Creating A Culture of Life & The Parable of the Ten Talents
The Catholic Church under the leadership of the Late Pope John Paul II made much ado about creating “a culture of life” and yet whenever I hear someone utter “culture of life” or “pro-life” I can’t help but think they are talking out of their butts.
For one thing the idea of “pro-life” often is religious-speak for anti-abortion and nothing more. Being anti-abortion is not the same thing as being pro-life, it is simply just anti-abortion. I am not going to debate the abortion issue here. Instead I am going to look more deeply at this notion of “culture of life” and see if we can come to a much fuller understanding of what this means and what those of us concerned with creating such a culture should be doing.
The Catholic Church officially opposes capital punishment…fine, I do too. That may be part of this culture that we wish to create. After all Christianity is about redemption and the possibility of redemption and killing someone, regardless of how despicable we deem them, may rob them of that opportunity to meditate on their lives and seek redemption. For me the issue of capital punishment goes deeper. I often see it as a desperate act of revenge sought to be used by the outraged and the indignant. We simply want to get even or get back at the person who has caused such outrageous harm. There is a thin line between justice and revenge and human beings blur this line all the time.
Before you ask the inevitable question let me answer it here so we can move on. “How would you feel if someone you loved was murdered, raped, tortured and so on and so forth?” Well…how do you think I would feel? I would be angry, outraged and want to get back at the person who harmed my love one. God help me I would want to see them die for their crimes. In fact, I would be so outraged that I would say “Fuck the executioner let me juice the bastard myself.”
I know myself. I know exactly how I would be. I would be so hurt and so angry that I would not be able to forgive let alone be able to make the distinction between justice and revenge. I would want revenge. Executing someone, either in my heart of hearts, or by willful participation in a legal system that condones it makes me every bit the murderer as the person being convicted of the crime. It is my conviction that the Gospel of Jesus calls us to a higher morality and one that does not include state sanctioned execution. The so-called Sermon on the Mount and the so called “great commandment” given by Jesus in the gospel is enough for me to hang such a belief on.
However, I don’t wish to ruminate on the “rightness” or “wrongness” of capital punishment. So now let’s set this aside for the moment.
It has come to my attention that the Catholic Church is starting to take seriously the environmental issues of our day. A group of American bishops even recognized that we can’t simply adopt an anti-abortion stand while we continue to create highly toxic environments that poison the womb and the children gestating within. The increase of asthma in our children is evidence of this toxicity. Even more disturbing than asthma being one of the leading causes of absentee days from school is the alarming increase in asthma related deaths each year. This is one example. Let’s move on
The Catholic Church even appears to be joining in the ranks of people concerned about humanities effect on global warming…an issue that even the recalcitrant George W. Bush now, late in his second term, sees as something of a concern.
Yet with all of these new attitudes and revelations coming from within the official ranks of the church it still persists in its foolish and medieval prohibition of contraception. I know these are not stupid men and women. They must know the statistics that over half of the world’s Catholics live in countries on the African Continent and in Central and South America. These are places of extremes...places where people can barely take care of themselves let alone children. Places where the infant mortality rate is so high it should be classified as criminal. Yet the church teaches that using contraception is sinful…and so people who shouldn’t have children continue to have them. They have them in substandard living environments which, not only puts the individual child at risk but continues to reinforce the poverty and create environment for new strains of diseases. The AIDS epidemic in Africa alone is frightening.
I look around my parish each week and it often seems that the number of young pregnant Catholic women seems to be on the rise. I suppose that if Catholics in North America or Western Europe want to have children I shouldn’t be too upset…after all it is their choice and generally they have the means to support themselves and their children (although that is not always the case). Yet I still can’t help but get upset.
With all of the children in the world who are orphaned due to unfortunate circumstances or are being born to parents who can’t even take care of themselves why have children of your own? Why not look at adopting? What is it about the human being that makes it think that it must produce offspring of its own? In some people it seems that the ticking of the biological clock is so strong that it is all they seem to hear.
I have recently read that there are more neureoreceptors in the brain for sex and procreation than there is for food and other requirements for survival. It seems that the continued propagation of the human race trumps the needs of our personal survival. In the distant dawn of humanity this probably made sense…but now we should look to override this tendency.
In this country alone millions of dollars is spent each year on fertility drugs and treatments that it should be considered criminal as well. Fortunately the Catholic Church doesn’t condone the use of fertility practices. In its medieval mindset you are either blessed of God to have children or you are not. I would like to see that money being redirected to help children that need homes, health care, and so on.
But again I don’t want to stress importance on this issue fertility and contraception either. I simply offer brief sketches as they are often in the forefront of creating this thing deemed “a culture of life.”
The issues really boil down to one word, stewardship. It begs the single most important question that those concerned with a culture of life and that is “Am I being a good steward?” In my attempts to answer this question I will look at myself and see how the decisions I make daily and how my lifestyle affects not just myself but the people around me and the earth. I will look at my consumption and my waste. I will examine how selfish a life I live and what I give back, if anything, to my immediate community and the world at large. I don’t have to do anything monumental to be a good steward just mindfully aware of myself and of the life I am living.
Conservative Christians often quote the biblical command in Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply” as one of the foundational pillars of their anti-contraception stand. I said conservative Christians because the Roman Catholic Church is not the only denomination that persists in this foolishness.
These same conservative Christians often tote the biblical assertion that God gave dominion of the earth and the beasts etc. etc. etc. as justification for the raping, pillaging and plundering of this beautiful planet. They seem to conveniently forget the other places in the bible where God reminds his people that not only did he create the earth but everything on it and in it is his. He is just sharing it with us. It was given as a gift by a loving creator but being given charge of something is not the same thing as being given permission to recklessly soil our own cages.
People who fail to see stewardship as the underlying principal “biblical command” are a lot like the faithless servant Jesus describes in his parable of the ten talents (Matt 25:14-30; Luke 19: 11-27) who fails to see the significance of his master’s gift. While the other 2 servants reinvest them and earn a modest return the cowardly servant does nothing. He buries his in the ground and there they remain lying useless. This servant has no regard for his master and while he “fears” him has absolutely no respect.
Teaching that contraception is a sin, having children that we don’t need or more importantly shouldn’t have, poising our environment are all examples akin to the faithless servant in the parable. This is the answer we need to seek…are we the faithless servant or are we investing the talents given to us to good use?
While I am not trying to make this essay solely about contraception and having children simply because you desire it while there are plenty of children who need care it is simply one way we can examine this question personally. Just as my decision to take the bus to work or ride my bike vs. riding my car is another way.
We just need to look at what we are doing and how it affects all of us in the long run and when we do this we may be more willing to put our more selfish impulses aside for the greater good.