Truth / Veritas

Dear parish family,
As many of you know, I am a language ‘Geek’. I love words, grammar and syntax and in my teaching career I have taught six languages. As one who appreciates the power of language and words I am distressed to witness how words are now being manipulated to fit a specific agenda or point of view. In his book 1984, George Orwell depicted a society in which language and truth had no objective value. The Ministry of Truth took as its job to reduce the number of words in the vocabulary and change the meaning of words to fit what was deemed appropriate. There was also the task of re-writing history so that the current state of affairs in which the people lived was portrayed as always having been ‘regular’; any dissent or question was deemed suspicious and not accepted by the authorities. Why do I bring this up, because it seems in my opinion that this is what is happening in our society today. One particular example in the current manipulation of words is the phrase ‘reproductive rights’ to really mean ‘abortion’. As human beings we have a right to reproduce, as a matter of fact in Genesis God said to Adam and Eve: ” Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth..” (Gn. 1:28). As soon as conception takes place, the couple have reproduced; there is no right or mandate to end the life of the child under the guise of ‘reproductive rights’. The choice of the couple is whether or not they will engage in the act by which a child is conceived: if a child is conceived they are parents. There is no such thing as an inconvenient life, nor a life that is not valuable; no one has the right to take an innocent life by abortion or any other means. To paraphrase Pope St. John-Paul II; “we should always call the truth the truth and use language that does not cloud, nor obscure the truth.” Language is important, let us not manipulate, nor distort language to fit a societal agenda or mask truth. As Christ taught: “The truth will set you free.”
God bless, Fr. Dan