Reliable rumors had the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v Hodges opinion coming down this morning at 9:00 a.m. My heart was pounding as I followed the live feed on the Scotus Blog.  The opinion did not come down. Two others did, including the much anticipated case styled King v Burwell, in which the court upheld the Obamacare subsidies.

So my heart will be pounding tomorrow morning or maybe Monday morning. Why will it be pounding? Because with the court’s rejection of the natural law as a ground for making legal decisions, civil law would be reduced to what judges or justices say it is. They will have rejected any objective standard of right and wrong and made a belief in untethered choice supreme.

This is more dangerous than many people realize. In the 1992 opinion in Planned Parenthood v Casey, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy made the famous but incomprehensible statement, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life.” This relativistic belief justified the court in denying the fundamental human right to life of our youngest neighbors in the womb.

If that sort of thinking holds sway, you can guess what the court will do with marriage.

Western Culture and False Freedom

Western culture is intoxicated with a false notion of choice as a power to do whatever one desires without reference to any evaluative or objective norm. It’s our new golden calf.

The choice the court ratified in Planned Parenthood v Casey was the choice to exclude a whole category of people from the protection of the positive law — and to place the state’s police power behind protecting the abortions that kill them. Some choices, like this one, are always and everywhere wrong. Making them can never lead to human freedom, happiness, fulfillment or flourishing.

Classical Christian moral teaching affirms the truth that what we choose determines who we become. Choosing what is true and good helps us proceed along the pathways of virtue and develop the habits which form Christian character, as we cooperate with grace. That is how we find true freedom.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses human choice, action and freedom, citing the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans, in these words: “The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to ‘the slavery of sin.’ (Cf. Rom 6:17).”

The late St. John Paul II wrote a letter on the moral life entitled The Splendor of Truth, which presents a classical Christian moral theology of choice through the story of the Lord’s encounter with the rich young ruler (Matt. 19:16-21). It was not the man’s possessions which made him choose to say no to the Lord’s invitation. It was his disordered relationship to them. They possessed him. They kept him from growing in true freedom. He went away sad because he made the wrong choice.

This story shows how the proper development and formation of conscience occurs only when we choose objective truth. In other places, Jesus gives us examples of the connection between what we choose and who we become. We “become” adulterers when we look at a woman with lust (Mt. 5:28), for example. What comes out of our “heart” (what we choose) is what makes us “unclean” (Mk 7:14-23).

The Evangelist John records these words of Jesus concerning this connection between freedom and truth: “Jesus then said to those Jews who believed in him, ‘If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free'” (John 8:32).

But if we don’t remain in his word, if we turn away from the natural law, we will not know the truth and we will not be free. We’ll be the slaves of something that possesses us, just as the rich young ruler’s possessions held him so strongly that he walked away from the Son of God.

Why My Heart Was Pounding

That’s why my heart was pounding. We’ve chosen legal abortion and our highest court ratified that decision with a bizarre statement endorsing relativism. Now that court may be on the verge of declaring that homosexual and lesbian paramours can marry, even though such relationships are incapable of achieving the unitive or procreative ends of marriage.

What are we as a nation choosing? Who are we becoming? No matter how the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court rule in Obergefell v Hodges, marriage will not change. What would change is this nation, and our place as Christians within it.