Doctrines and Nations
Is God Dead?
Humanity might well pause in these days when the hot flames of hell, by a peculiar paradox, fan a cold war of hate. Digging deeper than politics and economics, what is the path modern man is taking? Without knowing it, he has, in practice, accepted the dictum of Nietzsche: "God is dead." This death of God is not a physical demise, due to such things as nailing Him to a gibbet; it is much less dramatic. It means simply that the idea of God has disappeared among men. He is only a name, a "survival," "a remnant" of other days, according to some misbehaviorists. "God is dead" means He can be ignored, as one ignores the necessity of a horse and buggy for transportation because the automobile has taken its place. The new vehicle for progress is "humanity."
Atheism has moved from the intellectual plane, where it was in the last century, to the existential plane; from the level of proving atheism to the living it; from the nonexistence of God to the existence of humanity. Atheism posits a new god, namely, Man. The position of Marx and Engels, the founders of Communism, is that man has transferred to God qualities and attributes which really belong to him, such as knowing all things, possessing power to do all things, unlimited compassion, unbounded love and torrential mercy. Man, they continue, has destroyed his nature by this transfer of attributes to God; thus he emptied himself. The only way he can ever be himself is to take back those titles which really belong to him. Then will be ushered into the world that humanism in which Man is God and not mere man. Atheism then becomes not the denial of God, but the affirmation of Man. Marx wrote at the end of his thesis for a Ph.D., "I hate all the gods, and I hate them because they do not recognize Man as Supreme Divinity."
Official atheism, such as was put into practice in Marxism, implies an entirely new concept of truth. For those who believe in God, truth is conformity a) with the objective, natural order, revealed in the universe and in conscience, and b) ultimately with the Mind that made it. For example, my idea of a rose corresponds to a certain type of flower in the physical order. I do not say, "My idea of a rose is an elephant." In the ultimate analysis, just as a statue corresponds to an idea or plan existing in the mind of the sculptor, so every rose, tree, bird and stone corresponds to an idea existing in the Mind of God. Deny God, and what is truth? Truth, under atheism, is correspondence or agreement with an idea existing in the mind of the Marxist Party. Reality must correspond to the archetypal ideas existing in the mind of the humanist planners. Black is white and white is black; day is night and night is day. As Marx said, every idea is "true" which furthers the Communist Revolution, and false which hinders it.
This explains why Communist leaders appear to be so good and democratic and freedom loving one day, and so cantankerous, deceitful and full of lies another day. Both tactics are "true." There is no objective standard of truth. Revolution alone is truth. (Members of the United Nations please take notice!)
In the face of a kind of atheism that does not prove itself, all the intellectual arguments in the world for theism lack the power to convince. If a balloon were conscious, it would be pretty hard for a vacuum to induce it to deflate itself. Man who is god does not want to be man. He likes the beautiful irresponsibility of his excesses; he loves to hear the word compulsion to explain away his alcoholism. What then will convince the atheist and humanist of today that he is not the lord and sovereign of the universe?
One thing which atheism brings is chaos. Sociologists and psychologists, politicians and historians would do well to read the first chapter of Paul's Letter to the Romans for the consequences of human pride. We quote it not, in the hope that the reader will pursue it himself. It may sharpen his curiosity if he is told that the explanation of homosexuality and juvenile delinquency is recorded therein. Our troubles are not really outside us; they are within us. Nothing happens in the world that does not first happen in human hearts.
Two Kinds Of Atheism
There are two kinds of atheism: one is the passive atheism of the intellectual; the other is the militant atheism of Communism. The bourgeois or passive atheist is under the necessity to explain away his unbelief, but the Communist invokes not skepticism but persecution to prove his unbelief. Passive atheism is tolerant and willing to allow religion to coexist with it. Bourgeois society begotten of this denial of God is an incoherent aggregate of individuals saved from total collapse only by an extremely complicated armature of law—not to mention armies, police, court-houses, customhouses and monetary systems. This society has no consistency or unity since it is founded on negation. Communism has strength because it does not so much deny God as fight against Him.
It is the reality of God which gives strength to the militancy of Communism. Communists are no Don Quixotes battling windmills, fancying them to be enemies; they are hardened, practical men who always have God before them; otherwise they would not fight against Him.
This indirect affirmation of God which is hidden in all militant atheism was revealed in my experience in a London church one Sunday morning. The entrance to the church was from the rear. As I entered, I found a young woman standing on the altar steps, haranguing the congregation saying, "There is no God! There is no God because there is too much evil in the world; science has proven there is no God. Every night I go out to Hyde Park and talk against God. I circulate all England with pamphlets denouncing God," etc.
At that point I approached her and said, "My dear young lady, I am very happy to hear that you believe in the existence of God."
She said, "You silly fool. I don't."
I said, "I understood you to say just the contrary. Suppose I circulated England with pamphlets against a belief in twenty-footed ghosts. Suppose every night I spoke at Hyde Park about twenty-footed ghosts. What do you think would happen to me?"
She said, "You would be crazy. They would lock you up."
I asked, "Why are you not crazy? Do you not put God in the same category as a twenty-footed ghost? Why would I be insane and not you?"
She said that she did not know why. I answered, "Because when I fight against a twenty-footed ghost, I am fighting against a figment of the imagination. But when you are fighting against God, you are fighting against Something to which your hatred indirectly attests. You are fighting against Something just as real as the thrust of a sword or an embrace. But a twenty-footed ghost could never inspire me to such militancy. Only hatred of an existent, all-powerful Judge of my conscience could provoke me to such hatred. Do you think we would have any such thing as anti-cigarette laws unless there were cigarettes? Do you believe that there would be any such thing as Prohibition unless there was something to prohibit?"
Economics
In his play, Magic, G. K. Chesterton tells of a duke who signed two checks. One check was to aid in the building of a large saloon; the second check was to aid the league opposing the building of the saloon. It was not long until he had the reputation of being a "very liberal-minded man."
Economics begins with having. Economics has something to do with having. Having is a sign of imperfection. The purpose of having is to remedy our incompleteness. If we had perfect life, we would never need nourishment. Because our knowledge is imperfect, we need to complement it with education. Because our personality is inadequate for happiness, we need love.
It was creation that introduced the verb "have." When there was only God, before the world was made, there was only one verb, and only one form of the verb—namely, the infinitive "to be"—to indicate the Supreme being of God. God has nothing, but because He is sheer being, He is infinitely rich. If God had anything, it would be a sign that He needed something external to Himself in order to perfect His being.
But all possessions are extrinsic to us; they are never really a part of ourselves. It is, therefore, very easy to confuse having with being. We think we are something because we have something. On Judgment Day we will be judged only by being and not by having. The only things that we will be able to take with us will be those that we can take in a shipwreck. When an honest motorcycle policeman stops us on the highway, he does not ask what kind of car we are driving, but whether or not we obeyed the law. Man can be aggressive in acquiring. Man can be voluptuous in possessing. Man can be avaricious in retaining.
Since property has to do with having, there are two kinds of property: real and token. Real property consists of something physical and concrete which is related to use—for example, beds, land, ice cream, cabbage, corn, spinach, wagons. Token property is an artifice to express reality. Token wealth consists of stocks, bonds, money that has been folded and money that has not been folded.
Nature sets a limit to real wealth or property. No man desires an infinite meal or an infinite garment, or an infinite garden. A garden is a garden only when it has limits and therefore begets peace and complacency. Nature sets limits to the real wealth that we can use. There is a limit to the number of beds we can have in a room, a limit to the ice cream a boy can eat. One boy said that he never has too much ice cream; there just is not enough stomach. In Australia some of the primitive peoples count up to three. They say, "One, two, three enough." This is because they have no refrigerators and cannot keep their food longer than three days. Agriculture has, therefore, been considered one of the most peaceful enterprises of man, because man works with nature and nature sets limits to production and, therefore, to consumption.
Token wealth, however, is to a great extent infinite, simply because it is a symbol of something else. Avarice for credit tends toward infinity because it evokes an infinite desire. Though tokens do not fill the heart, they do fill the time. In real wealth a person limits his wealth by needs, but in token wealth the average person cannot be trusted to accumulate only sufficient tokens to satisfy his needs. Just as there are chain smokers, so there are chain hotels, chain grocery stores, chain railroads. In the language of the Gospel, a man builds bigger and bigger barns until the recording angel summons him to judgment.
Influence
Influence is that which a man is, the sum total of all his beliefs, actions, goals, habits, values, affections, manifested in all he does and does not. Influence is almost the opposite of a photograph; in the latter, an impression of the outside world is made upon a film. With influence, it is the photographer himself who impresses his imprint on another person. Because the light is in him, it shines on others; because the glow is in him, he radiates love. Influence is something like the shadow of Peter which cured the sick. As evil men spread immoral germs and infect the substance of another man's character, so there are those, like Peter, who cast shadows of beneficent healing, and who leave in the gallery of memory the portrait of one who does lasting spiritual good.
A second point about influence is that those who exercise it are quite apart from the masses and the mobs. Mediocre and weak characters succumb to the moods and fashions of the moment, Dead logs float downstream; it takes a live swimmer to resist the current. The creative element in any society is always a minority. There are multitudes in every organization, but the great influences are singular and almost unique. The Communists use the right principle when they seek to train a revolutionary core or elite. In this they are imitating Christ, Who chose out of the multitude first one man, then three, then twelve, then seventy, to change the world.
Who was it who delivered Israel from the Philistines' It was a solitary Samson, and in another instance, a solitary David with his stone and slingshot. Who was it who gathered the people together to rout the Midianites? It was Gideon. And the Lord told him to reduce his army to a mere three hundred, for those three hundred would have more influence than thirty thousand.
A final reflection is that sometimes great influences are exercised by those who once were evil and abandoned it. Not only the unspoiled saints, but the saints who have been converted from wrong, are potent forces of good. The night of the Last Supper, Our Lord told Peter, "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has claimed power over you all, so that he can sift you like wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith may not fail; when, after a while, thou hast come back to Me, it is for thee to be the support of thy brethren." Here was a man who would fall from Christ after having attained to Him, and yet he was the one whom Our Lord would use as the heart and soul of all of the other Apostles.
Shakespeare despairingly cried, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." This is not always true in the Divine order. The greatest teaching about Divine grace and mercy comes from Augustine rather than Thomas Aquinas. Augustine was a man who once had evil in his heart, and then, like Peter, became the strength of his brethren. Our world is well-organized into groups, but what a change for the better there would be if men potent with the spell of Heaven went out like Peter to let their shadows fall upon evil lives and heal them.
Freedom And Independence
If St. Francis had been sent to a Siberian labor camp, or to a leper colony, or to a Wall Street brokerage firm, would he be any less a St. Francis? But how many mortals there are in the world who are one kind of character in need, another kind of character in plenty, who grumble amidst the uncomfortable, and who become possessed by possessions. St. Francis remains the same in all circumstances; the non-St. Francis types, like a chameleon, take on the color of the leaf on which they rest. Why the difference?
Because St. Francis is more free. That seems at first far-fetched, but when is a man free? Negatively, he is free when he is not determined by outward circumstances, for example, when he is not in chains among prisoners, when he is not downcast with the despairing, when he is so far above environment as to be uninfluenced by it. He does not revolve around the world; the world revolves about him. It does not make his moods; he is free from moods. St. Paul said that he was content whether he abounded or whether he was in want.
But whence comes this psychological independence of the external, of maintaining an even spirit in a world of constantly changing lights and shadows? It comes from dependence on God. In fact, every true Declaration of Independence is a Declaration of Dependence. The Constitution of the United States makes its citizens independent of dictators, parliaments and even majorities as regards basic rights and liberties. But on what does it ground this independence? On the Declaration of Dependence, namely, "The Creator has endowed man with certain inalienable rights among which are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." If our freedom came from the government, the government could take it away. It is only because our freedom has a theological foundation that it is "inalienable."
Spiritual Inheritance
The United States has been an arsenal of defense against aggression; a Samaritan helping nations to rehabilitate themselves in peace; a pantry to the hungry and starving world; and, under Providence, the secondary cause for the preservation of the liberties of the free peoples of the world.
The moral and religious tone of our society has derived in part from our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, which affirm: first, that rights and liberties are derived not from men or majorities, but from God and, therefore, are inalienable; second, because rights and liberties are God-given, citizens enjoy rights and liberties in addition to those given by the Constitution; third, the "people" and not the "masses" hold the title to civil power, which derives from God—the people being self-determined through conscience are opposite to the "masses," who are other-determined or dictator ruled.
Despite our rich national moral background, serious-minded citizens are concerned lest, like prodigal sons, we waste our spiritual inheritance through a decline in moral responsibility. Such a decay is due to two causes: first, forgetfulness that man must one day render an account of his stewardship before the Eternal Judge; second, selfishness—a man cares most for those things to which he is bound organically, as he cares more for his head than his hat. As he becomes egotistic and separated from all organic bonds and social functions, such as Church, his country and his family, his sense of responsibility declines.
The consequences are many:
1. As persons surrender a sense of responsibility to God, to the state, to family and to their vocation in life, they dissolve into atoms; atoms exist only for themselves. To say we live in the atomic age may be a more unfortunate characterization than we know; for if we are nothing but atomic individuals, then we are ready either to be split or fissioned mentally, or else collectivized into a socialistic dictatorship. The latter is nothing but the forcible organization of the chaos created by a conflict of individual egotisms.
2. Once God and the moral law and conscience are exiled, then there is no standard outside of the crisis itself by which the crisis can be judged; no standard of time by which to set our watches, no score of music by which to distinguish our harmonies and discords.
3. Then science is left without a world of values, purposes, choices, ideals. The scientist himself, who is always a mind outside the facts he studies, is left without an explanation for all his descriptions. He is also without truth which he is always seeking in his experiments and which he knows exists and endures, even if the human race should go down to extinction.
4. Then education trains only half a man, developing his intellect, but not his will; his mind, but not his character; it gives him knowledge of facts, but gives him no purpose or destiny.
5. Finally, when Divine Truth is denied, there is no final determinant of truth except power, which has already enslaved one third of the world.
This item 1428 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
