are comforted and strengthened by the knowledge that we neither suffer alone nor in vain. Christ and the hope of the resurrection are always with us. Moreover, the transformative power of suffering draws us closer to Christ, conforms us to Him, and makes us sharers in our redemption.

The experience of suffering is real, complex, and personal. Ultimately, human suffering is a mystery, but its meaning can be found in Jesus, particularly within the context of the Paschal Mystery. As we conclude these forty days of Lent and the Easter Triduum, let us reflect on what these events reveal to us. Christ’s Passion and Resurrection show us that suffering can be transformed. It shows us that even in the midst of illness, tragedy, and death, there is hope. A hope rooted in faith and found in God’s salvific love for us. “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy” (John 16:20).

The Democratic Tea Party

Since the election of Donald Trump as the forty-fifth President of the United States, liberals and Democratic activists have denounced everything the President has said or done. Their zealotry  has resulted in a record number of declared Democratic candidates for the upcoming midterm elections in 2018. However, these candidates, and the vocal #resistance movement, have successfully shifted the Democratic Party even further to the left. As a result, the Democratic Party has dramatically reduced its chances of success in the 2018 elections.

Within the past month the Democratic Party of California demonstrated how hostile its base is towards politicians who even consider working alongside the President. Politicians like California’s senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, are condemned for being insufficiently liberal, and have adapted their policy preferences accordingly. Last month, California’s Democratic Party refused to endorse its senator of twenty-six years at its convention, where her challenger Kevin de León amassed seventeen percent more delegates. Although Senator Feinstein began her career without the expressed approval of her party’s convention delegates, this year’s convention demonstrated that her record—which couldn’t be called anything close to conservative—isn’t sufficiently progressive for her party. The surge leftward by the Democratic Party ensures a hostile primary and general election for their senior senator and the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee. More likely than not, Senator Feinstein will overwhelmingly win re-election, but the resources given to her to ensure her political survival will be allocated from financially strapped candidates who need the party’s support. Additionally, the overwhelming number of declared Democratic candidates for House seats held by Republicans could lead to them losing House seats that they should win.

The overwhelming vigor and ardent activism of California Democrats could potentially lead to them becoming the minority party in the House again due to the California primary system, which states that the top two candidates, regardless of party, advance to the general election. The nightmare scenario for the Democratic Party is that their multiple candidates will split the vote of their base, while only the Republican candidates advance to the general election. This isn’t a baseless fear; according to Politico, there are at least sixty-seven Democratic candidates running in the fourteen Republican-held districts in California. The strongest path Democrats have toward retaking the House is by winning several House races in California.  If that fails to occur, their chances fall dramatically.

Democratic optimism isn’t isolated to California; there’s even talk of a “Blue Wave” in Texas. For weeks leading up to the state’s primaries, media and Democratic activists insisted that their voters would outnumber the Republicans, thanks to their candidates’ newfound liberalism. National Democrats believed that the way to win Texas, and the House, was through a more liberal agenda. However, in the days preceding the vote even Democrats acknowledged that their strategy was not working as the Democratic Party targeted its own House candidate, Laura Moser.

Despite all the propaganda, it turned out that “blue wave” predictions were a wash. Without much effort, Republican Ted Cruz won twice as many votes as his now general election opponent Beto O’Rourke. While Democratic turnout was at a historic high, it failed to overcome the Republican dominance of the state, demonstrating that the liberal strategy of the new Democratic Party needs rethinking if Democrats are to succeed in winning races in Texas this fall.  Although they consider their progressive agenda to be the solution to their electoral woes, the Democratic Party’s radical agenda will bring losses in 2018.

While their animosity to President Trump and his conservative policies can motivate Democratic supporters, their radical liberal agenda will fail to convert moderate voters. Concerning the issue of abortion, the Democratic Party has become intolerant of any positions other than pro-choice. Previously, pro-life Democrats have faced primary opponents and have subsequently lost. The Democratic Party is  currently funding a pro-choice progressive primary challenger to a pro-life Democrat from Illinois, Representative Dan Lipinski. By primarying a moderate Democrat, the Democratic Party officials admit that their party has no place for moderates and asserts that they are willing to risk a House seat for a candidate that supports their uncompromising stances.

Democratic candidates have  also adopted a more radical view on immigration. The party now believes that arbitrary and haphazardly drawn borders are not incongruent with American democracy. Furthermore, while the overwhelming polling  data indicates popular support for action on immigration, public opinion should not be the basis for any policy. The foundation of America’s republican system decries arbitrary and shifting passions in favor of the written law. While Americans recognize the charitable and compassionate aspects of the Democratic immigration plan, they also believe that security from intruders and respect for immigration laws are far more important. The belief that immigration policy should be made out of compassion and not by existing laws or our regard for our national security will not be electorally beneficial to Democrats in 2018.

The ever present lurch of liberalism by the Democratic Party has already alienated voters with moderate views on abortion and immigration. By shifting left and adopting even more radical policies, more voters will be unable to support the new Democratic Party. Like the Tea Party movement, the progressive march leftward will put the Democratic Party at risk of losing seats and with them a very winnable midterm election.

The Mainstream Media Misses the Mark

When a disease breaks out, we analyze data to find a cure.  When a natural disaster strikes, we analyze data to determine how to better prepare for such future disasters.  But what do we do when a mass shooting happens? That’s when we disregard any meaningful data, propose baseless solutions simply because they fit our political agenda, and smear everyone with different solutions as evil bigots who want children to die.

We hear pleas for an open and honest discussion on gun violence in America: something the Republican Party, the NRA, and lawful gun owners sincerely desire.  For an honest conversation on this topic, we must rely on facts and reason.  Facts and reason indicate that gun control is a terrible idea.  From the 141% increase in annual homicide in just sixteen years following a Washington, DC gun ban, to an 89% spike in gun crime in the ten years following the gun ban in Britain, the evidence is not on the side for gun control.  Even in the case of Australia, which instituted a gun buyback so commonly praised by the left, a 2008 study from the University of Melbourne concluded that Australia's gun buyback had no effect on the gun homicide rate; the national homicide rate was already declining prior to this gun control measure. But this evidence is not shown, because instead of featuring highly qualified gun control experts and crime researchers, the mainstream media instead gives airtime to news anchors with absolutely no knowledge about guns, musicians and movie stars who have armed guards protecting them wherever they go, and traumatized seventeen-year-old high school students.

The Democratic Party and the mainstream media do not want a real conversation.  Colion Noir, an NRA commentator and attorney with eleven years of gun advocacy experience, says, “on every issue in this country, we strive to find the most knowledgeable people we can find on the topic, but when it comes to guns, it’s like we pride ourselves on finding the ‘smartest’ dumbasses to talk about guns, and then have the audacity to call it common sense.”  Common sense tells us to base our laws on factual data and logic.  The data discovered by the Center for Disease Control under President Obama showed that guns are used defensively anywhere “from about 500,000 to more than 3 million” times per year in the US.  In contrast to this, according to left-leaning research institute Everytown, there are an average of thirteen thousand gun homicides every year in America.  Even if we take the statistics most favorable for gun control advocates, guns save at least thirty-eight times more lives than they spare each year.  The passage of gun control legislation and gun-free zone laws only affect one group of people: the law-abiding.  We base our gun control laws on the false premise that the same people willing to break the law to kill people will somehow follow laws telling them where and how to do so.  Like sheep among wolves, we leave the law-abiding citizens defenseless against criminals who will go to any measures to cause harm.        

These facts I’ve already presented clearly establish that gun control is in no way the clear answer to preventing gun violence.  Yet, even if the data didn’t line up, and even if it wasn’t as clear that guns deter more crimes than they foster, that would not change the fact that you and I have an inherent right to defend ourselves and our families.  There is no right more precious and fundamental than the right to life, and the best protection against a bad guy with a gun who threatens the lives of others is a good guy with an equally powerful gun in his hand.  Guns serve as great equalizers.  One’s size, strength, and weight are no longer of importance when armed with a firearm.  How is a frail elderly man able to fend off a strong young burglar?  With a gun.  How is a young woman able to fend off a violent male rapist? With a gun.  How is a citizenry able to fend off a tyrannical government?  You guessed it: with guns.

Look no further than the twentieth century for why we need the right to bear arms.  Too many times we have seen governments claim to be the only necessary protector of the people and take away their guns, only to then turn back around and use their monopoly of force against the people in horrible ways.  In fact, gun control is nearly always the first measure governments enact before they begin to strip the citizenry of its natural rights.  It’s why over 100 million people were killed under tyrannical communist regimes in the twentieth century, and it’s why six million Jews were exterminated under Hitler.

Despite all of this, it is the gun-control-supporting Democrats who compare gun advocates to Nazis.  It is the gun-control-supporting Democrats who compare Second Amendment supporters to terrorists.  It is the gun-control-supporting Democrats who compare gun owning Republicans to segregationists.  In a recent panel about a new Disney movie, Oprah compared the gun control movement to the Civil Rights movement.  She is right; there are extraordinary connections between gun rights and racial issues throughout American history.  However, gun control advocates of yesteryear were not on the side she would have expected.  The first US gun control measure in 1640 was not enacted to stop school shootings. Rather, it was a Virginia law that prohibited blacks from owning guns.  Until the mid-twentieth century, gun control in the US was used almost exclusively to disarm African-Americans and other minorities.  The right to keep and bear arms was actually a fundamental force behind the Dred Scott decision; the Chief Justice of the case said that acknowledging the citizenship of blacks “would give them the full liberty to keep and carry arms wherever they went,” and thus the court ruled that blacks were not citizens.  After the Confederates surrendered in 1865, one of the very first things the southerners did was round up all the guns from freed blacks.  As Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire said, “gun control has been the single most important tool of white supremacists for centuries.” 

What was the NRA doing then?  The organization was founded in 1871 by Union soldiers who fought to free the slaves. As blacks continued to be disarmed for the next century by the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist southerners, the NRA was fighting to ensure that the right to keep and bear arms did not exclude African-Americans.  The NRA was possibly the most important organization in the fight for civil rights, as the Second Amendment is the only protection from infringement upon all other rights.  As Chief Organizer of the NAACP’s Jackson Movement in the 1960s, John Salter, said, “no one knows what kind of massive racist retaliation would have been directed against grassroots black people had the black community not had a healthy measure of firearms in it.”

Now, it is important to remind you that it was not the Republican Party that actively attempted to strip black Americans of their right to bear arms.  It was not the Republican Party that fought for the “right” to own slaves.  It was not the Republican Party that enacted the Jim Crow laws.  Contrary to popular belief, it was not even the Republican Party that voted in a larger number against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  No; that was all the Democrats.  Fortunately, these are no longer principles that the Democratic Party subscribes to, but as Delegate and 2018 Senate candidate, Nicholas J. Freitas said in a recent speech on the Virginia House floor, “[we] would really appreciate it if every time you want to make a powerful point, you don’t project the sins, the atrocities, and the injustices [of the Democratic Party] onto us.” 

Support for the Second Amendment is not only on the right side of the political spectrum, but it is also on the right side of history.   If we really want an open discussion about guns in America, the Democrats and the media better start giving us the respect that we deserve.  But until then, Molon Labe. 

State of the Union Bolstered by Tax Reform

Continuing the constitutional duty of informing Congress of the state of the union, President Trump demonstrated that his first year in office was a resounding success. From his inauguration on January 20, 2017, President Trump has accomplished policies on every conservative’ wish list. According to Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank located in Washington D.C., the Trump presidency has accomplished a greater percentage of conservative policies than Ronald Reagan did in 1981. The administration’s policies of cutting costly regulations, nominating conservative jurists to lifelong court tenures, increasing military spending, and enacting a foreign policy aimed at asserting the will of America and its allies have been immensely successful. Since its passage in late December, the Republican tax cut has bolstered the national economy, causing economic optimism to skyrocket. 

Contrary to the apocalyptic rhetoric about the tax bill used by Democratic politicians, emails sent by leaders in higher education to students, and media pundits, the tax bill is becoming a source of victory for the Grand Old Party. Back in December, party elder and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that the tax breaks would only help the rich while stating that the only benefits received by the middle class would be “crumbs” compared to the rich. Disgraced former Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz expressed a similar sentiment to that of Leader Pelosi when she said that a thousand dollars does not go very far for people. I think college students and people struggling from paycheck to paycheck would appreciate an extra thousand dollars in their pockets. Initially, the apocalyptic rhetoric of ensuing economic doom expressed by the Democrats like Pelosi and Wasserman Schultz was successful in eliminating popular support for Republicans’ tax law. According to several polls conducted before the law was passed in December, nearly a third of Americans had negative opinions of the law. However, as the Democratic rhetoric subsided and reports of investment by companies were published, Americans slowly began to favor the law. 

Since the Republicans passed tax reform in a partisan fashion, several companies have promised greater investment in their workers, charity, or technological advancements. As of January 14, a hundred and forty companies have given raises to their workers as a result of the tax bill passed in the first year of the Trump administration. Companies like Bank of America, Hostess Brands, and Disney have given benefits to their workers which will economically improve their life through raises and stock options. With corporations across America eagerly helping their workers, the economic condition of many people will continue to improve in 2018. As a result of these companies giving thousand dollar “crumbs” to their workers, the American people have swung their support to the law and the Republican Party in manner unprecedented in the Trump Presidency. Polling indicating American voters’ party preference gave the Democratic Party a double-digit advantage over Republicans. However, in recent weeks the same polling has seen the Democratic advantage slip to just a mid-single digit lead, which represents a strong Republican improvement. The combination of both Republican improvement within polling on the generic ballot and President Trump’s increasing poll numbers should raise some alarm for Democrats. While there are nine months until midterm elections and the Republicans are in defense, the Democrats should recognize that some of the political opponents' policies are popular among segments of the American public. As a result of the Democratic Party’s partisan opposition to the tax law, Americans across the nation recognize the Party which economically advanced their lives. 

During the State of the Union, this message was refined as Americans, sitting in their living rooms across the country, saw the Democratic Party refuse to acknowledge the benefits of the law. Concerning African American employment, the economic policies of the current administration has made a modest increase, which should be celebrated. Admittedly, President Obama decreased African American unemployment more significantly than President Trump, but having African American unemployment at an all-time low should have elicited bipartisan cheers. However, it was recognizable that only the Republican half of the chamber applauded while the Democratic Party, along with the Congressional Black Caucus, simply sat there. Throughout his speech, President Trump called for and articulated policies which should have evoked bipartisan support and Congressional unity, but widespread opposition came from the Democratic half of the chamber. The lack of bipartisan intent could be fatal to the Democratic members of Congress. Polling taken after the State of the Union indicated that three-fourths of those polled supported the speech, with a significant percentage believing that Trump acted in a bipartisan manner. 

Admittedly, there are nine months until midterm elections and the political climate will change substantially by then. Furthermore, conservatives and liberals alike argue that the lack of incoming revenue as a result of the lower taxes will lead to an increased national debt. Moreover, critics of deregulation assert that the economic advantages of slashing regulations fail to outweigh the health and environmental benefits. 

Despite the causes for alarm, America’s immediate economic outlook appears prosperous. The tax cuts have emboldened companies to invest in their workers while also allowing those same workers to keep a larger portion of their hard-earned money. As the tax cuts continue to fuel a continually growing economy, Americans of all economic backgrounds will be affected positively. If the economic changes improve the condition of millions of Americans living in poverty, then there should be hope for bipartisan support for the policies that improved the state of the union. 

Who am I to Judge?

A century ago, “societal progress” meant advancements in medicine and math, breakthroughs in technology, and improvements in peoples’ quality of life. Now progress is measured by the number of minority groups our politicians belong to. We live in a society that is hyper-focused on accepting all people—so much so that ideal societal advancement is centered around creating safe spaces, using proper pronouns, and teaching people to not “assume” their baby’s gender. We see tolerance as the key to creating a better world. 

At the outset, a disclaimer: we live in a country where people once owned other people because of the color of their skin. We need to work towards a society that respects the dignity of all people. I get that. I am not arguing that our society is perfect, or that things like racism or sexism aren’t real issues. There will always be challenges to overcome, and we should be striving to build a better world. The problem is that we’re doing it wrong. Pure tolerance has never solved a societal crisis, and it won’t solve the ones that America faces now. 

Tolerance has become the battle-cry of many in the “progressive movement.” Campus progressives teach us to “tolerate” everything in order to create a more accepting, affirming society. And yet the result is that people are afraid to speak out against something they consider morally wrong because they are scared they’ll be called intolerant or bigoted. Quickly, tolerance morphs into moral relativism: moral truth does not exist, and don’t you dare tell me otherwise. Morality becomes a purely personal sphere, regulated by a truism wrenched from its context and used as the basis of an entirely new system of ethics: “Who am I to judge?” 

On the surface, this approach of “who am I to judge?” seems to make us more loving, accepting, Christlike people. But the logic doesn’t hold water. We don’t tolerate homicide. If a mother killed her toddler, the woman would go to jail because she committed murder, and murder is wrong. This is literally how society functions. It’s the only way human beings restrain the evil that we’re capable of. Perhaps we shouldn’t judge too readily, but we can’t default to casual relativism either. That’s contrary to everything we believe about justice, right and wrong, good and evil. 

Christians have always preached a different kind of acceptance: love. We can best follow Christ and create a better world through loving people instead of just tolerating them. Our cultural tradition defines love as “willing the good of the other independent of your own.” That means putting another person’s long-term wellbeing—not just temporary satisfaction—ahead of your own wants, desires and fears. We don’t love people best by letting them hurt themselves or others, or violate the societal bonds between us and them. Love does not turn a blind eye to suffering. Tolerance does. That’s why it will never be authentic love. 

We are called to love the sinner and hate the sin. Yet in modern society, we think loving the sinner necessitates supporting the sin, so that no one feels ashamed or guilty. It’s one thing to love and accept human beings, but it’s another thing entirely to tolerate evil. We, as a society, do need to work to create a more peaceful, loving community. But we need to model that community after Christ. Jesus made the distinction between human beings and their behavior. His friends were prostitutes and tax collectors, but they gave up their sinful past to follow Him. His call is not just one of discipleship, but one of conversion. 

Love means encouraging and affirming a struggling mother in a crisis pregnancy so she can make the difficult decision to choose life. It means helping the sex worker to recognize her own dignity, so she can leave an industry that destroys rather than empowers. It means standing by the addicts and, instead of enabling them, challenging them to keep fighting. Sometimes true love means a demanding love. 

When we say “you do you” or “who am I to judge?” we really mean, “I like you, but I don’t care about you enough to fight for what’s best for you.” Sometimes the very act of standing up for what is true, good and beautiful frightens us. It might endanger a friendship, or anger people we love. But we can’t just blindly tolerate evil. Moral relativism guarantees a worse world—after all, Benito Mussolini once said, “there is nothing more relativistic” than fascism. Instead of cowardly tolerance, we must lovingly and courageously call people to authentic conversion, whether those people are abortionists or KKK members, violent socialists or hucksters of the alt-right. 

Many confuse this message with hatred. Most progressives—which is, most college students—imagine that conservative policies, and the people who support them, are filled with hatred for anyone who’s different. They aren’t. Quite the opposite, in fact; most of us are genuinely concerned for the common good. The myth that people who aren’t progressive are all angry, bitter bigots only serves to hamper authentic political and social dialogue. While there are bigots, they can be found on both sides of the aisle. In reality, most people who stand for things like the pro-life cause, traditional religious values, or conservative economic policies are loving people who want to make the world a better place. Just like most progressives. All we’re intolerant of is evil. 

The Four Last Things

“Gentlemen, you have a choice,” barked Fr. Larry Richards, his right hand resting absently on the forgotten podium next to him. He stood stiffly, gazing out at over two hundred attentive faces with an intense glare. “You can either become a saint, or you can go to Hell. Which will you have?” Immediately, we roared back “Sainthood, Father!” “All right, let’s get started,” he said, cracking a boyish grin and relaxing into a more leisurely pose. 

This was how Fr. Larry began his talk on sainthood at a conference that I attended this past break. He was hinting at something central to the Catholic faith, something that most people are afraid to think about, let alone talk about. He was hinting at the four last things—death, judgment, heaven and hell. Put more officially, he was referring to eschatology, the doctrines of the final destiny of humanity. 

Thinking about these four things might make you feel uncomfortable or even scared. If they do, good; that is exactly how we should feel. These are not easy topics to discuss, but it does us no good to run or hide from the reality of our situation. We are each faced with these four unalterable truths: we are all going to die, we are all going to be judged for how we lived, and we are all going to end up in either heaven or hell. 

Death 

You are going to die. Please stop reading for a moment and ponder that. There will come a time when you will not wake up, when you will be put in a coffin, and when you will be lowered into a rectangular pit and covered with six feet of dirt. For some, that time is a long way off. For others, it is just around the corner, maybe even minutes away. I don’t say this to be morbid; I say it to be candid. Whenever another of his fellow Jesuits would say that he would do something one or two weeks in the future, St. Ignatius was in the habit of saying, “What’s that? Do you think you will live that long?” Ignatius reminded his brothers, and reminds us, that death is utterly unpredictable. Since it will come “like a thief in the night,” we should live vigilantly, because we “know neither the day nor the hour” when we will die. 

Judgement 

Death is not the end. This life is not all there is, and we should not act like what we think, say, and do does not have consequences. St. Ignatius, in the First Principle and Foundation, spells out exactly how we are supposed to live: “Human beings are created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by means of doing this to save their souls. The other things on the face of the earth are created for the human beings, to help them in the pursuit of the end for which they are created.” Put another way, we should constantly live with eternity in mind. We should be constantly asking ourselves, am I showing God, by my way of life, that I love Him most of all, or am I showing God that I love something else more than Him? This is an extremely important question that deserves reflection, because God will give us what we truly want—either Himself, or not Himself. The famous passage from St. Matthew states it clearly: at our judgment Christ will gather all of humanity and separate us “as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, with the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.” To those on His right He will say “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” and they will be given this gift because “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” By their life, they showed Christ that they loved Him. But to those on His left He will say “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” and they will be given this because “what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me. And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” 

Heaven 

I am not going to try and pretend to know what Heaven is like. I don’t. Nobody does. What I do know is that I love God. I love Him in an imperfect, fallible way, and often I do a poor job of it. But still, I love Him. And I do know that, however imperfect my love for God is here on Earth, it will be made perfect in Heaven. That, I think, is what Heaven must be; it is a perfect relationship of love with Him. We will be set free from our doubt, fear, pain and sin. There, we will finally experience perfect love, and we will be made perfect in our union with God and exist in unending bliss. 

Hell 

If Heaven is our perfect and final loving relationship with God, then Hell is the ultimate and final breaking of it. On Earth, we each have an imperfect relationship with God, but we can deepen that relationship when we choose to respond to God’s love for us. Conversely, we can also damage it when we choose to reject that love by committing venial sin, or even break it when we commit mortal sin. However, even committing mortal sin does not constitute a final break, because God, in His divine mercy, continually offers us forgiveness in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. With Hell though, it is different. There are no more chances, and mercy can no longer be offered, because Hell is a final self-separation from God. It is something we choose when we choose to love things other than God without repentance. What is truly terrifying is that if we commit mortal sin, do not seek God’s forgiveness, and then die, God no longer recognizes us. We become unknown to Him who knows all things. We become like the five virgins waiting outside of the locked door at the wedding feast. We cry out and say, “Lord, Lord, open the door for us!” But He replies, “Amen, I say to you, I do not know you” (Matthew 25:1-13). The door is shut, we cannot get in, and we are alone. It is by our own foolishness that we are cut off from God, and we torment ourselves with that knowledge forever. 

If we want to have a relationship with God, we need to remember the four last things. In meditating upon them in prayer, we are forced to prioritize what is important in life: love for God, and love for neighbor. Apart from these two things and the most basic living necessities, the rest is superfluous or even a hindrance to our spiritual goal. Therefore, as we begin this Lenten season, we ought to reflect closely on the four last things. When we’ve done that, we ought to ask ourselves: Will we become saints? Or will we go to Hell? 

De-Emotionalizing DACA

If the last six months have indicated anything about the current state of our political discourse, it is that it’s nearly impossible to engage in bipartisan political dialogue without an overload of virtue signaling from members of the left. The left’s dogmatic standard in civic conversation is based upon the notion that feelings trump fact, instinct trumps reason, and emotional impulse trumps logic. This has left a noticeable taint on the way we carry out conversations on public policy. The consequences of such a standard are damaging and destructive. Of course, emotion plays a central role in the human experience and it’s only natural that it has some bearing on one’s political leanings and tendencies, but when it comes to public policy, one must rely on the objective and impartial rather than the infinite and indeterminate. Although emotional bias as a legitimate basis for diplomatic discussion has taken over seemingly every component of our political discourse, it is most prominent in discussions concerning DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Despite the policy’s blatant executive overreach and unconstitutionality, the emotion-infused policy proposals and overly euphemistic language of the DACA debate are ultimately detrimental to the integrity of political discussion on both micro and macro levels in the United States. 

In 2011, one year prior to former president Barack Obama’s reelection, he rightfully acknowledged on his campaign trail the antidemocratic and unconstitutional ramifications that an executive order like DACA would create: “Sometimes when I talk to immigration advocates, they wish I could just bypass Congress and change the law myself. But that’s not how democracy works.” 2011 Obama was correct: surely everyone who has passed a seventh grade social studies class knows that the legislative branch makes laws while the executive branch merely enforces them—to suggest otherwise runs contrary to the sociopolitical and constitutional foundations of the United States government, and the former president was right to clarify the issue in the honest and transparent way he did. 

Come 2012 reelection season, however, in an effort to frame members of the Republican Party as cold-hearted and compassionless (a rather masterful political move), President Obama decided that the integrity of the executive branch ought to take a backseat to his own partisan needs (the Republicans had won the House majority in 2012 as well, so he had to rely upon an executive order to push his agenda through, which stands in stark contrast to the current administration’s lawmaking tactics). His unilateral political maneuvering won, and before anyone knew it, DACA was instituted as a “temporary measure,” and any attempt to question the moral and constitutional foundations of the order was met with snide and pompous remarks from political opponents. What was once “not how democracy works” suddenly became “who we are as a people,” as Obama wrote when President Trump announced plans to end the program in September 2017. What was once considered executive overreach became known as “basic decency,” what was once illegal and unconstitutional became acceptable and encouraged, one who was once called an “illegal immigrant” was suddenly referred to as a “dreamer,” and what was once a desire to uphold the Constitution is now known as “racist” and “xenophobic.” 

Of everything we have learned over the past several months of immigration policy debate, the most striking would be the power of words. Politics and persuasiveness go hand in hand, and it’s no coincidence terms like “dreamer,” “family reunification,” and “undocumented” have been brought to the forefront. The left’s approach to the immigration debate is one of overblown euphemisms and emotionally persuasive language—and to their credit—it has worked quite well. Even the rather partisan Holy Cross administration has given in to such emotionally permeated language (which in and of itself speaks volumes about the school’s political priorities given that the administration rarely, if ever, focuses its attention to critical Catholic issues like abortion and the rise of the anti-Catholic cultural influences, while it does not hesitate to comment on immigration and refugee concerns), with members of the administration saying on multiple occasions that they are “troubled” by what was initially a temporary instance of executive exploitation being repealed. 

Surely, it is difficult to blame these so-called “dreamers” (illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children) for the wrongdoings of their parents, and even the most far-right politicians and pundits don’t have any real desire to deport hundreds of thousands of innocent and hardworking migrants for something that was no fault of their own. Unfortunately, though, that’s not the point. No matter how much we may sympathize for these individuals, facts are facts: the executive order allowing them to remain in the United States is glaringly undemocratic. Compassion does not hold a candle to constitutionalism, regardless of any political or emotional stakes. 

In more recent weeks, President Trump has held several bipartisan meetings on the future of DACA, and he has made it clear on multiple occasions – most notably in his first State of the Union address—that he is willing to compromise with Democrats on DACA and other pressing immigration issues so that both parties are satisfied. More specifically, the President has proposed his “four pillars” plan that would provide a pathway to citizenship for approximately 1.8 million “dreamers,” $25 billion for border security measures including the construction of a wall, an end to chain migration, and an end to the Diversity Visa Lottery Program. Of course, this proposed plan is quite generous and more than reasonable despite its neglect for the Obama administration’s unconstitutionality—as President Trump himself indicated, it “covers almost three times more people than the [Obama] administration. Under our plan, those who meet education and work requirements, and show good moral character, will be able to become full citizens of the United States over a 12-year period.” To no surprise, most Democrats are not budging: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi suggested that “the plan is a campaign to make America white again” while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed that Trump was using his plan “as a tool to tear apart our legal immigration system and adopt the wish-list by anti-immigration hardliners." This rationale, of course, is ludicrous. As political pundit Ben Shapiro said, “to suggest that allowing in millions of illegal immigrants and millions more legal immigrants is somehow a reflection of underlying racism is pure demagoguery.” The Democrats are, of course, politically posturing to their far-left base, and their inability to even consider a compromise as generous and balanced as President Trump’s sheds light on where their highest priorities truly lie. 

As unavoidable as emotional influence often is when it comes to major public policy issues and as challenging as it can be to resist such influence, if we truly want a shot at preserving the moral and constitutional integrity of our country, it is time to set emotion aside. Likewise, and more importantly, real debate cannot exist in an environment in which those with opposing viewpoints are shut down as “racist” and “bigoted.” When emotion takes the forefront in our public policy debates, it is easy to resort to name-calling, moral patronization, and virtue signaling, but what good do such antics do for the country? Passion and emotion are important, but they have their time and place, and politics is not one of them. The future of the country depends upon our willingness to sacrifice feelings for fact and sentiment for common sense and the rule of law. That journey starts here and now. 

Treason and the Culture of Deceit

We live in a culture of deceit. Two events this winter have proved that point abundantly. On January 5th, Michael Wolff published Fire and Fury, a gossipy account of the Trump White House. Taken to task for the fact that many of his sources (from a former British Prime Minister, to major Trump allies, to a slew of journalists at the New York Times) explicitly denied quotes attributed to them, Wolff found himself on the back foot. He wouldn’t produce the recordings of their conversations which he (allegedly) possessed. No, the public doesn’t need hard evidence to support contested claims. Instead, Wolff proposed a novel method to prove what was true and what wasn’t: “If it rings true, it is true.” What does that mean, in essence, except for “It’s true if you want it to be true?” Different things will sound true or false to different people. In that case, my biases distinguish what’s true from what isn’t. On a closer investigation, they do more than that; my biases come to constitute the truth. 

On February 5th, President Trump spoke at a manufacturing plant in Ohio. Apparently prickled by insufficient applause at his State of the Union address, he said of the Democrats, “They were like death and un-American. Un-American. Somebody said, ‘Treasonous.’ I mean, yeah, I guess, why not. Can we call that treason? Why not?” Cue media firestorm number three hundred and seventy-nine, even though the President was probably joking. As with a lot of media meltdowns over things Trump says, there’s something here worth being upset about. Nationally elected figures shouldn’t call their political opponents traitors, even in jest. But, as a Holy Cross alumnus over at National Review has pointed out, the left lost the ability to complain about that a long time ago. 

When? Oh, seven years ago, that time Joe Biden said Republicans in Congress and the House “have acted like terrorists” by playing debt-ceiling politics. Or six years ago, when Senate majority leader Harry Reid started speculating that Republicans were deliberately tanking the U.S. economy in order to score political points against Barack Obama. Or three years ago, when Hillary Clinton compared pro-life Republican politicians to “terrorist groups.” Or even three months ago, when Andrew Cuomo accused Republicans who voted for tax reform of violating their oath. “It’s treasonous,” he said. “It’s modern-day Benedict Arnold.” 

All of this puts Trump in his context. For nearly a decade in mainstream politics, and substantially longer in media circles, we’ve been transforming our political opponents into terrorists, traitors, and totalitarian sympathizers. But does that have anything to do with Michael Wolff? Of course it does. Trump and Clinton, Joe Biden and Harry Reid are all enthralled to the Wolff standard for truth. It has nothing to do with whether the accusation can be proven, whether the facts can support it, or indeed whether a conversation actually happened. No, none of those things make a quotation or a story true or false. But they ring true, so Democrats are traitors and pro-lifers are terrorists and the Republicans want to destroy the United States of America. 

But why does it matter? This isn’t a new phenomenon. We can find this sort of casual relativism at the headwaters of Western culture, critiqued in the plays of Sophocles and the dialogues of Plato. While that’s true, there’s an important difference now. We can see it in the standard that Michael Wolff proposed. He didn’t say “It’s true because I said it’s true,” or “It’s true because I can persuade you that it is.” He said, “It’s true because it rings true,” which is to say, “It’s true because you want to believe it.” 

And sadly, whether it’s a treason accusation or an invented quote by Tony Blair, we all too often do believe it. The great and good turned out in hordes to cheer for Fire and Fury back in January. Hillary Clinton even stood on stage at the Golden Globes to read selections from it. Trump’s crowd cheered on those treason accusations with gusto, and we know the far-right wing agreed. A heap of students at this college would gladly lend their voices to the Clinton-Biden siren song of Republican traitors and pro-life terrorists. Our society makes biases primary, and tries to conform reality to it. Truth? What is Truth? 

This rot runs from the roots of the tree to its crown: on campuses, in the news media, in Washington. It has real consequences. For obvious reasons, when truth doesn’t exist, nobody believes anything the other side says, so we make things up and decide they’re true instead. Conservatives will be content to believe that the Democrats want to recreate the Soviet Union, and liberals will think that Republicans have a hankering for Germany circa 1936. There results an alchemy of outrage which transposes minor policy disputes into raging culture wars. And, because we don’t believe the other side will tell the truth, compromise becomes impossible. 

The issue of “fake news” reveals another facet of the problem. The term should diagnose a real problem—the kind of “journalism” produced by Infowars that intentionally misleads people to manipulate their voting preferences. But instead, it has become a synonym for “bad press,” or even just “honest reporting.” CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post are “fake news” in a lot of conservative circles. National Review and the Wall Street Journal earn the same title among my liberal friends. The assertion isn’t merely that they’re biased; it’s that any of those five news outlets will make up facts whole cloth in order to score political points. Of course, every media outlet has a slant. But if the NYT and WSJ are “fake news,” what are Breitbart and Buzzfeed? 

Pontificating about how the West is facing a cultural crisis has become a cottage industry of considerable scale. I’m not going to toss my hat in that particular ring. You need perspective to do that, and the perpetual screaming match of a New England campus doesn’t offer it. This hill isn’t high enough to see that far. But the limited view from here shows us a particularly vicious kind of tribalism—fractious groups of like-minded people glommed together against their political opponents. Factions in the Church. Identity groups on the progressive left. The seven kinds of conservative. The unmoving progressive/traditionalist battle line. These reveal a bloodless form of blood feud, in which common good and common decency are trampled to win the ideological campaign. A truthless society makes for a culture at war, and culture wars are tribal wars. 

A lecturer I heard back in September put it best. He argued that our public life has lost the images of the covenant. Although drawing on religious imagery, he was talking about the signal forms of social solidarity, like stable marriages, civil friendships, and personal loyalty. Is that our fundamental problem? I don’t know. But the religious imagery can tell us some -thing. “Covenant” is a biblical word, evoking God’s fidelity to his covenant with Israel. In Exodus, the Hebrew for covenant fidelity is emet. When ancient Jewish scholars translated the Bible into Greek, they rendered emet with a word that also stands for “truth.” Fabricated “truths” betray our social covenant. That’s the treason of the culture of deceit.