Relativism

I wrote this in the hope of exposing Relativism and a proper understanding of the Natural Law.

FOR THE RELATIVISTS AMONG US, PLEASE CONSIDER THIS ..

We are, of course, not living in a Monarchy where Christ reigns as King, so we make do with what we have been given.

We are witnessing a plague of relativism in America and throughout the world, and it has invaded the hearts and minds of those who call themselves “Catholic.”

I’d like to begin by saying I attended a conference given by a good and holy priest. I sat amazed at how those who embrace the truths of the Church and a perennial philosophy which is at the service of the Church understand each other and express the same things in nearly identical ways. To my mind that is one of the miracles of grace that unites us in the Body of Christ. That is the beauty of objective truth, the beauty of the Church. I went back to things I had written in the past and tried to synchronize mental notes from the conference to what is relevant.

This will be an exposition of relativism. In light of our cultural conditions we are faced with a rather daunting and challenging endeavor, but I hope to provide you with some material for reflection.

I think it is best to first consider responsible citizenship. How do we go about being good citizens and good Catholics at the same time? How are Catholics to vote on major non-negotiable issues in Catholic teaching, issues such as abortion, euthanasia, homosexual marriage, redefining marriage, and all those things on which we simply cannot negotiate as Catholics? We also have issues such as infant stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, and other forms of genetic experimentation that threatens human life. There is simply no room for any compromise on these issues in the Catholic heart and mind, so I will first lay out a case as to how we are to live as good citizens and as Catholics where there is no conflict between the two.

We have to ask ourselves if the plague of relativism so dominant in our culture has impacted our thinking on these issues. After I have expressed numerous considerations I will ask Catholic men and women some questions and your answers will show you whether or not you have been impacted by relativism.

THE CASE FOR A GOOD CITIZEN IN LIGHT OF NATURAL THEOLOGY AND THE MORAL LAW:

The Declaration of Independence states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The Declaration does not state: “We hold these truths to be self-evident according to a religious creed, an interpretation of a religious creed, or according to any form of revealed truth” because these would presuppose faith according to an individual's subjective acceptance of a particular religious creed which is always based upon the acceptance of some version of revealed truth. Therefore, the Declaration does not establish our unalienable rights according to a particular religious creed.

In fact, the Declaration speaks of self-evident truths which stand on their own and inform us directly of what they are without the need of our free will to assent to their being to make them what they are, and it does so without respect to any religious creed. Self-evident truths simply are what they are.

The Declaration speaks of the ‘Creator’ as a self-evident fact through what has been created and the rights we are endowed with from the Creator without respect to any religious creed.

As long as there is no injection or projection of a religious association onto the use of the title Creator or name of God it must therefore be that God and Creator are one and the same because only God can be the creator and only the creator can be God as a self-evident fact. This simple self-evident fact, recognized in the Declaration, does not depend upon and has no association to any particular religious creed.

The government has an obligation to recognize the Creator as does the Declaration without respect to Creed. If this were not the case the Declaration of Independence would itself be a violation of the establishment clause and the separation of church and state because it speaks of God as the Creator as self-evident truth without appealing to any religious creed. No one would be fool enough to say we should toss out the Declaration of Independence. Our response to such an absurdity would be "Don't tread on me!" Therefore, when groups like the ACLU lay out their straw man argument by claiming the recognition of the Creator or God in law and in public life is a violation of the separation of church and state and the establishment clause do not be fooled. The motives, tactics, and agenda of the ACLU, atheists, and other such parasites leeching off the principle of free speech become evident when THEY try to associate religion with the words in the mouths of those who revere God and our founding documents.

Herein lies their deception. The ACLU and atheists are like ventriloquists throwing their voice around to put religious meaning and identification onto the words in the mouths of anyone who dares to speak of God in perfect keeping with the Declaration of Independence. The anti-God crowd does this in an attempt to shut down free speech in public life and to prohibit the government from acknowledging its obligation in law to recognize the Creator. They are plundering our rights as citizens of the United States and they have contempt for the obligation of government to acknowledge the first principle of our constitutional republic which is to acknowledge God. We, as individuals, say to them "Don't put religious meaning onto the words in my mouth. Keep your straw man argument out of my mouth, it is bitter to the taste, bitter in the belly, and bitter to the soul of this nation."

What brought about the false argument which says to acknowledge God violates the establishment clause and the separation of church and state? There are many, but we can look at the primary cause which is a failure to recognize the distinction between the Natural Law conscience and a conscience formed by a religious creed.

The Natural Law defines the parameters of our conscience which is the morality given to us by our Creator enshrined as self-evident facts that are included in the Declaration of Independence which are the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This Natural Law morality is completely independent from any morality based upon a religious perspective or creed.

Man has an obligation to the Natural Law morality which is the basis of our judicial system. The Natural Law conscience and the conscience formed by a religious perspective are as objectively different in nature as oil and water which do not mix though one may confirm the other from a subjective perspective.

The failure to make this distinction has served the secularists well as the catalyst to put forward the prejudiced argument which says morality must be kept out of politics if we are not to violate the establishment clause and the separation of Church and State.

For example, a person cannot be accused of being pro-life because they are religious. The pro-life person can argue their position without appealing to their religious conscience by saying "No, I have a Natural Law conscience and a conscience formed by my religion, but I appeal to my Natural Law conscience in my pro-life position.” Such a person is in good standing because they can appeal directly to the self-evident truth of life as enshrined in the Declaration itself for their pro-life position. Therefore, no one can accuse them of trying to impose a moral perspective regarding life issues based upon a religious perspective.

By trying to identify all morality as being associated with some religious perspective groups like the ACLU have been able to attack the Natural Law morality to create the vacuum of moral relativism which attacks the Natural Law morality of the Declaration of Independence itself.

What then is the folly of the secularist? They proclaim all morality comes from religion failing to see the Natural Law morality enshrined in the Declaration. Hence, we hear their cry that a violation of the establishment clause has occurred at the mere mention of the name of God or Creator at graduation ceremonies and the like. The secularists are in fact the ones who attach a religious association onto the title of Creator and God because they have issues with God. The Declaration of Independence gave birth to the Constitution and usurpers such as the ACLU should not be allowed to use the Constitution to shut down our unalienable rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence for the purpose of shutting down religion in this country. It is time the folly of the ACLU and the atheists be exposed for what it is.

By trying to identify all morality as being associated with some religious perspective they intend to achieve an absolute independence in temporal affairs from all that has to do with God and moral law in the Natural order which comes from God. With their prejudiced reading of the Declaration of Independence they intend to take over God’s role for the purpose not so much of opposing religion but to annihilate religion all together. They are the ones who fail to respect the proper boundaries of the establishment clause and separation of church and state as they grasp at divinity for the purposes of dethroning God in the secular order. They are in fact a god in their own little minds steeped in the cult of self for in their atheism the opiate of the irrational becomes manifest.

THE CASE FOR A CATHOLIC AS A GOOD CITIZEN:

So then, let’s consider what we face. We as Catholics have been confronted in our beliefs directly by the HHS mandate and the question of religious freedom. We are thereby forced to look at how we are to understand what is non negotiable in light of the pressure being exerted on the Catholic Church.
If you are Catholic, and I mean an authentic Catholic, it is this simple: if you see any non-negotiable position on the ballot you must vote against it. If you know the person on the ballot is an advocate for a non-negotiable you cannot vote for them. Why? To support them with your vote puts them into office where they implement policy opposed to church teaching and this makes you, the voter, party to the evil the elected official perpetrates in society and against the church. You would be an accomplice to evil. If there are two candidates who advocate something non-negotiable you must vote for the greater good, meaning you must vote for the one who advocates a more moral society and will perpetrate less evil.

Of necessity we must also look at the question of religious freedom in light of Catholic teaching. We have to consider whether a candidate or a political party threatens religious freedom, so, where do we as Catholics come down on that?

Let’s first go directly to Catholic teaching rather than the political considerations and all the attendant ramifications.

Consider two letters put out by the Bishop’s Council and committees that represent the National Bishop’s Council.

In light of the HHS mandate we have to ask what is behind these attacks on the Catholic Church, and where do these attacks come from? What is the goal of these attacks on the Church?

The goal is to make religion PRIVATE IN PRACTICE, not just in theory. It is the objective of the relativists, and they have bombarded citizens of America with the mantra that religion should be kept private. Those at war with the church want to make that “ipso facto”, and they will not rest until they succeed, if they can. They want to convince us, indeed force us, to think that our religion is to be a private matter. Pope Benedict XVI warned us about this. In fact, he talked about grave threats that come from this pressure being put on the church. Speaking to the Catholic Bishops, Pope Benedict said:

“It is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threat to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres.”

He also said:

“The seriousness of these threats needs to be appreciated at every level of ecclesial life. Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion.”

Interestingly, the Holy Father wrote this the day before the current administration came out with the HHS mandate.

The Holy Father said:

“Many of you have pointed out that concerted efforts have been made to deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices.”

Catholics will now be forced to pay for intrinsically evil practices such as abortion, euthanasia, contraception (which often acts as an abortifacient), sterilization, and other forms of birth control and abortions. Schools in Oregon are now providing permanent sterilization to 15 year old students without the knowledge of their parents as just one example.

To deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions is not only a terrible injustice, it is an attempt to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.

This is a HUGE, HUGE issue for Catholics. Indeed, this is why the Holy Father, after speaking with the Bishops turned to them and said:

“Get to work with your people. You are not going to resolve this alone.”

Speaking to the U.S. Bishops the Holy Father said this:

“Here once more we see the need for an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture and with the courage to counter a reductive secularism which would delegitimize the Church’s participation in public debate about the issues which are determining the future of American society.”

In other words, the real threat from the HHS mandate is for the government to deal with the Church in such a way as to making sure the Church and churchmen do not have a public voice. In a very real sense the government would have us neutered and make us eunuchs for the kingdom of hell on earth, i.e., relativism. The HHS mandate has made the Church ineffective in law to influence morals and standards of life in a country where Christianity represents the majority of the people.

We must therefore look at what is behind the present evil and we will find the culprit known as “reductive secularism”? It means the church and religion have no place in society. It is a movement with a root system of relativism, and we have to be on guard against it creeping into our own lives. In a real sense we Catholics are called to be guardians of society at large.

So let’s look closer at “reductive secularism.” What does it mean? Secular means “of the world”, by definition it is non-religious. Those who buy into secularism want to live only by what is measureable according to the scientific method in life, only what can be gathered by our experience and nothing that has to do with faith, revelation, or God. “Secular” is everything that belongs to us, everything that is man made, everything that we can control, see, and measure (I would recommend ‘Pascendi Dominici Gregis’ on this matter).We see that secular humanism which has been developing for many years is rooted in modernism. Secularism is an entire ideological movement that would replace God with man. No matter how you cut it, THAT is the bottom line.

In secularism man defines himself thinking he has no need for God. For him, God is merely an artifact who gets in the way of man who is content in his self-sufficiency.

What then is “Reductive secularism”? Well, everything in the end is reduced to what is human and everything is a human construct. Societal function is reduced to a man made product at the hands of self made men. Even faith and religion are to be reduced to a man made product which renders it utilitarian while gutting its essence. I would recommend “Lord of the World” by Msgr. Hugh Benson just mentioned by Pope Francis and Pope Benedict as well. Consider what “Utility of Religion” means.

To the secularist, religion is the invention of human imagination because man is the center, man explains everything; man is ALL KNOWING. That is the implication of secular humanism. Leave God undefined so that man defines God, man is god. Anything that can be known, man knows. To the secular man God cannot be known so faith and religion does not fit into his world view. If you reduce something to only one element that one element is the dominant element. That element explains everything and everything comes from and finishes with that element.

For Catholics, Christianity reduces everything to the Word of God through whom God made the universe and through whom God is saving mankind. Our faith can be reduced to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in short, to the Apostles Creed. The secular man tosses all of it out, he will have none of it, in fact he reduces every man to the “ism” of secular humanism.

The secular man rejects authority outside of himself which is directly related to Protestantism which also rejects any authority outside of the Bible. The very nature of Protestantism is relativism at its core. It is a reductionist’s view of spirituality which ultimately reduces Christianity to agnosticism in which nothing of faith can be known with certainty, the proof of which is the tens of thousands of Christian denominations bickering with each other over who is right using the very same text. For each and every claim any one of them makes as to why they are right, and it does not matter what claim they make, the other Protestant can make the same claim, but in the end division remains. Ultimately, in terms of practicality, Protestantism goes beyond agnosticism, it is atheistic as noted by Pope St. Pius X in his famous encyclical “Pascendi Dominci Gregis.”

Let’s look at a couple of other “isms” started by men such as Freud. He reduced everything to sexual instincts where people have perverted sexual experiences early on in life that explain all psychological problems.

Marx brings about Marxism which reduced everything to collectivism claiming that man is a part of the state, and if you don’t think the objectives of Marx are at work in the United States consider this video from the Democratic National Convention where we are told “The government is the only thing we all belong to.”

Considering that Marxism is alive and well in many politicians in the US, to Karl Marx, the state is the ultimate reality, that’s why Marx said “religion is the opiate of the people.” Behind the deceiving “gentle smiles” and even big, disrespectful, sneering white smiles of iron teeth during a debate you will find the attempt to reduce religion to utility by statesmen claiming they cannot impose their moral views on others. Consider the case above regarding responsible citizenship and do not let liberals tell you that you are bringing religion into the discussion when you maintain the laws of morality enshrined in the Declaration itself.

Where then does secularism come from? The basic point is to say that secularism comes from the philosophical rejection of something that we all know. It is the philosophical rejection of the fact that you can know objective truth with certainty.

Secularists have decided that no one is allowed to say that man can know objective truth, except that “objective truth” of course. They always love to allow exceptions for themselves which bespeaks their arrogance. From the beginning of time until the day of the secularist it was universally known that knowledge of objective truth is natural to human understanding. As an example, we know the Greeks celebrated for weeks the discovery of an absolute in math, say, in Math.

Secularists, however, are merely men full of themselves. They are actually small minded men who decided to push their ideas in a more serious way through modernism which came about from rejecting God. This produced a wanting world steeped in sin and guilt, yet unwilling to repent in its arrogance. Men like DesCarte, Kant, Hegel, and others developed the very destructive and quite insane view that truth originates within man, and not outside of man. If you consider the modernistic re-evaluation of how we know things, if truth begins and ends in man subjectively, how can you know that your truth is the same as my truth? The secularist, therefore, says we can no longer go about saying there is just “one truth.”

Well, the first simple and fundamental contradiction in their puerile view is this: the moment they say to anyone there is no truth that is absolute for all men they are in fact saying THAT IS TRUE FOR ALL MEN. Right out of the gate they stumble on the contradiction of their own absurdity. If they wish to say there is no right or wrong they are saying THEY ARE RIGHT TO ALL MEN, and once again they stumble. If they say there is no good or bad they are saying IT IS GOOD FOR ALL MEN TO KNOW IT, else-wise they would not be saying such a thing which is supposed to be for our benefit. If they wish to tell us we cannot know truth with certainty they are saying THEY ARE CERTAIN ABOUT THAT RUTH FOR ALL MEN, which once again reveals a fundamental contradiction in everything they have to say about truth. They operate in the web of ego, delusion, and in the vein of that which is insane.

Modernists’ craft a society in which each man is to live in his own bubble, but this does not make for a bubble bath, it makes for a bludgeoning. Consider the societal prison they create for themselves and others. If you are to live in your own little isolated world view and you want to know reality around you but you are trapped in your own little mental prison you have constructed, all the things outside of your delusion, and all the people outside of your “splendid isolation,” you can know them only according to your own subjective “truth.” You are not willing to break outside of your little prison because your ego defines truth. Outside of your ego prison someone else has their own little mental prison where they get to define truth, so you are cut off from each other, and results in something we refer to as “solipsism” which is from two Latin words, ”soli” and “psism”, it means “yourself” and “alone.” That is the sad and sinister reality of relativism and that is what we have come to in this country and beyond.

I would now refer to you something Pope Benedict XVI said which is an extraordinary statement. He said the following in the homily he gave when all of the cardinals were going into the conclave just before he was elected pope. He had no idea at this point that he was going to be elected pope. He said:

“How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades? How many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking?”

He was talking about all the “isms”.

“The small boat of thought, the thought of many Christians, has often been tossed about by these waves from one extreme to another, from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14).”

To summarize, all these “isms”, including Protestant”ism”, are different ways to manipulate thought. It is to manipulate peoples’ way of thinking to create new trends, new groups, and new religions.

The Holy Father goes on to say:

"Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a FUNDAMENTALISM (emphasis added), whereas relativism - is letting oneself be tossed and "swept along by every wind of teaching".

That is an outright condemnation of religious relativism found in the concept that the Bible is the only authority.

Consider, I mean really consider, what relativism actually says to you: Your truth is relative to you, my truth is relative to me, and there is no absolute truth outside of us that we can know. That’s relativism, and the Holy Father says relativism, that is, by letting oneself be tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine, each person defines one understanding of church one way over here, another way there, another understanding of church for each individual over there, where one person interprets scripture one way and other person another way. That is in FACT why we have over 40,000 different Christian denominations, and it goes further than that. As many people as there are in the tens of thousands of denominations, each person is potentially another denomination because what they hold themselves bound to in belief today they are free to reject tomorrow because they accept no authority outside of Scripture as the measure of THEM. They actually attack the Bible because they have embraced reductionist relativism at the core of their attempts to understand Scripture correctly, definitively, and with authority, which they can never do as evidenced by the 40,000 + Christian denominations. And this is a debate that we must finally have if we are ever to become solid as a Nation under God.

Speaking of modern man the Holy Father said relativism:

“… Looks like the only attitude which is acceptable in today's standards.”

What an interesting statement! Relativism is the only acceptable attitude in modern times, the only attitude that can cope with modern times. So let’s ask what that means for Catholics.

If you are not speaking, acting, and behaving according to relativism which is now the only acceptable manner of “being accepted”, simply put, you are not going to get along with the world, and many people in the world. When you speak up and say things like “I am against gay marriage’ you will be told that “You are being intolerant”. You will get pushed right into a corner, and you will be condemned because you are trying to impose your own beliefs from your own little bubble onto somebody else. American culture in our day will not let you cross that barrier because that other person has their own little world of beliefs. In a world of relativism everyone has their own views and they need to be left free to live according to those beliefs. Well that insane thinking opens Pandora’s box to all manner of vile and unspeakable evil which we see perpetrated and even defended in a world gone awry. The secularist insists that everyone needs to be free to live according to their piccalillis, but Pope Benedict told us this:

“We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires.”

Why is that? Because if you are in your own little world what is your objective in life, what becomes of your life? It is “only” and “lonely” to satisfy yourself. In fact, the real genesis of this is much deeper, so let’s see if we can capture it.

What is the problem with relativism? The problem is that if we believe there is nothing that can be known as absolutely true, that all truth is relative, what happens to dogma and morals? Dogma is what we believe as Catholics, like the Creed of the Church which is a profession of faith. It is what Jesus taught and the Church continues to teach down to this day. What becomes of the moral compass that guides us in how we are to live our life? If we abandon morals not only do we cut ourselves off from other people, we cut ourselves off from being able to teach others, there can be no authoritative teaching because each person has their own world view. If you embrace relativism, who are you to be so presumptuous as to teach anyone anything with any authority? And what of parents paying college tuition, do they want equal outcome so that when their child graduates they will hear them utter the mantra “I cannot know anything but my own truth?” Good luck with that, Charlie.

If you abandon morals as a Catholic man, if you succumb to a world that says you cannot speak about moral objectivity, or matters pertaining to faith, what has become of your manliness? If you yield you have been emasculated by relativism. If you succumb to the idea that you cannot speak to anyone about morality because you now believe your views are no better than the moral views of anyone else, by what right do you claim to be offended by anything, by what right do you claim to be Catholic?

If you do not hold to the fact that morality as taught by nature, and by the Church, come from something greater than yourself because everyone lives in a different moral mental prison, you have been emasculated indeed, and you have become selfish. That is in fact what the Holy Father said of relativism:

“The ultimate goal of relativism consists of one’s own ego and desires.”

In fact, if you embrace reductionist relativism you cannot really live for others. In order to live for others you have to be able to enter into a relationship with others. To live with others you have to be able to share your thoughts, your ideas, and truth with them, but you are cut off by relativism thereby frustrating the very nature of relationships. It is no wonder the world of politics which is so deeply rooted in relativism in our day has brought so much destruction to society, starting with the family, into the cesspool with it, for that is where relativists congregate. And so it was when 54% of Catholics in name voted for the most radical pro-abortion president in the last election.

No, a decent man has to be able to share his very self with others. He’s got to be able to share what is good, and you’ve got to be able to tell others what you know to be good without being shut down by political correctness and the charge of hate speech for holding to objective morality.

We see clearly that this concept of solipsism can only lead to self. It’s all you are left with if you embrace relativism. You have become a shell trapped in your own bubble.

Catholic men must come to terms with a few things here. If you are going to call yourself Catholic you know that absolute truth exists. In fact, you can demonstrate that absolute truth exists which means there is reality outside of those trapped in their mental constructs of confinement. If they reach out from their “splendid isolation”, once they hit bottom, you must try to help them come out into the world of reality.

What they need to know is that truth exists independently from them without their need of affirmation for it to exist. That also means that truth has a source which brings us to the author of truth. And with the acknowledgment of truth we come to meet the reality of authority. God not only gives us truth, but he can and does communicate that truth to us as to how we are to live our lives which is what we call morality. Morality comes to us in two ways, from the Natural Law which God embedded into our very being and by means of Revealed Truth and we must keep this in mind when we vote.

When you look at why people live in their relativistic isolationism the reasons are myriad, but at the root of it all you are faced with the fall of man. Like our first parents, there was an unwillingness to yield to authority, in fact, they rebelled against it. If you refuse authority over you, you are your own authority destined to be on a collision course with others. Remember, God told man not to do a certain thing and our first parents said “but I want to.” That was their sin. And in rebelling against God they created the first bubbles to live in where they let themselves be convinced it was a place they could live with their own truth. The consequences of their sin did not stop there. Once you rebel against God you will most certainly rebel against other individuals. It was at this point the difficulties that can arise within marriage and family life had its start. From there, rebellion is passed down to us all.

All Catholics must understand that to be authentically Catholic you MUST give assent in heart and mind to the definitive teachings of the Church. The Church teaches the Most Holy Trinity IS three persons in one God, and we accept. The Church teaches Jesus is both God and man, and we accept.

We say “I believe, I submit my mind, heart, and will to this belief”, but not without reason as St. Peter said in 1st Peter 3:15 “Be ready with a REASON for the hope within you.” We give submission to what has been revealed and we live by it.

So then, are we to respect all persons? Of course! Are we to respect all religions as being of equal value? Of course NOT! If you chafe at that, if you think you must respect all religions as being equal to Catholicism you have been deceived and are caught in the snare of relativism. You have embraced the notion that all religions are of equal value which is EXACTLY where the secular humanists wanted to get you, and they have gotten you. You have been emasculated.

In fact, on July 10, 2007, Pope Benedict issued a statement clarifying the Catholic Church’s position on “the church.” He stated the Catholic Church is the only true church. The Pope said that Protestant communities:

“Cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called ‘Churches’ in the proper sense,”1 because they lack apostolic succession, that is, the ability to trace their leadership back to Christ’s original disciples.”

That was a body slam to all the denominational communities and a warning to get back in line with the only Church established by Jesus Christ himself. There was the cry of “Foul” from the Protestants for sure, but good on the Pope. It’s about time it was said.

If you believe in relativism, if you think it gives you unlimited license to express, and do, and believe whatever you want to the full, your destiny is that of solipsism with the likelihood that Satan will claim you for himself at the end of your life. He would have you plunge into hell from the gravity of your own unrepentant sin.

Consider how obvious this is in practicality. When parents teach their children that truth is knowable and morals are their friend they bring up good children because they don’t believe in solipsism. If as a parent, however, you must respect everybody’s views regardless of what they are, why teach your children the faith at all if you must also teach them that all religions are the same and of equal value?

Why teach them any morals or politeness at all? Let them develop their own belief, let them revel in lack of discipline and temper tantrums. This kind of madness became a method of experimentation when some parents actually decided not to teach their children the faith in the mindless hope that their children would discover the faith on their own, as though children don’t need to be taught anything. Just what do you think that does to the Gospel admonition to proclaim the faith which comes to us through hearing? It brings shipwreck to the faith.

Let’s get to the bottom line. Solipsism leads to two things. First, as a philosophy of thought it has to do with philosophical relativism in that it rejects absolute truth, and in so doing it rejects absolutes in morality, hence, the birth of moral relativism.

If you don’t believe truth can be known, if you don’t believe you can know the earth is round or flat in any way, you can’t know if God exists, or if another person is running or standing still because you can’t know anything with certainty. The foolishness, the insanity of relativism, is patently absurd on its face. If you persist in claiming you cannot know absolute truth then you certainly cannot know morals, you cannot know how to live.

The unlimited pluralism rooted in reductionist relativism applied to society describes our attitudes towards society and towards the beliefs and positions of other people. This has resulted in a pluralism that tears down rather than building up society.

The relativist is a very small minded man. He is a man who lives only for self and in the end he can love only self and that is what narcissism is all about. Your whole life is about loving yourself, your own world, your own values, and all of that self centered rubbish.

They can live cut off from the real world, isolated, but they don’t really like being there because it leads them to despair and something called nihilism. And this is more problematic. A person who finds themselves in nihilism is more deserving of pity because he cannot make sense of the world, he finds no meaning in life, no purpose, no real happiness, that there is nothing, and this is all a waste of time ending up in despair. He lives only for self and everything else is merely a function of self in his own self constructed prison of despair.

Now, as a Catholic man or woman, after having read the above, you may say you would never fall into relativism, and I said at the outset that I would ask you some questions to see if you have been infected by relativism. So then, I will ask you some questions.

• How often do you share your faith with other people because you know it to be absolutely true and what they need?

• How often do you hesitate to share your faith because you don’t want to impose your views on someone else because you are going to be accused of not being tolerant?

• Do you hesitate to share your views because you think that is not what real men do?

• Do you think that real men consider sharing your faith is the job of women to do?

• Do you think it makes you less of a man to share your faith in the eyes of men who are of the world?

• Do you want to talk only of sports sitting around a campfire after having slopped down the booze and eaten baked beans convincing each other of how tough you are?

• Do you think sharing your faith makes you vulnerable because you may show emotion and passion, and men are not supposed to show emotion and passion for their faith lest you be emasculated?

• How often do you share your moral views when you know someone who is going to do something immoral?

• Do you laugh at the immoral joke just to be acceptable, because you are cowardly to stand up for decency and for Christ?

• Do you participate in the joke or do you challenge it in a respectful way?

• Do you use the Lord’s name in vain? If all religions are of equal value, why do you not use the name of some other religious leader when you get angry? And why is it that people of all other religions only use the name of Jesus when they curse? Are you willing to ask that question of others when you hear them use the Lord’s name in vain?

• Do you think you should tell a woman not to have an abortion?

• Do you find yourself saying you don’t want to be judgmental and you end up not saying anything when you know you should?

Considering the above you now know that many Catholics have come to a place of, and are advocates of, relativism not even being aware of when or how they got there.

Yes, you always have to respect the very person of everyone, but you DO NOT, YOU CANNOT, YOU MUST NOT, respect what is NOT TRUE because what is not true in the lives of others is dragging them down and can land them in hell.

How many times do you hear people tell us the church teaches we are not to judge others? Let’s get it right. The Church only says we cannot judge the motives of another persons’ heart because they may live in incredible ignorance, nor can we judge their eternal destiny, but SURELY we can and must judge whether or not their actions are objectively good or bad. In fact we can and MUST judge their words and actions as good or bad depending on what they say and/or do, abortion being just one instance.

In charity, without a scintilla of compromise, we must be mindful that some people have not received the fullness of what we have received and they find themselves in a truly frightening position.

Therefore, the task for Catholics is in how we are to teach others, how do we confront them, how do we motivate them, how to we get them to open themselves up to truth which at present they may be very opposed to? We have to try to find a way to reach their heart.

The founding fathers would turn over in their graves if they saw that freedom of religion in the 1st amendment was now being used against basic family morals and decency in what was meant to be a moral civilization. The fact is there is no such thing as a private sin. Whenever we sin everyone is affected because the sin and its effects are in fact communicated to others either directly or indirectly. It’s the nature of sin.

Our countrymen are telling us that we are individuals, and as such each one of us has to seek our own happiness and define for ourselves what happiness is. Well, the church is not about to impose on anybody the perfect idea of happiness, but what the church will do is reveal certain truths that will help us all find our own path, but the right kind of path to happiness. Isn’t it interesting that in the end it all comes down to authority?

The Holy Father is telling us to wake up and be careful because this secular world wants to cut us off from God. Secularism cuts us off from authority and in so doing it cuts us off from each other.

To conclude, naturally speaking, man does not want to live alone, but in our day many men lack the courage to live according to dogma because dogma has a connection to revealed truth, and the cowardly, along with the nefarious, want to redefine religion to be something of utility.

We live in a day when 1 in 6 people no longer consider themselves religious, but they consider themselves to be spiritual as they distance themselves from creed, doctrine, and denomination. Underway is an attempt to redefine spirituality void of doctrine, and the relativist must be exposed in this treasonous act before God and man.

There is now a failure to make a distinction between the Natural Law which is in every man and that which is of the nature of Revealed Truth. In his the natural attempt to get along with each other, the relativist does want to live in isolation because it is not natural to man, so he is willing to go forward with others only by what he has in common with them. Here he meets frustration once again because he has nothing absolute in common with other men according to his own view of reality. He should be willing for forego that because he simply cannot be alone in life, and this should be very revealing to him if he will only let this fact speak to him about objective reality.

By elevating the Natural Law to the level of religion the relativist would usurp and shut down the right of Christ’s to speak to the world through the Church. They tell us the Natural Law is the new face of God, that it is the grand and ultimate mosaic of revelation. However, in reality, this is nothing more than the evil of syncretism which says that all religions have something in common, that all religions are of equal value, none is better or worse, true or false, in this new definition of what it means to be spiritual.

What they fail to understand is this: the Natural Law is made in the image and likeness of the 10 Commandments, but the Natural Law is not of the nature of Revealed Truth. The 10 Commandments are of the nature of Revealed Truth because they were given to us by God by means of Revelation.

However, just like man is made in the image of God, he is not made in the SUBSTANCE of God, so too, the Natural Law is made in the image and likeness of Revelation, but it is not the SUBSTANCE of Revealed Truth. The relativist would elevate the Natural Law to a place where it becomes a substitute for religion based on authentic revelation which in the end says the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary is of no more benefit than a person into reincarnation attempting to self-redeem in Karma and the wheel of rebirth.

In those times and places where men are bereft of more explicit knowledge of Revelation man is not bereft of what it means to live a decent life according to the moral norms of the Natural Law. Don’t let the deception of those who claim to be spiritual and non-denominational apart from the Church that Christ established take you in. If you get rid of objective authority in your life you bring it all down to one common denominator which is relativism.

Wherever you go the Catholic Church teaches the same dogma and morals throughout regardless of culture and time throughout the world. But keep this in mind, if you do not submit and subscribe to relativism you will be called a “Fundamentalist” Catholic. Do not let it disturb or deter you.
Be Catholic through and through.

Roger L.

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