This article was adapted from Bishop Barron’s homily for Respect for Life Sunday 2024.
Tom Holland’s magnificent book Domination develops in detail what amounts to a very simple proposition: that Christianity is responsible for many of the central values that we take for granted and assume to be universal. In fact, he argues, our emphasis on the dignity of the individual, basic human rights, the principle of equality and perhaps above all that the poor, the marginalized and the victims must be especially cherished , arise from Christian foundations. convictions.
What initially prompted Holland to investigate this claim was his extensive work on ancient Roman history. The longer and deeper he examined Roman society, the more foreign it seemed to him, the less it resembled our times. And the more he studied the great heroes of Rome, the more they seemed foreign and morally problematic to him. To give just one example among many, he invites us to consider perhaps the most impressive of ancient Roman figures, Julius Caesar. Eager to improve his political reputation, Caesar embarked on a military campaign in Gaul (present-day France). His remarkable success in subduing this land and making it a Roman province served to cover him with glory and became the subject of his book. The Gallic Wars, which is read to this day. But what is rarely noticed is the staggering fact that during this conquest Caesar killed, by a conservative estimate, a million people and enslaved another million. Now, Caesar had many enemies in Rome who suspected him of coveting royal power. But what Holland finds fascinating is that none of his opponents were outraged by his murderous rampage across Gaul. In fact, all of Rome congratulated him for it. So the question arises: why would we today consider someone who killed and enslaved on such a scale a scoundrel when even the best and brightest of ancient Roman society considered Caesar a hero? The answer, in a nutshell, is Christianity.
What the early Christians brought to Roman culture was the belief in one God who created each human being in his image and likeness and thus endowed them with rights, freedom and dignity. Moreover, the Christians taught, the Creator God became man and willingly went to the very limits of suffering and degradation, in the words of Saint Paul, “even accepting death, death on the cross.” They proclaimed a savior who fell victim to Roman tyranny and whom God raised from the dead. And with this proclamation, they brought back to the center all the tyrannized, all the victims, all the weak and the forgotten on the margins. Of course, these beliefs were initially considered absurd and early Christians were brutally persecuted because of these beliefs. But over time, and thanks to the testimony and practice of courageous people, these beliefs have permeated the Western social fabric. They have penetrated our consciousness so deeply that we have come, as Holland has argued, to take them for granted and mistake them for general humanist values.
Believers have been intimidated by the insinuation that religion is a “private» matter.
Now why is all this important to us today? We live in a time where The Christian faith is fairly regularly denigrated by those in the upper echelons of elite society, in universities and in the media. Additionally, armies of people, especially young people, are disaffiliation from churches and stop engaging in religious rituals and practices. Harmless enough, one might think, or even to the advantage of a maturing society thanks to secularization? Think again. As Christian faith and practice disappear, so do the values that Christianity instilled in our culture. Cut flowers may bloom for a while once they have been pulled from the ground and placed in water, but they will wilt fairly quickly. We are mistaken if we think that the values that Christianity has instilled in us will long survive the disappearance of Christianity itself.
Signs of the emergence of neo-paganism indeed abound. In many states of our country, as well as in Canada and many European countries, a regime of euthanasia holds the top. When elderly or sick people become inconvenient, they can and should be eliminated. And of course, in most Western countries, when a child in the womb is deemed problematic, it can be aborted at any time during the pregnancy, up to the time of birth. In my home state of Minnesota, a proposal was made to enshrine this “right” to murder the unborn child in the constitution. This is similar to the ancient Roman practice of exposing unwanted newborns to the elements and animals. And it is fascinating, in light of Tom Holland’s analysis, that the early Christians attracted the attention of the surrounding Roman culture precisely through their willingness to save and welcome these abandoned babies.
So what is the necessary thing? Christians must raise their voices to protest the culture of death. And they must do it by claiming and publicly proclaiming the values that come from their faith. For too long, believers have been intimidated into silence under the insinuation that religion is a “private” matter. Absurdity. Christian values have informed our society from the beginning and provided the consistent moral framework that most of us still take for granted. It is no longer time for peace. It is time for us to shout our convictions from the rooftops.
