The Physiophobe: Modern Man Against Reality
by Anthony Esolen, Public Discourse:
We are physiophobes: we are afraid of, or we detest, the way things are. We take no delight in the real. We do not revel in boys being boys and girls being girls, and their coming together in marriage, the real thing, to make children, real children.
I’ve inherited from the library of a dear friend now deceased, Father J.J. MacDonald, a set of old textbooks from when he was a seminary student, circa 1950. We can tell something of the difference between our day and his from the language of the book I have before me now, Summa Theologiae Moralis, by Benedict Merkelbach, OP, which was translated from Dutch into Latin for use all over the world. Father J.J.’s marginal notes are to be found everywhere, in English and Latin; that too is remarkable. Most remarkable, though, is the unswerving realism of the author, the authors he cites, and the Church teachings he propounds.
It never occurs to Merkelbach that we should consult the feelings of usurers as to their usury, liars as to their lies, the irreligious as to their disdain for God, and fornicators as to their fun in bed. After all, most sins are accompanied by passion, and an evil man is not rendered harmless by his doing his evil with a will. Satan may whistle while he works; what of it? We need not go to Scripture to learn that passions can muddle the reason and cause us to do foolish or wicked things. We need only watch the madness of youth, or sit quietly in a room and be honest with ourselves for five seconds.
Nor does it occur to him to consult the opinions of highwaymen as to their robbery, monopolists as to their avarice, greasy politicians as to their graft, and sodomites as to their bituminous deeds. Every man on the verge of turning one bad deed into a habit becomes a moral philosopher, an advocate and a judge in his own case. Idiots and saints can fail to find cause to do the bad things they want to do; the rest of us are notably inventive in that regard, inventively blind. The world is what it is, and our deeds are what they are, but we will not see them, so we fashion for ourselves a fantasy world, where all the trees are green and the flowers in bloom, and all that I do for my pleasure is really, you know, perfectly harmless, indeed more than harmless, downright praiseworthy. There are Pharisees of vice as well as of virtue.
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