Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

It seems that there are always numerous stories floating around that manifest the great dangers a society faces when it has rejected sound, classical philosophy. Modern philosophy, with its foundation in Cartesian doubt, has left the average person who has thought about it with the impression that philosophy is to be equated with sophism.

Modern philosophy has also undermined our ability to any longer distinguish right from wrong. For centuries the Christian ethos in the West held at bay the deleterious effects of the loss of classical metaphysics, philosophical anthropology and practical philosophy (politics, economics, and ethics). The West, by and large, is now post-Christian. The Christian ethos is lost and now we are drifting free in Nietzsche’s great sea of endless possibilities that he waxed on about in his Gay Science. Unfortunately the sea he envisioned will be found to be the “lake of fire” St. John saw in his vision.

We now have medical ethicists who, if not morally sound, at least are honest. Two of them recently published an article in the NEJM, as reported by LifeSiteNews, in which they admit that brain death and cardiac death are fictions. These “ethicists” support the donation of vital organs and are left undeterred by the prospects for donations even though they admit we cannot reliably determine death before needing to harvest vital organs. LifeSiteNews quotes the two doctors:

Troug and Miller suggest that, rather than insisting on dead donors, “ethical requirements of organ donation” should be looked at “in terms of valid informed consent under the limited conditions of devastating neurologic injury.”

They base their “ethics” on a synthesis of Mills’s utilitarianism and Nietzsche’s will to power. If one does not have the prospects of an “adequate” quality of life (i.e. a devastating neurologic injury) then someone (Danger! Danger! Will Robinson) can choose (ala Nietzsche) to kill that person in order to harvest his organs. This is perfectly in line with our culture of comfort and choice.

It seems so reasonable because choosing to be comfortable is the only non-negotiable “value” that we seem to have left. Thus, choice becomes the only absolute moral norm. Good is the right to choose, bad is anything that conflicts with this “right.” How about when two choices for comfort conflict? Well, Barack Obama provides us the answer using this neo-Western ethic.

Last week LifeSiteNews ran a story about Senator Obama’s radical position on abortion and his work in killing (sardonic pun intended) the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill. The details are curious. Issues of his integrity in owning up to what he actually did with this bill aside, one thing really stands out to me. The Illinois bill copied language from a congressional bill that passed, that included a so-called neutrality clause. The language of this clause is enough to make one shudder:

‘‘(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed to affirm, deny, expand, or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being ‘born alive’ as defined in this section’’

Look at the stark language which wishes to exclude from the bill, any change in legal status or legal right of “a member of the species homo sapiens” before he is born alive. In other words, those drafting this bill who support the “right” to choose (i.e. abortion) have to have carefully considered how to separate members of the same species from one another with respect to legal rights. We have seen this happen in many different ways in the past. We can see it in the U.S. slavery episode, we can see it with the way aboriginal people were often treated, and we can see it in the systems of totalitarian collectivism of the 20th century in Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, China, North Korea, etc.

Here is the philosophical problem with pro-abortion thinking in terms of the above clause. They have chosen the criteria of passive potency in order to distinguish between members of the same species. Passive potency is essentially all of those possibilities of changes that can be done to a human being from the outside (without killing him). They do not seem to have the sense of active potency, those things that a human being already inherently has and can do by virtue of his nature as being human, but has not yet manifested.

What I mean by this is that they do not seem to recognize that everything that a human being will become, he has already in himself, in seed-form if you will, from conception. In other words, after conception, from the perspective of nature, a man gains nothing new. He simply is able to manifest inherent capabilities at different stages of maturity, that already exist in him as “potency.”

All human attributes, for those who reject classical philosophy, seem to become passive potencies–they are given from the outside–somehow. That is why they think that the status of a member of a species can change when some new attribute is manifested or hidden. The problem with this is that there is no way to decided then which attributes are necessary to be manifested, or even how they should be manifested, in order to change the status of a member of the species from one who deserves no protection under the law to one who now is given rights that can come at the expense of the unprotected class (see list of abuses above).

The underlying danger with this type of thinking is that when choice becomes the absolute moral norm, there is no way of ultimately deconflicting the choices of groups or individuals. The atheist phenomenologist Jean Paul Sartre saw this clearly–that is why he so coldly proclaimed that “hell” is other people. The mere existence of others denies one the absolute liberty to do as he wishes. This explains why the Liberté of the French Revolutionaries turned into totalitarian bloodshed. It also explains why “liberal” political movements such as Nazism, Fascism, and Bolshevism become totalitarian. It helps us to understand why modern liberalism also moves in the direction of media censorship and thought censorship (e.g. Canada’s Human Rights Commissions, the modern liberal mind’s proclivity to legislate against “hate speech,” this movement’s move to do away with medical practitioners’ conscience clauses when it comes to “choice” issues such as abortion and contraception, etc.).

This, I fear, is also behind Senator Obama’s rhetoric about getting beyond the debate about abortion. For him the debate is over, even though in reality it is just beginning to turn against abortion “rights.” The debate must end because the supporters lack the intellectual resources found in classical philosophy to defend their positions and they are now coming to terms with the fact that their arguments leave them in self-contradictory, and thus intellectually indefensible, positions. The only option left to them is the “will to power.” They must gain power in order to exert their will upon others–i.e. to end the debate. If this comes to pass, anyone familiar with history must be aware of the dangers which lie ahead.

Shy of the re-Christianization of the West, we need to re-appropriate the self-consistent philosophical framework of classical philosophy in order to facilitate lucid and fruitful public debate on these life and death issue; that is, if we are to turn back the lemming-like march toward liberal totalitarianism. It appears, however, that at this point a Christian West is the more realistic of the two possibilities.

Update: Senator Obama’s campaign now admits that the “people” whom Obama had accused of lying about his part in voting down the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection bill . . . was Senator Obama.  It appears that Obama did indeed take the position that he now says “defies common sense.”  One wonders what position he really holds with respect to infants born alive as is clear that one cannot reliably discern this based upon his words.

A couple of days ago, I began what might turn out to be a series of reflections on the anthropology of sex difference as exposited by one of Radical Orthodoxy’s representative thinkers, Gerard Loughlin. Here I am continuing to concentrate on an essay of his, entitled “Erotics: God’s Sex.”

I had mentioned that Loughlin cannot seem to get beyond his reductionist, postmodern concepts. Furthermore, his importation of a world view from morally bankrupt postmodern thinker, Georges Bataille, further exacerbates his ability to understand, and so critique, the Trinitarian theology and anthropology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. In Loughlin’s defense, while Balthasar is dependent upon an Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics, he is often loathe to acknowledge it. Without recognizing this metaphysical perspective in Balthasar’s thought, his theology can appear to be somewhat arbitrary. Loughlin’s apparent lack of understanding of this metaphysical tradition might contribute to his misreading of Balthasar.

Recall that Loughlin chose to replace theological analogy with a postmodern “parody,” with all of the latter’s attendant vulgarity. Loughlin seems to make the same amoral move with his understanding of eros, blundering into the same irony. Loughlin’s definition of eros is “ravenous desire” (p. 148). Eros for him, as we saw in the previous post, seems solely associated with animalistic desire. It is of interest to note that the meaning of the term ravenous is focused on taking something for oneself in a greedy way, quite antithetical to Balthasar’s anthropology, which requires disinterested and total self-gift as the foundation for an authentic eros. Etymologically, the term “ravenous” arises from the Old French word meaning “to seize,” itself coming from a word meaning “extremely hungry.” This is consistent with Loughlin’s adoption of Batailleian carnal vulgarity.

Loughlin seems to have in his mind when he talks about sex difference that a constitutive aspect of sex must include the various disordered sexual behaviors in which animalistic consumption masquerades as sexual intercourses’ proper telos, a communion of persons.

Loughlin’s obsession with corporal sex betrays an inability to understand the human person as a body-soul unity, a hylomorphic composite of body and soul in which the soul is not joined to a preexisting body, but the soul interpenetrates, gives existence, shape, and animation to the body. The human person is not, therefore, an enfleshed soul or an ensouled body, but a single nature that has two unified aspects, body and a spiritual soul.

Loughlin also seems not to understand the tradition of Trinitarian Persons as subsisting Relations, which distinguish the Persons from the one divine nature and the way that this is analogically manifested in the human person. The category of relation, a sort of quasi-substantial category, is essential to understanding how Balthasar and other personalists think about the human person and the way the human person is differentiated into two different sexes.

Loughlin seems only to be able to think in terms of Cartesian substance, which is simply matter, or - in the case of the human body - corporeality. For non-corporeal beings it is not as clear what his thinking is, but it does not include the category of relation. Thus, when Loughlin reads Balthasar writing of the Processions (the begetting of the Son and the Spiration of the Holy Spirit) in terms of the structure of Self-giving love, he sees this in terms of the movement of some substance from one Person to another. Human persons inevitably “parody” this postmodern monism in Loughlin’s anthropology.

Thus, Loughlin criticizes Balthasar’s concept of unity in difference. For Balthasar the unity in difference, which can be seen in creation (body and soul, individual and community, the Incarnation, male and female), is the created analogy of trinitarian unity (unity in nature and distinction in Persons). Loughlin does not appear to understand relation so he ends up collapsing every characteristic into some sort of substance (read as Cartesian extension).

Without a properly Trinitarian metaphysics, Louglin is unequipped to understand the Processions, the Incarnation, the Church, the Eucharist, or sex difference. It leads him to claim that his “parodic substitution allows Christianity to place at its symbolic centre certain cultural taboos-against cannibalism, incest and homosexuality-and there break them” (p. 152). Loughlin sees the Processions as “the incestuous homosexual coupling of Father and Son” (p. 156). Of course, the Eucharist is cannibalism. The Marian Church wedded to Christ the Bridegroom is incestuous.

Ironically, Loughlin accuses Balthasar of misreading “the flow of the trinitarian parodies” (p. 154) when the latter declares that humanity is primarily feminine. Loughlin claims that Balthasar’s own logic requires human nature to be masculine. His reasoning is that because Balthasar says that the Father is supramasculine in relation to the Son, and because the Church comes through Christ on the Cross, who is male, and that Eve comes from Adam’s flesh, which is male flesh, there is a masculine sexual monism that is later differentiated into male and female.

Loughlin clearly sees matter as the primary reality here, at least for creatures. Substance for him is extended matter. In fact, he does not seem to have any other category. Sex difference for him is real, and so in his limited, modern/post-modern categories, sex difference must be something arising from the flesh alone. This is inevitable without the category of relation, especially in this case, sex difference being a relational category which conditions the relational person (see this metathread for a short primer on these ideas).

Loughlin is not the only RO theologian with these views. Rowan Williams promotes similar thinking in his essay, “The Body’s Grace.” This essay was published in a collection of pro-SSAD articles entitled, Christian Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies: Sexuality and the Household of God [ed. Charles C. Hefling (Boston: Cowley Press, 1996)]. Hankey (see the previous post) shows that Williams was an original member of the Radical Orthodoxy movement. Hierothee pointed me to a recent article online that shows that Williams’s unfortunately soft thinking in this regard is not at all unlike that of Loughlin.

In conclusion, I would note that it appears to be not so much that Louglin’s and Williams’s distortions/perversions of Christian truth stem from a misunderstanding of classical theology. Rather, the problem begins with their pre-commitment to said perverted notions. Their articulation of an incoherent metaphysics is simply a rationalization for a subversively depraved anthropology. Indeed, with the likes of Loughlin and Williams as guides to the movement, one might argue that Radical Orthodoxy is at root an expression of radical depravity.

In a recent thread, a discussion about Radical Orthodoxy arose. In this discussion, Hierothee mentioned that at least some within the RO movement are able to advocate for unnatural sexual acts as theologically justified. RO arises out of the Protestant ethos and, even though they promote the importance of the authority of tradition, their Protestant ethos still imbues their thinking and so their rejection of the Christian anthropological tradition.

One such RO author is Gerard Loughlin. Loughlin writes a chapter in a volume edited by John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward, entitled Radical Orthodoxy. The volume is meant to be a representative summary of Milbank, Pickstock, and Ward’s school of thought. Thus, it would seem, that Loughlin’s essay is representative of RO’s anthropology. Loughlin’s article is entitled: “Erotics: God’s Sex.”

Loughlin uses Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological articulation of the analogy between Trinitarian Processions and the marital sexual act as his foil, primarily using the second volume from Balthasar’s Theodrama. Loughlin wishes to critique Balthasar (and by explicit implication, John Paul II’s Theology of the Body) by privileging the insights of none other than the French pervert postmodern essayist/philosopher Georges Bataille, who obviously was a bit sick, having volunteered to be a human sacrifice for a group of his friends. Bataille apparently never saw a Rorschach chart that he couldn’t find obscene, finding the mechanical aspects of sexual copulation in almost everything he saw. Bataille’s pornographic milieu, then, is Loughlin’s point of departure for evaluating Balthasar’s analogy.

The main thing he takes from Bataille, perhaps aside from his pornographic obsession, is his attachment to the postmodern literary parody. Loughlin decides that he wants to substitute parody for the theological concept of analogy because it entails the burlesque which “couples [Loughlin is clearly enthralled with the "parody" of this grammatic/logical phrase and the sexual-mechanical inference] the polite with the vulgar, the metaphysical with the indecent” (italics mine, p. 145). To replace parody with analogy simply illustrates either ignorance of the metaphysical foundation upon which analogy stands or an irresponsible disregard for analogy’s metaphysical implications. Wayne Hankey’s insights suggest to me that it may be both.

Loughlin, though a Cambridge scholar, who, I understand, claims to be Catholic, does not seem to have a solid grasp of the Catholic tradition in terms of metaphysics or theological anthropology. He very often appears unable to extract himself from his postmodern categories, which, after all, are ironcially modern distortions that are simply taken in a different direction. This leads him often to accuse his foils of the very faults he himself possesses. For example, he finds that Balthasar falls into a crude biologism (see p. 158). This charge comes from his apparent inability to distinguish between relational and substantial categories.

Perhaps his critique of Sister Mary Timothy Prokes treatment of human sexuality might be sufficient to illustrate what I mean. He says:

Prokes, who with Balthasar, is surely correct in stressing the intimacy of persons in the sexual relation, is nevertheless so concerned to distance human sexuality from the animalistic-from the itch and yearning of sexual organs-that one might think the attraction and desirability of the body-its physical comforts and excitements-had nothing to do with human sexuality. Prokes offers a peculiarly passionless, unsexy, sexuality. In short, she fails to think the erotic (p. 148).

This quotation, it seems to me, is quite revealing. Loughlin seems to want to equate the “animalistic” with eros. He appears to say that without this animalistic “itch and yearning” one cannot have eros. In other words, like many who promote libidinism (a sexual ethic which elevates pleasure to an end rather than accepting it as a secondary, non-essential fruit of the sexual act), he either does not understand or rejects classical Christian anthropology.

The human affects (appetites, emotions, etc.) are good, but they serve primarily the animal aspects of the human person. But man is a hylomorph; he is a body-soul unity and the soul has priority, though this does not diminish the essential (in a metaphysical sense) importance of the body. The functioning of the affects becomes an issue in our fallen state.

Human nature was created for grace. We do not require grace in order to be human, but we do require it in order to function integrally. Our human affects were created to be subordinated to human reason, but our loss of original integrity makes this subordination a challenge and a task. The tradition calls this challenge concupiscence. Too often, post-moderns (or better, late-moderns) emphasize human experience but they refuse or at least neglect to contextualize this experience as fallen. Truth be told, they want to make even their fallen experiences normative.

Loughlin seems to fall into this trap. He appears to want to make his experiences paradigmatic. Thus, he conflates the animal aspect of his experiences with the fallen animalism to which he apparently succumbs. He does not see that eros and the erotic must be purified from concupiscence. Nor does he desire to subordinate sexual urges (which in his thought include the unnatural) to reason. This he finds to be “passionless, unsexy, sexuality.”

Interestingly enough, this leads him in the complete opposite direction of the communion for which the personalistic end of the sexual act tends. In fact, Loughlin, clearly, has chosen his terms wisely. For the sexual act outside of the Church’s understanding of sexual intercourse is a parody, a mocking of its intended personalistic and natural ends-communion and procreation, respectively. These ends correspond to the hylomorphic aspects of the human person. When one severs the unitive from the procreative, one gets neither. We are left with what is authentically animalistic and contra-personal.

Sub-personal animals also reflect divine perfection, but in a lesser way than humans. Like their human counterparts, sub-personal animals also seek a sort of communion. However, without a spiritual soul, this communion is reduced to consumption. It is manifested in eating, in which the animal annihilates an often lower nature and takes it up into its higher nature. It is joined to the other but in the antithesis of personal communion. Instead of self-giving/self-sacrifice, it is the other that is taken/sacrificed. Perhaps this insight can explain why we speak of “comfort foods,” which we seem drawn to, especially when we have relational problems.

The eroticism that Loughlin seems to seek is this mocking parody of authentic, sexy, sexuality. His is the desire to follow his animal inclinations, to reject human reason, and to pursue a fallen, and in his case unnatural, communion with another. Thus he advocates the consumption of another soul for the sake of his pleasure-”the itch and yearning of [his] sexual organs.” Is it any wonder that unnatural sexual acts are “parodies” of eating?

There is much more that can and will be said about Loughlin’s article but this will have to do for now. If he is indeed representative of “Radical Orthodoxy,” then theirs is a most unorthodox and vulgar orthodoxy.

John Paul the Great’s Theology of the Body is very popular today with many young, faithful Catholics. That is a very good thing. However, there are at least two groups of folks who are not all that pleased with it. One of these groups is not surprising.

It is generally eschewed by those who promote sexual license, if not wanton promiscuity, at least in ways that reject the meaning of the human person and sexuality as authoritatively taught by the Church (read here same sex attraction disorder, sex outside of the marital union, etc.). Because it clearly shows how the human person is made to be complementary in terms of sexual difference and the real meaning of the sex can only be authentically understood in terms of a marital act, it negates the legitimacy of these folks’ attempts to insert pagan sexual “enlightenment” into Catholic theological discourse.

Another group that is unsure about it are those of a more traditionalist bent. This group is generally familiar with it through its popularizers. A good summary of what this group finds problematic with it, or more precisely they way it is interpreted by some of its popularizers, can be found here. Disregarding the dangers of oversimplifying, which I am wont to do at times, I would say that the way it is presented to them they believe that it goes against Church tradition in terms of modesty and purity.

The concerns that Michael J. Matt (see the previous link) summarizes were evident in the comments on an article that Hierothee pointed me to on Inside Catholic. Kate Wicker, the author of the article, writes about her overcoming her “shame” about breast feeding during Mass. As justification, she cites Christopher West as an authority on JPTG’s Theology of the Body:

Christopher West, the Catholic author best known for his insightful commentary on John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, describes a nursing mother as “one of the most precious, most beautiful, and most holy of all possible images of woman.” So why should I feel ashamed nursing in church — in the presence of the Most Holy Eucharist — but not at the mall? Do I believe breasts are made to feed babies or are they just meant to be squeezed into rhinestone-clad bras for surfers to ogle on the Internet?

Kate gets what seems to me (I did not read all of the comments, much less tally them) an evenly mixed response between those who support her and those taking issue with her. In a relatively early reply (in the combox section, #27) she again goes back to Christopher West in support of her position:

An article by Christopher West is what inspired me to write this article. I’m going to take the easy way out rather than addressing everyone’s comments indvidually and share some of the article here. I also want to mention that I’m not saying we should be giving kids of all ages snacks at Mass. My preschooler is not allowed any food or drinks in Mass. We are supposed to be fasting before receiving the Eucharist and children (even those who have not made their First Communion yet) can wait to nosh until after Mass.

However, babies’ wants and needs are the same thing. A hungry baby needs to be fed and cannot be spoiled by responding to his/her needs. (This may spur another debate). Also, as some of you have pointed out, nursing DISCREETLY is key. Even when I’m at the beach where women are walking around in string bikinis, I nurse so discreetly most people wouldn’t have any idea I was feeding my baby.

Still, I’m always amazed by how the idea of nursing still makes so many people uncomfortable. So without further ado, here’s an excerpt from Christopher West’s article entitled “Nursing a Sexually Wounded Culture.”

“I remember attending the Second World Meeting of John Paul II with Families in Brazil in 1997. Nursing mothers were a common sight at this international gathering. What I found intriguing, however, was that women from “first-world” nations tended to drape themselves and sit off in a corner, while women from other nations seemed to have no qualms whatsoever about feeding their babies in full view of others. I remember one woman unabashedly roaming the crowd passing all manner of bishops and cardinals with her breast fully exposed while her child held on to it with both hands happily feeding. The only people flinching seemed to be those from the northern hemisphere.

Isn’t it interesting that the part of the world producing the most pornography and exporting it to the rest of the globe has seemed to lose all sense of the true meaning of the human breast? What a commentary on the sad state of our sexually wounded culture! Breasts have been so “pornified” that we can fall into thinking that even their proper use is shameful. In other words, we have been so conditioned to see a woman’s body through the prism of lust that we find it very difficult to recognize the purity and innocence of breast-feeding.

St. Paul hit the nail on the head when he said, “To the pure all things are pure, but to the impure nothing is pure” (Ti 1:15). It is a tragically impure world that labels the purity of a baby at the breast as “gross.””

God bless!

Written by Kate Wicker

I have not followed Christopher West much at all so I do not wish to take these few decontextualized comments to characterize what very well could be a more nuanced position. So let me comment on what Kate and others seem to be getting from him.

It is interesting that Kate uses the term “shame” to characterize her initial feelings about breastfeeding in Church. Shame is in fact a central theme in JPTG’s Theology of the Body. Interestingly enough, it is not a purely negative concept for him. John Paul finds that shame serves an essential function in our fallen state.

He makes it clear that concupiscence is an ill fruit of the Fall and that this proclivity to sin will always be with us until we die. In fact, John Paul is adamant that we cannot authentically interpret our current experiences without understanding the “man of concupiscence” (the earlier translation used the “man of lust” which I find more appealing for its dramatic tone but as the translator of the updated edition points out, concupiscence is a more accurate rendering of what JPTG intends). The man of concupiscence is in a continual struggle against temptations to sin, especially sexual sins.

John Paul makes distinctions among many types of shame. He terms sexual shame the fear of being reduced by another to one’s sexual value. This is a great temptation in the fallen state. Concupiscence leads one who is exposed to those aspects of another’s body (the opposite sex for the vast majority who do not suffer from SSAD) which reveal his sexual value, to see only the sexual value and not the entire person. In seeing only the sexual value, one then reduces the other to this value. This reduction is the sin of lust when it is consented to.

John Paul says that the body’s sex reveals its spousal meaning but this meaning is nearly (but not completely) annihilated by concupiscence. Thus, sexual shame serves the purpose of trying to restore the body’s nuptial meaning. It promotes modesty. The modest person covers those aspects of his body which lead him to be reduced to his sexual value. These of course include the genitals for both sexes as well as the breasts for women which uniquely point to their sexual value as mothers, though some other secondary sexual characteristics can also be problematic. Christopher West, by the way, is correct that the sexual value of the female breast has been gravely distorted by our “pornified” culture making it not a sign of motherhood but of sexual use for pleasure (however, even if he correctly interprets his observations in terms of a trend I do not think that it is legitimate to intuit that the first world women were uniformly motivated by Manicheaism and the third world women were motivated by a healthy understanding of their bodies).

Sexual shame serves an important function with a two fold purpose. Thus, John Paul does not dismiss it as something to be overcome as some seem to infer. First, it motivates one to protect his personhood from being reduced. However, a second motivation is to protect the other person from the loss he will suffer through succumbing to temptation if he were exposed. So one is not only concerned with himself but he also has a grave responsibility for the other as well.

In his Theology of the Body, John Paul takes pains to make the distinction between the Church’s teaching on the body and Manichaeism which is a hatred for the body. He does this because he recognizes that superficially, one can interpret actions motivated by modesty for the sake of purity to be those motived by a Manichean outlook. The latter is termed prudishness or puritanism. This distinction is of fundamental importance. Without understanding it, one can fall into a category error and so misread much of John Paul’s writings.

Here is where I think the problem lies in the way many understand the Theology of the Body. They recognize that the body is good and has a good meaning but they miss the fact that concupiscence demands modesty for one’s own sake and especially for the sake of others.

Women especially have little idea, at least relying only on their own experiences, the effect that their bodies can have on men. Women in general reduce the man in his body to a use in terms of satisfying relational needs. They do not tend to experience the “testosterone rush” men must cope with when exposed to sometimes even seemingly innocuous feminine movements and gestures, much less more direct evidence of feminine value.

Men, on the other hand, tend to reduce women to their sexual value in terms of use for the sake of pleasure. Some men can experience this temptation so compellingly, that it takes what seems to be superhuman effort to resist. Our oversexed culture reinforces this temptation so greatly that, except for various disorders, this is fairly universal among men (of course it comes in varying degrees based upon temperament, environmental factors, the degree to which he has subjected himself to pornography, etc).

So what is the response to solve this problem. In the traditionalist post above, Michael Matt references a comment by Christopher West that seems to suggest that one should by some means (we can safely assume that if he is suggesting this that it be through self control aided by sacramental grace) overcome these temptations and no longer be subject to them. West references Karol Wojtyla’s Love and Responsibility:

John Paul II warned that if chastity is lived in a repressive way, it’s only a matter of time before sexual desires explode (see Love and Responsibility, pp. 170-171). I think we find here a key for understanding the sexual revolution of the 20th century. It was a ticking time bomb waiting to detonate in response to the prudery and repressiveness of the previous era.

Unfortunately, this is also what Kate seems to take from Christopher West’s statements. However, If one reads the passage cited above completely, one will see that Wojtyla makes it clear that repressiveness has the same superficial response as modesty. One still says “no”, but for a different reason. One says no to exposure to the body in its nakedness for the sake of seeing the whole person, not because the body is evil. Wojtyla understands that mistaking the body for an evil gives more “ammunition” if you will, for temptations. Thus, it is important to understand the Wojtyla/JPTG is not suggesting that we can set aside modesty.

Now we could make precisions in what John Paul the Great says about the naked body. He does find that it is possible to present it in art. He generally finds that the naked body should not be the subject of photography because there is not the ability to control the presentation of the whole person as there is in mediums like paintings, sculpture, and drawings. Nevertheless, not everyone can expose themselves to even authentically portrayed nudity in art, even if the majority can safely do so. For all of whom this might be problematic he has the obligation to avoid the near temptation to sin.

So what is the end result. I will say first, that one cannot legitimately point to John Paul II’s Theology of the Body as a defense for the decision to breastfeed during Mass. There are other issues to consider here as well to consider, not the least of which is the restraint demanded against even pure and noble, but still mundane activities, because of the solemnity of the Sacrifice of the Mass (can a bottle of breast milk substitute in this one limited case?).

Nevertheless, if someone’s prudential judgment dictates it is legitimate, after very serious consideration of the issue, one must not blithely dismiss covering oneself under the misguided notion that it necessarily implies Manichaeism or that one has no duty to safeguard the purity of others for whom such potential exposure might be a temptation to sin.

The feminine breast is a beautiful sign of motherhood, especially when a baby is being suckled. It is a shame that not everyone can enjoy such a sight without temptation. But that is the state in which we live. The man of concupiscence must be ever vigilant. He must not try to pretend he can bring back original innocence. John Paul the Great is adamant that the threshold was crossed and can never again be restored. Grace and cooperation with it through practice of the cardinal virtues is essential to self-possession, the precursor to holiness. However, this grace is given now to the man of concupiscence in a way not given to man in original innocence. We cannot forget that until we reach heaven, we are living East of Eden and shame will always be an ally.

CNA recently ran an article by Bishop Wenski of Orlando which was published last Sunday. In the very short summary, Bishop Wenski makes some very important points about the negative direction of society which is being orchestrated by a very few.

Particularly, he addresses the decision by a handful of activist judges in California who have chosen to push a disordered relationship as normal upon the rest of the United States. In fact, he is concerned that this is the tip of the iceberg in which the state will begin to use its coercive power to eliminate religious freedom when it comes same sex attraction disorder. He calls this a recipe for tyranny.

The soup stock for this recipe can be seen in the all out assault by the modern media in its promotion of disorder as not just normal, but perhaps even an exalted alternative. Yves Saint Laurent and other French fashion designers are the latest to join the fray through their attempts to feminize men through fashion.

This disorder is driven in part, by a fear of masculinity. Radical feminists who tend toward the Mary Daly variety epitomize this fear in terms of hatred. Other more pragmatic types wish simply to androgynize both sexes in order to attenuate the feared masculine characteristics. Same sex attraction disorder sexualizes this fear of masculinity, though it is a different fear for men and women sufferers. Men who suffer from the disorder cling to themselves, fearing their need to offer themselves to a complementary other in an offer of total self-gift. Women in this condition, on the other hand, fear masculinity as a hostile threat.

All of this is a more fundamentally disordered version of the disorder of sin from which we all suffer. In fact, John Paul II advises that the sin of Adam and Eve was, in a sense, a fear of masculinity. That is, it was a rejection of Fatherhood. It was a rejection of the gift of God the Father to His creatures because this gift required the total trust of man and his return of himself to God.

There are a host of attacks on man and his value in our culture today. However, the most fundamental attack is against the institution which most reflects Trinitarian love in both aspects of man’s nature, body and soul. That is, the attack on marriage. Society cannot survive without stable, selfless marriages. The fear of masculinity, reflected in the fear of man himself, is leading us toward a tyranny of the state against anyone who dare to suggest these disordered responses of fear are in fact disorders. Bishop Wenski is right, this is indeed a recipe for tyranny.

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Tom Wolfe, in his 2004 novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, explores the connection between the mind-brain reductionism of contemporary neuroscience and sociobiology and the moral depravity rampant on contemporary college and university campuses. Philosophical materialists who reviewed the book were, by and large, unimpressed by the idea that mind-brain reductionism should lead to the libertinism endemic to contemporary campus life.

But Wolfe, who is generally more prescient regarding the culture than those purely literary types who review his books, was simply expressing a sense of a connection that honest philosophers since the time of Socrates have recognized as their vocation to articulate. Namely, it is impossible that there should be such a thing as objective moral goodness if reality is nothing more than matter in motion.

Philosophical materialism is the underlying metaphysical presupposition of the contemporary academy. It is a metaphysical position that is thought, by many, to have been put on an unshakable foundation by the findings of modern neuroscience. All experiences and thoughts are capable of being measured in the brain, so it is said by materialists, and we have proven this by our successes in mapping experiences and thoughts to their neural correlates. Certain neural regions, when stimulated, give rise to experiences and thoughts. Many take this to mean that the brain must be wholly causal of psychological phenomena, and this is taken to mean, at least implicitly, that the human person is reducible to his brain. We truly are (on this view), to borrow an image from Descartes, brains in a vat, though the vat in question is simply the rest of the human body. Much of the effort in neuroscience is directed to finding the neural correlates of psychic experience.

Perhaps the best book written on the subject of the relationship of the mind and the brain remains Stanley Jaki’s Brain, Mind and Computers. The book was originally published in 1969, with a second and expanded edition in 1989. Jaki, as many may know, is a Catholic priest, theologian, and perhaps the most important historian and philosopher of science in the past 40 years. In this book, he defends the existence of the soul, whose existence alone, he argues, makes human understanding possible. He makes this defense, in a masterful blend of historical scholarship and philosophical argumentation, against the reigning philosophies that underlie modern neuroscience and especially against those who think that mental processes are reducible to computer models. Jaki considers the relationship of the brain to experience and thought, and he levels a devastating critique of those who champion the existence of “artificial intelligence,” those, that is, who equate understanding with the physical manipulation by pre-established rules of purely formal systems. Especially valuable is chapter V of the book, which Jaki added to the second edition and which gives a very suggestive phenomenology of language.

The book is worth considering in detail, but there is one point that Jaki makes near the end of it that I wish to bring out here, and that gets me to the point of this post. Jaki gives several suggestions, toward the end of chapter 5, for defenders of the existence of the soul to consider in regard to the contemporary debate on the mind and the brain, inasmuch as there is such a debate. One of his suggestions is that defenders of the soul should have the courage to call a spade a spade. By this he means that philosophers who recognize fully the dignity of the human person must be brave enough to stand athwart efforts by neuroscientists, sociobiologists, proponents of artificial intelligence, and the like, to reshape human society according to their valueless science. Jaki explains:

… [society] merrily marches down the road to anarchy. The march is to the brass bands composed of academics who have been busy trumpeting that exclusive attention to quanitatively specificable patterns is the only posture with intellectual respectability. Such a pattern is on hand whenever a behavior, no matter how queer, is acted upon in a statistically significant number. From there it is but a short step to claims to legal recognition and protection, as on the basis of mere patterns, so many pure formalizations, everything becomes a mere machinery, with no allowance for distinctions between the morally good and the morally evil. Hence the steady erosion of sensitivity for hallowed principles, as if they were so many words, and the growing readiness to grant social respectability to any behavior, provided it establishes itself as a pattern. (Brain, Mind and Computers p. 295)

Jaki wrote these words in 1989, and there is little doubt that he did not have the concept of “gay marriage” on his mind at that time. But the basic principle that he brings out here is at play in the ever-greater social acceptance of “gay marriage.”

What he means in this passage is that there are those who hold that behavior is entirely determined by biology. The biological dimension of beings is, in turn, thought to be capable of being mathematically measured. Indeed, the establishment of a mathematical measure to things is the ultimate goal of science. The ultimate reality of things is, on the view of many, that which is quantifiable. Given the advances of twentieth century physics, mathematical science has tended to rest in statistical analysis, especially so in regard to “biological systems.” The statistical is therefore thought to be the real. Statistical significance is the only significance. There is no good or bad, in the traditional moral sense. There are only, for these reductionists, statistically significant occurrences of behavior.

Jaki confines his attention to unmasking the pretensions of proponents of artificial intelligence. They think only in terms of statistical significance. They have no other basis then statistical analysis to uphold or deny moral norms. But, going beyond Jaki’s analysis, it must be recognized that the philosophical position of these reductionists goes hand-in-glove with utilitarianism, which reduces the rational assessment of human action to a calculus of pleasure.

The upshot of this type of moral reasoning is that there can be no standard of moral goodness that transcends comfort and demographic consensus. If a person’s behavior is thought to contribute to his comfort and pleasure then his behavior is acceptable, on the condition that the statistically-verified, consensus opinion of his society is amenable to his behavior.

Of course, this type of reasoning goes against the virtue ethic of the Catholic tradition, for which actions or behaviors are good or bad by their very nature. In regard to the discussion of “gay marriage,” the gap between the Church’s virtue ethic and the materialistic ethos of the wider culture makes it very difficult at present for genuinely Catholic opinion to penetrate public opinion. On the analysis of the Church, it is in the nature of things that male and female are sexually oriented to one another, as is evidenced by their bodily complementarity. It is for the ultimate good of a society that it should encourage a stable ordering of this orientation of one to the other in the socially privileged institution of monogamous marriage.

Scriptural revelation unveils the profoundest depths of the ordering of male and female to one another. Marriage is revealed in scripture in its sacramental profundity. The union of man and woman in the Church, as Saint Paul realized, gives to marriage its full significance as both sign and instantiation of the entire Church’s nuptial relationship to Christ the Bridegroom. Naturally, the Church cannot force civil society to accept the sacramental meaning of marriage. But the revealed meaning of marriage is a perfection of its natural meaning, and it is the Church’s duty to defend this natural meaning even in the civil order.

Ultimately, mind-brain reductionism devalues the body as much as it denies the existence of the mind. The form of the body is of little consequence to an analysis of human action for reductionists. For the virtue ethic of the Church, the sexual act is good inasmuch as it is ordered to the union of husband and wife and the openness to procreation that seals their love most fully. The form of the body and the experience of married love reveal to natural experience the soundness of this teaching. But reductionists cannot see in the form of the body anything that is of its essence, just as they cannot see in concrete experience anything that connects to reality. Male, female, or some combination of the two: it makes no difference. Matter and its statistically analyzed motion is the only reality for reductionists, not the “shape” of the body, not its concrete existence as we experience it. Reality, for reductionists, is ultimately a homogeneous mass of matter/energy in space-time. The things we experience in our everyday life, the basis for the Church’s virtue ethic, are denied reality.

So, the upshot of the cultural dominance of mind-brain reductionism, as Tom Wolfe realized, is the situation of poor Charlotte Simmons, an innocent college co-ed at a prestigious university, who is left to figure out her life in an environment where anything goes. What difference does it make, as long as almost everyone is comfortable and having a good time? In the end, you are only your brain. When it dies, there is nothing left. Why, then, should we not have a culture formed by the ethos of “Girls Gone Wild,” or “Boys Gone Wild,” or “The Jerry Springer Show?”

How do we, as faithful and hopeful Catholics, transform this cultural situation? It can only come through the Church. As the Holy Father himself realizes, it starts with the reform of the Church’s liturgy, where bodily form and symbol have to be valued once again after several decades of anti-religious leveling of the symbols in the Church. And Catholic institutions of higher education have to have the boldness, as Fr. Jaki says, to call a spade a spade. Moral reasoning is impotent if it is based upon the idea that the mind is reducible to the brain. The Church’s intellectual class needs to state it plainly: there can be no such a thing as objective goodness or of “values” that transcend cultural norms if the mind is reducible to the brain. Luckily, we are seeing more and more bishops who are stating the matter plainly, and we must all support them.

A careful reading of Catholic philosophers and theologians in the Thomist tradition, such as Stanly Jaki, has much to teach us as well, and Catholic universities should get back to this tradition of thought. A first pedagogical step would be to teach a sound epistemology to students: one that recognizes that each and every act of understanding transcends the material domain. The brain cannot understand. Computers cannot understand. These cannot understand because material systems cannot, as Thomists have always understood, abstract universals from concrete particulars. And it is only by abstracting the universal meaning of things that any particular thing – whether it be a word, or a symbol, or an animal, or a tree, or a molecule – is understood. Brains and computers are only concrete particulars, or collects of concrete particulars, and only act within the concrete moment. They cannot transcend the concrete moment of space-time because they exist entirely within it. It takes spirit, which is not confined to space-time, in order to abstract the universal from the concrete. It takes spirit in order to understand, for instance, what it means to be a person, or to be this particular person, or to understand any particular thing or general concept that persons communicate. Of course, I mean by spirit, at least for humans as opposed to angels and God, that which is, in the soul, truly united to the body (as the soul was not for Descartes), even though the soul is not reducible to the body. This sound epistemology, which is also the only basis for a sound ontology, is the starting point for a genuinely Catholic and Christian educational perspective. It should be expanded and brought out on many different levels. It is the basis of true philosophy and theology. It is only in recognizing the existence of the soul and the body (both of which are done away with by mind-body reductionism), and their unity, that a truly humanistic form of moral reasoning can be articulated.

LifeSiteNews is running an article about the near harvesting of the organs from a 45 year old man in Paris who later recovered from what was thought to be a fatal heart attack. After the “standard” protocol, he was apparently declared “brain dead” by the attending physicians. It seems to me that this is just one more case which calls into question the position of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences acceptance of “brain death” as a legitimate determination of death.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences met both in 2005 and 2006 to reassess their acceptance of brain death. As with their initial acceptance, there was also much controversy about these meetings. The earlier meeting’s papers were not published by the Academy while the 2006 papers were. A 2007 CNS news story summarizes the controversy when members of the 2005 meeting decided to publish the earlier meetings papers on their own. In a nutshell, those who were involved in the publishing of the 2005 papers, in a document entitled Finis Vitae, were critical of the Academy’s position. This group includes physicians, theologians, philosophers, and two bishops.

As a result of the 2006 meeting, the Academy reaffirmed its 1985 and 1989 positions that brain death is a valid determination of death (N.B. the CNS article ascribes the Academy’s position to the “Vatican;” this is not only misleading, it is wrong and they should know better. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences does not have magisterial or even executive authority).

The position of those who reject the Academy’s position can be found here. Here is the summary of their conclusions:

1. On the one hand the Church recognizes, consistent with her tradition, that the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural end must absolutely be respected and upheld. On the other hand, a secular society tends to place greater emphasis on the quality of living.

2. The Catholic Church has always opposed the destruction of human life before being born through abortion and she equally condemns the premature ending of the life of an innocent donor in order to extend the life of another through unpaired vital organ transplantation. “It is morally inadmissible directly to bring about the disabling mutilation or death of a human being, even in order to delay the death of other persons.” “It is never licit to kill one human being in order to save another.”

3. “Nor can we remain silent in the face of other more furtive, but no less serious and real forms of euthanasia. These could occur for example when, in order to increase the availability of organs for transplants, organs are removed without respecting objective and adequate criteria which verify the death of the donor.”

4. “The death of the person is a single event, consisting in the total disintegration of that unitary and integrated whole that is the personal self. It results from the separation of the life-principle (or soul) from the corporal reality of the person.” Pope Pius XII declared this same truth when he stated that human life continues when its vital functions manifest themselves even with the help of artificial processes.

5. “Acknowledgement of the unique dignity of the human person has a further underlying consequence: vital organs which occur singly in the body can be removed only after death–that is, from the body of someone who is certainly dead. This requirement is self-evident, since to act otherwise would mean intentionally to cause the death of the donor in disposing of his organs.” Natural moral law precludes removal for transplantation of unpaired vital organs from a person who is not certainly dead. The declaration of “brain death” is not sufficient to arrive at the conclusion that the patient is certainly dead. It is not even sufficient to arrive at moral certitude.

6. Many in the medical and scientific community maintain that brain-related criteria for death are sufficient to generate moral certitude of death itself. Ongoing medical and scientific evidence contradicts this assumption. Neurological criteria alone are not sufficient to generate moral certitude of death itself, and are absolutely incapable of generating physical certainty that death has occurred.

7. It is now patently evident that there is no single so-called neurological criterion commonly held by the international scientific community to determine certain death. Rather, many different sets of neurological criteria are used without global consensus.

8. Neurological criteria are not sufficient for declaration of death when an intact cardio-respiratory system is functioning. These neurological criteria test for the absence of some specific brain reflexes. Functions of the brain not considered are temperature control, blood pressure, cardiac rate and salt and water balance. When a patient on a ventilation machine is declared “brain dead,” these functions not only are present but also are frequently active.

9. The apnea test–the removal of respiratory support–is mandated as a part of the neurological diagnosis and it is paradoxically applied to ensure irreversibility. This significantly impairs outcome, or even causes death, in patients with severe brain injury.

10. There is overwhelming medical and scientific evidence that the complete and irreversible cessation of all brain activity (in the cerebrum, cerebellum and brain stem) is not proof of death. The complete cessation of brain activity cannot be adequately assessed. Irreversibility is a prognosis, not a medically observable fact. We now successfully treat many patients who in the recent past were considered hopeless.

11. A diagnosis of death by neurological criteria alone is theory, not scientific fact. It is not sufficient to overcome the presumption of life.

12. No law whatsoever ought to attempt to make licit an act that is intrinsically evil. “I repeat once more that a law which violates an innocent person’s natural right to life is unjust and, as such, is not valid as a law. For this reason I urgently appeal once more to all political leaders not to pass laws which, by disregarding the dignity of the person, undermine the very fabric of society.”

13. The termination of one innocent life in pursuit of saving another, as in the case of the transplantation of unpaired vital organs, does not mitigate the evil of taking an innocent human life. Evil may not be done that good might come of it.

I seems to me that the Academy falls into a reductionist presupposition. What I mean is that while there are certainly empirical manifestations of life, life, and so death, are ultimately philosophical issues. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences seems though, to equate brain activity (and here it is certain brain activity) with the presence of the soul. However, human life is more than brain activity; it is dogmatically defined to exist when the body is informed by the soul. As well, death occurs when the soul leaves the body. The soul is immaterial and as such, it is not directly empirically accessible and so empirical science can only indirectly assist in the determination of death. While the Academy would most likely agree with this, they seem either to overestimate the insights of modern science and/or reduce the soul to its manifestation in brain activity, a reductionist presupposition.

The failure to understand the limits of science in this matter is a major problem in the struggle to protect life today. Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz makes the observation that there seems to be a dichotomy between the Academy’s position that the lack of brain function can be used as a determination of death and the Church’s position that the destruction of human embryos, who do not yet have a developed brain, is a moral evil. Perhaps there is also a logical fallacy at play in the Academy’s rationale?

It is true that the presence of cognitive functions in the brain necessitate the presence of the soul but it is a logical fallacy to assume that the lack of that activity necessitates the departure of the soul. Now this Parisian case would seem to verify that brain activity alone is insufficient to determine death.

This is not a minor issue. Modern medicine, as the minority report points out, is not so concerned with the value of life itself as it is with the quality of life. In its triage/utilitarian mentality, it is too often motivated to harvest organs from those whose chances for an “adequate quality of life” are much less than those who could benefit from the organs. In other words, they are not so concerned with knowing if the person is actually alive, just what they believe the patient’s chances are of recovering in order to lead what they would find to be a sufficiently happy life.

What the delegitimization of “brain death” might mean for organ donation could be significant. I suspect that it is this concern that causes the Academy to err on the side of the status quo. However, I think that it is an issue that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences needs to readdress in light of this event. Even more so, I think that it is an issue that requires Magisterial comment, at least of caution, lest the faithful consider the Academy’s problematic position as authoritative.

CNA’s published an article about the repentance and the reconciliation with the Church of one of the excommunicated St. Louis parish board members.  Edward Florek recently returned to the Church after having been excommunicated for having voted to rebel against the authority of the Archbishop of St. Louis over the issue of the legal transfer of St. Stanislaus’ parish to the Archdiocese.

There are many things that could be said about Florek’s return.  However, one that is worth pursing is how this illustrates one of the main purposes of excommunication.  Our culture’s immature legalism immediately runs to a caricature of the medicine of excommunication, reducing it to a punishment as a means to coerce people amidst some power struggle.  Now while it may have been abused in some circumstances in the past, this is not generally a problem today.

Moreover, its remedial benefits are often overlooked.  Its purpose has always been to allow the sinner to experience in his daily life the separation he has already caused spiritually by his actions and thereby open his eyes to the reality of his sin.  St. Paul provides the template for this effect in his first letter to the Corinthians (see 1 Cor 5:5ff).  However, Its purpose has also been to show others the gravity of these sinful acts and thus avoid the chance of scandalizing the faithful.  This scandal is most often caused when others see no ramifications for prohibited actions and this all too often leads some/many to question the gravity or even the  truth of the prohibition against said actions.

Florek’s repentance shows the potential effectiveness of these biblically based remedies.  While it is obviously not going to work for everyone, it is a very necessary salve for those whose hearts are open but are being led astray by faulty thinking and affective attachments.  Nevertheless, even if it works to bring home just one lost soul, we know that there is more joy in heaven over the return of one lost sinner . . .

Benedict XVI’s General Audience reflections on St. Gregory the Great brought got me ta’ thinkin’ again. Much like Etienne Gilson’s observations about St. Thomas Aquinas, B16 finds Gregory’s greatness grounded in his profound humility. Gilson also believed that Thomas’ impressive intellect was made phenomenal because of his deep humility. Fr. Thomas Dubay, in his book, Faith and Certitude, makes the assertion that all error arises from sin. I think that this insight corresponds with B16’s thoughts on St. Gregory. Humility is nothing other than an orientation to the truth. Both arrogance and false humility are precommitments of the will to some proposition or belief. They remove openness to the truth and make one very susceptible to sin. Authentic humility is the remedy.

So what does this have to do with politics? Well, there have been two very high profile, prolife Catholics who have recently endorsed two of the most anti-life candidates ever put forth. I posted some time ago about Ambassador Raymond Flynn who runs a prolife apostolate and who endorsed Hillary Clinton. I need not review Clinton’s problematic positions. His reason: her husband gave him a job. Here we have a very distorted loyalty.

Most have also heard about Douglas Kmiec, who was among other things, Dean of the Columbus Law School. Kmiec also works for the elimination of abortion. He originally endorsed Mitt Romney and after that horse left the race, he switched to Barack Obama. His rationale: he thinks Obama’s position, that abortion poses a “serious moral issue” (whatever that may mean) but it is better addressed through personal responsibility than through “divisive” politics or through legislation. Jay Anderson does a very good job of outlining the problems associated with Kmiec’s position so I need not rehash that here (for those who may not recall Obama’s positions, here is a website that is very favorable to Obama and his positions that summarizes them).

It seems to me that both of these educated, articulate men are abusing their intellectual gifts in trying to rationalize their obvious, morally problematic positions. They both support candidates (Flynn now perhaps in the past tense) who have made it very clear that they will do everything they can to keep abortion legal and available. Roe v. Wade aside, with a President’s executive power alone, immediately upon taking office both of these candidates can and will sign directives that will greatly increase the numbers of babies killed throughout the world by making US funds available for this carnage. Supporting such a candidate is clearly material cooperation with evil . . . and I would argue could be shown to be formal cooperation. However, to make material cooperation morally licit, one needs to show that greater damage would be done by the other candidate. There is no case to be made here and so neither Clinton nor Obama can legitimately be supported.

So where does humility come in? Flynn presumably will not allow himself to be seen as “disloyal” as he sees it. He cannot continue to bear an unpaid debt when it is called in and so he is put in the precarious position, it seems to him, of compromising on some principle. He has chosen his personal honor over life itself. Kmiec is much more curious. However, his public support for any candidate brings with it questions, especially given the high degree of probability for confusion and scandal that this particular case can cause. Humility would allow him, moreover, to give up whatever precommitment he possesses in rationalizing his support for Obama.

I do not believe that either candidate provides the moral room for arguing he can be supported on prudential judgment grounds but certainly more humility would lead a good Catholic at least to be quiet about his problematic prudential judgments.

Earlier today, I was reading through the transcripts and summaries of B16’s locutions during his pilgrimage to the US which ended today. I had seen it earlier in the week, but I again happened upon the summary of his talk to Catholic educators at CUA. In that talk, B16 comments on the question as to why people are reluctant to entrust themselves to God. According to the Zenit summary, the Pope says:

“It is a complex phenomenon and one which I ponder continually,” the Pope confessed. “While we have sought diligently to engage the intellect of our young, perhaps we have neglected the will. Subsequently we observe, with distress, the notion of freedom being distorted.

“Freedom is not an opting out. It is an opting in — a participation in Being itself. Hence authentic freedom can never be attained by turning away from God. Such a choice would ultimately disregard the very truth we need in order to understand ourselves.”

In these words, Benedict summarizes a fundamental problem in modern education. In modern education, we seem to have forgotten that education is not simply the imparting of knowledge. Rather, it is the cultivation of an intellect; indeed, the cultivation of a whole person. While it is a fundamental part of education then, inculcating knowledge is simply one component of it together with forming intellectual skills and the training of the will.  There are several implications arising from this authentic meaning of education.

First, children need to be taught the skills of thinking, including the ability to critically consider the messages of the culture in which they are raised. Secondly, children must be taught not only what truth is but they must be challenged continually to live in accord with this truth. Not only must a child’s education be cognitive but it must be formative and transformative of his entire person. Thus, education must include the formation of his character.

This means then, that education thus must be a cooperative effort between a child’s first educators, his parents, and those who have been charged with assisting them. That is, today’s professional educators. If this education is to be effective, it must be an education in the whole person in which parents and schools support and reinforce each other.

Unfortunately, in our society the tendency is to leave all education to the professionals in public education. Furthermore, the difficulties of pluralism in belief has prompted public education (at least in theory if not in practice) to take the easy way out and eliminate from curriculum and classroom any mention of God, morals, virtue, or right character. In practice however, children get formed in immorality veiled as tolerance, pluralism, social justice, civil rights, etc.

Even with Catholic schools, the emphasis is on imparting knowledge because they are so wedded to the pedagogical tools and theories of public education. Thus, knowledge is imparted but too often little attention is paid to character formation. Likewise, while parents of Catholic school children tend to be somewhat more involved in their children’s education there is still the tendency of parents to leave aside concerns for the cultivation of the whole child–intellectual knowledge, thinking skills, character development, and especially, spiritual maturation (i.e. development in holiness).

No wonder then, even children raised in Catholic homes where church attendance is faithful, the children often tend to stray from the faith. When B16 refers to the lack attention to formation of the will, it is character formation and spiritual maturation that he has in mind. When he refers to the mistaken view of freedom, he is referring to the lack of formation in a proper view of the moral life. He takes up this point again in his talk at Dunwoodie (a.k.a. St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers).

B16 links freedom to Being itself. Fr. John Richard Neuhaus, in his commentary during EWTN coverage at St. John’s explicates this link between freedom and God’s own Being in term of “freedom for excellence” and its antithesis, “freedom of indifference.” I mentioned this distinction some time ago in a post discussing the late Fr. Servais Pinckaers, O.P. and his coining of those terms.

Children need to be taught to overcome the legalistic thinking of our age which results in almost an allergic reaction to any demands of personal restraint. They need to be taught that authentic freedom cannot be the libertine view of freedom our culture feeds us. If it were, it would be a vacuous concept.  We know this because we can see that by simply exercising this “freedom” we lose it. Anyone who has become enslaved to his choices, like hitting the alarm continually in the morning instead of getting up and going to the gym, or like immoderate indulgence in food or drink, or like any other bad habit which can even become addictions.

We can verify from our own experiences that for freedom to be preserved one must first recognize and then obey an order to the cosmos that preexists our arbitrary choices. Neither is that cosmic order arbitrary. It arises from the “Order” of Being itself and so brings with it a structure for action that corresponds with the meaning of the human person.  Subordination to this order brings with the fruit of joy and its disregard brings eventual interior discord and, if the disregard is sufficiently grave and prolonged, moral collapse.

This is what the Holy Father has often pondered. Why have we, especially in Catholic education and Catholic homes, failed to attend sufficiently to educating/forming our children’s will’s in addition to our concern for development of their intellects (or more precisely, to development of the cognitive content of their intellects)?

Perhaps we might pray that Catholic educators and Catholic parents will appreciate, appropriate, his words and also ponder with the Holy Father, what might be done in Catholic education that will again avail itself of the great patrimony of the Catholic Church.  This is the only way that Catholic children will not only learn not to fear giving themselves over to God, but will also allow them to be powerful witnesses of courage in surrender to God for the world.

In January, Shelray did a post about a San Francisco man suing a Catholic Hospital in Daly City for refusing to give him a sex change operation. Well apparently the hospital caved under the pressure of a court order according to an EWTN feed from CWN. This is most unfortunate but I suppose that it is encouraging that they resisted to start with. However, what is problematic is that the hospital is said to have released the following statement:

“We regret any confusion that may have come from this situation. We want this patient and her physician to know that they are welcome at Seton Medical Center.”

In doing so they not only have caved into the pressure but they also have abetted this suffering soul’s confusion by referring to him as a woman and seeming to imply that they were wrong to have refused the mutilating procedure (aka breast enhancement operation) in the first place.

Any way, it turns out that the man, “Charlene” Hastings will not have his mutilation done at the Catholic hospital, Seton Medical Center, because he would feel that the hospital “is doing it under duress.” Nevertheless, he is going forward with the civil suit for monetary damages according to his lawyer. That is a surprise.

The local CBS TV news station reports that “transgender Charlene Hastings has claimed moral victory against Catholics.” That after all is what “Charlene” is really after.  I suspect that even in his confusion he still senses that his interior conflict is not the fact that he is a woman in a man’s body but that he is in fact really a man who cannot come to terms with his sexual identity. Thus, he needs continual reaffirmation that he is correct in his desire to reconcile this conflict by mutilating his body such that it makes him look like he feels. Of course, the lawyer’s goal is just as pathological but has nothing to do with moral victories. Nevertheless, perhaps in order to satisfy his victim’s, errr, client’s need for affirmation, he provides the following:

The CBS 5 News station characterized the statement as a “veiled apology.” It said, “transgender Charlene Hastings has claimed moral victory against Catholics.” According to the California Catholic Daily, Hasting’s attorney, Chris Dolan, said that a lawsuit seeking monetary damages would proceed.

“Like any good religious experience, first you need enlightenment and then you need atonement,” said Dolan. “And what we have here perhaps is a glimpse of enlightenment. Has it changed their heart? I don’t think so. Will it change their practice? It better.”

Isaiah 5:20, from the book of judgment, comes to mind here: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” Dolan is right about Christian experience, though he forgets about repentance–not a surprise. However, to call what the hospital has “seen” as enlightenment is chillingly satanic. To trade the truth for an attempt at monetary preservation is exactly the opposite.  At best one can call their caving in, material cooperation with evil. If they did release the attributed statement, it becomes more likely formal cooperation with evil which a Catholic can never do, even if it means closing the doors of the hospital.

I hope that Dolan is right that those running the hospital’s hearts have not changed. It is the only chance that they will come to see that giving in to this coercion is harmful to those like “Charlene”, his lawyer, and in the long run to the hospital itself and larger society. If they were to act according to the truth, perhaps through their witness then those who authentically need it may eventually receive “enlightenment and then atonement.”

It was bound to happen. Biologists have known for some time that pheromones have a primary causal effect on sexual arousal in the sub-personal animal kingdom. Since every self-respecting biologist “knows” human beings are just animals, then this must be the same with us. In fact, you may have seen the article the other day about scientists who were able to confuse (my term) fruit flies into being attracted to the same sex and back again by altering the expression of the gene that affects the interpretation of pheromones. At least in this article, the biologists admitted to not knowing the extent to which, if at all, pheromones effect human sexual attraction.

However, where there is money to be made, others are willing to assume that the same holds true for man. A Boston TV station’s local news story is reporting on a Floridian company out of Naples that is marketing a DNA dating service. They contend that human beings are sexually attracted through the pheromones of someone with a complementary immune system. The company, on its website, claims:

When you share chemistry with someone:

1. You love their natural body odor. They smell “sexier” than other people.

2. You have a more satisfying sex life.

3. If you’re a woman, you have more orgasms.

4. There’s significantly less cheating in your relationships than if your DNA isn’t matched properly.

5. As a couple, you’re more fertile.

6. Your children have a better chance of being healthy.

For a mere two grand, you too can can find your genetic match. Of course, even if there is some effect of pheromones on human beings with respect to sexual attraction, these promises are still erroneous. The problem is that they reduce the human person to an animal, and suggest that we are constrained by our biology as are non-rational animals. The truth is that while human nature shares an aspect of it’s nature with the animals, man is much more than this. So much more that he is not constrained by his biology. This is manifested by his rational faculties. In man, his biological appetites and emotions are made to subordinate themselves to these rational faculties of intellect and will. We can verify from our experiences that we are different from the brutes in this regard. While subpersonal animals flourish when they blindly follow their instincts, man does not if he does the same. Rather, he damages himself often physically, psychologically, and emotionally, but always spiritually.

Men may or may not experience some sort of attraction due to pheromones. However, attraction is not love. Love is an act of the will in which one desires the good of the other for his own sake. It is an act of giving oneself to the other without expecting anything in return. This is not biology, though to some degree, biology is involved. The acts of understanding and willing freely, occur in the spiritual aspect of the soul meaning that these faculties are not actualized by union with the body. Thus, they radically transcend anything of similarity that we share with subpersonal animals.

So lets look at the claims. The first can only mean love in terms of attraction, but attraction does not necessarily lead to a fulfilling relationship; and all too often it does not if the relationship remains primarily on the level of attraction. The second claim is patently false. If there is any truth to the claims of attraction at all, at most this might increase pleasure. But pleasure does not increase satisfaction in the human sense. Sexual satisfaction for human beings is ultimately found in a fulfilling, mutual giving, marital relationship. Created in the image of God, one’s sex life is only authentically satisfying when it reflects that upon which it arises–Trinitarian love. That is, life giving, selfless love. Pleasure is finite, external, and transient. Happiness transcends the individual, is enduring, an arises from the act of selfless giving because it arises from communion with God. I suspect that number three is false because orgasm requires more than biology as well; it requires a full submission of the female self in trust. This does not arise simply from biology but is also an act of the will. The forth is also patently false. It likewise implies that we are solely driven by instinct. If that is the case, then it cannot be called cheating because the word implies infidelity to a promise. If we are constrained to actions driven by biology then the term cheating has no place. Rather, we say we cheat because we tacitly acknowledge free will. The fifth is primarily a biological claim it would seem and so I will not comment. The last claim, if limited to biological health falls in the same category as the fifth. If it claims more than that, it again fails because it is reductionist in its presuppositions.

This company’s “product” may appeal to some because we live in a culture of scientism in which the scientists are the new high priests who have access all of the cosmos’s secret knowledge and they know how to control the gods of nature. Since this is the case, it goes without saying that most of us are not critical thinkers. For example, the premises of this company’s claims are that we have no free will and are driven solely by our biology. However, the very act of advertising and attempting to get consumers to choose to spend their money on such drivel assumes, in a contradictory fashion, the we do indeed have freewill. This in itself, should be a warning to the casual, critical thinker.

Nevertheless, maybe there is some good that will come out of this. The company says that women who are one some sort of chemical contraception are not good candidates for this because the artificial hormones lead women to be attracted to other people. Perhaps this could lead some women to eschew artificial contraception in favor of finding and keeping thier “perfect” mate.

In the end, I would suggest that anyone who would fall for this would be a good candidate for meeting the terms of Thomas Tussler’s famous saying: “a fool and his money are soon parted.”

If you do not support “gay rights,” then according to Tim Gill you are a member of the forces of darkness. Gill has begun a well thought out strategy to use political donations to help ensure that you have no voice in the political system. Who is Tim Gill you ask? He created a publishing software company called Quark, Inc. He recently sold his holdings for about a half billion dollars in order to dedicate his money and himself to his goal of ensuring that “anti-gay” politicians get defeated on the local level. To do so, he has organized a political analysis machine to identify and target “vulnerable” politicians around the country along with a network of “pro-gay” donors.

He believes that while this is a long term approach, it is the most cost effective because it reduces the number of local “anti-gay” initiatives which can influence the national scene, it is much cheaper because a few thousand dollars can reverse an election on the local level, it removes “anti-gay” politicians from rising to the national level, and finally it creates an atmosphere of fear that will force politicians to abandon their “anti-gay” agendas if they want to keep from being targeted by Gill’s machine. Last year, Gill himself donated $15M; almost all to local campaigns around the country.

Atlantic Monthly ran an article in the March edition of this year that outlines his strategy. What strikes you as you read the article is that it takes the perspective that what “gay rights” activists are pushing for is obviously a matter of justice. The so called “gay” agenda has the moral high ground. The article throws out Gill’s terminology about “punishing the wicked” and referring to politicians such as Rick Santorum of Pennsylvannia, as “one such villain.” The author throws in that Santorum had once compared homosexuality to “man on dog sex.” Since he didn’t give a source for this claim, I suspect that it is a distortion of Santorum’s comment before the Supreme Court decision on the Texas sodomy law which they eventually overturned, in which Santorum said that if the Texas law cannot be upheld then there is no principle by which one could then outlaw such things as polygamy, bestiality, etc. Santorum was, of course, referring to natural law and the biological meaning of sexual intercourse as ordered to procreation. However, “man on dog sex” is no doubt how one affected with SSAD hears it which immediately tells you a bit about the author and the editorial staff of Atlantic Monthly.

Gill wishes to advance the agenda which he terms as equal rights for everyone. Equal rights include “gay marriage,” laws against discriminating in employment, housing, or anything else, against those who engage in and promote the “gay” lifestyle, and of course “hate” laws to punish more severely any crime done against someone who self-identifies as “gay” and has a suspicion that this was why he was attacked. Ultimately we see that those laws are increasingly being used to stifle the Christian teaching that SSAD is objectively just that, a disorder.

Something that I found interesting is that a recent failure was attributed in part by one of Gill’s strategizers as due to the factor he calls “the gay ick.” What this is, is when “good straight people” (i.e. those who buy into the line that the SSAD lifestyle is nothing different than a heterosexual romance) are made to focus on the acts done by those who engage in same sex activities, they are repulsed by it. But what else is this “gay” culture than one oriented around an unnatural activity?

Like abortion, this is fundamentally where the “rights” strategy breaks down and shows you the man hiding behind the curtain. If one has to hide the activity, such as the killing of a baby or the personally demeaning acts that one is led to do when involved in the SSAD lifestyle in order to make it palatable to the average person, then this ought to be a red flag for the average person.

Unfortunately, our culture is not in the habit of thinking critically and the propaganda machine takes advantage of this. Activists like Tim Gill will continue to promote the most sellable face of the SSAD lifestyle and call evil those who oppose it. St. Paul warned that those who give into these sins of the flesh will eventually call what is evil–good, and what is good–evil. So, if you are being confronted by those who call a disorder good, then do not be surprised when you are identified with the forces of darkness.

I recently saw this quote in a trailer for a new movie. It is by Grassroots Films (God in the Streets of New York). They are coming out with a feature length motion picture about the meaning man entitled, The Human Experience.

Here is their film’s synopsis:

From Grassroots Films of Brooklyn, New York comes THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE – the story of a band of brothers who travel the world in search of the answers to the burning questions: Who am I? Who is Man? Why do we search for meaning? Their journey brings them into the middle of the lives of the homeless on the streets of New York City, the orphans and disabled children of Peru, and the abandoned lepers in the forests of Ghana, Africa. What the young men discover changes them forever. Through one on one interviews and real life encounters, the brothers are awakened to the beauty of the human person and the resilience of the human spirit.

Here is the trailer: