Could someone put him in the next presidential debate?

Maybe in the moderator’s seat.

Enough rhetoric. We can see through that. We don’t like it. But….it keeps swirling around us.

So it’s refreshing to see or hear a good argument that respects the meaning and power of language and uses it with clarity. And it’s frankly energizing to hear the right questions asked for a change, that invite logic and reason to make a case…..about anything.

Especially abortion, since it’s at the core of a whole ‘culture of death’, as Pope John Paull II famously named it.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann made one of those great cases in a talk last week, and I’m frankly energized to see it, widely available, over at First Things.

It is the crisis of truth that allows otherwise intelligent individuals to posit that they are personally opposed to abortion but they support the right of others to choose an abortion.

The question that needs to be posed to those who make this claim is: Why are you personally opposed to abortion? Why do so many of the pro-choice politicians even say that they want to make abortion rare? Why want to make something rare if it is truly a valid choice? The rhetoric of choice has been a very clever marketing campaign for something that is of its nature evil and repugnant.

While it taps into some deeply held American values of personal freedom and individual liberty, pro-choice position is actually an exercise in illogic. Nobody is actually pro-choice in the sense that they are in favor of all choices. Indeed, one always has to ask the further question: What is being chosen? In the case of abortion, the honest answer is: to destroy a human life.

Follow the argument through. Apply it to other, reasonable arguments.

In some of the inner-city neighborhoods where I served as a priest, there was a great problem with gun violence. Could you imagine anyone saying that they were personally against drive-by shootings, but if someone else wanted to do it they should have that right? Yet it is precisely that illogic that has been used now for several decades to defend the legalization of abortion—the destruction of an innocent human life.

That’s true, and those who deny it of course deny the truth that human life (life of the species homo sapiens) is present in the womb from conception. Which is scientific human embryology, objective truth.

Without the acceptance of objective truth, everything becomes negotiable. The moral conscience of society and the individual are impaired. There is confusion in the recognition of good and evil. We become uncertain about such fundamental institutions for family and society as marriage. From the denial of natural truth, a nihilism emerges that we find expressing itself today in art, literature, and films. We become confused about what is good and noble. We question what is worth devoting our life to. This confusion results in a great interior emptiness. We try to distract ourselves with more and more things, divert our attention with more and more entertainment, and numb ourselves with drugs and other addictions.

Archbishop Naumann likens it to The Twilight Zone….an apt analogy.

This is a helpful image for the consequence of relativism that impairs a culture from recognizing what is objectively good, beautiful, and true. In The Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul had this to say about objective truth: “The Gospel of Life is not for believers alone: It is for everyone. The issue of life and its defense and promotion is not a concern of the Christian alone. Although faith provides special light and strength, this question arises in every human conscience which seeks the truth and which cares about the future of humanity. Life certainly has a sacred and religious value, but in no way is that value a concern only of believers. The value at stake is one which every human being can grasp by the light of reason; thus it necessarily concerns everyone.”

So could we arrange a debate with Archbishop Naumann asking the questions?