Some people love change. I’m not one of them but I do believe some change is natural and not necessarily something to be feared. Change can be good.
There is change we seek. It might starting a new job that we very much want. It might be starting a new relationship with a wonderful person. There is change we don’t want. It might the loss of a great job or a breakup of what we had thought was a wonderful relationship.
The world is full of change. Today I would like to talk about how fast change comes. Do we rush ourselves into something or do we take time to think it through?
Where is this coming from? Believe it or not, I came up with the idea for this article from reading an article about lightbulbs. Yes, lightbulbs (David Schechter, Haley Rush, and Chance Horner, “LED lights are erasing our view of the stars — and it’s getting worse.” September 1, 2023. cbsnews.com. https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/light-pollution-makes-stars-invisible/?intcid=CNM-00-10abd1h).
The article discusses how LED lights are changing our night sky and much more. The authors remind us that in 2007 Congress mandated that light bulbs become three times more efficient. This sounds good. It would save us electricity and save us dollars. We all like to save dollars and saving electricity is good for the environment (how good depends on how the electricity is produced; coal, natural gas, nuclear, solar, etc.).
So, at first glance, this would seem to be a very good change. What happened? The news story discusses light pollution. According to the story, “the night sky is getting 10% brighter every year.” They call this light pollution.
They also talk about how the bright nights hurt our sleep cycle, which they say increases cancer risks and heart disease. They say the light pollution is resulting in a decline in insect population and more bird deaths as the birds fly into brightly lit buildings.
Where am I going with this? Congress started with a desirable change, saving electricity and saving money. However, there have been side effects. Did we know about the side effects but choose to ignore them? Or did we rush to find more efficient light bulbs and didn’t bother to consider potential side effects?
We need to consider side effects when considering change. Of course, the change I am most interested in isn’t the efficiency of light bulbs or its effect on insect population.
I’m interested in the speed of moral change in society. For example, in 1996 the U.S. Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act which stated that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Twenty years later, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. Support for same-sex marriage had been growing. My concern isn’t that we went from, say 40% to 60% supporting same-sex marriage (I don’t know the exact numbers. I use 40 and 60 to show a shift).
My concern is the flip of thought. Some of the same members of Congress who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act have switched from banning same-sex marriage to proactively supporting it without a definitive reason. Well, a reason apart from relativism that says there is no truth and people must be free to choose whatever they want. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I do not believe in relativism. I believe in truth, specifically God’s Truth, the truth that sets us free (John 8:32).
We have been on a slippery slope. In recent years, many identify the beginning of the present sexual moral slippery slope as the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. The development of the birth control pill had an important contribution here. Sex became separated from procreation (which is what Pope Paul VI feared when he wrote Humanae Vitae and maintained Catholic teaching against the birth control pill).
The birth control pill started (for many) with a good idea, to help people not have more children than they could properly provide for. (One might ask in a country with a high standard of living, what does “properly provide for” mean but that is not our topic today). However, on the negative side, separating sex from procreation has made sex purely a matter of physical pleasure for many. They have lost the sense that sexual intercourse is meant to be an expression of a deep, caring, and committed unity between a man and a woman. I see this, our Catholic faith sees this, as a negative effect.
Looking at potential medical side effects of the birth control pill, studies find a higher rate of breast cancer among women who use the birth control pill.
The slippery slope of sexual morality that we have been on since the sexual revolution of the 1960’s has brought us to the gender ideology of today. Gender ideology is a topic for another day.
Morally speaking one of my greatest concerns following the introduction of the birth control pill is that the idea of sex without consequences (i.e. pregnancy/children) has led to the objectification of the human person. The “other person” in open sex is a means for physical pleasure rather than a person to be loved. I am concerned that those who see sex merely as for physical pleasure might even be objectifying themselves, only concerned with the physical pleasures and not seeing themselves as a person with deeper needs.
I would doubt (at least I hope) that the people at the beginning of the sexual revolution and/or the development of the birth control pill foresaw what was going on as leading to the objectification of human beings as means for physical pleasure. Here I should make clear that I do not want to place all the ills of society today on the sexual revolution and the birth control pill.
My point today is this. We need to slow down and consider both the positive and negative effects of the direction the world is going. We need to think about how we decide which effects are positive and which are negative. For me, my faith says God decides what is good and what is bad.
I pray that the world slows down and take some much needed time to reflect on where we are at and where we are going. God created us to be free. The question we must ask ourselves is “do we make good use of our freedom”.
Peace,
Fr. Jeff