At long last (what, they have lives or something?), the folks at National Catholic Prayer Breakfast have posted Bishop Morlino's speech, "The Dictatorship of Relativism," in which he makes three main points. You owe it to yourselves to read the whole thing: rarely will you find the topic covered both succinctly and wittily. But here are some favorite moments. The link is to the text as prepared; in delivery he skipped the opening 'grafs, considering them adequately covered by Bill Saunders' introduction of him.
In answer to the question
Who are the members of the junta who govern this dictatorship?He says it wouldn't be prudent for a cleric to name names, but he's willing to point a finger at the media, who are rarely neutral, and those who live their lives by polls.
We might also ask “What are the principal enforcement mechanisms of the Dictatorship of Relativism, what weapons are contained in the arsenal of these dictators?” The first is inconsistency in civil law and practice, inconsistency being just another instance of relativism. This inconsistency is especially neuralgic because the civil law is our teacher. We have the very same individuals protesting against warrantless surveillance of possible terrorists’ activities, and then in the northwest, affirming warrantless surveillance of people’s garbage containers to ensure that no recyclables are to be found. On the one hand warrantless surveillance with regard to possible terrorism is politically incorrect while warrantless surveillance of personal garbage is politically correct. The polls determine what is politically correct and thus the same people find themselves caught in a clear inconsistency in the context of a culture which never even thinks to question it. Polls rarely divulge information which reaches beyond the trivial and transitory but truth is neither trivial nor transitory. Those who claim otherwise promote the Dictatorship of Relativism.
I'm skipping even more trenchant examples to cut to his discussion of the manipulation of language. Lots of substantive stuff, but I'll cut to the sound-bite:
Supreme Court justices we’re told, should be uniters not dividers, when it comes to Roe v. Wade. How ironic, since Roe v. Wade has become our great source of division. Now to be a uniter means to uphold that which divided us in the first place.
He goes on:
The word “transparency” it seems to me, is being used so that we no longer even hear the word“truth” in our public dialogue and conversation. We already have a very good word for transparency: truth and truthfulness. Why is it the agenda of some to rid our language of the usage of the word, truth?
Best example (with a funny line at the end):
We are at the point where, because of in-vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood and what flows from that, we are no longer sure what the words “father” and “mother” mean. In some cases, there is the genetic mother, the gestational mother, and the mother who actually raises the child to adulthood. There are at least three mothers. When we move to the redefinition of marriage, as including other options than “one husband – one wife –one lifetime – with openness to children,” we find ourselves in very troubling waters indeed. The Dictatorship of Relativism gains strength from the outrageous manipulation of language, and if we are to overcome this dictatorship with true democracy, we’re going to have to regain control of the use of language so as to point to the objective truth. Certain Catholic legislators recently received a correction from our Bishops’ Conference when they attempted to promote a redefinition of primacy of conscience as a line item veto with regard to elements of the Ten Commandments and the teachings of the Church, another example of surrender to the Dictatorship of Relativism.
Second point: the dictatorship of relativism leads to state-imposed secularism, which undermines democracy (dictatorship being the enemy of democracy by definition):
The relationship between church and state involves three simple rules. First, the state is never to force anyone to practice a particular religion. Secondly, the state is never to prevent anyone from practicing a particular religion. And third, generally the state should favor the practice of religion, because religious experience includes a moral code according to which people restrain themselves so that restraint by the state becomes less necessary. Thus if the state wishes to encourage democracy and needs less to intervene in the lives of individuals, one key to this strengthening of the sphere of freedom, this strengthening of democracy, is the favoring of religion by the state. Secularism founded upon relativism and deconstructionalism, should never be imposed as a state religion.
What to do?
Our response is not to seek the embodiment of distinctive Catholic convictions in civil law. We should not be seeking to pass civil laws requiring belief in the Trinity or attendance at Sunday Mass or fasting from meat during the Fridays of Lent. Our response should be to seek the embodiment of natural law in the civil law. Natural law is that law written on the human heart which can be known by every human being through reason alone.
He then offers the world's shortest explanation of natural law, which I'd love to quote, but a girl's gotta stop someplace. I should mention that he was interrupted frequently with loud applause, which always seemed to take him by surprise. Not that he didn't seem completely composed and professional in his delivery, but he had a bemused smile on his face throughout --as if he couldn't believe a philosophy professor was getting applause during a lecture.
