A Juxtaposition, a Narrative, and Then I Rant, Then I Recover

I'll preface this by saying that I picked up a paper copy of the Daily Texan today. In its pages, paradoxy and hilarity abound: though I suppose inadvertently for both. On the front page, near the top is printed this article about the protesters at an event featuring Mrs Sarah Palin. Ok, actually it's supposed to be an article about the event featuring Mrs Palin, though you have to turn the page to figure this out: the front page coverage consists of a picture of womyn "anti-abortion protesters," by which is apparently meant a set of protesters who are pro-abortion.

This picture--which is probably seen by everybody who picks up the paper--is in stark contrast with the actual text of the story--which almost nobody who picks up the paper will read. And in that contrast is seen the Texan's blind loyalty to "the narrative": don't show the news so much as the snippets of it which conform to the story. What is the story, you ask? Why, it's the thing which the "reporter" wrote before arriving on-scene with the cameras, the thing which is just looking for a few choice quotes and a couple of details to prove that he actually was on-scene at some point. The details, alas, did not match the narrative as nicely as he would have preferred, and some of them apparently made it past the editor: sloppy.

Fewer than 50 protesters gathered outside the Austin Convention Center on Thursday night during an anti-abortion rally headlined by former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Almost 900 people responded to a Facebook event promoting the protest.

The crowd, composed primarily of men, stood around the building waving signs supporting abortion rights and attacking the former Alaska governor, who spoke at “An Evening With Sarah Palin,” sponsored Heroic Media, an anti-abortion nonprofit group. (Emphasis mine)

The pro-abortion crowd was composed primarily of men? Really? To those who have long been in the pro-life movement, this comes as no surprise, since the largest demographic group who supports keeping abortion legal, readily-available, and easy-to-obtain is unwed men between the ages of 18-30. This can be juxtaposed with the recent comments of NARAL's president, Mrs Nancy Keenan, who stated that she just doesn't see the passion for abortion amongst the younger voters: only passion against it.

However, the pictures used to tell the narrative in this article would lead us to believe otherwise. Although the pro-abortion crowd was composed of primarily min, the one photo showed only three womyn. I suppose they were at least honest enough to not photo-shop in additional people, and even to pass the fact that the crowd was primarily men. The censors at the Austin-American Statesman, on the other hand, was not so concerned about maintaining the narrative in it coverage.

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The "Old Man": here comes the bigger rant (note: I've edited it a bit to make it less, well, mean, but I am not in the least going to try to be tactful on this one).

This is not to say that there is an utter lack of passion amongst young womyn concerning abortion. The Texan's own Miss Anna Russo spent last week's column railing ad nauseum about how she, too, has every bit as much passion as her fore-mothers (an ironic term for that movement). She followed up that column with (an otherwise good, for her) one this week in which she explained in a single line why nobody should take her seriously:

My second year I enrolled in a Women’s Reproductive Health course, partially in response to what was an exhaustively long existential crisis

Note to radical feminists: this is another reason why the rest of us have difficulty taking you seriously. Most people who suffer an "existential crisis" look to philosophy, theology, religion, or science to help them through it: sometimes this even works. You, apparently, look to "reproductive health." Philosophy, theology, religion, and science (via psychology) are all intended in some way to help when such things occur; reproductive health is not. Or was your existential crisis that kind of crisis? In which case, reproductive anatomy and basic biology would be immensely more useful.

This must also be why one of the few things in our culture which doesn't deserve even 15 minutes of fame, a fad which ought to have died in ignoble infamy upon its release, is also the one fad which is dragged back every year around Saint Valentines day, resuscitated by the womyn's centers on every college campus in the nation. I am here referring to (and ranting about) the Vagina Monologues.

in it's most radical form, feminism is truly a religion. Their goddesses are now Gaia and Ishtar and Kali: and Moloch, made an honorary deity as the older brother of Gaia. They have made abortion their highest sacrament: a dark parody, defilement, corruption of the great Sacrament of Communion. The Monologues has become the liturgical equivalent of a Solemn High Mass, and non-sequitor pro-abortion signs are their liturgical vestments. Their CCD and RCIA are sex-education, sex-columnists, and "womyn's studies," their professors unholy language is to be spoken only in a shrill voice, and for their priestesses (and priests) they take those doctors who are ordained by rejecting the Hippocratic Oath. Their martyrs and saints are George Tiller, Margaret Sanger and David Gunn, their prophets and sages are Peter Singer, Judith Jarvis-Thompson, John Holdren, and Paul and Anne Ehrlich.

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The "New Man": a more charitable approach.


Miss Russo's column reflects a soul which is clearly both lost and morally confused. I contend that this is so even to the same (if not a greater extent) than her colleague at the Texan, Ms Mary Lingwall. It is a lamentable error to turn to the fad "philosophies" of the day--sex education, radical feminism, "reproductive health," etc when searching for meaning (that would be what an existential crisis entails). I do not know if she had previous beliefs--religious or otherwise--upon which to call for strength.

Any good religious belief will offer this to some extent. Simply having a foundation upon which to lean in times of trouble is a great thing. Christ offers something more, which is not only answers, but also grace; understanding, but also salvation; faith, but also hope and love. None of the other "-isms" offer this, or even claim to offer it. All other ideologies are cast into a form of domination, oppression, subversion, revolution: that is, of tyranny and rebellion, of turmoil. In short, the other -isms engage in every form of warfare save the most important one. It may be class or economic warfare, or strife between the sexes, of the struggle for the overman to reach the top; only Christianity--Catholicism and its offshoots--really identifies the problem, really identifies the form of warfare in which we are all wittingly or unwittingly engaged: that is spiritual warfare.

All of the other ideologies cause one to enter the fray, but to do so without knowledge of the real nature and dimension of the fight. Christianity does not offer a means out of the war: ratehr, a greater part in it. The difference is that it also offers a means of actually fighting the war (faith), and spiritual sustenance during the war (hope), and for winning the war (charity). The other isms offer at best a means for fighting the war, and not the best means at that.

Dancing with the Saints

I was not initially intending to write a follow-up to my last post, a brief musing concerning the saints and the gods. However, I note that two of my friends are rather itching for such a post (even if only to argue with it), and at least one more is in the wings waiting with unduly baited breath for the exchange. I am for some reason reminded of the old Bible studies we had once a week at the pub: ecumenical and friendly if still not in agreement, more a dialogue than necessarily a debate. Alas, I cannot write this response with a pint in my hand nor a pitcher on the table: though I imagine that opportunity will be present soon enough. That is probably for the best, since I do not have the time to really flesh out all of the points raised at this time.

There are three separate statements released by my amiable adversaries: two by Mr Nathanael Blake, and one by Mr Shawn Nelson. This latest round of discussion begins, i am told, at a Mass in New Mexico, complete with a May crowning held in April; the reaction of Mr Blake was, I am told, somewhat characteristic of him, an erudite if incorrect running commentary on the proceedings of the day. I can almost hear his voice beginning the commentary: so, is this little bit of pagan pageantry an annual occurrence, or just a Hispanic heresy? Apparently unsatisfied with a brief in-house commentary, he did what any good blogger will do and wrote a post to highlight and categorize the day's offenses (and any which might relate to the day).

When the saint puts the fix in, you owe him some extra honor–make a donation to his sort of cause, make a pilgrimage to a site associated with him, spread the word about him… This is paganism. The last thing a Christian saint would want would be to be seen as a sort of heavenly inside man who can sweet talk God for you, provided you grease his palm a bit.

Nor is this the only pagan element within Catholicism. The veneration of relics is hardly Christian, nor are practices like the ritual crowning of statues of Mary. Consequently, there is something to iconoclasm. To be sure, it destroyed many great works of religious art, but it is not an irrational response to the problem of paganism within Christianity. The temptation to fall from the terrifying spiritual exposure of the soul before God, with only Christ to mediate, back into the comforting cosmological world of paganism is constant, and too often Catholicism has gained converts at the cost of allowing pagan elements into Christianity.

So there are several charges of "paganism" leveled at practices which are assuredly not Protestant, or at least not universally so. In his follow-up post, Mr Blake notes that

I’ll stipulate that Mr. Sanders accurately represents magisterial teaching on this subject, and that while not acceptable to Protestant thought (I’d like some scriptural evidence that the saints in heaven can hear our requests for extra prayers), it is not necessarily pagan....Furthermore, there seems to be almost no interest in gently correcting this heresy, let alone vigorously stamping it out. Consequently, there seems to be something of a conflict between the Magisterium and Tradition.

All of this is, of course, a laundry list of charges against the Church: though nothing really new is here. I don't suspect that He is trying to be new or original, but neither is he really succeeding in being really old--that is, deep rooted within Christianity and Christian Tradition--in these arguments. On the other hand, there is the additional comment made by another mutual friend, Mr Shawn Nelson.

A blog about why you think praying to the saints is a good thing supported by scripture would be a great starting point (because Nate is right, a vast amount of Catholics do pray to the saints, regardless of what technical sidedance may be explained). A nice thing would be to define terms here. Prayer is simply making a request or statement to an unseen being over the spiritual aether....Then the setup is [churches] wherein there is a kneeling post in front of the statue of saints along with cards that direct prayers to these saints wherein you directly address them...leaves absolutely no position you can take except a complete defense of prayer to the saints or a complete acknowledgement that it's heresy. That said, I don't think polytheistic heresy is a deal breaker, it just creates a giant amount of problems in a religion.

Two Protestants have commented, and thus there are two different criticisms leveled, neither in agreement nor total disagreement with each other. As I understand this, there are two sets of complaints. First, from Mr Blake: quasi-paganistic prayer to the saints (in practice if not in actual espousal), worship of relics, Mary's May Crowning, that Catholics have some fear of experiencing prayer mano-y-Deo to the extent that they fall back on a middle-man, the seeming contradiction between the Church's Tradition and her Teaching, and the apparent lack of condemnation of all this by Catholic Intellectuals. On the other hand, there is Mr Nelson's much shorter list: that Catholics must ditch or defend prayers to saints, that in our churches we kneel before them and on our prayer cards explicitly pray to them, that this is a form of polytheism (even when presented with a specific delineation of gods as opposed to saints).

To address all of these claims would require far more time than is available to me today. It is worth noting that a good number of these charges is half-true: but it is under the false half--even the excluded false half--under which they collapse. For example, Mr Blake rightly states that "The veneration of relics is hardly Christian," if by "hardly Chrisitian" he means only that this practice did not originate with Christians or that it is not historically exclusive to Christians. For example, the Jews previously venerated the remains of Elisha (the Bible and Jewish tradition hold that neither Moses nor Elijah left any remains to venerate), as attested to by the non-canonical book IV Kings. There are additional arguments to be made concerning this one topic, but it would not be productive to make them at this time.

I will, therefore, not make an attempt to do so just now; instead, I will address only one (more) point here. The others I may return to later--even much later--but they are for another day. That is the point of prayer: Mr Blake, on the one hand, complains that Catholics say "I will pray to saint so-and-so," while Mr Nelson contends that this is precisely what Catholics are doing when petitioning the saints.

Both are right to some extent. If the act of praying is defined roughly as communicating across the spiritual ether, then it is quite true that Catholics can say that we pray to the saints. But note that this act of prayer does not imply worship: I am not by asking my friends to pray for me worshiping those friends in the least bit. Nor, for that matter, am I worshiping them even when I ask them for help with something, be it in finding misplaced keys or studying for an exam, in providing aid in a time of illness or in asking for a good word to be put in to a potential employer with whom my friends are also friends. If this weren't the case, then every college study group, every search party, every act of corporal or spiritual mercy would at the same time be a form of idolatry (unless, perhaps, it is unsolicited?).

This leaves the charge of idolatry through the returning of a favor. I contend that it is not the least bit "greasing the palms" of the saints if, when a sort of favor has been done by them through their intercession I return the favor in the only way in which I am capable, which is by some good work or penance. Or is it idolatry when I repay a friend's kindness when he searched for my missing keys by helping to drive him to the dentist? If so, then there is little room for the charge of idolatry to be hurled by anybody at anybody else.

Perhaps it is only idolatry because one partner happens to be dead? Even this does not make sense as a complaint without some very interesting redefining of idolatry. Consider an example: my friend rushes into a burning house to help me save my son. We are able to save my son's life, but only at the cost of my friend's. His death has left his own son an orphan; and though I owe no duty to the child, I raise him as my own from a sense of duty to my friend. In other words, I do a favor to my friend who is now deceased: a favor which it would be unthinkable to call idolatry, or a greasing of my friend's palms.

What makes it so different because the friend has been dead for some time? Especially since every good deed or penance is itself a glorification of God, intentional or otherwise. This is all the more so given that the penance or good work is done specifically in favor of a prayer answered: a prayer which, by necessity is answered by God, even if it was asked through a saint. I am not here concerned with whether or not this is the best reason to do a good work or an act of penance, but I will state that the best reason to do anything is first and foremost for the love and glory of God. We oughtn't need any more incentive than that, but if this is the first motivation which turns a man's life around, there will surely still be rejoicing in heaven that the man did turn around.

Thus the main argument against prayer to the saints must rest by necessity on the question of its efficacy: can the saints hear us, and can they intercede? If Scripture doesn't say that they can, it also most certainly doesn't day that they cannot. Such verses as Revelation 5:8 and 8:4 (to pick just two) at least seems to hint that they can. It was certainly a part of Christian Tradition (which prior to the 16th century meant Catholic Tradition) that the saints could hear us, as attested to by such Church fathers as Saints Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 208), Cyprian of Carthage (c A.D. 235), Cyril of Jerusalem (c. A.D. 350), and Basil the Great (c. A.D. 373), to name just a few.

Supposing for a moment that we reject the testimony of the early Christians. Suppose we say, with the Mormons and certain Protestants, that the Church was corrupted soon after the death of the last apostles (St John, c. A.D. 100), within a generation or two (that is, by the otherwise arbitrary date of A.D. 180). Suppose we furthermore state that any interpretation of scripture which commends prayer with and to the saints is a false interpretation, that any such hints are false hints or a misreading: that is, suppose we off-hand place the cart before the horse and reject these interpretations on the basis of our own authority, Spirit-guided or no. Then, the worst case scenario is that our prayers to the saints asking them to pray with us and for us are not heard. Then, we have done no worse than to waste our time (always assuming, of course, that the prayers do not slip into adoration, which is for God alone). But unless we know with certainty that the saints cannot hear us (a point not supported by the Bible), this is also no worse than for us to ask a forgetful friend to pray for us: for that friend is also unlikely do do so. Or, as a better example: it is no worse for our own prayer lives than for us to ask an atheist friend to pray for us (provided, of course that we do not know that he is an atheist).

Thus, to the demand that Catholics show where in the Bible it says that we should pray to the saints, we can at least answer the Protestants: tu quoque. The difference is that for the Catholics, we have such sources as history and Tradition on our side.

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If you enjoyed this post, here are some related ones:

The Devil's in the Details
Saint Dominic and Apologetics

The Hellenic Parthenon and the Heavenly Palace (Thirty Minute Musings)
The Idiocy of Iconoclasm
Apologetics and Evangelization
Rediscovering the Saints
Perpetual Apologetics
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Return to Equus nom Veritas home.

TMM: The Hellenic Parthenon and the Heavenly Palace

Whether 'twas heresy or complacency they fought,
However they proclaimed man's salvation won,
Be they nomadic wanderers or cloistered monks,
Each of the saints lives is a lesson to us:
It's not a man's perfection which leads to holiness,
Nor are holy people wholly without their faults.
(The Saints)

I haven't had much to say about the saints in some time, perhaps in part because I haven't had the inspiration to put my thoughts in verse. Nor have I had much to say about the Parthenon, the Pantheon, or the pagans in general, because they seem irrelevant today as anything other than a phase of historical religion or a tool to attack the Church (and always the Catholics, not the Orthodox or even the Anglican Communion).

The contrast between the supposed "paganism" of Catholics and the real paganism of the ancients is often ignored. It is ignored by the Catholics, because it is a familiar and obvious thing to us; by those outside the Church, because it gives them another stick with which to beat the Church (on the one extreme) or alternatively gives them one (more) reason to stay outside the Church, to avoid submitting to her teaching. Because Catholics generally don't think much about this, and non-Catholics think of it only as a weapon, there are few descriptions of it beyond apologetics works and websites.

The first big difference is the position held by the saints as opposed to the gods. The saints are those who would not be glorified in this life, so that they may be glorified in the next; by which I meant that the saints thought nothing of thier own relative holiness, for they are every bit the sinner as the next man. Their zeal was focused towards God, Who would glorify them in the sense that He would share with them a snippet of His glory in heaven. They thought nothing of themselves, and everything of God. Their own autobiographies--often written under the orders of their superiors, at times written as a sort of final confession of their sins so that they would not become "gods", so that the people would not worship them or even necessarily think them especially holy-- were a testament to this; to read these autobiographies is to read in the most lurid words imaginable how each saint was really a sinner who found the gift of faith; how all holiness comes not from within but from without, from God.

As such, the saints then become beacons or arrows which point towards heaven, and specifically to God. Their lives become a testimony of God's grace, and of what cooperation with that grace can do to and for a soul. Thus, any glory or praise given to the saints is rightly re-directed towards God. One cannot praise a painting without also praising the artist, or a statue without praising the sculptor, or a song without praising the composer or the singer. So it is with the saints and their Creator.

The gods of the old paganism are another matter. Each was a deity onto himself, and each was worshiped independently, "in his own right." By praising Poseidon, one was not also giving glory to Apollo, nor to Aphrodite by worshiping Hera. Each god or goddess was His or her own being, independent of the other gods even if related to them. Even Zeus, the old King of the Gods, was not being worshiped through the other gods, as if a sacrifice to Hermes was a sacrifice to him*. Glory given to each god was meant for that god alone, and not for the whole pantheon of them.

The second is the relationship of the saints to God and the relationship of the gods to one another. True, Zeus was said to be king of the gods, and so was the ruler of Olympus; in a sense, that made the other gods his courtiers. But these other gods were treated not as specially favored courtiers who may act as advocates between the king (Zeus) and his subjects on earth below. The saints truly are the courtiers of God, in that He is their absolute King, they are absolutely His subjects. Only they are His favored subjects, those who are close to Him; asking them for aide really is like gaining an advocate in the court of the King, in that they are really being petitioned to petition God. The same is not true of the old gods, who might be petitioned as one petitions a duke or a baron for help. The lord might grant aide independently of the king, or even against the king's wishes; not so with the saints. In heaven, their will is totally in accord with God's.

When a lord grants a favor apart from the king, it is he who must be repaid. When a courtier grants a favor, he might be repaid, but it is the King to Whom the most gratitude is due. With the gods, no gratitude was ever due apart from any particular favor being granted; but with God, all gratitude is already due, for He has already given us more than we could ever have asked for, both in this life and the next.

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*Of course, sacrifices aren't made to the saints, unless one considers a deed done in their honor. But spending a day working a soup kitchen in honor of Saint Vincent de Paul is hardly equivalent to offering a young ram to Zeus, since the former is really following one of God's commandments to "love your neighbor," even if it has been inspired by the example of the saint, even if it is done in thanksgiving for the saint's special aide. The ram for Zeus is, well, a ram for Zeus, meant to curry favor with him or appease him, and not offered necessarily because Zeus commanded such a sacrifice. It might be argued that spending the day in the soup kitchen in thanksgiving is not the best motive for caring for "the least of these," or that we oughtn't need the example of a saint to inspire us to do this; but that is for a different day.


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Update: I see that my friend Mr Nathanael Blake has written something of his own concerning the saints, though it is a contrast to what I've said. He appears to have fallen into the trap of rejecting as pagan certain element of Christianity for the mere reason that they are not Protestant, and unfortunate tendency of even the most sincere or amiable of those who mistake rebellion for reform. He does raise a good point in all this: one has to look hard to find much effort in condemning as heretical statements like "I prayed to Saint ___ today."

My question for intellectual Catholics is why they seem so unconcerned. On the one hand, I have their assurances that praying to saints, worshiping objects, etc… are heresies and have no part in true Catholic doctrine. On the other, I see the widespread practice of such and a quiescence from those same intellectual Catholics that seems well beyond any that might be required by tact or diplomatic reform.

I will probably have more to say about this later.  One thing to note:  before condemning such statements as "I prayed to Saint ____ today," there is first the need to establish that such a statement is actually heretical.  This, in turn, depends on what is actually meant by prayer.  Certain types of prayer (e.g. adoration as opposed to veneration, worship as opposed to merely praise), when directed at the saints, would be heretical.  Other types (e.g. communion, petition for aide especially for prayers, thanks for the prayers) are not. More will follow.

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If you enjoyed this post, here are some related ones:

The Devil's in the Details
C.S. Lewis on Apologetics (Quote of the Day)
Dancing with the Saints
 The Idiocy of Iconoclasm
Apologetics and Evangelization
Rediscovering the Saints
Perpetual Apologetics
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Return to Equus nom Veritas home.

Nicene Guys Feed: Review of Three to Get Married

It is a mistake commonly made today that the end of marriage is personal gratification, personal happiness. This mistake is not made merely along political nor even necessarily religious lines. Both the liberal who wishes to expand the meaning of marriage so that it includes two men, two women, or all four and the conservative who believes that marriage ought to be limited solely to the satisfaction of an otherwise sinful sexual urge are guilty in some way of treating marriage as a thing made for an individual’s pleasure. In the former case, marriage exists solely as a means to expand hedonism into a way of life so that pleasure and self-indulgence may be raised to a higher level of social approval. In the latter case, marriage serves no purpose save to limit hedonism for the salvation of each individual’s soul, or for the protection of civilizations.

In the Church today, the answer to this question of marriage is largely found in the Theology of the Body, as taught first and foremost by Pope John Paul the Great. The late pope and his followers taught a view of sexuality in which the marital act becomes an image of divine love. Marriage provides the context for sex, whose end is unitive: that is primarily procreative and secondarily the strengthening of intimacy between spouses. This teaching on sex and marriage has been a great boon to the Church, as it shows among other things that the Church’s reveres rather than rejects sex, holding it to be so holy that to engage in it outside of the bounds of marriage is more akin to blasphemy than to idolatry. That is to say, the Church under the leadership of Pope John Paul II rescued sex not only from the adulterers and fornicators, but also from the prudes and the Gnostics.

In seeing the immense contributions of Pope John Paull II with his Theology of the Body, it is often easy to overlook other writers and thinkers in the Church. As Christopher West noted in the introduction to his The Good News about Sex and Marriage: Answers to Your Honest Questions about Catholic Teaching, “John Paul’s contributions to the Church’s teachings on sex and marriage are so vast that over two-thirds of what the Catholic Church has ever said on the subject has come from his pontificate.” The late pope is not, however, the only great or even popular thinker within the Church to write on the subjects of sex and marriage—far from it, as much of his own writings were drawn and synthesized from the great mystic saints and holy philosophers of the Church: Thomas Aquinas, John of the Cross, and even Augustine.

Read the rest at the Nicene Guys site.

Return to Equus Nom Veritas home.

Nicene Guys Feed: The Place of Works in Salvation

I previously wrote about the importance of works as the manifestation of faith.

Works matter, not because we earn our salvation through these, but because they are the exercise of our faith. They are what gives life to faith, and what makes it manifest. They also become yet another channel for grace, both for ourselves and for others: a grace which strengthens our faith. This is not by any means to our own credit: our good works are the response which faith, hope, and love require of us to be effective. These latter three virtues are granted to us by God—as are any graces. He has willed that salvation must be a cooperative venture: it is a gift to us, but one with which we must cooperate. It is by our works that we engage in this cooperation with Divine grace; God calls us, and we must respond, which we do through our works. Just as sin can be in the body or the spirit, so too must salvation be participated in by both body and spirit.

This is a statement with which the more orthodox and faithful of Catholics would agree. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “Divine providence works also through the actions of creatures. To human beings God grants the ability to cooperate freely with his plans” (see paragraph 323). The form which this cooperation takes is, on the one hand the theological virtues—faith, hope, and love—and on the other hand our works; the former are spiritual things which may be manifested in the latter, but the latter are often physical things which can strengthen the former.



Read the rest at the Nicene Guys site!

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If you enjoyed this post, here are some related ones:

Sola Fide and Works (Nicene Guys)
Another Thought About the Importance of Works in Salvation
C.S. Lewis on the Importance of "Good Work" in "Good Works" (Quote of the Day)
Sloth and Christian Minimalism
Pascal's Wager and Invincible Ignorance: Irreconcilable? (Nicene Guys)
Homogeneity in Heaven and Hell
Religion or Relationship
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Or return to Equus Nom Veritas Home.

TMM: Science and the Death of Wonder

A few days ago I was working in my lab with the other two scientists who are in some way attached to my research project. We were capturing the spacial mode of the laser as it passes through its focus in the seed arm of my experiment by slowly translating a CCD camera through the focal point. The laser in question has an elliptical mode shape, which when passing through its focus momentarily changes the orientation of its major and minor axes. That this happens is not necessarily unusual or surprising--the effect is fairly well-known--and so in a strictly scientific sense, it is "normal."

Thus, when I remarked (mostly to myself) that this effect is "interesting" I suppose that it was inevitable that our group's rather contumely bore would interject his pontifications into my reverie. "No, it's not interesting at all. There's a perfectly good explanation for this," he practically snapped, and then proceeded t give the explanation. In the strictly scientific sense, this is all very true; the effect is very "uninteresting" in that it would be a waste to spend time in our lab trying to investigate this effect, and that the explanation is already known and published. It would not have furthered our research the least, nor would I want to spend time trying to characterize this effect or understand it any more than what was needed to analyze the evolution of the mode structure.

Nevertheless, the effect is still interesting to observe. That we can and pong since have attached some physical explanation to it does not make this any less interesting to behold; that we can describe it mathematically makes it no less a curiosity to observe the thing actually happening. The sunrise does become any less awe-inspiring just because the sun itself is more-or-less stationary, nor are the changing of the leaves in fall less fascinating because we undertand the biological and chemical processes involved. A rainbow does not inspire any less wonder because we have an understanding of diffraction, nor are "shooting stars" somehow of diminished interest to onlookers merely because they are not, in fact, stars. Fascination with the ocean's tides does not ebb when it is explained that they are caused by the gravitational force of the moon acting on the ocean.

To posit that a thing is less interesting because we know why or how it happens is to thrust aside any sense of awe or wonder to those things which cannot be scientifically explained. Since there is a large and growing portion of the population who hold that science will eventually be able to explain any and all phenomenon, this a dichotomy between understanding and wonderment must ultimately lead to the death of wonder itself. The scientistic attitude which reduces a man to a complex thinking-machine leaves no room for the truly human experiences of astonishment, wonder, fascination, awe, or marvel. In such a world there is no room for the mind's imagination to live, and no place for mystery or joy.

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If you enjoyed this post, here are some related ones:

Science Cells
Celling Salvation
The Sanitary, Sterilized Life
Three Sunrises (Poem)
Science Without Limits
The Limits of a Limitless Science (Book Review)
Professor Walzeburn (Poem)
G.K. Chesterton on Ceremony and Science
The Idiocy of Modern Man
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Quote of the Day: Archbishop Fulton J Sheen on Children

God did not intend that strength in a man and beauty in a woman should endure, but that they should reappear in their children. Here is where God's Providence reveals itself. Just at a time when it might seem that beauty is fading in one, and strength in the other, God sends children to protect and revive both. When the first boy is born, the husband reappears in all his strength and promise and, in the language of Virgil, "from high heaven descends a worthier race of men." When the first girl is born, the wife revives in her beauty and charm....Each child that is born begins to be a bead in the great rosary of love, binding the parents together in the rosy chains of a sweet slavery of love" (Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Three to Get Married).

We live in a culture which too often rejects the gift of children. Too many people cry out that it is the barren who are blessed: if this is the sign of the times, it is an ill one (see Luke 23:29). It is not a coincidence that the divorce rates began to steadily climb around the same time as contraception became the preferred form of "family planning."

Marriage is meant to be the beginning (and not the end) of a new family, one which grows with the birth of each new child. But it precisely for the rearing of children that marriages are necessary in a strictly civil sense. The Catholic concept of marriage includes procreation as the primary end to marriage. This procreation does not even stop when the children grow up and move out, but continues even with the granchildren. It includes not only bearing and then raising children, but also educating them and nurturing them, and teaching them virtue and social skills and the Faith. As our Catechism states,

"By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory."

Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves. God himself said: "It is not good that man should be alone," and "from the beginning [he] made them male and female"; wishing to associate them in a special way in his own creative work, God blessed man and woman with the words: "Be fruitful and multiply." Hence, true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it, without diminishment of the other ends of marriage, are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day.

The fecundity of conjugal love cannot be reduced solely to the procreation of children, but must extend to their moral education and their spiritual formation. "The role of parents in education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute." The right and the duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1652 and 2221).

If marriage is ordered to procreation, then the graces which come from the sacrament must also be ordered to help parents in this task. Thus, when children are rejected, the graces available through marriage are also rejected; without the supernatural element of grace, we are left with the natural elements of marriage--sex, perhaps affection, hopefully friendship. These things are all good, but none of them is meant to sustain a marriage.

Sex may bring the spouses closer, but if separated from its end in procreation it cannot be a full giving of the self, and thus is to some extent insincere. It is still pleasurable for a time, but if it is not a genuine and unique gift of the self, it will eventually lose its allure. It is like giving a gift which is missing a part--even a large part--for example, a novel from which has been torn the pages on which are written the climax and conclusion. Such a novel may be well-written and gripping, but in the end it leaves something to be desired.

Similarly, friendship is a noble element of any marriage, and if the spouses could not be friends then the marriage will be all the more difficult. However, neither of these is enough to sustain a marriage, for both spouses surely have other friends of the opposite sex. When the interests, habits, and even personality of each spouse evolves in time, the relationship of the friendship may also evolve, becoming something which it was not during the exchange of the vows. Similarly for affection, since affection springs from familiarity, which may also breed contempt.

Neither sex nor friendship nor affection can sustain a marriage--even in combination--even if all three are important to a marriage. Though marriage includes these things, it is more than all three, greater than all three. Eros, filios, and estorge are all present, but the most important form of love is absent this list: that absolute, total, perfect love, agape, which being perfect is impossible for men to attain without God's aide. This aide--grace--can perfect love in men, but only if it is accepted on God's terms: an openness to procreation.

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If you like this post and want to read more, here are some related posts:
The Sanitary, Sterilized Life
Reflection on a Rib (Nicene Guys)
Procreation and Commitment As Characteristics of Christian Marriage (Thirty Minute Musings)
Love and Responsibility (Book Review)
Speculation About Augustine and Birth Control (Thirty Minute Musings)
What's in a Name:  Marriage or Holy Matrimony?
Abstinence, Chastity, and Sexuality (Nicene Guys)
What is the Purpose of Morality? Part 2: Marriage, Chastity, and Sexual Morality (Catholic America Today)
Contraception and Discernment (Nicene Guys)

Wright is Right

Note: this post is rated PG-13 (and some of the linked posts are probably closer to R).


The indispensable Mr John C Wright has a couple of posts on his site which are of interest. Specifically, they pertain to my post concerning the problem of "date rape"--both the moral problem of the promiscuity and the pragmatic problem of cheapening the atrocity of rape--and to the two articles to which said post was a partial response; and to the follow-up to one of those articles. An excerpt from one of Mr Wright's pieces:

The basic flaw is that feminists start by seeking equality, but finish by seeking androgyny. Girls are not taught to be feminine and modest; boys are not taught self-command and decency. When mixed, narcissistic cruelly selfish males will then simply exploit, as far as they can, the narcissistic but defenseless females. Equality starts as a perfectly reasonable demand for women's suffrage and the right to own property, but ends with the oddly unnatural equality of a naked jello wrestling cage match between a rapist and a nymph. Unless she is Xena Warrior Princess, Wonder Woman, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, her chances of emerging from the cage unscathed are dim.

Most schoolboy friendships begin with a schoolyard fight. The way boys make friends with boys is that you roll around in the sweaty dirt, punching the candidate for friendship in the face or the stomach over and over again, and if he is man enough afterward not to cry, or even man enough to shake hands, you know he has character.

Most schoolboy crushes begin with euphoria, tenderness, shyness, and awe akin to idolatry directed toward “the little redhaired girl” (or whoever) combined with a powerful werewolflike hunger to seize her and carry her off to your cave and have your way with her. The way boys make friends with girls is to put on a tie, comb your hair, give her a bouquet of posies and shyly ask her out to a movie.

Now, I strongly suspect that not a single one of my readers of the fairer sex met her beau in this fashion. This fashion is out of fashion.

But I also strongly suspect that only one or two of my readers of the fairer sex met her beau after the fashion of schoolboy friendships, with your young man sitting on you in the sweaty dust punching you in the stomach over and over again until you cry uncle, and then waiting to see if you were ballsy enough not to weep or snitch.

However, I do suspect that modern boyish attitudes toward girls is much closer to the schoolyard fight than to the shy proffer of posies.

{snip}

With the abolition of the feminine mystique, a woman can attract a mate only using crude and obvious markers or identifiers indicating her willingness to mate. The proverbial dropping a hankie to give the swain an opportunity to be gallant would be ridiculous in the modern context: the easiest way to attract the attention of the porn-deluged and jaded young men is to dress like a streetwalker.

We hear these days accounts of bulimic woman starving themselves to death: literally dying for a body image. When there are no cultural markers or identifiers of sexuality that attract the thoughts and fancies of the male, all that is left is natural markers, or, in the case of silicon implants, unnatural. Imagine a science fictional society where every teen boy keeps a perfectly pliant and perfectly formed Marilyn Munrobot under the bed for lonely nights: the women of that day and age, in order to lure the males away from their robots would have to dress, act, and be shaped as provocatively and lusciously as the artificial beings with whom they are in competition. Our society is oddly close to this, with the images from the Internet providing the ersatz feminine eye-candy of the Munrobot.

The main thing that a Munrobot, or those who teach a young man to treat young women as if they were boys like him, but merely curvaceous, pleasantly scented boys with long shining locks, soft and well-formed hands, glittering eyes, ruby lips and pearly teeth that let escape words and laughter at a higher pitch than his, fails to teach the young man is a double standard. With other men, be respectful and rough, and punch them when they need punching but not before; with women be respectful and gentle, and kiss them when they need kissing but not before. Without this double standard, there is no civility or civilization, and women are merely prey.

Flare for the dramatic and exaggerations aside (most schoolboy friendships start with a fight?), Mr Wright has a few good (if somewhat recycled) points. First, the result of the destruction of our traditional morality is that chivalry is replaced with laws. Doctor Walter Williams has mentioned a similar phenomenon regarding, for example, rules on public buses (seats which are required to be yielded to elderly and disabled persons? What ever happened to simple courtesy, to say nothing of chivalry?). Second, the losers in this culture are 1) the real gentlemen (that is, the courteous, chivalrous, and noble-heated men), especially those who are striving for chastity; 2) the women who preferred the "old" way of doing things, who honor virginity and modesty and chastity and who want to be romanced; and 3) all the other women.

Quote of the Day: Archbishop Fulton J Sheen on the Eucharist

Maternity is a natural Eucharist. To every child at her breast, the mother says: "Take ye and eat; this is my body; this is my blood. Unless you eat me flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life within you."...As under the species of bread, day by day, Christ nourishes the Christian, so, drop by drop, the mother nourishes the child. As the divine Eucharist gives immortality ("The man who eats this bread will live eternally, " John 6:59), so this human eucharist of motherhood is the guarantee of temporal life.
--Archbishop Fulton J Sheen, Three to Get Married

A charge against the early Church was that Christians engaged in cannibalism, because in the celebration of their liturgy they "ate the LORD's Flesh, and drank His Blood." The charge was widespread enough that both Octavius Minucius Felix (c. 160-250 AD) and his contemporary Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170-230 AD) felt the need to address it--Felix with a sort of explanation of the charge, Hippolytus with an explanation of the actual Eucharistic prayer used in the the Church at that time. Felix writes, "The charge of ritual cannibalism was probably based on confused accounts of the Christian eucharist. Hippolytus of Rome tells us what actually went on at a Christian service. This early eucharistic prayer [is] still used in some churches."

The charge went away for a while, but it has come back with and largely because of the rise of two opposed ideologies: modernity on the one hand, and Protestant Fundamentalism on the other. A point of some frustration in modern Catholic apologetics is in explaining how the doctrine of the Eucharist does not amount not cannibalism: how the Host does not "drip" with blood, how the sacrifice at the Mass is a re-presentation (not a re-sacrificing), how Christ though consumed in communion is still whole. Then there is the question of accidents as opposed to essentials--the Eucharist is essentially Christ's Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, but accidentally bread and wine--a topic which itself can be difficult to grasp.

Archbishop Sheen offers a more sensible--and perhaps intuitive or familiar--analogy for explaining the Eucharist. Every infant who nurses at his mother's breast is eating "of her flesh and blood," yet there is never a mistaking of this for cannibalism. The same is true of an unborn baby--though this is not necessarily "eating" in the same sense as the infant nursing, since the nursing infant consumes through the mouth like an adult, but the unborn receives his nutrition through the umbilical cord.

The analogy goes deeper than just this, however. In many (though not all) forms of ritualistic cannibalism, there was a belief that those who consumed the victim's parts would gain his strengths. Similarly, when an infant consumes the mil from his mother, he receives a number of antibodies and other immunity-enhancing compounds from her; however, unlike with cannibalism, the exchange is not one-way, for hormones are released inside the woman's body, which improve her bonding to her child; and she, too, is made stronger, in that she will be less likely to develop breast, ovarian, or endometrial cancer (among other things).

Why is this like Communion? In eating of Christ's Body and Blood, we are not hoping to "take" His divinity. Rather, we are more completely incorporated as members of His Body--that is, His Mystical Body--and thus that Mystical Body becomes the stronger for our greater participation in it. It is true that we receive grace in consuming the Eucharist, and that the grace will make us stronger--more able to resist sins--just like an infant drinking his mother's milk becomes stronger for the antibodies he receives. But at the same time, as we receive God's grace, we become more receptive to His Will, and thus Christ may strengthen His mystical Body through us. The cannibal consumes his neighbor's body to strengthen himself at the expense of his neighbor; the Catholic consumes Christ's Body at the command of Christ, in part to strengthen Himself but in part to help strengthen Christ's Own Body.

Quote of the Day: G.K. Chesterton on Ceremony and Science

This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise to the most awkward and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in rude lands or ages. The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one-- absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of the professor. The teamed man will say, for instance, "The natives of Mumbojumbo Land believe that the dead man can eat and will require food upon his journey to the other world. This is attested by the fact that they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with this rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe." To any one acquainted with humanity this way of talking is topsy-turvy. It is like saying, "The English in the twentieth century believed that a dead man could smell. This is attested by the fact that they always covered his grave with lilies, violets, or other flowers. Some priestly and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect of this action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much disturbed in mind because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the funeral." It may be of course that savages put food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat, or weapons with a dead man because they think that a dead man can fight. But personally I do not believe that they think anything of the kind. I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers, because it is an exceedingly natural and obvious thing to do. We do not understand, it is true, the emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that is because, like all the important emotions of human existence it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself. And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason that we do not understand ourselves either.
-G.K. Chesterton, from Heretics

Sometimes. it's all-too-easy to poke fun of what we call "ceremony," or worse yet, "ritualism." These things seems to us to be dead things, things from the long-forgotten past which don't make sense to modern men with their modern minds. Yet, as Mr Chesterton notes, even the most modern and "rationalistic" man ultimately undergoes a sort of unquestioned ritual.

The modern man wonders at the garb of the Catholic priest in Mass, with his flowing robes and liturgical colors. Or he turns his nose at the scent of the incense and plugs his ears agains the peels of the communion bells. All this he does as he slips a colored silken rope about his neck, or sprays a scented liquid on his shaved cheek. He scoffs at the peels of the bells while obeying the chimes of his alarm each morning, going about his sub-conscious ritual.

The former rituals are in worship to an unseen God Who once walked and dwelt amongst us. It is the God Whom man does not want, Whom he rejects on the excuse that He cannot be seen. God he'll reject out-of-hand, yet the "sophisticated" man accept millions of minor premises which cannot be seen. The quarks and dark matter and darker energy, the vibrating cosmic strings and the universe which is infinite and yet contained in a "multiverse" whose other dimensions cannot ever be crossed--none of these things will ever be experienced by him. Though he cannot reach out to touch any of them, they are each more real to this rational man than his own neighbors.

He laughs at his neighbors and their "slavish" worship of the unseen God of the universe while subjecting himself to the far more demanding gods of efficiency, or career, or time. He will not trifle with such superstitions as his answers beheld, mocking their every custom or ceremony, yet his life is marked by a ritual dance which is far more strange than their customs ever were.

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If you enjoyed this post, here are some related ones:

Science and the Death of Wonder (Thirty Minute Musings)
On Canonizing Chesterton, Heroic Virtue, and Everyday Life
A Sort-of Review of Chesterton's Heretics (Book Review)
Chesterton on Dogma
Chesterton on Birth Control
The Idiocy of Modern Man
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LDLaMSM Update 5: "Death to the Pope!"

Today, April 15, 2010, we are witnessing the logical consequences of the media's furious campaign against the pope combined with the War on terror, with a little bit of the New Atheist rhetoric thrown in for flavoring. In the Australian state-controlled media outlet ABC, Mr Bob Ellis has thrown down the gauntlet:

No-one has yet suggested bombing the Vatican and pursuing the Pope through the sewers of Europe till he is caught and riddled with bullets in order to stop priests buggering choirboys in Boston, Chicago, Dublin and Sydney. But a precise mirror image of this is how we behaved in Afghanistan....If we do this violence to the Taliban for the way they treat their women and children, why not the Catholics too? Why not bomb the Vatican, and riddle the Pope with bullets as he staggers out of the flames?" (emphasis mine).

This, from a supposedly "rational" person, a self-described "Fundamentalist Atheist Humanist." Not to be outdone by Hitchens and Dawkins--who "only" want to arrest the Pope when he makes his trip to England (a foolhardy endeavor, according to one UK Lawyer)--Mr Ellis insists that the only fitting penalty for the pope's alleged crimes is death: and a horrible, violent death at that. All of this, and yet there is still no credible evidence of the pope's culpability in all of this. The three cases which the media has trumped up and then brought forth have each failed to actually show any guilt on the pope's part.

But notice that he doesn't stop with the pope; "why not Catholics too?" His target is the whole of the Church (not to mention the nation of Italy), which must be silenced and crushed under the (atheist-run) state's boots, until all resistance is driven out. This is the logical consequence of the (less violent) calls by New Atheists such as Dawkins, Hitchens, Meyers, Weinberg, and Harris, who have long said in their own ways that religion ought to be suppressed. For example, Professor Dawkins advocates making it a crime to raise one's children religiously; Harris, in his End of Faith, takes is a step further when he states offhand that religion ought to be suppressed.

Professor Stephen Weinberg once remarked--in his usual pithy though baseless ad hominum style--that "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion." As it turns out, some atheists are every bit as happy (and more!) to do bad things as any religious people. Of course, anybody who has passing familiarity with the twentieth century--with its wars of (atheistic) nationalism, of (atheistic) totalitarianism, and finally of communism--already knew that.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media continues to wage a self-congratulatory war against the pope and his defenders. As Mr Mark Shea notes:

This, among many other reasons, is why I find it so hard to credit the constant recommendation of MSM journalists that I get down on my knees in gratitude to them for their sterling and knightly high purpose of Reforming the Church. To quote Robert Bolt's St. Thomas More, "This is not Reformation. This is war on the Church." And it is using abused children as human shields.

Tips of the derby cap to Mr Matthew Archibold and Fr Dwight Longenecker.

Return to Equus Nom Veritas home.

A Catholic Woman and a Catholyc Womon

The more stuff I read coming from Ms Maureen Dowd, the more I understand the saying "With friends like these, who needs enemies?" Miz Dowd typifies what it means to be a Catholyc: she hates the Church and the leaders thereof, rejects out of hand any numbers of important Catholic moral and doctrinal teaching, and at every turn looks to undermine the Church's teachings. For all of this, she doesn't have the intellectual honesty to admit that she really is a Protestant in Catholic's clothing. In her latest hit piece, she describes talking to a "group of educated and sophisticated young professional women." Upon reflecting on the question as to why this group tolerates the oppression of women in their countries, she has a sort of self-styled epiphany:

"How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination? I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing."

The question is: to what is Miz Dowd "acquiescing?" To whom is she subordinating herself? Because it certainly isn't the Church. I cannot recall any particular instance in which she has publicly "acquiesced in her own subordination" to any teaching of the Church, let alone to any members of the hierarchy. She certainly doesn't "acquiesce in her own subordination" to the pope or any of the bishops: rather, she prefers to libel the pope and swing hard at any bishop who calls her to task for it.

There are others who are similarly frustrated by Ms Dowd's campaign against the Pope (and the Church). One such faithful voice is that of Dr Susan Timoney. As Dr Timoney notes,

There are so many ways in which I could respond to such a startling statement. I did a double take because anyone familiar with Maureen Dowd’s writing should be really surprised that she described herself as subordinating herself to the church. There are not many of the Church’s fundamental teachings that she has not held in contempt. If she has subordinated herself to anything, it would be a false feminism that celebrates abortion, artificial birth control and no-fault divorce which ultimately contribute to the objectification of women.

To all of this may be added her dissent from the Church on theological issues, namely the doctrinal teachings of the Church concerning the Eucharist. The Eucharist is not just a symbol, Ms Dowd, it is the Real Presence of Christ: Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. This would, of course, be one of the "core" doctrine of the Church which differentiates her from most other Christian sects or denominations. Maureen Dowd has bowed to the altars of feminism and modernity, and she has rejected the altar of her Church. Tragically, she has chosen to be counted amongst the Catholycs, if not as the first, most important, or even most heretical. She is, however, the most widely syndicated.

Nicene Guys Feed: Sola Fide and Works

"For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God; Not of works, that no man may glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in good works, which God hath prepared that we should walk in them. For which cause be mindful that you, being heretofore Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called circumcision in the flesh, made by hands; That you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the conversation of Israel, and strangers to the testament, having no hope of the promise, and without God in this world. But now in Christ Jesus, you, who some time were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh: Making void the law of commandments contained in decrees; that he might make the two in himself into one new man, making peace" (Ephesians 2:8-14).

The first sentence of this passage is often quoted by Protestants of every sect as “proof” that man is saved “through faith alone.” This is done in spite of the fact that the word “alone” appears nowhere in this or any other verse pertaining to salvation through faith by grace. An interesting point of my own personal experience with his passage is that I have never heard the whole passage quoted to me by any of my Protestant friends—to say nothing of those who would prefer to be outright opponents—only the first verse is ever quoted. Perhaps this is because it is easy to assume that the “core” of the message is contained in this first verse, and that the rest are just the details.


Read the rest at the Nicene Guys site.

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If you enjoyed this post, here are some related ones:

Pascal's Wager and Invincible Ignorance: Irreconcilable? (Nicene Guys)
Ignorance vs a Desire to Learn (Thirty Minute Musings)
Warnings and Ignorance (Thirty Minute Musings)
Religion or Relationship: A False Dichotomy
A Fitting Means of Salvation
Homogeneity in Heaven and Hell
What Happens to Non-Christians When They Die: a Speculative Reflection
Of Infants and Salvation (Nicene Guys)
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Return to Equus Nom Veritas home.

Planned Parenthood on HIV

The news service CNSNews.com has a story up today about the International Planned Parenthood Federation's "guide" for young people who are infected with HIV. Among other things, the guide opposes laws which make it a crime for people who are infected with HIV not to disclose this to their sexual partners. Is there more to this than non-disclosure?

In a guide for young people published by the International Planned Parenthood Federation, the organization says it opposes laws that make it a crime for people not to tell sexual partners they have HIV. The IPPF's “Healthy, Happy and Hot” guide also tells young people who have the virus that they have a right to “fun, happy and sexually fulfilling lives.”

HIV is the virus that causes AIDS.

“Some countries have laws that say people living with HIV must tell their sexual partner(s) about their status before having sex, even if they use condoms or only engage in sexual activity with a low risk of giving HIV to someone else,” the guide states. “These laws violate the rights of people living with HIV by forcing them to disclose or face the possibility of criminal charges.”

The guide continues: “They may worry that people will find out something else they have kept secret, like that they are using injecting drugs or, having sex outside of marriage or having sex with people of the same gender. People in long-term relationships who find out they are living with HIV sometime fear that their partner will react violently or end the relationship.”

“Young people living with HIV have the right to sexual pleasure,” the guide states under the heading “Sexual Pleasure; Have Fun Explore and Be Yourself.” {All emphases mine}

Wow. I would ask--like this fellow--if Planned Parenthood has considered the sexual partner's right to life, and to not contract HIV unawares. Then again, it's Planned Parenthood we're talking about: they don't believe in all that "right to life" stuff.

Tip of the derby cap to Mr Matthew Archibold

LDLaMSM Update 4: Reporting...or Distorting

Father Philip Neri Powell OP nails it in his assessment of the whole media coverage of the sex abuse scandal thing. I agree with him--there is no problem with the media types who are just doing their jobs. This is not, however, what they have been doing in their coverage thus far.

What I object to is shoddy reporting based exclusively on material leaked to the media from the lawyers of alleged victims. Any reporter worth her journalism degree should know that lawyers are advocates for a paying client. There is only one side to any story when you're paid to tell your employer's side.

This is just to name one fault in the media's woeful "coverage" of the crisis so far. "What I object to is the media spreading misinformation, distorting the facts, and outright lying." This is done, of course, because the media isn't so much interested in reporting anymore (we saw that in spades during the 2008 elections, and indeed in the rather-gate scandals from the 2004 elections, to name two political motives). The media is largely run by Catholycs and anti-Catholics, and by types who want to see the Church's influence in the world die out by any means necessary, including dishonest ones. They are especially interested in hammering on the all-male, celibate clergy (in spite of the fact that there is no greater prevalence amongst this clergy than the population at large; indeed, by all accounts which show a difference, the prevalence is less amongst priests that men in general). As Fr John Zuhlsdorf notes,

The people behind the mainstream media (MSM) attacks on the Church have certain goals, short-term and long-term. Among their immediate objectives is to distort the view of the average person about the Church to the point where the Church will be forced to ordain women and, for the Latin Church, eliminate mandatory celibacy.

They want to twist the Church way from being faithful to her conviction that a male ordained priesthood is of divine origin and away from the counter-cultural sign of clerical celibacy. If the Church caves in to save its image in a secular sense, it’s game over.
Clerical sexual abuse of children is simply the convenient club which which they hope to beat this message into the heads of the people in the street.

Therefore, they are hammering into you that both ordination for men only and celibacy produce a pederast priesthood. That is fallacious. Period.

The mainstream media has been doing a full-court press on this issue, in part because they want no competing voices to their own (and the Church is most definitely that). They want to force the Church to accept changes which she cannot make. As Fr Powell puts it, "What I object to is the media's obvious obsession with using the scandals to advocate for changes within the Church that cannot/will not happen. Reporters report facts; they do not advocate for reforms that suit their political and ideological goals" (emphasis mine). This is probably the most despicable part of the media's libeling of the pope: he has done more than anybody to confront this crisis, yet he is the target of the media's smear campaign (which is really aimed at smearing the whole Church by proxy). As Mr Mark Shea puts it,

"The frustrating thing for me about the press's recent vendetta against Benedict is that their insistence on battening on anything and everything as grounds for demanding his resignation and, if all goes well, his murder is that in defending Benedict against all the over-the-top hostility, it makes it very difficult to find the "middle ground" of common sense in the reforms that really do need to happen (including, if you ask me, a number of episcopal resignations). These MSM people seem to have no actual interest in the good of the Church or even in the good of victims who are not usefully Catholic. The only real focus appears to be self-congratulatory moralism and a thirst for Benedict's blood. So this week we are instructed that Benedict, who labored to fix a broken bureaucracy is guilty, guilty, guilty of... not being able to work miracles as he tried to laicize a couple of bad priests. Never mind that the priests were *not* reshuffled, nor that Benedict had no jurisdiction over them, nor that he never tried to hide their crimes, nor that he labored to laicize them in a crappy system he was trying to fix." (Emphases mine, links his)

That the Church has had a sexual abuse crisis is obvious, and that she should take steps to prevent it from happening again is too--the Church has indeed undertaken some of these steps. It does not follow that the leader of the Church on earth should be tarred and feathered (by the media or otherwise), deposed, arrested etc. for this. He has done more than any individual to fix the problem--as of yet no credible evidence has been brought forth against him as a part of the problem--and (as best we can measure) his solutions are working.


Return home.

Nicene Guys Feed: First Principles and Scientific Limits

My latest piece for the Nicene Guys is up! This one is a philosophy of science piece, for those who enjoy this.
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A frequent homework or test question presented to physicists-in-training is to derive the final relationship between objects, forces, or concepts from “first principles.” The idea for the physicist is to see where such a relationship comes from, beginning with “basic physics” principles—Newton’s Laws or Maxwell’s Equations, for example. Such first principles are generally well-established and ubiquitously accepted within the physics community, and are sometimes thought of as the most basic concepts in physics, from which all the other laws of physics can be derived.

Philosophical arguments and political discourse rely on similar “first principles,” as outlined by Aristotle (among others) in his "Rhetoric." This is to say nothing of theological discussions, legal cases, and even the act of teaching (or learning): all must begin with a basic set of principles (or other assumptions), which must be true if the rest of the argument is to hold merit: the first principles are the base upon which rests the conclusion, and it cannot stand of these principles are in error.

Read the rest at the Nicene Guys site.
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For the Catholics: Bishop Trautman vs the Liturgy

For any of my Catholic readers, Fr John Zuhlsdorf has some comments about Bishop Trautman's latest essay concerning the new translation of the Mass. Incidentally, attached to the bottom of the essay is a survey concerning the new translations. It may be worth the effort, especially if you don't like the current translation of the Mass. There is also a poll for those who are interested in such things, but the options available are pretty sparse.

Date Rape and the Cheapening of an Atrocity

Some ideas don't die--they just fade out of my conscience for a while. When I was a student at Oregon State University, I began to notice an unfortunate tendency amongst the writers, thinkers, and speakers of a feminist bent which I had not noticed or paid much attention to previously. I hadn't noticed this trend in some time; then again, I've made less effort to follow current feminist thought since moving to Texas, and my life has certainly been the better for it.

For all I knew, the trend may have died off--not soon enough--but alas was only lying dormant. I was reminded of it today by Ms Mary Lingwall, who for all her good intentions seems to me to have landed on the wrong side of this issue. That trend is to broaden the term "rape" to include some things which are quite frankly not rape. Miz Lingwall's article was in turn a response to an article written by Mr ALex Knepper. The offending passage--if I had to pick one passage from Mr Knepper's diatribe--is the one in which he notes that "date rape" is an incoherent term:

Let’s get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy’s room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK? To cry “date rape” after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident is the equivalent of pulling a gun to someone’s head and then later claiming that you didn’t ever actually intend to pull the trigger.

“Date rape” is an incoherent concept. There’s rape and there’s not-rape, and we need a line of demarcation. It’s not clear enough to merely speak of consent, because the lines of consent in sex — especially anonymous sex — can become very blurry. If that bothers you, then stick with Pat Robertson and his brigade of anti-sex cavemen! Don’t jump into the sexual arena if you can’t handle the volatility of its practice!

Disagree as I do with Mr Knepper's rhetoric and style--not too mention some of his analysis--I must note that he is right, to a point. Rape is on of the more horrendous atrocities in which man in his fallen state engages. There are few sins which count as worse. I will also note that "date rape" can be a form of "rape" under certain circumstances; the situation described by Mr Knepper isn't one of those circumstances. To be fair, there do exist parties in which actual "date rape" drugs are used, and when this is done the crime is possibly every bit as bad as what Ms Whoopi Goldberg famously called "rape-rape," that is, violent rape.

There are many kinds of "date rape" drugs, and I am no expert in any of them, but I can say that alcohol isn't a "date rape" drug. This is especially true when the person who is consuming the alcohol knows full well what he or she is drinking. If the young lady--in her drunken and slightly impaired state--decides to have sex with one of the random party-goers, she has given her consent. Provided that there is no additional "rough play," it is disingenuous for her to cry "rape" the next day when she decides that it wasn't the best idea in the world.

With this said, Ms Lingwall also brings up a few good points of her own.

In effect, Knepper falls into the easiest trope of blaming the victim, as if by drinking, a woman surrenders autonomy over her body. In a public statement submitted to the blog Jezebel, Knepper uses anti-feminist intellectual Camille Paglia’s idea of equating a woman drinking at a party, flirting with a man or wearing a short skirt, with her leaving her purse open and unattended in a public area.

“If you walk away, you will lose it,” Knepper said in the statement. “Of course, it is not ‘your fault’ that the purse is gone, and the police should pursue the criminal. But I also have the right to look at you and say, ‘What on earth were you thinking?’ This is not ‘victim-blaming.’ It is a call for personal responsibility.”

While a call for personal responsibility is seemingly all well and good, Knepper’s use of Paglia’s analogy of likening a drinking woman’s body to an unattended purse was a poor choice in his effort to defend himself against “blaming the victim” allegations.

Because now, instead of just blaming the victim, Knepper refuses to call for any personal responsibility on the part of date-rape perpetrators. Knepper does concede to the illegality of purse stealing and rape, but somehow, the rape victim must still be held personally accountable for the crime perpetrated against him or her, in Knepper’s eyes.

This is a problem with Mr Knepper's rhetoric, which is that while his point is valid, his analogy is not. A man who steals a purse is every bit as guilty of theft whether he stole it from his victim's home while she was away or from the park bench while her back was turned. By extension, a rapist is every bit as guilty of his heinous crime whether he committed it through violent force or by drugging the girl. In either case, he should be punished for the crime of rape, including in additional any physical abuse which he doles out on the helpless woman. Where Ms Lingwall has gone wrong is in overreaching with her repudiation of Mr Knepper's bad analogy.

I will for a moment expand the purse analogy so that it better fits Knepper's scenario. Suppose a woman goes to the party and gets very drunk. On her way back home, she meets a homeless man who acquires all of her money by the mere action of asking her to give it to him. She withdraws all of the money in her purse and gives it to the beggar--$1000--because in her drunken judgment this seems like the right thing to do.

Is that homeless person then guilty of theft when on the next day she realizes that she meant to give him only $1? I think not. Should the homeless man be taken to jail and tried and sentenced for robbery because the woman happened to be very drunk when she gave him all of this money? Again, no. Neither, then, should a man at a party be called a "rapist" (let alone be tried and convicted for rape) because he had sex with a woman who had drunk herself into a state of moral stupor.

This, of course, brings up the question of morality. Is it "morally licit" for a man to have sex with a woman who has impaired her ability to give consent by binge drinking? Is it the "right thing to do?" This question becomes more difficult when a transcendent moral order is rejected. For those who embrace traditional--that is, Judeo-Christian--moral norms, sex is only morally licit inside of marriage*. The Catholic could say that when it is used to consummate marriage, sex is sacramental, but beyond the bounds of this consummation it becomes sinful. The more radical amongst the feminists have a slightly different take, which is that sex is sacramental when enjoyed by a woman but sinful if committed by a man. And, of course, there is the basic secularist (not necessarily atheist) definition that sex is acceptable is consensual and not acceptable otherwise.

The secularist, if he is consistent with consent being the arbiter of whether or not the action is good, is for the most part left with saying one of two things. Either nothing is wrong with these drunken intercourses, or that the problem lies with over-imbibing, thereby impairing the ability to give consent. Similarly, for the Christian the whole scenario is immoral. While Christianity doesn't require teetotalism, is certainly frowns upon gluttony (of which excessive drinking is certainly a form). Thus, the point at which the partiers have gone wrong is in over-imbibing. The act of fornication only makes this worse.

This does not absolve the man who takes advantage of the woman's drunkenness to (nonviolently) have his way with her. The beggar who accepts $1000 without question from an obviously drunk woman is not committing any crime, but he is not exactly acting morally, hard as it may be for him to turn this sum down. He is still guilty of taking advantage of her, albeit only after she has placed herself in that position; the temptation which he feels of accepting the $1000 is surely no less than the temptation felt by the man who finds himself tempted to sex at a party; it may be no more, either.

However, the sin of fornication is not best compounded by bearing false witness. This is exactly what is done when a woman accuses a man of "rape" when she consented at every step of the way. To be sure, if at some point she say "no" and he continues, an entirely different line is crossed; but this is by no means as heinous a crime as the violent rape or the drugged rape in which her consent was never given at any point. To be sure, there is certainly guilt to be born by the man who continues after the woman says "no," and that guilt should be expatiated for what it is.

It is not, however, the same as rape, because the woman did give her consent initially. This would be somewhat akin to the drunken woman giving the beggar her money, and then leaving for a moment, only to chase after him and demand the money back while he is purchasing cigarettes at the store. When the beggar refuses to return the money--and especially if he is no longer able to return all of the money--he is hardly guilty of robbing her. To call this robbery is to take away any real meaning from the word. Similarly, "“To cry ‘date rape’ after you sober up the next morning and regret the incident" robs the word rape of its meaning.

Does this make the actions of the man at the party moral? By no means, and he will have to answer for this, either by repenting now or later. It is not, however, equivalent to the violence of rape, or of the abuse of a drugged rape (e.g. a rape involving drugging the victim without her knowledge or consent). Nor should it be, because the result is that while this form of immorality is raised to a higher level of indignation, the more heinous atrocity of rape is cheapened, and the outcry against it dulled. It does an injustice to the victims of a violent rape when becoming a "rape victim" means only that the woman was drunk when she had sex, and regretted it later. By expanding "rape" to include things which are not rape, we coarsen the public conscience against rape and create a whole host of accomplice-victims.

At the same time, it creates a new class of victims: men who are falsely accused of being rapists. Reprobates that the men at these parties may be, they are hardly rapists. A significant number of men have surely been involved in such situations (though I am not one of them), and there are surely plenty of women who have, too--without crying "rape" and reporting it as a crime--all of who tend to become a little less upset when they hear about a real rape taking place. It's a lot easier to brush of reports of these atrocities when said atrocities are re-defined to include an experience ubiquitous at some of the more morally lax frat houses across the country. This surely leads to more of the "societal confusion" about rape which Ms Lingwall rightfully bemoans. It also leads to a real form of "blaming the victim" in even when an actual rape (or other heinous crime) has occurred.

As Mr Schaeffer from The Art of Manliness puts it,

I once read a proverb that told the tale of a young man who found himself walking down the street of the town’s seductress. On cue she came out of her house to meet him as he passed by; she was dressed in revealing clothing and explained that her husband was away on business. “Come in, let’s enjoy ourselves ’til morning,” she offered. With her smooth words and seductive tone she got him to come inside. The proverb ended with the following words:
All at once he followed her like an ox going to the slaughter, like a deer stepping into a noose till an arrow pierces his liver, like a bird darting into a snare, little knowing it will cost him his life.
As my friend and I were discussing this I commented that he was so foolish to go inside the house when he knew full well what was going to happen. “You’re wrong,” challenged my friend, “he was foolish the second that he stepped down her street.”

The best way for a woman to avoid becoming a victim of "date rape" is to avoid placing herself in the situations which are known to lead to that kind of thing. Similarly, this is the best way for men to avoid being labeled "date rapists." To paraphrase Mr Christopher West, people who are in that situation crossed "the line" a long time before.

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*For a deeper understanding of these bounds, I would recommend delving into the Theology of the Body as taught by Pope John Paul the Great and the plethora of theologians and commentators who have followed him. Note that one of the bounds, properly understood, is consent, but that the bounds go far beyond just "being married" and "consenting."

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Of Womin and Min: A Rant
Thoughts about "SlutWalk" (Thirty Minute Musings)
Modesty and the Culture Wars (Catholic America Today)
Love or Power (Quote of the Day)
Wright is Right
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