One of the more disturbing aspects of contemporary life is the co-opting of language by political and cultural ideologues.
For those of us who subscribe to the Church’s teachings on marriage and family, for example, the twisting of certain concepts, words, and phrases land like chalk going the wrong way up a blackboard.
One glaring example would be the use of “they” as a singular pronoun, which is a corruption of reality and an egregious offense against those of us who love language, words, and clarity.
“Reproductive rights” is another such tortured phrase. The right to have a child — as many children as you want, in fact — is not in question nor under fire and in the U.S. (so far, praise God) never has been.
“Reproductive rights” would be the appropriate phrase in, say, China, which from 1979 to 2015 had a one-child policy under which many women were forced to abort (having observed the policy’s catastrophic effect, the Chinese government in 2021 switched over to a three-child policy).
In the U.S., “reproductive rights” means the exact opposite: not the right to reproduce, but the “right” to contracept and abort.
If that’s your desire, OK, but why the subterfuge? Why not call the underlying movement by its proper name?
You can’t make a doctor’s appointment anymore without being forced to check the nonsensical “sex assigned at birth” box. Assigned by whom? The God no one believes in? Because anyone who believes in God would know that who we are, down to the last cell, is ordained by God, not randomly doled out like a costume we can put on or off at whim.
But perhaps the most outrageous, stomach-churning term of all is “gender-affirming.” Chemical and surgical castration, the removal of healthy breasts, the blocking of puberty — arguably the most mysterious, glorious, essential transformation that occurs in a human life — all constitute a dreadful denial of creation, not an affirmation.
Woe to those who use such language, and urge such procedures upon prepubescent children. “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).
This is not mindless kvetching. Language goes to the very heart of who we are, as human beings, as neighbors, as citizens, and as members of the Mystical Body.
“Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power,” a 1974 essay by Josef Pieper, is directly on point.
Pieper begins by describing Plato’s lifelong battle with the sophists, clever, learned men who were trained in, and paid to promulgate, gaslighting rhetoric: “applauded experts in the art of twisting words, who were able to sweet-talk something bad into something good and to turn white into black.”
Sound familiar?
Plato presciently recognized that such sophistry represented “a danger and a threat besetting the pursuits of the human mind and the life of society in any era.”
The sophists were successful, “strangely handsome” men who had learned how to market and capitalize on the achievements of the mind.
Such efforts, when used to broadcast lies, have a profoundly deleterious effect. Because word and language are not a particular discipline or field, Pieper continues.
“No, word and language form the medium that sustains the common existence of the human spirit as such. … And so, if the word becomes corrupted, human existence itself will not remain unaffected and untainted.”
Words convey reality. (“In the beginning was the Word.”) And they are meant to convey reality to someone else, Pieper observes: thus, human speech has a built-in interpersonal character.
A lie is therefore the opposite of communication. And if you’re uninterested in reality, you’re also unable to converse. “You can give fine speeches, but you simply cannot join in a conversation; you are incapable of dialogue!”
Again, does this ring a bell?
Here’s the rub: Such sophisticated language, divorced from reality and the roots of truth, “invariably turns into an instrument of power, something it has been, by its very nature, right from the start.”
That is where we find ourselves today. It’s as if Satan, the Prince of Lies, is insatiable. Feed him a small lie; he instantly demands a bigger one.
Consent to humor someone (that is, to participate in the person’s lie) by calling him or her by a pronoun that’s the opposite of the person’s sex, and next thing you know it’s a hate crime to fail to do so.
Voice the common sense, our-eyes-don’t-deceive-us fact that men are stronger and bigger than women and have no place in women’s restrooms, locker rooms, jails, or sports, and you will be bullied, hounded, called a transphobe, and canceled.
What is this kind of power for? Who promotes it? Who stands to benefit from it? What essential part of our souls do we lose by bowing to it?
In the beginning was the Word, and in the end the Word will remain:
“Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Luke 21:32–33).
