In this week's edition of The Catholic Free Press, Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D, who serves as Director of Education at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, writes, "..His [President Obama's] stem cell decision also manifests a troubling shift toward a more widespread and systemic form of oppression within our society. The President is offering Americans the prospect of using the powers of science to oppress, or more accurately, to suppress the youngest members of the human family to serve the interests of older and more wealthy members. He is offering Americans the prospect of reducing fellow human beings to cogs and commodities in the assembly line of the medico-business industrial complex. Many Americans, however, seem only vaguely aware of what has transpired in the President's decision. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once commented on the way that oppression can subtly arise in our midst: 'As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.' Some would suggest that perhaps the darkness is already upon us. But a few moments of twilight may still remain, in which Americans can turn back the moral darkness that threatens our society and our future." (The Obama stem cell darkness, CFP, April 10, 2009 edition, p. 5).
Readers of this Blog know that I have been warning of the encroaching darkness for some time. Some have dismissed my warnings as "alarmist." No doubt others will also accuse Fr. Pacholczyk of being an alarmist. Many Americans have been desensitized to the darkness and have come to accept new values without even realizing it. Such people believe that we still live in a democracy. But we do not.
In his Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II reminded us that:
"Authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled by law, and on the basis of a correct conception of the human person. It requires that the necessary conditions be present for the advancement both of the individual through education and formation in true ideals, and of the "subjectivity" of society through the creation of structures of participation and shared responsibility. Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and sceptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life. Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends. It must be observed in this regard that if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.
Nor does the Church close her eyes to the danger of fanaticism or fundamentalism among those who, in the name of an ideology which purports to be scientific or religious, claim the right to impose on others their own concept of what is true and good. Christian truth is not of this kind. Since it is not an ideology, the Christian faith does not presume to imprison changing socio-political realities in a rigid schema, and it recognizes that human life is realized in history in conditions that are diverse and imperfect. Furthermore, in constantly reaffirming the transcendent dignity of the person, the Church's method is always that of respect for freedom.
But freedom attains its full development only by accepting the truth. In a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation and man is exposed to the violence of passion and to manipulation, both open and hidden. The Christian upholds freedom and serves it, constantly offering to others the truth which he has known (cf. Jn 8:31-32), in accordance with the missionary nature of his vocation. While paying heed to every fragment of truth which he encounters in the life experience and in the culture of individuals and of nations, he will not fail to affirm in dialogue with others all that his faith and the correct use of reason have enabled him to understand." (No. 46).
The English psychiatrist William Sargent explained that, "It is not the mentally ill but ordinary normal people who are most susceptible to 'brainwashing.'" And in her book The Nazis and the Occult, Dusty Sklar notes how, "Hitler's early speeches were so mesmerizing that even people who were repelled by his ideas felt themselves being swept along. The playwright Eugene Ionesco mentions in his autobiography that he received the inspiration for Rhinoceros when he felt himself pulled into the Nazi orbit at a mass rally and had to struggle to keep from developing 'rhinoceritis.' We 'catch' ideas, too, because we want to be like others, particularly when we want not to be our despised selves. If we're satisfied, we don't need to conform, but if we're not, we imitate people whom we admire for having greater judgment, taste, or good fortune than we do....Through conformity, the person who feels inferior is in no danger of being exposed. He's indistinguishable from the others. No one can single him out and examine his unique being. Conformity, in turn, sets him up to be further canceled out as an individual, to have no life apart from his collective purpose. This gives a movement tremendous power over the individual. Even intelligent people are not immune from the desire to conform. Heinrich Hildebrandt, a schoolteacher who was anxious to hide his liberal past, joined the Nazi party, and to his own disgust, found himself 'proud to be wearing the insignia. It showed I belonged, and the pleasure of belonging, so soon after feeling excluded, isolated, is very great...I belonged to the new nobility..'" (The Nazis and the Occult, pp. 157, 158).
The desire to conform and not to be perceived as being "different" or "countercultural," can be a very powerful force. Many Catholics (and other Christians) voted for President Barack Obama knowing full well that he supports abortion through all nine months of pregnancy right up to so-called partial-birth abortion - which is actually infanticide - as well as his support for Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR) and the radical homosexual agenda.
A democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism. Prophetic words indeed. It's twilight. Darkness is falling. Will we pray and work to turn back the darkness? Or will we give into it?
The choice is ours. But perhaps not for much longer.
Related reading here.
