It seems Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has done it again. Her comments about abortion and her Catholic faith are always sure to garner media attention. Her year end interview with Newsweek ’s Eleanor Clift was no exception. Proclaiming to be a “practicing Catholic,” she still holds that she can support a woman’s right to abortion. Her comments remind me of a conversation I once had with my teenage son.
He was trying to summarize one of the Star Wars episodes. I can’t remember which one it was. I’m afraid George Lucas lost me in his numbering system after the first three original movies. And, thanks to my son’s penchant for recounting movies in great detail, I don’t ever have to see this episode, whichever one it is. But I might. Not just because my son said I should, but because of his review of the movie.
It seems in this episode we find out why Darth Vader went to the Dark Side. If that wasn’t enough to hook me, a friend a few days later said I had to see it, because it explains the whole Star Wars saga. Lucas has, I fear, done it again. What has he done? Well, he’s probably intrigued me enough, along with millions of others, to rent one more of his movies. How does he do it?
He’s no fool. I think he touches the very basic human nature in all of us. I’m not sure how familiar he is with the Bible, but he certainly is familiar with the themes in the Bible. He has saved one of the most basic human themes, or sins to be more accurate, for the basis of his whole Star Wars saga.
I don’t want to give the story away to anyone who is as far behind in movies as I am and has not yet seen this episode, so I will try to keep this general. If the reader is one of that handful of people, such as myself, who has not yet seen the movie and may be concerned lest what follows reveal too much, I suggest you stop reading now.
According to my son, for those of you who are venturing on with me, Darth Vader wants to save the love of his life from death, and the only 
way he can see to do this is to go to the Dark Side. Aha, I said to myself. Brilliant! It’s so human. It’s so contemporary. Well, sin is always contemporary, isn’t it? What jumped out at me was a basic Catholic moral principle, “one may never do evil so that good may result from it.” (Catechism #1789). Or, in more common language, “The end does not justify the means” (Catechism #1753).
My son went on to explain the irony that it was only because Darth Vader went to the Dark Side that his worst fear was realized. His actions guaranteed the very thing he was trying to avoid. How human. How tragic. How common. How central, not only to Lucas’s epic, but to the whole human story. Lucas, intentionally or not, goes right back to Genesis and the beginning for his basic theme.
Consider Adam and Eve. The serpent is no fool. He’s not going to come right out and tell Adam and Eve to disobey God and to eat the fruit. Oh no. He makes disobedience and pride sound like good common sense. “No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods knowing good and evil.” Now that sounds pretty good. It sounded pretty good to Eve. “The woman saw that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eye, and that it was desirable for the knowledge that it could give. So she took some of its fruit and ate it.”
Notice that everything that the serpent tempts them with are goods: eyes will be opened, they will be like gods, they will know good and evil. Humans always sin, St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, by choosing some good. The problem is that we humans choose some lesser good over The Good, God. The irony, as with Adam and Eve, is that we delude ourselves into thinking we are choosing the greater good. What harm could come from eating the fruit, especially compared with the good that would follow. The ends seem to justify the means.
And so it goes down through history. Humans are always tempted to achieve what seems a greater good by some act of disobedience and pride. Think of the many horrible dictatorships of the twentieth century that began with a great goal in mind. Hitler claimed he only had the good of his people in mind. At first it may have seemed true, but over time he said that good could only be achieved by more and more brutal means. Even the Allies fell prey to the same old sin. How many evil means were justified by what seemed the ultimate good end, the ending of the war. That sounds terribly familiar, doesn’t it?
Marxism is just one long argument for ends justifying the means, especially as it was and is played out in communism around the world. But we don’t have to go so far from home to find this basic sin. How often do we justify our sins by this same principle. We usually start out with small compromises and then they begin to grow, like weeds in the garden. Soon enough we too are on the Dark Side trying to gain some end that we feel justifies our little sinful choices.
I believe this simple principle, or its negation, explains much of what passes in our modern world today. In fact, I would say most people today don’t even consider it a valid moral principle. It’s not practical. Consider the Catholic politicians such as Nancy Pelosi who ignore Catholic morality in their public life. They claim that there is some higher end that justifies such a suspension of moral principles.
In her case, it is a woman’s right to choose. Abortion, euthanasia, homosexual behavior, fornication, and divorce are all defended, ultimately, on the idea that the end is good and, therefore, allowable. That end is often stated as “tolerance” or “compassion” or “a woman’s right to choose.” But in seeking these ends outside this basic moral principle, we destroy the very thing we seek. Women are not freer thanks to abortion. Their freedom is lost to abortion.
Lucas knows what he is doing. His movie speaks to the perennial human dilemma. Nancy Pelosi has abandoned this basic principle just as Adam and Eve did, just as Darth Vader did, and just as so many of us have at times. We all need to leave the Dark Side and come to Jesus’ side.
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