"This is the Charity of God, That We Keep His Commandments"

Part Five

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. And every one that loveth him who begot, loveth him also who is born of him. In this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not heavy. (1 John 5: 1-3)

God made man to live with his fellow men. God created Adam, breathing into him the breath of life. He created Eve out of his side.

And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help like unto himself. (Genesis 2:18)

Man is thus a social being. He lives in the midst of his fellow men. Save for a few totally self-reliant hermits, each man is dependent upon his fellow men for at least some of the necessities of life. Save for the aberrant situations where children are born to single parents who have chosen to remain single, children are born into the midst of a family, where they learn to live with their fellow men.

He created the Adam and Eve to give Him honor and glory in this life so as to be with Him in Heaven for all eternity. He asked them not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They disobeyed Him, committing Original Sin, which is transmitted down to each human being as a result. Original Sin closed tight the Gates of Heaven and inclined man to commit acts of violence upon his fellow man.

The Catholic Church teaches us that human nature has been weakened, although not entirely corrupted, by the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin. Although the soul of a baptized Catholic has been freed from Original Sin (and from all Actual Sins--and the in the case of one over the age of reason), it still suffers from the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin, among which are a darkened intellect, a weakened will, and the struggle of our lower sensual passions over our higher rational nature. We are inclined, therefore, to sin, manifesting in various ways each of the Seven Capital (or Deadly) Sins:

1. Pride

2. Lust

3. Greed

4. Anger

5. Sloth

6. Envy

7. Gluttony

The vagaries of fallen human nature are such that these Seven Capital Sins interact with each other to produce some rather ugly moments in the lives of us all. Each of our Actual Sins, which further darkens our intellects and weakens our wills, inclining us to sin all the more, proceed from one or more of the Seven Capital Sins. The inclination to keep on sinning will not be attenuated until and unless we get ourselves to the Sacrament of Penance and make a good confession of our sins, receiving Absolution from an alter Christus and then do the penance assigned to us by a priest as a condition of the Absolution he administers to us. In addition to doing the particular penance assigned to us for the forgiveness of our sins in any given confession, however, we must live penitentially so as to undo the effects of sins on our souls and to pay back the debt that we owe God for our forgiven sins and our general attachment to those sins. The Novena Prayer contained in the Miraculous Medal Novena puts it this way:

Obtain for us also a spirit of prayer and self-denial that we may recover by penance what we have lost by sin and at length attain to that blessed abode where you are the queen of angels and of men. Amen.

Yes, we need to recover by penance what we have lost by sin. We will be more and more inclined to acts of violence against others and perhaps even ourselves if we do not resolve to live penitentially and to ask for Our Lady's graces so that we can have the highest place possible in Heaven next to her by seeking to eradicate any attachment to sin, whether Mortal or Venial, in our lives.

The Fifth Commandment is as follows:

Thou shalt not kill.

There are many precepts of the Fifth Commandment. Each requires the attention and obedience of a Catholic.

The Inviolability of All Innocent Human Life

The Fifth Commandment forbids the intentional, direct killing (murder, more accurately) of any innocent human being. Innocent human life is always inviolable. It may never be targeted for any kind of harm whatsoever.

The prohibition of the direct killing of an innocent human being excludes any attack upon innocent human life from the first moment of fertilization to the last moment of natural life. There is never any alleged reason (eugenic, economic, political, philosophical, situational) to make any exception whatsoever to the inviolability of innocent human life.

We know in our own day that there are many diabolical attacks on the inviolability of innocent human life. Chemical and surgical means are used to snuff out life before birth. Although there are some traditional Catholics, quite tragically, who insist that we cannot involve ourselves in the pro-life movement because decriminalized abortion is but a consequence of the larger doctrinal problems facing the Church, the truth of the matter is that we do have a positive obligation before God Himself to defend the defenseless as best we can.

Our Lord sanctified the womb when He was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the tabernacle of Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb, spending nine months there before His Nativity in Bethlehem. There will never be a time when right doctrine will prevail fully in the minds of all Catholics, whether clergy or laity. We do not wait until Russia is consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart in fulfillment of her Fatima Message to do what we can to discourage women from killing their children and to embrace the fullness of the Tradition of the Catholic Church without compromise.

While it is true that many well-meaning Catholics who assist at the Novus Ordo--and who devote themselves tirelessly to helping mothers save their children from execution at the hands of baby-killers--do not understand that all of the moral problems we face in the world today are the result of the systematic overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King caused by the Protestant Revolt and the subsequent rise of Judeo-Masonry, it is nevertheless important for Traditional Catholics to oppose the evils of the day by pointing out their root causes and urging our fellow Catholics to see that the only way to ameliorate our problems is by a return of the Church to Tradition and the restoration of the Social Reign of Christ the King in the world. What better way to evangelize our fellow Catholics than by praying Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary in front of abortuaries and doing what we can, at least once a week, to give a visible, public witness to what should be one of our chief prayer intentions in this wicked age: to bring an end to child-killing under cover of law, whether by chemical or surgical means, without any exception at all?

Father Brendan Dardis, who offers the Mass of all ages at Saint Pius X Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Saint Benedict's Church, in Louisville, Kentucky, is to be commended for leading the Rosary in front of killing centers--and for his having traveled to Pinellas Park, Florida, to lead the Rosary across the street from Woodside Hospice in March of 2005 as Mrs. Theresa Marie Schindler-Schiavo was being starved and dehydrated to death. More, not less, traditional priests need to raise their voices to help save the lives, both physical and eternal, of the children who are slated for extermination in this country every day and to save the souls of the mothers who are so eager to put their children to death. Anyone who thinks he can remain indifferent in the face of the slaughter of the preborn is not thinking as a Catholic.

True, we are not ending abortion by means of political or social activism. Activism is one of the chief elements of the heresy of Americanism. We can, however, help individual souls by providing our clear witness to the binding precepts of the Divine positive law and the natural law. Some traditional Catholics in Florida are trying to provide this witness at present by attempting to put together a conference to explain to well-meaning Catholics who do not understand that our problems are indeed the direct result of Modernity in the world and Modernism in the Church about the importance of restoring the Mass of all ages, where the Catholic Faith is best expressed and protected, and of restoring the Social Reign of Christ the King. This is a very useful thing as most Catholics are ignorant, largely through no fault of their own, of the perennial teaching of the Church, which has been taken away from them, leaving them to drift aimlessly as they express concerns about matters that, while serious, are nevertheless symptoms of the much larger problems facing the Church and the world.

Some secularists or naturalist-thinking Catholics would object to the inviolability of all innocent human life by using all manner of emotionally-based arguments to justify "mercy-killing," as they call it. After all, why would a "compassionate God" want a small child to suffer for the rest of his life from a chronic, debilitating illness? Why would a "compassionate God" want a brain-damaged human being to "waste away" in bed while being fed and hydrated through tubes? Why would a "compassionate God" want a person stricken with cancer to suffer to the point of natural death?

The answer is simple: the Cross. Each of us is called to bear the Cross of the Divine Redeemer in our own lives to pay back the debt we owe Him for our own sins and to help pay back the debt owed by others. Those of us who are totally consecrated to Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart offer her each of our pains and sufferings to be used as she sees fit for the honor and glory of the Blessed Trinity and for the good of souls. We know that suffering is a punishment for Original Sin and our own Actual Sins. None of us suffers as our sins deserve. God is merciful. He never permits us to suffer beyond our capacity. Each Cross we are asked to bear has been perfectly fashioned for us from all eternity. Our Lord redeemed every single moment of our lives, including each one of our pains and sufferings, no matter how small, during those three hours that He hung on the gibbet of the Holy Cross, the Instrument on which He wrought our redemption in great pain and suffering. There is nothing that any of us suffers, no matter how great, that is the equal of what one of our least venial sins caused Our Lord to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death. Suffering is a great mercy from God, as He wants us to use it to help us get home to Him. The souls in Purgatory, though assured of their salvation, suffer intensely. Our Lord wants us to expiate our sins here on earth by bearing our share of the hardship which the Gospel entails without complaint.

A child, for example, who is born only to die without hours or days of his birth is meant to be baptized immediately after birth. That child will go straight to Heaven to fulfill the purpose for which he was created: to gaze upon the glory of the Beatific Vision for all eternity. Such a child will be a powerful intercessor as a saint in Heaven for his parents and siblings, if any, to help them get home to Heaven by persisting until their dying breaths as members of the Catholic Church in states of sanctifying grace.

A man or a woman who is called to suffer with some sort of mental retardation or a chronic disability is a victim-soul who becomes a source of grace to those who are called to go out of themselves to minister to their spiritual and temporal needs. Such a person is suffering with Christ. We must see the image of Christ Himself in that suffering soul, not to seek to terminate their lives by the taking of direct, intentional actions designed to make things "easier" on ourselves by "getting rid" of a dependent human being. Remember, each of us came into the world as totally dependent upon others for our physical needs. We remain completely dependent upon God for everything we need, both physically and spiritually. We might very well spend a good deal of our lives dependent upon others as a result of an accident or some disease. This is how we are meant to sanctify and to save our souls. There can be no escaping this reality. There can be no effort to anesthetize it. We are called to save our souls by bearing the Cross.

We must condemn and oppose those efforts to promote "euthanasia" around the world, which now extend in The Netherlands to the same measures that were employed by the Third Reich in 1939 to deal with "undesirables." Parents now have the "right" to put their disabled children to death by means of a lethal injection. We must inform one and all that this is, as noted above, the logical result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King in the world and conciliarism's own rapprochement with the "principles of 1789."

Alas, a world that is in the grip of the devil comes to believe that killing human beings is necessary since human beings are no better than any other sort of being on the planet. Such a diabolical view is the result of the rejection of Special Creation of man by God by the embrace of the disproved ideology of evolutionism. Things have gotten to such a state that a lizard scientist, Erik R. Pianka, at the University of Texas has said that it is necessary to wipe out ninety percent of humans on the planet by means of the Ebola virus. As reported on WorldNetDaily.com:

"We're no better than bacteria," [eyewitness Forrest] Mims quoted Pianka as saying in his condemnation of the human race, which, he claimed, is overpopulating the Earth.

The only way to save the planet for the rest of the species is to reduce the human population to 10 percent of its current number.

"He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," writes Mims. "War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved. Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets. AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola (Ebola reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs."

Pianka notes in the online syllabus for his Diversity and Ecology class that the deadly form of Ebola – Ebola zaire – that has killed nine out of the 10 people infected currently only spreads by direct contact with infected blood, while Ebola reston, the close relative that currently kills only monkeys, is an airborne virus. Evolution, he says, will in time result in an airborne form fatal to humans.

Here is where the lie of evolutionism results in demonic schemes to attack the zenith of God's creative work, human beings. Here is where the conciliarist novelty of religious liberty and a respect for the "secular state" results in men like Mr. Pianka being able to promote error under the aegis of "freedom of speech." No one has the right to disseminate such errors. Alas, the Church in her human elements, despite all of the protestations about respecting innocent human life, is powerless to stop the assaults against innocent human life because the hierarchy does not believe that it is necessary to restore the Social Reign of Christ the King by fulfilling Our Lady's Fatima Message.

Catholics, therefore, are called to respect the inviolability of innocent human life--and to recognize that we are required us to take all reasonable means to preserve our own lives. That is, without for one second worshiping the body, we are called to care for our bodies and to avoid intemperance of food (gluttony) and drink. We are called to get a decent amount of rest, without being slothful, in order to fulfill the duties imposed by our state-in-life although some of the great saints (for example, Saint John Bosco and Saint Padre Pio, among many others) denied themselves bodily rest in order to spend themselves entirely for souls. Those of us who are the heads of households have more of an obligation than a single person to preserve our lives so that those who are dependent upon us will not without our spiritual and temporal support as a result of our lives of excess and sloth. Mindful of the fact that death can occur at any time, we must do those things that are reasonable, including some sensible exercise now and again, to keep the body in which our souls are housed and will be reunited to for all eternity, either in Heaven or in Hell, on the Last Day able to perform until age and/or disease take their inevitable toll.

A respect for the inviolability of innocent human life does not mean, however, that we are necessarily required in all circumstances to use extraordinary means of medical care (food and water are not extraordinary care no matter how they are delivered) to preserve our lives. This is a highly subjective matter. That is, a young man with a family to support who has been diagnosed with cancer might have an obligation to undertake some course of treatment, whether holistic or medical, to seek to retard the cancer that would not be binding on a ninety-year old man. Decisions in this regard must be made in consultation with a solidly traditional Catholic priest who is aware of all of the circumstances involved.

Similarly, the removal of an artificial respirator (or the cessation of dialysis or some other extraordinary care) is a decision that depends upon a number of factors. The removal of an artificial respirator is not the intentional killing of an innocent human being. The moral principal is this: the removal of a device that is sustaining an involuntary function of the body results in the natural processes of the body taking control. Death may or may not occur as a result of the removal of the artificial device sustaining an involuntary function of the body (eating and drinking are voluntary functions; we come into the world needing assistance to eat and drink and we might leave the world needing such assistance). Death is not intended. It is not directly willed. What is directly willed is for the body to function on its own to its natural end. There are many instances where people have lived for years after the removal of an artificial respirator. Karen Ann Quinlan, whose parents went to court in 1975 to win the right to remove her artificial respirator, lived for another ten years in a coma before she died. In no case, however, can any artificial device be removed until and unless the person involved has made a good confession, if conscious, and received the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. Once again, consultation with a solidly traditional priest is absolutely required.

A respect for the inviolability of innocent human life forbids, obviously, suicide. We are not to play God with our own lives. As noted above, the graces won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Lord's Most Precious Blood are sufficient for us to deal with any difficulty, embarrassment, loss, humiliation, physical or emotional suffering or reversal that comes our way. We are to carry the Cross to the point of our dying breaths.

A respect for the inviolability of innocent human life forbids any mutilation of the body. Cosmetic plastic surgery to mask the aging process is forbidden by the Fifth Commandment. Therapeutic plastic surgery to correct some defect or to reconstruct some part of the body after a fire or another kind of traumatic accident is, of course, quite legitimate. Any effort to change our bodily appearance so as to lie about our age is a sin of vanity and is against the Fifth Commandment. God made us the way we are. Aging is part of life. We should be proud of however old we are as this is however long God has meant us to be alive. We should thus keep our hair color the way God has intended it to be for all eternity, mindful that gray hair used to be considered a sign of wisdom. Spending money on making ourselves look younger or more attractive has nothing to do with being a disciple of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Father A. J. O'Reilly put it this way in The Martyrs of the Roman Coliseum:

The hour of sunshine and peace is now drawing to a close, and the year 250 opened, even on its first day with one of the most terrible persecutions that the Church had suffered. The blessings and repose of peace had relaxed the morals of the Christians, and it pleased Almighty God to purify them once more by the fire of persecution. The great Bishop of Carthage, who was secreted in exile during the few months that the storm raged, describes the sad causes that drew once more the terrible sword over the Christian community. “Almighty God,” says the great doctor, “wished to prove His family; for the blessings of a long peace had corrupted the divine discipline given to us; our sleeping and prostrate faith roused, if I may so to speak, the celestial anger. And although we deserved more for our sins, yet the clement and merciful Lord so acted that what has passed has been more a probation than a persecution. The whole world was wrapt in temporal interests, and the Christians forgot the glorious things that were done in the days of the apostles; instead of rivalling their brilliant example, they burned with the desire of the empty riches of the world, and strained every nerve to increase their wealth. Piety and religion were banished from the lives of the priests, and fidelity and integrity were no longer found in the ministers of the altar; charity and discipline of morals were no longer visible in their flocks. The men combed their beards, and the women painted their faces; their very eyes were tinted, and their hair told a lie. To deceive the simple, they used fraud and subtlety, and even Christians deceived each other by knavery and underhanded dealing. They intermarried with unbelievers and prostituted the members of Jesus Christ to pagans. They scoffed at their prelates in their pride, and they tore each other to pieces with envenomed tongues, and seemed to destroy each other with a fatal hatred. They despite the simplicity and humility demanded by faith, and permitted themselves to be guided by the impulses of worthless vanity; they contemned the world only in words. Did we not deserve, then, the dreadful horrors of persecution that have burst upon us?”

Other examples of self-mutilation would be the "body-piercing" that has become so popular in recent decades. Any form of surgery that mutilates our capacity to continue the species is a sin against the Fifth Commandment and Sixth Commandments.

A respect for the inviolability of innocent human life requires us to maintain our senses at all times. While people may drink alcoholic beverages in moderation, drunkenness is a sin against the Fifth Commandment. Similarly, all hallucinogenic substances, including marijuana, are strictly forbidden by the Fifth Commandment as they are designed to dull the senses and cloud our rationality, leading to altered states of consciousness that incline people to sin and to become steeped in a desire for the "euphoria" produced by the substance. No one is free to seek a state of "euphoria" from a hallucinogenic substance or from alcohol. We must maintain our senses about us at all times.

Indeed, there was much talk about "crack cocaine" as the hallucinogenic substance of choice twenty years ago when I ran for lieutenant governor of New York on the Right to Life Party line. My opponents, Democrat Stanley Lundine and Republican Michael Kavanagh, got into a protracted discussion in our debate at The New York Times building on October 14, 1986 on this matter. Upon being called upon by moderator Frank Lynn to comment, I simply said that the problem we faced was not crack cocaine, it was the glorification and decriminalization of marijuana, the highway that leads to all other hallucinogenic substances. My opponents had to shake their heads in agreement. A society that loses sight of the Cross will look inevitably to pills and substances to take away the pain of a world that is in the grip of the devil himself.

Before closing this installment, it should be noted that the a respect for the inviolability of innocent human life does not mean that we will not be called to give up our lives voluntarily in defense of our families and of the Holy Faith itself. Indeed, Our Lord Himself said this in His Last Discourse at the Last Supper:

Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)

Yes, the preservation of our own lives is not an absolute value. The King of Martyrs on Calvary gave up His life so that we would could have life with Him and the Father and the Holy Ghost for all eternity in Heaven. Each of the martyrs of the Catholic Church died in defense of the Faith. We must be willing at all times to die for the Faith, and we must be willing to die rather than to sin. Moreover, each of us is called to die to self every day to serve Our Lord in the persons of those He places in our lives. Each of us is called to rely upon Our Lady, who gave up her Son so that He could fulfill the Father's will as she gave birth to us in great pain on Good Friday as the adopted sons and daughters of the living God. God created man out of the clay of the earth. He recreated him on the wood of the Holy Cross. None of us have any right to play God with any innocent human life at any time.

The next installment in this series, to be published on Saturday, will deal with unintentional killing, the death penalty, anger and forgiveness, and the Just War Theory. Contrary to what the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin noted at Fordham University in December of 1983, there is not a "seamless garment" that binds together all of the issues of the Fifth Commandment. The direct taking of innocent human life, which is one of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, is different both in degree and in kind that the death penalty and the prosecution of a just war.

Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God. And every one that loveth him who begot, loveth him also who is born of him. In this we know that we love the children of God: when we love God, and keep his commandments. For this is the charity of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not heavy. (1 John 5: 1-3)

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint Vincent Ferrer, pray for us.

Saint Peter Damien, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Mary Magdalene, pray for us.

Saint Philomena, pray for us.

Saint Lucy, pray for us.

Saint Agnes, pray for us.

Saint Agatha, pray for us.

Saint Bridget of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint Catherine of Sweden, pray for us.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Saint Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

Saint Therese Lisieux, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us.

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, pray for us.

Blessed Francisco, pray for us.

Blessed Jacinta, pray for us.

Sister Lucia, pray for us.