We are so used to having people talk about Science as though it is in opposition to God. God, they say, is all about faith; but the modern world sees Science as the arbiter of meaning and significance. After all, it is a material world and therefore the study of it belongs to Science and its strict method of procedure.
But for those of us who do not see any opposition between Science and God, we hasten to point out that God’s creation can be studied and that Science is the name of that study.
In fact, we go further. There is a mathematical substructure to all of creation (or if you are squeamish at the word, let’s just call it nature). God is the ultimate Mathematician. He invented Mathematics since He chose to make it not only exact and coherent but predictable and surprising at the same time.
In the realm of Biology, we can also say that God has created all biological life according to fixed principles that can be discerned by scientists and medical doctors. The human brain, for instance, is an amazing machine. It is so complex that, even with the greatest Artificial Intelligence experiments, nothing comes near the power and sophistication of the biological reality that is the human brain. Thus, God can also be called the Greatest Biologist in all reality since He invented Biology as well.
In today’s world, the area of the Body and Spirit that has declared a certain autonomy from the structures of reality, however, is the area of sexuality. Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, this is an area of life, a very important area, that has declared freedom from the bounds that God, as Supreme Biologist, had set for it. Marriage and family, procreation and gender are among the areas that have been ‘liberated’.
But, if we believe that God Himself has created and established these very important areas of human life and that He has given them rules and boundaries that must be respected, then an error in the area of sexuality can have deep and destructive results for the family and, ultimately, for a society that is founded on the building blocks of the family.
This will eventually affect all of society and, by that very fact, will affect the Church.
We see this happening already in our families. Nieces and nephews, cousins and grandchildren, refusing to be married before God in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar (Matrimony). Baptized Catholics who have been brought up as practicing members of the Church (often at great expense at Catholic institutions of higher learning) refusing to have their children baptized. Families that were formerly church-going, giving up on regular attendance at Sunday Mass; and, even at the end of life, refusing to give the sick the Sacraments of Healing, and when they are called by God to their judgement, refusing them a Mass of Christian Burial.
How did we come to this sad state?
The demons know that attacking the Catholic Family through the flouting of the rules that God has established for the flourishing of true sexual development, they were dealing a death blow against the will of God and His loving plan for each of His precious creations. What better way to get back at God than in the name of ‘human rights’ destroying the family?
Recent studies have shown that Church attendance was on the way up throughout the period after the Second World War, but that it started a dreadful drop beginning in the mid-1960s. These studies seem to suggest that it was the so-called ‘Sexual Revolution’ that caused the drop, and that it has continued to decimate religious life and church attendance up until the present day. Arguably, the sex-abuse crisis in the Church and in many other sectors of modern life (including the family) may have its roots in the modern revolt against the rules imposed by God, the Biologist Supreme, which He had established to contain this awesome and potentially destructive power we call Sexuality.
Now, with the exception of adult consent, there are no rules to guide the use of the sexual gift that God gave us primarily for the procreation of children and for the strengthening of family life.
People laugh at the scene in one of the Godfather movies when Michael Corleone had to escape to Sicily to avoid arrest for the crime (and sin) of murder. He takes a shine to a beautiful Sicilian girl and begins to court her. As they walk romantically through the Sicilian countryside, the camera pans out to include a whole gaggle of family members of the young lady there to make sure that the man does not take advantage of the young lady. Everyone in the showing I went to laughed. However, maybe the old ways were true in realizing the power of sexual desire and the danger that it posed when the rules are flouted. We ‘moderns’ end up laughing at the wisdom of the past from our vantage point lying on the ruins of our culture, decimated by this ‘sexual revolution’!
We must always remember Who invented Science and why He set boundaries and gave rules for all of its areas including the sexual development of His children.