Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

The family reunion went very well. It was great to see so many show up. It had been 16 years since our last reunion so a lot had changed and there was a lot to catch up on. Family events like these remind me of the truth that God created us as gifts to one another. But that is a topic for another time. A couple of days ago I mentioned that I thought John Paul the Great’s apparent neglect of men and fatherhood in his papal writings was just that, apparent. Rather, that he implicitly addressed men in his writing on women and motherhood. In fact, in some of his writings on women, he directly addresses men. So why would he talk to men about men and fatherhood so obliquely?

Kate (see comments on previous post) is correct that in his theology of the body catecheses, JP the Great did give balanced treatment to men and women. I was in fact tempted, when I first engaged this issue, to give him a pass based upon his theology of the body. However, I soon realized that even in those catecheses he did not treat the issue of men and fathers in the explicit way that he did women and mothers, especially in Mulieris dignitatem. Still, I believe that he was not oblivious to the crisis of fatherhood and the problems of the absentee father. He makes mention of this problem in Mulieris dignitatem. Rather, I think that he finds the crisis of fatherhood to be a symptom with deeper roots than men just starting to abandon their vocation as husbands and fathers. The clue, I suspect, is given in Gratissimam sane (Letter to Families). In it, he says that the problem of the modern age is a crisis of truth manifested primarily in a crisis of concepts about the human person. This evokes Lumen gentium which says that when God is forgotten man turns against himself. I believe that men and fathers abandoning their roles is, for JP the Great, further down in the line of dominos. The collapse of family life (and therefore society) which we are experiencing begins with all of us forgetting who we are as human persons.

It is clear to most commentators that JP the Great indeed, spent much time discussing the truth of the human person and especially the human person as a sexual being. In his book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, he provides further insights about what he sees affected first by this loss of understanding of the human person. In Threshold, he says that women in particular have been the victims of thinking which has turned people into utilitarian means; means of economic production but also for pleasure. Now it is not that modernity is the first time that this has ever happened, but it does seem that it is only recently that pornography has become “mainstream.” You no longer have to sneak out to the seedy adult bookstore to get it. The internet and cable TV bring it to your home; what used to be very close to pornography is even on broadcast TV nowadays.

Unfortunately, with our distorted sense of freedom, women choosing to subject themselves to pornography is seen as an exercise of rights. But even the widespread acceptance of pornography and the blind eye turned by many governments to sexual trafficking and slavery, even of young girls and boys, are later manifestations of the loss of sense of the dignity of the human person. While there are many other reasons for this loss of the sense of human dignity, what has made it so critical for the family begins with the oppression of women and the response by many feminists who have rejected their femininity as a weakness which can be exploited. This has had a widespread affect on the way that women and the vocation to motherhood is now perceived. It is no longer a sacred vocation but a source of oppression, or at least a necessary evil which threatens to take women away from their real fulfillment in public life. In Mulieris dignitatem, the late Holy Father emphasized the danger associated with women trying to imitate masculine modes of being. He recognized that this could deform and damage a woman. But he did not say that the public sphere belonged to men; far from it. Rather, he said that women’s gifts are needed in the public sphere, but society needs to be able to accommodate this while at the same time allow women to devote themselves to being mothers.

So what does this have to do with men flying to coop? While he does not make the tie explicit, again in Mulieris dignitatem he discusses the fact that men learn their fatherhood from their wives. In a broader sense, they learn to be men from their wives and mothers who show them feminine love. David Blankenhorn, in his book, Fatherless America, presents sociological data which suggests this is in fact the case. Men are essentially being allowed to be cads by women who allow them to use them as sexual objects, many times in the mistaken notion that sex before marriage will draw the man closer when in fact it does the exact opposite. Of course this is a necessary simplification but the problem starts here.

John Paul, in Mulieris dignitatem, does explicitly say that women have the primary role in demanding that men recognize them and their feminine gifts for what they are—necessary complements to men’s gifts for a healthily functioning family and society. Thus, the late Pope’s writings seem focused at helping us to see the inherent dignity of the human person as made in the image of God. Next to see that our sex, as female and male, are integral to our dignity and our identity as human persons. Also we must recognize that the gift of sex is just that, a gift, not a toy to be used for selfish or profane purposes. I believe that his point is that to fix the problem of wayward men is for women to recognize their unique role as mothers (including spiritual mothers) and their special gift of femininity, as their unique genius in participating with God in creation and His plan of salvation. They must demand that men recognize and respect this dignity and not follow us into the lie that sex is just another form of recreation. This is something that men are more prone to promote than are women, by the way.

However, I must point out that in giving women the leading role he does not say that the current state of affairs (pun intended) is entirely their fault. Perhaps it is even more the fault of men than women. But that does not matter. What does is the road to recovery and that must start with recognizing who we are and why we are here. But, perhaps JP the Great does give too much credit to us men in supposing that we might get the point without things being laid out explicitly for us . . . after all we are largely to blame for letting things get this bad . . .

Work on the farm house up here in Saranac is an ongoing effort. We made a lot of progress yesterday; most notably by not falling off the roof while trying to affix a zinc strip to try to beat a moss problem. Moss seems to be a popular roofing challenge up here. I have to admit that the falling option was in the forefront of my mind for much of the effort because: a) when you need a rope to get up a 4×1 incline to get to the 40 ft peak, falling seems a distinct possibility; b) letting gravity do the work was the trick I chose the last time I was up on a roof. Any way, the roof work was uneventful. I can’t say the same about our drive back to the farm house after setting up for today’s Delaney family reunion. We happened upon the local deer crossing during a rain storm. Yep, we got ourselves a deer. Luckily it was my brother’s rental; though I don’t suppose it made much difference to the poor deer. But what about nature and nurture?

There has been a long and ongoing debate about whether nature or nurture is responsible for everything from a child’s behavior to homosexuality. Well a couple of years ago the Institute for American Values published a report from the Commission on Children at Risk entitled, Hardwired to Connect which describes findings they say makes this debate obsolete. In fact, what they have found “by looking at, well, rats” (their prose not mine, but it sounds bloggish doesn’t it?) is that the nurturing environment actually affects gene transcription. What this means is that rats who were given “good mothering” experienced measurably greater emotional and psychological resilience. I know; how do you figure out whether a rat is emotionally resilient or not? Any way, the study group apparently did. The point was that this resilience could be passed on to subsequent generations by modifications in the rats’ DNA.

The similarities of the relevant rat and human hormonal systems together with the available human data led these researchers to conclude that these finding are applicable to human children. The ability of the genetic code in DNA to be corrupted by the environment is well known (for example with cancer). However, the ability for constructive changes of the DNA via the environment in this manner was previously unknown. Note that these changes are not random constructive changes but they are directly related to the nurturing environment.

This amazing finding correlates very well with John Paul the Great’s anthropology. This is how it would work. The unity of body and soul (called hylomorphism which comes from Aristotle through St. Thomas Aquinas) is such that the soul gives the body its shape. The body expresses the soul and is the mechanism by which the soul interacts with the world. But physical changes to the body also then necessarily modify the soul in some way (since the soul gives shape to the body). It is a two way street. So when a baby or young child is affected by the environment in some way; this affect can permanently change the child; this is especially true with nurturing the child. A young child must be loved and nurtured. If it is not, the affect is more than just psychological; it affects the way the genes transcribe themselves and so the effects can be passed on to its children. In other words, the environment can permanently modify the soul in such a way that it seems the soul records this change via the DNA. Thus nurture changes nature (of course not human nature, but I use the term in a less technical sense). One ramification: even if a so called “gay” gene is ever found one still cannot eliminate the possibility that it was a mistranscription due to a defective nurturing environment.

In a wholly unrelated, but still very interesting, finding: back at the turn of the millennia Zenit ran an article about a paper to be delivered at a Jubilee congress held at the Vatican entitled “At the Dawn of Human Life,” organized by the Institute of Gynecology and Obstetrics of the Catholic University of Rome. The paper reported that:

Mothers undergo permanent changes during pregnancy, in which they “inherit” some characteristics of the child they carry and, through the child, also receive some characteristics of the father. [I wonder if this is scary to any moms?]

This “communication” between the baby and mother occurs via stem cells, which have been found in the mothers 30 years after birth. These are believed to be permanent changes to the mother via her baby. There are many interesting ramifications for this, including the fact that so called “surrogate mothers” who “rent” their wombs will be “modified” for the rest of her life, by a being who is 100% genetically foreign to her.

Does anyone find this stuff as fascinating as I do?

It is Christian marriage of course. First, I suppose that I should explain what I mean by “mystery.” Perhaps one could term it a mystery how my blushing bride has put up with me for the last 21+ years. But that would not be the Christian sense of mystery. Christian mystery is not a problem to be solved. Rather, Christian mystery is an excess of meaning; rather than darkness it is an excess of light. Thus, when we say that some aspect of the faith is a mystery; it does not mean we know nothing about it. Rather, it means that there is too much about it to know. This makes perfect sense when we realize that the faith is ultimately an expression of who and what God is. Since God is infinite and our minds are finite, logic dictates that there will always be mystery. We will never exhaust all there is to know about God.

So what is the Great Mystery and what does it have to do with Christian marriage. John Paul the Great always emphasized that this term, from chapter 5 of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, is fundamental for Christian marriage. Paul reveals that Christ’s relationship to the Church and Christian marriage are both part of the same mystery. Both sets of relationships are mutually illuminative but JP the Great provides some insights from Christ’s relationship to the Church for Christian marriage, which I think are fascinating. Here are my top ten:

1. Christ’s irrevocable union with His Church helps us understand the irrevocable sacramental union of husband and wife in Holy Matrimony.

2. Husbands and wives are complementary; neither alone has all of the gifts necessary for a healthy marriage and family. Therefore, they must mutually subject themselves, one to another out of reverence for Christ (some have called this a development of doctrine).

3. Husbands must love their wives/families like Christ loved the Church; desiring their sanctification to the point of husbands giving up their lives for their family’s salvation (notice the primary goal is salvation, not houses, cars, diamonds, vacations, Gameboys, etc.).

4. The grace of the Sacrament, due to the Great Mystery, is what allows the spouses to overcome concupiscence and to love one another as persons rather than treating each other as objects (but it still takes work).

5. Authentic Christian marriage originates in the Great Mystery; it is a sharing in Christ’s desire that His love be fruitful and salvific.

6. The husband’s goal must be to imitate Christ in loving His wife/family such that they see Christ’s love and solicitude for them in the husband.

7. The wife’s goal in marriage must be to reveal to her husband/family the total gift of self which Mary, the Model of the Church/Bride, gave to God such that they what they must imitate in their relationships with God.

8. Marital intercourse is a foretaste of the perfect union we will have with Christ and the Church in heaven and so it is analogous to the union we have with Christ and the Church in the Eucharist.

9. To be authentic, marital intercourse must reflect Christ’s Total Gift of Himself which He gave on the Cross; nothing can be held back (including fertility).

10. Marital intercourse participates in the fusion of the spousal and redemptive love of Christ for His Church. In other words, (paraphrasing Scott Hahn) sex is not Campbell’s Soup . . . it is not um, um good; sex is not Frosted Flakes . . . it is not grrrrreat; sex is holy for through authentic marital intercourse, the spouses mediate sacramental grace to one another!

Actually, I recall reading something along those lines from a certain feminist writer. Her point was that he seemed to idealize women into something they could never be but he completely ignored men or at most made them into creatures somehow less than human. That made him both a man hater and a misogynist. While some feminists have a hard time being objective in addressing matters in which they perceive a threat to their agenda, it is not just these writers who have noticed that the late Holy Father did not seem to write about men as much as he did about women. Many of those who traditionally agree with him also criticized him for this. Looking for myself at his writings the most that I could come up with which was exclusively directed to men was a paragraph on men in the apostolic exhortation Familiaris consortio (On the Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World) and an apostolic letter on St. Joseph obliquely focusing on men”Redemptoris custos (Guardian Of The Redeemer).

When one looks at the crisis of fatherhood in the West and the resulting dissolution of family life, it seems that perhaps there might be something to this criticism. I have looked at this argument and, trying not to idolize a mortal but still great man, I tried to consider the possibility that he did ignore men and concentrated his whole thought on women. However, I also decided that perhaps he didn’t ignore men at all but addressed them implicitly for some reason. I found that the latter was the case. But then came the question as to why.

Before saying what I came up with, I wonder if any one else has thought about this issue and what you may have come up with? I suppose you could answer:

A. No, and I don’t care.

B. Yes, but I don’t care.

C. No, but let me hear what you found out.

D. Yes, ______________ (fill in the blank).

E. No response (likely to be the most popular I suppose).

Well we made it to Saranac from Rochester. Everything went as planned with our trip but my brother’s plane . . ., well, that was another matter. Short story long, when it comes to my brothers lately, it seems they have me racing the weather for some reason or another. I had to take the ferry over to pick him up along with his family at the Burlington airport and try to catch the ferry back before the big storm hit . . . we made it. At least this time it was not a hurricane (see 7 July post). Any time I go to Vermont, for some reason, the trip has me thinking about politics. I’m not exactly sure why, the first strike in the same sex union war perhaps; but in that vein . . .

I recognize that many a keyboard has been burnt up with this issue but the nice thing about a blog is that you can always throw in your two cents and you don’t have to know that you are being ignored. So here go mine . . .

Now I understand the desire to know where someone is coming from and the convenience of placing him into an intellectual box. However, it seems to me that the importation of the terms “liberal” and “conservative” by those trying to classify any particular Catholic, is problematic for various reasons.

First, there is more often than not a lack of clarity as to what the user intends by the terms. For example, neo-conservatives claim that they are more in line with classical liberalism than today’s neo-liberals.  In fact, they say, modern liberals actually espouse many liberty depriving policies through government “interference,” especially in the economic sphere, that would be anathema to classical liberalism. Moreover, these terms can mean a variety of things, even limiting the ascription to the political, economic, fiscal, or social spheres. Beyond that, it is sometimes difficult to know what is really intended when they are applied to Catholics in terms of Church teaching. Is the reference to their ecclesiology, their Christology, their understanding of Catholic social doctrine, their anthropology . . . ?

Second, the classifications are overly simplistic and fail to take into account that many Catholics do not submit to particular, secular ideologies. Along these lines, a further problem is that it seems to me that once classified, there is a tendency by some to dismiss others with whom they disagree without actually listening to what is said or engaging their arguments.

Third, unfortunately, too often the term “liberal” is simply used as a euphemism by those who think that their ideology justifies their dissent from authoritative Church teaching.  Conversely, “conservative” often means one need not seriously consider judgments from the Church in conflict with his ideology if the judgment can be classified as prudential.

Fourth, it exacerbates the problem that both “conservatives” and “liberals” can unthinkingly presume that their _________ (political, economic, etc., fill in the blank) philosophy is foundational and that the Church must some how fit into it. This leads to an over self-identification with their respective ideologies and the tendency to view Church teaching through these ideological lenses. For example, many Catholics, who espouse social liberalism seem to conflate Catholic social doctrine with liberal social policies. On the other hand, some Catholics who consider themselves to be conservative, can often appear to dismiss out of hand consistent and repeated magisterial application of Church teaching about the death penalty because it contradicts their “law and order” ideology.

I suggest that we call a spade a spade. If one is a dissenter from Church teaching, admit it. If one accepts Church authority only when it aligns with one’s politically conservative ideology then don’t call yourself a conservative Catholic. Perhaps both of these tendencies would more fairly self-identify as Protestant “liberals” or “conservatives” who happen to agree with much of what the Catholic Church teaches.

O.K., I’m done.

As I was reading Walker Percy’s, Lost in the Cosmos a couple of weeks ago, his discussion of semiotics and the triadic character of symbol use brought this question to mind. How, you might ask? You more probably would ask what I am talking about with the mouthful: “the triadic character of symbol.” Essentially, that means only one creature, man, uses a sign/signifier to convey meaning about something else—the referent (I would recommend Percy’s book to learn more about this but I would warn that his measured use of profane sexual material to get his point across could legitimately offend some sensibilities which are aimed at purity). I don’t recall if Percy discusses the point but up until William of Ockham introduced the cancer of Nominalism in the 14th century, it was pretty much accepted that there was a real ontological (which means “the being” of something) relationship between the sign and its referent. Ockham insisted that what we called things is completely arbitrary. There is no deeper connection. This Nominalism, having been enhanced by Immanuel Kant at the beginning of the 19th century, is pretty much common thinking today. So how did I get to the topic of sex?

It occurred to me that this Nominalism goes well beyond words and their referents. For anything which we symbolize, we do not think of the symbol as having a very deep, and certainly not an ontological, relationship to its referent. This is the case even for some Catholics with the Sacraments. For them, the sacramental symbols are just material reminders of something spiritual (for other confused souls they function purely on the psychological level). Well, that is not what Christians ever believed prior to Ockham. The Sacraments are symbols par excellence. They are what they symbolize and they convey what they symbolize. That is the case with the priest as a symbol of Christ, the Bridegroom, in Holy Orders. The dissenters against the Church’s dogmatic teaching that only men can be priests suffer from two problems. The first is this rejection of the idea that symbols have a real ontological relationship to their referents. The other is that they do not accept that sex differences are something ontological, that these differences go to the very heart of who the person really is. We are either a female or male person forever; we cannot change our sex without annihilating ourselves as persons (transgender operations are simply surface mutilations of the body and cannot change the sex of the person). This relationship between sex and symbol is cosmological. Sex is a form of relation; it establishes the structure by which we relate to others. What we see as sex differences in creatures is simply a biological (and spiritual) manifestation of the way God relates to His creation and the way other aspects of creation relate to one another and to God.

Peter Kreeft has a masterful article (reading him I sometimes wonder why I bother writing anything) on sexual symbolism which explains this much more profoundly than I ever could. I would recommend reading this article before reading John Paul the Great’s theology of the body catecheses because in it Kreeft summarizes much of what JP the Great presupposes in his anthropology.

So how about the answer to the question? You probably can figure out by now that it is yes and no. No, if you are thinking of corporal copulation. However, there will be sex differences in heaven. Our masculinity and femininity remain with us forever as part of who we are. Furthermore, if one recognizes that sexual copulation is intended not only as a way to reproduce the species but as a foretaste of the universal intersubjective unity we will have with God and every other person in heaven, then I suppose that one might consider that sex—though I restate that it will not be corporal! However, I for one would not use the term because this heavenly unity is so far beyond the intimacy of marital sexual union that using the term would mislead and distort the unimaginable joys which God has prepared for those who love Him.

I like the way this lady thinks. Tracey Rowland is the dean of the JPII Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family in Melbourne. Zenit is publishing a 2 part interview with her on the differences in approach to Lumen gentium and the Second Vatican Council than we saw with JP the Great. Here is part 1. I think that she has hit on some very important points and I suspect that she is right in what we will see coming out of B16.

Well we are on the road again tomorrow morning. We are headed up to Rochester, NY to visit my wife’s nephew, wife and new baby boy. Then on to Saranac (population 1003) and the ole family homestead. We stay in the old farm house which is a renovated log cabin, moved to its current location sometime before 1860 when William Delaney had saved up enough money after having arrived in the U.S. to escape the potato famine (but we have forgiven the Brits). It stands on the 20 acres that remain of the original Delaney family farm. I am hoping that the heat wave spares us ’cause even renovated log cabins come sans a/c. However, we do have a phone line and mom is there with her laptop so expect me to continue pontificating until no one cares to listen anymore . . .

A few days ago, in the context of the idolization of the will, I discussed Walker Percy’s observation that sometimes we love death more than life. Death is the “end game” so to speak, of our “right to choose”_________ (to prevent life during intercourse, to extinguish life already in the womb, to control our suffering, etc. . . . fill in the blank). I was rereading a magazine article this morning which seems closely related. Crisis runs an article in their July/August issue by Benjamin Wiker, on George Felos, which seems to illustrate another manifestation of this need to control our destinies, a control which ultimately ends in the pursuit of death.

Felos, if you will recall, is the lawyer who helped Michael Schiavo snuff out the life of his wife in last Spring’s tragic “right-to-die” case in Florida. Wiker bases his article on Felos’s autobiography. Felos is a strange bird indeed but the common denominator in this man’s struggle with life seems to be a death wish, for himself and others. In fact, he seems to have found a philosophical system/religion which provides the framework for his worship of death. Felos rejected his Christianity for an Eastern religion which proposes the old duality between body and soul in which the body is an illusion to be jettisoned; the soul is the only reality. Rather, the soul is detached divinity waiting to be subsumed back into the ocean of impersonal divinity. Felos is now in control, having reached the Self-consciousness required for this “return” to the divine.

It is not hard to see how this is a distortion of the real truth. We are made in the image of God, and when baptized, we are divinized. However, this is distorted in Eastern thought into our being divine ourselves. We are indeed, made God-like by our baptism but our nature never changes into the Uncreated God. We never lose our personhood; our ineffable unity with God and with others in heaven completes us as persons, it does not annihilate our unique identities. Death is in fact the door to eternal life but it is not ours to choose. God has given us our life with the mission to become perfect; to become as holy as He is Holy (cf. Matt 5:38). We are not divine in the Eastern sense and so Self-consciousness of our own divinity is not the source of our salvation. Rather, only in Christ will we be saved . . . but only if we endure to the end (cf. Matt 10:22). Felos’s satanic siren song plays on a desire to control one’s own destinies, to control even death by seeking it in a confused assumption that one can overcome it through his will.

As for Felos, he has reached his state of Self-consciousness and now seeks death for himself and others. In fact, he is Death’s evangelist helping others to die and hopefully reach this state of consciousness for themselves. If he is not always successful, well, at least he is well compensated for his efforts. Wiker reports that he made about a half a million dollars for his efforts in the Schiavo travesty. John Paul the Great wrote that ideas have consequences. He was thinking about the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century in this statement. We find the same is true today. When we exalt freedom and our will above “being” and life, like JP the Great saw in the century of tears, the result is always death.

The National Catholic Register ran an article last week about a case decided by a New Jersey Appellate Court which declared that those with homosexual lifestyles do not have a right to marry. Of particular interest in the article are testimonies that we do not hear enough about. One is from a young woman with homosexual inclinations but who is trying to live a chaste life. She describes how difficult chastity is in today’s environment when the media seems to extol the virtues of same sex relationships.

Another is from a girl whose father is a practicing homosexual and the problems which she experienced due to his disorder. Her point that the disorder comes with selfishness and emotional immaturity making lasting relationships impossible, is borne out by the data. A 1994 “gay” census happily reports that 52% of gays are in relationships and of these 29% are in them for 8 years or more. How they picked 8 years seems to do more with monkeying the data than anything else, since 8 years is no where near a lifelong commitment. Further more, 29% of the little over half (52%) means that only 15% make it to 8 years or more. This is not the stability that children need.

Homosexual relationships, because they are disordered, cannot be stable. A study based on the health records of young Dutch homosexuals by Dr. Maria Xiridou of the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service and published in the May 2003 issue of the journal AIDS found that men in homosexual “monogamous” relationships have an average of eight partners a year outside their main partnership, and that the main partnerships last only an average of a year and a half. Even in the age of throwaway marriages, according to the US National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), 67 percent of first heterosexual marriages last 10 years and 50 percent last 20 years.Besides stability, the homosexual lifestyle is unsafe for children. The disorder of ephebophilia (the attraction to post pubescent children which is different from pedophilia) is significantly higher in gays than in the normal population (less than 2%). In fact, homosexual activists Karla Jay and Allen Young revealed in their 1979 Gay Report that 73% of all homosexuals have acted as “chicken hawks” (i.e., they have preyed on adolescent or younger boys).

Regardless of the child’s age, there are a great number of studies that indicate a strong link between those engaging in homosexual intercourse and child molestation:

Ray Blanchard, et al. “Fratemal Birth Order and Sexual Orientation in Pedophiles.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 29, Number 5 (2000), pages 463 to 478.

A. Zebulon, Z.A. Silverthorne and Vernon L. Quinsey. “Sexual Partner Age Preferences of Homosexual and Heterosexual Men and Women.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, February 2000 [Volume 29, Number IJ, pages 67 to 76.

Ray Blanchard, et. aI. "Pedophiles: Mental Retardation, Maternal Age, and Sexual Orientation." Archives of Sexual Behavior, Volume 28, Number 2,pages 111 to 127.

Kurt Freund, Robin Watson and Douglas Rienzoo "Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, and Erotic Age Preference." Journal of Sex Research, February 1989 [Volume 26,Number 1), pages l(J7to 117.

W.D. Erickson, et al. "Behavior Patterns of Child Molesters." 17 Archives of Sexual Behavior 77,83 (1988). IOJ.

Freund, G. Heasman, I.G. Racansky, and G. Glancy. "Pedophilia and Heterosexuality vs. Homosexuality." Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, Fall 1984 [Volume 10, Number 3], pages 193 to 200.

“Homosexual activists Karla Jay and Allen Young. The Gay Report: Lesbians and Gay Men Speak Out About Sexual Experiences and lifestyles [Simon and Schuster, 1979], page 275. K.

Freund & R.I. Watson. “The Proportions of Heterosexual and Homosexual Pedophiles Among Sex Offenders Against Children: An Exploratory Study.” 18 34, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 34-43 (1992).

Neither is the lifestyle healthy for either children or gays themselves. For example, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), has shown that the life expectancy for homosexuals is about twenty years shorter than that of the general public. The study, entitled “Gay obituaries closely track officially reported deaths from AIDS”, has been published in Psychological Reports (2005;96:693-697). Another study in Vancouver British Columbia and published in 1997 in the International Journal of Epidemiology (Vol. 26, 657-61 reveals almost the exact same findings.

However, the dangers are not solely associated with AIDS. Two studies appearing in the October 2000 issue of the American Medical Association’s Archives of General Psychiatry show a strong link between homosexual sex and suicide, as well as a relationship between homosexuality and emotional and mental problems. One of the studies in the same journal (by David M. Ferguson et. al.) discovered that “gay, lesbian and bisexual young people are at increased risk of psychiatric disorder and suicidal behaviors.”

A summary of other health problems associated with homosexual behavior can be found in the Catholic Medical Association’s (http://www.cathmed.org/) paper, “Homosexuality and Hope.” These include: homosexuals are four times as likely as their peers to suffer from major depression, almost three times as likely to suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, nearly four times as likely to experience conduct disorder, five times as likely to have nicotine dependence, six times as likely to suffer from multiple disorders, and over six times as likely to have attempted suicide (and it points out that an “extensive study in the Netherlands (published in the Archives of General Psychiatry) undermines the assumption that homophobia is the cause of increased psychiatric illness among gays and lesbians. The Dutch have been considerably more accepting of same-sex relationships than other Western countries — in fact, same-sex couples now have the legal right to marry in the Netherlands”).

Homosexuality and Hope also showed that “compared to controls who had no homosexual experience in the 12 months prior to the interview, males who had any homosexual contact within that time period were much more likely to experience major depression, bipolar disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Females with any homosexual contact within the previous 12 months were more often diagnosed with major depression, social phobia or alcohol dependence. In fact, those with a history of homosexual contact had higher prevalence of nearly all psychiatric disorders measured in the study. Also, a recent study in the American Journal of Public Health has shown that 39% of males with same-sex attraction have been abused by other males with same-sex attraction.”

The document also shows physical illnesses associated with homosexual sex: “the diseases found with extraordinary frequency among male homosexual practitioners as a result of abnormal homosexual behavior is alarming: anal cancer, chlamydia trachomatis, cryptosporidium, giardia lamblia, herpes simplex virus, human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, human papilloma virus — HPV or genital warts — isospora belli, microsporidia, gonorrhea, viral hepatitis types B and C, and syphilis. Sexual transmission of some of these diseases is so rare in the exclusively heterosexual population as to be virtually unknown. Others, while found among heterosexual and homosexual practitioners, are clearly predominated by those involved in homosexual activity. Men who have sex with men account for the lion’s share of the increasing number of cases in America of sexually transmitted infections that are not generally spread through sexual contact. These diseases, with consequences that range from severe and even life-threatening to mere annoyances, include hepatitis A, giardia lamblia, entamoeba histolytica, Epstein-Barr virus, neisseria meningitides, shigellosis, salmonellosis, pediculosis, scabies and campylobacter.”

It seems that the media has turned a blind eye to the stories of those who have experienced the real horror of a homosexual lifestyle. However, fortunately there are good apostolates, such as Courage, which are available to help those who recognize that they have the disorder of same sex attraction and want help in overcoming it.

Updated to correct an erroneous citation.

I will admit that I go to our parish’s 8am no music Mass on Sunday mornings because if there are going to be “innovations” it will usually be related in some way to the music. In my estimation, music is perhaps the last major area where liturgists can (and often do) really trash the prayerful experience of the Mass without explicitly violating the rubrics. I have a good priest friend in the Sacramento Diocese who said that at one of his first Masses there, the liturgist was using circus music as the Mass theme. I am sure that there have been worse.

So you can imagine how pleased I was to read Zenit’s news release today about a topic for the October Synod of Bishops on the issue of liturgical music. Among the items to be discussed: the recovery of Gregorian Chant, the enforcement of liturgical standards for liturgical music, and the encouragement for new hymns according to these standards using Gregorian Chant as a model. I hope that the time is now right for an escape from the gaudy music to which we have been exposed and a recovery of this very important aspect of liturgy.

I mentioned as an aside in a post a couple of days ago, that biological evolution is one area that scientists can be as agenda driven as anyone else. LifeSiteNews ran an article today about a release from the Discovery Institute which updated their “Statement of Dissent from Darwin.” This is a list of now, over 400 scientists who state their skepticism that Darwinian evolution (i.e. solely the factors of random mutation and natural selection) can account for the complexity of life.

This is a very difficult issue for scientists to take on. For those who are not familiar with the field: scientists can be much more dogmatic about scientific dogma than many religions today. Dissent can lead to being ostracized and even to character assassination. Compound ordinary dissent with the fact that most of the English speaking world considers dissent from Darwin (Lamarckian evolution is not even on the radar screen for most in the English speaking academy) places one in the camp of a religious fundamentalist. This is almost the worst thing a scientist can be called. So you can see the problem of getting anyone to sign on to such a list and so the chance of real progress in advancing the science in this field is still pretty slim.

Christianity has nothing to fear from science (done right). I for one am looking forward to the day when we can get on with the investigation for what natural explanations there are for the formation of life. However, for the time being, it is still a “mortal sin” for a scientist to point out that emperor Darwin has been running around in his birthday suit for well over a century now.

Friedrich Nietzsche was the father of the philosophical school of nihilism. He died at the turn of the 20th century, well before effective oral contraception became widely available. In fact, he was a philosopher and not a chemist or doctor. So what does he have to do with the pill? Well Nietzsche was an honest atheist who recognized that without God there is only one thing that matters in the end; the “will to power;” in other words, self-assertion; pursuing our will becomes our god.

I would suggest that the Pill is the ultimate manifestation of Nietzsche’s “will to power” philosophy. Our fertility gives us the ability to cooperate with God in passing on life, in co-creating with Him. But in contraception we demand the right to worship the gods of sex, power, and wealth regardless of the cost. We find fertility such a dangerous foe that women are willing to put their health at risk to defeat it (It seems to me that sex is in first place of the sex, power, and money tri-theon right now, but I wonder how long it will be before the lawyers recognize the financial windfall available if they were to take the drug companies to the carpet over the death and disease, including breast cancer and a host of other problems including blood clots, caused by chemical contraception).

Unlike the lower animals which sexually procreate, we have the intellectual capacity to choose to impede our cooperation with procreation. With the pill we manifest our wish to overcome nature; we go to battle with nature (i.e. with God) over our fertility. And battle seems to me to be the correct term considering the ever so martial contraceptive vocabulary (contraception, barrier method, spermicide, etc.). In the end, we are fighting against life. We are embracing the culture of death; in fact the paradox is that in pursuing the satisfaction of our every sexual desire, we actually seem to have a death wish. Walker Percy saw this in his book, Lost in the Cosmos in which he criticizes our sex crazed culture. Literary AIDS is a new manifestation of this coming out of the “gay” subculture. This genre (??) seems to be a celebration of death, of flirting with and embracing activities which will bring death. The late Stephen Happel discusses this:

the condition for accepting the pleasure of single-sex affection . . . is the willingness to accept death by AIDS, not as the antagonist of pleasure, but as the always already-there inner limit of an open-ended desire. This appropriation of death-in-life, however, requires divesting oneself of the kind of constructed masculinity that asserts dominance over everything, including suffering and death. The understanding of anthropology faces lack as an intrinsic moment of human self-realization, whether male or female (Stephen Happel and James J. Walter, Conversion and Discipleship: A Christian Foundation for Ethics and Doctrine [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986], 114).

Demanding the right to seek death is the ultimate self-assertion of one’s will (even if Happel doesn’t see this); it is the final defiance against the Lord and Giver of Life. If the traditional satanic exclamation Non Serviam does not come to mind here, I would be surprised. It makes perfect sense that Satan would attack the very point at which our wills can either bring us into the imitation of Trinitarian, fruitful love or into a rejection of the purpose of our free wills by our becoming lower than the animals who still at least act according to their instincts.

As much as scientists (doctors generally consider themselves part of this community) like to espouse their objectivity in looking at the scientific data and their skepticism with respect to any and all “ideologies,” the truth is that they are every much as subject to “groupthink” as anyone else. The biological evolution debate comes to mind here, where such ideologues as Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould refuse to admit the shortcomings of the current evolutionary theories because they are frightened that the only alternative explanation seems to them to be some sort of theism.

Well, move over Richard, Stephen, you have company coming to join you. Zenit ran an interview in today’s edition with Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons of the Catholic Medical Association. In previous posts, I have referred to a white paper, to which he was a major contributor, “Homosexuality and Hope.” In the interview, Fitzgibbons, a psychiatrist, details how the American Psychiatric Association has wedded itself to anti-Christian, and especially anti-Catholic ideologies. Fitzgibbons says that these ties blind it to the medical evidence that homosexual attraction and behavior bring with it serious psychiatric and medical illnesses. The best part of this interview is the links to summaries of studies which detail these findings.

In a culture where the gods are scientific knowledge and technology, and the high priests are the scientists and engineers (I had to throw engineers in . . .) the lay faithful are apt to bow down to whatever the high priests tell us. Hopefully we will mature in time to keep from following these “scientists,” like lemmings, over a sociological cliff.

The Second Vatican Council was, as the Good Pope envisioned, the opening of the window of the Church to the Holy Spirit. VII provided the Church with the tools to engage modernity and to effectively dialogue with a changed world. A new personalist approach to presenting the alterable truths which Jesus suffered and died to leave us, has sparked the beginnings of a new springtime in the Church. John Paul the Great’s anthropology, though his writing can be dense for non-specialists, is a personally compelling way to understand what the Church has always taught about God and man’s Covenant relationship with Him. In fact, this blog tries to popularize JP the Great’s thought so that his understanding of the awesome reality of who we are and who we should become is more readily available to non-specialists.

John Paul the Great was in a sense, formed by the Council and is perhaps its most fruitful implementer. It seems to me then, that it is important to have a good understanding not only of what the Council said but also of the history of the development of the documents. A couple of articles have recently appeared which have cast a new light on the “current wisdom” in which Vatican II is (mis)characterized as a fight between progressive bishops and theologians and traditional, neo-scholastics. In this common view, the latter of course lost the fight. Those who espouse this view often try to depict the council as a break with the past.

Sandro Magister writes on Cardinal Ruini’s refutation of this popular view. The Cardinal took the occasion to discuss this common (mis)perception of Vatican II at the presentation of a new book, published by Libreria Editrice Vaticana and written by Bishop Agostino Marchetto. Bishop Marchetto is a Church historian and the secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People. The book is entitled The Ecumenical Council of Vatican II: A Counterpoint to Its History. Zenit interviews Marchetto on his new book. Marchetto takes particular issue with the so called Bologna School which is a major purveyor of this mischaracterization of VII. He emphasizes the continuity of the Council with the past and takes pains to refute the simplistic view that the Council was a fight between liberals and conservatives. This is of fundamental importance because this mistaken view is held by some extreme traditionalists who then reject the council and by dissenters of Church dogma who see it as their license for dissent.

I hope that the book will be available in English as my Italian is not so good. It will provide an important corrective to the history by legend to which most of us have been subjected up to now.

I rely on Hiérothée for a lot of blog topic ideas so I was happy to see him send me an article on an area related to my recently completed dissertation. It appears that MSNBC ran an article last week about a new movement among some professional women. It seems that they are coming to recognize late, with respect to their “biological clocks,” their innate “need” to have a baby. However, for various reasons they find that the best option is to conceive through anonymous sperm donation. The MSNBC article focuses on the need for support groups and child care for these mothers but there is no mention of the impacts of the missing father on the children.

David Blankenhorn, in his book Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem, draws together a mound of statistics to illustrate the problems associated with fatherless households. He begins by showing that the problem of fatherless households has grown significantly since 1960. By 1995 about 40% of all children in the U.S. were living without their biological fathers. This number is expected to reach 50% in this decade. While divorce and remarriage accounts for the majority, 40% of these children live only with their mothers. Blankenhorn cites study after study which links male youth crime, emotional and behavioral problems and social maladjustment to fatherless households. In fact, the most significant indicator of crime in a neighborhood is the percentage of households without the biological father present. While violence and crime are the main results of boys being raised without a father, for girls juvenile and single motherhood become the problems. For example, girls in single parent homes (87% of which are fatherless) are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 111% more likely to have children as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a child out of wedlock, and 92% more likely to divorce. These facts help to perpetuate further societal problems since women living with a man who is not their husband are four times more likely to experience abuse than a wife by her husband. In addition, children in fatherless households are at a significantly higher risk of sexual abuse. Finally, children are six times more likely to live in poverty if they live only with their mother.

I studied John Paul the Great’s theology of fatherhood and found that from his anthropology, these problems are predictable in a home where the father is not present. You see, God created man, male and female. We, men and women, are made to complement one another. We need each other’s complementary gifts to become who we are called to be (in a word . . . saints) and to subdue and have dominion over the earth (i.e. fruitfully steward families, society, technology, the environment, etc.). In a nutshell, women and men are given different ways of giving themselves as gifts to others. Children, who learn to trust from their parents’ love, need to experience both of these complementary ways of loving in order to be well nurtured and to develop into healthy and well adjusted adults. The problems listed above are by and large, a response of destroyed trust.

By the way, the sociological data indicates that there is a big difference between children of divorced parents and children of a parent who has died; the latter not experiencing the extent of the problems generally seen among other fatherless households. Depriving children of this stable family life cannot be made up for later in life. Interestingly, the studies which ostensibly show that there is no difference between children of heterosexual parents and children of gay or lesbian parents actually does support the need for both parents. It seems that the authors of gay studies always take as their point of comparison single mother households, which as shown above, leads to very troubled children.

So, it turns out that you cannot fool Mother Nature. When we think that we can, with impunity, alter living in the way for which God has created us we are playing with fire. In the end, the piper will get his pay. Unfortunately, in this case it will likely be at the price of the emotional wellbeing of the innocent children.

I saw that Amy had a long run of comments a couple of days ago on her post about the debate between Gerry Matatics and Robert Sungenis on the validity of the post-1962 Roman Missal and post-1968 Ordination Rite. I was surprised by the number of those commenting who summarily dismissed the issue as well as those extreme traditionalists who subscribe to it. While they are probably correct that few minds will be changed by the debate, I do not think that ignoring the dissenting traditionalists is any more advisable than ignoring any other dissenting Catholics. Paradoxically enough, I suspect that dissenters on sexual teachings, Church structure, Sacraments, etc. have much more in common with traditionalist dissenters than they might suspect.

This brings me to the title of this post. The first item: the Liturgy. Traditionalists generally understand that the Mass is essential for Christian life, in fact, for life in general (see our posting on this subject). Even though many traditionalists mistake accidents for essentials in the liturgy, perhaps those who do not have some sympathy for traditionalists do not appreciate an important aspect of the liturgy which the traditionalists seem to intuit. Their desire to return to those things jettisoned in the 1970 and subsequent Missals which evoke a sense of mystery and transcendence in the Mass may be accidents but that does not mean they are not significant. We, after all, are both material and spiritual creatures and so we require stimuli from the material world to reinforce and orient us toward what is happening spiritually. Our ability to focus on and experience the great mystery which we enter into during the liturgy is greatly affected by the liturgical accidents. It is not surprising then that those who recognize the awesome nature of the Mass but do not experience the sense of transcendence in most of the present day liturgies they attend, perceive that there is some sort of discord between the reality and the experience. Unfortunately, this leads some traditionalists, such as Gerry Matatics, to separate themselves from the Church.

The second item: Wyle E. Coyote. Gerry Matatics was one of the first apologists I listened to after beginning to relearn my faith back in the early 90s. Not too long afterward, I heard his good friend from seminary days describe Gerry in terms of Wyle E. Coyote. It turns out this friend was quite disturbed that Gerry had recently subscribed to the theory that the current Roman Missal was invalid. He described what he saw happening to Gerry in terms of the coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons who worked so hard to break into a house to get the Roadrunner, that he went right through the house and out the back door. In this case, the house was the Catholic Church. What explains this Wyle E. Coyote act? I cannot tell you that I know the answer. However, I suspect that it has to do with the fact that Gerry never shook his Protestant outlook on faith.

The third item: Faith. Now to the point I made earlier about similarities among all varieties of dissenting Catholics. Cardinal George has described our U.S. culture as Calvinist. I believe that he is right, though perhaps post-Calvinist would be more accurate. In any case, we have a Protestant mindset, reinforced by rationalism and American individualism, where, in truth we are our own popes. What I mean is that we do not recognize the necessity of trust for faith. This trust is in Christ and the Church He established. Trust is fundamental for faith, for social interactions, for community, for learning, for just about everything in our daily lives. However, if we make the mistake that because the Church may have made erred on something in the past, then our opinion is just as good as the Magisterium’s authoritative teachings then we are adopting the foundational premise of Protestants and all varieties of Catholic dissenters. There a many ways to show that this makes no sense but the quickest is to say that it is illogical to trust the Magisterium for the source material (the Bible, Papal Decrees, etc.) and then use these sources to show that the same authority is now wrong. This trust only in oneself is misplaced, dangerous, counter to our constitution as human persons, and totally alien to Biblical faith. This type of trust is not fideism it is faith aided by reason.

Well we made it home and for those familiar with traveling the I-95 corridor from Richmond to DC on a Sunday evening, you know that is no small grace. Actually, we were still in North Carolina when traffic ground to a halt the first time. It was bumper-to-bumper most of the rest of the way with a lot of stop-and-go . . . but all too much just plain stop. Regardless, we had a wonderful time with my brother, his wife and four children. Sheri is on the mend but we are keeping her in our prayers.

We spent the night with our nephew, Ben, in Charleston, SC. We arrived early Saturday afternoon and saw some of the sights, we braved the traffic on the new Charles River Bridge (it’s actually named after a politician but I do not recall his name) which had just opened that day. It was apparently the thing to do in Charleston. We went to Mass this morning at the beautiful St. John the Baptist Cathedral. Thankfully, it has not been subjected to any of the slash and burn renovations all too popular these days. They even retained the ornate, carved marble fixed altar from the late 1800s. My wife was reading the bulletin on the way home and saw that the new rector/pastor plans to soon begin having the Credo and Pater Noster recited in Latin at all of the Masses. They begin practicing next week (the reform of the reform has begun . . . ). Now we have a week to recuperate before we leave on a trip up to the ‘ol family homestead near Pittsburgh, NY for a Delaney family reunion. Guess who is in charge . . .

So what about the title of this post. Well that comes by way of my six year old nephew, Tyler. Tyler is somewhat precocious but he has a little problem with pronouncing his “r”s, which makes him a hoot to listen to (I know, a dangling preposition, but it sounds better than the alternative). As I was taking Tyler and his brother to nature camp (there was also speed camp and reading camp for the other two nephews) we passed a couple of young men jogging on the way, very tanned and shirtless, which figures into the story. We were still a mile or two from camp and since Tyler and Aidan were not on their best behavior, I threatened to drop them off with the runners and make them run the rest of the way. While Aidan, the agitator, liked the idea Tyler was not going for it. He first thought that the boys would induce them to run shirtless as an obvious sign of manliness (not sure where that one came from). However, he thought that running around without a shirt was inappwopwiate.

I thought about this for a second and realized that perhaps Tyler sees something here. While flaunting it if you have it . . . well these days unfortunately, even if you do not have it . . . is common place, it is important to recognize our responsibilities to one another. If we can be the cause of sin for another by what we wear (or don’t wear) we have an obligation to avoid subjecting others to our wayward fashion. Is this Victorian prudishness? Perhaps in Tyler’s case there is room for honest disagreement. However, it provides an opportunity to make an important distinction. What is the difference between prudishness and modesty aimed at purity for oneself and others?

Prudishness seems to me, to be based upon a false shame of the body. It is a modesty which sees the body as something dirty and therefore, to be hidden. Purity on the other hand, is a modesty which recognizes the beauty and wonder of the body, as the very expression of the soul of the person. However, purity also recognizes the reality of concupiscence. In other words, in the fallen state it is no secret that the body, inappropriately exposed, can be a cause for viewing the person as an object for pleasure or for the satisfaction of a desire. It seems then, that one must judge, given the circumstances, what kinds of apparel are reasonably likely to cause lustful thoughts in potential viewers and avoid wearing them in public places. We are our brothers and sisters keepers.

No, this isn’t the title for J. K. Rowling’s next book. Although it does seem to be a constant theme in the secular media. In 2003 JPII was falsely quoted as being in favor of the Harry Potter series. A news article from a few years ago has recently resurfaced which Pope Benedict the 16th goes on record as disapproving the series. An article in Reuters sets out the Popes thoughts on Harry Potter. Our Holy Father is quoted as saying “It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because these are subtle seductions which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly,”. I have read several of the Harry Potter series and have found that with out a properly mature and informed consious (which is a rare thing indeed) it would be difficult to see the damage the devil can do to a soul using the imagination and Harry Potter. I guess the words of our Lord Jesus Christ can sum this up better than I. “Whoever causes one of these little ones who belive in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” Pray for our little ones always. Peace & Prayers, CLS

On Monday, the Ottawa Citizen ran an article on a hockey mom who was upset with the British Columbia Amateur Hockey Association and was taking her case to the Human Rights Tribunal in Vancouver. It seems that the residual patriarchalism/prudishness in Canada was leading to discrimination against her 14 year old daughter. Apparently this poor young lady was being unfairly left out of team camaraderie because she was not allowed to change in the same locker room as her male teammates.

I suppose that in the broad sense of the term, this is in fact, discrimination. However, in this case it is not unjust. Rather, this discrimination recognizes the propriety of keeping undressed teens of the opposite sex separated from one another. This is something lost on the mother who would seem to be more concerned with her daughter’s so called “rights” and her “integration” into the team than she is with recognizing the reality of sexual differences and the sexual urge. Unfortunately, I will not be surprised to learn that the tribunal finds for the mother.

This Texas saying nicely summarizes the problem with same sex marriage. After all, from an authentic Texan’s perspective a dog is made for hunting and it is a serious disorder when something cannot do that for which is was created. Same sex marriage is much the same. It seems perfectly obvious that marriage is ordered to the raising of children; even though it has been endowed by Christ with much more meaning. A relationship in which the two partners rebel in some way against their natures, reflects disorder. Homosexual relationships are the epitome of this rebellion.

LifeSiteNews is posting an article from earlier in the year by Richard Bastien on same sex marriage which helps one see this rebellion. Bastien’s article summarizes and refutes the major arguments raised in support of same sex marriage. This is a very helpful article because it makes important distinctions between the valid arguments from the civil rights movement and their misapplication to the gay agenda. Bastien also addresses something we have mentioned previously in this blog. The connection between a contraceptive mentality and the situation to which we have now arrived with the near complete dissolution of the nuclear family.

I really cannot overemphasize how important I think the contraceptive mentality is for where we find ourselves headed in society. Contraception is the first step in turning life from a gift into a commodity to be seized, controlled, and bended to our wills. However, our wills cannot change reality. Eventually our cheat’n ways will catch up with us . . .