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In the wake of the Supreme Court’s marriage decision, these sober thoughts occur:              

(1) The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has rendered a decision that puts the Court at odds with the Constitution, with reason, and with biblical religion.                

(2) SCOTUS has gotten it wrong before. It got it wrong on race in Dred Scott and it repeated the mistake in  Plessy vs. Ferguson (which upheld segregated public facilities). It got it wrong by concocting a constitutional “right” to abortion-on-demand in Roe vs. Wade and doubled-down on that mistake by getting it wrong on abortion again in Casey vs. Planned Parenthood. Now SCOTUS has gotten it wrong on marriage. There are remedies to SCOTUS getting it wrong; one of them is a careful re-examination, during the 2016 campaign, of the theory of “judicial supremacy,” which holds that the Constitution means whatever a majority of the Court says it means.               

(3) The marriage battle was lost in the culture long before it was lost in the courts. The foundations of our culture have eroded; now, the New Normal insists that literally everything is plastic, malleable, and subject to acts of human will. The result is a moment of profound moral incoherence in which understandings of human nature and human happiness that have stood the test of experience for millennia are being discarded as mere rubbish – and those who resist trashing the moral patrimony of humanity are dismissed as irrational bigots, religious fanatics, or both. This New Normal is willfulness-on-steroids, especially when that willfulness involves human sexuality. Nothing, it seems, constitutes aberrant  behavior – except the public defense of traditional virtue.               

(4) The Catholic Church in the United States bears its share of responsibility for this incoherence. It was clear 60 years ago that the old mainline Protestant cultural hegemony was fading, that an alternative cultural foundation for American democracy was necessary, and that a new cadre of citizen-leaders, capable of articulating the moral truths on which the American democratic experiment rests, had to be raised up – and the prime candidate for doing all that was the Catholic Church. It might have happened. But too much of the Church’s clerical and lay leadership lost its nerve after Humanae Vitae; the window of opportunity closed amidst the maelstrom of the Sixties and the decadence of the Seventies; and the forces of incoherence won the day.                

(5) The New Normal will not leave the Catholic Church alone. Like everyone else who contests the New Normal’s ideology of Anything Goes, the Catholic Church will be aggressively attacked for daring to oppose that ideology. So the Church must learn, fast, how to play good defense, defending the right of our people and our institutions to be themselves; it will do a service to America in the process. (A good primer for thinking through these issues is the recent pastoral letter by Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, Being Catholic Today: Catholic Identity in an Age of Challenge.)               

(6) The long-term answer to the New Normal – and to the dictatorship of relativism the New Normal is trying to impose on the universities and professions (without encountering much resistance), on traditional religious communities (less successfully, so far), and on individuals (through reprehensible but effective bullying and shaming) – is the re-conversion of the United States to right reason, moral truth, and a biblical way of seeing the world. This is a multigenerational project; it will necessarily be ecumenical and interreligious. From the Catholic point of view, the only possible response to the New Normal is a robustly evangelical Catholicism: one that displays true happiness in lives of solidarity with others; one that links that happiness and solidarity to friendship with Jesus Christ and the truths his Church teaches, inviting others to consider “a still more excellent way” (1 Corinthians 12.31).              

(7) And that means a thorough catechesis of the Catholic people of the United States, not least through preaching: preaching that forthrightly challenges the too-often-typical Catholic shrug at the New Normal; preaching that calls Catholics to deeper friendship with Christ, meaning deeper conversion to his truth. 

Comments from readers

Maria Maguire - 07/17/2015 06:13 AM
Like everyone else who contests the New Normal�s ideology of Anything Goes, the Catholic Church will be aggressively attacked for daring to oppose that ideology. So the Church must learn, fast, how to play good defense, defending the right of our people and our institutions to be themselves; it will do a service to America in the process. AGREED. BUT, Catholics are in need of strong and constant guidance from the clerics. EVANGELICAL CATHOLICS: GET GOING IN PRAYER, IN SELF-EDUCATION THROUGH MANY AVAILABLE READING ENCYCLICALS AND CHURCH DOCUMENTS, AND SPECIALLY, ROOTING OUR POSTURE IN THE SCRIPTURES! EACH ONE OF US MUST PLACE HIS/HER LIGHT TO THE WORLD ON HIGH PLACES TO BRIGHTEN THE DARK. OUR "LITTLE LIGHTS" WILL SHINE THE TRUTH OF GOD'S LOVE FOR ALL. IT IS NOT AN EASY BATTLE, BUT IT IS WHAT WE ARE CALLED TO DO AS CATHOLIC-CHRISTIANS. THIS IS LOVE IN ACTION IN THE 21ST CENTURY! And... one day we will hear: "WELL DONE, GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT".
Rodrigo Rodriguez - 07/14/2015 12:06 AM
IT CERTAINLY IS ABOUT OBEDIENCE TO THE WORD OF GOD, PLEASE READ THE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH #S 2357-2358 & 2359 WHERE IT IS BASED ON THE BIBLE, WHICH THE MAJORITY OF THE CATHOLICS ARE MOSTLY IGNORANT. THE COMPLETE LACK OF PREACHING ON THIS PARTICULAR SOCIAL SIN BRINGS US TO WHERE WE ARE RIGHT NOW, VERY CONFUSED AND AFRAID. FOR STARTERS READ WHAT HAPPEN TO SODOM & GOMORRAH AND COMPARE IT TO WHAT HAPPEN TO THE PEOPLE OF NINIVE, WHICH WE NEED TO IMITATE ASAP. WE SHOW OUR LOVE BY WARNING OUR NEIGHBOR OF THE SIN, SO THEY MAY SAVE THEIR SOULS, THAT IS OUR DUTY AS CHRISTIANS!
Jan Rush - 07/13/2015 11:32 PM
It is not only about love. Two people of the same sex can love one another, but that love can't include the misuse or abuse of the body of the beloved, which is what happens in same sex sexual behavior. The God given gift of sexuality and its proper use is written in the design of the complementarity of male and female. This is also clearly apparent in the severe health consequences of those who engage in same sex behavior, especially men who are with other men. The incidence of AIDS, hepatitis, syphilis and gonorrhea, herpes, anal cancer and so on are incredibly high in this population. See the CDC for the stats. The Church doesn't forbid this behavior to be unkind, but rather to be loving. People have inclinations to engage in many kinds of immoral and unhealthy behaviors, but the mere desire to engage in them doesn't make the behaviors OK. Some people are inclined to engage in adultery, drunkenness, fornication, rage and so on. Jesus loves everyone and asks each of us to rise above our sinful inclinations and strive for holiness of life with His grace and the sacraments to help us. Many homosexuals lead lives of heroic celibacy. Of course, all persons not married to someone of the opposite sex are to live in celibacy. No one is trying to exclude those with same sex attractions from the Church. All are welcome in the Catholic Church. We are all sinners and must help one another to gradually approach Christian perfection, whatever our particular challenge may be. There is no discrimination in the Church. Jesus leads us through the teachings of the Church to true human flourishing. Love without truth is not love at all.

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