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Dear President of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family, Professor Dr. Josef Seifert, dear participants of the Congress, “Brain Death, A Medical-Legal Construct, Scientific and Philosophical Evidence,” organized by the same academy. I would like to address you on the topic, “Truth, the Foundation of a Culture of Life.”
First, I would like to thank the Academy and the organizers of this Congress for having made the theme of “brain death” the focus of attention through thorough scientific and philosophical research. For many decades, a process has been going on under the eyes of the entire world, the legal murder of severely injured and terminally ill persons. These homicides, with a growing tendency, are covered up by the enormous lie of the so-called “brain death theory”. We are witnessing how the entire world is being lied to and deceived by means of a pseudo-scientific, constructed sophism. Unfortunately, so many Catholics, and even important representatives of the church hierarchy, have fallen prey to one of the biggest and cunningly disguised lies of the zeitgeist of our time.
In dealing with the established “brain death theory,” we are facing the phenomenon of a lie, of untruth. The aspect of truth and evidence is, in this context, consciously and ideologically blanked out. However, reality, life, and truth are inseparably linked with one another. The “brain death theory” is a denial of reality and hence a denial of truth. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, logical truth is the conformity of the intellect and reality. St. Thomas says more explicitly, “Truth is found in the intellect, according as it apprehends a thing as it is.” The human judgments will be true. It means thought will correspond with its object if that object itself determines the content of the thought. The assent is determined by the evidence with which one is confronted. It is the object that is the determining cause of truth.
Cardinal Pie of Poitiers, a courageous defender of the faith and of the truth against the anti-Christian ideology and revolution in the 19th century, whose works were a favorite read of Pope Pius X, made the following relevant statement. “All of you, if you are condemned to see the triumph of evil, never applaud it. Never say to evil, you are good, to decadent presence, you are progress, to death, you are life. Sanctify yourselves in the times wherein God has placed you. Bewail the evils and the disorders which God tolerates. Oppose them with the energy of your works and your efforts, your life uncontaminated by error, free from being led astray in such a way that, having lived here below, united with the Spirit of the Lord, you will be admitted to be made but one with Him, forever and ever. But he who is joined to the Lord is one in spirit with him.”
The anti-life ideology of the modern world, which is, by the same fact, not a culture, but an anti-culture, is a mentality that, at any cost, rejects suffering. It wants to make paradise on earth. However, those who want to make paradise on earth actually made a hell on earth, as we could state this in the various communist dictatorships. The entire gospel of Marxist materialism, which, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, now established in our days its totalitarian tyranny in the entire Western world, this Marxist materialism is synthesized in the axiom, “We will make paradise on earth.” The realization of the materialistic and Marxist paradise on earth demands the destruction of innocent lives. It demands the implacable and macabre elimination of any obstacle to the hedonistic egoism of those who are ruthlessly pursuing the enhancement of their personal health, of their personal richness, of their personal power and honor. The materialistic world is par excellence the enemy of the cross and the enemy of the salvific suffering. Therefore, according to the materialistic view, a terminally ill person must be at once eliminated, and his body, which is a temple of God, is being used, in all seriousness, as a spare parts store. However, the cross meets us everywhere.
The cross is the model of our life. The cross is the eternal standard of all who wish to follow Christ in reality and not merely in name. Pope Leo XIII warned already in the 19th century against the mentality that rejects the cross, the suffering, and the consequences of original sin. He affirmed, “It is hard and painful to despise the supposed goods of the senses and of fortune for the will and precepts of Christ, our Lord, but the Christian is absolutely obliged to be firm and patient in suffering if he wishes to lead a Christian life. Have we forgotten what body and of what head we are the members? Having joy set before Him, Christ endured the cross, and He bade us deny ourselves. The very dignity of human nature depends upon this disposition of mind. For as even the ancient pagan philosophy perceived, to be master of oneself and to make the lower part of the soul obey the superior part is so far from being a weakness of will that it is really a noble power in consonance with right reason and most worthy of a man. Moreover, to bear and to suffer is the ordinary condition of man. Man can no more create for himself a life free from suffering and filled with all happiness than he can abrogate the decrees of His divine maker, who has felt that the consequences of Original Sin should be perpetual during this temporal life. It is reasonable, therefore, not to expect an end to troubles in this earthly world but rather to steel one’s soul to bear troubles by which we are taught to look forward with certainty to supreme and eternal happiness. Christ has not promised eternal bliss in Heaven to riches, nor to a life of ease, to honors or to power, but Christ has promised eternal bliss to long-suffering and to tears, to the love of justice and to the purity of heart.” So far Pope Leo XIII.
The rejection of reality, of truth, and of the law of God leads to the tyranny of selfishness, as Pope Leo XIII explained, whom I quote again, “The supremacy of man which openly rejects Christ, or at least ignores him, is entirely founded upon selfishness, knowing neither charity nor self-devotion, man may indeed be king through Jesus Christ, but only on condition that he, first of all, obey God and diligently seek His rule of life in God’s commandments. By the law of Christ, we mean not only the natural precepts of morality and the ancient law, all of which Jesus Christ has perfected and crowned by his declaration, by his explanation, and by His sanction.” So far Pope Leo XIII.
When man rejects the evidence of truth, he becomes necessarily a slave, not only of error, but of falsehood, and also of grave sins. The sins blind even the natural light of the intellect, so that scientists are committing the grossest errors, even in science, as we can state it in the so-called “brain death theory.” Again, Pope Leo XIII says, “The slavery of sin and of falsehood will be shaken off and the most perfect liberty attained, ‘You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ It is then evident that those whose intellect rejects the yoke of Christ are obstinately striving against God. Having shaken off God’s authority, they are by no means freer, for they will fall beneath some human sway.”
They are sure to choose someone whom they will listen to, whom they will obey, and follow as their guide. Moreover, they withdraw their intellect from the communication of divine truth and thus limit it within a narrower circle of knowledge, so that they are less fitted to succeed in the pursuit even of Natural Science, for there are in nature, very many things whose apprehension or explanation is greatly aided by the light of divine truth. Not infrequently, too, God, in order to chastise their pride, does not permit man to see the truth, and thus they are punished in the things wherein they sin. This is why we often see men of great intellectual power and erudition making the grossest blunders, even in natural science. So, Pope Leo XIII.
When man and society reject reason and natural law, there arises a society of mercilessness and nihilism, and such a society seems to have reached its peak in our days. Again, Pope Leo XIII prophetically diagnosed such a situation. I quote, “How is it that in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself, that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. Public administrators prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are disappearing daily from political life. What blindness, once the idea of the authority of God as the judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority, and justice must perish, and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society. Similarly, once the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, and hatred arise. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home, public life is stained with crime.” So Leo XIII.
We see how up-to-date this prophecy of Leo XIII is. Christians have to defend innocent human life at all levels and in all circumstances, without compromise, together with all people, even with non-Christians, who still are using their natural reason and common sense, who are observing the natural law inscribed in their hearts and remain therefore true humans. However, a lasting guarantee of the maintenance in society, of the functioning of common sense, of reason, and of the unquestionable validity of natural law provides only the reign of the Christian faith in society, the social kingship of Christ, and of his divine teaching. Pope Leo XIII presented this mutual connection. He said, “So great is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy.”
It is, of course, both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way, but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher. A power greater than human must be called in to teach men’s hearts, awaken in them the sense of duty, and make them better. This is the power that once before saved the world from destruction when groaning under much more terrible evils. Once all impediments are removed and allowed, the Christian spirit to revive and grow strong in a nation, and that nation will be healed. The strife between the classes and the masses will die away. Mutual rights will be respected. If Christ is listened to, both rich and poor will do their duty. The former will realize that they must observe justice and charity, the latter self-restraint and moderation, if both are to be saved. Domestic life will be firmly established by the salutary fear of God as the lawgiver. In the same way, the precepts of the natural law, which dictate respect for lawful authority and obedience to the laws, will exercise their influence over the people. Seditions and conspiracies will cease. Wherever Christianity rules over all without let or hindrance, there the order established by divine providence is preserved, and both security and prosperity are the happy result.
The common welfare then urgently demands a return to him from whom we should never have gone astray, to him who is the way, the truth, and the life, and this on the part not only of individuals, but on the part of society as a whole. We must restore Christ to his own rightful possession. All elements of the national life must be made to drink in the life which proceeds from him, from Christ, legislation, political institutions, education, marriage, family life, capital, and labor. Everyone must see that the very growth of civilization, which is so ardently desired, depends greatly upon these, since it is fed and grows not so much by material wealth and prosperity as by the spiritual qualities of morality and of virtue. The more one contemplates Christ with a sincere and unprejudiced mind, the clearer it becomes that there can be nothing more salutary than his law. There can be nothing more divine than his teaching. So far, Pope Leo XIII.
In his epochal encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II left us the following concise synthesis about freedom, about truth, and life in stating, “Freedom negates and destroys itself and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth. When freedom, out of a desire to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority, shuts out even the most obvious evidence of an objective and universal truth, which is the foundation of personal and social life, then the person ends up by no longer taking as the sole and indisputable point of reference for his own choices the truth about good and evil, but only his subjective and changeable opinion, or indeed his selfish interest.”
And so we conclude with the words of Pope John Paul II, of whom your Academy for Human Life and the Family bears the name. We are asked to love and honor the life of every man and woman and to work with perseverance and courage so that our time, marked by all too many signs of death, may at least witness the establishment of a new culture of life, the fruit of the culture of truth and love. Thank you for your attention.