From my CWR interviews with Teresa Tomeo and Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J.:
CWR: It’s gotten so bad that we are now no longer even trying to defend traditional understandings of male and female, and marriage; we are having to explain what those understandings are in the first place. Are there any positives, however, to this situation?
Tomeo: Yes and no. I recently gave a talk on morality to an RCIA group, and it was amazing to see that amount of confusion among those present about what I was presenting. I felt like I was trying to cut through so much fog in their brains—and these were people who were going through the trouble to going to RCIA and were entering the Church or returning to the Church! I was amazed that I didn’t get more of an energetic response. One woman did said, “I’m getting confirmed because my daughter knows more about the Catholic Faith than I do”, which is great, but the rest of the people were looking at me like deer staring into headlights. I could tell they were so steeped in the culture, and that is what really stood out to me. I could see they were overwhelmed, and didn’t know where to begin in processing what I was telling them.
So, on one hand it’s good because we can go back to the basics, but on the other hand it’s not as though you have a fresh, clear mind to work with, as though you are working with a young child. These people have had so much garbage go in, you have to clear out the garbage first before you can really begin to build anew.
CWR: The challenge is getting people to love and desire truth and to rely on reason to make sense of things.
Tomeo: Yes. And the beautiful thing about using reason is that you don’t have to necessarily use theology or Scripture overtly to back everything up; we can appeal to natural law and commonsense. Yet people so often don’t even know how to think or to use reason to process information. So I ask, as I do in the book, if everything the world proposes is so wonderful, why is there so much misery and sadness? If you sleep around, you are going to have problems. “Gay marriage” is going to cause problems. Artificial contraception is going to cause problems. But people often don’t think that way. And people often don’t want to change the way they live, and they also don’t want to be seen as politically incorrect.
And Catholics have been so desensitized to so many things. In fact, Catholics are often among the worst in dealing with these issues. I meet so many Catholic parents who say, “Do I really have to tell my kids, ‘No’? How do I say, ‘No’?” Well, it’s not that hard, it’s just that we’ve lost our commonsense. ...
CWR: How do we get people to see that if they want to have all of their rights, that withholding the right to life from the unborn is contradictory to their assumption of rights?
Fr. Spitzer: That’s a big question. People need to understand that “rights” is a reciprocal term, and its reciprocal term is “responsibility”. Franciscio Suarez recognized that the moment you have rights, then everyone has rights as well. Rights, by definition, are what are shared by every human being. Therefore, what every human being owes is a responsibility to every other human being. For every right there is an obligation. And if you don’t want to acknowledge that fact, then on what basis do you deserve rights? And that, in a sense, goes back to the teachings of Plato and Aristotle.
CWR: What is the relationship between the philosophy and metaphysics covered in your book and the historical basis and context? How important is the historical rootedness of these things?
Fr. Spitzer: I want people to recognize that these ten principles are the basis for civilization, and that prior to these principles being understood and acted upon, life was much worse. The application of these principles paves the way from sophistry to science, which is really significant. The three principles of ethics basically defeated slavery, not only in the Roman Empire, but also in the New World. These are so essential for the building of a civilization. The three principles of ethics not only built Europe, but they built the United States. They are the undergirding structure of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, which is really the founding document of the United States.
CWR: You begin your book by talking about sophistry, skepticism, and cynicism. And while the meaning of those terms have changed a bit over time, they are the three big enemies still today, right?
Fr. Spitizer: They are the three big enemies, and the enemies of rationality. And when they have the upper hand, civilization declines. And when they are put in their place, then civilization increases.
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