Busting myths and exposing false claims

Cardinal Francis George, America’s most intellectual prelate, is taking to task some cultural trends that harbor dishonest claims and images of the Church, and it’s about time.

The Archdiocese has moved into ‘new’ quarters, Chicago’s historic high school seminary turned into a pastoral center, and he gives the reader a little tour and history lesson.

Around the walls of the room now used by administrative assistants and secretaries are statues of figures important to the intellectual and artistic life of the church through the centuries. No one would be surprised to find statues of St. Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suarez, Giotto, Michelangelo or Cardinal John Henry Newman; but some who live with the conviction that a permanent state of enmity exists between the faith and scientific inquiry might be surprised to find in a seminary library a statue of Galileo.

Yes, let’s clear up this fallacy that the Church tortured Galileo, and abhors science, and other myths.

Galileo was a believing and practicing Catholic all his life, as is evident in his lengthy correspondence with his daughter, who was a nun. Had he been content to teach his theories about the motion of the sun and the planets as a hypothesis, as had others before him, he would not have been censored. As a matter of fact, much of the scientific community of Galileo’s day was not completely convinced of the truth of his teaching, and the final scientific confirmation of Galileo’s theories came some centuries after his death.

But the myth has him uniquely a victim of the church. The myth, which strips away complicating circumstances in a sorry moment of church history, serves many purposes; and so it will continue to live and shape people’s mindset.

Only so long as it’s left unclarified. This helps. But the Cardinal is about to take a shift here to other anti-Catholic trends, so for more on the historically good and strengthening relationship between Church and science, check out this site.

Now he challenges something that needs strong voices to challenge, and plenty of them. Fake rights.

The current resurgence of anti-Catholicism in the media and in many classrooms is based, I would argue, not so much on old myths as on protecting fake rights. Those who want to claim that we should have the right to kill an unwanted unborn child or who want to have the right to change the nature of marriage itself or who claim a right to kill those who say they want to die find their primary obstacle in the teaching of the Catholic Church about human life as a gift from God, to be respected at all stages of its development. The church can therefore expect to be attacked in order to weaken her moral influence.

No one can claim a moral right to do what is wrong; and a state with laws that invent false rights destroys the collective happiness of its citizens. That the breakdown in sexual morality and married life should go hand in hand with a breakdown in financial security and in political trustworthiness should not be a surprise. Morality is neither public nor private; it’s just a matter of right and wrong in every domain.

The year 2009 will be pivotal in the life of the nation’s political and economic life, he predicts, and that’s clear from the start.

The church’s social teaching applied to public life in our country can help us and our nation to face the challenges before us with intellectual honesty and moral authenticity.

The social teaching of the church is offensive to those who want social policy grounded on desire rather than reason. “If I want something, the law should permit me to have it,” is a popular way to describe what the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called “the triumph of the will.” There is a chasm between non-violent demonstration against an unjust law, like the laws that once protected racial segregation, and making violent threats against those who disagree with you.

Because of the latter, George predicts the Church will be a target in 2009.

As we enter a New Year filled with uncertainty, the church’s social teaching remains a sure anchor for our personal lives and for social polity.

Especially if it’s made better known.