There is a fatal lack of awareness that makes us easy targets for the deadliest weapon of our time—words. Not strange words, not “big” words, not words no one understands, but little words we all know and use every day, “nice” words like “love,” or “marriage,” or “Church.” Yesterday the news reported that the Catholic Church affirms the right of gay couples to marry. Huh? It turns out that three theologians (named) said the vast majority of Catholics believe gay couples should have a legal right to marry. What the news reported is called a “spin,” a new term for our time. Take anything anyone says—in whole or in part—apply your own interpretation, and report that interpretation as what was said. Given the “spin,” nothing in the statement is actually false, nothing can be argued with, nothing is libelous. Spin allows anybody to say virtually anything with impunity. There was once a code of ethics for journalism that would have condemned this practice, which has become so commonplace that even the most unsophisticated audience believes all reporters now lie. Everybody’s got an agenda and all news is subjected to the spin of that agenda.

But that’s the news. And what we don’t realize is that the language of that distrusted source has its affect even if we don’t believe what it says. We may well see the falseness of the statement, and seeing that falseness, believe we are protected from its power to deceive. Not so. The weapon was not in the statement, but in the words it used. The Church—what IS the Church? The “vast majority” of Catholics? Affirms—what does that mean, exactly? An election of some kind? The right—I’ve often wondered about that word, “right.” What does it mean? By whom is it granted? By God? Are we endowed with it from birth? How? If Natural Law no longer rules, by what code, what authority? And last, “marry”—a right to marry would seem to depend on what one thinks marriage is. Historically, it’s a public ceremony of record for the purpose of identifying offspring. But if there’s no offspring, what is it?

That’s just a look at a few words that one statement contains. The affect of unquestioned common little words is subtle, slow, and of enormous power. Words are the abstract representations of perceived concrete reality. If their meaning is changed, however slowly or subtly, the perception of reality is changed accordingly. Do we know what “the Church” is any more? What is a “marriage” now? And, most of all, what is “love”? Kevin O’Brien has written about that question both here and in the St. Austin Review, exploring the differences/unity of “eros” and “agape.” That’s one important area, but what is LOVE when it’s implied in such statements as the one spun by the reporter? Or when it’s exploited in our insatiable appetite for its expression (presence) in fiction, films—and even in the news?

Scripture says, “God is love.” We don’t argue with Scripture, but it’s as easy to spin as anything else we “interpret.” Scripture did not say “Love is God,” but that’s how it’s been spun. Why? Because to say “Love is God” allows us to do anything we like in the name of love (God). The word itself disarms. It mutes all opposition. It is that before which every knee shall bend and every tongue confess that it is Lord. You don’t question it, you don’t dare ask what it means—it’s shrouded in holy mystery on El Shaddai. But in its name, children are killed in the womb to “protect” them (from being unloved), elderly people and disabled people are put to death out of love (“mercy”), and sodomy receives God’s blessing, as a sacrament of “love.”