I’m thinking of writing a country song called “Barack Obama Done Stole My Heart.” And, as you all reel in shock and horror, let me specify that this would not be a loving tribute to the Commander in Chief, but rather a lament that, given our country’s steady saunter towards socialism, I’ve become sadly cynical about any effort that is supposedly aimed at helping “the poor.” (Actually, there might be exceptions, because I do think that the poor in this country suffer greatly, but it is a suffering born primarily out of the totally degraded social conditions under which they live. So I don’t sneer at job training programs or marriage education, but mostly the programs I hear about seem aimed towards offering handouts of one kind or another, many of them no doubt to people who ought to be working.)

A classic example of what I hate cropped up at Mass recently where, at the Archbishop’s request, all the parishes have been playing a recorded message basically asking us to give money to the archdiocese. Now, in the first place, playing a recording seems tacky to me. If you want to send a letter for pastors to read out, fine. But do we have to have a little commercial, complete with cheesy, recorded music? It’s just not dignified.

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Coming out of the last post (on “excessive Mariology), I thought I might pose the question: is it right to think of gender as accidental? When I say this, of course, I am referring to the Thomistic metaphysical language by which the characteristics of any thing are either essential (roughly, an unchangeable part of the sort of thing it is) or accidental (a characteristic of the thing that could theoretically be changed without changing the fundamental nature of that thing.)

Bonifacius, following St. Thomas, contends that gender is accidental, on the way to making an argument that the female gender is (accidentally but still intrinsically) inferior to the male. It is my opinion that this argument is offensive and degrading to women generally and Our Lady in particular; it is a fact that it contradicts the explicit teachings of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You may read more of that discussion in the next thread. Here I just want to ask: how helpful is it to think of gender as an accident?

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I ask for your prayers this Lent.  I desperately need them.  So for 1.) a private intention of mine, 2.) success in the completion of my dissertation (I defend on the Tuesday in Holy Week!), and 3.) good fortune in finding a job, I ask for your prayers.  And I shall be giving up this blog for Lent/dissertation completion purposes.  So please do not respond to this post other than by praying.  All responses in the combox result in an email being sent to me, which will only tempt me to return here.  I wish you all a holy Lent as well!

One of the things that people faulted in Sarah Palin is that she supported the killing of wolves from helicopters. Apparently, the Alaskan government determined that there were too many wolves and that the packs needed to be culled. First off, liberals are going to hate that right there. I think there are two related reasons for this. First, for man to assert himself over nature is to admit that God gave our species dominion over the earth and all that is in it. (Actually, God granted us stewardship for the earth, but the steward is just his master’s vicar, so practically speaking it amounts to the same thing. We act as master — exercise responsible dominion — in God’s place.) That means we are not just animals. Which means that we are responsible for directing our own passions — the wild beast within — in accordance with reason. And as both reason and will have been so severely compromised by original and actual sin, we need to seek grace. If the determination that we have a right to kill wolves is Proposition A,  then fealty to the Pope and the burning of votive candles with gaudily painted pictures of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the side are Proposition Z (I would argue that we actually get there by Proposition H). Continue reading

For debate: Could the situation arise in which the legal toleration of prostitution would be the lesser evil?  As prostitution is currently illegal in most jurisdictions in the United States, legal toleration would entail decriminalization, whether statutory or by way of informally “looking the other way.” 

St. Augustine of Hippo, “Divine Providence and The Problem of Evil”

What can be mentioned more sordid, more bereft of decency, or more full of turpitude than prostitutes, procurers, and the other pests of that sort? Remove prostitutes from human affairs, and you will unsettle everything because of lusts; place them in the position of matrons, and you will dishonor these latter by disgrace and ignominy. This class of people is, therefore, by its own mode of life most unchaste in its morals; by the law of order, it is most vile in social condition. (emphasis added) Continue reading

When the topic of men and women comes up, Catholics will almost invariably chime in, “The holiest person who ever lived was a woman!” This sort of comment gives me pause. The Blessed Virgin was indeed the holiest *human person* who ever lived. However, she was not the holiest *human being.* Our Lord, a man (i.e. male), was the holiest human being who ever lived. Unlike his completely human Mother, Our Lord was a divine Person with a divine nature in addition to His human one. He was infinitely holy and, as man, was holier than His Mother. So, we can’t say that the holiest created human being (Our Lord’s human nature was created) ever was a woman. The *second* holiest human being was a woman. So there is a hierarchy/inequality of man and woman even in the case of the New Adam and the New Eve.  They are not equal, not even in holiness. Only God outranks the Blessed Virgin, but that God is also incarnate as a human male. If the fact that the holiest human person was a woman says something (and it does!), so then so too does the fact that God chose to become incarnate as a man and not as a woman.  Point:  it’s a man’s world, albeit a God-Man’s.

(This article is not about anything explicitly Catholic.  But often liberals complain about how the white man supposedly made this continent worse.  They say that the coming of Columbus made life worse for the Indians.  We know that he brought many evils along with the *greatest good* — the Good News of salvation.  So the Indians benefited.  This article points out that there are other ways in which the Indians benefited.)

You may recall the movie “Alive.”  It was about a group of Uruguayan soccer players whose plane crashed in the Andes.  A number of them died.  Those who survived did so by devouring the flesh of the dead.  They did this only after great and solemn debate.  They ate only the flesh of people who had already died and would not have killed anyone in order to eat  their flesh.  All of the people in question were Catholic and they attended a Catholic college.  When the survivors returned to civilization, officials of the Church said that they had done nothing wrong.  From what I can understand, the position of the Church is that one may permissibly eat anything in extremis.  You may not kill people in order to devour their flesh, but eating the flesh of those who have already died is permissible.  In extremis, this is not inconsistent with the necessary respect we owe the dead.  The people in the Andes respected their dead comrades.  When two of them reached civilization, they buried the human flesh they had brought with them as rations.  At the same time, one student refused to eat the flesh given him and starved.  The Church officials said that he did not die of suicide.  This was a case of double effect; he intended to refrain from cannibalism, not to kill himself.  He could have eaten the flesh morally, but he was not obliged to do so. 

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I am not bothered by teenage pregnancy as such.  I am bothered by the way our society defers marriage.   The  time when reproduction is healthiest is the time when women should do it.  Let me repeat that.  Biologically speaking, the time to reproduce is when the body is ready, willing, and able.  Most societies have prepared men and women to be spiritually and mentally mature about the time they become physically mature.  For women, there is no good biological reason to defer child-bearing past the completion of puberty.  In fact, there is every reason to do it (in the literal sense of “do it”) at that time.  Time was people were ready to support themselves at that age or not very long after it.  None of my grandparents had a high school diploma.  One of my grandmothers may have spent a year in what we would today call a high school.  Back then high school was called “high” because, well, it was the highest education most people could reasonably expect to get.  People were functioning as adults well before reaching the age of 21. Continue reading

Traditionalist Catholics talk a lot about the abuse of language. Here I will protest that many traditionalist Catholics also abuse language in a particular instance. There is a movement afoot to say that Catholics “don’t date,” they “court.” The idea is that dating is what the world does — easy sex, no commitment or commitment entered into too hastily, no thought of marriage, contraception, abortion. “Courting” means that you are looking for marriage in a chaste way. Continue reading