April 9, 2008

I have a B.A. in philosophy from a liberal arts college.  When I describe my education, many people wonder what the heck I plan on doing with all the "impractical" studies I've occupied myself with. Yet, the more I steep myself in the public controversies LifeSiteNews.com reports on daily, the more thankful I am for having spent so much time pondering the important questions in life.

After all, everyone has a philosophy by which they understand life. In addition, every person has a theology, a set of convictions relating to God(s) and His/their relation or lack thereof to the world. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, "You cannot evade the issue of God, whether you talk about pigs or the binomial theory, you are still talking about Him." Our laws are inevitably related to our convictions about the nature and destiny of man as formulated in philosophy and theology.  Take two recent court cases related to incest.

On March 20, John Deaves and his daughter Anne pleaded guilty to two charges of incestuous intercourse. The first instance of intercourse the couple was convicted of produced a daughter who died from a congenital heart disease only a few days after her birth. The second act of intercourse they were charged with produced a healthy child.

Because of her parents' divorce, Anne did not grow up with John. They were basically strangers when they reunited in 2000 and began their sexual relationship. Anne was in her early 30s when she freely began her relationship with her father.
 
"This is not a case where a father has violated his daughter and used his position of authority to take advantage of her powerlessness. Rather, this is a case of a mutually consensual union, formed by adults, who had previously had little contact," observed District Court Judge Steven Millsteed.

Millsteed argued that "the offence of incest exists not merely to protect children from sexual abuse" and went on to cite other reasons for the law. 

"In my view, other relevant factors include the need to prevent the high risk of congenital defects of children born of incestuous relationships and to prevent children who are brought up in a family unit founded on an incestuous relationship suffering psychological harm and social stigmatisation. Those factors assume significance in this case," said Millsteed.

Yet the question remains, what if the Deaveses freely decided to undergo sterilization? 

In February 2007, the German brother-sister couple Patrick Stuebing and Susan Karolewski asked the Constitutional Court to overturn the ban on incest. After giving birth to four children with his sister, Stuebing freely opted for a vasectomy. With no threat of inflicting physical or emotional harm upon future offspring, are Stuebing and Karolewski now engaged in a perfectly healthy, loving relationship?

"The main problem is, of course, that the couple might produce unhealthy children. But if they don't have children, then I see no reason why not, in this day and age. But then, I'm a scientist, not a moralist," stated Professor Roland Littlewood.

From a secular perspective, Littlewood's moral assessment is unassailable. If, as the great neo-Darwinian narrative teaches, man is merely the accidental byproduct of blind, unguided natural processes, then there seems to be no reason for man to restrain his sexual desires. If there is no God, then there is no transcendent purpose for sexuality. Man is thus free to follow and satisfy his sexual urges as he sees fit.

Most proposals for the social and legal recognition of traditionally condemned sexual relationships, whether between members of the same sex or of the same family, base their advocacy in a secular lassie-faire sexual ethic. "Our body, our choice" runs the mentality. 

The secularist's endorsement of deviant sexual practices is perfectly consistent with their worldview. The question, then, is whether their secular worldview is actually true.  Thus enters all that supposedly useless philosophy and theology people like me have "wasted" so much time with.

This article is not the place to marshal forth the extensive evidence for the Catholic Christian worldview that I'm convinced most fully expresses God's design of marriage as exclusive lifelong partnership of love directed towards the procreation and education of children. It will have to suffice to state that there are ample reasons for embracing a Catholic worldview. I would point interested readers to the works of Norman Geisler, William Lane Craig, J.P. Moreland, Lee Strobel, Peter Kreeft, Scott Hahn, and Patrick Madrid for highly readable, but scholarly presentations of the scientific, historic, and philosophic evidence for the truth claims of Christian Theism and Catholicism in particular.

I exhort the many pro-life readers of LifeSiteNews.com to recall the fundamental philosophic and theological issues that shape contemporary legal and political debates. Proponents of aberrant sexual practices will not abandon their lassie-faire sexual ethic until they are shown that their sexuality is a gift designed for a specific purpose as part of the loving Creator's plan for their lives.