Fight spiritual laziness: At least for today

		Notes from the  Vicar General  Msgr. Paul J. Swain

At St. Raphael Cathedral, confessions are heard a half hour before the 5 p.m. daily Mass, except on Holy Days when additional preparation for the Mass is needed.

This past December 31, as we anticipated the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, I placed a notice by the confessional to remind people of this policy so that no one would be inconvenienced. Someone decided to improve this notice so that it read in edited form: "No confessions today BECAUSE YOU ARE LAZY." At first I was taken aback, and then wondered if God was sending me a message.

Dictionary.com gives three definitions to lazy: 1. disinclined to action or exertion, averse to labor, idle, shirking work; 2. inactive, slothful, slow, sluggish, 3. wicked, vicious. Ouch. Someone thought that of me.

Not everyone will agree with the decisions any of us make concerning use of our time. We make the best judgments we can, based on the information we know, and let the consequences fall where they do. We should try to be understanding of one another in part because none of us knows all the reasons or motivations of others. Christian charity calls us to give the benefit of the doubt.

Spiritual dryness

Yet it is possible for us to become spiritually lazy in all three definitions above. Christ called us to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. That takes effort and commitment. Some days that is hard work.

There are times when there is a kind of dryness to our spiritual lives. God seems remote, Mass seems without meaning, and sin seems overpowering. It may reflect itself in being disinclined to pray, or to reach out in loving service, or to be merciful in relationships. It can result in a self-focus and loneliness that makes our days aimless. It can lead to a new vulnerability to temptation.

January can be such a time. For some, the joyful uplift of the Christmas season has given way to the tedious winter doldrums. For others fear of terrorism, loss of loved ones, possible lay-offs, and a range of uncertainties hover. It may reflect itself in our having difficulty in being hopeful and trusting in God's plan and accepting God's way.

Winter doldrums

It is necessary, and possible, for us to move through our periods of spiritual laziness. It is better to approach it a day at a time. Someone said yesterday is a cancelled check, tomorrow is a promissory note, today is ready cash, spend it well.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who had her moments of spiritual dryness, wrote these words of encouragement in her poem entitled "My Song of Today":

My life's a jot of time, an hour that comes and goes; my life - moment; now - escapes and runs away. To give You while on earth, O God, the love one owes, I've got . . . only today!

What do I care, O Lord, that darkness may pervade? Tomorrow - ah, for that I simply cannot pray! . . . Oh, make my heart stay pure, enwrap me in Your shade: this, but just for today.

Tomorrow? Dream of that and wavering I fear - For then I feel a gloom, a boredom, on its way: But trials do I want, O God, and suff'ring here: This I want, for today.

I soon shall fly to You, to praise You, my Desire. When day without an end sheds on my soul its ray, I shall be singing - to the Holy Angels' lyre - That Eternal "Today."

As winter slowly moves along, and the temptation of spiritual laziness lures us, may we recall the sacrificial love of Christ which can give us hope - at least for today.

Marriage: Word with consequences,
shows effects of language on culture

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

The proposed federal marriage amendment begins with this straightforward affirmation: "Marriage in the United States is exclusively a union of one man and one woman."

Some pro-family critics of the amendment suggest that it defends only the word "marriage," not the institution of marriage.

I'm not persuaded by this criticism, as a matter of law; but in any event these well-meaning critics may be missing some crucial points about language and its effects on culture.

Moral truth

1. It's not an accident that the proponents of "gay marriage" want to claim the word "marriage." Gay activists understand that ideas, which have consequences, are formed by words.

Everyone knows that, whatever the benefits conferred and whatever the rhetorical chaff surrounding those benefits, a "civil union" is not a "marriage." Defending the right meaning of words is more than an exercise in semantics; it's a defense of a public moral culture which recognizes that there are moral truths built into the human condition.

One of those truths is that "marriage" - an institution millennia older than the modern state - is "exclusively a union of one man and one woman." The law's recognition of that truth is no small thing. If "marriage in the United States is exclusively a union of a man and a woman," then those who wish to defend the primordial institution of marriage will not be contradicted by the law when we do so.

Ideas shaped by words

2. Culture is made of ideas-shaped-by-words. One of the ways Communism tried to destroy civil society and democratic culture was through verbal mendacity: "people's democracy" was the Communist euphemism masking the reality of totalitarianism.

If the word "democracy" and what it means was worth defending (and it was), so is the word "marriage."

Marriage culture

3. It's important that the law help keep public discourse about marriage honest. Doing so strengthens the hand of other institutions committed to defending and promoting stable marriages - institutions like families, churches, synagogues, schools, and voluntary associations.

These institutions of civil society are, arguably, even more important than the state in building what Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy calls a "marriage culture." Their work would be undercut if the legal meaning of "marriage" is changed, i.e., distorted and debased.

'Benefits' of marriage

4. When gay activists talk about the "benefits" of marriage, they're talking about entitlements granted by the state. When advocates of "marriage" rightly understood talk about the "benefits" of marriage, we mean, at least in the first instance, something different.

As Gallagher puts it, we mean "the good things that happen when husbands and wives are joined in permanent, public, sexual, emotional, financial, and parenting unions" - we mean the good things that happen to couples, and to the children who grow up in stable families. Legal "benefits" are secondary to these goods, which are public goods, not just state-conferred private goodies.

Sexual love

5. If the advocates of "gay marriage" succeed in legally claiming the word "marriage," the notion that sexual love is simply a matter of satisfying personal "needs" will be further enshrined in our law. We've already gone too far down that road, thanks to an out-of-control U.S. Supreme Court and misguided initiatives like "no fault" divorce.

To lose the word "marriage" is to lose more than the word "marriage" - it's to lose any idea of sexual love as an expression of sexual complementarity, permanent commitment, and generativity.

Sustaining democracy

Are "civil unions" a good idea? No, they're not. But to cite Maggie Gallagher once again, while "civil unions are one unwise step down a pathway from a marriage culture," so-called "gay marriage" is "the end of the road."

The question of "civil unions" can be dealt with on a state-by-state basis, by legislatures rather than by arrogant courts.

The question of what "marriage" means requires a binding and unambiguous national solution in which the word "marriage" reflects the human and moral reality of marriage.

Defining "marriage" for what it is is a good in itself. Defining "marriage" for what it is is good for children.

And defining "marriage" for what it is erects a barrier to the further dismantling of a public moral culture that, by recognizing the truths embedded in human nature and human action, is capable of sustaining democracy.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.