Truth: Veritas

Dear parish family,
There is so much discord and yelling in our society that truth seems to be ignored or cast as being irrelevant as long as one can shut down anyone who disagrees with them. In John’s Gospel when Jesus is being interrogated by Pilate, Jesus says: “I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the truth; and all who are on the side of truth listen to my voice”. “Truth? ” said Pilate, “What is that?” (John 18: 37-38) That is still the question, the answer to which we seem to have confused in our society.
There is what is called object truth; that is the thing itself (object) does not change and does not depend on anyone’s knowing, liking or agreeing with it. An example is that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Another is that the earth is round, even though there was a time when many believed the earth to be flat, that did not indeed make it flat. Then there is subjective truth, that is the truth is not in the unchanging object but rather in the persons (subjects) perception of it, understanding of it, or liking it. Again, just because people perceived the earth as being flat, did not, nor does it make it so.
This is the essence of the debate as to when life begins. It is a biological fact that at the moment of conception the blastula has the complete, unique, human DNA that the person will have throughout the person’s biological life; nothing will be added nor subtracted throughout the entire development of the person. It is for this reason that the church proclaims that at the moment of conception there is a unique, individual human person, engendered by God with an immortal soul who enjoys the right to life and the right to bodily integrity.
In the following weeks, I will discuss the nature of language and how it can be and has been manipulated.
-Fr. Dan