Nihilism and Christianity: a war of religion.

"Nihilism is the one contrast confronting us in the works of postmodern, post-Christian, deconstructionist and liberationist philosophers and theologians. This nihilism comes dressed up in a variety of styles and colours, but everywhere the message is the same. There are no absolute truths, no absolute values, no absolute judgements, because there is no objective reality in which such absolutes could be rooted. There are no tests, only conflicting interpretations; there are no compass points, only differing perspectives; there is no human nature, only changing human beings.... Nihilism robs us of the substance of things, leaving only an ever-changing pageant of empty forms." --Joyce Little, The Church and the Culture War, p. 14

Today we are witnessing one of the greatest historical events that man has ever seen: the all-out war between Christianity and nihilism, between what Pope John Paul II calls the "culture of life" and the "culture of death". For the past two centuries, this war, whose origins go back to the Enlightenment, has been fought on various political, economic, social and cultural fronts. But in the past forty years or so cultural issues have predominated.

In this war, arguments based on common sense and human experience carry very little weight. The clearest demonstrations have never convinced a Marxist of the irrationality of his economic positions, nor a Nazi of the absurdity of his racial or ethnic concepts. These positions are symptoms of a spiritual disease rooted in the heart of man. That is why they end in major catastrophes: the oppression by the Communist system or the devastation of the Second World War.

Today we see the same irrationality in the great cultural issues. If you invoke science to demonstrate that a child in its mother's womb is a human being, you will be met with nothing but disdain or indifference. If you point out that two persons of the same sex cannot procreate and that the notion of homosexual marriage defies common sense, you will be accused of bigotry. The culture of death has its reasons which reason does not know.

The Pill of 1960

Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, this culture of death has gone from victory to victory. The first was the victory of contraception, which broke the link between procreation and the giving of self. This rupture paved the way for no-fault divorce, then legalized abortion. The main issues today are homosexual marriage, euthanasia and cloning. And there is nothing to suggest a successful outcome in these battles.

In most countries, the war between Christianity and nihilism resembles a fight between David and Goliath. Only in the United States and Poland does there seem to be a well-organized resistance to nihilism. In most European countries and Canada, nihilism is not only the dominant culture but the national religion: rather than pass laws ratifying citizens' convictions about what is right and wrong, the all-powerful State now sets itself up as the definer of good and evil, in defiance of the deepest convictions of the population.

In Canada, this phenomenon is reaching disturbing proportions, as witness Bill C-250, sponsored by NDP MP Svend Robinson and passed by the Canadian Parliament in March 2004. This law adds homosexuals to the list of groups against whom we must not encourage a "hateful" attitude. Now, for Christians, who are commanded by their faith not only to reject any form of hate but to love even those who hate Christianity, this law is a serious threat.

It means that any arguing in favour of traditional sexual morality may now be considered a criminal offence. In fact, traditional morality--what moral philosophy calls "natural law"--affirms that some acts are intrinsically good and others evil. If you claim that it is evil to engage in homosexual acts, how could you not be accused of inciting hatred against those who engage in such acts?

"Gay" militants deny Christianity's traditional distinction between homosexual persons, whom it commands us to love, and homosexual acts, which it condemns. According to "gay" thinking, only those who display moral neutrality toward the homosexual lifestyle are tolerant. Thus we are dealing with two irreconcilable concepts of tolerance. It goes without saying that one of them is incompatible with freedom of expression and freedom of religion. Which one will win out in the courts? Stay tuned.

Same-sex "marriage"

What then are we to say of "homosexual marriage"? This notion means that the State equates homosexual relations, which are necessarily sterile, with conjugal relations, which are based on acts that are procreative in nature. It also means that a child is no longer viewed as the natural fruit of conjugal love, but as a mere "option", a sort of whim that we may indulge if we feel like it. In short, the State declares that, from the standpoint of the public interest, the homosexual "lifestyle" has the same social worth as the lifetime commitment of a couple who start a family.

It is difficult to imagine how such a redefinition of marriage would not lead to its gradual disappearance as a publicly-supported and protected institution. And that is precisely what proponents of the "privatization" of marriage are seeking. They argue that marriage is of no useful purpose and that it must be considered as a strictly private affair.

One should note here that such a position is not without precedent. In a recent study, Dr. Allan Carlson, a fellow of the U.S. Family Research Council. argues that the two great totalitarian systems of the 20th century tried to eliminate marriage. The Nazis sought to replace marriage with "breeding farms" for the racially pure, and the Bolsheviks, who set in place the Russian Communist system in 1917, considered marriage "backward" and "reactionary" because it thwarted their plans for the collective rearing of children. Even in Sweden, where marriage was extended a few years ago to include same-sex couples, a campaign is now under way to eliminate marriage as a publicly recognized social institution. Marriage, says Dr. Carlson, has historically been a target for those who want to radically "engineer" society.

The notwithstanding clause

Here in Canada, governments could counter the pressures emanating from the judiciary in favour of same-sex marriage by invoking the "notwithstanding" clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This makes it possible to disregard judgments concerning the constitutionality of laws. In doing so, they would be acting in accordance with the wishes of the majority (63% of Canadians support maintaining the traditional definition of marriage, Catholic Civil Rights League, Bulletin, December 2003).

But instead the Liberal federal government has opted to yield to pressure from the homosexual lobby. And, in an excess of refinement, it has resorted to a reference to the Supreme Court to determine whether the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects the right of the clergy to refuse to officiate at homosexual marriages. In short, ministers of the State no longer know whether a minister of God may refuse to administer the sacrament of marriage to homosexuals. The fact that they no longer know whether this right, inherent in the freedom of religion, exists, speaks volumes about our democratic culture.

Canada's future

Will Canada be able to resist the totalitarian temptation that has been assailing it for some years now? There is no indication that it will. The various Human-Rights Commissions set up over-the past twenty years are nothing more than a new thought police used by the elites to intimidate, and even penalize financially, all who, like us, resist the new ideological mindset. Mussolini's famous formula uttered at La Scala in Milan in 1925--"Everything within the State, nothing outside of the State"--is on the way to becoming our national motto.

And what victory can the defenders of the culture of life claim in the United States? None. Abortion continues to be accessible without restriction; children do not have the right to pray in schools; every public representation of the Ten Commandments is now outlawed; and some Catholic institutions, including the diocese of Colorado Springs, are threatened with losing their tax-exempt status because their leaders have declared publicly that certain practices, such as abortion and homosexual marriage, are "intrinsically evil".

So Canada is not the only country where people who believe in the objectivity of the moral law are on the defensive. Everywhere in the "post-Christian" West the notion of a personal God and the principle of a moral law applicable to all are being ignored. So it is no exaggeration to speak of a cultural world war. And this war is primarily religious.

The neo-pagans' claim that they do not have a religion is a deception: their nihilism--which they call secularism--is a metaphysical system, a set of beliefs. And those beliefs are no less dogmatic than those of other religions. To believe that "Man is the measure of all things" is no less doctrinaire than to proclaim that "There is only one God and we must love him with all our heart". Moreover, the neo-pagans talk all the time about tolerance, but their intolerance is boundless. They want to have the whole public sphere conform to their beliefs, while confining Christian beliefs to the private sphere, in addition to arrogating to themselves the exclusive right to decide what comes under each.

We need a supernatural view

What then are we to do? From a strictly natural perspective, we have been losing ground steadily and there is a strong temptation to give up. But our faith tells us that such a perspective is deceptive and that we must view things with a "supernatural" outlook. The first Christians laid the foundations of a new world because God was with them. And God will be with us too, provided we are faithful. We must therefore ask how we are to live our faith in these times of general apostasy. Christian tradition proposes a three-point strategy: prayer, formation and action.

First, prayer. It is necessary to pray. If John Paul II devotes a minimum of two hours a day to prayer, then we should spend at least thirty minutes. It is our spiritual food: prayer is as necessary to the soul as food is to the body. The prayer par excellence is the Holy Mass, where, in the Eucharist, we unite ourselves sacramentally with God himself. There is also the Holy Rosary, which gives us recourse to the intercession of the Mother of God.

Second, formation. We must have the piety of a child and the doctrine of a theologian, according to a great twentieth-century saint. We must develop the doctrinal synthesis which John Paul II has bequeathed to us, especially his theology of the body, which American theologian George Weigel compares to a theological "time bomb", a teaching that will explode in the Church at some point and repair the devastation wrought by the Sexual Revolution and especially by contraception.

This latter issue should not be overlooked: most of the problems that we face--whether divorce, abortion, the falling birth rate or homosexual marriage--are simply consequences of the contraceptive culture. To admit the legitimacy of contraception is to admit that one can separate the unitive and procreative ends of the act by which spouses become one flesh. If this separation is legitimate, there is no reason to condemn homosexual marriage.

Today, the greatest service that Christians can do for mankind is to propose to it a sounder conception of human sexuality. That is what John Paul II's theology of the body does. In past centuries, the Church defended the carnal dimension of human love against the Gnostics, who despised the body. Today it defends the spiritual dimension of love against the nihilists, who despise the soul. Disdain for the body is not Christian, nor is disdain for the soul. The miracle of the Church is that it has always held both ends. And it is alone in doing so.

Third point: action. We must make a distinction between action and activism. For the ordinary Christian, action means seeking to become holy in the midst of the world through work and family life, with all the sacrifice and effort that these entail. That is how we will be leaven in the dough and the salt of the earth. Our task is to evangelize the culture. If we succeed in doing so, the reforms that we want in public life will follow naturally. If we do not start with the culture, specifically through prayer, our action will not have any lasting effect. The Christians of the first centuries created a new world without even setting out to do so. So our chances of success are better than theirs were.

Richard Bastien previously wrote "The impact of same-sex unions" CI, July August 2003, p.10. He is on the editorial board of the quarterly Egards, Revue de la resistance conservatrice, 3333 Chermin de la Cote Sainte-Catherine, Montreal, H3T 1C8.