Dear Rev. Know-it-all;

I was shocked and chagrined to see a Fox survey that said only 14% of Catholics make political decisions based on their faith and 25% of Catholics sometimes doubt the existence of God.  How did we get into this mess? Also, I didn’t understand your reference last week to epichaia. Isn’t that a figure of speech, or a province of Northern Greece or something?

Your friend,

Guy L. Less

 Dear Guy,

Oddly enough, all three of your points are tied in to each other.  Let me begin with epichaia, or perhaps better spelled “epikeia.” Epikeia is a Greek word meaning reasonableness or clemency. I was told that in its root meaning it had something to do with jumping over, but I am unable to verify this. I remember long lectures about epikeia back at Wassamatta U, given by the eminent Dr. Samuel Dreck on the subject. Dr. Dreck taught classes in moral philosophy and home economics. He brilliantly combined his two passions in an essay on Immanuel Kant’s favorite recipe for apple strudel. He also maintained that Martin Heidegger’s preference for potato dumplings was the inevitable result of his phenomenology. Apparently they have more “being” than other forms of the dumpling. Where was I, oh, Yes.

Dr. Dreck delighted to point out that clement and reasonable interpretation of the law meant that, when compliance with the law demands heroism and effort out of proportion to the purpose of the law, epikeia may be used and that when particular circumstances unforeseen by the legislator would indicate that it was not in his mind or intention to bind a person, epikeia may be used. (I have lifted these last two phrases directly from the New Catholic Encyclopedia.) He rarely emphasized that these dispensations only apply to laws made by men and not laws made by God. For instance, if a person is ill and in the hospital, the communion fast may be abrogated under certain circumstances, but we are still not supposed to covet our neighbor’s ox, as the Ten Commandments tells us.  

Dr. Dreck was not happy with the Church's restatement in 1968 on the traditional ban on artificial contraception. I’m not sure that he ever said it but he certainly seemed to believe that it was just a silly human law and was thus subject to epikeia. Further, he was fond of pointing out that to commit a truly mortal sin one needed complete freedom and a complete turning of the will, and who in this modern world is truly free?

In fact, much of the moral theology taught at Wassamatta U. and many other colleges was designed to help us young progressives think our way around artificial birth control, and if you can think way around one sin you can  think your way around any sin. This was very handy at the time. It was the late sixties.

Ah, bright college days, the summer of love, the dawning of the age of Aquarius! You try telling a lot of arrogant college students who have been told that they are the new generation to whom the torch has been passed that they have the right, nay the duty to judge the law. You’ll be amazed at the mayhem! Well, the summer of love brought us forty years of sexually transmitted diseases, divorce and single parent homes. We used the above mentioned torch to burn down the civilization, and now the bill has come due. Thank you Dr. Dreck.  I suspect that what we learned was  partly the cause  for the horrors and scandals that have rocked the church over the past years. If you believed that you were superior to the law, what horrible things would you do? 

The repudiation of Humana Vitae, Pope Paul VI’s encyclical restating God’s teaching about the sacred privilege of transmitting human life, is responsible for the other two points you mention.  If we are the judges of law and we come to believe ourselves superior to the law, it is a short jump from superiority to merely human laws, to deciding what parts of the Scripture are divine and what parts are merely human and therefore subject to epikeia. God  no longer has anything to say about politics or morals or anything, and when we make God mute we don’t hear him speak. St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, “Brethren when you were heathens you were led astray to mute idols.” How are we to believe a god who we refuse to hear?

It seems that we have returned to mute idols. When, on  July 25, 1968, Pope Paul VI reminded the world what God had said about marriage and family life, the world told God to just shut up and mind His own business. We would make our own decisions, be they political, moral, economic, or whatever. Besides it wasn’t God speaking it was just some silly old celibate Italian bishop who doesn’t have any idea how tough we have it here in America. Did he have any idea how stressful it can be to pack our 2.3 children into the Hummer and go to the mall. Designer gym shoes aren’t cheap you know. We will do as we please. God’s job is to help us, not to make our lives more difficult!!!

The American Church reminds me of Dr. Dreck teaching that, when the law demands heroism, epikeia allows us to mitigate the law’s demands. When the going gets tough, jump for epikeia.

Dr. Dreck and his colleagues began the process of de-heroizing the American Catholic Church and after 40 years it seems they have done a fine job of it. No wonder the churches are empty and we regularly vote for politicians who claim to be “pro-abortion Catholics.” That’s like going to dinner with a cannibal who claims to be a vegetarian. Be careful. You may be the dessert course.

Perhaps it’s time to quit the American Catholic Church and return to the Roman Catholic Church.

Rev. Know-it-all