By Brad Miner

Mostly unrelated to the Synod on Synodality, my wife Sydny and I went to Rome in the last week of October. Upon arrival, we did have lunch with one journalist covering the synod: Robert Royal. You may have heard of him. We were exhausted because of jet lag, and Bob was weary of the synodal process. Walking around Rome, which Syd and I would do a lot of, is not nearly as tiring as "walking together" in a synod. Or covering it. But Rome does offer many compensations.

We began our second day in Rome with a tour of the Galleria Borghese, which houses a remarkable collection of paintings and sculptures in the Villa Borghese, 17th-century home of one of Italy's great families. (Camillo Borghese of Siena had become Pope Paul 5 in 1605.)

Today, the Villa and the surrounding gardens are among Rome's major attractions. The house was built by Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of the aforementioned Paul 5. As "Cardinal Nephew" (an official post at the time), Scipione engaged in what today would surely be illegal benefices that allowed him to build the villa and procure the art that fills it. (Scipione is buried in one of Rome's most remarkable churches, the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore - or St. Mary Major.)

The Borghese Gallery features most prominently the work of two great artists: Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

Fr. Joseph Scolaro wrote here of Bernini's Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius, one of a number of Bernini's remarkable sculptures at the Borghese. Among all the Bernini works there, I found Apollo and Daphne the most arresting. In some ways, it's not unlike Bernini's The Rape of Proserpina, also in the Borghese. Both depict abductions by gods, each based upon stories told in the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Apollo, ideal god among the gods, relentlessly pursues the nymph, Daphne. When he finally catches her, however, she turns herself into a laurel tree. Working with Carrara marble, Bernini shows Daphne's fingers sprouting leaves, her flesh turning to bark. Never in a museum have I so wished to touch a work of art, but I resisted.

And this was the moment I realized that in Rome, particularly, and Catholicism, generally, there is no conflict between the classical and the Christian. You see it in museums and churches and especially in the Raphael Rooms in the Apostolic Palace.

The Borghese's Caravaggio collection is remarkable. One painting, known as The Sick Bacchus, is thought to be an early self-portrait. It pairs with Boy with a Basket of Fruit - both painted when the artist was in his early- to mid-twenties. The collection then jumps ahead to 1605 to 06, a period in the last years of his young life when he was at the peak of his powers and fame. Madonna and Child with St. Anne (or Madonna Dei Palafrenieri, after the group that commissioned the work) is more colloquially known as Madonna and the Snake.

Our Lady, her mother, and the child Jesus look down at Eden's snake. In other artists' depictions, it is crushed solely by Mary, as in Genesis 3:15 (in Jerome's Vulgate): "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and thy seed, and her seed, and she shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt be ensnared by her heel." Caravaggio being Caravaggio, depicts the Virgin and Jesus crushing the snake, the boy's foot upon hers.

The papal grooms (the Palafrenieri) rejected the painting, and Cardinal Borghese scooped it up.

The Borghese also has Caravaggio's Saint Jerome Writing. "This was probably the first of the painter's works to come into the possession of Scipione Borghese," the Gallery tells us, because the cardinal had helped Caravaggio with "legal problems," which were many.

I'm going to skip over two more wonderful Borghese Caravaggios: David with the Head of Goliath and John the Baptist - both dated from 1610. (The Borghese has nine by Caravaggios in all - more than any other museum in the world.)

Grand as the Villa Borghese and its Gallery are, for me the highlight of the trip c...

By Leila Marie Lawler

But first a note from Robert Royal: The most important issue about the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith's recent response regarding "transgender" baptism is the use of the word "transgender." A quick "so-called" is not enough of a qualifier. No real answer to the various problems it involves can be given before we have a free and frank conversation about what this word signifies and why it is used as an identity.

Now for Mrs. Lawler: Accepting the word "transgender" and using it in an official document represents a capitulation to an ideology that is completely contrary to, and the enemy of, the Catholic faith and indeed reality itself. This is not the first time, either. For years now, bishops have used this word in, for instance, statements on bills before legislatures on bathrooms and pronouns. They lose the argument before it begins, for defining terms is everything in seeking the truth and helping others find it.

The late Fr. Paul Mankowski, in his First Things review of Fr. James Martin SJ's book, Building a Bridge, pinpointed the word "gay" as, above all, political:

One does not find among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people - taken as a collectivity - distinctive commonalities of religion, nativity, culture, recreation, or fellowship. Their shared interests are political; they are aggregated not as a true community but as something like a caucus.

The forces of gender ideology well know how to shape public perception. They offer pictures of clean-cut men holding hands to embed the idea of anodyne "gayness"; they censor anyone using the word sodomy. They sanitize "queerness" as a wacky, boa-wrapped library outing. When it comes to "transgender," they hold speech hostage by insisting that any dissenter from the current craze simply wants young people dead.

This slick campaign works: its perpetrators are emboldened by its triumph. Having won the so-called same-sex marriage question, they quickly pivoted to an even more primal one: the nature of man himself.

But it's the job of the Catholic Church to hold fast to eternal things and not to abandon the faithful as pawns in a political game. Questions do not have to be answered using the vocabulary tendered. We ought to challenge how they - and who are they? - characterize themselves and others (who gave them sovereignty over their victims?).

The rise of transgender ideology has many facets, hard to marshal into one place but known by those with common sense who pay attention. Anyone not born yesterday can remember a time when it didn't exist.

Sure, there have always been a few men in drag here and there, and the odd Parisian female in a man's suit and tie. People once accepted such things as part of the weird parade of life. They also kept their children away from them.

But now, in the very young, we observe vulnerability where there is divorce and father-absence, and a form of child abuse where the parent, usually the mother, imposes a pathology on the child.

In older children, social media has created a virus that infects the weak immune system of young people formed by a culture opposed to their normal development. And this is now bolstered by a school system submissive to LGBTQA interests. Everyone with a child in public school knows the ubiquity of signs, books, programs, and events designed to pick off the vulnerable and indoctrinate all.

The medical establishment geared up during lockdown to monetize the trend. "Gender affirming care" - that Orwellian and remarkably effective phrase - assures a strong bottom line for surgical wards and pharmaceutical companies, and not only for the horrible procedures, but for the creation of a life-long patient.

Several states have adopted regulations that detach children from parental authority so that procedures can move ahead over their objections. The child just needs to indicate he may think he's of the opposite "gender," and the machinery goes into operation. Planned Parenthood has chan...

By David Warren

But first a note from Robert Royal: Several of you have reported problems donating yesterday. Our apologies for that, but we've talked with the company that runs our donations platform and that glitch should be remedied now. Even so, we're doing well in our fundraising campaign, but let me urge you not to think that the massive challenges we face within the Church and the world are easy to combat. We work frugally at The Catholic Thing, but the daily column, the podcasts, the Rome coverage, and the TCT courses do not happen all on their own. We try to respond to the challenges with our various programs, but it's you - all of you contributing together - who make it all possible. Without the generosity of our readers, we would just fade away.

So we feel a heavy responsibility to provide the very best reporting and analysis we can. But we depend on you to make everything possible. So. There's the button. There's you. And there's a battle to be fought. Don't wait. We're here every day. Will you be too?

Now for Mr. Warren's column: Perhaps my criticism of the Instrumentum Laboris, and the various documents that follow from it through the Synod on Synodality, is trivial. This is because I find them trivial. Doctrines are suggested without any argument besides the implication that they are modern and up-to-date.

To start narrowly and personally, I did not become a Catholic in order to be modern and up-to-date. I did have to choose. Indeed, I was fleeing the intellectual, spiritual, emotional and sometimes physical fashions of my time, by signing up to the Church. Had I been born a Catholic, I do not see how I would not have had to pass through a similar revulsion. For I cannot imagine an upbringing, anywhere in the modern world, where this could be avoided.

One is, as it were, marked for "martyrdom." As all readers will I hope already know, this word does not describe a martyr's death, necessarily, but the martyr's "witness," from the Greek word for witness and Greek suffix for "a state or condition."

Being a Catholic sets one apart, as, more extensively, it always has. The best social analogy I can imagine is being Jewish. It is, in that comparison, not an option. God comes into it. One is "chosen" and cannot be unchosen. For the Catholic (who is Christian "par excellence") one is bathed in the Grace. Even in moments of religious doubt, he cannot escape it.

I have met many Catholics who tried. I haven't met one who succeeded, although the attempts to be free of Our Lord involve him in much pain and confusion.

This is also true of those who don't quite escape, and who are marked by a confusion that is a source of pain, for them and for others. In the absence of moral clarity, intellectual clarity is unavailable to them, and vice versa.

My trivial critique of the Instrumentum Laboris, et seq., is papistical. I was informed by Pope Pius X, and most recently, by a meditation on this passage from Pascendi Dominici Gregis ("On the Doctrine of the Modernists,"1907):

It is one of the cleverest devices of the Modernists (as they are commonly and rightly called) to present doctrines without order and systematic arrangement, in a scattered and disjointed manner, so as to make it appear as if their minds were in doubt or hesitation, whereas in reality they are quite fixed and steadfast.

Here, I think Pius X (I'm aware that I may be criticized even for my choice of popes) was most alarmingly prescient, for his criticism would continue to be current more than a century later. His critique of the modernists of his day pertains so well to all features of the Synod on Synodality today, that I would invite all Catholics who have an interest in their religion to read the whole thing.

Even so, this tiny passage has a broader application, to the ecclesiastical fruits of the last sixty seasons. The sainted pope continues that the Modernists:

cry out that ecclesiastical government requires to be reformed in all its branches, but especia...

By Stephen P. White

But first a note: Our current fundraising continues to move along. Thank you. But we're still a long way from where we need to be. Please, consider what's at stake just now for the future of the Church. We know you care enough to be a reader. Do you care enough to be a donor? And be sure not to miss tonight's special episode of the Papal Posse: Robert Royal will join Raymond Arroyo and Fr. Gerald Murray on EWTN's "The World Over" (which also features a long discussion with suspended Bishop of Tyler, Texas, Joseph Strickland). The show airs at 8 PM Eastern Time, and will also be available on the EWTN YouTube channel shortly after first airing.

Now for Mr. White's column...

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops are meeting in Baltimore this week for their fall plenary. While the agenda for the conference is set long in advance, events in the Church and the world have a way of shaping the tenor of the meeting. This year, several such things are worth our attention.

The first such event was Pope Francis' removal of Bishop Joseph Strickland from his diocese in Tyler, Texas less than a week ago. As is often the case, the Vatican gave no official reason for the removal, which has led (predictably) to a lot of back and forth about whether the removal was punitive or if there were sufficient administrative reasons to justify it.

There are more than a few American bishops who share at least some of Strickand's concerns about, for example, the Synod on Synodality. But while some share those ecclesial concerns, few shared his affinity for what might be described as a "fire, ready, aim" strategy in voicing those concerns, particularly on social media. Put another way, Strickland didn't just stick his neck out repeatedly, he was practically daring the Vatican to take action.

Very few other bishops - even those who agree with Strickland on any number of substantive issues - have put themselves in a similar position. Call this fear or call it prudence, the notion that Strickland's removal somehow put other American bishops "on notice" seems a stretch. If Strickland's removal is a cause for consternation (and any perceived offense for the divine right of the episcopate, as Cardinal Mueller recently said, is just that), it is also likely to be something of a relief to the many bishops who saw Strickland as, if not quite a pariah, then at least imprudent and, often, a distraction.

And that brings us to the second bit of context for the meeting in Baltimore: Rome's peculiar view of the Church in the United States. Pope Francis is known to make occasional criticisms of the American Church as being full of reactionary backwardists. These jabs have not so much pricked the consciences of American bishops as they seem to have prompted confusion about just what the Holy Father is talking about.

With these criticisms in mind, it came as an unpleasant surprise to many bishops when the nuncio to the United States, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, gave an interview to America Magazine (which ran early this month) in which he echoed a similarly unflattering picture of the Church in the United States.

Among Cardinal Pierre's criticisms was that the American bishops continue to fail to understand the need for the kind of consultation and collaboration with laity that synodality is meant to promote and embody. The result, he suggests, is flagging efforts at evangelization and mission.

In his opening remarks in Baltimore on Tuesday, USCCB President, Archbishop Timothy Broglio (who attended the Synod on Synodality) went out of his way to insist that a "synodal" dynamic, far from being absent, is already an important part of the Church in the United States, even if it doesn't go by the name "synodal."

The collegial atmosphere that characterizes these assemblies, the excellent consideration and interaction that typifies the work of the National Advisory Council, the work of diocesan pastoral councils, presbyteral councils, review board...

By Randall Smith

But first a note: : A Catholic editor feels a certain trepidation touting his publication during a fundraising campaign, such as we're in at present. Humility is fundamental to Christian life, even now. But it can't be a sin against humility to quote what others, donors to the current campaign, are saying. Is it? These have to be anonymous, of course, but here are some recent representative samples. The most common: " TCT is my first source, daily. Many, many thanks." And almost as common: "Keep up the excellent work as the battlefield gets more vicious for the soul of America (and the world)." There's the spiritual side: "Thank you for helping me on my faith journey." And the aesthetic: "Brad Miner has introduced me to so much beautiful art." And encouragement: "Keep doing God's work," which of course we intend to. The one lament: "I wish it were more, but I can't afford it right now. Thank you for your great work. TCT focuses my mind and helps keep me sane."

But you never need to think any donation too small. This is a large common effort, with some people who can afford large gifts and many others who do what they can. If any of these comments by fellow readers resonates with you, please, do your part as you've done so generously in the past. We're only here because you stand with us. It's not hard. Click the button. Follow the prompts. Support The Catholic Thing. - Robert Royal

And now for Professor Smiths column.

I guess I'm supposed to "update" my theological terminology now (i.e., a "paradigm shift") and should not keep repeating old terms and slogans. I'm not sure one can express the same thing in completely different words. The poet Robert Frost once replied to someone who asked him to "explain" one of his poems: "Oh, you want me to express what the poem says in different and worse words."

Am I really going to find better words than Saint Augustine or St. Athanasius, let alone Jesus? Count me skeptical. But I'm nothing if not submissive to the authorities. So I'll try.

I've written about priests who, when asked for a prayer, did not pray to God, but merely asked everyone to "be mindful" of something, as for example: "Let's be mindful of the poor," or "Let's be mindful of those suffering from the earthquake." I suggested, perhaps somewhat unkindly, that this was a kind of hypocrisy.

"Hypocrite" comes from a Greek word meaning "actor." A "hypocrite" is pretending to be something he is not, the way an actor pretends to be someone (Hamlet, Henry V, or a cowardly lion) he is not. "Being mindful" is not a prayer, and one should not play-act as though it is.

I have no trouble with mindfulness. I need to be more mindful. And mindful meditation can be a good preparation for prayer. But it's not prayer, so we should not pretend it is.

But if that's not clear, consider another example. There is a story about an Anglican bishop who, when asked by someone about God, replied: "How would I know?" Well, dear sir, if you don't, then why are you wearing that cassock and gallivanting around enjoying the privileges of that position?

Those who pretend to be something they're not, so that they can enjoy the privileges of the institution, those who put on the outward cloak of Christian, Catholic faith but do not possess it, what else can we call them but "hypocrites"? They're play-acting; they're playing "dress up," and not just in the clothes they wear.

Christ described the religious hypocrites of his day as "blind guides," "serpents" (presumably like the one in the Garden of Eden), "a brood of vipers," and "whited sepulchers full of dead men's bones." Those words are all pretty clear. But if I were to make the requisite stab at "updating" them, I suppose I would have to go with one from my science background: parasites.

I am not using the term "judgmentally," however, merely in its technical sense. Technically speaking, a parasite is a creature that lives on or in a host organism and gets its food from or at the expens...

By Eduardo J. Echeverria and Father Brian A. Graebe

But first a note from Dr. Royal: Our deep thanks to all of you who have already responded to the end-of-year fundraiser that we began yesterday. It's a good beginning, but we need to hear from many, many more of you. Please, don't wait. Click the button and make your contribution to our work. We only exist because of your support. And we can only carry out the work we think necessary if we know we'll have the resources. Our gratitude as well to the over 30,000 of you who watched the podcast discussion between Father Gerald Murray and myself about Bishop Strickland and the recent Vatican policies towards "trans" people.

Though we're determined not to become Catholic ambulance chasers at this site (please see my column yesterday), we're almost weekly facing confusing, sometimes perilous developments in the Church. So we're back again today with two deeper theological reflections on the very acceptance of the category "trans" by some of the highest authorities in the Church which we think will have consequences of great interest to our readers.

Now for "The Radical Implications of "Transsexual Baptism"

by Eduardo Echeverria

Does the Church now accept transgenderism, that is, "gender diversity," in virtue of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith's recent response to the question of whether so-called "transsexuals" may be baptized? If so, does it therefore eliminate the normative status of the creation-based anthropology wherein sexual difference between male and female is fundamental to our humanity, and hence to conjugal marriage?

And is the DDF's apparent rejection of sexual differentiation inconsistent, not only with the 2019 document from the Congregation for Catholic Education (hereafter CCE), namely, "Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education," but also from Pope Francis's teaching (following John Paul II and Benedict XVI) in Amoris Laetitia? And even more worrisome, what is to prevent the logical slippage of this position to transsexual marriage and transsexual priestly ordination?

The Dicastery responded to the question of whether a "transsexual" can be baptized.

A transsexual - who had also undergone hormone treatment and sex reassignment surgery - can receive baptism, under the same conditions as other believers, if there are no situations in which there is a risk of generating public scandal or disorientation among the faithful. In the case of children or adolescents with transgender issues, if well prepared and willing, they can receive Baptism.

What is a so-called "transsexual"? This term refers to a "transgendered individual" whose gender self-identity is contrary to the biological, chromosomal, and genetic sexual identity he has had from conception. Or someone having made a "transition" from female to male, or vice-versa through hormone treatment and sex reassignment surgery.

If a so-called transsexual may be baptized, does that mean that the Church now accepts the claim that gender dysphoria between the body and the mind is not a mental illness, reflecting the brokenness of our fallen world, but actually an indication that a person was born in the wrong body?

Pope Francis has rejected transgenderism as an ideology that "promotes a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female. Consequently, human identity becomes the choice of the individual, one which can also change over time."

He holds that "biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated." (Amoris Laetitia, no. 56) That means that an individual's sexual identity is composed of biological, physical, psychological, and social dimensions in an integral anthropology.

The CCE suggests it might still be useful to study this distinction between sex and gender in order to "achieve a deeper understanding of the ways in which sexu...

By Robert Royal

But first a note: The Catholic Thing begins its end-of-year fundraiser today. We only come to you twice a year for support in what we believe to be a crucial mission. Towards that end, please read the column below. You may also click here to watch or to listen to the latest TCT podcast, in which Fr. Gerald Murray and Robert Royal discuss some of the latest developments in Rome on "trans" people and baptism, Bishop Strickland's removal, and related subjects.

Now for Dr. Royal's column...

Catholicism is a religion of Faith and Reason - and has a rich, centuries-long tradition of deep thought about God and man. But the Catholic "thing" is also a religion of mysteries - not superstitious mumbo-jumbo as some critics believe, but mysteries in the sense that human reason has limits obvious to reason itself. We don't know - and cannot know - via ordinary human reasoning, where the world and we ourselves come from, or where we are going.

For guidance in living with those and other mysteries, reason at its best recognizes that we need Revelation, a revelation from the One who does know. And we have a reasonable Faith, therefore, in what He has delivered.

In an unsettled time like ours - a time when great confusions are rife even within the Church - it's more urgent than usual to maintain that Faith. Amidst confusions and worse, skeptics point to the many evils in the world as evidence that our belief in a loving Creator is mere wishful thinking.

Why, for instance, would such a Being create human beings who - as we see over and over in history and no less in our own "enlightened" age - are quite capable of industrial-scale murder (including the holocaust of tens of millions of innocents in the womb), war, torture, rape, slavery, oppression, and the thousands of other acts that constitute what Saint Augustine called the mysterium inquitatis - the mystery of evil.

One traditional answer is that God took the risk of creating free human beings in the knowledge that He would do something even greater in redeeming us, after we'd fallen. If you want to read a brilliant example of how all that signifies something of unsuspected gloriousness, it's worth spending some time with the first pages of Tolkien's Silmarillion (free online here), in which God sings the world into existence along with the angels. And then, like a musical prodigy, incorporates the discordant notes introduced by the Devil into a breathtakingly beautiful symphony.

Mystery still surrounds all this, of course, both because a mystery by definition has no complete explanation in this world, and because, frankly, our human reason would have preferred something less exalted. Most of us would have preferred what we regard as "discord" never to have existed. We want an unbothered existence. But all indications are that God thought that a simpler human story would not have been as wonderful as what He actually chose to do. And it's part of the Faith to understand what that means, as much as we are able.

We get help from several of our Christian ancestors. At the very beginning of Dante's Paradiso, for example, Beatrice explains:

All things whate'er they be Have order among themselves, and this is form, That makes the universe resemble God. . . Hence they move onward unto ports diverse O'er the great sea of being. . . (Par. 1)

This goes to the heart of what ails us at present. We know many individual things now through various sciences and technologies, even know some moral principles, but we've lost the One Thing that holds the Many together: the order that God put into the world. Dante and the whole Catholic tradition contain a good deal of Thomist and Aristotelean reasoning, but the overall message is more Augustinian: we need the divine ordo amoris. "O Thou who art love, set my loves in order."

This prayer is more urgent than ever today, even within the Church. Only the Catholic Church has the full range of cultural resources - thanks to its Jewish roots, Greek p...

Fr. Gerald Murray and Robert Royal discuss some of the latest developments in Rome on “trans” people and baptism, Bishop Strickland’s removal, the U.S. bishops’ meeting in Baltimore this week, and related subjects.

By Fr. Timothy V. Vaverek

St. Paul gave thanks for the Christians in Thessalonica, that "in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe." (1 Thesalonians 2:13) This concisely describes how we are united to God and become saints. To appreciate the depth of his insight, we must understand what he means by the "word of God." That will in turn help us recognize and reject today's false apostles who seek to change the Gospel.

Scripture calls Jesus the Son of God and the Word of God. The reason for these two titles is that the Second Person of the Trinity is the perfect image and expression of the Father. As the perfect image of the Father, he's like a son. As the perfect expression of the Father, he's like a word. Because Jesus is God the Son born of Mary, the Word made flesh, whoever encounters him encounters the Father. So, by being united to Christ we're united to God. At heart, that's the means and meaning of our salvation.

Having established the Eternal Covenant, Jesus sent the Apostles to unite the human race to himself so we could share God's life now and forever. He told them, "Who hears you hears me." (Luke 10:16) Thus, when St. Paul proclaimed the Gospel, it was Jesus, the Word of God, speaking through him.

That's why St. Paul could say he spoke the Word of God rather than the words of men. This Word isn't merely a sound in the air or ink on a page. It's the life-giving Word of the Father addressed to every person.

Although the Gospel is proclaimed by human beings, the eternal Word of God is the one who comes by divine power to stand at the door of the hearer's heart. There Jesus knocks, and in so doing enables us to open and receive him despite our selfishness and sin.

Upon entering, Christ unites us to himself and, therefore, to God, providing all we need to share his life. That's what St. Paul means when he says, "the Word of God is at work in you." As we live each day with and in Jesus, united to the Trinity, God perfects us in his love so we can become saints. The Christian life is that simple, though it's not easy because selfishness and sin (our own and others') oppose his work within us.

No human word has this power to save us, to give us a share in God's life and love. If we change the Gospel, the resulting teachings are merely human words that no longer bring us the Eternal Word, Jesus. That's why St. Paul warned the early Christians never to accept anyone (not even himself) who proclaimed a "gospel" other than the one Christ entrusted to the Apostles. He went so far as to declare such pseudo-evangelists "accursed." (anathema; Galatians 1:8)

St. Paul may seem harsh. But he's in harmony with our Lord's warning that it's better to be drowned with a millstone around the neck than to mislead even one of his followers. Counterfeiting the Gospel ruins innocent lives and can encourage people to continue in their sins. That's catastrophic.

In our times, many Catholics, like other Christians, want to change the Gospel. Faithful Catholics have been shocked by an increasing number of bishops and Cardinals who have called for altering sexual morality, approved the blessing of homosexual couples, or suggested that euthanasia be permitted.

Such changes are said to be "realistic," "inclusive," and "compassionate." In fact, they're cruel illusions that lead people in harmful directions and fail to offer the healing and redeeming Word of God. They have no power to bestow divine life or merciful aid because they're the misguided, foolish words of men.

Jesus reminded his fellow Jews that the "scribes and Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses." (Matthew 23:2-3) He meant they had the authority granted Moses to guide God's people according to the laws of the Covenant.

Therefore, when he went on to say, "observe all things they tell you," he meant "all things in keeping with the Law and the Covenant," not liter...

By Julian Kwasniewski

Fresh air rustled in the fall leaves of aspen trees, flickering golden foliage. The prairies of Canada stretched before me, broken by a few rustic red barns and groves. I stepped into the farmhouse. The warm light glowed through the open door. There was a table surrounded by children, and a mother setting fresh food before them. My friends and I were ushered into the warmth and bustle. Fresh whole milk, red wine, or cool water were placed in our hands, and a homemade dinner spread before us.

This occurred on a recent trip to a conference in Saskatchewan; the theme was "Catholic realism in the postmodern world." Heady discussions of modern philosophy during the day were a stark contrast to mornings and evenings at the family farmhouse. This led me to a deep realization of the "two ways" our world can take: the way of life or the way of death.

The past few hundred years (at least) have seen morality and religion heading in one of two ways: the way of the warm hearth, or the way of cold hygiene. The first way is, broadly speaking, the way of Christianity and what we call natural moral law; the second, of modernity, and a denial of the mores traditionally associated with natural law.

In his prophetic dystopia That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis anticipates this division. One of Lewis's villains, Filistrato, describes the intelligent life on the moon as "A great race, further advanced than we. An inspiration. A pure race. They have cleaned their world, broken free (almost) from the organic."

The reason for this? "Hygiene. Why should they have their world all crawling with organisms?" In fact, there is a war between them and the "surface-dwellers," the "savages" who still eat and procreate. The "pure race" is, according to Filistrato, "slowly spreading their hygiene over their whole globe. Disinfecting her. The savages fight against them. There are frontiers, and fierce wars, in the caves and galleries down below. But the great race presses on."

In fact, the marriages of the "pure race" on the moon are "cold" and their wombs are "barren." They are, as a character fighting against this evil way describes it, an "accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust.

These prophetic words were first published in 1945; the decades thereafter would see pregnancies via artificial insemination, and a growing prevalence of the "cunningly fashioned" images of bodies in movies, magazines, and the Internet.

By contrast, the hearth represents, more than anything else, the united family and the warmth that radiates from it. Hygiene (to my mind) represents the modern manipulation of life, which does not truly allow it to flourish. It is at war with "loved life" yet mimics it, never truly creating it. For modernity, life is an enemy: everything from bacteria to men and women are sterilized.

The way of hygiene - what St. John Paul II called the "culture of death" - seeks the release of man from nature. For Lewis' Filistrato, its goal is to "bring out of that cocoon of organic life which sheltered the babyhood of mind the New Man, the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick her away."

Which becomes clearer when we look through the farmhouse door and realize that this comforting view will never exist if we take the sterilized road of "hygiene."

The farmhouse way allows life to grow largely on its own terms, in its own time. organically. The other way dictates that, as much as possible, life should be manufactured, whether on gigantic farms or in artificial wombs. The first way leads to the caressing of horses; the other to self-driving cars. One leads to breastfeeding, the other to breast amputa...