The Dictatorship of
Relativism
By Most Reverend Robert C. Morlino – Bishop of Madison
National Catholic Prayer Breakfast
April 7, 2006
Since I was asked to
address the topic "The Dictatorship of Relativism" it behooves me to
return to the original text from which that very important phrase
emanated. In his homily at the mass "Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice"
celebrated in St. Peters Archbasilica on April 18th, 2005, the then
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, spoke as follows:
"whereas relativism,
that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by
every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with
modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does
not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal
consists solely of one's own ego and desires. We, however, have a
different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of
true humanism."
In the space of just a
few sentences, Pope Benedict connects the dots in terms of
relativism as a divorce from God and friendship with Christ, and
truth as attained in the most fully human way, only within the
context of this friendship. Thus, Pope Benedict takes us back to the
insights of the encyclical, Fides et Ratio of John Paul the Great –
the desire written by the Creator in every human heart for the truth
and for the fullness of love, can only be satisfied in Christ.
Those among you who know
me will not find it surprising that my remarks this morning express
three points. First I would like to, unpack, if you will, the
metaphor of the then Cardinal Ratzinger, articulated as "The
Dictatorship of Relativism". I would note that just this past
January, Pope Benedict spoke of policies which promote contraception
and abortion as "a dogma of hedonism" which opens the door to the
culture of death. The second comment regarding a dogma of hedonism
leading to a culture of death certainly explicates the metaphor
"Dictatorship of Relativism" as we shall see.
The first question we
might ask as we unpack the metaphor "the Dictatorship of Relativism"
is "Who are the members of the junta who govern this dictatorship?"
As one who is called to Holy Orders, and thus to refrain even from
the appearance of offering partisan political comments, it would be
best for me to refrain from naming the key players. However, we all
know that the mass media are generally accomplices to those who
govern the Dictatorship of Relativism; they are generally not
innocent bystanders or detached journalists who report in an
objective way – willing cooperators in this dictatorship are also
those who live their lives according to polling results, frequently
sponsored by the mass media.
We might also ask "What
are the principal enforcement mechanisms of the Dictatorship of
Relativism, what weapons are contained in the arsenal of these
dictators?" The first is inconsistency in civil law and practice,
inconsistency being just another instance of relativism. This
inconsistency is especially neuralgic because the civil law is our
teacher. We have the very same individuals protesting against
warrantless surveillance of possible terrorists' activities, and
then in the northwest, affirming warrantless surveillance of
people's garbage containers to ensure that no recyclables are to be
found. On the one hand warrantless surveillance with regard to
possible terrorism is politically incorrect while warrantless
surveillance of personal garbage is politically correct. The polls
determine what is politically correct and thus the same people find
themselves caught in a clear inconsistency in the context of a
culture which never even thinks to question it. Polls rarely divulge
information which reaches beyond the trivial and transitory but
truth is neither trivial nor transitory. Those who claim otherwise
promote the Dictatorship of Relativism.
A second example of this
inconsistency has to do with killing of a mother who is carrying a
child. In certain instances the murderer is charged with the death
of two human beings, both mother and child. However, if a woman
exercises her alleged reproductive rights and has an abortion, the
law clearly determines that no crime of murder has been committed.
Thus, a human life is precious when someone thinks it is, be it a
parent or be it a civil court, and when that life is deemed not to
be human or otherwise be without value, then it is expendable. This
kind of gross inconsistency is not questioned in our society but is
taken for granted with serenity, sad to say.
In addition to
inconsistency in the civil law and practice, the second weapon in
the arsenal of those who would dictate relativism to the rest of us
consists in a series of linguistic redefinitions, euphemisms, and
other anomalies. Language, as the philosopher Heidegger said, "is
the house of being". If our language is contorted and deconstructed
through euphemisms, redefinitions and other anomalies then, the
being housed by language becomes indeterminate, there are no fixed
meanings, that is relativism pushed to its pinnacle, nihilism
itself. Allow me to take a brief excursion into these redefinitions,
euphemisms, and anomalies.
In the first case, our
society speaks of openness and tolerance as almost supreme virtues
but to be open means precisely to be closed to the objective truth.
If one would claim the existence of objective truth, one is
considered closed and arrogant, rather than open and tolerant. So go
the language games. The euphemistic approach is perhaps best
captured by the words "late-term abortion." This term covers up the
fact that a partially born human being is brutally murdered in the
process of being born. It is always interesting to hear the
commentators talk about late-term abortions, adding that these are
sometimes called partial-birth abortions by anti-abortion activists.
If one were to watch a video of this procedure taking place would
one more likely describe it as a late-term abortion or a
partial-birth abortion?
We also have the
euphemism – discard, used when speaking of the fate of frozen
embryos which are "superfluous" and "left-over" as part of the
process of in-vitro fertilization. We never speak of the destruction
of innocent human beings whose fate has become absurd and who are
completely under the domination of other human beings. We say that
these human beings are discarded, like the one last sticky note on
our notepad that might just as soon be discarded, as we take out a
fresh pad for our use. There are many language games being played.
Supreme Court justices we're told, should be uniters not dividers,
when it comes to Roe v. Wade. How ironic, since Roe v. Wade has
become our great source of division. Now to be a uniter means to
uphold that which divided us in the first place.
Pro-choice. I've never
heard anyone defend a pro-choice position with regard to bank
robbery. The only time this expression is used without reference to
what we're pro-choice about is when the most innocent and helpless
human being is at stake. Pro-choice is synonymous with pro- abortion
because no one speaks of pro-choice in any other context. Pro-choice
is a euphemism that causes us to forget the baby.
The word "transparency"
it seems to me, is being used so that we no longer even hear the
word "truth" in our public dialogue and conversation. We already
have a very good word for transparency: truth and truthfulness. Why
is it the agenda of some to rid our language of the usage of the
word, truth? Talk about the Dictatorship of Relativism! When the
term "prochoice" won the day in our cultural, linguistic usage we
temporarily lost the battle to protect the most innocent and most
helpless human lives. Language games, euphemisms, redefinitions are
very dangerous. We are at the point where, because of in-vitro
fertilization, surrogate motherhood and what flows from that, we are
no longer sure what the words "father" and "mother" mean. In some
cases, there is the genetic mother, the gestational mother, and the
mother who actually raises the child to adulthood. There are at
least three mothers. When we move to the redefinition of marriage,
as including other options than "one husband – one wife – one
lifetime – with openness to children", we find ourselves in very
troubling waters indeed. The Dictatorship of Relativism gains
strength from the outrageous manipulation of language, and if we are
to overcome this dictatorship with true democracy, we're going to
have to regain control of the use of language so as to point to the
objective truth. Certain Catholic legislators recently received a
correction from our Bishops' Conference when they attempted to
promote a redefinition of primacy of conscience as a line item veto
with regard to elements of the Ten Commandments and the teachings of
the Church, another example of surrender to the Dictatorship of
Relativism.
Let me move on to the
second point which, thank God, can be made more briefly. The
opposite of dictatorship is democracy. The Dictatorship of
Relativism leads to secularism as a state imposed religion. Only in
the context of relativism and deconstructionalism can secularism
flourish. Religions, generally, make claims to objective truth. To
impose secularism as the state religion one must rule out as
outrageous the concept of objective truth, which is precisely what
the Dictatorship of Relativism seeks to accomplish. Opposition to
the Dictatorship of Relativism involves the right relationship of
church and state as taught by the Second Vatican Council and
repeated by Pope Benedict XVI in his recent encyclical Deus Caritas
Est – God is Love. The relationship between church and state
involves three simple rules. First, the state is never to force
anyone to practice a particular religion. Secondly, the state is
never to prevent anyone from practicing a particular religion. And
third, generally the state should favor the practice of religion,
because religious experience includes a moral code according to
which people restrain themselves so that restraint by the state
becomes less necessary. Thus if the state wishes to encourage
democracy and needs less to intervene in the lives of individuals,
one key to this strengthening of the sphere of freedom, this
strengthening of democracy, is the favoring of religion by the
state. Secularism founded upon relativism and deconstructionalism,
should never be imposed as a state religion.
The third and last point
is, "what should our response be as we seek to protect democracy and
combat the Dictatorship of Relativism?" Our response is not to seek
the embodiment of distinctive Catholic convictions in civil law. We
should not be seeking to pass civil laws requiring belief in the
Trinity or attendance at Sunday Mass or fasting from meat during the
Fridays of Lent. Our response should be to seek the embodiment of
natural law in the civil law. Natural law is that law written on the
human heart which can be known by every human being through reason
alone. There are three propositions of the natural law that need our
attention and promotion precisely as such, that is to say, as
natural law not as distinctively Christian or Catholic doctrine. The
first is the existence of God. The founding documents of our country
made reference to nature and to nature's God because there are a
variety of ways through which reason arrives at the conclusion that
the Creator God exists. There are arguments that are more
experientially based, there are arguments that are more abstract,
but there are valid arguments which prove the existence of God. They
are arguments of philosophy or logic; they are not arguments of
science. Nothing is more narrow than to claim that the only real
truth is scientific truth. This claim serves the cause of relativism
because scientific truth develops through paradigm change whereas
objective truth does not. Objective truth is not subject to paradigm
change; its substance never needs to be updated. It is good when
science advances through paradigm change. But to grant the claim
that scientific truth is the highest form of truth is to hand over
the day to those who lead the Dictatorship of Relativism.
The second proposition
of the natural law teaches us that every human being has a priceless
and unique dignity. So many modern and contemporary philosophers
have arrived quite apart from religious faith at the conviction that
a person is an end in him or herself and never a means to an end.
Persons are never to be manipulated or treated as things by other
persons. To live in peace in a just society is impossible apart from
the conviction arrived at by reason alone, that every person is an
end in himself or herself and never to be used as a means. The third
proposition of the natural law teaches us, as we reflect on the
desire of every human being for social relationships and intimacy,
and on human anatomy – that marriage means a one-flesh communion of
"one husband – one wife – for one lifetime – with openness to
children". Artificial contraception and abortion are not behaviors
which someone has a right to choose. To be sure, one is able to
choose them but there is no right to do so. One has a right to marry
or not to marry. Within marriage, one has a right to acts of marital
intimacy and by mutual agreement, husband and wife also have a right
to refrain from those acts for a just cause. Husband and wife do not
have a right to a child - a child is a human being, a human being is
not a thing, people have rights to things, and they never have
rights to human beings. So there is no right to a child, there is no
right to abortion, there is no right to artificial contraception.
There is a right to marry or not. There is a right to the acts
proper to marriage. That is a scandalously brief overview of the
natural law.
In closing, let me say
that we must reclaim the proper use of language if we are to combat
the dictatorship of relativism. Instead of hearing "pro-choice" all
over the place, we need to promote the use of "natural law" all over
the place or better some equivalent, that is a more catchy sound-
bite. Some of you might well be gifted to articulate that
sound-bite. We need to insist that the existence of God, the dignity
of every human being, and the definition of marriage are not
catholic curiosities that we are trying to force on the rest of the
world, but the dictates of reason - of the natural law itself.
Language has been used to lead us into the Dictatorship of
Relativism, the dogma of hedonism, and the culture of death. But
Jesus Christ is Risen from the dead and the Church is alive with the
truth of Christ and the truth of the natural law. Let us live with
joy and with hope, proclaiming the truth of Christ with love for
all, but especially for our time and our culture, proclaiming with
love and a smile the truth of the natural law.
When you and I were
first created, that is, when the Lord created your soul and mine, we
glimpsed, just for a moment, the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. And as soon as our souls took flesh, when we were conceived
in our mother's womb, because we were not immaculately conceived
like our Blessed Mother but conceived as heirs of the sin of Adam,
we experienced a kind of amnesia and forgetfulness of that glimpse
which we have had of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When
we listen to the voice of reason within us, that word, that meaning,
is an echo of the Eternal Word Whom we saw and heard at the moment
of the creation of our soul. The law of reason within us when given
unrestricted range cannot arrive at any other truth in the end than
the truth of Jesus Christ. He is Risen, His victory is ours. The
challenges are difficult but we have every reason, the reason who is
Christ Himself, never to give in to discouragement. Our faith in
which alone our reason finds total fulfillment, that faith is our
sure victory. Thank you for listening to me. God bless you all!
Praised be Jesus Christ!
