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Christopher Check on The True Roots of Mass Violence

Christopher Check, President of Catholic Answers, writing for Catholic Answers Magazine:

A good bit of the political rhetoric that followed the El Paso and Dayton massacres argued that we can arrest or reverse immoral behavior with legislative, therapeutic, or technological solutions. We have heard calls for more federal money to address mental illness, more legal restrictions on the ownership of firearms, and better software for sifting through billions and billions of social media posts. Some of these measures may well prevent some future brutality, but their effect will be marginal.

I propose something more fundamental: Christians who feel a sense of helplessness or even despair after each mass shooting should start being honest about evil, with themselves and with those that God puts in their lives. If you are reluctant to talk about evil and need a pep talk, I recommend the stirring final chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:
For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.


Let’s set aside talk of the culture war and talk instead about spiritual combat. Paul’s meaning is clear: evil is personal. There are demons at work in the world, and these demons are persons—not just vague forces or bad feelings. If you have ever been tempted by the deliberate efforts of another human person, you can at least have a guess at how vastly more skilled demons are. They need not bother with your senses. They can go straight to your imagination.


For very good reason the Church exhorts us to make it a fair fight by seeking the help of St. Michael and his angels to defend us in spiritual combat. For very good reason the Church warns us to avoid the occult. I discourage you from looking at all into the obsessions of the Dayton killer, but his enthusiasm for the demonic cannot be separated from the evil acts he committed. Was he possessed by a demon? The Church is careful not to make such determinations without close examination and cannot do so in this case. But it would be naïve to dismiss the massacres that are now so much a part of our news cycle as merely the actions of racists or the mentally afflicted.

Amidst all the attempts to politicize — and to politically profit from — these tragedies, I haven’t heard too many takes like this, taking into account the metaphysical (yet very real) dimensions of these evils.

As a former Marine, Check knows, as did G.I. Joe, that “knowing is half the battle”. But only half. To win, one must not only understand the enemy one is up against; a practical battle plan is needed. Check offers one strategem in particular:

Closer to the truth, of course, is the causal relationship between the disintegration of marriage and family and the abundant social pathologies that afflict the children of broken homes. My friends Allan Carlson and Jennifer Roback Morse, and many other historians of the family, have amassed data enough to choke an elephant showing that social chaos fills the vacuum left by the retreat from marriage. If the government wanted to promote the one institution whose failure leads more than any other to the violence plaguing our country, it would encourage marriage and the traditional family. An easy way to do this would be tax incentives that favor intact families with children.

Catholics who want to do something about mass shootings should live fully and publicly the teachings of the Church concerning the sacrament of matrimony. Here are two: don’t divorce and stop contracepting. That sounds glib, I know, but matrimony is a sacrament, so with it comes all the graces needed to live it to the fullest.

Direct and to the point. Many of today’s lost boys and girls are the casualties of the War on Marriage and the Family being waged in our culture today. Intact families don’t always produce law-abiding citizens, of course (original sin and its aftermath, at work in the existence of free persons who can choose against the good, are always in play), but there is no question that healthy “cells” (families) are the key to the health of the “body” (societies, be they nations or the Church).

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Maltese Madness

ALTodd Aglialoro, writing for Catholic Answers:

With their shocking publication of new norms for permitting divorced and remarried Catholics to return to the reception of Holy Communion (based on their reading of Amoris Laetitia – ed.), the bishops of Malta have shown how great errors can grow from tiny seeds.

And:

Remember, divorced and remarried Catholics (those, obviously, who have not had their first marriages determined to be invalid by the annulment process) are not prohibited from receiving Communion because the “failure” of their first marriage was a sin. They are prohibited because, in maintaining a sexual relationship with a person who isn’t their spouse, they are committing adultery. This grave sin is incompatible with the state of grace required for worthy reception of the Eucharist (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1415).

The remedy for such people, as affirmed for example in John Paul II’s encyclical Familiaris Consortio (84), is first to stop committing adultery. Even if life circumstances practically or even morally require them to continue living in a common household with someone who isn’t their spouse, in no way would those circumstances ever require them to continue having sexual intercourse with someone who isn’t their spouse.

The bishops of Malta, on the strength of footnote 329 (of AL – ed.), are now saying that circumstances might do just that. Because not having sex with someone may be impossible, adultery and Holy Communion are now compatible.

What an appallingly defeatist idea, and one that is without analog in Catholic morality. Where else do bishops teach that it’s impossible to do what’s right?

Todd absolutely nails some key issues here, with the precision and power of a Bobby Hull slapshot (he’s a big hockey fan). The fact that Catholic Answers (a well-known, orthodox organization, faithful to the Magisterium and to historic Church teaching) thought it necessary to publish such a piece in the first place is very telling. It’s safe to say we’ve reached a full-blown crisis in the universal Church. Nothing less than the integrity of three sacraments (marriage, the Eucharist, and confession) are at stake. The integrity of scripture (with respect to the Gospel teaching of Jesus on marriage) is also being challenged. Quite a bit is on the line, not to mention the fate of countless eternal souls who have every right to look to the bishops of Christ’s Church for clear moral guidance.

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Cardinal Burke Responds to “Amoris Laetitia”

Cardinal Burke

Q. I am very confused about the apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”) issued by Pope Francis. I’ve been reading a lot of articles online that say that the Pope is changing Church teaching on marriage. Is this true?

A. In a word, no. The Pope did not (and cannot) change Church teaching on faith (what we believe) and morals (how we live). In fact, Pope Francis makes it very clear in Amoris Laetitia (hereafter abbreviated as AL) that he is not speaking infallibly. Nor is the exhortation even to be regarded as an official document of the Magisterium (the teaching office of the Church). He is merely offering his own personal opinion and reflection on the work of the recent Synods of bishops on the family (AL 3).

In fact, AL upholds Church teaching on marriage, and condemns many societal evils, such as abortion, euthanasia, and “gender ideologies” that are cancers in the culture.

Q. Fair enough. But there are some who believe that the document calls for a change – not in the Church’s teaching, but in “pastoral practice” – specifically, that civilly divorced and remarried Catholics ought to be allowed to receive Holy Communion. Cardinal Raymond Burke, who was a participant in the Synods on the family, has written an article in response to this idea. What did he say?

A. The article, which is well worth reading, can be found on the website of the National Catholic Register. Cardinal Burke notes that one can never validly “divorce” Catholic teaching from its application in pastoral practice.

He writes, “I remember the discussion which surrounded the publication of the conversations between Blessed Pope Paul VI and Jean Guitton in 1967. The concern was the danger that the faithful would confuse the Pope’s personal reflections with official Church teaching. While the Roman Pontiff has personal reflections which are interesting and can be inspiring, the Church must be ever attentive to point out that their publication is a personal act and not an exercise of the Papal Magisterium. Otherwise, those who do not understand the distinction, or do not want to understand it, will present such reflections and even anecdotal remarks of the Pope as declarations of a change in the Church’s teaching, to the great confusion of the faithful. Such confusion is harmful to the faithful and weakens the witness of the Church as the Body of Christ in the world.”

Cardinal Burke goes on to say:

“Over more than 40 years of priestly life and ministry, during 21 of which I have served as a bishop, I have known numerous other couples in an irregular union for whom I or my brother priests have had pastoral care. Even though their suffering would be clear to any compassionate soul, I have seen ever more clearly over the years that the first sign of respect and love for them is to speak the truth to them with love. In that way, the Church’s teaching is not something which further wounds them but, in truth, frees them for the love of God and their neighbor.

“It may be helpful to illustrate one example of the need to interpret the text of Amoris Laetitia with the key of the magisterium. There is frequent reference in the document to the ‘ideal’ of marriage. Such a description of marriage can be misleading. It could lead the reader to think of marriage as an eternal idea to which, in the changing historical circumstances, man and woman more or less conform. But Christian marriage is not an idea; it is a sacrament which confers the grace upon a man and woman to live in faithful, permanent and procreative love of each other. Every Christian couple who validly marry receive, from the moment of their consent, the grace to live the love which they pledge to each other.

“Because we all suffer the effects of original sin and because the world in which we live advocates a completely different understanding of marriage, the married suffer temptations to betray the objective reality of their love. But Christ always gives the grace for them to remain faithful to that love until death. The only thing that can limit them in their faithful response is their failure to respond to the grace given them in the sacrament of Holy Matrimony. In other words, their struggle is not with some idea imposed upon them by the Church. Their struggle is with the forces which would lead them to betray the reality of Christ’s life within them.”

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Q and A: What does Pope Francis think about marriage?

marrigeQ. I have heard many pundits from the MSM (mainstream media) declare that Pope Francis wants to redefine marriage. Is this true?

A. No, this is simply not the case. People who say these things are clearly not reading the Pope’s actual writings on this issue, or paying any attention to his homilies. That Pope Francis wishes to uphold Catholic teaching on sexual morality and marriage (which cannot be changed, at any rate) should have been abundantly clear when the Pontiff beatified his predecessor, Paul VI, at the conclusion of the recent Synod on the family. Pope Paul VI himself suffered greatly because of his defense of marriage, and is a personal hero to Pope Francis.

Q. What did Pope Francis say in his opening remarks at the Colloquium on the Complementarity of Man and Woman this past week at the Vatican?

A. This is a very important conference indeed. What stood out to me in particular was the brilliant connection the Pontiff drew between marriage and ecology. In a world where so many people are (quite rightly) concerned about the environment, it is so often forgotten that the “environment” of human society is the family. As the Holy Father said, “we must foster a new human ecology” by strengthening marriage. Here is a great quote from his speech (translated from the original Italian):

“We know that today marriage and the family are in crisis. We now live in a culture of the temporary, in which more and more people are simply giving up on marriage as a public commitment. This revolution in manners and morals has often flown the flag of freedom, but in fact it has brought spiritual and material devastation to countless human beings, especially the poorest and most vulnerable.

“Evidence is mounting that the decline of the marriage culture is associated with increased poverty and a host of other social ills, disproportionately affecting women, children and the elderly. It is always they who suffer the most in this crisis.

“The crisis in the family has produced an ecological crisis, for social environments, like natural environments, need protection. And although the human race has come to understand the need to address conditions that menace our natural environments, we have been slower to recognize that our fragile social environments are under threat as well, slower in our culture, and also in our Catholic Church. It is therefore essential that we foster a new human ecology.”

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