I have been having hallucinations recently.  I would call them nightmares, but they are occurring at all times of the day and night. And the frequency is increasing.  I have the strange sense of being transported to a different time and place where I no longer live in the Land of the Free and the Brave, but reside in the Land of the Thin-Skinned, the Confused, and the Irrational.  Is this an illusion or am I living in the Land of Absurdia?

We are all fallen souls in need of redemption.  We have all messed up at one time or another. But today, our culture is hell-bent on sacrificing our moral and spiritual health in favor of worshipping at the altar of personal autonomy.  Modern man rejects any call to the virtuous life, fearing that a life in pursuit of virtue cannot pursue happiness.

Someone once said ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims.    When a culture severs its anchor to moral absolutes, it becomes awash in the sea of relativity.  Anything goes because no one can define right and wrong, as the definition is constantly changing.

What was once thought of as evil is now considered good.  And vice versa.  So, is it any surprise that the news this past year was filled with nonsensical headlines? Our culture is increasingly witnessing things that can only be described as absurd.

 What do I mean?

Earlier this year, the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an ultimatum to a top-rated Catholic hospital network in Oklahoma, threatening to shut down their services to poor and vulnerable patients unless they removed the sanctuary candle from their chapel. Such candles serve as a sign of Christ’s presence and have been used in Catholic hospitals in Oklahoma for over fifty years.  Who knew candles posed such a threat?

California law allows men to transfer into women’s prisons by claiming to be women.  These trans-women have a “gender identity” other than their sex and can request bed moves whenever and to wherever they want. They can choose their bunkmate or choose to live alone.  As of today, the state review board cannot deny any request based on one’s physical anatomy, criminal history, or sexual orientation. What is even more baffling is that “trans-women” are not required to have taken cross-sex hormones, nor to have undergone cosmetic surgery to remove their genitals.  What could possibly go wrong?

The CDC recently announced its endorsement of induced lactation in transgender women (men who identify as women), claiming that, with the aid of drugs, such men can “chestfeed” their infants.  Believe it or not, men can produce a substance similar to breast milk by taking hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, and prolactin. No long-term testing has yet been done on the effects of this behavior on the men or the babies. Politics and science make for strange bedfellows, and their progeny can only be described as bizarre.

The state of Oregon has a policy in place whereby anyone seeking to adopt a child from the state’s foster care system must agree to “respect, accept and support the … sexual orientation, gender identity [and] gender expression … of a child or young adult.”  When Jessica Bates sought certification to adopt, she was asked if she agreed with the above-noted items.  Since this went against her religious beliefs, she acknowledged she could not agree to such a pledge.  Ms. Bates’ application was denied.  A federal lawsuit has been filed.

When two news directors, Stanton Tang and Amy Fox, at a Grand Rapids, Michigan TV station, wrote an internal memo this past June to employees of their station to be more balanced in their news coverage, they were fired.  What was in their memo?  Essentially, it was an attempt at balanced and unbiased journalism.  They wrote, “We should not cover every Pride event that we learn about. We need to do some work to discern the newsworthy-ness of the event. If we are covering Pride events, we need to consider how to make the story balanced and get both sides of the issue…”.  Apparently, being unbiased is a fireable offense. But, of course, the news media isn’t biased.

Navy veteran Gregory Hahn showed up for jury duty and was directed by North Carolina Superior Court judge Charles Gilchrist to wear a mask. Hahn refused. The Judge found him in contempt of court and sentenced him to 24 hours in jail.  What’s so absurd about it? Judge Gilchrist is the only judge in that courthouse that enforces such a mandate AND, the judge issued his sentence while not wearing a mask. When Mr. Hahn, a single father, asked if he could call his son who was at home, the judge refused.  Mr. Hahn was handcuffed and hauled off to jail.

The Farmington (Michigan) Public School system commissioned an “equity audit” and recommended schools stop promoting the idea of the traditional family, calling it “systemic familialism.” The audit claimed that the traditional idea that a family is a group of two or more people related by birth, marriage, or adoption is “discriminatory.”

Democrats have introduced legislation in Congress that would “crackdown” on pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, which they characterize as “disgusting,” “deceptive,” and an attack on “reproductive rights.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said, “We need to shut them down all around the country.”

According to a Heartland Institute poll of people ages 19 to 39, 48% were in favor of allowing the United Nations to overrule the U.S. Supreme Court.

Recently, about 500 members of the literary community published an open letter to Penguin Random House demanding the publisher NOT publish Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s forthcoming book.  Why? They consider Justice Barrett’s book to be an attack on inalienable human rights. Barrett was one of the Justices that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, thus earning the enmity of these pro-abortion members of the literary community. They insisted that their demands were not a form of censorship. They further insisted that they still uphold the freedom of speech.  They justified their demand by stating that when someone doesn’t recognize abortion access as a fundamental human right, they shouldn’t be allowed to earn money by publishing a book. Someone is going to have to explain to me what freedom of speech means nowadays.  

On April 27, 2023, 16-year-old Abigail Wheeler, a swimmer at the Springfield, Illinois YMCA, walked into the women’s locker room to find two biological males changing clothes.  Complaints to the YMCA leadership resulted in no changes. Frustrated, Abigail and a teammate hung protest signs in the women’s locker room reading “Women’s Rights,” “Biological Women Only,” and “Safe Sport.”   As a result, Abigail was barred from swimming at the YMCA and accused of “hate speech.”

Reading these news stories may be cheered by some and lamented by others. It reminds me of something C.S. Lewis said in his book, Mere Christianity, “Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” 

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput had a more dire view of such events. “Evil cannot bear the counter-witness of truth. It cannot co-exist peacefully with goodness, because evil insists on being seen as right, and worshipped as being right.”

This may not be an illusion after all.  I really am living in the Land of  Absurdia.