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Gireesh Gupta: Prayer is a gift from God to us

In 07 Observations on 2012/10/11 at 9:11 AM

gupta-gareesh

Prayer is a beautiful and polite way to talk to our Maker. Prayer is a way to cultivate our personal relationship and friendship with God. Prayer is the way to connect to God. Prayer is our direct link to God’s Kingdom. Prayer is the quality time that we spend in the company of God to feel close to Him.

Prayer is also to praise and thank God for His beautiful creation and for His merciful protection of us. Prayer is to ask for God’s blessings, guidance and direction to lead us on the right path and to be true to ourselves and to others. Prayer is a time to ask for God’s forgiveness for our wrongdoings and plead for His mercy. Prayer inspires us to help those in need and brings us closer to God, because serving the needy is to serve God. Prayer cultivates the love of God’s creation and helps us to be thankful. Prayer puts us on the path that leads us to our Creator.

God gave us the gift of prayer with many benefits in return. Prayer calms our minds in times of despair. Daily prayer helps us to focus on what’s important each day amid all of our daily activities and tasks. Prayer brings relief from stress, pain, sorrow and anxiety. Prayer engenders peace in mind and body, and cultivates love for others and for God’s creation. To forgive is divine, and it is the daily practice of prayer that brings out the divine in us and gives us the strength and will to forgive those who have hurt us. Prayer subdues our conceit and fosters humility. Prayer enables us to subjugate our material attachments and elevates our spirituality. Humility and spirituality are two important traits to foster in order to lead a life of contentment, gratitude, happiness and love.

Churches are the sacred and formal places of prayer for Christians, synagogues for Jews, mosques for Muslims, and temples for Hindus. Praying formally with a congregation in these places has the power of uniting people and fostering a community of brotherhood and sisterhood.

However, prayer can be offered at any time and in any place, as many times each day as we wish. We can pray briefly before getting up in the morning and before going to sleep, while working in the office, while doing chores around the house, and even while walking or jogging.

Some of us pray and plead for God’s mercy only when we are needy, sad, fearful or sick. But God wants us to think of Him in a humble manner at all times, especially during the good times and not just the bad times. Just as parents love when their children share their happiness and not just their sadness, we should share our happiness with God our Father in prayer as well.

Our prayers may be simple or short, because praying from the heart is what is important. It is not important how long we pray for, or how formally we pray. A short prayer with a pure and innocent heart will win blessings, but a long prayer without heart is meaningless.

I encourage you to pray with a sincere heart and to pray often, to cultivate your personal relationship with God and seek closeness to Him.

Gireesh Gupta is an associate professor of computer information systems at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont.

Reprinted with permission for the Catholic News Herald

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The Idea of Sainthood Has Often Been Distorted

In 07 Observations on 2012/10/04 at 9:11 AM

“We increasingly experience the failure of our efforts and our personal shortcomings, despite our best intentions. In the final analysis, the world in which we live, in spite of its technical progress, does not seem to be getting any better. There is still war and terror, hunger and disease, bitter poverty and merciless oppression. And even those figures in our history who saw themselves as ‘bringers of light’ – without being fired by Christ, the one true light – did not manage to create an earthly paradise, but set up dictatorships and totalitarian systems, in which even the smallest spark of true humanity was choked”.

“At this point we cannot remain silent about the existence of evil. We see it in so many places in this world; but we also see it – and this scares us – in our own lives. Truly, within our hearts there is a tendency towards evil, there is selfishness, envy, aggression. Perhaps with a certain self-discipline all this can to some degree be controlled. But it becomes more difficult with faults that are somewhat hidden, that can engulf us like a thick fog, such as sloth, or laziness in willing and doing good. Again and again in history, keen observers have pointed out that damage to the Church comes not from her opponents, but from uncommitted Christians”.

“Dear friends, again and again the very notion of saints has been caricatured and distorted, as if to be holy meant to be remote from the world, naive and joyless. Often it is thought that a saint has to be someone with great ascetic and moral achievements, who might well be revered, but could never be imitated in our own lives. How false and discouraging this opinion is! There is no saint, apart from the Blessed Virgin Mary, who has not also known sin, who has never fallen. Dear friends, Christ is not so much interested in how often in your lives you stumble and fall, as in how often you pick yourselves up again. He does not demand glittering achievements, but He wants His light to shine in you. He does not call you because you are good and perfect, but because He is good and He wants to make you His friends. Yes, you are the light of the world because Jesus is your light. You are Christians – not because you do special and extraordinary things, but because Christ is your life. You are holy because His grace is at work in you”.

“This gathering shines in more ways than one – in the glow of innumerable lights, in the radiance of so many young people who believe in Christ. A candle can only give light if it lets itself be consumed by the flame. It would remain useless if its wax failed to nourish the fire. Allow Christ to burn in you, even at the cost of sacrifice and renunciation. Do not be afraid that you might lose something and, so to speak, emerge empty-handed at the end. Have the courage to apply your talents and gifts for God’s kingdom and to give yourselves – like candle wax – so that the Lord can light up the darkness through you. Dare to be glowing saints, in whose eyes and hearts the love of Christ beams and who thus bring light to the world. I am confident that you and many other young people here in Germany are lamps of hope that do not remain hidden. ‘You are the light of the world'”.

Pope Benedict To German youth in Freiburg, Germany
(Vatican Information Service; 20110925 (1040)

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Our Obligation to the Less Fortunate

In 07 Observations on 2012/08/11 at 9:11 AM

 

Two stories in the news recently caught my eye. The first was an economic piece stating that after World War II there were many good paying jobs for blue collar workers in the United States because demand for goods was strong. Today, however, those jobs are not so attractive because we are now a more service oriented society and those with a college degree are typically much better compensated than those without. Also, the unemployment rate is significantly higher for those with less education. The second item was the announcement that in 2011, there were more births to what we typically call “minorities,” than to the “majority,” the latter meaning non-Hispanic whites. Minority here refers to those who are black, Latino, Asian, or mixed race. This is a remarkable development but it is also sobering, because in the aggregate minorities attend college at a far lower rate than Anglos, and thus their economic prospects are generally not as good.

Demographics are very predictable, and we know that given current birthrates, there will be more and more “minorities” in the future and fewer Anglos. Given that, and a continuation of the college education disparities, we will likely see a large segment of the population facing economic difficulties. As a society, and especially as Christians, what is our obligation to help remedy this economic inequality? The broader question is, how should we work to remedy social problems in general?

Even a casual reading of the scriptures shows many, many passages in which God tells us to serve the disadvantaged, including the poor, outcasts, prisoners, the sick, widows, and orphans. Looking at the Old Testament, Psalm 41 says “Blessed are those who have regard for the weak”; Psalm 72 states “May he [the king] defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy”; 1 Samuel 2 says “He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap; he seats them with princes and has them inherit a throne of honor.”

How did Jesus address the social problems during His time on earth? In Matthew 19, He says to the rich young man “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Luke 14 tells us what Jesus said to the Pharisee: “… when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.” Jesus spent much time with people who were looked down on in that society. So, it’s clear that He is ordering us to help the less fortunate and He set an example of doing so.

What about Church teachings? The modern Catholic tradition of social ethics has consistently insisted that the needs of the poor must take priority. The encyclical Rerum Novarum, written in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, was perhaps the first Church document in the industrial age dealing with our obligations to those less fortunate. The document stated, “there underlies a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.” Rerum Novarum was written as a result of the problems resulting from the industrialization of the United States and workers taken advantage of by unscrupulous business owners.  While it spoke of the obligations of workers, it condemned unrestrained capitalism.

Closer to our own time, in Octogesima Adveniens (1971), which marked the eightieth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Paul VI told us of our obligation and the spirit in which we should give. “In teaching us charity,” he wrote, “the Gospel instructs us in the preferential respect due to the poor and the special situation they have in society: the most fortunate should renounce some of their rights so as to place their goods generously at the service of others.”

So, Sacred Scripture and Catholic teaching consistently stress our obligation to help the disadvantaged, but don’t say specifically how to do it today. There are two general methods: government programs and private giving. Almost all would agree that some combination of the two is justified, but the difficult decision is, what should be the proper proportion of each? Some say the best way to meet these needs involves adopting tax policies designed to stimulate economic growth, along with increased amounts of private charity. Others emphasize public programs and increased government intervention. Political parties fight sometime savage battles over a difference of a few percentage points in tax rates and spending and increases over time.

There are good points on both sides: overly generous government programs reduce the incentive to work and can undermine a society’s values. This is evident in some cases in the wealthier countries of Europe and even in the United States. On the other hand, while in the ideal world enlightened business practices and private charity would be the best way to remedy all social ills, they cannot always cover all those in need and some people slip through the cracks. So, a balance is required.

One thing is clear: there are no easy solutions and anyone who claims they have one is mistaken. This is certainly true regarding the difficulties facing many of those with less than a college education. Nevertheless, here are some suggestions for us as Catholics in dealing with social issues:

1.      Stay well informed. Be aware of issues regarding the less fortunate in our community, our country, and our world.

2.      Participate in the political process by supporting candidates and policies in line with Catholic teaching regarding the disadvantaged. Bring your faith to your politics, not the other way around.

3.      Donate generously to worthy charities, commensurate with your financial situation. Give until it hurts, following the example of the widow in the scriptures. Ten percent of income is a good goal.

4.      However, don’t just give money, volunteer. Follow Jesus’ example of personally serving the less fortunate.

5.      Do the right thing in your personal life and set a good example for others. Don’t underestimate the benefit of living a virtuous life and the effect it would have on the disadvantaged if all of us who are more fortunate would do that.

Deacon John Kopfle serves at St. Vincent de Paul Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Re-printed with permission from the Catholic News Herald of the Diocese of Charlotte.

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Post-Comfortable Christianity and the Election of 2012

In 07 Observations on 2012/08/04 at 11:11 AM

CATHOLLIC SIGN

Shortly before he died in Oxford in 1988, the Jesuit retreat master and raconteur, Bernard Bassett, in good spirits after a double leg amputation, told me that the great lights of his theological formation had been Ignatius Loyola and John Henry Newman, but if he “had to do it all over,” he’d only read Paul. “Everything is there.” There is a temptation to think that God gave us the Apostle to the Gentiles in order to have second readings at Sunday Mass, usually unrelated to the first reading and the Gospel. But everything truly is there. Paul was one of the most important figures in human history, and a great character to boot. That is, a character in the happiest sense of the word. “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain” (1 Cor 15:10).
Tragedy and comedy intertwine, ultimately issuing in glory, whenever he is on trial. He longs to live and t0 die in the same breath: ”For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:210). Whenever he is on trial for his life, he invokes a forensic brilliance to save the very life he is willing to sacrifice. Just as Jesus who had come into the world to die, slipped through the mob in Nazareth because his hour had not yet come, so does Paul become his own defense when on trial, ready to die by God’s calendar and not man’s. In Caesarea, he confounds Antonius Felix, the Roman governor of Judaea and Samaria, and a little later he does the same to the successor of Felix, Procius Festus. The best court scene is Paul before Marcus Annaeus Novatus, who had taken the name of his adoptive father Junius Gallio, the rhetorician and friend of his father Seneca Sr. whose son Seneca, Jr. was the noble Stoic. Nero forced Seneca’s suicide, but before that, in Achaia where Gallio was proconsul, Paul was bit of a Rumpole of the Bailey, in how he played the jury like a piano to the frustration of the judge. The point is this: Paul, both innocent and shrewd, was willing to suffer and did so regularly, as he was not loathe to recount at length, and he was also ready to die, but as death comes but once, he wanted it to be at the right moment.
There is in Paul a model for Catholics at the start of the Third Millennium which began with fireworks and Ferris wheels but is now entering a sinister stage. Like Paul, it is not possible to be a Christian without living for Christ by suffering for him, nor is it possible to be a Christian without willing to die for him when he wants. The Christian veneer of American culture has cracked and underneath is the inverse of the blithe Christianity that took shape in the various enthusiasms of the nineteenth century and ended when voters were under the impression that they finally had a Catholic president.
This new period is not “Post-Christian” because nothing comes after Christ. We can, however, call it “Post-Comfortable Christian.” Niebuhr, looking out from New York’s Neo-Athens on Morningside Heights with its Modernist Christian seminaries and highly endowed preaching palaces and office towers of denominational bureaucracies, caricatured the Messiah of mainline religiosity: ”A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” The virtual collapse of those institutions on Morningside Heights, is mute testimony to the truth of his irony.
The bishops of the United States have asked the faithful to pray for religious liberty, now facing unprecedented assault. The national election in November, 2012 will either give Christians one last chance to rally, or it will be the last free election in our nation. This can only sound like hyperbole to those who are unaware of what happened to the Slavic lands after World War I and to Western Europe in the 1930’s. St. Paul was writing to us when he wrote to the Galatians and Corinthians and Washingtonians – or rather, Romans – in his lifetime.
Unless there is a dramatic reversal in the present course of our nation, those who measured their Catholicism by the Catholic schools they attended, will soon find most of those institutions officially pinching incense to the ephemeral genius of their secular leaders, and universities once called Catholic will be no more Catholic than Brown is Baptist or Princeton is Presbyterian. The surrender will not come by a sudden loss of faith in Transubstantiation or doubts about Papal Infallibility. It will happen smoothly and quietly, as the raptures of the Netherworld always hum victims into somnolence, by the cost factor of buying out of government health insurance. Catholic businessmen with more than fifty employees will be in the same bind. Catholic institutions and small businesses owned by those with religious and moral reservations about government-imposed policies, will wither within a very short time, unable to bear the burden of confiscatory tax penalties. As analysts have figured, an employer offering a health plan that does not comply with the preventive services package and other requirements under the federal health plan could be subject to a confiscatory penalty. The fine, imposed through a civil penalty or excise tax on a non-exempted religious employer could be as much as $100 a day for each employee insured under a plan at variance with federal law. The burden would amount then to $36,500 for each employee.
Add to that the approaching discrimination against Catholics seeking positions in commerce and public life. Catholics will not be suitable for public charities, medicine, education, journalism, or in the legal profession, especially judgeships and law enforcement. As the bishops, by the acknowledgement of many of their own number, failed to articulate the cogency of doctrines on contraception and other moral issues, so will they now, despite the best intentions, not be able to stem the radical attrition among native Catholics whose eyes are on mammon, and among recent immigrants whose privileges are guaranteed only if they vote for opponents of the Church. The general election of 2012 may rally the fraction of conscientious Catholics among the sixty million or so sympathetic Catholics. If their influence is not decisive, and the present course of federal legislation accelerates, encouraged by a self-destructive appetite for welfare statism on the part of ecclesiastical bureaucrats, the majority of Catholics with tenuous commitments to the Faith will evaporate, as did the lapsed baptized in North Africa during the oppression of the emperor Diocletian.
Should the present direction of the federal government be endorsed by a reiterative vote in the November elections, more blatant threats to the Church will begin, culminating in a punitive suspension of tax exemptions on church properties, once the Church’s moral precepts are coded as offenses against civil rights. The test case in this instance will be what is known in Orwellian diction as “same sex marriage.” In the Supreme Court case, McCulloch v. Maryland, argued in 1819, the same year that Daniel Webster reduced Chief Justice Marshall to tears in the Dartmouth College case which vouchsafed private charters, Webster said: “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy.” Chief Justice Marshall, an antecedent of Chief Justice Roberts, said “That the power of taxing (the bank) by the States may be exercised so as to destroy it, is too obvious to be denied, and that the power to tax involves the power to destroy (is) not to be denied.”
St. Paul would have understood this. After all, he lived through its precedents. His self-defense in the secular courts showed his disdain for bravado and theatrical martyrdom. He enjoyed common sense, reason, and native intelligence in outwitting evil, for he knew as did St. John Vianney, who was not as bright as the student of Gamaliel but whose heart was at least as large, that “the Devil is stupid.” Because of that, the Devil can only get his way with the help of stupid Catholics.
This year offers the best and possibly last chance to see how many actually obey Christ’s pastoral instruction in a conflicted world: “Behold, I am sending you out as a sheep among wolves, so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16).
Re-printed with permission from Crisis Magazine http://www.crisismagazine.com/author/rutler

REV. GEORGE W. RUTLER

Rev. George W. Rutler

The Rev. George W. Rutler is the pastor of the Church of Our Saviour in New York City. His latest book, Cloud of Witnesses, is available from Scepter Publishing.

Articles by Rev. George W. Rutler

© Copyright 1982-2012 Crisis Magazine. All rights reserved.
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Spiritual Nourishment From Msgr. Romano Guardini

In 07 Observations on 2012/06/30 at 9:11 AM

“The more intensely He directs his creative power upon me, the more real I become. The more He gives me of his love, the fuller myself-realization in that love.  Christ is God in the pure, full sense of the word; the Logos through whom all things were created, myself included.  Not until he inhabits me, do I become the being God intended me to be.”

“Just as your soul is the shaper of your body, He is the shaper of your soul and body, the entity, you.”

“What makes a Christian Christian in everything he says and does is the living Christ in him; different in every individual and in every phase of that individual’s life.”

“He lives and grows in each of us, that our faith may increase, our love may be strengthened, our Christianity constantly deepened.”

“For redemption and rebirth do not mean that an individual, as if by a stroke of magic, is renewed overnight, but that the beginning of his renewal is established.  The wickedness is still there, but the new beginning as well.  The Christian is a battlefield on which the struggle constantly rages between the ‘old man,’ rooted in his rebellious self, and ‘the new man,’ born of Christ.”

“To be a follower of Christ does not mean to imitate him, literally, but to express him through the medium of one’s own life.”

“The task of the Christian consists in transposing Christ into the stuff of his own daily existence.”

Guardini, Romano Regnery pp.529-531

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Wisdom or Chance?

In 07 Observations on 2012/06/07 at 9:11 AM
God’s accuracy may be observed in the hatching of eggs.

For example:
-the eggs of the potato bug hatch in 7 days;
-those of the canary in 14 days;
-those of the barnyard hen in 21 days;
-The eggs of ducks and geese hatch in 28 days;
-those of the mallard in 35 days;
-The eggs of the parrot and the ostrich hatch in 42 days.
(Notice, they are all divisible by seven, the number of days in a week!)

God’s wisdom is seen in the making of an elephant..The four legs of this great beast all bend forward in the same direction. No other quadruped is so made. God planned that this animal would have a huge body, too large to live on two legs… For this reason He gave it four fulcrums so that it can rise from the ground easily.

The horse rises from the ground on its two front legs first. A cow rises from the ground with its two hind legs first. How wise the Lord is in all His works of creation!

God’s wisdom is revealed in His arrangement of sections and segments, as well as in the number of grains.

-Each watermelon has an even number of stripes on the rind.
-Each orange has an even number of segments.
-Each ear of corn has an even number of rows.
-Each stalk of wheat has an even number of grains.
-Every bunch of bananas has on its lowest row an even number of bananas, and each row decreases by one, so that one row has an even number and the next row an odd number.

-The waves of the sea roll in on shore twenty-six to the minute in all kinds of weather.

All grains are found in even numbers on the stalks, and the Lord specified thirty fold, sixty fold, and a hundred fold – all even numbers.

God has caused the flowers to blossom at certain specified times during the day, so that Linnaeus, the great botanist, once said that if he had a conservatory containing the right kind of soil, moisture and temperature, he could tell the time of day or night by the flowers that were open and those that were closed!

The lives of each of you may be ordered by the Lord in a beautiful way for His glory, if you will only entrust Him with your life. If you try to regulate your own life, it will only be a mess and a failure. Only the One Who made the brain and the heart can successfully guide them to a profitable end.

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Our Will?

In 07 Observations on 2012/06/01 at 9:11 AM

The created will is not destined to be free to exalt itself. It is called to come into unison with the divine will. If it freely submits itself to this unison, then it is permitted in freedom to participate in the perfection of creation. If a free creature declines this unison, it lapses into bondage. The human will continues to retain the possibility of choice, but it is constrained by creatures that pull and pres­sure it in directions straying from the development of the nature desired by God, and so away from the goal toward which it itself was directed by its original freedom. With the loss of this original freedom, it also loses security in making decisions. It becomes unsteady and wavering, buf­feted by doubt and scruples or obdurate in its error.

There is no other remedy for this than the following of Christ, the Son of Man, who not only promptly obeyed his heavenly Father, but also subjected himself to people who imposed the Father’s will on him. The obedience enjoined by God releases the enslaved will from the bonds of creatures and leads it back to freedom. Thus, it is also the way to purity of heart.

Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedict of the Cross)

©Institute of Carmelite studies 


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Divine Healing

In 07 Observations on 2012/05/16 at 9:11 AM

Now if, when Jesus went about in the world, the mere touch of His robes cured the sick, why doubt, if we have faith, that miracles will be worked while He is within us and that He will give what we ask of Him since, in Eucharistic communion, He is in our house? His Majesty is not accustomed to paying poorly for His lodging if the hospitality is good. If it pains you not to see Him with your bodily eyes, con­sider that seeing Him so is not fitting for us…

But our Lord reveals Himself to those who he sees will benefit by His presence. Even though they fail to see Him with their bodily eyes, He has many methods of showing Himself to the soul, through great interior feelings and through other different ways. Be with Him will­ingly; don’t lose so good an occasion for conversing with Him as is the hour after having received Communion.

St. Teresa of Avila.  The way of perfection, ch. 34 (©Institute of Carmelite studies)

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David Hains: Marriage – more than a word

In 07 Observations on 2012/05/03 at 11:09 AM

 hainsThe latest deception from opponents of the upcoming statewide constitutional marriage amendment is the use of the expression “Amendment One.” Like much of the rhetoric from the other side, this latest term is likely to confuse rather than inform the voting public.

The term “Amendment One” started appearing on signs and bumper stickers in late March. Apparently the long-winded and inaccurate previous reference, “the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage,” wouldn’t fit on a yard sign.

The problem with the term “Amendment One” is that it doesn’t exist. The ballot for the primary, produced by the N.C. Board of Elections, does not associate a number with the only amendment under consideration, which is the last item voters will see on the May 8 ballot.

So, it doesn’t have a number and it’s last, not first. So why would opponents of the marriage amendment use the term?

They don’t share strategy with me. But my guess is that they are afraid of the word “marriage” and want to avoid using it. There is so much goodwill associated with that single word, so many hopes and dreams, so much happiness and, with children, a promising future. The word simply cannot be demonized or mocked.

Marriage pre-dates the state of North Carolina and even our 2,000-year-old Catholic faith. In His wisdom God created man and woman differently, and from that beautiful and loving difference comes the whole human race. Without it the Bible would end about halfway through the Book of Genesis. God knew what He was doing when he created Adam and Eve and the complementary natures of men and women.

I’ve yet to speak with an opponent of the marriage amendment who has an underlying philosophy or theology for their arguments that is as deep or as broad as natural law, Scripture, Church teaching and thousands of years of human experience in support of traditional marriage.

Without a logical argument for their opposition to marriage, the opponents have chosen to play word games. They substitute “Amendment One” for “Marriage Amendment” and – presto – people who support traditional marriage can now be miscast as bigots.

Sadly, even President Barack Obama has chosen to jump in to what essentially is a local event by declaring his opposition to the amendment. His re-election campaign office released a statement on March 20 saying, “While the president does not weigh in on every single ballot measure in every state, the record is clear that the President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples.”

Putting aside the fact that North Carolina’s marriage amendment will not deny rights and benefits to anyone, the weakness of the president’s argument is made clear when you realize that he couldn’t bring himself to utter the word marriage.

David Hains is the Diocese of Charlotte’s director of communication.

Reprinted with permission from the Catholic News Herald

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The Unexpected Debate by Linda Granzow

In 07 Observations on 2012/04/26 at 9:11 AM

Up until the 21st century, no reasonable human being, of faith or not, would have ever deemed it possible that the definition and understanding of marriage could be the subject of a statewide vote to either protect it or to redefine and reinvent it as something other, something less than what it has always been. The ever increasing relativism and disregard for absolute truths based on natural law in our society has put us at an unimaginable crossroads at this moment in history. This is a country founded and fought for, where religious liberty (freedom of religion, not freedom from religion) and true freedom would form the ideal society—true freedom, not to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what is right.

In the midst of desensitization, through the media, targeted especially toward the younger generations to unprecedented violence, pornography, divorce and homosexual activity, there appears a trend toward indifference to this critical issue of what constitutes marriage and even growing support for radical negation of an undeniable truth. Many say, “What’s the big deal? I don’t have to approve of their lifestyle. If they want to get married, who cares?” It is a lack of understanding and an exaggerated expression of tolerance for any desire, urge, want, or fashionable cause that is automatically presumed to be a “right,” even if it goes against the very nature of what it means to be a man or woman, violates the natural law and ultimately corrupts and devolves the society into chaos.

Biology Lesson & Common Sense 

Males and females are physically different and are so obviously meant to join together like two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly. Further, when they join together in that beautifully perfect way, the physical reality often results in a chain of events that actually creates a new male or female.

Take for example the classic children’s toy, Tinker Toys. The inventor of Tinker Toys created simple wooden wheels with holes, and sticks which would fit perfectly into the holes. As these individual pieces are connected together, a fantastic building process takes place, limited only by the number of pieces in the set and the child’s imagination. But if one were to take all of the wheels by themselves and try to build something, the best would be to build a tower or perhaps a pyramid, which would be easily knocked down. So too, the sticks by themselves do not have the ability to build anything. It is only through the joining of the wheels and the sticks that something wonderful and structurally stable can be built.

In the same way, neither females by themselves nor males by themselves can build a wonderful and structurally stable family, community or society. In fact, the species would die out! So the primary biological purpose of sexuality for animals and humans is to procreate to ensure the species’ survival. The United States Supreme Court agreed when it said that marriage is “fundamental to the very existence and survival of the (human) race.”  In the human species, because of the added element of the soul, sexuality takes on a much deeper meaning and purpose. We are wired not only to perpetuate our community, but also to love and protect others within that community. We do this through different bonds of love depending upon our relationship to another person.

Friendship and Beyond 

We are all born capable of loving and being loved, and in fact, we need it. There are many forms that love can take, for example, the love between a mother and her child, the love between two friends, the love between a child and his dog, and the love between a man and a woman. Between two human beings, married love is the fullest expression of love. This has been true throughout human history because it requires a lifelong, faithful commitment between a man and a woman, usually witnessed by others in the community, to love and protect each other and to love and protect the children who are created out of their sexual union. This definition of marriage “has served as the very cornerstone of civilization and culture from the start.” (Archbishop Timothy Dolan)

Although we could say that a great bond of love exists between a mother and her child, we would never say that the two could be married. We could admire the bond of love between a child and his dog, but we would never say that the two could be married. In these instances, the nature of the bond of love does not fit the reality of what marriage is. Two men or two women could be great friends and enjoy each other’s company and they may have a logical expectation that they will have a lifelong friendship. But their bond of friendship love will never fit the reality of what marriage is by definition.

Dignity and Rights 

Each human being is born with inherent goodness. Even someone born with a physical or mental disability is endowed with an inherent goodness and dignity and is entitled to certain rights to life and liberty. As such, a society or culture recognizes basic natural laws—laws that are instinctively known by each individual–that protect the dignity and rights to life and liberty of its individual members. For example, a natural law would be the instinctive knowledge that killing another human being takes away that person’s right to live. Therefore, it becomes “against the law” to kill another person.

Another natural law is in the area of sexuality. Instinctively, individuals know that they are physically made as a male or a female and know that they are made to fit together complementarily for procreation. In the same way that circumstances, environment and temperament can affect a person to the point where he no longer honors the natural law against killing and instead chooses to fulfill an errant desire to commit murder, these same elements can affect a person to the point where he no longer honors the natural law of sexuality and instead gives in to an errant desire to commit rape, incest, pedophilia or homosexual acts.

Although the dignity of the person who commits such acts must be respected, the behaviors themselves cannot be allowed to supersede the natural laws that exist for the good of other individuals and that of society as a whole.  As specifically related to the question of rights for homosexual individuals, Archbishop Timothy Dolan clarified that “the Church affirms the basic human rights of gay men and women, and the state has rightly changed many laws to offer these men and women hospital visitation rights, bereavement leave, death benefits, insurance benefits, and the like. This is not about denying rights. It is about upholding a truth about the human condition.”  Logically, it is not about denying homosexual couples a “right” to marriage since, by the very definition of marriage, that “right” does not exist for them in the first place.

Real versus Counterfeit 

Over the last several years, a very small group of people in this country has been forcefully pushing an agenda to change our society’s view on homosexuality even to the point of demanding that homosexual couples be allowed to marry. Although it is easy to psychologically understand their overwhelming and desperate desire to have their unnatural sexual actions be accepted as “normal” and just another lifestyle choice among many, the reality is that it is a counterfeit of reality. The very fact that in discussions it is referred to as “gay marriage” openly acknowledges that it is not the real thing—the word “marriage” has to be qualified with the word “gay” because it is different and not the same. Think of the popular game Monopoly and Monopoly money. The qualifying word “Monopoly” reveals that it is different from the real money used in our country on which our whole economy is based. What would happen if our country decided to allow a counterfeit to commingle with reality?

Although both are made of paper, money from the game cannot be used to buy things in real life. Why can you not go into a store and buy a loaf of bread with Monopoly money? Is it because the paper itself is not good? No, it is because the value of the exchange of that paper is not backed by a tangible valuable asset such as gold.

Suppose a small group of people in this country decided to pool all of their Monopoly money and present it at a store to buy food. The store would refuse to sell, not because those presenting the money are not good people, but because the money they are trying to use is not real. Imagine the group presents a plea to the government saying they are trying to buy food and the store will not sell it to them. What would happen to the economy of that society if the government ruled that the store must accept Monopoly money from that group? Chaos and economic collapse would result because real and counterfeit money cannot be circulated at the same time.

In the same way, a small group of people who think they have a “right” to go to the government and say they want to have the ability to get “married” is proposing that it would be acceptable to have a counterfeit institution pass for the real thing. But the result for the society would also be collapse. In addition, once something counterfeit is forced to be accepted as the real thing, any entity that does not honor the counterfeit would be punished for discrimination. This is what would happen in our country to churches, businesses and individuals who, based on their faith, morals and ethical standards, refused to accept the counterfeit.

Protecting Marriage 

Although it seemed impossible that the integrity of the true meaning of marriage would someday need to be protected, that day is here. Thirty states have already passed an amendment to their state constitutions protecting the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. This is due to the current vulnerability of marriage as an institution, one which is the basic building block of a civilized and productive society, to be subject to activist judges and lawmakers who would impose decisions changing the real definition of marriage to allow its counterfeit “same-sex marriage.” Marriage is the logical, ideal and intended haven for the procreation, protection and raising of children. This is supported by an overwhelming body of social science evidence. Of course, for those who truly believe in the God who created man and woman and are still unsure, He has provided a most explicit and definitive answer to what the outcome of this unexpected debate should be.  (Genesis 1:27-28, 2:21-25, Leviticus 20:13, 18:22-24, Romans 1:24-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10).