Is Today's Population Ready to Face the Idea of Evil?
There are small signs that today's generation may be considering the unthinkable — that evil is a reality, and not just a medieval myth, perpetuated by priests and stuck-in-the-unenlightened-past teachers in parochial schools. The dread word — "evil!" — actually came up recently on a Fox News panel discussion by analysts. Fortunately for them, the moderator's question about the possibility of evil's being at work in today's computerized, psychoanalyzed, liberalized, subsidized, and sanitized world came at the very end of the program. They just had time to speak or, nod an affirmative, without having to discuss the implications before time was up.
But there are more and more indications today's population may be ready to face up to the idea of evil, brought to that point by events that defy understanding unless the awesome truth is that something malevolent greater than of man's creation is newly loose in history, having malignant success against society beyond even that in the so-called Dark Ages.
We of the 21st century, of space travel and mastery of matter's inmost energy, may have to face up to the realization that if evil is our greatest threat, then materialism and empirical science and all other expertise have nothing with which to exorcise it.
And this is especially true of the very system we have established to protect us, government with its legal-penal systems, the workings of what are called law and justice. Those who are avoiding facing up to what should and may be done to violent criminals, namely, separate them forever from society, are leaving it to what is in fact a system of sociology, rather than of justice. It is surely unjust to leave society, with its vast majority of peaceful and orderly citizens, at the mercy of at-large predators. But that is exactly what the present judicial system does. This is the result of a growing acceptance of the idea that the individual is not responsible for misbehavior, no matter how indecent or violent or contemptible it may be.
No, society itself is judged at fault. Crime is merely maladjustment. Violence and the propensity for it are sickness of one sort or another, understandable to psychiatry, to which we leave the job of rehabilitating, perhaps even curing, those afflicted by it. In other words,. the present thought of our judicial-penal system is that no human conduct is evil, since there is no such thing as evil. Thus, no punishment is really deserved, other than what contributes to a criminal's reform. Thus sentences are based oh what is considered needed for reform, usually on the basis of how heinous the crime might be considered.
As for sexual crimes, a vast majority of judges seem unwilling to consider them particularly reproachable. Harshness against them would contradict a number of current assumptions about sex — that it is a compulsion, a necessity requiring fulfillment by its enjoyment; or that it is a means of personal expression. The enjoyment of sex has become a human right, without any concern of the manner or naturalness of its use. The caveat that it may not be imposed upon another, or that it not do "harm" to another, is a highly elastic restriction, particularly in a culture that views chastity and virginity themselves as abnormal, when compared to indulgence in sex, which is considered permissible regardless of purpose or manner. It is certain then, that judges (almost all products of a legal education from which the natural law has long been absent) in judging and sentencing those charged with sexual abuse, even rape or pedophilic assaults, will look into their own sexual recesses of desire or practice.
This surely is among the reasons sexual predators have been shown an excess of leniency, and are so often in our time roaming about with implied or actual permission from some bench or other. The last thing most judges or their advising psychiatrists would want to have considered is that they believe sexual acts might actually be evil. This would put us back to the days when adultery and fornication were outlawed.
We might have to even take seriously Jesus' admonition that a man who looks upon a woman with lust has committed adultery!
Speaking of lust, would any attorney today be taken seriously were he to quote Shakespeare regarding lust and related matters? Yet the greatness of Shakespeare is he plumbed the depths of human entrapment or dalliance in evil, including that involving sex. The rape of Lucretia, a beautiful and virtuous wife, by her husband's kin, the Tarquin prince, brought first exile of the villain by the Romans, and then overthrow of the Tarquin royal dynasty.
Shakespeare puts in Brutus' mouth indignation at the disgrace this crime brought to Rome, and his own change of reputation from something of a public fool (like some of today's politicians) to being avenger of self-slain Lucretia. He prompted banishment of the Tarquin heir, and establishment of the Roman republic. Tyranny returned in the person of Julius Caesar.
All great writing, such as that of Shakespeare and Teodor Korzeniowski (Joseph Conrad); is meaningless if evil is nonexistent.
To understand the truth in such matters, it is necessary to speak about evil openly and honestly, something a generation treated to enlightened valueless and amoral education is unlikely to heed. Evil is the absence of good. It is moral evil when that negation is purposeful, when what is done is directed purposely against the good, destructive of it and contrary to the duty of government to both protect and promote the good.
There is no deed of assault against a single innocent life, against the innocence of children, against any human right whatsoever that is not a deed against society at large, against everyone who has the right to law's protection. Violence against the innocent is always also against human rights. And failure — to answer such violence in a way that will best and most certainly protect human rights is a conspiracy with the criminal. Thus judges who deal in such leniency as encourages further crime, or makes it possible for the criminal to go to violence against more victims, are in reality denying the true evil involved — that of rending the fabric of society, and wounding the very soul of civilization.
But what of liberties? What of the rights of the accused? What of the sacredness of the life of even criminals? As for the latter, certainly ontologically any human's life is sacred, being given by God through the functioning of nature. But social human living was intended by God, and a life lived in contempt of societal duty, thus as a threat to society both as it consists of individuals and their communities, is hardly sacred. Thus, the Church has always recognized the right, even duty, of government to deal with antisocial criminals, by removing them from society's presence, even by execution.
I am not arguing for capital punishment, but it is necessary to understand why the Church, even when holding the sacredness of human life per se, has also always upheld the right of government to end human life when necessary for the safety of the state, and the maintenance of an environment of justice.
So important is that right of defense of nation and its citizenry that the Church has always recognized the right of a state to wage war, with its inevitable loss of life by both defenders and attackers, even innocent life that will unintentionally be lost. Pacifism in regard to dealing with either national enemies or social ones is not always virtuous. It is especially not so when it endangers the very values pacifists claim to uphold — a peaceful society in which well-being and goodness prevail as opposed to what is seen as violence, but which may actually be authorized force to prevent violence. Pacifists invariably confuse the two. A utopia in which force is unnecessary ignores the reality of evil.
Such paradises regained exist only as a tempting ideal, and when held out politically, as did the theorists of Communism, is dangerous to genuine freedoms, which always require intermittent defense against the evil of aggression. Force in the cause of that defense is, unfortunately or not, a social necessity, which is why the vocations of policeman, soldier, sailor, and military pilot are honorable ones, indeed. The current contempt of the military, particularly among young students, intellectuals who teach those students, and a vast array of commentators can amount to cooperation with pacifism and an indifference to the evil of aggression against human rights.
Then, what about the right to freedom of will, as for example, in choice as to how to use one's own body, in regard say to bearing children, or in the expression of one's sexuality? Is that not beyond the jurisdiction of society, enjoying liberty from society's decisions? What about honoring the flag? Does the state have a right to compel anyone to do that without a diminution of liberty?
Here, too, we must consider the existence of evil, and just what that means, and a proper understanding of goodness. The power to choose, part of human nature which God has willed to honor even in its abuse, is certainly inviolable. But its employment is not always beyond the judgment of society. If it were, society would have no right to criminalize any act freely chosen (one reason it is so dangerous to accept the idea that no human acts are really free, and therefore none should be subject to punishment, but only "correction").
It would be an immoral proposal to use any possible medical or psychiatric means to rob a person of free will, force upon him subjective docility and obedience, for the free will is part of human nature. But society has every right to hold persons responsible for their choices, especially when they redound against the rights of other persons. That is why such an act as aborting one's baby should never be shielded by an imagined right of "privacy." The taking of an innocent human life must never be considered a "private" matter if we are going to have a culture in which any human life is safe against the "private" judgment of its being unwanted or a nuisance. Freedom of will cannot be appealed to as a defense against such barbarism.
So, too, for the supposed right to license in regard to the choice of how to put human sexual powers to work. The state is sustained by both a fruitful use of sex, and a respect for the outcome of such use, shown by a proper rearing and education of children. No method other than the traditional family has been found to be effective in fulfilling that social duty, Contraceptive sex could be a danger to society; licentious sex, abnormal sex is always certainly such — that is, dangerous.
The myth that homosexual sex must be honored as a human right ignores the fact that it is primarily such perversion of human sexuality that has set loose one of the fiercest epidemics of history. Perverted heterosexual practices contribute to that evil, as well.
As regards honoring the flag, it is beyond the right or power to force anyone to do so. Actually, it is impossible, for a forced act does not give true honor. But it is certainly within both the right and power to prevent the dishonoring of the flag, its burning or other desecration. Such acts could quite properly be upheld under the same authority that prevents in some cases destruction of even private property, especially by arson.
The cloth of a flag might be considered private property, but the symbol that makes the flag a special sort of property is public. The act of burning the visible, physical substance of that symbol can be judged an assault against the very soul of society. In times of war, burning the flag could very rightly be considered an act of treason, especially in our times when any such act of contempt for the nation's soul would give aid and comfort to the enemy. Further, such acts disturb public order.
All of this is very pertinent to our discussion of whether evil exists, or is simply a fictional figment of the human imagination. If it does not exist, then all the problems treated above could be subject to being properly and effectively dealt with by education, persuasion, judicial power, by utopian ideologies, philosophies of government and social makeup, by political activism.
But if evil is real, then every generation will face these fundamental challenges to the good, and will be measured by history to the extent those evils were recognized and by the courage with which they were opposed. That is how we once judged history, in terms of good and evil, the noble and ignoble, the honorable and dishonorable. It makes all the difference in viewing for example, the Crusades if they were wars in defense of justice and human freedom, or were mere political adventures, the current understanding.
We must always fight, if there is evil. The only victories over evil are temporary, so that the only human and temporal victory is in the fighting against it. The final victory over evil must await the end, with the sealing of Evil into the depths of Hell itself.
God's eternal Kingdom is evil-proof. Our Kingdom on earth can never be. But to fail to recognize evil and to refuse to oppose it with,every means possible to us, including appeals for God's graces in doing so, is a consummate human failure, and always invites human tragedy.
This item 6551 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
