Sometimes a few insignificant flakes of snow on a hillside give way to gravity and then there is an avalanche beyond belief. How many contemporary people have heard the name Descartes or Kant? A minority of educated people may have been forced to learn their names to pass a test in a college philosophy 101 class and could probably identify the country they are from on the game show “Jeopardy.” But Rene Descartes introduced the world to “universal doubt.” And Immanuel Kant introduced the world to the idea that we are all locked in a prison where all transcendence is impossible. For Kant, if there were eternal truths . . . we can never get reach them.” From these two “snowflakes” . . . the avalanche.

Here is the avalanche. If the Absolute cannot be known by reason or recognized in history . . . then prophecies and miracles are impossible. This Kantian idea has influenced first a generation of Protestant Scripture “scholars” and now a generation of Catholic ones. If miracles are impossible, then how does one reconstruct the history of revelation and the history of Jesus and the history of Christianity? It is not Scripture scholarship that “proves” the philosophy of Descartes and Kant. Note this well . . . It is a “philosophy”, a wrong philosophy, a fallacious philosophy that generates the Bibical exegesis. A biblical exegesis based on a false philosophy cannot be true even if there was a huge consensus among exegetes because falsity does not make truth nor does consensus!

While Kant somewhat mourned the death of transcendence in the human spirit and tried to salvage it, Nietzsche celebrated it: “God is dead and we have killed Him.” The avalanche is this: God must be banished from philosophy, from science, from public life, from everything. We, you and I, are riding the avalanche. Sadly most people don’t know they are in one. One reason is that the avalanche moves slowly. The legalization of the killing of unborn children is now 40 years old. Now liberals talk about legalizing the killing of just born children or children of any age that have not reached the age of reason. Such a development could never happen, you say. That is what we said about legalized abortion. Such a thing could never happen.

When the absolutely innocent Jesus was condemned to death he was accorded a trial, something in keeping with ethics and political principles, something having the solemnity of being based on logic and truth. But the condemnation of Jesus is where the Holy Spirit convicted the world of sin. The issue of abortion also was given all the formalities and rubrics of a trial. Like Pontius Pilate, the Court, the Supreme Court gave in to the people calling for the legalization of the killing of the innocent. All the arguments are couched in moral terms just like in the trial of Jesus. There was even as in this modern Sanhedrin a kind of religious zeal: religious language is reversed: “This is my body” the radical feminists say, but it isn’t the “This is my Body given up for you out of Love” of Jesus is it? Five words: “I sacrifice myself for you” which reveals the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the saints and martryrs is now: “I sacrifice you for me.” The same five words turned around tell us what abortion is. Creating huge debt and then passing it on to our children and grand-children is the same thing: “I sacrifice you for me.”

Jesus tells his followers that they will be hated: “Do not wonder that the world hates you.” Following Jesus arouses hatred. Jesus is not talking only to those first followers. People who try to follow Jesus will be hated because those in love with evil cannot stand to be contrasted with the followers of Jesus. They want to see their wicked deeps approved of and celebrated by others. Cognitive dissonance unsettles those who love wickedness. It forces them to question themselves, to doubt themselves , to wonder whether godly love, faith and hope are after all right. Because deep down in their heart of hearts they know that what they are doing is wrong. During Lent every Catholic should ask themselves a question. If Christians are not to wonder why they are hated. Why am I not hated? Is it because I am not really following Jesus?

Pope Benedict XVI noted something interesting in one of his writings, I forget which one. He said that doubt and temptation work both ways. It is customary to speak of the difficulties and temptations of Christians. But the Holy Father says that atheists and anti-theists also are tempted by faith, hope and love because they cannot completely silence their conscience. That is why the pro-choice people are so aggressive and violent. What they want to kill is not just the unborn or the pro-life people. They want to kill that voice of conscience that is still there in them. “The Church’s pro-life movement is a war of men against women?” they say. Oh really, then why is it that most of those aborted are girls, hundreds of millions of girls. The pro-choice movement is the most anti-girl, anti-woman force that has ever been seen on the world, the very opposite of what it pretends to be.

I was told of an interesting debate between a highly educated pro-choice advocate and a simple Catholic. The pro-choice advocate brought out all kinds of complex, abstract arguments. But the Catholic lady simply said: “But its just a little baby you are killing.” This caused the pro-choice advocate to increase the complexity of her arguments. To which the Catholic woman simply said: “But its just a little baby, with little ears, and little eyes, and little fingers and toes. And all the worldly wisdom in the world couldn’t silence this simple Catholic woman: “But it’s just an innocent, defenseless little baby with a little face, and little eyes.” The Catholic woman had no answer to the sophisticated arguments of the pro-choice advocate. But she knew that this was murder. And watching the face of the pro-choice advocate, one could see that she knew it was murder too.