Apropos a post below

. . . including the statement “moral theology is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”.

Like most towns, my hometown has an “alternative” newspaper. It’s alternative in that it doesn’t pretend to get subscription revenue; it takes overt advertisements for several forms of prostitution; and it doesn’t try to hide its hostility to everything outside its own narrow view of the world. Unfortunately, it also is the home to the best restaurant reviewer in the area. He knows food and he can write very well indeed. There is some quota of political correctness per column – whether required by contract or inserted by the editor - but it’s usually possible to get past that. Last month he wrote this about the beverage selection at a new high-end steakhouse:

Laura and I went with beer. Our waiter said that was a good choice. But then, everything was a good choice in his opinion. I could have asked for a glass of Drano and fillet of underpants and he would have just wanted to know boxers or briefs, then complimented me on my taste and sophistication.

Beautiful writing and true to our sick culture. We are asked not only to tolerate, but to celebrate, all manner of evil behaviors on the principle that we can’t criticize other people’s pursuit of happiness, no matter how misguided. Being the odd character, though, this image stuck with me in ways that would horrify the publisher, editors, advertisers and most of the audience of the paper because that vivid analogy curtly sums up so much of my life.

Every day I have the opportunity to ask the One who humbled Himself even unto death to recommend the day’s fare. Instead I seek at best the completely useless fillet of underpants or, far too often, the positively lethal glass of Drano. I know better and have known better for years. Even after I “meditate on the law of the Lord day and night”, I follow the prodigal son yet again. I’ve repented far more than seventy times seven, but I’ve rebelled more times yet.

I have some hope in seeing that I’m not alone in this predicament – that even saints have bewailed their own tendencies to fall. I have hope in the phrase “in Your mercy keep us free from sin”, knowing that Holy Mother Church would not pray for the impossible.

I found yet more hope in a snippet I read the other day. I’ve probably seen this idea several times before but have been too dense to understand it. Gloria Olivae observes:

You can neither know what chastity is nor observe chastity unless you first know poverty and have observed poverty. And you can neither know what is obedience and practice obedience unless you know and have practiced chastity. Now, do you see why the biggest problem of the Church today is lack of Chastity and lack of obedience? Because there is no spirit of Poverty.

Fr. Odon explains elsewhere in the post how the three evangelical counsels apply to the laity so it is best to read the whole post. What hit me was the explanation concise enough even for me of how the love of money is the root of all evil.