What Will Solve the Crisis of Mass Violence?

Bulletin Column – September 22, 2019

            El Paso. Dayton. Odessa. The unholy litany goes on – the recent mass shootings that we have seen in our nation. It seems like every week there is yet another one, followed by the predictable societal hand-wringing, promises of thoughts and prayers, calls for change, and then inevitable silence as the nation moves on to the next newsworthy event.

            Recently I came across an article online from Chris Check of Catholic Answers (and brother of our very own Fr. Paul Check!) regarding this situation. Its title was potentially controversial: “The True Roots of Mass Violence”. It argues that there are deeper reasons for the mass violence than even the racism, extremism, and mental illness that are often cited. Here are Mr. Check’s words:

Perhaps you have caught yourself nodding along with a commencement speaker holding forth about “progress.” Did the occasion cause you stop and wonder, after so many commencement speakers have launched so many generations of “bright young graduates” to go forth and make the world a better place, why it so obviously is not? We have all been seduced to one degree or another by what in the end is a denial of original sin. When we speak of evil today we more likely mean some not-so-clearly defined failure on the part of men to organize human society properly.

A good bit of the political rhetoric that followed the El Paso and Dayton massacres argued that we can arrest or reverse immoral behavior with legislative, therapeutic, or technological solutions. We have heard calls for more federal money to address mental illness, more legal restrictions on the ownership of firearms, and better software for sifting through billions and billions of social media posts. Some of these measures may well prevent some future brutality, but their effect will be marginal.

I propose something more fundamental: Christians who feel a sense of helplessness or even despair after each mass shooting should start being honest about evil, with themselves and with those that God puts in their lives. If you are reluctant to talk about evil and need a pep talk, I recommend the stirring final chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:

For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

Let’s set aside talk of the culture war and talk instead about spiritual combat. Paul’s meaning is clear: evil is personal. There are demons at work in the world, and these demons are persons—not just vague forces or bad feelings. If you have ever been tempted by the deliberate efforts of another human person, you can at least have a guess at how vastly more skilled demons are. They need not bother with your senses. They can go straight to your imagination.

Closer to the truth, of course, is the causal relationship between the disintegration of marriage and family and the abundant social pathologies that afflict the children of broken homes. My friends Allan Carlson and Jennifer Roback Morse, and many other historians of the family, have amassed data enough to choke an elephant showing that social chaos fills the vacuum left by the retreat from marriage. If the government wanted to promote the one institution whose failure leads more than any other to the violence plaguing our country, it would encourage marriage and the traditional family. An easy way to do this would be tax incentives that favor intact families with children.

Catholics who want to do something about mass shootings should live fully and publicly the teachings of the Church concerning the sacrament of matrimony. Here are two: don’t divorce and stop contracepting. That sounds glib, I know, but matrimony is a sacrament, so with it comes all the graces needed to live it to the fullest.

Such divine grace, in fact, is the ultimate remedy to evil. If you want to do something about mass shootings, avail yourself with abandon of the many means of grace the Church has given us. I recommend sacramentals like scapulars, miraculous medals, and holy water, and devotions like consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Above all, avail yourselves regularly of those means of grace instituted by Our Lord himself: daily Communion and frequent confession.

While the reasons behind the mass shootings are complex, I do believe Chris Check has a very good analysis of some of the underlying issues. American violence will not be solved only with legislative or therapeutic solutions – the problem is deeper than that: it goes all the way to the root of original sin and our propensity for evil. The antidote, then, is conversion of heart and being receptive to the Lord’s transforming grace. Along with the Sacraments, one of the greatest sources of this grace is intact, stable, God-fearing families. When family life is restored and when our nation turns to God’s grace to overcome the very real problem of evil within the human heart, we pray then that these mass shootings will become a thing of the past.