Cattle Point

There is something about the seashore that entrances me. The rhythmic lapping of the waves, the salty tang of the air, the sheer weight and power of the ocean, the knowledge that in the depths a world entirely alien to me teems with life, it's all so beautiful and strange. I was disappointed that today was cloudy, but even so Cattle Point, a rather wild place, was still beautiful. Beauty is everywhere, but it's easier for me to see in some places than others. It's my belief that when we perceive beauty we are perceiving God directly. It's not the things themselves that are God, but the beauty itself. That's why I think it's important to cultivate our sense of beauty. The things we see register through our senses, but it is our souls that recognizes beauty.

I am what's called a cradle Catholic, having been raised in a strongly Catholic home. Like most young people I went through a phase of skepticism before coming to the realization that the Church has mankinds deepest, most profound and thorough body of thought on morality, ethics, and the relationship we mortals have with eternity. If I had paid more attention to it I might have avoided some of the serious damage I have caused in my life. So when I hear of the likes of the New York Times, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins lecturing the Pope on morality, I am understandably disturbed. Hitchens and Dawkins want to arrest him, and I suppose their next step would be to put the rest of us Catholics in reeducation camps. The provocation du jour changes from time to time, but the technique of exaggeration, outright lies and misinformation, and above all the mindless, visceral anti catholic bigotry remains the same.

Do Catholics, even priests and nuns who take vows to serve Christ's flock, sometimes violate the moral teachings of the Church and commit grievous sins? Of course. It's just as the Church teaches- we are all fallible, we are all inclined to commit grievous offences. I am just as disturbed as anyone by prominent people who call themselves Catholic- Nancy Pelosi would be a good example- and then turn around and do their utmost to promote laws that allow the killing of babies. It is despicable for a person entrusted with the priesthood to deliberately corrupt a child, but the 50 million abortion deaths in the US since Roe vs Wade is monstrous. And keep in mind that the Church is reviled by the New York Times both for having a culture of permissiveness regarding child abuse (which it doesn't) and for opposing 'a woman's right to choose.' (a euphemism for killing unborn children) In fact the Church has been opposed to abortion since the days of the apostles when Christians routinely rescued unwanted children from dunghills where they were left for dogs and vultures to eat. It is part and parcel of the fundamental reverence for life taught by all the Church teachers and thinkers to condemn such practices. One of the most enduring Christian images is of Mary and the infant Jesus, a favourite subject of all the great artists in our tradition. The family, the child, no matter how humble is precious to the Church.

If Hitchens and Dawkins called for the arrest of the executive of Planned Parenthood and Nancy Pelosi as enablers for the holocaust of our children it would be understandable.

But still, I would say that the remarkable ignorance of the general public, and even most Catholics, regarding the teachings and insights of the Church is largely the Church's fault. With all the possibilities of the media that have come into existence in the last century it has failed to realize that the pulpit no longer has the power to influence it once had. Movies, radio, TV, and now the internet present huge opportunities which the Church has been slow to utilize. But one could go all the way back to the 16th century when the printing press came into use. From then on the Church lost its monopoly on the dissemination of Christian doctrine because more and more people could read the bible, often newly translated into the vernacular, for themselves and make up their own minds. A new class of interpreters came forward, like Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley and many more who led movements in different directions. For opportunists like Henry VIII they provided all the excuse he needed to seize the Church's considerable wealth.

The inability of the Church to communicate its message continues today to the point where it has become almost incomprehensible to the modern mind. What does the public, even the Catholic public, understand about the meaning of concepts like sin, grace, free will, penance, salvation? Why does the Church insist that Jesus was literally the son of God? Is Hitchens even remotely familiar with these ideas? He shows very little sign of it, and how can he disagree with something when he doesn't know what he's disagreeing about?

As for Dawkins, his claim to fame rests in his books on the primacy of the genetic code to explain the creation of life. No room for God in his thinking. And there is nothing in the logic of the genetic code to make concepts like morality meaningful. His selfish gene is only concerned with its continuance, nothing else. And if that's the case, how can Dawkins condemn any actions by anyone since they are all predetermined by DNA- by his own theology, the DNA is always right. The fact that he has yet to follow his own logic this far doesn't say much for his intelligence.

It seems to me that the New York Times, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins should try out a time honoured Catholic technique called an examination of conscience. That's where a person goes off by himself and thinks through his beliefs and actions in the light of the ten commandments, among other Christian orthodoxies. Of those commandments, the one about bearing false witness would seem to be especially appropriate.

Reena Virk's birthday

I was intending to write a pleasant piece today about fishing for herring off the Craigflower Bridge, but whenever I stop to admire the beauty of the Gorge Waterway, I can't help thinking of Reena Virk.

Last Wednesday, March 10, would have been her 27th birthday. Unfortunately, she didn't make it to her 15th birthday, as she was brutally murdered by her middle class schoolmates in November 1997.

It happened right under the Craigflower Bridge where the folks in the picture are standing with their fishing lines in the water. The school she and her killers went to is just upstream from the bridge. All this beauty, the bucolic setting of the Gorge Water meant nothing to these products of our wonderful education system. Where did the boiling rage, the seething hatred, the indifference come from?

Could it be that modern society's rejection of the traditional morality we were taught when we were a Christian nation have something to do with it? One of the bedrock principles of Christian belief is that every human being is loved by God, and so to kill a person is a kind of blasphemy against God. We have strayed so far from that principle in the last half century that I think it's no wonder at all that those adolescent savages turned on one of their own like rabid dogs.

I believe the turning point was the Roe vs Wade decision in the US Supreme Court which made it a human right for a mother to kill her child. It was a lead that every Western nation followed. No need to go into the legalisms. It was a judgement desired by certain powerful elements in American society and so the English language was tortured and contorted until the right answer came out.

As is well accepted since Darwin's time human beings are classed as mammals. The word mammal refers to breasts, as mammals feed their young on milk produced by breasts. This means that instead of laying eggs and dying like salmon do, mammals nurture and protect their young until they are ready to look after themselves. And mammals are supposed to have a maternal instinct.

But the intellectualoids decided, as is their wont, to abolish that instinct. The world is too crowded, they reason, humans are destroying the earth. Bright idea! Let's talk young girls into killing their own babies. Let's change those outmoded laws, let's write articles and books, make movies and TV shows. And here's how we do it. We tempt people with sex. Everybody likes sex, it's like sugar, you can never get enough of it. Everybody always wants more. So many pretty girls, so many virile young men. Abolish the old morality. It's all right to 'hook up' just for the pleasure of it. No need anymore for getting married and getting stuck with one person your whole life. Have sex with whoever you want, at any time anywhere, it's just the funnest thing. Consequences? What consequences? Oh, yes, the baby thing. Easy. You just kill it. Problem solved.

So how can those young people be blamed for indulging their blood lust? We all have it in us. And if the pleasure is the only thing that matters in sex, why shouldn't they be able to indulge this other pleasure? If the only thing that matters about another person is the pleasure he can give you, then why should it be wrong to get pleasure from killing? If it's all right to kill an unborn child, doesn't that mean that lives are disposable, anyway? It took thousands of years of moral teaching to curb our primordial passions so we could function in large societies. It took one generation of idiots to cancel it. This is where it's got us.

Life is cheap now. People get more upset about puppy dogs than they do about our systematic baby killing. Maybe this was one of the lessons these young people learned at school. I happen to know that there was an abortuary adjacent to Shoreline School where these kids would have known about it, seen it every day. What more evidence do they need that to our modern culture life is no longer sacred. I don't know if it's still there, and I didn't figure out what it was until some time after I had occasion to visit the premises. That was several years ago but I still remember the smell. I have worked in hospitals and know the smell of blood and death, but this was something different. I can still smell it sometimes. What a handy place for it, right next to a school. Just like the tattoo parlour right next to Vic High in Fernwood.

I think future generations are going to look back on our age with horror. How could we have done this thing? With the example of Hitler's Final Solution to instruct us, it turns out we have have learned nothing.

The memory of Reena Virk has a way of intruding on my perception of this beautiful waterway. It's almost always calm and serene. Did any of Reena's tormenters live in one of those fancy houses lining the hills? I often wonder about that.