One writer has referred to it as “the some-people-say-X-but-others-say-Y-and-who’s-to-judge dance”. I get whiffs of this nearly-deadly, now-stale, always-polluted air nearly daily. It is like some stagnant pool in him that the person exhibiting “the steps to this ‘dance’” does not even know is there, let alone that it should be drained.
I first encountered such ‘sock-hop thinkers’ while teaching CCD. Parents would sit in on my classes, and, aloud in front of my students, one of their favorite questions was “How do we know Jesus Christ even existed?” First, I would note that the two-millennium existence of the Gospels and New Testament, and His Church to embrace these, attested to God’s urgent requirement for us to know and know of Jesus. But, too, more or less contemporary non-Christian historians like Josephus, a Jew, and Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger, all Romans, have references that relate primarily to the Christians; but secondarily, of necessity, to Christ after Whom Christians are named. Even my pastor, who loved the ‘brilliant orthodoxy’ of my late wife and I, seemed amazed that I had such answer readily available. I noted to him that maybe even more than this parent or that, I doubted Jesus myself. It was out of search for the truth, and of course, He Who is the very Word of Truth, that I encountered this information.
More currently, such a one, cradle Catholic of similar education and age to me, questioned my questioning the less-than-Christian words of a third party, who wouldn’t even stop to talk about her words. I proffered to my critical listener that “To call a man ‘a fool’ may be an untoward step into God’s role of judge. But to call his actions and/or even his words ‘foolishness’ is attempt to push into truth . . .” I got the interruptive (need I say abrupt and annoyed) answer: “And, why should she have to care about the truth?” To the above ‘dance’, it seems, some would make small ‘hymns’ to self-deceit. And, over all this time, I have made sad note of how inadequately catechized Catholics are.
As I said, I get this plain mental pollution nearly daily. (It does seem to have been hatched and permitted to multiply since the culture of death rose to prominence in the 1960s and up until now.) The younger the other person, the greater the likelihood that he or she is rife with it; and, worse, so very precisely on culture-of-life issues. And, it does seem to have bearing on the practical atheism of so many persons. I am exhausted as to how to say anything but, frankly, avoid talking about anything at all serious with such a person. Have any of you happened upon a better solution, the result of which would be powerful evangelization?
