The Logic of the Culture of Death
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By Jim J. McCrea
The term "Culture of death," coined by Pope John Paul II has an
obvious meaning. There is death by abortion and euthanasia. There is death by
AIDS, fueled in a large part by sexual immorality. We have school shootings
because moral values are no longer taught to many students (you have the
right to construct your own moral reality as the U.S. supreme court
decided in Casey vs. Planned Parenthood).
There is, however, a deeper meaning to the term "Culture of death." When a
human dies, the integrating and life giving principle, called the soul, leaves
the body. Nothing is left, therefore, to co-ordinate the actions of the
individual cells. The process of decomposition of the body after death, is
simply the individual cells each going their own ways. The philosophers have
said that a corpse is not a true body but a congeries of bodies. There is no
true unity so there is no longer a single being - better said, there is a
multitude of beings in a heap in the approximate form of a human body. It
is the same way with society. A society is dead when it is no longer united with
its "soul" or unifying principle, which is God. Each person goes his or her own
way, in the name of "freedom." But it is the freedom of the cells of
a corpse.
The moral law given by God, and written in nature, is not an arbitrary set
of rules, but rules determining the proper functioning of the human person, so
that all component parts within the person work in harmony, and all persons work
in harmony with each other. To follow the moral law as laid down by
God, brings peace into the individual and society. Those, agitated by the
idea of "progress" and working to destroy traditional morality are simply
putting society and everyone in it on a path of perpetual warfare, tormented
discord, and ultimately destruction.
The rejection of the moral law is an echoing of Lucifer's "non-serviam"
once again, in which individuals wish to be their own gods. The specific horror
of hell is that not only is each person there vying to be number one god, but
each faculty within each person is striving to be god as well. This striving for
godhood, in hell, goes right down to the atomic level. The fire of hell is
simply random agitation on the atomic level as each atom wishes to be its
own god without being integrated into the whole. The result of this complete
disunity is eternal chaos and torment. This is why hell is an eternal and living
death.
Heaven, which is eternal peace and rest, comes about when everything and
everyone is united to God who is infinitely simple and unified, so that
everything is animated from a Single Principle, around which it is
organized, in order that everything be harmonized. Happiness is the abiding
in harmony. Since the harmony of heaven is infinite, the happiness there is
likewise infinite.
"Progressives" who agitate for a rejection of the traditional Christian
moral law, say that they are doing so in the name of freedom. Something is only
free, however, when it acts according to its nature. The more something is
united to God, the freer it is, because God is the very cause of its being. To
be perfectly united to God would not, therefore, be like being tethered to a
Jupiter, which would of course be bondage. To attempt to be free by being
separated from God is to be simply enslaved to randomizing forces, and in the
case of man, to his lower nature (even though it may feel good initially).
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