Catholic Husband

The Catholic Church’s position on life is unimpeachable. Every human person has inherent dignity and the right to live from the moment of conception to their natural death. Arguably, the Catholic Church is the biggest champion of human rights and dignity in our world today. There are no exceptions and the Church speaks out against violations of the dignity of the human person in all quarters. Whether it be immigration, human trafficking, forced sterilizations, abortion, pornography, IVF, or the poor, the Church fights valiantly on the international, national, regional, and local levels to correct injustices.

Many of us call ourselves pro-life and espouse the virtue of respecting all human life. Undoubtedly, many of us fail to fully live this mission for one simple reason: the sheer magnitude of the disrespect for human life in our culture is impossible to grasp. Respecting life is about more than children and the elderly, it’s about having empathy and compassion for people in all situations. It’s realizing in moments of discomfort or strife that the person opposing you is a person just as you are, and worthy of respect, dignity, and love. 

Consider this story, one that I’m sure you can relate to.

Driving conditions in Virginia can be, well, complex. Recently I was traveling home on a major interstate after going to Confession. Elated, and in a state of grace, I had a tremendous sense of peace and calm. It’s that feeling that we all know, the realization that we just received a chance to start all over again. I drive 5 or 6 over the speed limit, and in this case, was traveling on a major trucking route with only two lanes in either direction. With my cruise control set, I moved into the left lane in order to pass two tractor-trailers. We were in a safety zone, an area of interstate that, because of the nature of the road construction, requires a reduced speed. Still, I was traveling at my 6 miles over the limit pace. Admittedly, my pass rate on the trucks wasn’t great, but I was still moving.

Behind me, with all the speed, energy, and inertia of the proverbial bat out of hell came a silver SUV. They flashed their lights, honked, and followed me at an unsafe distance. With no opportunity to pass me on the right due to the trucks, it was the perfect situation for some road rage. Since I’m not an employee of the Virginia Department of Transportation, a delegate in the Virginia Assembly, or even a traffic engineer, I did not have the power to change the speed limit. The limit was determined, by law, to be the safest speed allowable for that stretch of road. Yet, the driver behind me insisted on making it known that they believed my speed was inappropriate and wished that I would simply move out of their way.

Road rage is often cyclical. One person initiates, the other responds, and the cycle continues. I passed the trucks about three minutes after this person came behind me, and they raced on. I had several possible responses. Noticing their license plate, I could’ve said disparaging things about the State of New York and the people from there, I could’ve prolonged their delay by not fully passing the truck. I even could’ve stared at them and gestured appropriately. Instead, I offered a simple prayer for them.

In that moment, I realized just how systemic our respect for life must be. I don’t know what was causing that person’s concern or need to drive so dangerously, but they may have had a legitimate reason. They may be a veteran with PTSD, completely unaware of how their actions are being perceived, or even just someone who’s having a bad day. They may have just been a jerk, I’ll never know. The point is that instead of matching rage for rage, I consciously decided to return compassion and empathy in the event that they truly needed it in that moment.

In order to truly respect life, we must act without exception. All of our actions either respect life or degrade it. So the next time that you’re tempted to join in on office gossip, purposely exclude someone, or even withhold empathy from a person on the street, remember how valiantly the Church fights for the dignity of the human person, and afford that same courtesy to those around you.

I recently received an email from Facebook congratulating me on my 10 year anniversary on the network. While I’m sure they had a heavily researched intention behind the email, I found it to be both striking and frightening. In the first place, I found it striking how in such a fickle market, they’ve endured for so long. While others have come and gone, Facebook remains. I found it frightening when I considered just how much of my life I’ve lost through Facebook.

There are two ways of looking at social networks. The first way is that they’re a geographically agnostic way of connecting people. The opposing view is that social media is destroying human communication and relationships. I do acknowledge the great good that social networking has done. As a military child growing up in the time before the internet was so mainstream, I lost many friendships with each move. Although it did not necessarily adversely affect me, it would’ve been nice to carry on at least a few of those friendships. At the same time, I’ve found social media has trended from authentic connection to sheer vanity.

So I deactivated my Facebook account. Here’s why.

Certainly there have been a number of evolutions and iterations in how Facebook handles its timeline feature. So much of the news that was appearing was wholly uninteresting, a plethora of articles, images, and status updates liked by people in my network that had no relevancy to my own life. That was annoying, but not my impetus for leaving. Instead, I evaluated how I was using the network and hated what I found.

I was being vain. I was pushing out updates that were only self-serving. I was sharing a heavily curated set of stories, updates, and photos, meant to impress. Like someone preparing for their high school reunion, I was editing my story in order to cater to the expectations of others. The further I fell into this trap, the less that I shared. Instead of sharing an unfiltered view into my life to my connections, I was only sharing that which I believed made me more likable.

Then there was the “default.” Any time I had a lull in my day, I would default to checking social media. So many precious minutes lost that could have been writing, designing, reading, or learning, were sent out into the nothingness of social media updates. Instead of defaulting to something worthwhile that I could walk away from feeling satisfied, I defaulted to reading the same updates that I’d already seen.

Facebook was designed to meet that human desire to connect, but all that it has ended up doing is creating the most tentative of connections. We get into fights instead of getting into conversations. We troll instead of building up. In my estimation, it was no longer worth my time.

I’ve left my Facebook page up so that I can continue to share my work, but I no longer use Facebook for personal reasons. I’ve pared back the number of people that I follow on Twitter and I’m still unsure what I’m going to do about Instagram.

Social networks have largely failed to achieve their stated purpose because they are, in the end, a business. We are the product, sold to marketers, leaving this attempt at human connection hijacked by advertisements. Communication is one area in our lives that we could all work to improve. I’ve taken the first step by ceasing to give time and energy to outlets that fail to make me a better person. What’s your first step?

Television programming has the unique ability to bring people together. Pursuing Twitter after an episode of “The Bachelor” or checking out the blogs after an explosive episode gives one the sense of just how transcendent it can be. One of the more popular genres of television programming in the past decade has been the rise of so-called “Reality TV.” The thing is, none of it is real, and I’m sick of it.

Entertainment is meant to be a form of escapism, removing us from the cares and concerns of our current state in life and, for a time, immerse us in someone else’s story. The best storytellers are those who are authentic, relatable, and believable, traits that are conspicuously missing from Reality TV. As humans, we crave connection and authenticity, so being manipulated by a set of writers or editors is a truly revolting thought.

The problem with Reality TV is that the scripting is so invasive that it prevents anything real from happening. Characters, whom we’re supposed to believe are opening their lives up to us, are instead just character actors. They play a part and not necessarily the person that they truly are. This is antithetical to the premise of the programming. Even if characters are given leeway to be themselves, in post-production, the editors and producers cherry pick clips in order to fit their narrative. What results is a story so divorced from reality that it bears no merits.

This is a problem in almost all programming today. Competition shows, lifestyle shows, and even entrepreneurial shows have fallen victim to this plague. What’s left is what’s sure to be known as the “Missing Years,” a period of time in which there was no substantive contribution to the art of entertainment. TV Land in 20 years will still be showing “The Andy Griffith Show” and “I Love Lucy,” because they were what they represented themselves to be: fiction. Instead, what we have today is heavily scripted programming masquerading as reality.

The solution is to change our demands in programming, but it must be acknowledged that this is a large ship to turn. We collectively get what we crave, which is why family programming has been squeezed out by racy, borderline pornographic storylines. As with anything else, effecting this change will take us individually refusing to tune in or click on those shows which are devoid of any value: entertainment or otherwise.