People know that the current order of things doesn’t help them lead good lives

Time to Abandon Comfort 

And Defend Essentials

By James Kalb

The issues that now put Catholics in opposition to secular public thought are too basic to ignore. The Church accepts God as our reference point, and views freedom to develop our relation to Him and act by reference to it as basic to our good and our dignity. In contrast, secular society has made our own outlook and desires our reference point. Those things make us what we are, or so it is thought, and freedom to follow them is considered the key to a good and dignified life.

That opposition leads to views of morality and justice in which drastically different claims and authorities carry weight. The Church values conscience, and accepts “this is right”—in general, this expresses the moral nature of a world that after all is God’s creation—as a claim that normally overrides other considerations. Today’s secular world values individual autonomy instead, and prefers the authority of claims such as “I want this” or “this is part of my identity as I define it.”

The contradiction is sharpened by conflicts in institutional loyalty. The Church accepts its hierarchy as the authority that defines, protects, and furthers the most fundamental human concerns. Secular society rejects that authority in favor of that of the state, with its courts, constitutional law, experts on human rights, and system of education and social welfare. At one time it was possible to reconcile the two by saying that they dealt with different matters, the Church hierarchy with fundamental spiritual and moral principles and the state with worldly practicalities and standards of conduct generally accepted as a matter of vernacular natural law (otherwise known as common sense).

That view no longer works because of growing state absolutism resulting from the decline of transcendent religion and the sense of a natural moral order. All social institutions, including the family, are now viewed as state creations, so that determining what they should be in light of ultimate values such as equality and personal autonomy is considered a basic function of government. On such an understanding there is no room for the moral authority of the Church.

From the Catholic standpoint the claims the secular world treats as authoritative are weak.

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