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| Monday, January 02, 2012 |
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the comfort of uselessness
In 1997, I was present at the Vatican for a special Mass at which Blessed Pope John Paul II declared St. Thérèse of Lisieux a Doctor of the Church. This was 12 years before I joined the Church, and I had little understanding at the time of the significance of what was going on or interest in St. Thérèse. But these days St. Thérèse has been very important to me, as I've been learning about her "Little Way" of salvation.
Read more...Category: Life |
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| | Thursday, December 22, 2011 |
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what is "the Gospel"?
I recently read that Tim Tebow's Dad
heads a ministry whose purpose is to evangelize the Philippines. The Philippines is about 80% percent Catholic, but this ministry considers these Catholics to "have never once heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ." I find this pretty disturbing. Which raises the important question, "what is this 'Gospel' of Jesus Christ," such that the Catholic Church does not teach it?
Read more...Category: Jesus |
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| | Saturday, November 26, 2011 |
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realist sexual ethics applied: reproduction
I’m going to obsessively dwell on this general arena for one more post, just because I can only imagine that many people wonder about this question: Why on earth would anyone morally object to contraception? I can imagine this question occurs to many people just because contraception is so completely commonplace in our society that in practice the vast majority of people don’t think twice about it. Yet up until 1930, as I’m given to understand, all churches (not just the Roman Catholic Church) forbade use of contraception. And if one is willing to suppose that it isn’t just some arbitrary “puritanical rule” or some such, one might want to find out what the actual or possible moral grounds for such a bar might be.
Now, it’s become quite true in our society at least that contraception is closely linked to the prevalence of extramarital sex. Just as extramarital sex is pretty much expected and taken as a given in our society, so too is contraception, and it’s not hard to see how these two are linked: extramarital sex normally actively excludes the intention to conceive a child, so one expects that “safe sex” will be practiced as a rule.
But extramarital sex as immoral in itself was dealt with in a previous post. What about granted that sex is only morally permissible within marriage? Within a faithful lifelong bond, what’s wrong with practicing some family planning that doesn’t involve abortion? Is the point simply that one should have as many children as possible? Well, no, otherwise the Catholic Church (for example) would also frown on natural family planning (which is not, by the way, just the “rhythm method” under a different name), which, on the contrary, it actively encourages. To see what a proper ethical disposition toward sex is that precludes contraception, we return to the realist basis that was introduced earlier, and apply it to the present case…
Read more...Category: Philosophy |
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| | Monday, October 31, 2011 |
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realist sexual ethics applied: charity
The Greek word agape can be translated to the ambiguous English "love," but more specifically denotes charity: love that gives without the condition or requirement of receiving in return. The English language is impoverished in having only one word, love, to denote a disparate range of phenomena, and is most often used to indicate what is called eros in Greek, rather than agape. The application of eros—romantic, emotional love—to sex is obvious, but charity? Not so obvious, perhaps.
Yet there is a real basis for charity in sexual expression, given, as was canvassed earlier, that an essential component of sex is the bonding of two people. The basis for sexual relationships is not exhausted by the nature of eros, because there is more to sex than just, well, sex. In terms of human relationships, per se, it is essentially about giving oneself to the other; and that, specifically as opposed to taking, or getting from the other simply so as to get one's appetites filled. Our sexuality cannot be cordoned off from the rest of our relational nature and treated as merely an appetite. Mere eros, then, is just lust and using another person for as a means to an end, that end being an emotional thrill, and satiation of physical appetites.
Below the fold, it will be explained how these considerations lead to the conclusion that masturbation is immoral.
Read more...Category: Philosophy |
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| | Friday, October 21, 2011 |
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realist sexual ethics applied: marriage
Another vastly unpopular conclusion to be argued for: sex outside of marriage is immoral. As before, although the conclusion is often taken to be associated with some religious basis, an argument will be made on strictly nonreligious terms.
Building on what was said in the initial post on this topic, we have it that to be in a proper disposition towards something, sex, that is obviously of vast importance for our species, is to not treat it in a way that’s incompatible with its essential properties. Enjoying sex is not, ipso facto, treating it a way that is incompatible with its reproductive function, because the whole reason (rooted in its essential properties) that it is enjoyable is because it is reproductive.
So what would it look like to enjoy sex in a way that is incompatible with its essential properties? If anything, it’s the “hookup” mentality—meet someone at a party for the first time and decide to sleep with them the same night. You want some, I want some, so let’s do it. Previously I mentioned the “just-as-if” test for whether something is being treated in line with its essential nature or not. Well, if people are totally promiscuous and having sex with “no strings attached,” this would be perfectly appropriate if sex were the sort of thing where we just happened to discover that rubbing certain parts of our bodies against each other just happens to feel good. But is this what sex is, really? No. If there were such a thing, it would not be sex, but something totally different. So using sex just-as-if it were such a thing is to abuse its essential properties, as though we could detach a nonfundamental part of it to use for our own ends and then reattach it again. But we can’t, really, because sex is one, integral, thing.
What actual, positive qualities does sex have that makes it such that it’s not just-as-if just described above? Well, the very thing that makes “hookups” immoral is because in fact sex has a bonding characteristic between two people, so we can’t just stipulate that there are “no strings attached”—in fact there are strings attached, because it’s just the nature of the thing. If we treat sex just-as-if we can just throw it around however we please, then we neglect its emotional bonding nature. Then, if we are in an emotionally-bonded relationship, sex doesn’t make any difference because it’s just the sort of thing we would do with anyone. So we’ve undercut the basis for sex being able to help bond us to people we want to be bonded with, “strings attached.” If we’ve thus “bonded” ourselves to just anyone we’re physically attracted to, we’ve ended up bonding ourselves with no one. The “hookup” culture is terrifyingly lonely and nihilistic.
Now, to the extent that we can recognize the reason that total, willy-nilly promiscuity is immoral because it weakens our capacity to form important sexual bonds that help cement long-term relationships (that have some kind of claim to exclusivity and faithfulness), we can logically follow that line of thought to the conclusion that there is such a thing as marriage, and that sex outside of that bond is immoral too.
Read more...Category: Philosophy |
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| | Sunday, October 02, 2011 |
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realist sexual ethics applied: gender
I've started with some quite uncontroversial nonmoral premises, such as that we did not make up sex; that it is a prime example of something that is, and remains, what it is regardless of how we choose to think about it. This means that to be right about it, we must get into a proper disposition about it, and not the other way around. First of all, sex is something biological. More specifically, sex is essentially about reproduction. (But not just biological, or just reproduction; more on that below.)
The other use of the word "sex" is to mean gender. And here the word "sex" is not being used in a completely unrelated sense, like a river "bank" versus a financial "bank." Quite the contrary. The essential thing about gender, being about sex, is that there are two of them. Each of the genders would not be what it is without being implicitly about the opposite gender. This is exactly because this is how sexual reproduction works: it requires both. So sex (the general thing) means nothing unless there are two sexes (the natural kinds). If humans reproduced asexually, there would be no sex exactly because there would be no sexes. It is absurd to suppose that there be any such thing as sex if there were only one sex. Likewise, and equivalently, it is senseless to suppose that there be only one sex, period. All of this is so humdrum that it's almost painful to recite it. But it's true, and incredibly enough, often treated as of no importance; more to the point, it's the premises doing all the work in the present argument.
Except of course, the premise, as discussed in the previous post, that whatever moral-realist facts there are about sex, they are, like all moral facts generally, rooted in (in philosophy-speak, "supervene on") the metaphysical-realist facts about the thing under discussion. That's pretty much the only thing that need be added to the uncontroversial biological facts. The point, with regard to homosexuality, of course, should by now be obvious. The conclusion I'm headed for: homosexuality is intrinsically immoral.
Read more...Category: Philosophy |
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| | Thursday, September 15, 2011 |
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realist sexual ethics
There are those who would say that if one takes the same position that the Catholic Church (or any church) takes on an issue, then the only argument that is possible for that conclusion on an issue is an essentially religious one. But this itself is an invalid argument. For example, if the Church has a teaching on a particular moral issue that is not itself religious—that is, that someone could take a position on for nonreligious reasons—it doesn't follow that the only argument possible for the position is that the Church teaches it. One could arrive at the same position for reasons independent of the fact that the Church teaches it. And if one could do that, it might suggest that those reasons are the reasons that the Church teaches that position (although someone's reason for taking that position might be either that the Church teaches it, or for some independent reason... or both).
More to the point: the Church has a unified sexual ethic (see the "Theology of the Body" for more on this) that stands in stark opposition to the prevailing sexual ethic of the contemporary secular culture. Its positions are not totally unique on all issues, but the complete package on all interrelated sexual issues is something that, as a whole, only the Catholic Church stands behind. Most people no doubt think of the Church's teachings on sexuality (if they think about them at all) as arbitrary, "outdated," perhaps even mercenary or Machiavellian, but certainly not as if those positions could be arrived at by any independent chain of reasoning. Committing the very fallacy described above, certainly most people think that the only reason anyone could ever adopt such "conservative" positions is in blind deference to the Church's authority.
But if it could be shown that such positions can be arrived at independently of brute appeal to authority, this would open up the possibility that there are actual ethical grounds for the Church's ethical teachings, which can suggest that they may reasonable themselves and not just arbitrary decrees. As it turns out, I think this is exactly the case.
Read more...Category: Philosophy |
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| | Friday, July 22, 2011 |
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the papacy
(Or, "Is the Pope Catholic?")
I'm under the impression that for many Protestants, the two biggest "issues" they have with the Catholic Church are Mary and the Pope. The Blessed Virgin I've devoted a different post to, so here's one on the Pope.
The papacy can easily seem strange to a Protestant trying to understand it in light of their existing concepts. It must look as though the Catholic Church were a huge denomination with one central authority figure who calls all the shots, whereas a Protestant picks a church based on whether they agree with it, and can always "change churches" if they end up disagreeing with the pastor. So one issue is the very idea of having a church with objective authority, but that's something I've also dealt with in a different post. The main thing is, then, what is the Catholic Church if not a huge monolithic denomination answerable to just one human being?
Read more...Category: The Church |
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| | Tuesday, June 07, 2011 |
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mercies often construed as burdens
People sometimes look to Christ's sacrifice of himself on the Cross as though it's an imposition. Some of the kinds of responses could be put in these words: "Did I ask for that?" "What a cruel Father to do that!" "So what's it to me?" The Cross says something to people: it's the ultimate "sign of contradiction", which doesn't really allow for a neutral reaction. What it says, of course, is that if such an ultimate, infinite merit was purchased, it must be because the penalty of sin is just as serious. But if sin is a reality, the Cross can only represent a mercy in the face of it. The problem with most people today is that they can't recognize "the Good News" because they don't recognize "the Bad News" to begin with. But the reality and meaning of the Cross is such that it's not a matter of whether there is sin—given that there is, it's the ultimate good news that we can have recourse to that merit which we could not buy on our own efforts. The alternative is no penalty paid, and damnation for all, as we deserve.
Just as non-Christians object to the Cross, the exact same principle, as I see it, applies to many Catholic doctrines that non-Catholics object to: Confession, Purgatory, Indulgences, and marriage "Annulments."
Read more...Category: Apologetics |
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| | Friday, May 13, 2011 |
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Jesus' Mom
(This would have been particularly appropriate last week, but, oh well...)As my previous post set out to portray something that is "unfamiliar"-strange to many in a way that shows how it is actually not "objectively"-strange—and on the contrary, entirely natural given certain natural assumptions—I want to do so more-specifically with the issue of Mary, Mother of Jesus, in Catholic thought and theology. As the Communion of the Saints is a general and necessary Christian theme that in Catholic theology is simply played out to its full and natural extent, attention paid to Mary is a specific instance of the Communion of the Saints that is as natural an instance of it as the Communion of the Saints itself is natural.
Read more... Category: Jesus |
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| | Sunday, April 17, 2011 |
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"So what is the deal with Mary and the Saints?"
From the Protestant point of view, almost no aspect of Catholicism seems as bizarre or perplexing as the Catholic emphasis on the Saints, particularly Mary. There is the "strange" that is so simply because it is unfamiliar, and there is the strange that is just objectively so because it is arbitrary or otherwise nonsensical, period. I'm going to offer an explanation for why this aspect of Catholicism, while it may be "strange" in the former sense, is not strange in the latter. (Mary, being Jesus' mother, is of course the foremost of the Saints: I'll specially discuss the Blessed Virgin in a separate post.)
First, the emphasis. Who are these people and why do we care so much about them? The Saints are those who are definitely in heaven now, having completed the process of salvation—according to Catholicism, salvation is a process that one undergoes, which is completed once one has been completely conformed to the image of Christ. So it's not enough to be a "believer" to be a Saint: although that's a necessary condition, it's not a sufficient condition. You don't just get "zapped" into heaven-worthy status just by believing that you are one. So, there are those who have already walked that path and completed it, and then there is you. And if you want to walk that path, too, you look at the examples of those that have gone before you.
What's so glorious about the multiplicity of the saints is that although each is conformed to the image of Christ, they are all so different from each other. Somewhere G.K. Chesterton writes about how whereas evil always and everywhere looks exactly the same—each tyrant is the same as any other—those who are really good are thereby more uniquely themselves. The differences between the saints can be quite dramatic; Chesterton asks us imagine the comical contrast between St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thomas Aquinas as they walk together, their figures silhouetted as they crest a hill. Each saint has a unique story and something unique to teach us.
And then there's the Communion of the Saints. This means that they all share in the glory and the power of the Church Triumphant in heaven, the Church Militant being here on Earth and with recourse to all of them to help us in our path to eventually be what and where they are now. That's why we're able to ask them to pray for us: because the prayer of the righteous—the Saints most of all—is powerful and effective (James 5:16).
Objection 1: Why can't we just go directly to God, who is most powerful and righteous? Answer: In principle, we could, but what are our purposes to begin with? Why assume we even know what to pray for? We don't even know what it looks like to follow Jesus unless we look to the Saints, who know from their own victorious experience? In any case, the reality is such that it's not just you-and-God, but the whole church together: the Communion of the Saints, if it means anything (and it's in the Apostle's Creed, so it must mean something) means that the Church Militant has recourse to the Church Triumphant precisely because we are all in this together. Your own relationship to God can't be abstracted away on an individualized basis apart from its place in the whole picture. So it's not an "either-or" between praying to the Saints or to God: it's dramatically and decidedly "both-and." And remember, the Saints are those who have finished the journey, not those who are on it. So if you ask fellow sojourners on earth to pray for you, how much more would you want the Saints to do so?
Objection 2: Still, why would we divide our attention among anyone besides God Himself? Why give the glory and thanks for anything to anyone besides God? This assumes not only something that the previous reply rebutted—that attention to the Saints hinders rather than helps getting to God, but also seems to imply something about God that we might not really want to imply. Consider what Gandalf says about Sauron: "There is only one Lord of the Ring...and he does not share power!" Is that what we think about God? Is he maybe kind of like Sauron, only a "good" version? I, for one, find ample independent reason to reject this view of God. It seems to me a far more fitting and praiseworthy ascription to suppose that He does share power; that it is His delight to let His trusted servants—the Saints—do work on His behalf.
The below diagram encapsulates the major points canvassed above—which of the two pictures is most "Christ-centered": the one that just has you getting to God somehow on your own resources and propositional beliefs, or the one that puts you in touch with the whole "network" of those who are, in a truly completed sense, in Christ?
Category: Apologetics |
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| | Saturday, March 26, 2011 |
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How do you know you're in the religion that Jesus founded?
It's been nearly 2000 years since Jesus left his work to the apostles, and a wide and disparate variety of groups of people think that they are in the same religion (or "belief system," or perhaps "relationship," if they don't like the word "religion") that Jesus began back then. But hardly any such people ever ask themselves how they know they are in that same religion, even though the disparity of beliefs among people who are pleased to call themselves "Christians" makes this a pressing question. Perhaps people think the differences are not so great after all. But then, there will always be people who think they are "Christ followers" but who lie beyond the pale of others who think the same thing about themselves. At root, each person who falls under that self-appellation probably thinks it's so "obvious" who really merits the designation that it requires little thought. But all that can buy one is a subjective sense of assurance, which is pretty cheaply bought, not to mention falling far short of providing a way to know (not merely believe, however strongly) that one's beliefs about the matter have any connection with reality.
Read more...Category: The Church |
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| | Friday, March 18, 2011 |
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the single sense in which "time is not real" and "I do not exist"
(Or, Time for Some Delightful Mind-Blowing—one of things I most enjoy about philosophy) I'm just feeling the need to journal down some straight-up philosophizing, because I've been gathering a brainstorm to critical mass on a couple interrelated topics that I've now got convinced and definite views about. First, time, and an explanation of our illusory sense of it that causes us to be mystified by it. Then, the sense in which it can be true to say that "I do not exist." The former conclusion I have come to more recently, and found it to be interestingly analogous to the latter topic.
For a long time (no pun intended) I'd had no definite philosophical views on the nature of time, and not in fact read any of the philosophy of time, I think. More recently, though, I've been very strongly drawn to presentism: the view that the present moment contains everything that is real. The past and future are not "out there" either waiting to happen or having happened; they do not exist, period. Quasi-theological views about hope vis-à-vis the present are likely what have led me to this, and now I think presentism makes so much sense of time itself: where is the future, but 100% determined by present facts? Where is the past, but 100% contained within the present (since the present is 100% determined, without remainder, by the entire past)?
If the past and future are not real, but only the present is, then one may say that there is a sense in which time itself is not real (although there certainly is "passage," or in any case something that "does its work"). Supposing that presentism is true and furthermore that there is a sense in which "time"—as a "spotlight" moving across the total history of the universe—is not real, this can help make sense of our perception of time and why we find it so puzzling and ineffable.
Read more...Category: Philosophy |
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| | Thursday, March 10, 2011 |
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"...and the greatest of these is Charity."
In the context of answering questions about spiritual gifts, St. Paul emphasizes that above all, any gift is to be used for the building up of the Church, in love. The word "love" there, agape in the Greek, is also translated "charity." In fact, it's perhaps a better translation since "love," unfortunately, has such subjectivized connotations in English. St. Paul gives a sort of "hierarchy" of virtues—"these three, faith, hope, and charity, remain; but the greatest of these is charity"—that points to the importance of agape over hope, or even faith. The point generalizes to charity itself, not just in relation to spiritual gifts.
This is well worth exploring, because for many Christians (e.g., Martin Luther), the essence of the Gospel is faith. But this is the common and straightforward logical error of confusing necessary with sufficient conditions. Of course faith is necessary, but just believing in something isn't the Gospel. For the Catholic, on the other hand, the essence of the Gospel is charity. Far from excluding faith as an either/or proposition, it's a both/and. (An analogy: if I tell my 3-year-old son "that's a grackle," he says "no, that's a bird." He doesn't realize, of course, that far from disagreeing with him, I'm profoundly agreeing—it is most certainly a bird, insofar as it is a grackle.) Moreover, when charity is given its due priority, the relation of faith and hope to it can be more clearly seen, so that everything falls into place. (As C.S. Lewis says somewhere, put the first things first, and you get the second and third things too. Put the third thing first, on the other hand, and you lose the first thing and the second and third.) Specifically, I think the three are related as according to the following Venn diagram.
The logical relation between them as represented above can be described like this: Charity in its fullness, as expressed at the present time in what one is actually being and doing, entails the having of hope, and these jointly entail the having of faith. What is meant by "faith" and "hope" as the important things that St. Paul is talking about can thus be accurately understood in terms of their relation to charity, and this is one way in which charity is "greater." Charity is greater also because it is a very large target to hit (which is why "my yoke is easy and my burden is light")—it is always right there, available and applicable to every moment, right at the leading edge of experience. This is how hope, too, finds its place as obtaining purchase on the now: it's not about projecting an imagined future, but rooted in what one is doing now. Real (that is, metaphysically real, not just based on ideations) hope is that which deals with the future in the only way that one actually can: by drawing it into the present, moment by moment. Faith is the resultant of these: knowing that one's hope and charity are not in vain even if their fruits are unseen at the present moment. Hope and charity would not be what they are without faith, and without charity, faith is just whatever beliefs one decides to have. Without charity, all one's orthodoxy and dogmas are but "clanging cymbals and gongs."
Category: Jesus |
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| | Friday, February 25, 2011 |
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The Assumption
(Or, examining the mindset that leads to describing veneration of the Blessed Virgin as "The Marian axe that severs the head of Christ from the Church.")
No, not that Assumption... not just now, anyway. This is to make an extremely straightforward point, even if it is a philosophical one (as usual). People have a tendency to make a certain foundational assumption that guides a lot of their practical reasoning, and it manifests itself in a startlingly wide variety of ways. When it is examined and exposed as manifestly false, lots of misapprehensions about reality crumble, and a whole lot of vastly important and fundamental truths fall into place. Apropos to this blog specifically, criticism of this Assumption turns out to be important to Catholic apologetics. So here it is:
The Assumption: If x ≠ y, then x and y exist independently of each other.
Now, some distinct things may exist independently of each other, but the existence of almost anything is inextricably bound with the existence of one or more other things, such that one could not exist without the other. Thus, counterexamples to the inference of The Assumption abound: in nature, theology, and almost anything else you might care to name.
Read more...Category: Apologetics |
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