REINVENTING RELIGION by Gary L. Morella

he PC police constantly remind us of the great "diversity" which exists in the world and the need to accommodate it. But somehow all this diversity ends up looking the same. Moreover, this "diversity" does not include those who cherish the traditional family and have moral objections to issues like abortion, homosexuality, and the lie of safe sex outside of marriage. These people are treated as merely obstructionists in need of "education" as somehow "diversity" would be better served by having everyone agree. They are forced to embrace ideas which their faith holds in anathema and are hypocritically coerced to give sole allegiance to a "state belief system (religion)" of amorality. This can take many forms. Locally, it is subsidizing a University which promotes homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle, a cause for affirmative action, through the Vice-Provost Office of Educational Equity. It is subsidizing a school district which has succeeded in doing nothing but polarizing a large segment of the community through the efforts of a minority of board members to follow the University lead in the recognition of sexual orientation as a civil right - a problematic concept. We are talking about behavior which has been proven changeable as opposed to skin color and ethnicity which isn't. This observation has been made by Alveda Celeste King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and General Colin Powell.

In a recent column purporting to "straighten out the issue of gay 'choice'", we saw in response to a Christian mother's concern regarding the homosexual tendencies of her son, that "we choose the God we need." An interesting comment given that Genesis tells us that man was created in the image of God, not vice-versa. This constitutes a "reinvention of religion" which was addressed by Anthony Sheehan in "The Georgetown Academy", March 1995, quoting Cardinal Newman. "This is a religion which is pleasant and easy, benevolence is its chief virtue, intolerance and excessive zeal are its first sins. It includes no true fear of God, no deep hatred of sin, no indignation at the blasphemies of heretics, no jealous adherence to doctrinal truth, and is therefore neither hot nor cold but rather lukewarm." This is a religion which refuses to talk about the gravity of certain sins as measured by the extent in which they depart from the rule of right reason totally ignoring the words of Our Lord to Pilate (John 19:11); "He that hath delivered me to thee hath the greater sin." This is a religion which merits the most serious admonishment by God in the Book of the Apocalypse, "I would vomit you out of my mouth."

As Philippe Beneton describes in his essay "True and False Tolerance", "Tolerance is an ambiguous word greatly valued in the prevailing multicultural climate. Who would be against tolerance? There wouldn't be anything left to say if the current idea of tolerance was not fundamentally distorted."

Properly understood, tolerance implies respect for people but not agreement with their error or fault. Another way of saying this is that it is not people who are being judged but rather their actions if anarchy is to be avoided - a positive law precept also found in the Decalogue. This distinction is clouded by those seeking victim status for their actions.

In a relativistic world, to affirm that a particular proposition is true by itself, apart from mere opinion, is considered an attack on tolerance. After all, "there is no such thing as right or wrong" - the message of the homosexual agitprop video "It's Elementary" recently shown to some of our public school teachers.

Another column asks us to "challenge, but don't silence the voice of art." We are told that all citizens have the right to express their views, however they wish to do it, without harming their fellow man". And that "the expression of ideas is sacred and crucial to the growth of individuals and the evolution of society." There is a slight problem here. Just who determines whether or not "their fellow man" is being harmed? Surely not the one doing the harming; he's the agent for conjectured harm. Those claiming that they've been harmed? Hardly, they have nothing to fall back on except their opinion. In the absence of some universal truth, how is this situation resolved? It isn't in a moral relativistic world which doesn't have an answer to the question "what happens when A's unlimited rights (freedoms) conflict with B's?" It also overlooks the fact that there is something called a "common good" for society which carries precedence over "individual good." It confuses freedom with license.

Beneton continues, "These are my values, say the brutal, the violent, the sadistic. If all values" are equal, how can I answer them? Pure freedom knows no limit. Pure liberty subverts everything, including liberty itself. The relativism of choices, values, and opinions results in a comprehensive leveling. If everything is worthy, nothing is."

Sheehan points out that personal morality for most people has become subjective dictating a God made in man's image. "One can do anything as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. Such an attitude encourages every kind of depravity and vice within a man, while it ignores the reality that only good people can make society good. Man's relationship with God is even more crucial because all morality depends on it. We cannot learn to love our neighbors as ourselves until we first learn how to love God, and we cannot learn to love God unless we learn to obey Him."

The chasm between personal morality and man's relationship with his creator cannot be bridged by any amount of shared values or moral discourse. There is no common ground in this sense as evidenced by Christ words in Scripture, "He who is not with me is against me." Toleration is not the uncritical acceptance of all ideas and does not extend to evil or error which must be condemned because truth and falsehood cannot be equal. Truth whether rational or revealed cannot be compromised.

As G.K. Chesterton said, "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and never tried." Of late, it might be added, "it has been reinvented" in the best tradition of the political spin-doctors. They want us to forget that before the Resurrection was a cross that had to be carried. A cross that explains why bad things happen to good people. (John 3:16).