MUST READ!!! Another Great Speech From Archbishop Chaput: 'Being Human In An Age Of Unbelief'

These days I seem to only find the time to blog when I am extremely inspired by something... like a news occurrence, a new movie coming out, a great speech, or an enlightening homily.  The most recent speech given by Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput (SHAP-yu) at the University of Pennsylvania is one such example.  It has a copyright at the Witherspoon Institute, which explains why the length of it on this post has been reduced to a few paragraphs, rather than the whole speech.  Ryan Anderson contacted me today  (11-14-11) and very politely requested I limit my usage to excerpts rather than the entire item.  Seems they want readers to click on the link and come see the rest of it at Witherspoon.  Fair enough.  I have linked to them for almost two years now because they publish such great material.  Please visit them online and donate if you can.  They are a largely undiscovered treasure trove of great finds.

It's very hard to pick just a couple of paragraphs, as the Archbishop was making FOUR important points in defense of human dignity.  But here are a few paragraphs to whet your curiosity:

America could afford to be secular in the best sense, precisely because its people were so religious. The Founders saw religious faith as something separate from government but vital to the nation’s survival. In his Farewell Address, Washington famously stressed that “religion and morality are indispensable supports” for political prosperity. He added that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” For John Adams, John Jay, James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, Charles Carroll, George Washington, and most of the other Founders—including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin—religion created virtuous citizens. And only virtuous citizens could sustain a country as delicately balanced in its institutions, moral instincts, and laws as the United States.

Here’s my purpose in mentioning this. The American Founders presumed the existence of natural law and natural rights. These rights are inalienable and guaranteed by a Creator; by “nature’s God,” to use the words of the Declaration of Independence. Such ideas may be out of fashion in much of legal theory today. But these same ideas are very much alive in the way we actually reason and behave in our daily lives.

Most of us here tonight believe that we have basic rights that come with the special dignity of being human. These rights are inherent to human nature. They’re part of who we are. Nobody can take them away. But if there is no Creator, and nothing fundamental and unchangeable about human nature, and if “nature’s God” is kicked out of the conversation, then our rights become the product of social convention. And social conventions can change. So can the definition of who is and who isn’t “human.”

How's that for a tease?  There's a lot more to read by clicking on the links above or right HERE.  Okay, one more paragraph.  This one is really important:

It’s important for our own integrity and the integrity of our country to fight for our pro-life convictions in the public square. Anything less is a kind of cowardice. But it’s even more important to live what it means to be genuinely human and “pro-life” by our actions—fidelity to God; love for spouse and children; loyalty to friends; generosity to the poor; honesty and mercy in dealing with others; trust in the goodness of people; discipline and humility in demanding the most from ourselves.

There.  That should be enough to get you interested.

MUST READ: Archbishop Chaput Addresses Notre Dame's "Right To Life" Student Group

From Archbishop Chaput on Facebook:

"Last Friday, I addressed the University of Notre Dame's 'Right to Life' student group.  I urged them to be courageous in fighting for their beliefs, and to always remember what being Catholic REALLY means." 

Here are excerpts from the speech called Politics And The Devil (I wanted to post the whole thing, it's THAT GOOD, but Witherspoon has a copywrite, so....:

...the idea that the “separation of Church and state” should force us to exclude our religious beliefs from guiding our political behavior makes no sense at all, even superficially. If we don’t remain true in our public actions to what we claim to believe in our personal lives, then we only deceive ourselves. Because God certainly isn’t fooled. He sees who and what we are. God sees that our duplicity is really a kind of cowardice, and our lack of courage does a lot more damage than simply wounding our own integrity. It also saps the courage of other good people who really do try to publicly witness what they believe. And that compounds a sin of dishonesty with a sin of injustice.

And this...

The moral and political struggle we face today in defending human dignity is becoming more complex. I believe that abortion is the foundational human rights issue of our lifetime. We can’t simultaneously serve the poor and accept the legal killing of unborn children. We can’t build a just society, and at the same time, legally sanctify the destruction of generations of unborn human life. The rights of the poor and the rights of the unborn child flow from exactly the same human dignity guaranteed by the God who created us.

And even THIS:

In Europe and the United States, our knowledge classes like to tell us that we live in an age of declining religious belief. But that isn’t quite true. A culture that rejects God always invents another, lesser godling to take His place. As a result, in the words of the great Jewish bioethicist Leon Kass, we live in an age of “salvific science.” In the place of the God who became man, “we have man become as god.” And in place “of a God who—it is said—sent his son who would, through his own suffering, take away the sins of the world, we have a scientific savior who would take away the sin of suffering altogether.”

There is so much more to this speech than what I've posted above, and it's very well worth spending a few minutes to read and ponder.  I've never read a speech of his that wasn't.  I'm just waiting for the day he's made Cardinal...or even...dare I say?

God Comes Before Caesar...And Allah, Too

Archbishop Chaput of Denver

Yesterday Archbishop Chaput of Denver gave a very stirring speech in Slovakia indicative of the "new direction of the American episcopate."  It was a speech about "living within the truth," and was a continued call for active Christian resistance in the ongoing spiritual war against societal notions that Christianity is intolerant and obsolete.  One need only look at the necessity of the fight by reading one of today's posts at Jihad Watch about New York state high school exams slamming Christianity while simultaneously praising Islam, an oppressive religion.  Here are various extracts of the Archbishop's speech:

Two of the biggest lies in the world today are these: first, that Christianity was of relatively minor importance in the development of the West; and second, that Western values and institutions can be sustained without a grounding in Christian moral principles. [...]

Downplaying the West’s Christian past is sometimes done with the best intentions, from a desire to promote peaceful co-existence in a pluralistic society. But more frequently it’s done to marginalize Christians and to neutralize the Church’s public witness.

The Church needs to name and fight this lie. To be a European or an American is to be heir to a profound Christian synthesis of Greek philosophy and art, Roman law, and biblical truth. This synthesis gave rise to the Christian humanism that undergirds all of Western civilization.

Relativism is now the civil religion and public philosophy of the West. Again, the arguments made for this viewpoint can seem persuasive. Given the pluralism of the modern world, it might seem to make sense that society should want to affirm that no one individual or group has a monopoly on truth; that what one person considers to be good and desirable another may not; and that all cultures and religions should be respected as equally valid.

In practice, however, we see that without a belief in fixed moral principles and transcendent truths, our political institutions and language become instruments in the service of a new barbarism. In the name of tolerance we come to tolerate the cruelest intolerance; respect for other cultures comes to dictate disparagement of our own; the teaching of “live and let live” justifies the strong living at the expense of the weak.

If human rights do not come from God, then they devolve to the arbitrary conventions of men and women. The state exists to defend the rights of man and to promote his flourishing. The state can never be the source of those rights. When the state arrogates to itself that power, even a democracy can become totalitarian.

What is legalized abortion but a form of intimate violence that clothes itself in democracy? The will to power of the strong is given the force of law to kill the weak.

There is much more to this speech, and I pray that the contents go viral on the web.  I found it referenced by Roma Locuta Est, who got it from Chiesa.  For God's sake, as well as ours, spread it around!