Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Fr. Coyne, the Director of the Vatican Observatory, has weighed in on the so-called Evolution/Intelligent Design debate. Fr. Coyne has his PhD in astronomy, as well as a License in philosophy and theology. He really should be qualified to at least understand the debate, if not contribute to it. Alas, at least as Catholic On-line quotes him, neither appears to be the case.

He assails Cardinal Schönborn’s July 2005 NYT article for condemning neo-Darwinism and supporting ID. He lists five errors of the Cardinal’s, which highlight problems in his own thinking:

One, the scientific theory of evolution, as all scientific theories, is completely neutral with respect to religious thinking; two, the message of John Paul II, which I have just referred to and which is dismissed by the cardinal as ‘rather vague and unimportant,’ is a fundamental church teaching which significantly advances the evolution debate; three, neo-Darwinian evolution is not in the words of the cardinal, ‘an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection;’ four, the apparent directionality seen by science in the evolutionary process does not require a designer; five, Intelligent Design is not science despite the cardinal’s statement that ‘neo-Darwinism and the multi-verse hypothesis in cosmology [were] invented to avoid the overwhelming evidence for purpose and design found in modern science…

For his first issue, Fr. Coyne’s problem is one of factual error. The Cardinal defines the term neo-Darwinism, as his FT article clarifies, as what one might call crypto-philosophy. O.k. so this may not have been clear in the NYT article but surely he should have taken the FT article into account before his public criticism.

His second error, a rather preposterous one, is to suggest that JP the Great’s address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996 in which JPTG said that “evolution is no longer a mere hypothesis” is “a fundamental church teaching.” First, let us give him, for the sake of argument, that JPTG meant what Coyne assumes he did (which is far from apparent). His assertion that this is fundamental Church teaching reveals a fundamental ignorance of fundamental theology, resulting in a claim that is nothing less than fundamental-ism. The problems: JPTG’s statement was a single assertion in the form of an allocution (together these hardly carry the weight of a fundamental teaching) and did not address faith or morals (which are the only things the Church teaches anything about), but an appraisal of the state of a scientific theory, there is absolutely no grounds for such a ridiculous assertion. Some how I do not think Fr. Coyne would have made this error had JPTG said the opposite.

His third issue has been labored over here and other places so I will pass on it.

His fourth issue is exactly the “neo-Darwinist” thinking that Cardinal Schönborn was speaking against. Here Coyne makes a negative metaphysical assertion when, apparently, he seems to be limiting himself to modern science. In other words, he is ruling out formal causality (the design) based upon a method which limits itself to material and efficient causes (modern science). I suspect that this is due to the fact he mistakes God’s work in creation as either being the only source of efficient causality or no participation at all. I suspect this is the case because later he says:

God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world which reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity,” he said. “God lets the world be what it will be in its continuous evolution. He does not intervene, but rather allows, participates, loves.

Based upon other times I have heard Coyne speak, it appears to me that his statement of continuing creation where God does not intervene, supposes some sort of deist or process theology when he talks about God. His false dichotomy that God would have to intervene or let evolution take a natural course seems to reflect ignorance for formal and final causality as well as God as the Primary Efficient Cause working through secondary causes.

His last issue seems to make the same mistake so many others make. Correctly understood, the debate is not or should not be between evolution and Intelligent Design as explanations of the origins of man. Those scientists and philosophers who support ID do not intend this. Rather it is the demarcation debate as to what is to be considered modern science (i.e. a method limiting itself to study of natural efficient and material causes). That is something that the Cardinal said he was not entering, nor should he it is an issue in the discipline of the philosophy of science, and so not his competence. It appears that it is not a debate that Fr. Coyne is competent to enter either.

In the end, I fear that Fr. Coyne seems to fall into a sort of scientism; presupposing that only modern science is competent to speak as to the existence of design in nature. While he may make many scientists happy with his sloppy conflation of modern science and philosophy to arrive at the politically correct answer, he does the same for himself as he accuses Cardinal Schönborn of doing with the Church and modern science: that of “instigating a ‘tragic’ episode ‘in the relationship’” of himself with clear thought.

ID_Series

I ran across an article today, European Parliamentarians Stand up Against Homophobia, and yawned, knowing it was going to be the same ol’ baseless attack against anyone who doesn’t dance, while ringing bells and blowing whistles, to celebrate anything that is “gay”. So why did I read it? Probably because I felt like it. Anyway, an EU “resolution called on member states concerned finally to accord full recognition to homosexuals as targets and victims of the Nazi regime.” Yeah, those Nazi’s were nasty to anyone who did not fit the mold of the ideal german, and men who had sex with other men were targeted and put into concentration camps.

I wonder when the self rightous EU will step up to the plate and establish a memorial for other targets and victims of the Nazi regime. After all, you would think the same EU which proudly urges member states to grant gay people “the same respect, dignity and protection as the rest of society,” apparently thinks that all people in our society should be treated equally. What you think the chances of the EU establishing, for example, the Richard Jenne Memorial? Richard Jenne, was he “gay” too? No, he wasn’t gay, but he was 100% guilty of being born handicapped. He is the little boy in the picture who was euthanized by the Nazi regime at the Kaufbeuren-Irsee euthanasia facility, where disabled children (at least 5,200) were either starved to death or given lethal injections. The name given to this program, initiated on July 25th 1939, was theT-4 program, and this eventually became the model for the mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, and others, which started in 1941.

Its true, the Nazis carried out atrocities, including arresting “homosexuals” and killing handicapped children, just like Richard. Of course, things have changed dramatically in Europe; thankfully, “homosexuals” aren’t jailed for their sexual preferences and get a brand new National monument to boot!! That’s really nice news, but What about the kids? Well, let’s put it this way, national monuments are probably the least of their worrys. But hey, they probably don’t even know the difference, plus the money we would’ve used on the sick kids can be used to help in the battle against homophobia. What do you say we go and put on our dancing shoes, polish those bells, clean all of our whistles and CELEBRATE!!! Above all, don’t forget to congratulate the EU on their monumental accomplishment of getting that National monument in the works. What else can we say, but a another job well done by the EU!!!, AKA …world champions of respect, dignity and protection, the same as the rest of society!!!!

What if a  Catholic Church has re-opened after 10 years and you were assigned to find a place to put the Tabernacle. Now pretend you live in bizarro world, and instead of displaying it where you think it should be, your objective is to place it where you would think it would be seen by as few Catholics as possible. Where would you put it?

Answer

Mark Shea has had an ongoing discussion over at his blog, much of it heated at times, over the issue of the torture of prisoners (here is the latest). I do not intend to import that discussion here but it came to mind while reading on the topic in an article over at Christianity Today.

I do not know how to say this without sounding condescending, which I certainly do not intend…but I was pleasantly surprised by the article. It was well presented and correctly identified the dignity of the human person as the principle criteria by which one must evaluate any treatment of prisoners. Evangelical theology is such areas, when it intersects with politics, often seems to be biased in the direction of particular political platforms. That was not the case here. In his article, David Gushee shows that because of the dignity of the human person, there can be no exceptions in regard to torture and lists five reasons, all of which seem quite reasonable to me.

One argument that seems to be missing from his list is the moral principle that one may not do evil even if good may come from it. This together with recognizing the intrinsic dignity of every human person, no matter what henious crimes he may have committed, and understanding what treating someone with dignity means are the keys to determining what is acceptable treatment of a prisoner and what is not.

Now lest I be accused of being anti-military, soft on terror, a left-wing dove, etc., let me offer that at spent 20 years in the Air Force, with one assignment bringing the possibility of combat close to home. I have had friends and family engage in combat operations in both Gulf Wars. On the eve of the invasion, a good friend who I had sponsored into the Church and who was part of the invasion force, contacted me from his staging area. He had been a pastor of a CEC congregation in west Texas and joined the Army just to feed his family after joining the Church; this just months before 9-11. He was torn as to whether he could participate in what many in the Church were calling an immoral war. I advised him then, as I still believe, that while one may legitimately disagree on the prudence of the war, it was a just war and he should feel no compunction against serving. In the end, I would admit to having much more hawk in me than dove, which I continually must work on. As my boss says, being trained by the military, I want to blow up my enemies. However, I also recognize that martial inclinations, testosterone induced affectivities, or “real-life” pragmatism, cannot justify the unjustifiable. Torture, even if one could show it works to save lives, can never be morally justified.

Jeff over at the Curt Jester has an almost unbelievable thread today illustrating the absolute confusion some folks still possess; specifically, over sexuality and human personhood.  I am not even sure Shelray could find the sarcasm to put the ridiculousness of these ”intellects” into any more sharp relief than just reading the articles (but maybe he could try, but don’t use your fingers).

Jeff actually has two references in the post.  The first is from a Toronto Star answers column.  The questioner, whom I will affectionately call Mr. Bonehead, asks the Star’s oh so insightful answer man if he should lie about his once-a-week same-sex orgies with a small group of friends…when applying to become a Catholic priest.  After all, Mr. Bonehead reasons (?), he considers these nature contravening trysts, just a hobby.  Oh yea, he doesn’t intend to stop.

The savant they have answering the question is little better.  Mr. Dimwit (chosen with all charity but little inventiveness) responds that Catholic priests, in general, only violate their vows of celibacy for meaningful relationships, be they unnatural or just the run-of-the-mill mortally sinful type.  Mr. Dimwit doesn’t think that Mr. Bonehead is of Catholic priest-making material any way.  Everyone knows that sex shouldn’t be a game.  One should only engage in sex, whether it violate vows or not, for deeply loving relationships (again I assume of either the deviant or just the garden variety sinful flavors).

Not to be out done in minds-darkened-by-sin, an America magazine (I had hopes that with the change of editors things would improve…alas, it appears not…) editorial comes to the defense of “the document” and says that, sure the Vatican has just concerns over “gays” in the priesthood.  After all, they were starting to become a dominant demographic.  Imagine what kind of priesthood we would have if they were all Irish, or from Canada, or something like that.  That would violate the dissenter’s prime directives of diversity and plurality and stupidity (well, o.k., maybe I’m going too far; I don’t suppose the last one is explicitly articulated anyway).  America does have an admonition for the Church however; they mustn’t let their attempts to deal with the sex abuse crisis be the cause for discrimination against the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, bestial, foot-fetish-al, or any other gender… After all, these genders make just as good priests as any other genders (well, perhaps they might rule out the ork-al gender, but who knows).

Hey, they are running a poll on the editorial.  When Jeff published his thread, it was 57% in agreement with the editorial and 43% responding “what are you smoking?”.  Well, it seems that perhaps Jeff’s little post has had an effect because as of this posting, it is standing at 52% to 48%.  If you haven’t already, perhaps you would also like to ask what they are smoking over there at America?

The president of Providence College has banned a campus performance of The Vagina Monologues saying the work contradicts church teaching. Another prominent Catholic school, the University of Notre Dame, also has placed restrictions on the plays performance.

The new school president at Providence, the Rev. Brian Shanley, wrote in a Jan. 18 letter to students that he particularly objected to one tale that uses religious language to describe a sexual encounter between a woman and a teenage girl. While the teen narrator describes the episode as “a kind of heaven,” Shanley said it’s “abusive, exploitative and morally wrong.” The church teaches that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered.”

The V. monologues uses have done as much for the awareness of violence against women as abortion activist have done to protect human rights. The following are some highlights of the V. monologues highlighted by the Cardinal Newman Society

Hair: A woman discusses pubic hair, how she shaved it to please her husband and convince him to stop cheating on her. It didn’t work. (poor woman, bad man!!!)

If your v***** could talk, what would it say, in two words?: Litany of women’s responses to another ridiculous question, most of them vulgar responses related to sexual activity.

The Flood: The monologue is preceded by Ensler’s description of her interview with a 72-year-old woman who had never touched herself down there intentionally.The elderly woman’s therapist convinced her to masturbate. In the monologue, the woman explains how sexual excitement causes an unfortunate reaction in her v*****, which she calls flooding.

I Was 12. My Mother Slapped Me.: A woman describes her mother’s discomfort and abusive reaction to her menstruation.

The V***** Workshop: A woman describes her experience at a group workshop where she and other women are taught to draw pictures of their v******, look at them using hand mirrors, and masturbate.

My Angry V*****: A woman rants against those who oppose masturbation and suppress graphic talk of v****** in public. This monologue is extremely vulgar and offensive.

The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could: A woman describes several memories of her life, including painful accidents and a childhood rape that cause her to view her v***** as a very bad place. At age 13 the age has more recently been changed to 16 in the script she is seduced by a 24-year-old lesbian woman, who served the girl vodka, dressed her in a satin teddy, had oral sex with her, and taught her to masturbate. The monologue’s conclusion presents the lesbian seduction of the young girl by an adult, which in many states would be prosecutable as statutory rape, as a positive outcome: I realized later she [the lesbian woman] was my surprising, unexpected, politically incorrect salvation. She transformed my sorry-ass coochi snorcher [v*****] and raised it up into a kind of heaven.

What Does a V***** Smell Like?: Litany of women’s responses to this interview question. No comment needed.

I Asked a Six-Year-Old Girl: A 6-year-old girl’s responses to the same ridiculous questions: what would your v***** wear, what would it say, what does it smell like, etc.

The Woman Who Loved to Make V****** Happy: A bisexual woman describes how she likes to excite women sexually, using a variety of props. She then describes a variety of moans she has experienced. A second interview, in which the woman describes lesbian sex, is pornographic and highly explicit.

Sinfulness separates us from one another and promotes the ideology of seeking to dominate over the other. The above examples of sexual gratification separates the beautiful gift of sexuality from its purpose, which includes the expression of a gift of oneself to another in a permanent union of life and love. The V. monologues is a violent presentation of the gift of human sexuality. It divorces human sexuality from the woman herself, from her body and her spirit and from the bearing of children. Sadly, many of the women who participate in these monologues are in pain. Victims of abuse of the body and soul. As it is with so many women who identify themselves as lesbians, many (through no fault of themselves) have no concept of respect, dignity and love, because they have never received it. BRAVO for the trend on our Catholic Universities.

“Everyone should be treated with dignity. This is part of our following of the Gospel. A woman’s dignity is closely connected with the love which she receives by the very reason of her femininity; it is likewise connected with the love which she gives in return.” On the Dignity of Women, Pope John Paul II

After fighting it over the past year, Bishop Gumbleton, who as an auxilliary has mislead Catholics in Detroit and around the world for far too long, finally threw in the towel and submitted his resignation.  He has used his position to spread his confusion over the nature of the Church, over the human person and human sexuality, and just about everything else revealed by God and taught by the Church.

In his letter to his parishioners he unfortunately says that this really won’t change much, just his canonical office as a bishop.  He will continue to pass along his confused opinions instead of preaching the gospel as he took an oath to do when he was ordained.  The one thing that I can and will certainly follow the bishop on as he requests in his letter; he will be in my prayers.

Amélie has posted some thoughts on this encyclical and the comments to her thread suggest that there is much interest in it.  However, some of the comments are a bit inane.  For example, one guy sees this Encyclical as an olive branch to “gays” because B16 does not explicitly limit eros to heterosexuality and limit “gays” to agape.  This sad thinking, besides being delusional, completely misunderstands the faith and the Trinitarian foundation of love.  If one reads this Encyclical closely, he will see that same-sex eros can never be purified.  One can never acheive same-sex agape (here I mean in the sense of which we call the disorder of same-sex attraction).

Part of the problem with understanding what unity in difference can mean is a lack of a proper metaphysics.  Orthodox theologian, David Bentley Hart does a masterful job in Beauty of the Infinite of showing that the errors of post-modernism reduces to monistic presuppositions about the Being of God.  This error of monism leads post-moderns to see God as in competition with creation and so in opposition to man, especially in terms of freedom.  What Msgr. Robert Sokolowski calls the Christian difference, solves this problem.  God is ontologically different than creation as His is Uncreated Being, where creatures possess created being.  Hart demonstrates that these are not at two opposite poles of the same dimension of being with the finite on one end and the Infinite at the other.  Rather created being ex-ists by participation in Uncreated Being (which sub-sists).  Infinite Being is not the sum of all beings, it is Being Itself.

This type of false opposition is at the heart of other confusions, including Trinitarian theology and the theology of love.  Eros and agape are not two different types of love in opposition to one another but two aspects of the unity which is love.  Like the distinction in Persons in the Unity of the divine nature, the distinctions of love do not eliminate love’s unity.

As the title of the Encyclical says, God is Love.  God is perfection itself and so Love, and loves distinctions into eros and agape are logical distinctions which allow understanding of the different manners in which created being participates in the simplicity of God’s Being. These distinctions are proper to created intellect, but making these distinctions shouldn’t be confused with complexity in God.

Love is an act of the will in which one selflessly gives himself as a gift to others.  But this gift of self is the result of a developing process (in creatures) which is the culmination of a love of attraction.  The attraction (eros) is not annihilated but it achieves its end in the self-gift (agape).  Eros, in our fallen state, must be purified in agape.  Neither is this self-gift static.  It is an on-going act of the will; it is a decision to give oneself as a gift and to receive the other likewise, in response.

What some folks seem to miss is that eros as we experience it, can and many times is, distorted.  B16 addresses that and makes it clear that eros which is not grounded in self-gift is a distortion which strips love and the lover of dignity and humanity.  So what is and is not authentic self-gift?

Self-gift can only be rooted in Trinitarian love.  The Father’s total gift of Himself to the Son and the Son’s reciprocation are fruitful. This mutual Love is a Person . . . the Holy Spirit. Being the Source of everything that exists, this total self-giving establishes the framework for creation and so it is the interpretive key for understanding creation and most especially the human person who is created in the image of this Self-giving God.

This framework shows that love must be true to the order of creation.  This is where those who mistakenly believe that B16 is somehow now saying that same-sex genital relations are suddenly not a disorder, completely miss the Trinitarian nature of creation.  The Encyclical says that “…man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become ‘complete’” (DCE 11).  Here B16 follows JPTG’s theology of the body in which the latter shows that man is made, male and female, in the Trinitarian image.  Husband and wife are a unity in difference, made complementarily for one another.  The structure of heterosexual anatomy demonstrates their complementarity and their having been ordered to the one-flesh union which is the only genital union that has the capacity to be fruitful in a life-giving way.

B16 uses the phrase unity and difference also to describe the hylomorphic union of body and soul. Because the soul is the substantial form of the body, the body expresses something in the soul.  This includes sex differences.  Sex differences are ontological and created for the unity in difference of love, manifested in its dimensions of eros and agape. 

So no Virginia, there is no Santa Claus…there is nothing here but wishful thinking to suggest homo-eroticism can be included in anything but a “warped and destructive form” of eros (DCE 4).

Now while marital love is the most clear place to demonstrate this unity and distinction, B16 does not do this.  I suppose that JPTG’s theology of the body, to which I find unmistakeable allusions, has already done that.  Here, B16 makes these distinctions in the unity of love as the prelude to what I believe may be a new development in Church social teaching and perhaps even in ecclesiology.  I will share those next time.

“Being gay and lesbian is who you are inside, not what you do in the bedroom,” Davis said. “Anyone can have gay or straight sex, it’s just an act. Your sexuality is something much bigger than that.” I’m kind of confused by his logic. I thought the sexual act was actually part of sexuality. Anyway, we were not created to be defined by disordered acts or personal desires. It sounds as though Mr. Davis (self proclaimed “gay” Christian) sees the human person as a being who is a by product of personal thoughts and attractions. We are all broken images of God, who have personal crosses to bear. Sexual attractions do not make a person “gay”, “straight”, “lesbian”, bisexuals”, etc…, that is a role assumed by the individual person.

The person created by God is not fully defined by sexuality. Sexuality is human precisely because it belongs to and is for the person; it is not an independent reality, but is related to the person. As Christ said: man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man (cf. Mk 2:27). This can also be applied to the relationship between sexuality and the person: the person was not made for sexuality, but sexuality for the person.

Source Article: Minority Report

EWTN Link: Christian Anthropology and Homosexuality Series

Website of Mr. Davis: http://herndondavis.com/

Not exactly the way the English translation put it, but I believe that understanding unity and difference is the key to seeing what B16 is doing in this Encyclical (well at the part 1 right now).  I just finished reading it through the first time so it is very dangerous to go too far with one’s assessment of the letter as a whole.  Nevertheless, I do think I am safe in saying that those who miss this point, e.g. those who are schooled in Cartesian dualism, will undoubtedly see dualist error in this document.  For example, I clearly expect, if they have not already, the usual suspects of feminist theologians to accuse B16 of dualism in paragraph 11 when he describes the one flesh union as the completion of humanity.  But I believe this is a misappropriation of his meaning.

My next post will try to explain how I believe that B16 understands unity and difference and how it works in his explication of eros and agape.

The new president of Notre Dame, Reverend Jenkins , “has polarized students and faculty” by putting boundaries on events sponsored by and held at the university. These “boundaries”, included the Vagina monologues, which sexaulize women to women and women to girl sex, will have no ticket sales, no fundraising and be limited to a lecture hall. Anther one of these limits was to changing the 3-year-old Queer Film Festival’s name to Gay & Lesbian Film: Film makers, Narratives, Spectatorships.

Imagine the gall of this new president, who in the world does he think he is, confusing queers with gay and lesbians?    It’s the same old song and dance with those Catholics. We all know how they love to repress those women folk. No ticket sales!  No fundraising! and worse of all, having to fantacise about woman to girl sex in a lecture hall!!!..  I think this is insulting! I think this president should “get with the program” and remember that everyone doesn’t live in the middle ages.

 

According to media reports, the show was written by Jack Kenny, a practicing homosexual, who described himself as being “in Catholic recovery,” interested in Buddhist teachings about reincarnation, and not sure exactly how he defined God and/or Jesus. “I don’t necessarily know that all the myth surrounding him (Jesus) is true,” he said.

Good work by the AFA, although a bad script didn’t hurt their cause.

My boss showed me this CWN article today which showed the Spanish Jesuits’ official newspaper has come out to lambaste Pope John Paul the Great for his unfair treatment of the Jesuit order, for trying to stifle the order’s attempted reforms under Father Pedro Arrupe, the former Father General of the Order, and for being more show than substance when it came to the effectiveness of JPTG’s ministry. They also appear to attribute the decline of their order to the late Holy Father’s casting suspicion upon them as well as to the “consumerist and satiated” societies of the northern hemisphere.

I don’t suppose that it ever occurred to them that their decline in numbers had most to do with the widespread disobedient juridicism of the Society, which they euphemistically call “creative fidelity.” This term they appropriate from their star juridicist in ecclesiology, formerly on the faculty of the Gregorian in Rome, Francis Sullivan S.J. Fr. Sullivan devoted an entire book to the idea of trying to show how one may weasel out of just about every Church teaching with which he might disagree. To be fair, his book Creative Fidelity, does have some useful information in it and one who recognizes his fundamental erroneous presuppositions would not be mislead.

However, the way these Jesuits use this term to suggest that one can consider himself faithful while still dissenting is ridiculous. Sullivan tries to achieve this by dividing Church teaching into reformable and non-reformable teaching. Then, as a good minimalist, he reduces the latter to a handful of Trinitarian and Christological statements. Finally, since the vast amount of Church teaching could be wrong (after all it is reformable), one may for good reason (read any reason), choose to follow whatever his lil’ ole heart tells him. This is the height of Phariseeism.

They take the soteriological mistake of the Reformers and commit it again ecclesiologically. I mean, as Luther and Calvin saw Christ’s judgment solely in terms of a courtroom, the Sullivan Jesuits drag the same Protestant lawyer into the family home–the Church. Dare I suggest, Sullivan’s book reminds me of someone trying to change the definition of simple copulative verbs, if you know what I mean. If one recognizes the Church as the family of God and the Pope and bishops as Christ’s vicars, then we have a more realistic understanding of the Church. Trust in Christ and His Church, and therefore, the Magisterium, replaces the need for each person having to be their own pope. Historically and personally one can easily see that this is much more logical and reasonable then the so called “adult” faith (meaning I will decide on each and every issue based upon how I feel about it) that many dissenters try to push. A family is dysfunctional in which the children will not listen to the parents until the parents have repeated themselves over and over again, and finally have to threaten to ground the kids.

If the Jesuits survive, it will only be through the intercession of the Saints who seem, in some provinces, to be bringing young, faithful priests back into the order. This development is much to the chagrin of those Jesuits who considered themselves enthusiastic supporters of Vatican II. Unfortunately these older Jesuits turn out to be supporters of a so called “spirit” of the Council which was anything but holy. St. Ignatius, ora pro nobis.

AT LEAST 500 women in Ireland are conducting clandestine affairs with Catholic priests, according to the leader of a support group (maybe a little misleading, but it’s not a Catholic sanctioned group)set up (by who?) to look after those in “forbidden relationships”. ”Bishop” Pat Buckley (reference check #1 and #2 ) also said an “extremely conservative” estimate was that one in 10 of Ireland’s 5000 Catholic priests enjoyed regular sex with women. Some even referred to their clerical collars as “bird catchers”.

Studies (which most likely do not exist, but sure makes this made up number sound credible) showed 80 per cent of priests had broken their vows of celibacy at least once, he said.   Bishop Buckley (with no reference to his axe to grind with the Catholic church) claimed the church’s hierarchy was prepared to turn a blind eye to sexual indiscretion because it was so widespread. “Bishops are caught between Rome and the priests and, of course, some of the bishops are in same position,” he said. “From the top down it is hypocritical. We (a guess this is a claim he is still part of the Catholic Church) are preaching compulsory celibacy, but very few are living it.“

He had met 147 women who had joined Bethany to share their stories of priestly promiscuity. Romances between an understanding man of God and an unloved wife were common, as were priests and their housekeepers secretly living together as man and wife. Relationships between priests and nuns were unofficially known as the “third way”. 

Ireland’s Catholic Church declined to comment on the claims (by Buckley since he has absolutely no credibility and nothing to do with the Catholic church). To get a better understanding of his delusional Buckley dogma, read his creed on his website. Pray for Pat Buckley, but especially for all of the Catholic priests who are committed to remaining faithful to their vocation.

Perhaps no work in modern theology brings together as well as Louis Bouyer’s Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God the three realities of creation – cosmos, liturgy and sex — whose connection it is our intention to elucidate on this blog.  Bouyer, one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, puts on full display in this volume an immense erudition and speculative insight whose effect is to vividly portray the perennial relevance of the Church’s liturgical vision of the cosmos and the nuptial metaphysics that expresses most profoundly, in deep connection with the revealed figures of Scripture, the God-world relationship.

In fact, Bouyer’s work might be seen as an a priori synthesis of the primary intellectual concerns of the last two pontiffs: JP II’s theology of the body, and Benedict’s liturgical vision, which itself takes cosmic proportions (see The Spirit of the Liturgy).  Bouyer establishes, in fact, a nuptial metaphysics of Sophianic dimensions – that may indeed go beyond the related theme as found in JP II – and his incorporation of properly liturgical themes with speculative theology may have been unmatched in the twentieth century.

The volume has many different themes and levels of meaning that cannot be easily summarized in a blog blurb.  Some of the themes: the foundation of human reason in mythopoetic consciousness, the connection of human history to cosmic destiny, the connection of “impersonal” nature to the liturgy of the angels, the completion of humankind’s microcosmic subjectivity in the nuptial relationship between man and woman, the link between magic and technology, the interweaving realities of individual human personhood (summed up in the person of Mary) and social existence (summed up in the Church), and much, much more.

Though, perhaps, the book cannot be understood fully except in connection with the eight other volumes of the nine-volume synthesis of which it forms a part, it nevertheless stands on it own as a great work of theology that should be more widely read…Do not tarry!  Buy this book!

Writer Norah Vicent talks with “20/20″ about her 18-month experiment in which she disguised herself as a man to experience their world as an insider. She lived life as a man, throught the “eyes” of a woman with same-sex attraction.

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Hierothee sent me this link from the Telegraph which is reporting that Hitler had plans drawn up to build a replica of St. Peter’s square in Berlin after they defeated the Allies. The article suggests that Hitler thought that only the Eternal City competed with Berlin for the title of the worlds greatest city.  Curious…

This tag line from a section in Evangelium vitae came to mind when I saw this picture over at Open Book today.  I wonder if this young mother really gets it?  Notice her belly-sign shows she understands that she is not a mother-to-be, but rather she is already a mother carring a baby!  Can she really see her unborn baby saying “sure mom, whatever you decide.  Carry me to term or let the abortionists butcher me…after all, it’s your body not mine”?

I suppose that she does not recognize that she is a walking billboard for Nietzsche’s nihilist dictum that in the end, all that man really has is the will to power.  What she really is saying is that her baby must submit to her “choice” because her will trumps the baby’s.  John Paul the Great calls this attitude a perverse idea of freedom (EV 18).

When the discussion is of rights, if one does not simultaneously recognize a hierarchy of rights and resulting duties, then it is inevitable that the assertion of one person’s rights will conflict with another’s and the result will be the powerful’s oppression of the weak.  I suppose that it does take more thinking than most of us are used to today, to realize that if the right to life does not come first, then one really can be no rights as truly fundamental right. 

There will be some of this type of thinking displayed at the D.C. march tomorrow, and I suspect that the press will do their best to find and broadcast it.  However, the good news is that they will be very few in number.  I will miss being at the march and rally this year.  Every year for the last four years we had Tricia’s family visit and we would all first go to the Vigil Mass.  That is quite an uplifting experience, seeing so many young people excited to be at Mass…that in itself is encouraging but also seeing their purposeful resolve to confront this culture’s distorted thinking is inspirational.  The Youth Mass at the MCI center on Monday morning is more the feel of a rock concert.  Twenty thousand kids screaming before Mass but very reverent during the liturgy.  From the Mass the kids will pour out of the MCI Center and join up with the masses of people at the pre-march rally on the mall.  There will be tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands there, many with banners, some with medieval battle flags, all of which kind of gives it a militant air to start with but once the march starts things change.  It becomes very quiet, even prayerful.  The most one hears all through the march are rosaries being said and songs being sung.  If you are discouraged about the way things seem to be going, I would recommend participating in this event.

Through the eyes of the world, I suppose one might consider it an exercise in futility.  However, with the eyes of faith one becomes convinced that the next generation will be the one to undue the structures of carnage that the last generation has wrought. 

John Paul the Great, echoing the words of Gaudium et spes, often warned that without God, man eventually turns on himself.  John Paul had ample, first hand experience of this, first, with the Nazi occupation and then the Communist occupation of Poland.  These two regimes were what came to mind as I was reading through a book released a few years ago, written by Edwin Black.

In War Against the Weak, Black discusses stories of the police suddenly showing up in a small village to take away men and women, boys and girls.  People would disappear for a time, but eventually many would be returned, but not all.  Where were they going and why were they being taken?  It turns out, the government had identified them as potential threats to society and this threat needed to be neutralized.  What was the threat?  Well, it was the threat of polluting the gene pool with what was believed to be defective genes.  It seems these folks possessed genes which resulted in such genetic ailments as “feeblemindedness” and “pauperism”.  The solution?  They were taken to hospitals for forced sterilization or for those really dangerous types permanent, involuntary incarceration in “mental” institutions.  Some were children in their preadolescence.  This was the beginning of the eugenics movement.  It was the brainchild of intellectuals and businessmen but it was implemented, very secretively, by a willing government.  The goal was to rid the gene pool of undesirables and direct it toward the ideal man—a Germanic and Nordic super race.

Of course, we are taking about Nazi Germany here right?  No, not yet.  The Nazi’s actually obtained their ideas from this eugenics movement.  Well it must have been those fascists in Italy then, right?  Well, no . . . Black shows that this happened in the pre-WWII U.S.  It happened all across the United States, with over half of known cases occurring in . . . California.

Here are some excerpts from the book that provide more details:

Throughout the first six decades of the twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of Americans and untold numbers of others were not permitted to continue their families by reproducing. Selected because of their ancestry, national origin, race or religion, they were forcibly sterilized, wrongly committed to mental institutions where they died in great numbers, prohibited from marrying, and sometimes even unmarried by state bureaucrats. In America, this battle to wipe out whole ethnic groups was fought not by armies with guns nor by hate sects at the margins. Rather, this pernicious white-gloved war was prosecuted by esteemed professors, elite universities, wealthy industrialists and government officials colluding in a racist, pseudoscientific movement called eugenics. The purpose: create a superior Nordic race. [Snip] The goal was to immediately sterilize fourteen million people in the United States and millions more worldwide—the “lower tenth”—and then continuously eradicate the remaining lowest tenth until only a pure Nordic super race remained. Ultimately, some 60,000 Americans were coercively sterilized and the total is probably much higher. No one knows how many marriages were thwarted by state felony statutes. Although much of the persecution was simply racism, ethnic hatred and academic elitism, eugenics wore the mantle of respectable science to mask its true character. The victims of eugenics were poor urban dwellers and rural “white trash” from New England to California, immigrants from across Europe, Blacks, Jews, Mexicans, Native Americans, epileptics, alcoholics, petty criminals, the mentally ill and anyone else who did not resemble the blond and blue-eyed Nordic ideal the eugenics movement glorified.  . . .  Immigration assistance bureaus connived to send the most needy to sterilization mills. Leaders of the ophthalmology profession conducted a long and chilling political campaign to round up and coercively sterilize every relative of every American with a vision problem. All of this churned throughout America years before the Third Reich rose in Germany. [snip] Eventually, America’s eugenic movement spread to Germany as well, where it caught the fascination of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. Under Hitler, eugenics careened beyond any American eugenicist’s dream. National Socialism transduced America’s quest for a “superior Nordic race” into Hitler’s drive for an “Aryan master race.” The Nazis were fond of saying “National Socialism is nothing but applied biology,” and in 1934 the Richmond Times-Dispatch quoted a prominent American eugenicist as saying, “The Germans are beating us at our own game.” [snip] Within these pages you will discover the sad truth of how the scientific rationales that drove killer doctors at Auschwitz were first concocted on Long Island at the Carnegie Institution’s eugenic enterprise at Cold Spring Harbor. You will see that during the prewar Hitler regime, the Carnegie Institution, through its Cold Spring Harbor complex, enthusiastically propagandized for the Nazi regime and even distributed anti-Semitic Nazi Party films to American high schools. And you will see the links between the Rockefeller Foundation’s massive financial grants and the German scientific establishment that began the eugenic programs that were finished by Mengele at Auschwitz. [snip] Today we are faced with a potential return to eugenic discrimination, not under national flags or political credos, but as a function of human genomic science and corporate globalization. Shrill declarations of racial dominance are being replaced by polished PR campaigns and patent protections. What eugenics was unable to accomplish in a century, newgenics may engineer in a generation. The almighty dollar may soon decide who stands on which side of a new genetic divide already being demarcated by the wealthy and powerful. As we speed toward a new biological horizon, confronting our eugenic past will help us confront the bewildering newgenic future that awaits.

Lest you think that this was written by someone in the pro-life movement, or even someone who has an anti-technology agenda:

Although this book contains many explosive revelations and embarrassing episodes about some of our society’s most honored individuals and institutions, I hope its contents will not be misused or quoted out of context by special interests. Opponents of a woman’s right to choose could easily seize upon Margaret Sanger’s eugenic rhetoric to discredit the admirable work of Planned Parenthood today; I oppose such misuse. Detractors of today’s Rockefeller Foundation could easily apply the facts of their Nazi connections to their current programs; I reject the linkage. Those frightened by the prospect of human engineering could invoke the science’s eugenic foundations to condemn all genomic research; that would be a mistake. While I am as anxious as the next person about the prospect of out-of-control genomics under the thumb of big business, I hope every genetic advance that helps humanity fight disease will continue as fast and as furiously as possible.

Nietzsche was right about one thing.  Without God, all that is eventually left is the “will to power.”  Regardless of how humanitarian some atheistic individuals may be, if society does not recognize that the ultimate source of human dignity derives from the fact that each and every person is created in the image of God, in the end, there is no defense against the strong imposing their will on the weak and the rest of society blindly going along with it.

Well, it could be worse for Joe Convert (Sean Herriot), purgatory it is. Sean is the host for Morning Air on Relevant Radio. I think he does a great show.

It’s never too late if you come up a little short from time to time. Dante’s Inferno Test