The Joy of the Truth » modernism

Mel Gibson vs. Roman Polanski What’s the Difference?

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:00:47 +0000

Mel Gibson has made the news – in the form of a media feeding frenzy – yet again. This time he is accused of making racial slurs and of possibly physically abusing his girlfriend (the mother of his nine month old baby). There is little doubt that the accusations are true. Mel Gibson has slid once again in his lifelong struggle with alcoholism. However, especially as far as celebrities go, this news is “nothing new under the sun.” I say especially as far as celebrities go mainly because their domestic woes are typically public knowledge. Alcoholism, extra-marital sex and even (sadly) abuse of all kinds are all-too-common occurrences. In fact, one has to wonder why such a media feeding frenzy (including an audio clip that went viral on the Internet) exists at all.

Meanwhile, another celebrity has made the news as well, though much further down the media page. Switzerland refused to extradite movie director Roman Polanski, who was accused of drugging and raping a 13 year old girl. Unlike Gibson, Polanski was even defended by many in Hollywood. The ruling of the courts of Switzerland is considered a great victory for some people who claim that Polanski was just misunderstood, that the sex with the 13 year old was consensual, and that it all happened so long ago that we shouldn’t even bother.

So what’s the difference between Mel Gibson and Roman Polanski? Frankly, both cases of sin outrage and sadden me. Rape and abuse are both gross desecration of human dignity. At the same time, I am aware enough of my own sinfulness to be driven to prayer for both of these men. But I notice the difference in the way they are treated publicly, and I have to wonder.

To me, this is just another sign of the rampant presence of modernism in our society. As I have said before, modernists consider hypocrisy one of their few major sins. To the modernist-influenced media, Roman Polanski was just following his nature, and even though the girl was only 13, she did choose to be with him and to take drugs. However, Mel Gibson created the movie Passion of the Christ and claimed to be a faithful (and traditional) Catholic. Because he followed a religion that dares tell the world what is right and wrong, Gibson’s sinfulness is hypocritical.

The irony is that those who criticize Gibson and defend Polanski are themselves hypocritical. Abusive sexuality is apparently OK for some people but not for others. Unless, of course, the crime is not the abuse but instead the moral standards held by Gibson. Modernists aren’t really saying that abuse is evil, but that moral standards are.

What if Natural Were Not Natural?

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:00:43 +0000

The Spring 2003 edition of Wilson Quarterly ran an article called, “What is Natural?” The author, Andrew Stark, was exploring the standards used by insurance companies to decide what treatments to cover and which ones not to cover. One of the standards that he explores is the classic standard of a true medication or treatment returning the human body to natural functioning. Of course, like a true modernist, Stark then asks the question what exactly is natural? One example that he gives is the question of covering Viagra but not birth control pills. The idea of returning to the body to natural functioning would seem to indicate that Viagra should be covered since it returns the natural procreative functioning of the male, and that contraception should not be covered because it works against the natural procreative functioning of female. Then Stark pulls the standard modernist trick “what if.”

But suppose we view “natural” sexuality in recreational, not procreative, terms. Since “most Viagra users are men aged 50–75, hardly peak biological years for procreation,” a writer in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer pointed out a few years ago, “the specter of ‘recreational’ use is hard to ignore.” Viagra users are not fulfilling their natural functioning but thumbing their noses at it. After all, as Robert Scheer wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Isn’t sexual impotence God’s gentle way of saying to a 75-year-old man, ‘You’ve had enough’?” Contraception, by contrast, enables a woman “to enjoy sex,” Paige Shipman of Wisconsin Planned Parenthood told me, precisely by “eliminating a direct threat to her natural functioning: the ravages on her body that would result from having to bear 12 to 15 children.”

So if sex is understood in procreative terms, Viagra promotes natural functioning and contraception thwarts it. If it’s understood in recreational terms, Viagra frequently mocks natural functioning and contraception protects it. [1. Stark, Andrew. "What's Natural?" Wilson Quarterly. Spring 2003. 55-56.]

This common modernist fallacy creates a false supposition on which to base an argument. The argument itself seems perfectly logical, but the very premise on which it is based is made up out of thin air. “Suppose we just change the rules.”

For what reason would we consider sexuality from a recreational viewpoint? It is obvious to human reason that the purpose of human sexuality is greater than pleasure alone. It is equally obvious that at least part of that purpose is procreative. While there are many things in human life that bring pleasure, there are very few for which pleasure is the ultimate purpose because pleasure is such a low good on the hierarchy of human needs.

Of course, once you start heading down a false trail of logic, it is easy to remain misled. Paige Shipman’s comment about contraception preserving a woman’s natural functioning from the ravages of her body that result from having 12 to 15 children is a completely spurious argument. First of all, chemical contraception ravages the body even more than natural pregnancy — artificially aging the cervix, making the body more susceptible to cancer, and causing infertility. On the other hand, the woman’s natural fertility functioning makes it unlikely that she will ever bear 12 to 15 children. The application of little human reasoning to her natural fertility cycling guarantees it. The woman can use natural family planning to limit the number of children she has without using chemicals that would further damage her body.

Modernists like the “what if” game. It allows them to create a logical-sounding argument that calls truth into question while at the same time it makes no real claim to truth itself. It’s a dangerous form of propaganda that can do real harm.

Pro-choice is the Death of Love

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 05:51:27 +0000

In a previous blog post, I pointed out that abortion advocates have problems even if they call themselves pro-choice. The overemphasis of the individual’s choice tends to isolate the mother from the support of the community. Our culture is pretty much telling unwed mothers, “It’s your choice, so it’s your problem.” Whether a mother decides to kill her baby or give her baby life, the pro-choice movement makes the decision and all its consequences hers and hers alone. Her right to choose removes society’s responsibility and compassion.

Wesley Smith, an outstanding opponent of Euthanasia, teaches that the same thing happens with the “right to die.” The individual’s choice to end his or her life in the face of suffering or despair removes our responsibility to reach out to them in love.

“But I know people and you know people who became suicidal,” he continued. “They might not be alive today if it had not been for the mental health professionals and friends and loved ones who stood in the gap and said, ‘No, we love you, there’s another way’.”

“We are disengaging from each other,” Smith said. “We are losing love for each other, and that is reflected in how we treat people who are in despair and darkness.” [1. Klein, Franz. "Wisconsin is a 'major target' for pro-euthanasia groups, speaker says" Catholic Times. October 1, 2009. 12.]

One interesting thing about Smith was that he said he did not understand why euthanasia is a progressive issue. Apparently Wisconsin is being targeted by pro-death advocates and Wisconsin is known as a blue state. I wonder if Wesley Smith falls into the same misunderstanding of modern liberalism as many Catholics. Liberalism is no longer founded on progressive ideals, but instead on philosophical Modernism, the belief that truth cannot be known except through personal experience. Modernism emphasizes personal choice as the most important value, since it sees truth as a personal thing (“What’s true for you may not be true for me”). Pro-euthanasia and pro-abortion advocates call themselves pro-choice because the personalized choice is what matters most to them. However, their over-emphasis of personal choice means a neglect of community responsibility and love.

Standard Medical Practice and International Rights

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:08:15 +0000

Our culture now considers shutting down the healthy fertility system and killing babies to be basic woman’s health. Long ago the abortion movement abandoned their slogan “safe, legal, and rare.” They are now successfully pushing to make abortion everyday, commonplace, and accepted medical practice. The practice of medicine used to be considered the practice of making a sick person whole and healthy. It is now becoming a commodity business that offers whatever the customer thinks he or she wants. Even while the morally reprehensible act of abortion is constantly under fire and is increasingly unpopular, activists are moving to make abortion a basic human right on the international stage.

Top Abortion Law Firm Says Government Funded Abortion is a Human Right
By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.
(NEW YORK – C-FAM) A top abortion-rights law firm recently released its conclusion that the last decade of international legal trends indicate that abortion is not only an international human right, but that government funding is part of that right. They claim that the “vicious” health care debate in the United States over abortion funding shows that the U.S. is flouting international law.

In “Reproductive Rights at the Start of the 21st Century: Global Progress, Yet Backpedaling on Gains in U.S.,” the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) argues that “funding for abortion services has increasingly been recognized as a necessary tool for ensuring access to a fundamental human right.”

C-fam.org

We need to shout from the rooftops! True woman’s health is making sure her body, including her fertility system, does what it is designed to do. True woman’s freedom is the ability to choose to enjoy her sexuality within the context of marriage and family love so that she is not used as an object of pleasure and so that her sexuality fulfills the purpose of its power: to create family love.

Who Is Really to Blame?

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Mon, 03 May 2010 04:45:54 +0000

The virtue of prudence gives rise to the virtue of “memory” – the habit of learning from our mistakes. The media and our decidedly anti-catholic culture continue to try to place blame on Pope Benedict and the bishops for the sex scandals. People who look to place personal blame assume that the problem with the bishops was a sort of malicious negligence. In reality it’s more likely that the problem lay in accepting the same philosophy that had shaped our culture. What can we learn from our past mistakes?

This philosophy, born of the Enlightenment, said that the human power of science would solve all of the world’s problems. Before the hubris of this philosophy too over our way of thinking, bishops would have assumed the traditional understanding of human nature. According to this understanding sexual disorder is caused by a warped or twisted appetite. This twisted appetite is common to all human beings due to fallen human nature, though it affects each of us in different ways and to different degrees. Any sexuality that was not grounded in family love was considered disordered. While psychology and therapy can help us come to terms with our twisted desires and maybe even give us some tools to overcome them to some degree, the Church has always taught that only grace can truly bring healing to our disordered appetites. However, the Enlightenment-born philosophy of our culture at the time, promoted by the likes of Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers, claimed that people with disordered sexuality can be healed through scientific methods.

Prior to the early 1990′s, most people in the Church and in the culture at large were unaware or only beginning to come to grips with the prevalence of this horror and the high rate of recidivism among abusers. Accordingly, many leaders- and not just in the Church- felt that sex offenders could be treated pharmacologically or therapeutically and then returned to their former lives and occupations. Many bishops throughout the 1970′s and 1980′s sent priest abusers to treatment centers and received reports from therapists recommending that priests could be safely returned to ministry.

— Robert Barron from Real Catholic TV

You can still see the error of this purely scientific view of humanity in the way we approach alcoholism and drug addiction and other such obsessions. We tend to speak of alcoholism as a disease. This philosophy correctly identifies a biological element to alcoholism and that a person is not able to heal himself without professional help, however it also connotes that the problem is purely biological and does not include elements of the sinful choice or disorder caused by original sin.

The problem with this opinion is that human conditions are much too complicated to be purely biological. Sin and choice and fallenness always come into play. Environment, biology, choice, habits all interact in human behavior and even in addiction. That is why medicine and therapy alone are never enough heal someone.

So the mistake made at the time of the sexual abuses was to put too much trust into human ability to heal pedophilia. This was the mistake of an entire culture, not just the Catholic bishops. The same actions were taken by heads of secular schools and other institutions.

The irony is that while our culture blames Catholic Bishops, it still holds to the mistaken attitude that human beings have the power to cure human disorder through science. This attitude of the Enlightenment has been combined in a schizophrenic way with modernism. So, our culture assumes that anything without a biological cause is a free choice and therefore acceptable.

While we have not yet come to consider pedophilia normal, there are signs we are headed in that direction. Take the case of the famous movie director and screenwriter Roman Polanski. He was accused of drugging and committing sexual acts with with a 13 year old girl. He is now being brought to justice and Hollywood is up in arms in his defense. Whoopi Goldberg said on The View “It wasn’t rape-rape.”

Watch the video of Whoopi Goldberg statements and see for yourself. Notice how Whoopi Goldberg seem to think that statutory rape is not a crime, or at least not the same level of crime as “violent rape.” What’s going on here? This is an example of the effects that the philosophy of modernism is having on our culture. Modernism is leading us to accept even pedophilia as just another lifestyle choice. What would have happened if the scandals that we face today. Had happened today in the age of our current schizophrenic blend of Enlightenment and modernism? Our schizophrenic philosophy would make it even more probable that this could happen. We should not be placing personal blame on the bishops or on the Pope. Rather, we should be analyzing the very thought processes that our culture is being led by now.

Modernism Gets It Wrong – Again

Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:18:11 +0000

A new law requiring insurers to cover the costs of chochlear implants for children has drawn opposition. What is the complaint? Is is that . . .

Government has overstepped its bounds, once again meddling in affairs that should be left to market forces?

the law puts undue burden on small business who now have to pay a higher premium to insure their employees?

the law does not do enough to help children born deaf or severely hard of hearing?

Nope, not that either

So what is the complaint? It comes from Audism Free America:

The notion that being deaf is an affliction and an abomination which alienates one from society and leaves (one) dependent and isolated is a myth,” the petition states. “We do not wish for your state to be mislabeled as promoting eugenics and linguistic and cultural genocide.

Taken from “Ear-implant law draws dissent“, Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune.

What this petition seems to be saying is that deafness is not a disability but just another part of cultural diversity. Therefore, to mandate a procedure that could enable children who are deaf or severely hard of hearing to hear more is like trying to bleach African-American skin white so that African Americans can fit into a white culture better.

Such a ridiculous statement has its roots in modernism, the philosophy that truth is created by personal experience and perception. Modernism celebrates diversity, not because every human person has innate dignity, but because every individual has his own truth. In the case of the petition from Audism Free America, modernism is saying, “Who are you to call deafness a disability. From our perspective, deafness is normal and hearing is an abomination.” Yes, I have heard some proponents of “deaf culture” take the argument that far.

The problem with Audism free America’s position is that deafness is a disorder. Human nature includes the five senses as a normative and universal constituent. In other words, the senses make up part of what it means to be human, and a diminishment of the senses is a diminishment of something that a human person should have (however not a diminishment of their humanity or dignity). Therefore, deafness is a disability based on the standard of human health. Modernism does not believe in disability because it does not believe in a universal standard of human life or of human health.

The problem comes in how we look at disabilities. We tend to look at people with obvious and severe disabilities and say they are disabled and we are not. I have been around severely disabled people all of my life, and I have learned that there is no “they” and “us.” Fallen human nature is fallen for all of us. Disability is not a matter of having one or not having one, but a matter of degree and of kind. People who are disabled in one area of life are also extremely able in other areas of life. The term “disabled” becomes a problem only when we let it define a specific segment of the human family.

One can see the same line of thought in the homosexuality movement. The Church calls same-sex attraction “disordered” because it is opposed to the universal human purpose of sexuality. Modernists see this as an insult that alienates a specific segment of the population. However, the Church realizes that every person’s sexuality is disordered to one degree or another, so calling same-sex attraction disordered is actually a statement of solidarity, not one of divisiveness. Again, modernists rankle because they do not believe that a standard for “normal” sexuality even exists.

I had friends in high school and college who were deaf and hard of hearing, and I learned sign language in the course of our friendship. One of these friends had been brought up in the “deaf world” and had a difficult time relating to the “hearing.” The others tried very hard to interact with everybody, and counted a number of the “hearing” among their friends, even those who did not learn sign language. It was not the deafness that isolated them. In the case of my one friend, it was his desire to see his deafness as something that set him apart and his consequent unwillingness to form relationships with those who would not share his unique “culture.” He had implicitly bought the lie of modernism.

In the end, the petition from Audism Free America isolates deaf people from the rest of us by accentuating the differences rather than acknowledging the fact and universal nature of disability. And their modernist bent would keep children from getting help to overcome their disability. That is just not acceptable.

The Joy of the Truth » modernism

Mel Gibson vs. Roman Polanski What’s the Difference?

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What if Natural Were Not Natural?

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Pro-choice is the Death of Love

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Standard Medical Practice and International Rights

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Who Is Really to Blame?

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Modernism Gets It Wrong – Again

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