The End

Hello everyone. Haven't done much here in a while, so I'm thinking I will archive all my posts and eventually delete this blog. I am planning a far less ambitious blog with a far more universal appeal and more limited scope. Basically, I'm not going to write anything that can't fit into a tiny space. More specifically, 420 characters.

That's right. I'm going to try to fit every post into something that can fit in a Facebook status update. Because that's about all I think I'm likely to commit to in writing regularly. Maybe it will increase later on. I dunno. But I'm too lazy apparently to continue writing full length blog posts. My American attention span simply can't cut it, I guess.

So cheers, and hopefully the few of you that read this will check out the new blog at:

http://evan420.blogspot.com

The Triune War

http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=36797

Ponder this story for a moment, if you will.

There has been throughout history a certain recurrence of war between life itself and death, and it is chiefly represented in the battle over the family and the child. It is also the battle of each Person of that Sacred Trinity which the Christian holds dear.

The first was the Battle of the Father and Moloch, a dance of death fought from Jerusalem and Tyre in the East to Rome and Carthage in the West. It is the war of a wroth Father God to preserve His own people against the mad gods who desired nothing less than to devour them through their children. It was a war echoed in the hearts of Rome, and more importantly in the hearths of Rome. For while the Romans knew not the Father God of the Hebrews, they did at least make fatherhood and family into gods, gods greater than the others of their varied pantheon. And it was this divinity of the family that refused all surrender and all peace with Carthage, the city of the slaughtered innocents.

And in that Roman struggle, as in the Hebrew struggle before it, we see something amazing. That as each of these disparate tribes was conquered, they conquered the conqueror; as each tribes hope's were consumed, each tribe brought an end to a darker hope. That the Hebrews, though broken by Egypt, yet escaped and conquered Palestine. That when broken by Assyria and Babylon, they were yet freed by Persia, and fought all the empires that sought to tame them. But even more it was Rome, Rome the Mighty who we find prostrate but unrepentant at the feet of Carthage. At the feet of Hannibal, grace of Baal. And though crushed, though defeated, though hopeless, Rome was still the army of life, still the guardian of the family, and would never make peace with death. From ruinous defeats untold throughout Italy, Rome triumphed, life conquered, even as it was about to die, it conquered finally, and fantastically. It left no stone standing of Carthage, salted its grounds and burned its fields, and put to the sword the works of Moloch.

Thus ended the first battle between God and the Demons, as Chesterton calls them in th Everlasting Man.

The second comes in the Battle of the Son and Ha-satanna. Again Rome and Jerusalem are the focal points of history, and again, the battle between life and death found its root horror in the slaughter of innocents. For the coming of the Jewish Messiah and the Christian God was presaged by the butchering of hundreds of children throughout Palestine by King Herod "the Great." Again at the pivotal time of history, infanticide found its expression in the ancient war of life and death, and this battle would find its climax not at the walls of death, but instead at the gates of Sheol and on the lonely plain of Calvary. For again did the forces of life struggle against death, and like in the first, life was conquered, life was vanquished. And like in the earlier wars of life and death, but surpassing even them, was life truly killed. For Rome was never beaten to death in that it always lived. It was conquered, but not vanquished. And the Jews may have been brought to bondage numerous times, but there always remained Jews to be bound. But on the day when the world turned black, and Jesus the Christ hung on a cross, life was not merely beaten down or bonded, life was ended. Christ died, death won, the slaughter of innocents that began 33 years earlier culminated in one final, and one even more grave slaughter. The slaughter of a man no longer an infant, and yet still innocent.

But the battle did not end. For Christ, though dead, again lived. The Crucifixion was the triumph of death over life, but it was the Resurrection that was the triumph of Life over Death, and in it death was destroyed more completely than ever Carthage was wiped from the Earth. And wherever Christ's banner, the banner of His death, the banner of the Crucifix went, death was toppled. From the Thuggie cult of India, to the human sacrifices of the Aztecs, Christ conquered all such dread terrors.

And following Christ, who rose to Heaven to join His Father, we had sent to us a Guide, the Spirit of Truth, the very Spirit of the Life we adore.

And now it is the Spirit's war, and it is a war which has escalated. For so were the innocents slaughtered by the hundreds in Carthage, and the thousands by Herod, now they are butchered by the millions. And while before they were sacrificed for some dark purpose, for some unthinkable objective that had to be purchased in human blood, now it has become even less and so even worse. It is the unwillingness of the world to be responsible for itself. It is the final assault on this God of Fatherhood, of this familial deity, of this the God of Father, Son, and Spirit. This is the final rebellion, this is the final war, and we are in the pinnacle battle. And while before the dark purpose of this sacrifice was to invoke demons against gods, or the Demon against the God, now this final sacrifice is of Men battling God, and it will indeed be the last struggle, for there is none left to challenge life. But who shall stand for it? Rome and Jerusalem stood in their times, but now they are failing. Christ on the Cross stands eternally, but what if none shall follow? The death that entered the world through sin was defeated by Christ, but if we elect to reject Christ, if we war with life itself, then death will be our victory and our defeat.

It will be, if you can forgive the pun, the ultimate in Pyhrric victories.

God the Father and God the Son have waged this war, and planted the first and most important victories in human soil and in human hearts. The first victory ensured that the past was not horrific, and that the future could be bright. The second ensured that so long as man followed God, life would never wane. The third victory, the final victory, is the one that God will fight in us, as God once fought through Jerusalem and Rome. And this time it will not be the wrath of the Father, but the inspiration of the Spirit that will guide us. This is the war to end all wars, the chance to rebuild that which has decayed, and defend that which is defenseless.

But from where shall the battle be waged? For both Rome and Jerusalem are besieged, and even now are falling. Rome's soul is burning, and Jerusalem's is divided. The West is immolated in its own self-destructive tendencies, for the West has come full circle back to Carthage, full circle back to Moloch. This is the last struggle of a long dead god, who has found one last arm to stretch out and bring death to others. For just as Carthage's own obsession with the practical darkness, with the material and commercial worlds, with its own practical endeavors wrought its final downfall, even as it stood, foot on the throat of Rome, so too shall our civilization fall. We shall fall to decadence, we shall fall to practicality, we shall fall to Moloch, who has devoured our children. We have given up our families to the idol not of gold or bronze, not worked in strange or terrible faces, but to the idol of glass, the idol of the mirror, the idol of humanity, worked in our own face, and our own image, which is the most frightening of all. We have become the premier cannibals, the connoisseurs of evil more repugnant than any that has gone before it. Humanity has become the idol to which we sacrifice our young, and we no longer do it with even any pretext to purpose, but out of mere inconvenience, and we have no further to look for the most horrific demonstration of the Truth of Christianity's doctrine of Original Sin than to see what humanity has become left to itself after too much secularism.

Man and God now war, the Spirit of Life with the Man of Death. And the Spirit shall win, and the Final Day shall come, and all we have wrought will be shadows and dust, and the long arm of Moloch will fall. And with it shall fall the West, where once the hope of Mankind lay.

Christians, what is there for us? Our society has become the veritable culture of death, and we stand in the midst of battle. And even as we speak, as you read, as I write, our world is battering down all others. We are destroying Africa, we are laying waste to Asia, just as we have laid waste to Europe and North America. China has become so a part of our modern Moloch, that they are not even cannibalizing their society just in figure of speech, but in literal action. Africa too is reeling under the hammer strokes of the secular world's solutions, that of the common choice to end the future of humanity. As Europe is dying, so Africa will die, left to this course. As we have slaughtered, so China is slaughtering.

We have come to the final battle, to the world at war, to the last stand.

So stand! Stand and fight and go not quiet into that long night. For life and love and light themselves are what we have at stake. And the only path we have to walk is that of battle.

These priests, they are fighting, and they are winning. And just so, we see the very demons who demanded the deaths of our most innocent and beloved throughout human history making their presence known in the horrific and blasphemous assaults upon their faith and character. If any doubts that this is a war between demons and the Spirit of God, reread this article, go see for yourself the trenches of this war, and then start praying.

Religious syncretism and a watered down truth.

The Dalai Lama has written an op-ed piece for the New York Times with the title of "Many Faiths, One Truth."

On the face of it, the article's title is sound. There are many faiths. There is only one Truth. All well and good. But the article's content makes it clear that the Dalai Lama believes that all of these faiths point the way to the Truth. He even seems to imply that none are better than any others.

In reading Mere Christianity lately, I noticed Lewis make two points that I think are understated in today's world. The first was that as a Christian, as compared with an atheist, I am free to believe that every religious tradition in the world that concerns itself with God has at least gotten one thing right. There is a God. All atheists must deny this central, core truth, and thus all religions, while any member of a religion may at least agree with other religious that the divine exists. The second is that as a Christian one necessarily believes that Christianity is right and the other religions wrong. Or in other words, that only Christianity presents wholly accurate, completely true information about God to the greatest extent possible for man to know. And of course, we here at the Apologetics Knights firmly believe that the Catholic Church is the arbiter of this information, the teacher through whom we learn it, and thus the holder of the most complete revelation of God.

From reading this op-ed piece, it seems that the Dalai Lama finds such a belief naive, or equivalent with religious intolerance. I find this to be an interesting assertion, and one that is certainly incompatible with the Christian world-view. I think it requires a critical examination of what religious intolerance is, as well as how it could possibly be naive to believe one thing as true, and thus admit that another thing is false.

Now tolerance is a funny thing, in the modern world it seems to be given many meanings which it does not in fact have. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, "Tolerance is the virtue of men without principles." In other words, he notes that those who are the most tolerant are those with the fewest positive principles. A Christian cannot tolerate human sacrifice. Neither can anyone else who believes in principles of human dignity and life. Tolerance does not mean agree with. It does not mean like. It does not mean consider the same as or equivalent to something else. Tolerance means only that you permit and endure. And somethings we simply cannot, like the aforementioned human sacrifice. Thus I find it difficult to see how exactly the Dalai Lama reaches the conclusion that believing Buddhism superior to other religions is similar to or the same as extreme religious intolerance. One can believe one's religion to be more reasonable, more true, more righteous, etc. and not seek to kill or forcibly stop the practitioners of other religions, even if one might otherwise try to convert them. If a religion is intolerable, I think you'll generally find there's a reason why it is intolerable, one which is viscerally compelling for the mass of men.

Now, I think any reasonable person will admit that religious intolerance is problematic. Killing people who don't agree with you is not good. Forcing people to convert is not good. Many religions, including Christianity, have had people who engaged in these practices, and they are generally condemned. Certainly they were sinning according to Church teaching. But does this equate to believing another religion is as valid and true as your own? How can that possibly be?

Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ is God. Islam and Judaism deny this. Buddhism simply doesn't care. Hinduism and Buddhism both posit a cycle of suffering and reincarnation, with no end save escape to Nirvana, a state of non-being where the individual melts into a pantheist world-soul and ceases to exist. Christianity, Islam and Judaism all argue that the universe does not run in such a cyclical metaphysical way, that we are headed towards a definitive end from a definitive beginning, and that that end will be either some sort of paradise or some sort of torment. To the extent that Buddhism has paradises, they are all designed as stop overs, not end goals. Places from which enlightenment is easier to achieve, though of course how enlightenment, ie detachment from all desire and thus all suffering, is supposed to occur in a hyper-luxurious environment is beyond me. Buddha didn't become enlightened by sitting in his palace, nor by being an ascetic for decades. To the extent that Hinduism has paradises, they are all part of the cycle of rebirth, and the only definitive end is the end of everything that is.

These are just cursory complaints that anyone could make upon superficial analysis of these religious systems. They do not agree. Because they do not agree, it cannot be true that they all have the same grasp of the truth. This is not intolerance, this is strictly a logical conclusion. These religions teach things which are, in fact, contradictory to each other. Therefore they do not all teach the same thing, and either none of them have anything right (atheism or some other religion) or only one of them has it all right, and the others only have bits and pieces right.

If we wanted to go more in depth, it can be understood that there is a much more fundamental issue at stake exactly where the Dalai Lama believes the most similarity exists. Compassion. It is easy to see the thread of compassion interwoven throughout the world's religions. And it is to be expected, because compassion is one of the most obvious facets of human experience. It complements the sufferings which we all undergo. It is neither particularly marvelous nor unexpected that every religion and anti-religion has picked up on compassion and embraced it. Compassion is and always has been universal, because nearly all of us feel empathy and sympathy with those who are suffering at any given time. We all suffer, we all can understand, and we all want to help those who are suffering. Yet each religion approaches compassion in a different way. For our purposes, it will be most instructive to compare the Buddhism of the Dalai Lama with the Christianity of this particular author, and for two reasons. The first is that the author was at one time a Buddhist, though of the Zen sects, not the Vajrayana, and thus has more intimate knowledge of Buddhism in general than of Islam, for instance. The second is that it only makes sense to compare the nature of compassion within Buddhism as compared with Christianity because the Dalai Lama is Buddhist and is writing from that perspective, while I write from the Christian.

Let me tell you about the Buddhism I know. The essential points are fairly easy to grasp. Buddha was born Siddhartha Gautama in what is now India centuries before Christ was born. He was born a rich prince, yet was exposed to various degrees of suffering which convinced him to become an ascetic monk. After decades of asceticism in the mountains, he returned to seek a middle path. While meditating, he came to understand what Buddhism calls the Four Noble Truths: Suffering exists. The cause of suffering is desire. There is a way to escape suffering. The way to escape suffering is the Eight-fold Path. The Buddha believed that the root cause of all suffering was desire, and that it was better to escape suffering than not, thus we should snuff out our desires. What this becomes in practice is an attempt at destroying selfishness by destroying the self, Zen in particular as well as Theravada Buddhism both focus on helping the individual person become an arhat, an enlightened one. Mahayana Buddhism is a much more popularized version, and focuses on Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who aid humanity in achieving nirvana by various acts of compassion.

The Buddhas in Mahayana set up paradises. The Boddhisattvas are beings just short of the enlightened, who have chosen to remain unenlightened out of compassion for us, to aid us. The strain of compassion in Buddhism comes largely from the idea of these Boddhisattvas, as well as the Jakarta tales which told of previous lives of the Buddha and the compassion he showed within them. Yet at the same time, Buddhism maintains two things that make its compassion different from Christian charity. Buddhism still holds to the fundamental ideas of Hinduism, that we are reborn over and over, that all being is essentially one being. In other words, brahman and atman are still concepts in Buddhism, and they essentially mean that every living individual is in fact the same being as the world itself. Thus the first point is that all individuals are in fact the same being and the second point is that Nirvana, far from being salvation of the Christian variety, is in fact annihilation of the individuals into the original one.

Christianity says something strikingly dis-similar. Christianity says that God is separate from Man, and that men and women are separate from each other. Christianity says that our unique and individual existence is good, that annihilation would be the most horrific of evils, and that compassion is in fact superseded by charity, that love which wills for the good of another, even if it means giving of one's self. Not annihilating the self as in Buddhism, giving of the self. I must still be me and you must still be you, for me to love you as Christianity teaches.

Certainly Christianity has a place for compassion. The Corporal and Spiritual works of mercy are textbook acts of compassion. We could even argue that God becoming a human, the Incarnation, is the greatest act of compassion conceivable. That God would go so far as to be in solidarity with Man's suffering and so to help alleviate it, this is a powerful statement, and one that is practically antithetical from Buddhism. For Christ, when He came, did not teach us a way to escape suffering, nor offer us a path to a heaven on the way to annihilation. Christ, instead, stated simply that to follow after Him we must take up our Crosses, and walk. Those who followed Christ were not promised an escape from suffering, but instead more suffering, the suffering that God Himself knew on Earth. Christianity teaches that we are to embrace suffering and in so doing bring good to others. That is Christian charity, what everyone else calls love.

And I maintain, and have done so since I left Buddhism, that no Buddhist can truly know this sort of love and remain a Buddhist. Not simply because it requires that one accept suffering and transform it instead of run away from it, but because philosophically, Buddhism simply cannot accept the basic premises of Christianity. How can you love, really and truly, if you are not separate from the other? This is not a self-giving love, because your self is the same as their self. I don't love others because they are the same as me, that would be purest narcissism, and not self-giving or sacrificial in any way. It is no sacrifice for me to give something to another if the other is also me, and ultimately that's what Buddhism contends. Furthermore, nirvana itself is opposed to love. For love desires the good of another, and Christianity makes no bones that existence is fundamentally good. Yet nirvana is the active seeking of annihilation of one's own existence! This is neither compassionate nor loving, it does not alleviate suffering save by alleviating one of existence. Just as Christianity cannot accept the ideas of euthanasia, assisted suicide, etc. since they seek to alleviate suffering through the killing of a person, so it cannot accept the idea of nirvana, which seeks to alleviate suffering through the annihilation of one's being. No part of this can work with Christian charity.

The Dalai Lama, you will observe, does not mention the Crucifixion at all in his words on compassion in Christianity. He talks about the material aid given: the food, the healing, and His teachings on mercy and compassion towards others. Not one word on what Christians consider the greatest act of both compassion and love in human history. This is because the reality is that the Dalai Lama doesn't think Christianity is right. He does not believe Christ is God, he does not believe that Jesus died for our sins and redeemed Mankind. How can he? The central message of Christianity destroys the Buddhist philosophy, they are wholly contradictory. Without this belief, Jesus can only be evaluated based on the things He said and taught up to the Passion story, yet these are all a prelude, a dance towards the Death that was the mission. Every teaching is bracketed by prophesies about His upcoming betrayal, torment and execution. Every miracle points out something for the Apostles for after His death.

It is true, all religions and even non-religious philosophies admit compassion. They even glory in it. But this does not make them the same, nor does it mean they have the same grasp of the Truth. Certainly there is common ground, and certainly humanity needs to be united in certain aspects against very dangerous and very real threats. To this I believe we can all agree. What I cannot agree to is the negation of key points of each religious paradigm for a superficial understanding of compassion. This neglects the reality of Buddhism, and it neglects the reality of Christianity. The sort of unity we'd have with watered down Buddhism and watered down Christianity would be equally watered down. Our strength is in our conviction, in our principles, and that goes for every religious body. We believe firmly that something is true and right and good. We will stick to that belief, otherwise what is the point? To do otherwise would be to tacitly admit that what we believe is false. Live and let live, yes. But do not abandon your beliefs or your search for the truth, do not lose your convictions. Certainly you can learn from other religions and about other religions, you might even become convinced that one is right and leave your current one, but once you abandon any idea of an actual truth to be known and begin to believe all religions are the same you'll abandon all of them as well as the truth, for if all are the same, why be one as opposed to another? Why be part of any of them? That is the inevitable conclusion of a watered down truth. That there ultimately is no truth.

Fulfilling the Law

"Why did Jesus say I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it? But then we as Christians today do not follow rules like in leviticus. Like stoning of homosexuals. Or that a raped woman can be bought for 50 shekals. The invading of other nations and parts about crushing babies skulls against the rocks. Or that Christians are crazy because if God told them to sacrifice their only son they would.(Isaac) Even if these laws are void under Christ for some reason. How do we reason that God allowed these laws or commands to beging with. Also how does Christ fulfill the law, yet we have changed from following alot of the Old Testament laws."

Because the entirety of the Old Testament was leading up to and preparing for the arrival of Christ. The ancient Hebrew people were being slowly reformed and refined morally speaking, from people who would fight clan wars and destroy every member of a family for the sin of one member of that family (look at the rape of Dinah, for example) to a people who would follow a moral code more along the lines of "an eye for an eye," which we find in a lot of the laws of Leviticus and such and eventually to a code of forgiveness and grace and true justice in the coming of Christ.

Jesus is not an alteration of God's will, He is not saying that God's will has changed, He is the fulfillment of the plan of which the Old Testament records the preparation. Everything that came before Him leads up to Him, prepares for Him, and makes ready for Him. Which is why those laws are not abolished but fulfilled, and in fulfillment we understand them differently.

The only way to understand the Old Testament properly is through Christ, He is the lens by which we can understand God's revelation, because God's revelation is focused on Him. Lacking Him, we'll never truly understand the bulk of Sacred Scripture.

Which means when it comes to answering your questions, we need to look at the Old Testament in light of the New Testament. Just this past Sunday we had the Gospel reading about the woman caught in the very act of adultery, whom they brought to Jesus to test Him concerning the law of stoning. What was His response? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. We Christians understand that thanks to Original Sin, we all sin, we all make mistakes. Christ came so that even with our sins we might know His forgiveness, His grace. Christ came so that we may be slaves to sin no more, and as a result, we can always repent in this life and return to Him. This is the ultimate truth which the Hebrews were being prepared for that we see in Christ. Forgive. Do not condemn, but instead let sins be forgiven and let sinners go and sin no more.

Likewise, when we speak about raped women being bought, we must understand it in light of the New Testament. To the ancient Hebrews, women were considered property of their fathers. The rape of a woman was thus a crime not only against her but against her father, her whole family. Such a crime might provoke, again, a genocidal response, exactly as it did in the case of Dinah, because the tribal nature of the times meant that a sin against the family had to be met by the whole family, and if you left any men in the opposing family alive, they were honor bound to try and destroy your family in response. This is applicable to the arguments about genocide in the Old Testament as well. The Hebrews were being gradually brought away from this system, but they still had to survive in a world where it was the rule for many centuries. So amongst themselves, it was made law that a raped woman had to be bought and MARRIED, thus preventing family feuds and blood debts from destroying the Hebrews before God had a chance to being Christ to us. Instead of the families being divided, they would be united. And yes, the prospect might have been rather miserable for the woman, and maybe even for the man, but the alternatives were worse.

We however understand from Christ that marriage is about the union of two persons of equal dignity and worth, and that in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, male nor female, slave nor free. Every person is equal in the eyes of God, regardless of status or gender or country in this world. This is an equality that we could only know with two perfect examples of humanity; Christ the suffering servant, and Mary, meek and obedient. In these two we see the perfection of masculinity and femininity, and we see that finally we can understand Man and Woman such that we no longer need understand women as property to provide them with protection, nor do families who understand forgiveness need to fear the blood debts and tribal warfare of the ancient world.

Likewise, war by the time of Christ had become something between nations, not between tribes, and so the difficulties of leaving any member of a tribe alive to seek revenge and retribution had become moot. Likewise, there was no longer the danger that the Jews would be tempted to be unfaithful to God, their polytheistic tendencies, which God had also been trying to prevent by making sure they weren't tempted by polytheists, had at last been weeded out by the Babylonian exile, and so it was no longer necessary that they be at war with polytheist tribes in Canaan and elsewhere who tried to corrupt their faith. Thus the two main reasons why the Hebrews had to fight to destroy every male of an opposing army, tribal warfare and resistance to polytheism, have been removed. Instead we are now called to the fulfillment of warfare against idolatry, which is spiritual warfare centered in Christ and following His path, taking up our crosses, and dying to ourselves.

The reference to Abraham and Isaac is an interesting one. In the passage it says, "Isaac said to his father: My father. And he answered: What wilt thou, son? Behold, saith he, fire and wood: where is the victim for the holocaust? And Abraham said: God will provide himself a victim for an holocaust, my son."

Christ is the victim of the holocaust, the offering, Kasie, Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Again, we see Christ fulfilling the New Testament. Any Christian asked by God to sacrifice his son would know that such a test is a trial of faith, for God never tempts us to evil, for He is good. An evil act like murdering a child is not His will, His will is to reveal to ourselves and the world the depths of our faith. And like with Abraham, He will provide such that we do not have to commit any evil.

There is more that can be said regarding Old Testament laws, but I am not a scholar of them, so for fear of mis-speaking I will keep it short and simple. It is my understanding that there are differences in the laws of the Hebrews. Some, like the Ten Commandments, are considered laws given by God Himself and of a far more eternal and binding nature, while others are not of the same level of authority and power, but more laws made for the governing of their society at that time. Certainly the Jews seemed to have developed a fairly legalistic approach to viewing them. Christianity does not abandon the Ten Commandments, but it does consider the commandments of Christ to accurately and completely sum them up and thus fulfill them. Christians are not, however, bound to the various dietary or dress requirements unless they so desire, for example, since those are not the same sort of laws as the Ten Commandments. The need that those laws fulfilled has been met, and after Christ is no longer relevant to us spiritually or materially.

Hope that helps.

Apologetics Knights

For those of you wondering, I am still blogging, but my recent writings have been posted on the website of the Apologetics Knights, a Catholic apologetics group of which I am a member. Check out our site, www.apologeticsknights.org if you get the chance. I'm still planning on blogging here, and potentially linking the two sites eventually, or posting simultaneously on both, but for now this blog will be for debates and discussions, the other for current events and media apologetics.

Also, look forward to the return of the debate with Mr. Diga sometime soon.

Cheers.

On Angels

"What does it mean to be created in the image of God? How do we differ from the angels. Jesus says we were created a little lower than the angels. But I often hear that human beings on reserruction will exalted above the angels. For example...Paul says that we will actually judge angels. How will we judge angels if they are invisible to our sight our whole life. And does this imply that we are somehow exalted above them or merely fellow servants. "

What it means that we are created in the image of God is that we are beings with the ability to love in the way God loves. This is most important in regards to our ability to reason and to will, both of which are necessary to love in the way God loves, who is both Reason and Love.

We differ from the angels in several important ways. First, we are corporeal, they are not. This means that we are souls, they are not. We have the commingling of a physical body with a spiritual component, while they are entirely spiritual beings. This results in them not being bound or limited by physicality. So they do not die, do not eat, do not sleep, etc. They are not limited to any particular shape, indeed one could say best that they have no shape save what they let us see them have. They are often depicted as powerful warriors or fierce beasts in the Old Testament.

The second difference, and this is more crucial, is that while angels and humans both have reason and will, they differ in key ways. Angels, because they are not physical or part of the material universe, do not exist in Time as we do. Their wills, as a result, are fixed, they have made their decision to be with God or not with God, and this decision is set from the moment of their Creation. There is no time for them to change them in. And related to this is the issue of their reason, which is perfect in a way human reason cannot be (since human reason is in part bound by our material cognitive processors, the brain). Angelic reason is thus more certain and clearly aware of everything. When they made their choices, the angels had rationally concluded to do so in a way to make even the most logical humans seem infantile. There is no going back on a conclusion reached in this way, via the epitome of logical reasoning.

It is thus that we are inferior to the angels, in terms of pure splendor, might, power, etc. We are finite, infintessimally small creatures in comparison, bound to weak, sickly bodies, and we are Fallen. The majority of the Angels never fell, and never know disease or weakness, and exist eternally in the communion of the Saints, so they are with God always.

Yet because the Angels never fell as a whole, and because those angels who did cannot ever repent, in another sense humanity has been blessed far beyond the Angels, for humans can always repent of their sins and rejections of God and return to Him, a boast not even the great and mighty Angels can make. And what is more, God Himself, in the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus the Christ, came to Earth and lived as a Man, a human person, an honor and privilege that the Angels have never known. When His faithful are Raised and Glorified at the end of the world, we will receive glorified bodies like to Christ's own Body after the Resurrection, the perfection of what we are into what we were meant to be. This too, none of the Angels can boast, and in this way, in sharing in the majesty of Christ, particularly in the Eucharist and eventually in Heaven itself, we are above the Angels. But make no mistake, all of us, every one, is a servant of the God, the Most High. None of us is anything more.

And in the case of those Fallen Angels, the devils and demons, we will stand with Christ, as His faithful sheep, as judgment is passed against them and all who did not come to Him. Whether or not we can see them will be, at that point, moot.

Satan and the Snake

"And what is up with the snake in the garden of eden. Did Satan really morph into a snake or is it some Hebrew explanation of how Satan is sneaky like a snake. And if it wasn't a real snake then why did God condemn it to eat the dust of the earth...by losing it's legs I presume. It seems like a literal snake that had legs at some point.
That's another one that athiests throw at you. "Do you really believe a Satan was a talking snake" is usually the jibe."

If we understand the Creation story of Adam and Eve as mythical and to have certain allegorical and symbolic meanings, then it yet remains to trace and illustrate each symbol and its meaning so that the story's inherent truths are revealed.

Adam, for example, is a name that means both Earth as in dirt, or dust, and Mankind, or humanity, etc. Adam could be an individual human, as the story says, or he could be a representation for all humanity, or an individual human who was all of humanity, etc. There are layers of meaning, but in each case, Adam's role is that of a representative of Mankind.

Eve, by the same token, is the Mother of Nations. She could be an individual person in a more literal interpretation of the story, she could also be a symbolic figure of the earliest women, or the earliest mothers, etc., or even of the earliest woman of the Hebrew people, from whom the tribes of Israel descended, the Ishmaelites descended, and spiritually the Christians descended.

The fruit that they ate of is specifically called "the knowledge of good and evil." There are few more blatant examples of symbolism in any kind of literature anywhere. Adam and Eve ate from the tree whose fruit is the knowledge of good and evil. This too can be understood to have a symbolic and spiritual meaning, for example, the act of disobeying God has the fruit of experiential knowledge of evil, something Adam and Eve, ie all humanity to that point, had not yet known. They knew, intellectually, that God did not want them to commit a given action, in the symbolic terms of the story, that action was probably something sinful, certainly something proud.

The snake in the story, if interpreted literally, is just that, a snake. It is a talking snake, certainly, and it has been understood since the earliest days of the Church to be a reference to Satan, the enemy of humanity, for its role in tempting Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge, by promising her equality with God. Hence the nature of the sin being pride, and the realization that it was the Devil, who fell through his own desire to be equal to God.

But we don't have to understand the story literally, which means the snake too is a symbol, a representation of the way the Devil operates, which is to whisper slyly in our ears and tempt us to disobey the commands of God which we know in our heart we should obey. If you think about it, the voice of temptation always has the softly sibilant aspect of a serpent's hiss, which is probably why the snake was selected as the animal to represent Satan in the story.

As for God's condemnation of the snake, the Hebrews did not have a natural explanation for the origins of any creature, let alone the snake. What they did have was an understanding of the world as they saw it in spiritual terms. They understood that humanity had been born to a paradise, Eden, and lost it through sin. They saw human misery and difficulties, the hard work needed to survive and the pain associated even with child birth, as consequences of this Fall from Grace, and so they are. And they saw a natural enmity between women, who were the ones organizing and running hearth and home and serpents, who could slide under tent flaps and door ways and hurt those inside.

Remember, the Hebrews were largely a desert people, and they lived in an area of the world filled with dangerous, poisonous animals, of which the snake was a primary example. The snake was extraordinarily dangerous to them, and thus the Hebrews would likely have been very wary of it. Just look at the story of the serpents that afflicted the Israelites in the desert after they escaped from Egypt and disobeyed God. Serpents were an excellent example of a dangerous animal, particularly to women who were generally at home or with the children all the time, and had the same slithering and soft sensibilities of Satan.

As for losing its legs, the Hebrews again would not have a naturalist explanation for the snakes unusual shape. They would see most animals having arms, legs, wings, etc, while the snake has none, and so would explain it through a myth, not through science. Yet there is still some interesting fruit to be had in examination of this idea, since Satan himself is often considered "earth-bound" so to speak. Satan, because he fell, is no longer able to be a part of Heaven, and some Christian understandings link him specifically to the planet Earth. Read CS Lewis' Space Trilogy to get an understanding of this concept. As such, the snake again makes an excellent allegorical representation because the snake too is earth bound, it cannot rise up to the heavens, it cannot even run on two feet, it must wriggle through the dirt, lowest of the creatures the Hebrews would be most vitally aware of. An excellent representation of Satan if I do say so myself.

The most common atheist challenge to free will:

"Another question. How do we believe in predestination and free will. I often hear. 'If God is all knowing than you have no free will. For example if you have the choice between two pairs of pants and God already knows what one your going to choose than you had no choice in it.'
Now I don't make this up but I hear it from other people who are usually athiest and agnostic or even Christians who just don't believe that God is all knowing. How do we answer this as Catholics?"

This is a very common argument, I've heard it myself, and it's simply a misunderstanding of what knowing entails on the part of atheists who make it.

The Church has not explained in precise detail just how free will and predestination cooperate, only that they do. There are several theories within the Church, stemming mainly from St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Molinas and St Augustine, and so there are three theological branches dealing with it: Thomism, Molinism and Augustinian. Thomists and Molinists each tend to focus more on one aspect than another, the more heavily predestinarian are the Thomists, the more heavily will focused are the Molinists.

The Church has not declared one or the other or neither or both to be correct, largely because she has not needed to. Most times when the Church defines a dogma for the faithful it is out of need, in opposition to a heresy which has become too common or a misconception that is spreading, etc. Hence the dogmatic declaration of the sacramental presence of Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Eucharist via transubstantiation when that was challenged by Luther and consubstantiation, hence the declaration that Christ is both fully human and fully divine in response to things like Arianism and Gnosticism. It is most likely the case that both Thomism and Molinism have part of the truth, but miss out on something. As for Augustinian thought on the subject, I can't say I have been educated in it, so out of ignorance I shall hold my tongue.

The easiest response to the challenge you quoted is to note that knowledge does not equate to will. In other words, they are assuming that God's knowledge is predicated on God willing, that God knows an event occurs because God MAKES the even occur, but this is an assumption that they bring into the equation with them. It is NOT part of the meaning of knowledge, nor is it implied. It's something they read into it.

The reality is that the knowledge of God of our actions could be predicated on several things. It could be predicated, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, on God's nature, as He is outside the universe and able to observe it in its totality all at once. It could be predicated on the fact that God is immanent within the Universe, and so is at all places and times simultaneously. It could be both. It could be neither.

If, for example, it is one of those two, or both, then God's knowledge is based on our actions and therefore not the cause of our actions. In other words if God knows what we will do tomorrow because He is observing us today and tomorrow and yesterday in the same instant, then our actions are not necessarily caused by Him. Knowledge, then, does not mean CAUSATION. It merely means knowledge, and the atheist claim is refuted.

Some believe that this facet of God's knowledge being contingent upon our actions means that God is not truly omniscient, or that it creates a logical problem, though I do not agree. I believe omniscience refers to the ability to know all things which logically can be known. If God has created actors with legitimate choice, then what logically can be known is always known by God via observation of His Creation, since the only way to know, logically, what an actor with legitimate choice does is to observe it.

No matter how you slice it, predestination is a belief of the Church, and in its essence is the understanding that because Heaven is atemporal, and God knows every event of our lives in one moment, whereas for us it takes a lifetime, God knows who is in Heaven with Him, and because our existence in Heaven is predicated on accepting the Grace He offers us, His will is intrinsic in the process. It is the degree to which His will is present, and its forcefulness, that Catholics can have legitimate disagreement about. We all agree that God's will and grace must be present, and that the human will must be present. That our will must be present is also a teaching of the Church, for the Church says that Love is an act of the Will, and that we were created for love. We could not have a genuine love for God if we lacked a will, yet this is why we were created. So, in some way or other, we have a will, thus we are made in the image of God.

Is the Resurrection a Fabrication?

"What is this stuff all about Jesus not really dying on the cross and just entering a coma like state, only to wake up out of it on the third day. There's all these claims that Christians made it up that he died and rose and went to heaven. Do we have only the Bible to rely on for those facts?"

This is a heresy that is fairly old, and pops up now and again when people are improperly educated. The problem, of course, is that Jesus did actually die on the cross. While conceivable that a man could hold out against all the agonies of normal crucifixion, it's not likely, and any theory that He did neglects one important thing: The Romans were extremely efficient killers. Extremely efficient. They were probably the most ruthless and effective killers in history until the modern day and the Hitlers, Stalins, Maos and Pol Pots came along. They did not allow criminals whom they had crucified to survive, which is why they traditionally broke the legs of victims to make sure they eventually asphyxiated, and why they also stabbed them with spears to make sure they were dead, and not anything else. This also had the effect of bleeding them to death if the holes through their wrists/hands and feet, and the whippings to their backs hadn't done that yet.

And remember in Christ's particular case, He was executed as a rebel against the Roman empire. They would have been particularly scrupulous about making sure He was dead. They would have actively worked to prevent any of His followers rescuing Him or somehow helping Him, to become once again a source of rebellion and discontent. They also would've worked to make sure He died and stayed dead, again out of that same Imperial pragmatism. The Romans were shrewd and skilled administrators. They had no love for local leaders who might challenge their rule. And in strict observance of historical fact as far as we can tell, they did make sure He was dead, and they did post guards around His tomb to prevent His followers from staging anything like what actually happened.

Nope, historically speaking the odds are astronomically high that Jesus Christ died on that Cross. High to the point of utter certainty, in fact. As far as historical evidence goes, we don't have all that much, and by that I mean we have more evidence that Jesus Christ died than we do that Julius Caesar died. The Bible, certainly gives its share of evidence, and frankly, the historical validity of the Gospels is well established in scholarly circles, and while the dating of them is somewhat in doubt, that they provide historical information is not. It is only those who cannot see them as anything aside from faith documents and Scripture that reject their historical validity, and that's a dogmatic stance, not a historical one.

There's no reason to disbelieve the Gospel writers and yet to believe any other historical document. They had human authors, so if you can trust a human in history to write something true and accurate to any degree, you can trust the Gospel writers. If not, then you can't trust anyone, ever, anywhere.

As for Christians making this up, that's ludicrous. Remember that of the original Apostles, ten of them DIED for this belief, one spent his life in exile, and the last committed suicide after betraying Christ. I'm not saying that being a martyr makes you automatically right, now, but what I am saying is that if it was made up by Christians, the Apostles are the likely authors of the lie, or at least were guaranteed to be in on it. In that case, they would know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the religion they were creating would be based on a false principle, and that as a result it wasn't true and they were likely doing it to gain power or money or respect or whatever.

But what they actually DID gain was death at the hands, again, of the worlds most efficient killers. And in each instance, they were offered the opportunity to recant of their beliefs and claims that Christ was Risen, and thus save their lives, and they refused to do so. Likewise, those not of the Apostles who nevertheless claimed to have seen Christ also refused to abandon their beliefs, even in the face of, and after, torture and then execution. For a lie? For something they KNEW was untrue, and the rewards of which would not be available to them after death? That's the silliest and most ridiculous claim ever.

No, the Apostles, right or wrong, really and truly believed that Christ had died, and Risen, and that they had seen Him and talked with Him after His Resurrection and that they saw Him Ascend into Heaven. And we must ask why. What could make these men, from disparate backgrounds and walks of life, some of whom didn't particularly like each other, and all of whom rarely showed why Christ selected them until the end, agree on something so radically impossible? What they believed was nothing no one would have believed at that time without having seen it.

And then look at the evidence of what happened afterward. Those same followers of Christ were out of their minds with fear that the Romans, those brutal killers, would execute them too. And then, as of nowhere, they burst out into the world and set it on fire. There's never been a missionary effort like that of the Apostles, who were utterly manic in their obsession with spreading the Gospel. They preached everywhere, all over the world, and reached every audience they could. They spoke to people whose languages they didn't even know, they converted people everywhere.

Why? For a lie? No. No man has ever been so motivated for a lie. The only truly likely explanation is that the Apostles really believed that Christ had Risen, and this gave them the courage and love to proclaim it to everyone, even in the face of death and torture.

And finally, there's the basic theology of it. There's absolutely no meaning, nor theological importance, in a Crucifixion where Christ doesn't die. If God exists, and He is the God we Christians have always said it was, then the conquest of Death was logically part of the plan, and that meant dying and Rising again. It was part of the conquest of the consequences of Sin, it freed Man from the doom of Hell, and from the final Death, it promised us the Resurrection of the Body for ourselves, not just Christ.

As for our sources, yes, we have the accounts of the Gospels, four separate accounts compiled into the Bible that are both historical, and inspired scriptural literature. We also have the oral tradition of the Church, the spoken teachings of Christ and the Apostles, of which the Gospels only capture part of the message. And we have historical writings of Roman historians who record the spread of Christianity with an alarming speed, and the measures taken by the Romans to stop it which only increased its growth.

There was a Jew in the Sanhedrin in Christ's time named Gamaliel who said something important about the Apostles when they were preaching of the Risen Lord. He said that if they were of Man, then they would fail eventually and fall away or die out. But if their message and purpose were of God, then nothing could quench it and they would never die out, and that is exactly what we've seen. The Church, despite periods of persecution, inept leaders, terrible corruption, low attendance, rank heresies attacking her, etc. has never fallen. She has been reformed, certainly, she has in some senses been resurrected, but she has never been vanquished. If she were of Man, this would not be possible.

The Poverty of Wealth

"But what if the parents are poor and they start having to many kids isn't that unfair to the children."

Ok, there are a lot of fundamental issues involved in this question/statement, so it's difficult to know where to begin. I think I'll have to start by asking what is a greater poverty, lack of material possessions, or lack of selfless love and giving of life?

Before we can address the issue of fairness, we have to address this issue concerning the true nature of poverty. Westerners, and particularly Americans, live in the most powerful, affluent, decadent society ever created by Mankind. Only the Roman Empire could compete in terms of relative affluence, and I'd say the average American has vastly more than the average Roman ever did in terms of material wealth. And yet, the vast majority of human history has been dominated by societies which are poorer than American society, while the families within those societies consistently had far more children than industrialized and wealthy nations today have. That's right, the poorest epochs of human history have also involved larger families.

The reasons for this are numerous, and here are some basic utilitarian ones. Agrarian societies that have a more vibrant farm and rural life tend to need more children for the extra hands to man the farm. Early industrial societies likewise involve families flocking to cities and needing more money, so children with income potential were a boon to any family trying to survive in this new environment. Not to mention the fact that while contraceptives and abortions still occurred, they were nowhere near the norm they are at today.

The fact remains that despite poverty, families have historically been able to have more than one or two children, in fact greater numbers of children often was an aid to the family, not a problem. It's only relatively recent child labor laws that have altered that in many respects, and the artificial construct of a "childhood" in the modern world which never existed before. By this I mean that children were only children for a short while, the things people now write off as childish behavior in teenagers being acceptable would never have been two hundred years ago, let alone two thousand years ago. Human persons have the ability to live adult lives much earlier than they now are expected to, now they are expected to be immature and hedonistic for at least 20 years before they grow up. Which of course feeds into the problem, which is not poverty, it's selfishness.

The reason the richest societies in the world have stopped having children isn't because they can't afford them. This is a myth perpetuated by those who would rather not face the truth. And the truth is that these societies have become more enamored of material wealth and possessions than they have of family and children. The question people ask themselves, and the excuse they rationalize to allow for their behavior is whether they can afford to have children and maintain the same level of pure selfish materialism that they have enjoyed prior to having children. Families used to exist and function just fine with half a dozen kids and their parents living in two room homes. Now mansions are virtually empty and devoid of life because the people who live in them cannot sacrifice their comforts for children, or they have one "designer baby," and stop there, spoiling their child rotten and condemning that child to the same expected level of wealth.

We have constructed a world in which material wealth is all that matters, and having children gets in the way of amassing more of it. Children mean sacrifice, they mean loving someone more than you love the things in your life, the luxuries and pleasures. And children, as joyous and pleasurable as they are can also be big, messy pains. They break things, they keep you up at night, they get sick and require you to stay home, etc. The converse, in a world where contraceptives and abortions are plentiful is far more attractive to people used to living in perpetual pleasure and wealth. So they do. And in so doing they've created a new poverty, a poverty that involves the loss of one of the greatest joys of existence, which is sharing in the Creator's joy, and self giving in love. The real question we need to start asking ourselves is not whether we can afford to have kids, it's whether we can afford NOT to.

Now, there was a concern in your question addressing the subject of fairness. The fundamental problem with any question of the fairness of a given action is that fairness itself is non-existent. The belief in something being fair is based on a human sense of entitlement to a given thing or action. If we believe ourselves entitled to something, and yet we do not receive it, we believe ourselves victims of unfairness. The fact of the matter, however, is that upon examination it must be admitted that humans are entitled to virtually nothing in this life. Our very existence is, if one is a theist, a GIFT from God, not an entitlement. And even if one is an atheist, it still has to be admitted that our existence can be nothing more than accident, it is certainly not something we are entitled to. So what does fairness really mean, since it cannot mean we're entitled to something?

If it is to mean anything valuable at all, fairness must refer to whether something is Just or not. Which means that having children is probably not part of it to begin with. God, who is Just, has blessed human kind and desires us to be fruitful and multiply and share in the ability to give life and create. Anyone making the argument that giving the highest good is unjust is going to have a difficult time.

So when you ask whether it would be somehow unfair to children whose parents have lots of children as opposed to a few, even when they are poor and cannot provide all the material comforts of modern Western society, I have to say no. Children, indeed human beings, are not entitled to material comfort, and the act of procreation is in fact giving someone the great gift of existence, the highest good there is. Therefore, it certainly cannot be said to be unfair to the child or children born into a large, poor family. If anything, I'd be more worried about the children born to wealthy parents who are not taught the joys of family life, of the value of large families and sharing in Creation with God. They are the ones most likely to grow up spoiled, selfish, and weak. Children who live lives with the great wealth of a strong, vibrant family, seem far likelier to be less spoiled, less worried about material things, more interested in the value of family, etc. They're vastly more lucky than those born into the poverty of materialism.

On Natural Family Planning

"What exactly is Natural Family Planning and how is that better than using the above [contraception]."

Natural family planning, in basic terms, is a means of spacing out the birth of children using methods that are natural instead of artificial, part of our sexual reproductive nature, more respectful of our human persons, open to life consistently and involves a higher discipline and love. I would say it is better for all of the above, and this is why:

When I say that the methods are natural, instead of artificial, I mean that there is nothing involved in the process save the married couple themselves. Nothing foreign is inserted into the relationship to try and keep procreation from occurring. No pills, no condoms, no surgeries, no spermicides, etc. Nothing artificial comes between the two people, no barriers are present, no forced with-holding during the sexual act occurs. Natural family planning also does not follow a mere calendar in regards to a woman's fertility, it's not like you have sex during two weeks of the month and you don't have sex the other two weeks, which would be a fairly faulty system.

What it does involve is both the husband and the wife learning a lot more about their bodies and their reproductive nature, and working with each other instead of just erecting barriers between themselves. Natural Family Planning simply will not work if there is a lack of respect between a couple, or a lack of closeness or interest. It will not work with a lazy love. Instead, the couple must both actively study their bodies and know when they are most fertile and least fertile, using means that are scientifically proven and again natural, like the quality of vaginal mucus. I have heard that learning and following the NFP system brings husbands and wives closer together, and I believe it. It involves a far greater degree of mutual understanding than any artificial form of birth control.

NFP also involves the practice of abstinence, instead of barriers or other artificial contraceptives. So during those periods when use of NFP methods has brought the couple to be aware that they would be most likely to conceive, they abstain from sexual intercourse. This is where a lot of people have a problem with NFP, they do not want to abstain. But abstinence as a sacrifice for the person you love has a lot of merit, any sacrifice for love does. It shows a depth of commitment, and a strong will for the other's good. This is also, by the way, part of the reason why the Church only allows for the practice of NFP when the couple has grave reasons for not wanting to have a child at that time, like a true lack of the resources to provide for him or her. It's only a sacrifice for the other's good if selfish motivations are not present.

Abstinence also promotes more interior discipline, something necessary to every Christian's spiritual life. Discipline better enables us to accept the sufferings of this life that Christ has promised us, and also aids us in performing charity even when our natural inclination or feelings try to steer us away from it. Practices which promote interior discipline (discipline of our inner lives and selves, as opposed to our superficial lives) should never be shied from, and we should always examine what makes us uncomfortable when we come face to face with them and wish to not follow them. Christianity does not, after all, promise an easy life, or one free of trials and pain. Discipline is part of our defense in these instances. If we are shying away from it, we must wonder why, and how we will persist in difficult times if we cannot make sacrifices now.

This is in basic terms how it comprises part of our sexual nature. A woman's period of fertility has certain indicators and lasts a certain amount of time, and the time a man's sperm will remain viable in the uterus also lasts a certain amount of time. As human persons, we have the will to abstain or to have sex, we have a choice. We are not merely animals following rote instinct. Our sexual nature is part of our human nature, and thus intimately connected to our wills, and so to love, our will to bring good.

NFP unites all of these factors through closer union and understanding of each other's sexuality, the practice of abstinence when a woman is more fertile, and closer union in love making when she is less fertile. It takes our sexual nature, and instead of denying it, or separating an aspect, or trying to change it, which all natural contraceptives attempt to do, it embraces them and works within their boundaries. Thus NFP never completely closes the act of love making to the possibility and potential for life. God is never barred, nothing is ever denied by barriers or a refusal to give part of one's self. The system is admittedly not "perfect" as a result, the successful practice of NFP means about a 97% chance of not conceiving, and this perceived imperfection to those who would rather practice artificial forms of conception is actually a sign of its perception to those of us who understand and admit that sexuality is first and foremost about pro-creation, about human beings joining God in the Creative act of new life. We would not deny it, and we proudly admit that NFP is always open to this process. That's really its best point, and why it is acceptable practice at all.

Hopefully that answered your question a bit more fully.

On Contraception

Mr. DeMers has passed along some more questions for me that I will attempt to answer. I intend to answer in a one post to one question ratio, so things don't get too long winded or out of control.

"Why won't the church let married couples use condoms or use birth control."

For a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, the fact that condoms and other artificial means of birth control attempt to remove the pro-creative aspect from the sexual act, and also prevent the couple from truly giving themselves to each other in the intimacy of love making.

If we understand existence to be good, and things which enrich or aid existence to also be good, then we have to admit that sex, which allows human people to bring new life into the world, and life facilitates existence in a material universe, is positively awesome. Sex is an extraordinary and amazing good. This, however, doesn't mean that it is always good or that it is always used well, as it was meant to be. Sex, like all other goods, can be abused and mistreated, which deprives it of some facet of the good it is supposed to have. That's evil. The deprivation of a good it should have had.

Condoms and other forms of artificial birth control are sinful primarily because of this deprivation of the good of reproduction. If the Church is right when it teaches that existence and life are good things, then the Church by extension must teach that the sexual act, which has procreation as its first purpose and its highest good, must be open to that good always. Otherwise, what we are doing when we have sex is taking sex and depriving it of its purpose and its good. We're abusing it, most likely just to get pleasure out of it, which is a disordered understanding of the act itself.

The sexual act in the Church's teaching is also an act of perfect self-giving. A husband and a wife are supposed to be giving themselves completely to each other in love, and the sexual act is a physical expression of that. That is why unity is its second purpose, sex is meant to bring and hold a married couple in close congress and union. Human persons were always meant to exist as both spiritual and physical beings, that is the nature of our soul, of our existence. The sexual act is an act of union that is both physical and spiritual, and involves (or should involve) the whole person, not a mere piece or portion of them. Anything less is the essence of objectification. You are taking a human person and objectifying them, using them for your gratification, and reducing them to one piece or portion of the whole that they are to do so.

The conscious decision to use an artificial contraceptive means that one or both of the couple is consciously deciding to hold back a part of themselves, the reproductive part. Since sex is meant to be a union of the WHOLE person to another WHOLE person, voluntarily through love, any with-holding is a rejection of that union. Artificial contraceptives bring people to say, "I love you only enough to use you for my sexual pleasure, but not enough to truly give you my whole self, my whole being." It isn't love, in effect. It's use, which is more truly mis-use, and becomes abuse because it's mis-use of something which should never be mis-used.

Love is the willing of good for another before yourself. The usage of such contraceptives mean that the will of one or both persons is not for the good of the other, their relationship or their future child (they certainly aren't willing for good there, since they're attempting to deny that person the chance to exist, the basis of all goodness).

And these are the primary reasons why the Church does not and cannot allow the usage of artificial forms of birth control. As I said, it's not necessarily limited to this, but they're the most important reasons, others include the fact that many artificial forms of birth control involve an actual, physical barrier being placed between you and your partner, which is a direct rejection of true union. As well as the idea that we need to "protect" ourselves from what is supposed to be an act of love.

A Question on Satan

Having not posted in ages, I figured that it would be a great time to start up again when I got this excellent question from an acquaintance who has written in before, a Mr. DeMers. Sorry to those with questions or comments I hadn't seen because I had been inactive, I'll attend to them soon.

Why did God create Satan/Lucifer to begin with if God knew he would rebel and usher in a rebellion in heaven and tempt and bring sin to mankind? I understand the free will bit. But couldn't God of avoided it altogether since he is all knowing. By creating those who would not rebel since he knows they won't. It almost seems unfair to say "Oh you have free will, but if your not on my side you get sent to everlasting torture in hell and I'm speaking for angels and mankind alike. See we can't say God didn't know Lucifer would rebel because I'm sure as Catholics we believe God knows the future. Anyway if you have time to respond that be great, because the free will, all knowing, always present, throws me off sometimes and answer to this would really help me grow in my faith. I also get asked this question and I think I get kind of a warped logic about that God Simply IS and you cannot be seperate from God because he simply is Life. So if you rebel against Life/Light/Love itself you damn yourself away from his presence which is all of the above. That's the closest answer I've got for myself but I"m not to sure of it. Could you help me out?

You're very close to the answer, so you've done quite well so far I'd say. This is a difficult question for a lot of people, you're not the only one who has struggled with it (as I'm sure you've realized from people asking you about it).

Let's start with a basic issue. Putting aside whether God knows everything about what we would subjectively perceive as the future, and putting aside HOW He knows, which is vastly more important to the present question, let us assume that He knows Satan (his name is not really Lucifer, he certainly is not the bringer of light) will rebel.

You say you understand the free will bit, but if you truly understood it, why would you expect God to avoid it? Were God to only create those who would not rebel, He is in fact not allowing for free will, but actively stopping those who would exercise that freedom to err from being.

Remember that God really IS, that God's essence is existence itself, and that existence is GOOD. You're on course when you note that you cannot exist without God, the entirety of the universe, everything that is, including Satan, can only exist because God wills for it to exist. And willing for existence, willing for that good of existence, this is Love. Love is willing for the good of another, no matter the cost to one's self. And willing means choice and action, not mere desire. It's not that God just wants good for others, it is that God is actively pursuing and creating good for others, He's even creating the others.

Asking God to avoid creating beings, period, is going to run into problems because it is contrary to this fundamental aspect of His nature. And asking God to avoid creating creatures with genuine, real freedom of choice is asking God to create creatures who cannot will to love Him. Remember that the entire point of Creation is to give us, the Created, a chance to love God, to will for His good, no matter the cost to ourselves, and thus have a relationship with Him, as He wills good for us. If God never gives anyone who rebels a chance, well Kasie, you wouldn't be around. Nor would I. We would never have the chance either.

Of course, you and I are a bit different, after all, we can repent, we can change our minds.

Satan, however, cannot change his mind. Angelic reason is perfected to the point that an angel cannot change his mind, he has already completely and perfectly considered his course of action and its consequences prior to making it. And angels are beings that exist outside of our understanding of time, thus not really giving them time to reconsider or change their course of action. Satan's rebellion then, has no hope of repentance, Satan has chosen, has willed, and will never, ever change his mind.

Should God then have prevented this by not creating him? By not willing for Satan's good? God would not be God in such a case. The problem of evil, the problems of evil, are not remedied by a denial of love in any aspect, not the creative, not the redemptive, not the active. God created, creating is good and part of God's nature, do not ask that He stop. Satan rebelled, and God knew he would. Satan cannot be redeemed because he cannot repent and return to God, but this does not mean that no good can come from him.

God's omnipotence, if it means anything, means that He can turn even evil into good, and this is shown to us most plainly in the Passion of Christ. We can never consider murder, torture, betrayal, abandonment and the other sins of the Passion to be good things. They are all objectively evil acts perpetrated against Christ, in some cases by people who were among His closest and best friends. Yet look at their result. Because of these evils, the greatest good in human history blossomed, and salvation became possible for humanity, and true freedom, which we had not known since the Fall. Christ's murder resulted in our redemption. Christ's obedience to the Father to submit to sinful actions resulted in our chance to obey the Father and break the bondage of sin.

The Passion was Satan's great triumph, it was the leading of Man to reject God yet again, to murder Him, to seek His death, just as he had lured us to seek our deaths in the Garden. The Resurrection is the ultimate end of every triumph of Satan, through death to life, through evil to good, through deception to truth. So it will always be for those who let God into their lives. The Enemy will never win.

As for damnation, let us not pretend that God is damning anyone. God does not damn. We damn. We choose whether we wish to be with God or not in our lives by doing the things we do. If we live a life which radiates love and is filled with Grace because we will for God and communion with Him, then we're choosing Heaven. If we live a life which does not radiate this love, and rejects God because we will for our own desires and pleasures and not for God, then we're choosing to reject Him. In rejecting Him, we reject His good, and His offer of salvation, and thus we demand Hell for ourselves, and it really is a demand. God offers, over and over again, to let us come home, to forgive and heal and love. And we, rather like children, demand to have our own way. Well, the ultimate end and challenge of true freedom in the name of love is that we have to be willing to let people make choices. That's why we cannot just seek to prevent their choices because we know their choices will be wrong. That's not true freedom, and thus it is not true love, love cannot be forced.

It's wholly inaccurate to cast God as the petulant child who stamps His feet and sends us to torment and horrors unspeakable because we won't be His friend. We are the spoiled ones, we're the ones who are obsessed with our addictions, our desires, our whims, even when we're aware that they're not good for us at all, and not good for others either. We're the ones who don't give a damn, and don't care about each other. We're the selfish ones, the petulant ones, the whiny ones. Look around you and you'll see it.

And yet God has given us the chance to be, to live, to know the sheer glory that is life, even in this Fallen state. Would you truly ask Him to rescind such good for any being?