26 January 2003
By
Fr. Michael Dolan
This week’s article: “What is Truth?” (John 18:38)
“What is truth?” Said Pilate who at the time stood face to face with Truth. If he were able to ask the same question today in a public forum, I am afraid to say that the answer might be that truth is relative, that it has no intrinsic value, but serves only to support one’s interest. Someone once defined it as merely an expression of class interests. Truth it seems is not only not a primary concern of society, it is actually debased and its debasement applauded.
Consider the recent revelation of a U.S. Senator with a leadership position in the Senate who recently told the National Press Club that he and others at one time or another take someone’s argument, misrepresent it, misstate it, and then disagree with it. It is very effective according to the senator. Or consider the recent exploit of government scientists who, hoping to close two forests to outside interests, planted evidence that the forests were inhabited by an endangered species of lynx, and tried to present that evidence as factual. Or look at the energy giant, Enron, aided and abetted by the accounting giant Arthur Anderson. And then consider what might be thought in some quarters to be trivial, the word “conception” as applied to biology.
Up until 1972, “conception” was a lay term, which was synonymous with the biological term “fertilization.” In 1972 with the rescinding of New York’s restrictive abortion laws, and a year before Roe vs. Wade, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology gave “conception” a unique meaning, namely the implantation of the fertilized egg in the womb. Either then or a little later, “conception” was correlated with the start of pregnancy. It didn’t matter at all that the definition was errant in at least two aspects. First, that which implants is not a fertilized egg, but an embryo; and second, implementation does not bestow life, it sustains life already 5-10 days old. So why the obfuscation? Why the untruth? Because now abortifacients could be used as contraceptives, and those with scruples about killing an unborn child could look to the so-called “integrity” of science to allay their innate sense of guilt. Simple! And as the Senator said, “very effective!”
The columnist Paul Craig Roberts recently wrote an insightful Op-Ed piece in the Washington Times entitled “Discarding Truth” in which he said, “The appearance on the scene of scientists and scholars who betray the public trust in their integrity to advance ideological agendas is frightful.” He goes on to say, “When the canons (i.e., measuring rods) of scholarly objectivity become widely abandoned, truth ceases to guide decisions. Public policy outcomes and court cases depend on which side has the best propaganda, and upon those who can more effectively demonize or vilify the other party.” Indeed, an article in the Washington Post by Rick Weiss, not too long ago, does just that by strongly suggesting that religious conservatives who oppose medical experiments on cloned human embryos are like the Taliban.
May God bless you always,
Father Mike
Next week: “Vatican says Catholics must not promote laws that attack life.”